the pursuit of happiness

 god, it is somewhat embarrassing to come crawling back on here. To myself, of course. I am fully aware that this blog is a shout into the void, and thank god it is: the void won't judge me for the horrific, teeny-bop rambles of past posts. To delete them would be to deny the existence of such a person and forgo the past, which is a luxury we cannot indulge.

However, I feel I need to come back here for numerous reasons. The world is in a cataclysmic state, the horrors of which most of us are shielded from. I feel I need somewhere to write my thoughts on the topic, somewhere that is not my diary, however still maintaining the comforting lull of anonymity. This small chunk of html coding on the interwebs appears to tick the box. 

so now, without further introduction, before we pass out (as one does when reading tolkien's extensive expository hobbit descriptives) at the cusp of the hill, I will now puke out some ***inner thoughts***. 

I am swimming in a free week, ladies. My exams ended two tuesdays ago, and i have been out gallivanting as much as is possible in a national lockdown. Walks, painting again (which I have neglected for a long time), grandmotherly crafts whilst I sip on coffee, reading without feeling guilty, and trying to practise my upwards splits. And also just long sections of time spent alone, listening to music on my carpet. Whilst it all feels like I am returning to the person I used to be, before I began to lose myself last year, some of it feels like I'm playing a part. Like, I'm trying to be maximally productive during inherently low-productivity activities and periods, by listening to philosophy podcasts (most of that shit goes straight over my head. why does it MATTER whether we are the same consciousness as we were as a baby? does it change our present? I can perhaps see the value of artistic debate, but due to the temporality of existence, the pondering of it seems fruitless and also deeply frustrating) and trying to educate myself on things that aren't FUCKING NUTRITION for once (sometimes, I hate my degree. I love it, but it is monopolising, like sea urchins without sea otters). And why, whenever I write a blog post, do I sound so tryhard? I'm trying to follow a stream of consciousness and I'm annoying me. Maybe its because I'm stopping myself from writing about the one thing I really want to speak about. Anyway, its just so hard to let go completely and not worry about doing things and being productive and making the most of this singular week I have in my final year, especially when my housemates are grossly hyperactive. R cannot read without sitting down, and J has already applied for six postgraduate programs. My only thought regarding the imminence of next year is how exactly I'm going to piss about for 6 months in Southeast Asia by myself, as a chick with relatively poor street sense and poor hand-eye coordination. 

I comfort myself with thoughts garnered from many spacey, soppy romance novels: that life isn't a collection of awards and medals, but rather each day existing as its own entity, scooped and savoured like a teaspoon of honey. And I suppose if today were to be any day in the numbered collection I have on this earth, `I would want it to be spent doing what makes me happy in every single second - making soup, cutting pictures from magazines for collages, eating soup, and attempting to rollerblade. The famous gandhi quote always sticks in my head (god, is it gandhi? I bloody hope so) - live today as if you'll die tomorrow and all that. But it is intrinsically flawed, because most of time (thank goodness), we don't die tomorrow. most of us live. And sometimes to make your tomorrow better, you need to do things you don't like today, like revise when it is sunny outside, or go through hospital placements you sort of hate, so you can get your degree and fuck off. But then, by this logic, you could argue that all these arbitrary 'acknowledgements' we place on points in our life are inherently meaningless and we should just travel and laugh and live off pennies. BUT I'm sure we have all experienced the feeling of feeling useless, of not having enough to do and occupy ourselves with, which could argue we require a 'purpose' in life in order to harvest a full sheaf of happiness. John Green's Hazel Grace once proclaimed that the existence of broccolli in no way improves the taste of chocolate; however, she and I disagree here. Hard work and turmoil makes the slow, calm periods of our lives all the sweeter. It is even physically manifested in our muscles; to exercise hard, is to sleep soundly. However, once again (bear with me), this could be engrained in us from society's fervent need for productivity, and we have pinned 'purpose' on jobs or degrees, when our purposes simply need to morph into something more wide-spanning and beautiful, such as living in the pursuit of helping others. Without a purpose, I think we can become too hedonistic. Not that these are original thoughts; Wilde horrified us all with the very embodiment of devilish hedonism as his protagonist, Dorian Gray, a hundred years ago. 

So, in order to be happy, what do we need? perhaps I am better qualified to discuss what I need. Something to keep me going in the grander scheme of things, and something every day to keep me happy. Maybe it will be my new biological rhythms module, or doing a tasty glute workout, or baking something sugary. As small as these things are, they are the fabric of life. Can I interrupt myself with a poor metaphor? Life is sand in a sieve. Made up of endless tiny pieces and constantly slipping through holes - if we don't appreciate each tiny granule, we miss it. I don't want to get didactic and chat shit about the grander scheme of things today. Let's focus on the sand, not the desert. EW. I really need to not stretch out an already disgusting metaphor. 

So: my grain of sand today was decoupaging a box for my friend's birthday, baking her cupcakes, and parcelling it all up. Then I got to walk to the post office in the lightest, sweetest flurry of snow, covering my coat like sugar, and walk back with my teeth chattering. I got to do that; the world gifted me with the opportunity. I acknowledge my mental health privilege, my education privilege, and my luck at having two levels of my social pyramid satisfied. 

see you soon (hopefully),

sam