leave all behind, said he
dear dear journal, on my first official day of freedom today, i woke up feeling ... a little lost, empty and uncertain. i know it'll all come together soon enough though so i'm not worried about this strange strange feeling of ... just having nothing i'm obliged to do. finally, i had the 闲情 to have dinner at the ho's residence again and actually engage in relaxed conversations and indulge in some inspiring post-dinner exercises, hehe. not being able to help myself, story ideas jumped out at me again and i considered whether they were worth pursuing considering my current...state. maybe, maybe not; we'll see. i guess i really relish the not being tied down and committed to any one thing.
i'll be flying home for a bit in less than 10 hours' time. do you know that five years ago today was my first day of work at the scamp? i just clicked through a small handful of entries i wrote around that time, documenting my fears and difficulties after the first few days at work. it's interesting, to look back and recall, see just how far i've come since, what fears remain, where i've progressed...and regressed.
here's an excerpt from the night before my first day:
there are still many, many things i'm deathly fearful of. what if they don't love me the way the others did? what if they hate me? what if i don't like them too? what if i'm damn stupid and lousy and they hate me even more? what if they're underwhelmed by my performance? what if they don't like to eat and are unfriendly and all stay in every dinner? what if they don't take to me? what if they hate me? so, basically, i'm actually secretly really afraid lah.
and another, after my third day:
in terms of actually doing scamp stuff, i feel a sudden total loss of control and access. i mean, i used to be able to handle most stuff, help people with most stuff, order people around at times, make certain people listen to me if i really wanted to, troubleshoot, whatever. even at the mafia, i had quite a bit of control and power over a range of things (even if i didn't always enjoy it).
suddenly, i have to start all over again, taking the smallest stuff, being advised to avoid the big stuff, relying only on other people's generosity in dispensing information and advice. previously, i had spent months and years collecting valuable information and technical knowledge from the guide, picking his brains every chance i got. now, i foresee i may have to split my energies (as there seems to be no one main person) and still get less out of it -- you know the saying about it being most productive picking your apples from one tree.
but i asked myself, would i rather be comfortable and secure and know-it-all in a smaller pond which may eventually limit me, or be content to put up with a few years of uncomfortable smallness and unimportantness and uselessness and being constantly kept on my toes in the scary sea (because i can't swim!) for the long-term sake of growth? i think the answer is clear. maybe it will be painful, but there's only one option now, in order for me to have more choices in future.
God grant me the tenacity.
i have so many so many thoughts re these couple of excerpts. five years ago, my attitude was so good. five years on, where have i strayed? i think i might have a small inkling now. but five years on, though my deepest fears remain the same, are my objectives and priorities also still unchanged? i don't know.
anyway, i'm grateful to now have the free time and to have my mind freed to be able to pen my thoughts here once more in that kind of more introspective manner i used to write in so long ago (rather than my past year of relating and documenting every detail of what happened) ... i don't know if it's just me, can you sense the shift in my content yet? i feel like something has changed in penning this entry, like something's different, but maybe not.
okay, i should go to bed. i expect that over the course of the next few months, i shall be writing here far more often. will share the full range of my wide variety of (still half-baked) plans in time, haha. <3
有什麼 放不下
昨日如煙火 未來如流沙
誰知道 下一分 下一秒 會如何變化
有什麼 放不下
青春如曇花 歲月如流沙
天再高 地再大 也容不下寂寞啊
談感情要瀟灑