Two wrongs and a right

Listening to: A Fine Frenzy
“I’ve got no claim on you now.”

I’ve been trying to write a research proposal and the one thing I keep coming back to is : HOW THE HELL WILL I KNOW THE FIRST THING ABOUT WRITING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL?

I woke up in the middle of the night in a panicked frenzy thinking: WHAT MAKES ME THINK I CAN DO THIS FOR THE NEXT FEW YEARS? WHAT AM I, EINSTEIN?

The answers to the above is quite obviously: Nothing and Yeah, you wish.

So I forced myself to regroup and dive into the water anyway. Forget about the fear and ‘what if’s’. Suck it in and collect whatever balls I have and go for it before I over analyze and scare myself.

Bundle

I’m in uni at the moment waiting to meet someone about a postgraduate program in35 minutes. The guy confirmed an appointment with me but never replied me with a venue so I’m wondering what the best time would be to call and ask him. I hope it’s in a common area with brochures and stuff instead of in his office so that it will feel more casual and would prevent me from fainting in a heap of nerves. It’s not like it’s an interview or whatever.

Mental note: I really need to get some kind of personal organizer so that I don’t have to write important stuff down on the back of my hand. I need to organize my bag so I don’t walk around rummaging through it for a pen like some homeless person looking for some pennies while tissues and lip gloss and one ringgit notes fall haphazardly around me. Most of the time I start of with a calendar cum organiser and write in it diligently for the first month and then it goes missing under my bed and I only find it the next year when I’m cleaning out my room and have already purchased a new organiser. No, I have start acting like I’m a 23 year old. Going on 24 (omg).

I’m nervous. I wish I could be all cool and calm and collected and self-assured but I’m just not. I’m a big bundle of nerves. I’m wearing a black blouse and slacks and covered shoes and my hair is tied up way more neatly that I’m used to. I’m a nervous wreck hiding behind the facade of a confident honours graduate.

But it’s okay, I can do this, right? After all I’ve made some major decisions and so far, survived them all. Trust, I must trust in God and let him do His part. I cannot be going through life being so afraid all the time.

I have to be assertive (NY Resolution #1) .
So I must Ask All The Questions and Be Bold.

After that I can go home and pig out on the sofa in my pyjamas.

My picket fence

When I was a little kid I remember being afraid of a lot of things. Seriously, I had been such a happy carefree kid that anything new and alien and unfair seemed really evil to me.

I also remember being a really naive kid. Not in a stupid way but in a way that reminds me that when I younger I seemed to have all sense of right and no sense of wrong, in other words I had no idea when somebody was taking me for a ride. I believed everything everybody told me and got really hurt when it turned out to be untrue. I could not understand how that could be so, how somebody could lie to your face and expect you to be okay with such a betrayal.

As with all things, I grew up and eventually learned how to distinguish between bullshit and truth. Although I can’t be 100% sure which is which everytime, it’ s mostly instinct that I go by. About 24 years down the line and I still get a little caught be surprise. But I learn you should take risks with some people, you’ll never know who could surprise you.

I still get scared of a lot of things though, sometimes really simple ones. Another NY resolution is to force myself to face every single one of those fears. Nobody ever won anything by sitting at home twiddling their thumbs. You don’t live life by sitting on the sidelines, watching it go by.

So.
I don’t quite know why I felt the urge to write this down. Maybe because if I wrote it down it would become tangible and then something that I would have to act on. Or be reminded to act upon.

Here’s to books and covers and venturing out of picket fences.

The rationalization of fear

Listening to: Paramore
“They taped over your mouth, scribbled out the truth with their lies.”

Enough.
Enough of being afraid and scared and nervous and calculating.

There is power in liberation and we are free men.
Bound to no man, free to live.

No need to be inhibited by fear, if there is anything that needs to rein us in, anything at all, fear should not be one of them. Fear incapacitates and robs us of our dignity and the capacity to stand tall – it is probably the only guard that keeps us captive through our own free will.

How foolish!
That so many have fought selflessly for freedom and we keep ourselves locked in our own fear. In a cage of our own doing.
How needless! If regret comes from fear then we have nobody to blame but ourselves.

Sometimes it is easier to fight an external enemy, something tangible and real, something visible. Visual sensory perception is an important necessity for a better evaluation of the environment, if you can see what you fight, you have a better chance of defining its weaknesses and defeat it.

But fear – fear, that tricky thing, can not be touched or seen or heard. It defies sight and sound and taste but it is still very much present. Fear can be smelt and felt but when we cannot see it, we are trained to believe we cannot fight it. It is a funny thing, this fear, but it is real and when caught in its grips, it is a mighty struggle.

However, unlike the common adversary, it is one that cannot be beaten by avoidance or trickery. To defeat it, there must be a battle. To face your fears, is half the battle won. To deal with it, is the entire victory. And it is the only adversary where rationalizing it, makes it powerless.

It is an adversary of our making.
It is nothing.
It is needless.

Enough of fear.
I’m sick of it.

Lower me down

Listening to: James Morrison
“When you’re lost and alone, guess you think it was the last place you come back for more.”

Who would have thought this day would come so soon? The day when I wake up and realize it’s going to be almost over. And that once again I will soon stand at a crossroads and ask God what He wants me to do next with barely an idea of what He expects of me. I think I may have made the mistake of telling too many people too many different things of what my plans are because I myself am unsure and maybe telling them those things would have made them get off my back. Call it lying, but I call it stalling in the name of peace.

So yes, I am almost done and yet it seems much too far away. Most mornings I still wake up with a sick feeling in my mouth and I force myself out of bed. Other mornings I wake up without a thought in my head. But it’s a rare weekday that I wake up and tell myself I can’t wait to jump on out of bed and get to work. Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing this for much too long without a holiday to speak off. Just a few sick days and it’s been back to work, Monday to Saturday.

It’s gotten better though, I now don’t kill myself with guilt if I have to walk out at 6.30pm and all eyes are on me. I just pick up my bag, turn off my PC and walk out without so much as a glance back lest I turn into a pillar of salt. Thick skins are a necessary commodity, I think.

It’s not as bad as I make it out to be, the fact that I moved back home to do my honours is something I will not regret because having family and friends to buffer me through this entire process has proven invaluable. I have learned that despite everything I have feared, I have been forced to face each and every single fear, and have learned to handle it quite adeptly, I have learned to do things I would never have known I was capable of. Of course this is purely God’s grace because on my own, I am a stumbling oaf, but with His hand guiding me, I am made somewhat competent, if not more.

So I do not fear the panel or my committee of judges. As far as I am concerned, I worked my ass of this entire year and I have done every single thing within the time afforded me. Forget politics or petty details, I may feel alone but the one fundamental fact of life is that, the nearness of God should not be a feeling, it should be a fact. Something you belief despite what you think you cannot see. There is much that the human eye is unable to see and a lot of the times we make the mistake of pinning what we feel on what we can see but once we begin to trust, we realize we can hold on much tighter than we imagined. Like air, you can’t see it’s there but because you know better you don’t walk around afraid you will be unable to breathe if you decided to inhale.

Like someone once said, You don’t know God is all you need, until God is all you’ve got.

Somehow, and DESPITE myself, He has pulled me through.

While I dragged my feet and curled up in a fetal position and would not budge, He pulled me up and pulled me along until I could will myself to start walking on my own. And every day that I drag myself out of bed, it is only because He is gently nudging me out as well. There’s a reason I’m here. I am right where I am meant to be despite what I may feel. I know, I am where I am supposed to be. Faith is the opposite of ’seeing is believing’. It is believing despite not seeing.

Or something a bit more profound than I am able to elocute.