Crippled

 I feel it's a problem not to help. So I stayed at 10 Genting Lane to help out sorting the stuff that came in for the survivors of the Turkish Earthquake. In the beginning, it was just about me trying to get my stuff taken after having brought them all the way there. Then it's about saving those donations that weren't sorted but were thrown into the trash. And then, it was about not letting that single lady who remain there to sort stuff soldier alone. I left when there were more people to help. And I was kinda hoping that that lady would acknowledge my presence even a little bit more.

Another lady gave me 2 packs of soy milk when I said I was leaving.

I was thinking of how people who volunteered probably did it because they were also able to make contact with other people. Not me. For me, I'd just quietly be there, blend in for a short moment, and leave without anyone knowing.

Anyway, here I am, there's a list of things I needed to clear, things to research, and courses to take. And I'm distracting myself by reading manga. Nothing much has changed in this respect.

I'm petrified, crippled by the fear of doing things. That's why fixing heaters are not a problem for me. But doing bigger things, like getting my financial education comes only at the price of great greed or resolve. Usually resolve is not the word.

And yes, I still berate myself. A lot. As if punishing myself is enough to make up for all the non-actions I've committed to in the past. Yes, I did commit to non-action. Cos that's what happened when I didn't commit to action.

I'm living in a free-fall mode now. After the curve of my prime. I'm dammed scared of having a kid. I'm not prime material for reliability.

I don't really get along with People

Yeah, I'm just like that roomie I had in Canada. I forgot his name. "Eeks, Peeeple",  we'd joke.

I find it too bewildering to know how to behave. I don't know what's appropriate. I don't know what they expect of me. I don't know how I'd reciprocate, or be of value.

I just want to go into my corner and resign. So dammed complicated.

I can't do a thing for them. I just take and run, and I don't want to be indebted. I don't want to find out what kind of a smuck I am.

I'm too breakable. And I don't know how strong, or weak they are. It's easier if there were just monsters and aliens, all we have to do is to take them apart.

But there really isn't any. Monsters. Aliens maybe.

I'm just a sad little boy not knowing whether he'd be fine.

And that's the irony.

Do me a favour. I'll just love them a tiny bit. All that I can bear. And then retreat. I know no one will run after me. Somehow, that's fine. Though, yeah, it's incredibly lonely.

Someone did. Maybe foolishly so. But somehow, that didn't matter. Cos maybe we can't find the keys to the future.

Didn't it all start like that?

Meanwhile, I'd acknowledge that part of myself. And know how helpless I am, without all the help I've received so far.

Appreciating the Fact that We Will Never Know Enough

I was scared of the future.

I still am. I was scared that there will be troubling things, painful things, hurts, uncertainty, things that I don't know and thus cannot handle.

I had an early relationship with failure. Every child did.

I'm afraid of taking the wrong step such that I failed to see that I've been living all this while.

Fear takes away our ability to appreciate this moment.

The Meaning of Wife

 Somehow, along the way of the last post and now, I got married.

I guess that is a pretty dramatic turn of events. I suppose while I was witness to it happening, I can't really say I know how it happened.

And I am thinking of the things that soon reflected to me, about me commenting on things, finding faults, but not taking any leadership to fix things.

Along the way, while reading the past entries of this blog, I also come across the same neurosis, the same sense of not really belonging to this life.

Is there a difference though? I think at some point, a couple of days ago, I started feeling a sense of despair. I turned out unremarkably ordinary.

There was no special latent talent or potential I had. There was no point in my life that I would find a sudden enlightenment that would allow me to leap frog the rest of humanity and bring me to the next level.

In contrast, I come to see how indistinguishable I was from the so called suffering masses, and even less so.

I'm just a mess of half-starts, and 30% efforts, passionlessly drifting around without a goal or purpose.

Whatever it is I was looking for, I never found it. And I didn't have the courage to look for, take up anything bigger than my ego.

So while I was doing that, I somehow got married to a person who was as emotionally injured such that I was needed.

Somehow, I gave up everything else. That is associated with hope, and blind alleys.

I'm in awe, like, why would someone like that even need me?

But she's great. She has her own faults and problems, and opinions, and tonnes of things that she wouldn't do, plus she has a hard head to get across. She's completely in a mess.

But she's also teaching me the meaning of wife.

While I am slowly entering my last tenure in life, suddenly thinking that if life already sucks so much, then what is it in stopping me from just doing the things that I want to do.

Nothing. And I have always been doing that.

It's only my lack of direction, my lack of milestones that makes this life so lackluster.

She's thinking of how to climb her career while supporting her family. I'm thinking of how to be competent in something I could sell. I thought I was multi talented. I was just posing.

So yeah.

I appreciate my wife, my mom's cooking, my nephew.

I appreciate the fact that I'm living quite comfortably, with a lassitude that allows indulging in things that have no meaning and doesn't bring me forward.

I appreciate that somehow, I am still being taken care of. 

Thank you.

In Life, but not fully

Appreciated the lesson that I learnt while talking to Waheeda, about how she struggled through her self doubt, but still managed to run some programs without any certification, but pure gumption.

Talked to May from NTUC who turned out to be vegetarian as well. Who said she wanted to introduce her daughter to us because she wanted to do branding too. Appreciated her for imparting knowledge which I more or less already know. But had trouble absorbing before.

I got my bike back after repairing it at Joo Chiat for $10.

Understood how hard it is for Phoebe, who is having a bit of attention seeking because her baby sister is getting more attention these days.

Lazy life.

1) Being able to read an article that stopped me from overdramatizing being late.

2) The Seminar that was run for social entrepreneurs and the fact that lunch was provided.

3) A casual date with Geraldine. And she paid me for the painting and told me it looked like that guy.

Peak?

1) People who are willing to help answer technical questions.

2) I'm glad to have the story board assignment completed.

3) Appreciate the free seminar of Skillsets for Expanding your Business by people I know.

4) The ride back from Escape Bukit Timah.