Jan 2026

Somehow I'm always surprised that travel so consistently forces you to re-think and experience in first principles. Being snowed in, having plans and flights cancelled repeatedly, trying to manage classwork and (mostly self-imposed) social expectations with compounding sleep debt... fighting bitterness and depression resurfacing over petty comparisons, past mistakes, lost time... but having the space and time to work through it all and come out happier. It reminds me a lot of the winter youth retreats from years ago: the cold and the discomfort that seemed to contribute to the emotional purge I'd experience at the revival sermons, the afterglow that lasted all of two days when I got back. It turns out those two days were the actual vacation. 

Shoveled friend's driveway for fun. Vacation never feels like vacation unless I do some work... 

There's always this turbulence between a nihilistic "life is meaningless and painful, so why do anything" and existentialist "life is meaningless but joyful, make meaning of it". I think it's that both are valid at different times. You can reframe pain all you want but there is no escaping it in that moment. Avoiding it dulls your capability to live, drags things out. Being stuck in your head prevents you from engaging with, experiencing, remembering the external world, but that struggle is necessary sometimes. You have to fully hold both sides as valid.

I was listening to this podcast today and the author (George Saunders) and Dua Lipa reflected on the absurd nature of death, and how he himself, despite struggling and failing to find peace with death in any consistent way, finds that it lends force to art -- the impermanence of those "sacramental" moments where through art, we become something more than our mundane selves, something more pure. Actually, I'd like to pass this idea to the limit and say that we die every second we are alive, each such "mundane" moment holding the same beauty. It's just that sometimes we are allowed (allow ourselves?) to bask in it when awareness aligns with the moment in a kind of flow state. 

Deleting

I hoard notes. I can't seem to let them go the same way I can't seem to let the past go. I don't want to forget since I don't trust my memory. But it seems the more I try to hold the more things slip through, the more I forget. Sometimes I wonder if my past prevents me from living in the present. 

Many times I've thought that the only reason I didn't end myself is because I'd leave all these notes behind, baring all my embarrassing and personal thoughts. It's a stupid reason, so tonight I decided to eliminate that. I gave a cursory look through some of my notes -- mostly rubbish, but some approached honesty, feeling. There were a couple interesting ideas I thought to save, write-ups I wouldn't be too ashamed of leaving behind. 

So much of my notes were about how to do things better, how to improve, lessons I'd learn, things I had to do and learn. A few reflected pain and anguish. Some were impressive, the way I could contrive thought without knowing a whole lot. It felt pretty human and insignificant, to be honest. If I were capable of regretting right now, I'd say I'd regret not feeling, experiencing, instead of thinking more. I wish I had been at a point I could be more honest with myself. But I guess I've never been a good writer. 

More surprisingly I found that I didn't find a lot of things embarrassing. A few things still were, but I felt more than just cringe. It really felt kind of familiar and distant at the same time. I didn't really care for his past struggles... but I suppose he was not speaking to me. Humans are humans, I feel that now. I can't really judge. Even the most embarrassing parts of myself, stupid things that I wouldn't tell anyone, things that still make me cringe at first glance, I think twice. I now know better than to judge myself, judge others. So maybe it was that, or maybe it was just not caring. 

One particular entry from NYE 2020 was rough. It was titled "I am shit", and it was this text exchange, or more of a tirade on my end, about me realizing how worthless I was. About me having convoluted everything, and it's clear to me now, because I was so incapable of dealing with emotion in myself and others. It's embarrassing but I accept it. I just feel bad that my partner then had to deal with that.

I think the entries that were hardest to delete were my rants on whatever relationship issue I was dealing with at the time. Things with feeling. I don't know if it was the right move... but it feels like a form of death. I remember reading this thing, that even if you remember it's not the real thing, a facsimile, a projection of your current self. But I feel like I remember that past self quite well. It wasn't that long ago.

But it's likely that I won't remember anything now. The idiosyncrasies that stay with me from those times, I won't be able to trace. If I meet them, what reference will I have with them? I'm no longer that person, even moreso now. But maybe that's exactly the thing I have to do.