yep.

365 days isn't going to work, because of too much work.
I don't have time for stuff. Bah.

so.

uhhh midterm PHAIL.

We had to write odes about pets in english class. here's mine:
Hip-hop was my dog, my Sparky
Back when I was fat kid lonely
On my cousin's counter first CD met,
I'd play with Sparky until the sun set
We barked at each other
And became like brothers
We ate from the same bowl of life
Shared our tribulations and strife
Pretty soon you couldn't tell which was which
Cause me and Sparky were sewed to the hip


At some point Sparky got too ugly
Flea-ridden, mangy, way too dirty
I'd get sad looks from the girls in the hall
Made me ashamed to rock Sparky at all.
Dog of mine had no tact,
Dog of mine held me back.
I didn't kick it with him no more
Cause his constant barking left me sore.
My dog Sparky was too old anyway
Too tired and worn out for any play.


Now I'm a little bit older
And also a lot less colder
When I see Sparky curled sad on the stoop
This weather-ridden mutt thrown for a loop
Our once great friendship
An irreparable rift
Me, who left him to struggle alone
Picks up this malnourished bag of bones
Petting Sparky like I was dropping beats
Saying sorry like I was spitting heat.

eighth day

oh man oh no oh man.

got hiragana down. now I need katakana. Yeah I'm not sleeping tonight

lol.

I like to think that if I write well enough, these words will somehow bridge the chasm between you and me.

With a pencil I'm omnipotent. I can make our mistakes fade into the past tense, I can clear the fog that covers our future. Time is meaningless here. I can rewrite everything until I get my point across clear like neon signs on a new moon night.

I can take you anywhere you want to go. Just say the words and I can turn this barren, lifeless terrain into the veranda overlooking the Napa Valley you always wanted to go to, where you bite into grapes fresh from the vine and look at the sky through the patchworks of trees older than both of us.

I can erase and rebuild, until there's something there we can both smile upon.

I write with the verve of madmen, scratching frenetically at the walls to make sense of what is happening to them, their own tantric ritual. The desperate clawing their attempt to make sense of what's happening. To know what's going on, to get you to understand.

seventh day

Got so bored studying that I tried to log onto my old myspace. I have forgotten the password though.

I'm glad I didn't, that thing was straight up embarrassing.

Sixth day

Made something for the first time that almost made me vomit.

I left the meat in the fridge too long so it went bad.

I is eating microwaveables tonight. Waaaaaaaah.

On the plus side, I did get a 97 on a midterm. And, I'm getting the hang of this hiragana business.

Fifth day

Didn't really study yesterday.

Powering through hiragana/katakana practice and an essay due tomorrow.

This week is going to SUCK

Fourth day

Haven't studied yet. Been playing Restaurant City.

Whoops.

third day

I hate my slow-ass computer that makes me wait like the most patient parent, hot naps, and this grogginess that is making my head feel weighted in its orbit.

Paati de ikimasu.

Let me sleep please.

second day.

Day 2

Studying while working at the courtyard study lounge

I dreamed in Japanese characters last night.

Hai, soo desu ne.

First day

Midterm for a class I'm failing next Friday, having to write a composition in a language I cannot read, an essay on Monday and I need to finish Frankenstein by Friday. I'm on page 50. Way too much work.

So I have a week and 2 days to get my shit together, so these posts will be short, sporadic, and a case study on a student with way too much shit on his plate.

So today, I'm going to sear squiggly lines into my brain. The beauty of hiragana.

tuesday

And this is today's the thing that's been inside my head.

Yo, so. We only keep up through facebook feeds,
This computer replacing you in your stead.
Status updates replacing our interactions conversationally.
And the only time I see your smile, sated
Is in other people's pictures.

There was a point in our lives
When you ceased to be in my life.
I only ever see you electronically.
Pixels on screens that illuminate
books I'm reading too late at night.

Shoes

I missed a day. Shoot.

