today

It's funny to think of how much time I've dedicated to reading about staying in the present. Putting that side-by-side to my success rate in the matter, it's very easy to conclude that I'm a failure at it, or that it was a waste of time.

I get weepy over the past a lot. I miss people, decades, stuffed toys a little too much. 

Even when I'm "happy" It's often because I'm projecting a beautiful moment in the future for myself. And whenever I successfully get in the zone and enjoy myself inside the present moment I worry that I'm not enjoying enough or being present enough, and I think about how "tomorrow all of this will just be a memory"

However I think of this and feel glad that I opened myself to learning about it as much as I did. I sure as hell needed it. I still need it now. I just have to approach it in a more hands-on way rather than my usual (annoying) philosophical way.

I watched the movie called A Single Man yesterday. It was a very sad film revolving around a man who lost his boyfriend in an accident. His family didn't want him in the funeral and he'd been mourning alone for eight months. He was so depressed that he decided to end his life on the night of the day where the movie started.

Emmy told me that he watched sad flicks and listened to sad stuff whenever he felt sad. He said it served as a form of catharsis for him. I never understood him in that area; I always avoided sad stuff for my own sanity. I know I have a very sad disposition and those things make it worse. I gravitate towards positive books, songs, films, you name it. I like things that make me laugh. Most people, including myself, write me off as a very happy person because of it. It's only recently that I myself realized that it's a form of coping. It's a survival skill I'm proud to have naturally acquired to keep myself afloat. Thinking back, I've had more depressive episodes than euphoric ones. 

Anyway, after watching the film, I told him "this isn't for me. it's making me snowball" and sure enough I finally cried about missing him, about wanting him here. But at the same time, that night I didn't dream about him getting lost, or leaving me (I did the previous two nights)... So I guess it did work. But I still felt a bit sad today.

In the movie, Colin Firth's character takes on a new attitude with his encounters, they become more vivid to him (as shown in the film by heightening the heat and saturation of the colors) and he starts to be silly and happy again. 

 Sometimes I get glimpses of it too. It's just hard to do it on purpose. This was my salad this morning. I noticed how pretty it looked and instead of letting my laziness get the best of me I took my camera from my room and snapped a picture.

 This was Sly today, holding on for dear life because I plugged him on stuff from both sides of the computer.

I'm usually receptive to the little things in life like this, so that's not where I get my discontent from. It's because of my weird aversion to things that are required of me that can propel me to any kind of success. I live in a floating world of todays, but ironically my head gets stuck in pasts and futures. Because I don't let myself make today big.

Today I tried to tell myself to give tomorrow me a favour. I think I'm doing this through having a plan for the next week. I want to finish my studies and start working. I have zero confidence in myself by now but I'm sure a bit of exposure to the real world might give it back.

PS: LIFEHACK ALERT! I used a miniature director's chair thingy and my tripod as a guitar stand. HAH. The guitar's not even mine though.