Feeling Brownish-Orange

Hello! I’m back in action!

I took a break from the site and the YouTube and the email and the everything this past week. (This was inadvertent. However, it was still a break.) I filmed a video for about half an hour of me just talking to the camera, explaining this weird feeling I’ve had in my stomach for the past week. Then, it turned out that you couldn’t hear anything I was saying because of the A/C making its loud A/C noises. *sighs* So, here I am in blog texty-text style to chat it up with you, one on one.

What I’ve been up to lately:

I bleached my hair! Nice.

 

I’ve written a few songs and poems. I don’t sleep with the Christmas lights on in my room anymore- a third of the string burnt out. I wore my dad’s button up shirt for 4 days straight (pictured above). I decided not to make a video every Tuesday for YouTube (like I said I would) and I decided not to post this 1975 cover I was working on for a few reasons. 1) I’ve been feeling a bit odd and the channel was feeling a bit odd, 2) I didn’t want to force things and didn’t want to make things just for the sake of posting it, 3) I found myself saying, “Oh, I can just throw something together,” (no, u cannot) 4) Since my heart wasn’t into the idea of writing or making a video for a week, I didn’t just want to put something out just to put something out. I didn’t want to give you guys anything I didn’t genuinely feel excited to create, aka anything contrived. (As you can see, authenticity is a huge theme this month.) (e.g. see Being More Me)

So yes, I have a mile long list of blog posts I would like to write and videos I would like to film, however, I haven’t spurred myself up enough to start any of them. So, of course, I am going to explain why. 

How I have been feeling:

As much as I can spill to you lovely people about all of these things- about my outlook, my life, my shortcomings, and ways to bounce the heck back from them- often, I am not able to “fix the thing” completely.

For example, at the end of Being More Me,  it probably seemed like I was going to be myself, whatever that is, once again. Like, I just snapped out of this trance of depersonalisation and hyper-awareness as soon as I finished writing that post and went back to my life of Snapchat stickers and a morning cuppa. 

Well, I did! It worked, somewhat. I stopped feeling yucky, and I thought, “Yes, I’m good. I’m Me. I’m… yep. Chill out. I am chill. Good.” And then I lied in bed for about a week and stopped writing in my journal, let my eating habits fall apart, and watched a lot of Bojack Horseman. I still went out with friends sometimes, took nice selfies, did my makeup all cute, and had a good time; I was fine. Just fine. Good-ish. However, I found myself not wanting to think about the things that had been bothering me. I would just ignore it. This was unprecedentedly unsettling because I wanted so badly to write and reflect and produce something that I can learn from, yet I had nothing. I would come upon a thought that I would want to write about and delve into, but then it felt like I was wearing a lifejacket while trying to scuba dive. My brain wasn’t letting me go deeper even though I wanted to. I’d start typing; then I’d bail.

I love introspection, but I think my accidental week of self-afflicted distress, stemming from the act of getting lost in this metaphysical limbo of why-I-am-the-way-that-I-am, burnt me out. My brain was not having it.

So, in a way, I was not “fixed,” I guess. I think I put a blanket over my problem, and it started suffocating. And that happens! And I’m accepting that. And I’m learning from it. Which is why I’m writing about it.

What I am learning from this:

It’s human. It’s human to take one step forward and a couple of steps back.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like I write and present myself on the Internet as if I tend to solve all of my problems in 1100+ words or less. However, it would be dishonest for me to let you think that. 

Sometimes, I’m just able to step out of the feeling long enough to write about it and figure out why it’s there or how I should fix it. I don’t talk about it, but sometimes it then takes weeks, maybe even months, to fully implement that solution. This blog is all just a manifestation of things on my mind; it doesn’t completely reflect my actions. It’s just me. Me trying to figure things out in my head and me trying to help someone that is also trying to figure their own things out if they are in the midst of that.

In light of that, I’ve recently started really paying attention to online personalities and the influence they have over me and others. I’ve just as recently remembered just how easy it is to forget that they’re people, too. I romanticize them so heavily in my mind that I just forget; their aesthetic is just so pleasing, and they seem to have it so together.

THEN I REALIZED, I never want that to happen between you and me, even at this small of a scale. I think that is what tripped me out. I wasn’t confused about who I was around my friends, but who I was around complete strangers. Who I had to be when presenting myself to complete strangers, more like.

So, I’ll just go on with a full disclaimer that I’m a little bit all over the board. I post selfies that make me look like another person, I lose hope sometimes, I’m a wee bit moody, I get in massive bouts of happiness and huge bouts of downtroddenness, I am really, really bad at texting people back, I admit to all of these things. I do space out. I do try to make my life look better than it probably is on Instagram. I do get very attached to people. I do feel very conscious of how people perceive me at all times. All that jazz. I won’t deny any of that because that’s all human. However, I am also someone that does not allow any of those facts define me.

I love my life, as I have said before. I will never be able to stress this enough. I love it so, so, so much, and I am very well practiced in the art of looking on the bright side. However, if I can communicate anything through this platform, it is that I am a whole human person that cries at every movie she sees and forgets to brush her teeth sometimes. We are the same; I just have a blog.

(So, with that, I think I have tackled the Being More Me issue. I understand that my apprehension towards writing was probably because I felt like I didn’t fit any of the kind words people gave me in any and all of the feedback I have received and just- yeah. Cool.)

I have officially taken the problem out of the blanket and given it life and kindly shown it out the door.

Moving on-

Despite this love for life, and in the midst of the lifejacket-in-the-scuba-class metaphor, I recently described to someone the feeling I’ve had in my stomach this past week as kind of a brownish-orange. If brownish-orange were a feeling, that would be it. 

It’s not exactly orange which is bright and exciting, not exactly brown which is gross and just sad and muddy. Someone else interpreted the feeling as being noticed, yet also in the background; so maybe I’m getting attention, yet still feel a bit unimportant around some? (I will admit to feeling like that, but lately I’ve surrounded myself with very good people that make me feel loved, so that theory has lost traction.) It’s also noteworthy that this color is pretty cozy; it’s pleasant to look at, but it’s not exceptional. It’s comfortable. A bit like my life right now. Comfortable; nothing too spectacular. 

I think this color/feeling is because I am in the midst of a transitionary period in my life. I remember telling someone that I don’t feel like I belong in my hometown anymore, yet also feel like I don’t belong at Stanford yet (which is a bit rubbish and pretty pessimistic of me to say, but hey). I guess I’m spending way too much time waiting- and that’s not a good state to be in. I am not as present as I used to be, and that has actually had a huge effect on my life. I keep either reminiscing or anticipating, and I utterly stopped taking advantage of the moment that I am in. That’s no good. I’ve been working on it, don’t worry.

 

So, in conclusion:

1. Stay present.
2. I am a human being and so are you, and we can go make mistakes together.
3. I am back to writing.
4. Feel free to own your imperfections and all that. They’re awesome.
5. I am still a little slumpy; maybe I’ll always be a little slumpy, but that can’t stop me from loving a lot of things.
6. July’s whole theme of “authenticity” and “being genuine” has definitely been taken to heart because I feel more honest with myself now than ever. I’m very glad.
7. I love you guys a lot.

(Sorry this is post is so dense, there’s been a lot on my mind.) My tea is cold now, so I’ll stop here, and you should go check out some new photos by clicking here ❤

Good night or morning or afternoon, thank you for reading all dis, I’m eternally grateful.