So I'm going to cheat again, and post some shoes I was looking at online.


http://www.urbanoutfitters.com/urban/catalog/productdetail.jsp?itemdescription=true&itemCount=60&id=14261671&parentid=M_SHOES_CASUAL&sortProperties=+subCategoryPosition,price&navCount=207&navAction=poppushpush&color=01&popId=MENS_SHOES&pushId=M_SHOES_CASUAL&prepushId=


(I want them)

YO

Yo, I change my mind, fuck your shit, those girls with those smoky voices sounding like canaries who have never flown out of their cages.

I want to propose to this girl's flow, man. I heard her first on this track:


Check your conceptions of what hip-hop is at the door, because this is what the game ought to be. El Gambina, google her. She's amazing.

bah.

Customer service is hard. I hate the way they look at me. You know what I'm talking about. Like I'm too fucking dumb to do my job. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah too tired to write, back to studying. bleh.

Books talking to me: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

I guess I don't have a lot to say, so sometimes I cop out with a youtube video or something. But, I feel that creative exercises allow me to write really fast, and I have fun doing it too. So I'm going to utilize the tag system for the first time ever, in my creation of a series that I really want to do.

Ready for it? It's really exciting.

It's BOOKS FROM MY SHELF THAT TALK TO ME!

...What? I make my books talk to me through personification. Come on, it's BOOKS FROM MY SHELF THAT TALK TO ME! Fine, I thought it was clever. See, I'm not really that talkative of a guy, but I do like to talk about books. I've bought a lot of them too, and I think that the way I feel about a book is something akin to recounting stories of traveling. They're experiences, and I want to see what they'll say to me back. It does feel pretentious though, something you might see in Mcsweenys or something else hipster-y. I guess you have to see it happen. The first book, one of my favorites, Haruki Murakami's "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle."

AH! TIME FOR WRITING YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHYUH

*ahem*

First Segment.

"The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" talks to me.

--------

Hey Rante. It's me. Remember when you bought me in junior year? It was after you resigned yourself to majoring in business in college. You just stopped reading! After your dad made you read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad (which, by the way, was a pretty lame book. I mean, come on, the guy thinks he's so cool but when you're bankrupt, what's he going to say then? Business adages are nice, but they don't help you when your company is corrupt. But anyway.)," you just stopped enjoying reading. You'd look at each book as useless. How the heck is someone supposed to raise a family only writing words? So you just kind of scrapped them off to the side, and resigned yourself to funds and what have you.

I know it's vain of me to say that I'm proud that I was the one that brought you back into reading. I mean, any number of books you met after me could have done that. In fact, reading "Life of Pi" and "A Confederacy of Dunces" the summer before probably had a more resounding effect on you. But I'm glad to say that you started to seriously delve into more literary fiction after meeting me. Murakami was a love letter that you gushed over, and you read my other counterparts voraciously, then you started reading the authors Murakami liked, then your foray into the classics, until suddenly you entered college declaring English. That I was the foundation that would bring you back to English, needless to say, makes me all warm and fuzzy all over.

You were obsessed with me. I mean, you've never reread me completely. You know that I'll always make the time for you! But I'm a commitment, and I know that you're way too busy for me at the moment. I'm happy that you wouldn't want me to slim down on any of my five hundred something pages. You do, though, frequently reread the parts that resound with you, Kumiko's letter in particular. Have you ever read anything so perfect? I know you like to quote that one a lot. Or that bit about how the loneliness gleamed like a razor blade, the pages taking on the shines of knives. Not in those words, but the general feeling. You love that.

You passed me on to so many people. You gave me to Kellan after that memorable summer at Harvard, you hounded Matt to read it after school on the bus, and you gave the book to you know, that one girl. She ditched her classes to go to the bookstore with you and on your suggestion I was given to her. She loved it. You hoped she would love you in the same way but she never did. You can't expect her to love you for the experience that I alone have given her, you can't do that. You just have to expose yourself, and if she doesn't want that, then by God you don't need her. You'll find someone yourself, don't worry.

