some observations mid jan 2025

18 Jan, 2025

happy new year everyone! hope 2025 is treating you kindly so far...¹

if you know me well you will inevitably come to be frustrated with me

i'm really not ambitious at all and like to live in my shell. i put up more obstacles for myself and i tend to follow strange rules that exist only for me. i've only sensed this come from a couple of friends though, who are assertive and put-together, with a clear focus on where they're going or would like to go, so it might also be a clash in personality.

what kind of historian am i if i care very little about what's commonly associated with the study of history??

i'm cheating again (i have thought about this before). anyways i was thinking about it last night while ruminating about suetonius and his lives, which i had recently started reading in preparation for honours (hope i get in...²) and how some people expressed frustration over his lack of reliability (xoxo gossip girl). i fully understand, but can't find myself being the same because over the years i find that i'm never really so interested in what happened as much as everything around it. so what if he lied, if he included only hearsay, if we can never verify it? it's in here, so what might it mean? i like conjecture and what-ifs, the abstract and the invisible parts of history and being engaged with it. how history is a process of storytelling that just so happens to have some roots in reality. which might sound a bit contrarian to history's whole thing. i defend it by the heavy hand of postmodernism that has affected me more than i would've thought but it still keeps me up at night sometimes. another thing about me is that i was an english (the high school subject) hater. victim of 'the curtains are blue'. and when i think about the stuff i do nowadays in my arts degree with a focus in history, it's really not so different to what i got up to in english class. sometimes you live long enough to see yourself become the villain i suppose.

i still hate driving, but at night it's better (less people)

my lovely high school friend got married and i was the designated driver for me and a couple of friends. i was very nervous mainly because it was my first time driving by myself (i.e., without my dad next to me), driving other people, and driving up somewhere far (i.e., using highways). everything was fine, except for the weather, which made it very hard to see and very scary when a big truck drove very fast around me. i had hoped it would clear before we left but it was also not to be (thankfully it wasn't raining when we were making our way to the highway via the country roads) but i noticed that i wasn't too afraid and actually felt a bit calming. not the bit when i drove through a massive puddle at 90km/hr and the car felt it with all her being, but not so bad as one would think, especially one who's had some trouble with being confident to get behind the wheel over the years.³ i believe it all to be thanks to about 3 people being on the road, which confirms other times that i have driven home from my friend's house late where there were also about 3 people on the road and i felt tempted to keep driving a little longer. thankyou to my two friends who helped with the directions since my car doesn't have gps and i didn't feel like using my phone lol and who chatted and kept company with me at various points during the journey. deep apologies if my cardigan became quite stinky once the perfume wore off. i had a lot of fun.

i need to play another game that utterly destroys my mind soon!!!

i have a void in my heart and it's shaped perfectly for a video game with a compelling narrative that targets my specific interests (will not elaborate now). i think a large part of it might be because last year i didn't really come across any games that affected me so strongly like in previous years, although mgs2 and chulip are the contenders. they are both really good but i've been so spoiled before so unfortunately i noticed. a side note but i haven't been playing much video games either recently (i've been itching to read and watch more) which makes me a bit sad, because i miss it... my goals so far are to finish pikmin 4 and get back into dos2 (so i can finish it too!! it's been a year since i started it now!!).

instagram's uniform formatting deters me from posting

disclaimer i haven't updated it in a while so maybe it's different, but i don't want to give the app any more attention than i would like.

i've been wanting to post some drawings and pics for my friends on there for a while (like my journal i kept when i went away in 2023-2024) but when i finally made myself start making a post, i realised it wanted me to keep them all the same size! maybe there's another way around it without updating the app, but i simply cannot be bothered to put in the effort. my drawings will just have to remain in my notebooks and my phone's gallery then.

maybe i will shop for clothes out of my own volition this year, and even enjoy it too

i really hate shopping for clothes (it stresses me out). i had to run around like crazy trying to find something to wear for my friend's wedding as mentioned above though, so i braved the shops and put (most of) my heart into finding something respectable, on-theme, and that i could use again later. it was tiring, but at times i did find myself enjoying it, which i think was due to the fantasy i had in my head when considering all the clothes in front of me. when will i wear this again, do i feel comfortable, do i feel grown-up, do i feel good, do i feel right in it? i'm still not entirely sure what was different this time (maybe i feel like i know myself more?) so i will continue pondering on this, but it does help when your mum offers to pay.⁴