I'm horrid at writing consistent posts but here's another half-year journal. This time, I have a lot to reflect upon in my life-- I just finished my first semester of grad school (!!!) and I just turned 22 (!!!).
Turning 22 is kind of weird for me. Naturally I know that 22 is still young and free, but it definitely feels like the age where you've really passed the "kid becoming an adult" birthdays (ex. 16 for a driver's license, 18 to vote, 21 to drink). Maybe a case could be had for being 25 to rent a car without restrictions, but for all intents and purposes, I'm a real adult now. It's a little scary because I've always been childish my entire life; my worst flaw is that I still now want to look the other way and wing it instead of actually budgeting to save money for the future.
For my birthday, I had my favorite girl and my favorite food :)
Of course, I don't think there's anything wrong with being "childish" as general society conceptualizes it. I love my oshikatsu and taking my dolls out anywhere I go, and that's not going to change anytime soon! I don't believe that there's a magical age where we need to let go of things that bring us joy just to become an "adult." In fact, when I first moved to where I'm going to grad school, I joined the local lolita comm and was happy to see that everyone there was older than me but never let go of their excitement for fashion or their other passions as well.
But, like I mentioned before, I also have a bit of unwillingness to face the fact that if I want to improve myself, or change my life, I had to do it myself. I've gotten complacent in letting life happen to me, which is odd for someone trying to get a PhD, but it's a nasty habit that's carried over from the days where I was really depressed in high school just trying to get by. And as I've started to heal and improve my mental health (good job me), I've started to become more and more aware that I've never tried to just take control of my life and do what I want for myself. In fact, I'm not even sure
how to want a life for myself outside of what I think other people want. It definitely sounds stupidly simple, but it's hard!
And that brings us to grad school. Honestly, I think I'm lucky that my math major that I chose for moneymaxxing purposes actually turned out to be my passion. Choosing to pursue a PhD is honestly one of the first choices I've made (despite being so scary!!) to actually choose and pursue a life that I wanted for myself, even if grad school is hard and scary. Every day this semester, I become even more and more sure that it was the right decision.
It's definitely true that I'm lazy and I like to give up and run away from things that are hard. Even a few years ago, past me would have definitely ran away from the prospect of something this difficult with such delayed gratification. But these days, I find myself maybe not embracing, but understanding why I choose to do things that are hard, even if they're not pleasurable right now. I'm learning that it's okay to be okayishly really bad at things (I'm certainly no longer at the top of my class unless there's a stack underflow) as long as I know why I love to do it and that I'm willing to work to get better. Yeah, I got pretty bad grades this semester. Yes, I was really down in the dumps about it for many days. But this time, instead of thinking about jumping ship and finding a different job, I found myself thinking to myself: Okay, we know what we did wrong this time, so we need to do better next semester.
I <3 tensors
The whole idea here for me is that though simple, it's hard for some people to live for themselves (or at least I felt that way). It isn't even that I had to live for someone else, and I was so preoccupied with that and I couldn't think of myself, but for so much of my life, I found it very scary and overwhelming to be planning these things. It's childish, but it's the way I was for such a long time. It's not that I don't want anything, I want so much! And those wants are so complex and difficult and I don't know how to untangle them and put them together in a way where I feel confident about even what I want.
Around the time of my junior year in college, where I was really stressing about this, I started reading up on Marie Kondo's tidying techniques. I bought her book Kurashi at Home at a small bookstore in Cape Cod on spring break and really loved her philosophy. In a way, since people's lives are so connected to their living spaces, philosophy on organizing your ideal space directly translates to philosophies for organizing your ideal life-- in fact, it's written in the subtitle of the book itself.
Also there are pretty pictures in the book.
What I really liked about it was that her advice, though printed and written the same for every reader of her book, was still so personalized to each person's different wants and experiences. I found the examples of her clients particularly enlightening. Despite obviously having different lives and different wants from them, I empathized a lot when she asked them what they wanted from their spaces. One client said that she wanted a green and beige wardrobe, and knew it sparked joy for her, but at the same time, was scared of being known as the "local Martian" by others around her. Kondo's advice guided her to accept and take control of the fact that the things that bring her joy are a part of her identity to take pride in. Likewise, there are a lot of things I want for myself, but I'm also scared of the reactions of those that I hold near to me. And though maybe I'm too scared to wear it out proudly like Ms. Martian, her advice helped me remember that I should at least hold on to it in my own corner.
Mainly though, something I noticed is that when Kondo's clients threw things away, or decided to keep things, they were also confused, unsure, and lost. And when they finally decided to act upon tidying with her help, they didn't fully get rid of the confusion and uncertainty but rather just acted in what they felt was best given what they had. And later on, many would come back to Kondo, telling her how much their happiness improved as a result of their tidying decisions. It struck me that I could make decisions to work for my ideal life without really knowing what that life might look like. Things might change along the way, I might change along the way, and my plan might change along the way, but taking those steps even though I'm uncertain is the first step to getting to that ideal in the first place.
I'm still scared!!!!! But when I'm scared, I find looking to Kondo's philosophy and advice is helpful in calming me down and realizing I can tackle things slowly and one by one. Maybe because tidying is also a monumental task in my head, but reading her book reminds me to take it at my own pace. My life is mine, so when I begin my tidying festival for it, I should always think about what that ideal looks like and what small concrete steps I can take in that direction.
I should also just tidy my actual room... my closet is fully unloaded on my bed right now because of a water leak... it's so over...
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