But anyway, we have grown significantly together. Remember in high school, when you were so proud busting me out during silent sustained reading? Look at that complicated work, look at that young kid reading it! He must be so smart! I didn't want to mention it at the time, but using me to look good wasn't right, but I was patient with you and you came around. The first couple of pages or so might have been used to mitigate an image of you (after all, you did read about how I was the darling of literary critics everywhere), but a hundred pages in you were engrossed for real, and started to find meaning in every single sentence you could. I really, really liked that, that I as a story could help you mature, see the world in a much more productive light. Help you grow up a little.

You carried me to Boston, Massachusetts. I'm taken to trips everywhere. I'm surprised I haven't fallen apart. I mean, I am WRECKED. My pages are so soft from wear, there are stains from food, highlight marks, torn covers and a broken spine. But I've outlasted a lot of books you had before, and I think that it's because I'm so important to you that you refuse to let anything wreck me. And if they did, you wouldn't hesitate to buy me the next day. My philosophies had a big effect on you, but we know that there are depths to me that you haven't even scratched at yet. But in essence, I'm a simple love story, and the fact that I could make you want to be a better guy for the girls you meet make me feel special. Thanks.

********

I now want to reread this book... Ah man, I tried last year but couldn't because of school, and a prior commitment to Bukowski.

*sigh*

I am always deeply disturbed by stories that tell of the human capacity for evil, the ones featuring some apocalyptic situation wherein people struggle to stay alive through any means possible. I mean, I shouldn't believe in it. These stories utilize character tropes: the typical airhead, the naive optimistic, the altruistic hero, the one that stoops to whatever means to survive. These are blueprints of personalities, scripted characters that do not exist; realistically, it's impossible to quantify someone's personality into specific, one word answers. Jock. Genius. Thief. Altruist. These single-word statements cannot describe the intricacies of the human mind. Rationally speaking, I can't imagine these kinds of situations playing out so neatly in its own anarchy. I would like to think that in an earthquake, I wouldn't hoard all of the food for myself, in a tsunami, I would dive after the woman that fell overboard, and if blindness suddenly struck everyone I wouldn't go about raping someone. But see, the thought strikes me, that in the same way that I can believe that this couldn't happen, someone else could believe with all their heart and soul that this can ensue. I mean, the guy writing it nurtured the thought, cultured the notion of committing these unspeakable evils to his fellow man. What's to prevent him from actually acting them out?

I think that there's a certain responsibility in writing. People that write deal with the views and minds of so many characters that sometimes I wonder if their personalities are blurred because of it. Like, did J.R.R Tolkein get lost in the expansive world he created? Did he slip up sometimes and talk to his wife in Elven? Do those creeping suspicions, those rising urges, all of the actions boiling over ever find their way into the author's life? Sometimes I fear that when a story is sympathetic to a monster of a character, it's simply the author trying to redeem himself. He puts that monstrosity through a living hell to baptize himself, punishing him and then having us mourn it simply to go through a process of self-salvation.

I really need to stop reading depressing stuff.

I think that's what makes me write so safely. I don't know what to make of it. I definitely recognize an immaturity in my writing, and I'm not too sure how I go about fixing it. It's like... a painter, when he finishes his painting. Of course, it matches the picture inside of his head, and he keeps telling himself it's fine. He looks closer at strokes he can only see, those that were made too fast, or too sloppily, or in a color that slightly not the shade intended. There's this weird sense of disappointment whenever I finish writing now. I cannot match the stronger tones of people better than me.

Good writing, I feel, definitely explores the innermost depths of the soul. The author looks inward to tell the thing that he can best. It could be a lovely elegy, a heartfelt poem, or the end of the world and established society. See, there's this bit from a lot of writers, to "write fearlessly." I still don't really know how I can do that. I feel that if I unravel my innermost thoughts, my mind will follow, and I'll expose something that I cannot take back. It's kind of scary when I think about it. But if I am going to write, it's something I have to do, or else the words that I write won't mean much, if anything.

another cop out

I like girls with soft, hazy voices that sing to bouncy accompaniments and make me want to fold laundry.


please marry me.

mang.

No tutoring high schools until next quarter.

It's a shame because I was looking forward to it too. Waaaaaaaaah.

