Thinking again
I think I do too much of this thinking stuff. Or too little. It's hard to say. >.>
As anyone who reads this knows, I've been...on edge, shall we say?...lately. Lately meaning, to varying degrees for the past year or so. <.< >.> I still don't know why exactly, but I have new idea, so I am posting.
I'm starting to wonder if it isn't a--lack of passion? lack of goals? Something like that--in my life. I mean. When I was younger, I always had *something* I was working towards. Improvement in sparring. Good grades (with the ultimate goal of being able to choose whatever school I might really love, instead of being trapped in a tiny Wisconsin school forever--the grades themselves never meant a whole lot). Reading out the entire young adult section in the local library, then the entire sci-fi/fantasy section. I spent an entire summer in middle school reading academic textbooks on Shintoism; the choice in reading material surprised my grandmother quite a bit. I spent years thinking through religious stuff, and once again basically made up a belief system I could actually follow and support and believe by the time I hit high school. I learned to draw, and draw well, through hundreds and hundreds of hours of effort (every school day for half of middle school and my entire high school career, minus one semester of painting and one semester of introductory general artsy stuff freshman year--both of which involved but didn't focus on drawing--plus my own attempts). I wrote fanfic for a while. I learned to sew when I was in elementary school, and had made two quilts (with help) by the time I hit 5th grade. I taught myself to read tarot cards, after deciding myself that I wanted some and picking out a deck that worked well for me and learning what the symbols in it meant. I began to teach myself a language, as much as possible, starting in--7th grade? Something like that. I got almost my entire family into Tae Kwon Do. I've skied down mountains, snorkeled, hiked for hours, I know the basic technique behind sailing a simple boat even if I would never trust myself to actually apply that technique unless my life depended on it, I know how to rock climb and know my own limits well enough to not try it from anywhere above ~10 feet off the ground even if my life did depend on it because I would fall and die, I played soccer for several years when I was little. I learned, somewhere in here, to read the vast majority of people even more easily than my beloved books...which is saying something, considering the rate I read at. Some of these things were things that my family just did, things I was lucky enough to experience because we had the money to do them, but many of them were things I chose to do and then made happen because I was passionate enough about them that I couldn't imagine not doing them.
At the time, none of this seemed unusual or like anything everyone else wasn't doing. This is partly because there are lots of rich families in my area and there are lots of parents in my area that will pressure their kids to all these accomplishments and activities for their own satisfaction, so many weren't actually unusual. But now that I think about it...I was one of the only people I knew who actually did so much of my own volition, with very little pressure from my parents (all right, the skiing and soccer were pressure, but I don't consider those much of achievements anyways). And I don't know many kids, despite having little cousins and friends with little siblings ranging through all sorts of age groups, and despite my babysitting kids through many ages while in high school, who actually went after that much stuff. So...in retrospect, I guess I've always been a Wellesley woman. Driven, curious, sometimes obnoxiously stubborn and contrary and Wendy-ish, but generally engaged, passionate, and driven.
Maybe that's the problem. I'm not all that engaged in my studies anymore--language classes are something to get through to get to the interesting stuff (aka USING the language, which is funfunfun so long as the book doesn't suck), and my other classes are interesting and I'm enjoying them but I'm not passionate about them and I know it. My seminar last semester was great, once you factor out that I was dying from stress and overwork, but it's over. Outside classes, I spend most of my time procrastinating. Rather passively. I've spent so much time on pointless games, but they're addictive, especially when my alternative is really undesirable homework. >.> I read a lot of fanfic, which is usually badly written or badly characterized or badly plotted, but once again? Compared to the alternative, it's wonderful. I've watched some anime, but it's generally out of boredom rather than passion (though I'm definitely into Gundam Wing, I can see why fandom got so big over that one). Same goes for manga. I've pretty much read out the authors I like, and I'm having a really hard time finding new ones I actually do like at this point; like with fanfic, I've read out the widely-published really good authors in the areas I'm interested in, and I've spent the last three years or so picking through the trash looking for the couple gems buried there. Cosplay is fun, I enjoy it, and considering the amount of time and money it sucks up I better be passionate about it XD but it's not enough on its own to occupy my brain. My brain is highly active, processes information quickly, and gets bored very quickly if not appeased. There are times where I wish it would let me slow down, but that's not how it works.
