It’s been ten years, and I still remember
Ten years, and I am still afraid
Ten years, and the hatred still burns
Ten years, and my tears still sting.
It’s been ten years, you probably don’t remember
But it’s been ten years, and all I want to do is forget.
Today I got into a totally silly and unnecessary discussion/minor argument with my boss and new(ish) senior designer. I don’t even understand why – it was just a minor detail, and I decided to endlessly pick on it anyway for the next ten minutes or so. Of course, I guess it didn’t help that my boss was trying to “clarify” this little detail with me as well. It ended as a stalemate, mostly because I was trying to get across the same point as she was trying to get across to me – I have no idea why I didn’t get it, and I have no idea why she didn’t get it either. Or maybe we weren’t actually talking about the same thing, because by the end of the whole thing I was so annoyed that I didn’t even remember just what the heck I was trying to say at that point. The way she was trying to sweep things under the carpet to keep the peace only added to my annoyance. She probably noticed that I was getting a little too worked up over no reason and wanted to calm me down, but unfortunately I hate it when people try to resolve problems by not resolving them. Especially when I’m already annoyed. I spent the rest of my work day with a raincloud over my head.
I think this is a sign that the stress is finally getting to me. I am normally able to separate work from whatever personal issues I may have with work. I don’t take my frustrations at work out on my colleagues, because I think it’s unprofessional. But somehow, that professionalism flew out of the window today. I was annoyed, yes – but what was worrying is that I actually didn’t care about showing it at work.
I guess I’ve been feeling rather emotionally volatile lately. Ever since the previous senior designer quit, I’ve never quite felt the same about my company. His leaving affected me a lot. Now I’m sick and tired of my work, my deadlines, my hours, my clients… I’m just not happy anymore. And I don’t think a holiday will help either, because I will be returning to face the same shit anyway. And at this point, it might not be healthy for me or my company to keep me around anymore.
I don’t really want to leave, really. I really want to stay on for at least another year and build my career. But I really don’t think I can stand the pressure for much longer, unless things change for real. But somehow I doubt it will happen. So I guess maybe it’s time I redesigned my resume and look around for opportunities elsewhere.
To say that I disliked having my photo taken was a gross understatement. I hated taking pictures of myself with an unbridled passion most people usually reserve for killing people they majorly dislike, before chopping them up into several pieces and tossing them into the river. That’s not to say that I didn’t let anyone take pictures of me, just very reluctantly, and more out of politeness than anything else.
I hated the way I look. No matter what angle, what pose, what hairstyle, I’ve almost never found a photo of myself that I would willingly show to people or put up on sites like Friendster or Facebook. I look so stupid, I would think. So freaking horribly ugly.
Today someone asked if I was on Facebook.
Yeah, I replied. But I don’t really know how to work that thing. Plus I don’t have a lot of photos to upload anyway.
Why not? he asked.
I’m lazy, I replied. But it made me think about some photos which maybe I could upload, after all. The rare few photos that I took with friends. Perhaps I could upload it for them.
I opened a file, and took myself completely by surprise. And then I opened another. And another. And I got the same results.
I saw myself. Smiling, having fun, laughing with friends. Enjoying the moment. The stupid feeling that I used to have when I looked back at those photos wasn’t there anymore.
I actually no longer hate the way I looked.
And that made me smile. Perhaps I do have some photos to upload after all.
So I bumped into two ex-collegemates at the cinema on Friday night. I was never really that close to them, but I went up to them to say hi anyway. The usual “so what have you been up to?” questions came up.
“So have you been keeping in touch with anyone?” one of them asked. Ahh, the other inevitable question. “You know, like X, Y, Z?”
I thought that through for awhile. Hmm, I DID sorta keep in touch with a few….although the last I heard/saw from them was more than half a year ago. “Well, sorta,” I replied truthfully. “I haven’t really seen them for awhile.”
What followed was a confused look. “So you haven’t been keeping touch with any of them?” he prodded.
“Well, not really.”
More of the surprised look. “So you’re all alone now?” he asked.
That took me by surprise. Sure, I haven’t really kept in touch with anyone from college, but surely that doesn’t mean that I’m all alone (I like my alone time, anyway – so long as there’s not too much of it).
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.” In context of not keeping in touch with people, yeah, I guess I am “alone”.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really offended by the statement. If anything I don’t think he meant what he meant, but I thought it was rather tactless of him to put it across that way anyway. What do you guys think?