So much love.

Just listen to it. So much love for this track.



A good song is like a faithful lover.

Facebook feed

I'm saddened that we only keep up through feeds on facebook, status updates and newsfeed posts, face to face is through thumbnails and tagged photos. And I can't even stick this on a twitter so you can see how I feel: 217 characters to tell how messed up this is.

Ideaaaaa

I had a pretty good idea to write but I forgot it. It's a really crappy feeling too, losing something that you thought was pretty solid in my head. I'm trying to retrace my steps to see if I can catch it again. As soon as I trace it I'm pinning it down. I was at work. I was eating breakfast, which consisted of ovaltine and pop-tarts. Then I... was eating this crappy candy from my childhood. Hey! That's what it was! I was going to write about how things from my childhood don't enthrall me as much anymore.

Well, now that I have THIS, I might as well save that concept for another day. It's not technically cheating, I think...

*ahem*

I hate it when I lose ideas. Sometimes I'll see a certain person on-campus, and I'll think "hey, they'd make a nice story." Or I'll be daydreaming and stumble on something interesting. I find random tidbits in books that could be used for conversation pieces, and I discover deep, philosophical quotes I can base a post on. And just like that they're gone, lost in the inability to retain most anything within my short-term memory. Not to say, however, that I always forget great, or even good ideas. I forget about things that suddenly sprout up in the back of my mind that I'm glad I didn't do (tribal tattoo, eighteenth birthday for one). I remember how at one point I wanted to own a snuggie (I refuse to buy one now because they made these "designer" prints, which are basically leopard-spotted, meaning that they have more or less affirmed that their audience are tacky moms who wear stiletto heels to the grocery store. DAMN YOU PRODUCT MARKETING!). I also groan at how I tried to be emo or indie or whatever in high school, wishing that idea had left my head at the time (More on that later. Actually no, never). But, no matter how I try to see the silver lining, an idea lost is an idea wasted, regardless if it's good or not.

David Sedaris is one of my favorite memoir writers. He notes that he keeps a little notebook around with him, jots down notes, and elaborates on them later. I actually tried this for a day. I was really nervous about looking pretentious, busting out some random notepad and just writing in the middle of nowhere, so whenever a thought or observation struck me, I would run off to a secluded corner and write it down. Eventually, I would start annotating anything interesting, and every couple minutes I would run off to some shady corner, then reenter society, looking over my shoulders, writing in a notebook furtively. If anyone was watching me, they'd probably think that I was engaging in multiple drug deals. It got so bad that I pretty much only use that little notebook to compose my grocery list now.

If I find something I HAVE to write about, I think about it constantly. I try to sear it into my brain, hide the idea in the wrinkles of my lobe to pluck out later. But if I go with this method, it consumes my conscious. The concept will strike me at inopportune times: during classes and conversations, it's all white noise as my thoughts begin to blossom. I'll find myself unable to sleep, and then wake up to only be thinking again about the same thing. I'll have to write it, and then find myself unsatisfied because it doesn't match the words in my mind, and then keep writing over and over and over, knowing that there's just too much of a boundary between the words I write and the mental images within my head. I need to accept that these are two separate realities, and no matter how much I want the thing in my head to exist on the page, it can never be. The best I can have is a doppelganger, a somewhat accurate facsimile. It's PRACTICALLY the same, but there's just this one unspeakable quality that prevents it from being one and the same.

Lately I've just been kind of freestylin' on it. I read this novella, "Ron Carlson Writes A Story." It's about how the director of the UCI creative writing program goes about writing a story. I always figured, it was through detailed planning, meticulous editing and constant revising that a story finds it's way into existence but it's NOT. So Carlson thinks that he wants to write a story about a mattress that falls out of a truck. Great. Except he kind of word-vomits everything else. Characters, places, scenarios, all of it just comes out of his head and onto the paper haphazardly, but the thing is that it all WORKS, and that's because he's not just throwing crap together. He creates a character, and then lets them live their own lives. I've found that in my spontanaetiy I made some pretty good stuff (this blog, for example). So I think I'm going to use this approach a lot more.