I feel....stagnated. Stuck in a rut. Frustrated, apathetic, trapped, etc. I'm not really learning anything, in the sense of discovering new knowledge, I'm just sort of absorbing what's stuck in front of me and it's not interesting enough to go back for seconds. It's passive, not active; disinterested, not absorbed. It's extremely frustrating to me that this passive activity eats up so much of my time. In my hobbies...as I said, cosplay is great, but I'm not the kind of person that can focus on only one hobby. I am stagnated with my reading, due to lack of new material. I no longer have to work to read people--in fact, if anything, I occasionally need to work to read them less well, or at least learn to ignore what I'm seeing. But, once again, this is a chore rather than a passion or even an interest. It's something I actually really don't like doing, trying to block people out or ignore them--making people happy is really satisfying to me, so long as I'm not cutting chunks out of myself to do it, but I need the ability to not do so to keep myself stable when I'm worn out. I'm not learning new drawing or sewing techniques, or anything like that. My martial arts ability is slipping away due to lack of practice...I miss sparring so much, but I don't get it here, end of story.
Basically, the things I'm doing are either chores or mindless escapes from chores or cosplay. I'm bored. I'm frustrated. I'm irritated and on edge because I'm bored and constantly having to do unpleasant things on the basis of 'they'll be useful later'. I mean, that kind of unpleasant thing is important and I've always done them--but it's not balanced out by any kind of passion or interest right now. I'm restless.
I think this is actually a big source of my discontent. I don't have anything to *think* about. I don't have anything to involve myself in. Of course I don't bring up conversation topics much; my mind is in a major rut.
I don't really know what to do about this. I mean, it's not like you can just throw a dart at a list of topics and go, okay, that's my new passion for the week. Either you're genuinely interested, or you're not. But...yeah. This is very not happy for me, I don't like sitting still intellectually, I want to be engaged and involved and active about things, I just don't know how at the moment. My mind is boring me. :(
If anyone has any ideas for how to work past this, let me know. (I don't really expect any, on the basis of it's too individual, but still--let me know if you have some techniques that have worked for you before.) Otherwise, that's all.
As anyone who reads this knows, I've been...on edge, shall we say?...lately. Lately meaning, to varying degrees for the past year or so. <.< >.> I still don't know why exactly, but I have new idea, so I am posting.
I'm starting to wonder if it isn't a--lack of passion? lack of goals? Something like that--in my life. I mean. When I was younger, I always had *something* I was working towards. Improvement in sparring. Good grades (with the ultimate goal of being able to choose whatever school I might really love, instead of being trapped in a tiny Wisconsin school forever--the grades themselves never meant a whole lot). Reading out the entire young adult section in the local library, then the entire sci-fi/fantasy section. I spent an entire summer in middle school reading academic textbooks on Shintoism; the choice in reading material surprised my grandmother quite a bit. I spent years thinking through religious stuff, and once again basically made up a belief system I could actually follow and support and believe by the time I hit high school. I learned to draw, and draw well, through hundreds and hundreds of hours of effort (every school day for half of middle school and my entire high school career, minus one semester of painting and one semester of introductory general artsy stuff freshman year--both of which involved but didn't focus on drawing--plus my own attempts). I wrote fanfic for a while. I learned to sew when I was in elementary school, and had made two quilts (with help) by the time I hit 5th grade. I taught myself to read tarot cards, after deciding myself that I wanted some and picking out a deck that worked well for me and learning what the symbols in it meant. I began to teach myself a language, as much as possible, starting in--7th grade? Something like that. I got almost my entire family into Tae Kwon Do. I've skied down mountains, snorkeled, hiked for hours, I know the basic technique behind sailing a simple boat even if I would never trust myself to actually apply that technique unless my life depended on it, I know how to rock climb and know my own limits well enough to not try it from anywhere above ~10 feet off the ground even if my life did depend on it because I would fall and die, I played soccer for several years when I was little. I learned, somewhere in here, to read the vast majority of people even more easily than my beloved books...which is saying something, considering the rate I read at. Some of these things were things that my family just did, things I was lucky enough to experience because we had the money to do them, but many of them were things I chose to do and then made happen because I was passionate enough about them that I couldn't imagine not doing them.
