"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.

"A tree is known by its fruit"

The other day I got an invite on Facebook to my high school class’ five year reunion. I’ll probably go if I’m not busy. A friend recently asked me if I thought I peaked in high school. I don’t think I did, but I definitely peaked in popularity; it was not very hard to be popular in my high school, all you had to do was skip class and drink and smoke a bunch of cigarettes (in contrast to the real world, where skipping on your responsibilities and drinking and smoking a bunch of cigarettes makes you a degenerate).

I bring this up because all I’ve been doing recently is skipping out on my responsibilities and drinking and smoking a bunch of cigarettes. I was agonizing over what to write about this week since there has been nothing on my mind that has been bothering me since I’ve settled down back here at home. I committed to taking this gap year before entering law school a while ago, and I would daydream about all the cool things I could get done with all the free time I would have. But being a NEET is too enticing, it’s already been three weeks into the summer and I have done nothing so far. I can feel my brain regressing.

But other than the the brain regressing part, being a NEET has its benefits. A lot of new restaurants have opened up by my house, and if I can wake up on time, I can try them out for cheap by checking out their lunch specials. That’s actually about it though. All of my friends have jobs so I spend most of the day staring at the ceiling. Boredom is setting in hard and I need to find a new hobby or get a job. Hopefully the next post will be more interesting than this one.

"You thought you were better than you are."

If you know me, one thing you’ve probably heard me say before is, “I like losing more than I do winning.” The reason behind this is pretty simple, I feel like whenever I find success in anything I bask in my mega geniusness and get complacent, while when I fail, I (at least try to) assess everything critically and learn from it.

I first coined the aforementioned phrase when I really got into playing fighting games seriously. Eventually I reached a point where I was better than most of the players who would play online casually and I could beat them on autopilot; the fun sets were the ones against strong players who would destroy me by breaking down my habits and force me to get better. In general, I live my everyday life this same way. For a lazy person like me, it’s basically impossible to find the motivation to improve in things I’m already decent enough in- positive reinforcement does not really work on me. The last post was basically all about that. But in games, and fighting games in particular, losses and wins are really clear cut. Although many do make excuses (and look rather foolish doing so), it’s hard to escape the all caps “YOU LOSE” and taunting win quote from the opposing character that dawns on you after a loss.

I was doing just that until you came long...

What’s been bothering me recently is that I’ve realized that losses are not as clear cut in the real world. Most of the time, the various things you do day to day will not bring about an absolutely terrible result, or at least not immediately so. From there, it becomes easy to start autopiloting everything as long as things are going well day to day. This only really dawned on me recently when I caught up with some of my old high school friends and realized that fucking around all throughout college really made me fall behind my peers.

Looking forward, I guess the easiest way to get back on track ties back to what I wrote about last time, by setting small goals to keep me heading forward. Not everything has to be a competition anyway, everyone works at their own pace. But I just have to remember not to fall into the trap of equating happiness and comfort in my day to day life as a win. Maybe the best way is just to think of everything as loss anyway.

via ytCropper

"Our everyday lives may, in fact, be a series of miracles."

The other night I found myself staring at my messy bed wondering if Sisyphus would be at his happiest if he were to just lay down at the foot of the hill for all of eternity. I turn 23 this year and I have not made my bed a single day of my life. I thought back to around five years ago when I first entered college. I remembered seeing the shy faces of those who would blend into my high school class posting pictures of their newfound outgoing faces, blending in with the brothers and sisters of the frats and sororities they were rushing into. I would press the like button with a smug expression thinking to myself how I was still the same person I had always been.

In that moment, in the middle of the night staring at my messy bed contemplating all of this nonsense, there was probably nothing I wanted to do more than to go back in time and smack the shit out of my 18 year old self. When did I become so jaded? When did I first hand in a paper late? When did I first skip class? School is probably a bad example, though. I think it’s only natural to get fed up with something you’re forced to do for 15 or so years. But it’s also not hard to get fed up with things you’ve not been forced to do for 15 or so years. It seems that with everything I have taken seriously in my short life, I eventually hit a wall; a wall that is reached when talent runs dry and it can only be scaled with effort. It is then when I decide to lay down and rest for all of eternity, alongside all of the film rolls I will never develop and all the useless frame data I have memorized.

This is not to say that we will all find success if we work hard enough, I don’t think this is true at all. I can’t really speak for how the other half lives, but while they may be thinking their effort will eventually let them scale this wall and reach the top, I now think they seem more like fools carrying a boulder up a mountain and not realizing that this phantasmal peak is incredibly temporary, if it even exists at all.

So yeah, way more likely than not we will all live mundane and boring lives. But does fulfillment have to be so fleeting? Probably not. Camus imagines Sisyphus to be happy (or for a weab like me, Junpei never leaves the dunes). I’m starting to think that I’d rather live a fulfilling life than a jaded one. I’d probably be happier that way. The first step is accepting that both reaching the top and staying at the bottom of this hill are futile endeavors. But that is easier said than done. I didn’t make my bed this morning. But to be honest, I think it’s stupid to do so if you’re not expecting any guests.

I could settle with not being a mega genius