The creative process is something that still befuddles me. Is there a certain approach to create certain things, or are our brains just wired to do something a certain way? I still don't really know what works for me. I plan intensely on papers only to realize I had TOO much; I write papers in mere hours and realize just how much another hour or two could have helped if I had only planned ahead. I guess I need to strike a fine balance, but in the meantime I guess writing casually is the best thing for me. No mental thoughts of a guilliotine above my head to keep my head down and write. If anything, casuality justifies my habit of putting things off until the very last minute, and I do indeed like that.

Cooking.

So I think that writing is a lot like cooking.

I'm starting to cook for myself nowadays, and it's a great, refreshing feeling. I don't think I've started anything new in a while. I've been doing more of things that I find important, but I haven't really done anything outside of my niche. The only experiences I've had with cooking were sparse dalliances with toasters, microwaves, and rice cookers. I've used the stove maybe a couple times in my life, but nothing so extensive as cooking a whole meal for myself; maybe just a grilled cheese sandwich to munch on, or some spam.

So I'm now becoming more involved with the kitchen. No longer do I keep my back turned to the stove and oven when I make my mad-dash to the refrigerator for food. In fact, I no longer approach the fridge briskly; knowing that cooking my meal will be more than throwing a tray into a microwave, I take my time. I wash and dice the vegetables, set the wok and frying pan on the stove to heat up, season my meat in spices and marinades, and recount the steps I'll have to take to conjure up the recipe in my mind. To make one's food is a labor of love, and for that one must take it slow.If anything, at least cooking has made me much more patient.

It's a lot like writing, when I think about it, and it's the very same feeling that I had when I started to write that I have right now with cooking. Look! I'm creating things! I'm experimenting! As of right now, the dishes I create are far from perfect, but I can eat them just fine one way or another, and I'm happy. Yet, little by little, my inadequacies are starting to show up in my food and I want to erase them. I would add too much soy sauce like so many words, ruining the flavor of a story. Or, I would add a wrong spice to the mixture like a bizarre phrase or paragraph, changing the very flavor of the concoction. I don't feel for the consistency of the recipe, or I overcook it until its natural flavors are lost. I edit my creations into oblivion until I lose the meaning I want to convey.

I don't know why I am attracted to things that demand a delicate touch. Either with cooking or writing, with one mistake you can make a catastrophe. If you're too attentive, then you can be so muddled in technique and precision that the overall picture is ruined. If you're too inattentive, then you can under-cook something so it doesn't fulfill its potential, or even worse, not even make the thing you intended to in the first place. Sure, you can salvage a bad meal with sauces and sides, or you can salvage a bad story with a good character or two, but in the end, when you're downing it, there's still that indelible feeling of disappointment on your heart or tongue.

I've been reading a lot of recipes and books on the subject of cooking in order to better myself. I have a gigantic cookbook of Martha Stewart's right next to my copy of Fitzgerald's short story collection. I go blind trying to solve the puzzle hiding the techniques of the great. I hunch over computer screens and stoves. I watch my concoctions boil, fry, and simmer, hoping everything will go alright. I am walking in the presence of giants, attempting to match their humongous steps by making every effort to match their pace.

I really shouldn't be looking at it that way though. Like everything else I care about, I stick my nose in too deeply in the subject and try to rush its stages. I need to learn to revel in glacial paces. I always feel like I'm stagnating if I'm still, just waiting, and I tend to rush things to get to the next point. I think that the best things about both cooking and writing is that I can try again a near-infinite amount of times. It's not like race car driving or snowboarding, wherein if I meet a fatal accident while attempting to be the best, it's a career ender. The worst accidents that could befall me writing is carpal tunnel; with cooking it's um... burning my house down. But barring the worse, the great capacity of both of these activities, to be able to try again in order to strike that fine balance, to be able to change something because there is no finality to it, I think that's what I like best about it. In my quest to attain a near-perfection, it excuses my imperfections.

