How i should think about myself

i was playing tennis today... during class. practiced something different, and haha, naturally i was one of the worst in class, just couldn't hit the ball the right way in class. and when we played game, i kept losing for my doubles partner.

all these had me depressed and despaired. I like play 3 times a week, getting as much practice as i can, and yet i still do so poorly compared to my coursemates, who never play apart from the class. i could be angry at myself, and i was. kicked myself for not having a single sport bone in my body. and that no matter how hard i try, i still cannot make it, in sports as in life, compared to these other people...

taking a step back, i realized something important.

How good i perceive myself, should not be relative to other people. if i want to compare, the only person whom i should be comparing with, is myself. Nobody else is relevant. Nothing else is relevant. Of course, people will say that you're at the top of your class, won first prize, came in last for the marathon... so on and so forth.

That's really their own problem. Not mine. Each and everyone is unique. If i really want to rationalize away my comparative shortcomings, i can always say that the other people were highly sports-oriented folk, one is a physical ed teacher, the other a national sportsperson. But what's the point of doing that?

What i should really be doing... is look at myself now, as compared to before. My tennis is improving, my health is improving, my love for sports is immense. I have done alot of the things that i've set out to achieve, and just because i'm the worst student in tennis class in no way diminishes my self-worth.

I am proud of who I am. I try hard to do the things that I set out to do. Just because everyone is better than me in some (and many) ways does not mean I'm a piece of crap. My sense of self-worth should not be contingent to how people do compared to me.

That's a good lesson to learn during tennis class, no?

:)

From questioning my feelings to questioning my existence...

Had a meaningful discussion last night with her.

Gave myself a better understanding of how I think with respect to her...

The two of us are out-of-sync. What does this mean? She started working 1 1/2 years before I did, so the emotions that i'm going thru right now, the issues, the frustrations, and the disappointments , she's like "Been there, done that, your turn to face it"... her work maturity has already moved on to the next stage, and it only seems that all i will ever be able to do is play catch-up...

does it matter? i dunno... perhaps it's the male chauvinistic pig inherent in me, but i do wish i wasn't always on the receiving end of experienced advice. all i really suffer from is a time-lag, which is a gift from the system that i grew up with. eventually things will level out, i hope...

talking yesterday, reached the realization that the two of us, perhaps like the majority of people our age, don't really know what we are doing with our lives. she's amazed and envious of women who can live for their family and children. Our time is running out, she says, not much time left to think about what to do with our lives already...

Which is true... I'm already 26. Sure, i can always say i'm still young and still got time left. But i'm over-drafting on my timebank even as i write this. I could be doing super productive office work, training up for my marathon, learning a new hobby, making new acquaintances. But I don't really know what the end result of all this is. I could only reply meekly that I have certain milestones, short-term tactical goals that I would like to achieve now, like health and fitness, like sports... and avoid thinking about my future...

She says that people are born, and then they die, so what's the point of leaving a trace behind? Yet i am not prepared to go willingly into the night, coz i always wished i could leave a mark, leave some sort of legacy behind. That's how parents achieve immortality, isn't it, by having children? People who know me well, know that i have this concept of maintaining my mobility, by refusing to lay down roots here or elsewhere, so i can just pick up and scoot off in a blink of an eye. and yet, even deeper within myself, i always knew that i want someone to live with, to love, to grow old with, to settle down...

Someone once said that "What we leave behind is not as important as how we lived"... I haven't left anything behind, and i haven't been ecstactic about how i've been living too...

So, what am i doing?

Reflections

in university, i craved having someone by my side to listen to me grouse about my workload, to walk along the river bank in the setting sun, to mother me when i'm sick and complaining like a brat, to fret over when she's sick or crushed with work, to console her in her disappointments...i even planned before a nice romantic dinner, thought about the cutlery, the food, the candles, even the type of music to be played, the worrying whether the food would be too burnt/dry/uncooked/overcooked/tasteless/gross...

then like that, my 5 years of uni life just passed. like the snap of a finger. all i had to remember, was the lonely nights spent sitting in front of my computer, hoping... begging for someone to come on msn, ping me, and acknowledge my existence. there were many a times i felt that, if i had just died in my room, no one would know until the stench of my carcass seeped into my neighbor's air vent. It was a period of non-existence; I was lonely...

Yet, on the other hand, I also started avoiding people. Outwardly i was all smiles and cheerful banter, but i kept an invisible barrier between myself and others, declining invitations. Even when i went to gatherings, i couldn't connect with the others. i knew it, and pretty soon, so did the others. When people ask me what the best time i had, the first thing that came into mind....Sitting in front of my laptop, a dvd waiting to start playing, a nice full-sized roasted chicken on my plate, a bottle of white wine at the side, and the promise of sweet delicious chocolate dessert ... alone, by myself...

it's almost hilarious, a loner, afraid of loneliness.

i thought this feeling would end when i came back here. no, it's just the same feeling but at a different location. i take up a myraid of activities to keep me occupied, to fill up my time after work, but at the end of every day, when i'm lying in bed, i know that i am still... alone. alone in the sense that i think no one out there knows how i feel, no one out there understands or truly appreciates who i am, no one out there who i feel i can connect with without even saying a word, no one out there i can just sit together with in a comfortable and reassuring silence.

there are billions of people in the world, isn't it amazing that i can still feel lonely?

I don't want to be alone anymore, but i dunno what i can do...

An Old Beginning...

Think i've been trying to compose a new entry for months... it's tough. used to have a blog elsewhere, when i stopped that, i thought: hey that's enough for me. played enough with this blog thingee, time to move on to something else.

Haha, here again, perhaps i have way too much things in my head, and no other outlet for it. the thoughts are overwhelming me, and many a times i lay in bed, unable to sleep, restless, in agony, and at times, emotional pain.

since this is a personal and anonymous blog, will air out things that i couldn't say in my old one. will try my best to be faithful and truthful in all that i write, in the hope that only my closest friends will ever see this....