Well well...

Many have reflected on this, but the passage of time is truly puzzling. I was wondering if I was able to become the person I thought I would grow into 5 years ago, immediately remembering that I don't even know what I will be doing tomorrow, let alone have a 5 year plan. And I've always been like that. So I came here lost, only to find a blog post from 5 years ago- and, unfortunately, the golden age has still not come. It's funny, I consider that first hobonichi to be a recent purchase, a recent hobby, not something I did and abandoned a fifth of my life ago. Another wish unfulfilled, but maybe because it still seems achievable is why it feels like such a recent affair. 

But it's probably because I haven't grown. The void has gotten larger and the only difference between then and now is that I realize how foolish it is to wait on a golden age to save me.

A Return To Form

It seems that I always come back here at my lowest points; I suppose there is a healing element in writing out one's thoughts. I remember many years ago, I used to record voice memos in times like this and would cringe hard later on when they would come up when shuffling music. I guess the difference is that I actually go back to this blog sometimes while those memos are long lost to time. I was journaling before the pandemic hit, and I keep coming back to this one line that took up half an entry, "THERE ARE MORE GOLDEN AGES YET TO COME". I am charmed by my former self's optimism since I don't have much now.

My last post here was over a year ago, long before the pandemic and naturally before I got my good grades for that semester. I find it hard to believe I was in such a low place in October 1st of last year; I knew the end of the semester did not go too well but I pulled it together and I really don't remember struggling so much so early into my law school life. I often think about how I keep making the same mistakes and this seems to correlate- I'd rather forget about my troubles than learn my lessons. 

Going back to optimism, if there are more golden ages yet to come, I hope they come soon. This year has been lost to the pandemic, so perhaps everyone will be wanting to make up for lost time once it subsides. When that comes, it will be up to me to start a new golden ages as opportunities will surely exist. I guess me thinking this is optimism in and of itself. But still, until that moments comes, here we are still flailing towards the next goal post.

Is the silver lining sterling?

The change did not come. Well into law school at this point, I find myself already barely getting by and holding on to the bad habits that got me into this good situation. However, this time around the silver lining is becoming harder to discern from metal bars. And I'm the prisoner that dreams of digging out but ends up keeping his silver spoon in his mouth. 

This makes me think, was the silver lining ever even there? Going back to reality, I realize that for a long time now I have been slowly but surely flailing towards the next goalpost. I find it hard to think of the last time I felt free. It seems everything comes back to that myth of Sisyphus, and everything comes back to my fear of finding fulfillment. So instead, I flail and hope I make it to the next stage in one piece.

Thankfully, it doesn't have to be this way. The silver lining surely is still there. It just may not be the one I have always thought of it to be.

Looking back is always more fun than looking forward

We are two posts into the smaller font era of this blog. It has been close to a year since my first post here, and I don't think I have become a better writer. Actually, I think I have become much more stupider since that first post in general. I opened this page hoping to find guidance in the words of the smarter 2018 me, but was greeted by a lot of rambling and eventually lost interest. I realize that this introduction is a bunch of rambling as well; I have not become a better writer since last year.

My current situation is marked by a lot of change. My mother quit her job, my sister finished grad school, my father has clots in his heart, and I'm starting law school. We're also all moving away from Jackson Heights. And my cousin is pregnant and another cousin is getting married. My immediate and distant circumstances are changing rapidly, but I still find myself the same as always. I justify this to myself by saying that I'm very entrenched in my ways and that I'm happy with who I am- but is that just a side effect of fear?

As expected, I am not sure. Is 23 too old to re-invent yourself? The question is moot as I am not sure who I want to even be. I can think of specifics; I would like to be more responsible, study more, be more sociable, etc... But the big picture? I don't really know. And I realize that a lot of these things I want to become are generally incompatible with my current central state of being, or more aptly put, my personality. So if I want to change then, there are only two possible ways to do so it seems- I either gradually change and my overall personality shifts as so, or I go for the nuclear option and try to become a new person tomorrow morning.

After writing it out, it seems that going for the latter is surely a recipe for failure, but when have I never not gone for the easy way out? Still, that doesn't change the question. Who do I want to become? I've realized that the best version of my current self won't cut it. I need to change.

"Feel like I've been through a washing machine"

It must have been the lack of sleep that caused my fingers to take me back to this page after so long and write this flowery opening. Recently I have been thinking about how accountability and integrity are quite distinct from one another. 

When I was really young and still in Catholic school, I asked one of my teachers what "integrity" meant, and was told that having integrity was doing the right thing when no one was watching. Surely, this must be the best way to define the word since I still remember that interaction to this day. Now, if integrity is justifying one's actions to themselves, then accountability would be having others find one's actions justifiable. To find them to be right. 

    
Recently, I was working at the MET. I don't know how much I can talk about it because I signed a NDA I didn't read, but at the very least I can probably say that I did work there and that the revenue from ticket sales fund the giant Slip N Slide in the staff cafeteria. When I first started the job, my uncle from Australia was in town and he was all too enthusiastic to share his wisdom on being a functional member of society.