That, and I find it a lot of fun. A LOT. There aren't too many things that make me really excited. And of course, not everyone is going to share my enthusiasm. I won't ever hear from my roommate, "boy howdy writing! What are we waiting for?" nor will I hear, "hey, spending hours trying to make a cake? Sounds like a weekend!" But these are the things I like, and I guess that I make so much of an effort towards them because I want to enjoy them to my fullest.

That's not to say I'm anywhere near-good in the kitchen. Honestly, I'm pretty awful. Or if not awful, nearing adequate. I can't say that much about my writing either. I keep hearing that we need to approach our works with confident strides and strokes, but I'm sure that's not an approach that works out for me. I guess that I constantly demean myself so I never get too full of myself, and due to that I never stop to strive towards bettering myself. I'm realizing the flaws in this though. Because I stop myself so constantly, I miss so many paths due to me dwelling on a point. Like making a steak too well-done. Or never finishing the story you want to write.

All I can do is steadily improve, and try to take the steps that I should be making.

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Friday's.

So I knocked the fuck out as soon as I got back from work. I was feeling okay too; I figured that I wasn't sleepy. My muscles weren't sore, my thoughts weren't murky. Everything was really clear to me, it felt like a normal day. Then I closed my eyes around 4 PM, and woke up at 2 AM clearly confused. Where the heck did the sun go?! Why is on the clock in single digits again? And for that matter, why do I feel so freaking hungry?

It's a really interesting concept to me: sleeping the world away. Don't like the present that you're in now? Sleep for a couple years and wake up in a brand new world. Want the love of your life to come by? Maybe she'll stumble on your sleeping husk. Sleep as the grand protector of things, that great mover that allows you to transition into a new epoch, as your shield, your sword against the sorrows of this world. I would like to sleep away my responsibilities and see them gone.

If only this could be true, but it isn't. In a perfect world, sleeping away everything would be conducive to reality, but it's not. Sleep is the guiltiest pleasure to me. It's my biggest waste of time, it causes me to stagnate and not do anything. Hours passed that could be used fulfilling obligations that I keep putting off, and sleep prevents me from doing that. I wish that sleep could be something of more value in this life. I mean, SURE it's like a responsibility to your body, but it's not like you need that much of it. 4 hours is enough to function.

I think I've been conditioned to think in this sense. I really need to sleep more.

uwah.

Being taught by graduate students has humbled me recently. They're probably within 4-10 years within me, yet the sheer scope of their learning shows. When we analyze the same piece, we come up with startlingly different observations. I'm proud in analyzing something I perceive as "deep," and then they present their take on the thing that absolutely blows mine out of the water. They're using obscure literary techniques, cleverer things than me, and can truly find the meaning of a work. In comparison, it's like I'm hammering away at something and am happy when one layer is peeled. I need to be more thorough. It makes me jealous too, because I have to become just like them within the next three years, and it just feels like there's this enormous chasm between us.

I'll still try to tread across it though.

YES

Hey how much does a polar bear weigh? ENOUGH TO BREAK THE ICE OHHHHHHHHHHH this will be the first thing my wife will remember me saying to her.

AHHH

Took a nine hour shift. Fucked for class. Worst idea ever.

As my bank account goes up, any joy I could obtain from said money is only eclipsed by mounting responsibilities. Hoh shit. Tuesday's post.

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh...

I am really, really glad that I'm not in high school anymore.

I know it's a sad thing to think about, especially since I'm starting to get along in my years. But I really, really want to emphasize that point. I am fucking ecstatic to not be in high school.

The people here seem friendlier.

(More later)

20.

Thurs 8:28 PM

I turned twenty today. The big two-oh. Whoo, congratulations. Wait, no, what the heck am I talking about? Being twenty isn't a celebratory affair! I mean, 18 years under my parents' roof, another year in a paid dorm, and this year, a paid apartment. It feels like I'm still in my mother's womb.

