LUXOMME

 

       There wasn't anything pressing to do, so I spent the morning in a leisurely way, going about my activities in a particular slow manner. People ask me what I do with my free time, which I usually find myself grasping at words for because I don't have the typical answers like "crocheting" or "yoga", although sometimes I'll use those two just so I won't have to elaborate further.

       In reality though, my hobbies usually revolve around things that you see on this blog and blogging itself. Everything from the content of my posts; cooking, eating, traveling - to the actual blog itself which I tweaked and re-coded almost from scratch, a skill that most people don't know I have. So of course, as per usual, whenever I have a bit of time, I turn here.

       Today was a little different though as I found myself in a place I hadn't visited in a while, the archive section. Land of the blog posts laid to rest - 934 in total, to be exact. I was quite surprised at how active I used to be, although perhaps not, as I had started this blog back in Grade 8 when I had abundantly more time and a greater desire to share everything in my life than I do now. Things are much more subdued at 25 than at 13 - for better or worse. You've all been spared a detailed breakdown of each shopping spree I had, or every test that I had to write which I declared harder than the last each time. Most of them centered however on this one goal, and that was to get into Medical school. I took down most of these posts when I finally achieved that goal and never really looked back.


       I try not to vocally announce this, but I have the memory of a gerbil, so as you can imagine, three years is long enough for me to forget most of what I had written, so as I went through these posts, it was like I was discovering myself again - for the first time. Everything from getting ready for my first school dance, to sharing really really TBT photos of myself, blogging about "the perfect guy" and this trip to Italy that I felt like I got to re-live through words and pictures. What I didn't expect however was feeling like I wanted to be back, and that maybe, just maybe, I would give up what I had now to be there.

       I've been feeling rather uninspired lately, and you'll see that in the last few years, I've been significantly less active on here than I used to be. I just feel like I'm not as interesting as I used to be because most of my days, weeks and months are spent working towards this one goal that sometimes despite all the time I invest into, I still feel like I'm not that successful at. Sure, I've experienced much more since I was 13 and developed some odd quirks along the way, but overall, studying and working really just isn't that exciting. I've told this to few close friends, who surprisingly share the same sentiment, and we're all wondering - is this it?

       But as I continued scrolling through my old thoughts, I realized that life back then wasn't really that different than it is now. I was still writing exams, still going to school, still blogging and doing virtually everything exactly the same - although perhaps with a little more teenage angst. So why is it that I find life interesting then, but not now.

       I thought back to an old post I made a few years back while I was working this strenuous job (you can find it HERE) which talks about how sometimes we are so busy in our lives, focusing on everything that is not right, that we forget about everything else that is. I had a bit of a cliche moment halfway through reading my 34th post realizing that my life wasn't remarkably more exciting back then than it was now, I just managed to see it in a more appreciative way. One of my first blog posts was solely on this one assignment I had to do for AP biology, which was perhaps most of the most mundane things I've ever had to do to date, yet I dedicated an entire post and wrote about it in such an enthusiastic way that reading that post again almost makes me want to do that paper all over again!
       So today started off a bit slow and in retrospect a bit dreary as I dragged myself through it initially, and while most people would write a letter to their younger self teaching them lessons they had learned through the years, today was a little refresher of something my 13 year old self knew that I had forgotten through the years, that life is only as much as you make it to be and that simple things, simple moments can be beautiful if you allow them to be.

       With this realization, I'm hoping that I'll have the time to share more of myself on here, something I wish I had done more of in the last few years. I want to be able to look back on here in 10. 15 years and feel like I can relive my moments - mundane or otherwise, over and over again. I've also veered away from doing these thought posts because they weren't as visually or emotionally pleasing as a dinner date or a post about an exotic experience, but in reality, life isn't always this adrenaline rush of excitement and anticipation. It's about the 99%, the everyday that perhaps isn't moving in the moment, but comes together in a spectacular way.