But I didn't really need it. I was accountable. I worked so much harder than anyone else in my department, even when no one cared. I thought it was more fun, and that I owed it to the person who got me the job when I probably didn't deserve it. My coworkers assumed I was being humble when I told them the tryhard who does his hair every morning, tucks in his shirt, and runs around in uncomfortable shoes all day would spend his days off staying up all night drunk, playing Tekken, and eating cold pizza. 

My uncle though assured me that the person people saw me as was actually the true me. And with that confidence I quit my job knowing I could do a lot more if I got my life together. But as time went on, I stopped studying for the LSAT, I stopped looking for jobs, and I kept just doing what I wanted to do. Even this post lacks the nice format (I went back and fixed the format, it was too ugly) and pictures of my older ones since I don't plan on sharing it. Do I lack integrity? If that is the case, now I suddenly see the appeal of religions and believing in God- the concept of always being held accountable to a standard set for you. But that is far gone, I have read too many long words in pretentious texts to believe in God.

What I think it is though, is that I can indeed justify my behaviors to myself, because I am doing what I want to do even if it is not good for me. I have integrity in spades, but the morals I hold myself up to are corrupt. I'm not sure how to rectify this, most likely because I can't honestly tell myself that I need to. Referring back to my second post here, I have optimized my daily autopilot enough to meet the minimum to secure some sort of livelihood in the future. But referring back to my first post, I find myself on the foot of the hill once more.

"I don't know where the lies end and the truth begins."

In a shocking upset, the incumbent Representative Joseph Crowley lost yesterday's Democratic primary election to the young newcomer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez here in my home voting district. Mainstream political news has been covering the race all week; today I woke up and overheard some pundit on a show my father was watching mention how this result reflects the current state of American politics today, in which authenticity holds more weight than credibility.

This was not supposed to be a shot at Ocasio-Cortez, this result was just inconceivable to most as recent as about a month ago. Crowley had been in office for close to two decades, and had been the leader of Queens politics for quite a long time. He was well known and well respected in the community, old immigrant men who had never voted a day in their lives would line up to shake his hand whenever he was in town.

And yet at the same time, Crowley was shaking hands with corporate interest groups and various well-lined Super PACs in Washington D.C. and downtown Manhattan. Crowley was well connected and was known for his ability to raise large amounts of money. He was the fourth ranked Democrat in the House, and was widely considered to be a strong candidate for the next Democratic Speaker of the House. Across various circles in the country, he was considered to be a dealmaker who could get the job done.

And back at home, he was equally as respected. As recently as this past May, Crowley had helped champion a dual-language Bengali program to open at a local public school. Crowley was not always in Queens, but he had never turned his back on the Bengali community here. In part thanks to him, Bengalis were able to culturally flourish here in my home of Jackson Heights.

Bengali New Years celebration in the middle of Jackson Heights

So I am sure that all of us Bengalis must have felt a bit of guilt when we turned our backs on him yesterday. Jackson Heights voting districts voted heavily in favor of Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez brought the corporate contributions made to Crowley into the limelight. She openly addressed the skyrocketing cost of housing (greatly affecting Jackson Heights) and the influence of luxury housing developers on Crowley’s regime. Crowley had credibility, he had helped our community many times in the past and on a national level, he was known to get the job done. But all of a sudden this no longer seemed authentic. How can Crowley be looking out for us if he has his hands in so many places? Is he really doing the most he can for us if he’s receiving upwards of millions of dollars by companies that are only interested in profiting from us? This is the climate that allowed Ocasio-Cortez, an unproven 28-year old with big promises and (honestly speaking) not many ways to back it up. It’s because it felt like she really cared for us. It was authentic. I just hope Ocasio-Cortez will continue to support the Bengali community here as much as Crowley did, if not more.

"Damn fine coffee"

I haven’t found a job or a new hobby yet but that’s okay since I decided I should focus studying for the LSATs more seriously. I’ve been staying up late studying and have been drinking a lot of coffee to compensate. During one of these late night sessions, I stumbled upon this hilarious old commercial for Japanese canned coffee featuring the Twin Peaks cast.

4AM can take you to some weird places.

I ended up ordering a case of Georgia coffee. I’ve had it before when I went to Japan, it’s alright. But I paid about $3 a can when it cost $1 a can in vending machines there. I’ve had a problem with impulse purchases for a while now. Just last night I bought an electric lighter even though I quit smoking cigarettes. I wonder why I have such a fascination with collecting junk. One of my favorite hobbies is going through my closet and looking at all the random stuff I bought and threw in there years ago. Nice junk is pretty to look at, I guess. People say that money is better spent on experiences than items. I agree, even if I buy a lot of junk, I rarely make expensive purchases. I would say though that items themselves can be mementos of experiences. Even junk can have its uses. When that coffee eventually makes its way over the ocean, I’ll sip on it remembering about how I was so bored with studying that I started looking up commercials.