Well, not exactly. I mean, I definitely have more independence now than at say, age 16. And, I'm not exactly spiteful, so to say, about turning 20. It's just a weird age. Turning twenty. No longer a teenager, yet not really an adult. I'm still within the domain of school, but I'm already being exposed to the realities of this world. I'm sort of stagnating in my youth, yet I am also transitioning into my adult self. It's somewhere between a cocoon and it's metamorphosis, a half-blossomed flower, a fermenting wine. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm growing older, and yet I still feel young. It's like certain parts of my life are ending, and other parts of it are beginning.

Being twenty is weird. Things that were so huge to me before are really insignificant to me now. Like, friends I had in high school, that I vowed I would always care for, these people are just nice mementos of a past that I can never reclaim. We can't help it. I mean, after a certain point things stagnate: people move away, go to different schools, whatever. And you find yourself being pushed to the side, taken out every now and then so you don't collect dust, so you don't grow completely meaningless. But that's not a completely sad thing. I mean, it's just re-prioritization. Different environments dictate different needs, and different things to satisfy those needs.

This was just a thought I had when I tried to reminisce about stuff. If it's your birthday, naturally, you should reflect on your life, right? Another year has gone by; time to take inventory of all your memories. But when I do look back, everything just feels hazy to me, as if they weren't really fulfilling. They seem a lot smaller now. That's not to say, however, that I am filled with regrets within the last 20 years of my life. I did everything that I wanted to. Not necessarily everything I COULD do, but I acted in such a way that I wanted, whether it was at the crux of my potential or not.

To elaborate on this point, what I'm getting at is that although I am disappointed in certain past decisions, I don't necessarily regret them. So I was a sadsack in high school. Big deal, that made you just a little bit cheerier in high school. So you weren't able to stay on a sports team. Whoop-de-doo, all that time was spent studying and you're in UCI now, not some shitty community college. You fight with your sister all the time, and you don't have a normal relationship with your sibling. It's that struggle that made you too empathetic, and more understanding of emotional turmoil.

However, I cannot say I am fully without regrets. I regret not asking out one chick simply because my friend had dated her. I regret saying certain things that ruined an otherwise fine friendship. I regret not reading and writing sooner, waiting for appropriate schooling instead of taking the initiative to learn by myself. All in all, these regrets are simply so because I feel that they are wasted efforts, things that I dwelled on for far too long in such a way as to make me stagnate in my growth.

Again, back to my point, that 20 is a really weird age for me. I definitely recognize that I've matured in a way, but I also feel that I'm behind a lot of people. I can talk to people, but I still suck socially. It's a whole age of contradictions, little things that have been hammered out only to give way to things that still need to be worked on. I've concentrated in things that have improved me, but also held me back. Staring at sights along the road, pondering at the use of it all while everyone continued on the tour. I'll know THAT particular segment very well, but everyone else knows so much more of the road ahead of me.

It's been a good trip so far, but I need to catch up. But, I still have a lot of time on my hands, and I'm happy to have lived this long.

Sleeeeeeeeep.

I went to sleep at 11 PM, and woke up at 10 AM. It was one of those deep, dreamless sleeps that I haven't experienced in a long time. I blinked in the dead of night, and in the next second I saw sunshine. All the fatigue in my body was washed off my body, and my eyelids weren't heavy anymore.

This week was a pretty bad week. I averaged out about 4 hours of sleep a day. I really need to get this schedule on track. I'll wander around campus feeling like a ghost, just because everything that is usually so vibrant and alive is dull and muddy to me, like watching a television that's been dropped down a flight of stairs. Everything is washed out: blue skies are fading, sunsets are gray, sorority girls all look the same to me.

It seems that right now, I'm not technically living a life, but rather living a process. Wake up early, class, work, study, sleep. My day to day can be summarized in 5 words. Five! Oh, how could I let this happen.

I should really get out more.

You are what you read.

English 28A is a poetry analysis class. Thus, it is ruining my life. But anyway:
These verses committed to paper
Wreathed in academia and genius
Echoing the deepest sentiments of mankind
Expressing the fortitude of its thought.

I am so tired. This class is making me think too differently. AND I DON'T LIKE THAT

Because I'm-

Thu 8:22

Japanese on the brain.

Hajimemashite. Doozo yoroshiku.