When all the papers are over, I'm going to devote all my time to creating. Writing, reading, drawing, making postcards, taking photographs - basically anything that includes an element of creation.

And I might finally start on the little project that's been brewing in my mind for quite a while. Maybe it'll teach me to be independent.

Sometimes I just feel the need to pick myself up and start doing something good about my life. Disappointments, wants, mistakes, being a burden, all too many. Need to start making conventions, invent rules only I can live by. Creating. Even making things that I can proudly call my own. A sense of ownership, ownership of my own life. To grab life by the reins and tug hard and make myself worth living for.

Ha!

How could I forget! I got my driver's license on Tuesday. Good times ahead!

Ramblings.. and a lie to myself.

You know that feeling, when you read what you've written previously, and you think back, and wonder to yourself, was that really me? Was I really going through that torrent of emotions just four months back? Has life changed, since? It's quite amusing to know that us humans have this innate since of retrospection. It just comes naturally, to want to compare your now-self with your before-self. I guess we are all judgmental creatures, and a bit of self-critique wouldn't hurt, would it?

It is inherently about whether we are better off than we were before. Are we happier. Are we more at ease with those around us. Have things been going smoothly, or have they been becoming worse? But there's a part of me which is screaming out to be heard: isn't this all about you and wanting to douse yourself in self-pity? All these endless questions about one's worth and one's abilities. Why put yourself through all these when really, all that's important is to be happy with what you already own and you already have?

Frankly speaking, I don't know what sparked off this little tirade I'm having within me. They're just observations. About myself, and this thing called human nature. It's funny how one can judge the world for all it is and at the end of the day, be at odds with yourself. I wonder if I actually do make sense to anybody else.

So life has been pretty. The teaching stint ended (I don't know why but the rarity in which I update this space has resulted in the demarkation of my life into these things called 'stints') and apart from fourteen days of exploring the motherland, or China as it is more commonly known, I've been lounging around and taking life as it is. I've also been entertaining lots of crazy ideas in my head about the future, but now with school starting really soon for me, I don't know if any of those could ever come to fruition.

And once again, I make a promise to myself to write more. But whether this is a white lie or not, only time can tell.

Ma.lig.nant

School got tougher. Teaching got tougher. Either one of them, I can't really tell which. I went back baring my soul, showing my earnestness, and thinking that my sincerity and efforts would be the light guiding me forward.. but that didn't hold out after the first three weeks. Maybe I, the egg without the shell, was a mistake afterall.

I was told to build barriers around me to protect myself, but what I think I have done was to build walls instead. All these walls... unnecessary yet practical, redundant but vital, as I was told. Why are these people so keen on helping me lay the bricks? They are protective, I know. They are doing their bit to shelter me, but did I need it? Why should I, a confident and unfazed individual with my own values of discernment, suppress my words and keep mum? I know I will not cross the line, but why do these people, who don't know me too well at all, keep pointing that line out to me as though I was incapable of controlling my own actions?

And then there are those who don't give me space and intrude upon me, pushing me into corners and asking me offensive things that even the walls will frown in dismay upon hearing them words being whispered. I am not deserving of this.. I am not a brunt for people to deal their blows on, I am not.

Thank you for letting me rant in complete sentences. I promise happier posts in the time to come.

How we forget

And so it turned out that I had completely forgotten about this space as I got caught up in the whirlwind of excitement that marked the end of my service to the nation. Bags packed, we were given our final pep talks and bid our last goodbyes. I took a week off for myself, caught up on some rest and got ready to return to my alma mater to teach. So life's been quite the drill - early morning and I'll be in school wrestling with the kids and marking work till it's time to go. I have been enjoying myself so much that the second week of teaching is just tomorrow. Meeting new people and hearing their predicaments, bumping into old teachers and friends, and most of all being in such a familiar place surely brings back truckloads of great memories. Right now I'm taking everything in my stride and really, really considering my post-university options. Got lots to consider..

Tessellate me.

I want to trace tessellations in the sand and know that the repetition I make is no smaller, no bigger, not prettier than the very first. I want to feel the coarse grains against my weathered tips, make imprints I can see in a blink and then miss in the next. I want to flit from edge to edge, tracing up every single corner left to explore. I want to know what it feels like to be the last pattern in the sand. Or the first. Or be sandwiched. But what does it matter, for when the tide comes, we will all have to start tracing again?

Eat, sleep, now repeat.

We are a constant cyclone of repeating interests, emotions, possibilities. The vortex of the cyclone being the individual you, or me. Unchanged and unchallenged by time, by fear, and anything else. This cyclone, our cyclone, carves out patterns in its path. Patterns intricate and temporary, but the strong ones stay etched, and for a while so.

I've had the urge to go back to blogging ever since the national service stint, but after a failed image-based attempt on tumblr and the realisation that I have, in fact, nosy platoon mates, I'd decided to call it off. Call it off and wait for the right time... and there never was a right time. Until now, I guess.

I am a week away from the end of my twenty-two long months in the army. And although we always remind each other with the comforting words "the end is near", I can now safely say that the end of this arduous phase is finally and really on its way.

Strangely so, I feel like I've taken the past year to set my compass down, aiming and re-aiming its course, losing track of my bearings here and there. But now I know where the path to home is. And I'm following it, warily so but relieved almost, in my own little way. Will you join me?