The older I grow, it seems the more impatient I become. A long, long time ago I used to be the advice dispensary – patiently listening to friends as they confide in me about anything and everything and then sympathizing with what they’re going through, and perhaps dishing out some suggestions on what to do. Days like that are long gone. These days whenever someone tells me about the crap they are going through, I am more likely to chide them about not doing anything about it. I push people, ask them questions they don’t want to think about, let alone answer – all out of impatience.
The older I grow, the faster I see time ticking across my mind. I’ll be 25 this year already and there are still so many things I want to do, so many things that have yet to happen – and yet I see myself aging before my own eyes, and I fear that I will die still chasing the dream whose face escapes my memory. I grow impatient, wanting things to happen now, and yet not knowing exactly what it is I’m chasing. I no longer have time, it feels – I want to live my life now, before it’s over. So when someone starts moaning about how life is throwing a spanner into its works, I think – why are you wasting your time? Shouldn’t you be fixing whatever is wrong? Life goes on anyway without you – lose rhythm with it and you’ll have to spend time catching up. Don’t you want to better spend that time? It frustrates me, spending time trying to give people advice they don’t seem to understand.
I’m no longer the listener I was. And to my friends who have been on the receiving end of this frustration lately, I’m sorry. I truly mean the best for you, even if it’s hidden behind a wall of impatience.
Only hell awaits those who have lost hope, for they have lost the ability to redeem themselves.
Well, not really my closet, but my desk drawers and bookshelfs. If there’s one habit I have when I clean up my junk, it’s that I shove crap down dark corners and then pretend they don’t exist anymore. Until they threaten to spill over, anyway. So that’s how I ended up cleaning and clearing out all the junk I’ve hidden over the years (some dating back to when I was nine) over the last few days. Among some of the things that I found were:
Stickers – of cutesy little forest creatures, slowly progressing to pop idols (I guess that was when I grew older – God knows why I even kept them!). I even found some holographic stickers (woah! remember how those used to be all the rage?) of the Ghostbusters tucked away somewhere.
Sketch pads – I used to draw a lot of anime-ish stuff – was how I got drawn (pardon the pun) into a design career.
Half-written books – I wrote a lot of crappy Sweet Valley High-ish (hahahahaha, remember those books?) stories when I was younger, but I don’t remember ever finishing any.
Letters from pen-pals and friends who moved away when I was young.
A lot of birthday cards (which I guess I never bothered throwing away either – again, God knows why).
Colours pencils, pens and other drawing materials that I cherished so much – so much, in fact, that I couldn’t bear to use them. Some of them are still in their packaging.
My collection of keychains. One of them was the types that had water sealed into it. Amazingly, there is STILL some water left in that thing.
Autobiography books – you know, the kind that kids passed around to their friends so they could draw and write a bit about themselves in it?
Some other weird projects that I indulged in with friends.
I smiled at the memory of some of these items. Read some. Cringed at some. Others made me wonder what the fuck did I think I was doing at that point in my life.
And then I put away the keychains, and the drawing materials – and I threw the rest away.
A tiny voice asked if I wasn’t being too cruel to throw the remnants of my childhood away like that. And a wave of sadness washed over me. All those well wishes and “let’s be friends forever!” – wouldn’t it be nice to keep them, to remind me of what my childhood was like?
But there they remained, sitting in the trash. To be honest, the way things had gone over the years, I was surprised at how many cards and letters I’ve kept. I suppose it’s a good enough thing that I can laugh and not feel bitter when I read them. Friends forever indeed. At least I’ve gotten over it.
However, there were three things that I was simply too weak to throw away – diaries I’ve kept over the years, one of which was a joint effort with friends (who might kill me if they ask for it one day and find out that I’ve burned it. It’s their memories too, after all). Ironically, these were the very items that I sweared that I’d burn all this time. Part of the reason why I kept them was because my mom has a habit of going through my trash, and picking out items that she was SURE that I wanted to keep – even though it’s obviously in the bin because I wanted to THROW IT AWAY – and I’m paranoid that she’ll read it. Actually, considering how careless I was about these books, she might already have, and discovered the barrage of hatred I wrote about her in it. Which in that case, the only thing I have to say is PFFFT, that’s what you get for reading things you’re not supposed to in the first place. So I want to personally burn these books, instead of just throwing it away.