At the time, none of this seemed unusual or like anything everyone else wasn't doing. This is partly because there are lots of rich families in my area and there are lots of parents in my area that will pressure their kids to all these accomplishments and activities for their own satisfaction, so many weren't actually unusual. But now that I think about it...I was one of the only people I knew who actually did so much of my own volition, with very little pressure from my parents (all right, the skiing and soccer were pressure, but I don't consider those much of achievements anyways). And I don't know many kids, despite having little cousins and friends with little siblings ranging through all sorts of age groups, and despite my babysitting kids through many ages while in high school, who actually went after that much stuff. So...in retrospect, I guess I've always been a Wellesley woman. Driven, curious, sometimes obnoxiously stubborn and contrary and Wendy-ish, but generally engaged, passionate, and driven.
Maybe that's the problem. I'm not all that engaged in my studies anymore--language classes are something to get through to get to the interesting stuff (aka USING the language, which is funfunfun so long as the book doesn't suck), and my other classes are interesting and I'm enjoying them but I'm not passionate about them and I know it. My seminar last semester was great, once you factor out that I was dying from stress and overwork, but it's over. Outside classes, I spend most of my time procrastinating. Rather passively. I've spent so much time on pointless games, but they're addictive, especially when my alternative is really undesirable homework. >.> I read a lot of fanfic, which is usually badly written or badly characterized or badly plotted, but once again? Compared to the alternative, it's wonderful. I've watched some anime, but it's generally out of boredom rather than passion (though I'm definitely into Gundam Wing, I can see why fandom got so big over that one). Same goes for manga. I've pretty much read out the authors I like, and I'm having a really hard time finding new ones I actually do like at this point; like with fanfic, I've read out the widely-published really good authors in the areas I'm interested in, and I've spent the last three years or so picking through the trash looking for the couple gems buried there. Cosplay is fun, I enjoy it, and considering the amount of time and money it sucks up I better be passionate about it XD but it's not enough on its own to occupy my brain. My brain is highly active, processes information quickly, and gets bored very quickly if not appeased. There are times where I wish it would let me slow down, but that's not how it works.
I feel....stagnated. Stuck in a rut. Frustrated, apathetic, trapped, etc. I'm not really learning anything, in the sense of discovering new knowledge, I'm just sort of absorbing what's stuck in front of me and it's not interesting enough to go back for seconds. It's passive, not active; disinterested, not absorbed. It's extremely frustrating to me that this passive activity eats up so much of my time. In my hobbies...as I said, cosplay is great, but I'm not the kind of person that can focus on only one hobby. I am stagnated with my reading, due to lack of new material. I no longer have to work to read people--in fact, if anything, I occasionally need to work to read them less well, or at least learn to ignore what I'm seeing. But, once again, this is a chore rather than a passion or even an interest. It's something I actually really don't like doing, trying to block people out or ignore them--making people happy is really satisfying to me, so long as I'm not cutting chunks out of myself to do it, but I need the ability to not do so to keep myself stable when I'm worn out. I'm not learning new drawing or sewing techniques, or anything like that. My martial arts ability is slipping away due to lack of practice...I miss sparring so much, but I don't get it here, end of story.
Basically, the things I'm doing are either chores or mindless escapes from chores or cosplay. I'm bored. I'm frustrated. I'm irritated and on edge because I'm bored and constantly having to do unpleasant things on the basis of 'they'll be useful later'. I mean, that kind of unpleasant thing is important and I've always done them--but it's not balanced out by any kind of passion or interest right now. I'm restless.
I think this is actually a big source of my discontent. I don't have anything to *think* about. I don't have anything to involve myself in. Of course I don't bring up conversation topics much; my mind is in a major rut.
I don't really know what to do about this. I mean, it's not like you can just throw a dart at a list of topics and go, okay, that's my new passion for the week. Either you're genuinely interested, or you're not. But...yeah. This is very not happy for me, I don't like sitting still intellectually, I want to be engaged and involved and active about things, I just don't know how at the moment. My mind is boring me. :(
If anyone has any ideas for how to work past this, let me know. (I don't really expect any, on the basis of it's too individual, but still--let me know if you have some techniques that have worked for you before.) Otherwise, that's all.