The other part of the reason was that I somehow got drawn into reading my diaries again – reading about what it was like to be me years ago. I had written them sporadically till my second year or so in college, apparently. It certainly feels odd, as though I’m reading someone else’s diary, because I no longer recognize myself. The way I felt at certain events and people were just….surprising. Did I really feel that way? Did I really do those things?
But then I ask myself – is it worth knowing all that? Is there a point? Without my past, I feel free to create the future, no strings attached. But the past has made me into what I am today – without it I am nothing.
So here I am, staring at the physical remains of my childhood in the trash, unsure of whether this is going to be something that I might regret doing later on in life.
I think I may have screwed up the interview I really really wanted to get.
Everything was more or less going on okay until he asked if I had a favourite designer. Which I didn’t. Then he asked if I had kept up with international works and what other designers were doing. Which I haven’t (even though I know I should). He more or less chided me nicely about how I should keep up with what other designers were doing to keep myself fresh and to get inspirations from my work….and I think it went downhill from there T__T
Siiiigh. To be honest, sometimes I do wonder where my passion for the arts have gone. When was the last time I surfed the net for interesting ideas? The last time I bought a design book? The last time I sat down in Kinokuniya to browse through their art books? The last time I bought a design magazine?
In short, wtf is up with me? Why aren’t I keeping up with the design world anymore? Am I getting complacent? Or am I seriously losing grip on the reason why I’m in this industry?
Siiiiigh. In any case, I should have prepared myself. But I guess I should have seen this coming my way. I can’t keep chanting “I love design, this is what I want to do” over and over again without keeping up with what the rest of the world is doing. There is no excuse for complacency.
I guess there’s a looooong road ahead of me, and I had better play catch up soon or risk losing my sense of design identity.
Few months ago before I took on my soon-to-be-defunct job, I was attached to another small ad agency. It lasted a week. Ever since then, the time I served there has been the butt of many jokes. It was a ‘graveyard’ company, as a friend put it.
As I was walking back to my car this evening, I mused that my current company was slowly becoming a graveyard itself. Z, the creative director had left. My other colleagues were running around going for interviews. The other two partners were out most of the time. Even when everyone else is in, there is an unmistakable quietness in the air, deafening over the loud chatter between my colleagues, the rapid clacking of the keyboards, and the loud music blaring from the senior designer’s speakers. I guess that was when I smelt the stench of decay, not just of the company, but my own. I feel like I’m rotting inside, slowly dying with every second that passes by. I don’t feel like doing my work anymore, nor do I know why I’m even doing my work for. It all seems pointless as the stench of decay overwhelms me.
A few days ago, Significant Other was talking to me about how he heard Western Europe was slowly dying. “People there don’t have a sense of urgency,” he said. “They just sit at home everyday and watch TV. It’s as if they’re waiting for their time to die.” He shudders. “I can’t live in a place like that.”
It reminded me at once of the surface world in Texhnolyze. How it was much older, and more technologically advanced than the underground world, but its citizens were slowly dying, living only in memory. They had forgotten what it was like to live, waiting instead for their deaths. Their world was beautiful, but devoid of life. Decaying.
“You know, we feel really bad about the whole thing. You can stay employed till you find yourself a job,” one of the partners say. I can’t. Because the more I stay, the more I feel like I’m dying inside, digging my own grave in this graveyard.
Decaying.
And I don’t belong there.
I’ve always thought that Jason Lo was one of the best local artistes we have here in Malaysia. He always made pretty good music, but I’ve never felt the need to look up his music like I do with some others I rave about. Until I heard Operator, The Line Is Dead. I felt compelled to post this because the song went beyond being good music for me. I may not quite understand the lyrics, but I hear its message and it resonates deeply with me, bringing back all my ugly thoughts, memories and feelings about myself, all the desperation, the hate, the despair and the self-pity of what it’s like to be suicidal. It took what seemed like a momumental effort (and a few really, really good friends) to crawl out of the mess I felt that I was in, and I suppose it was nothing but ironic that karma should show me what it was like from the other side a few years later. Sometimes the depression rebounds and I withdraw into my shell, but I’ve never forgotten that there are other people out there whose lives my stupid selfishness is affecting, and I remember the painful lesson that karma taught me.
Of course, since I don’t understand the lyrics, for all I know I’ve completely misinterpreted the song. But it brings all this back, and reminds me that I have a long way to go. But I’ll make it. I’ll make sure of that.