A Desperate Cry into the Vast Space of my own Insignificance

It's early admission application time at UBC this month. I have to get to work on it today because I don't have a whole lot of time before December 10, which is when it's due.

This is terrifying.

I am terrified.

Out of my mind.

I'm facing my entire future. I have to decide what I want to do, where I want to go and nobody will give me a straight answer when I ask for information or advice. All I hear all the time is "follow your dream/happiness". I'm 17. How the HELL am I supposed to know what my dream is, not to mention how to follow it?! People expect me to start being an adult, but I have no idea how to do that and nobody will tell me. How am I supposed to suddenly know how to be an adult without having ever been one before? How do I face the world and my life when I don't know what it looks like or where it is?



Another scary part of this is that I'm facing a change similar to the one that destroyed me a few years ago. Once again, I'm faced with leaving every comfort and everything I know and love behind and facing an entirely new life. This time, I'll be completely alone, without even my mother to guide me. I'm still not even out of the emotional wreckage of the last big move, and probably never will be, and now I have to move on again.

As ever, I am a mess of contradictions. I'm terrified of change, of moving on, of leaving things behind and of being forgotten. And yet I have one of the greatest escape/running away/avoidance instincts you'll ever encounter. When confronted with difficulty, struggle or emotion, I tend to run the other way like my life depends on it. And in those moments, it does seem like my life, my very being, depends on it. Depends on my ability to prevent damage, to preserve myself and shield myself from the world.

It's ironic that I'm starting to feel that way about my life currently. I'm very emotionally invested here, and there are a lot of things I find myself needing to escape from, to remove myself from. And yet, the way that I can escape requires me to face my future. I'm kind of stuck between two giant walls, and can't go sideways, and I'm panicking.

As much as I want to leave, though, there are some things here that I know I can't live without. I completely depend on certain things here, most significantly my three best friends. I know this for a fact. A little while ago, two of them were gone for a week, and I nearly imploded. I don't know what I would have done if Tee hadn't been there. I got anxious, stressed out and could actually barely function. Losing that support in 8 months is even harder to face than leaving Germany was when I was still there, because now I'm consciously aware of how much I rely on it and what losing it will do to me.




This song goes well with this post because I went to see Windmills in concert recently and when he played this song, I got overwhelmed with exactly the feelings that this post is about. Live music is incredibly powerful.

The illustrations on this post are photos by him and her.

Hit Me Like A Ton

A really, really nice thing about being an employed person is that you get paid. Luckily, that's not the only upside for me because my job is fabulous and wonderful, but it's a big plus. The nice thing about being paid is that as long as you don't waste it all on frivolous things, it builds up. Especially when you still live at home and don't have to worry about living costs or silly things like that yet.

What I'm trying to say is that I have money saved up. Quite a bit, actually, which means that I can actually consider buying a nice camera a realistic option! Especially with the Christmas season, which simultaneously blesses retail with glory and prosperity and also makes retail its bitch, coming I'll be able to afford something that nice. That really excites me, because I've wanted a really fancy camera for quite a while now.

My primary standards are that it has to take really nice still photos as well as really good HD video, because eventually I want to enter the world of YouTube, specifically vlogging. Or something like that. And I'm also getting really annoyed with the constant flow of grainy pictures whenever the natural light isn't precisely perfect for whatever camera I'm using in that moment. I'm at a really exciting time in my life, and I'm facing really big moments and milestones, and I want a good way of capturing all that.

My preference, right now, tends towards the Canon Powershot SX40. Whatever my camera ends up being, I definitely think it'll be a Canon. I've had Canons all my life, I understand them, I really like them, and based on my experience with my mother's camera, I really distrust or am just not comfortable with Nikon. That might be foolish, naive or stupidly biased, but I just really want to be very comfortable with my camera. That's very important to me. The alternative would be the Powershot SX50, which is a tiny bit nicer and quite a bit more pricey. They both have turn-around screens, which is important for me because of the vlogging thing and obviously the selfies that are apparently inevitable in high school. Geez, am I thinking about how best to facilitate people hi-jacking my fancy camera and taking weird pictures of themselves with duck faces? I am a troll-enabler.

For the SX40 (I've already become dangerously attached to it; I'm trying to fight the urge to internally refer to it as "baby") I'm thinking about Costco or BestBuy so far. I actually saw it on the display at Costco, and BestBuy has it for a very similar price. It's a wee bit higher at BB, but it also comes with a mini-tripod. Yikes, I'm shallow.

In other news, I found the perfect Christmas gift for my best friend today! I can't say what it is, though, because she's literally the ONLY person that reads this blog. Honestly, I think she'll flip for it. My mom agrees. I just hope nobody else gets her the same thing. Or, Heaven forbid, she gets it for herself. *runs into all local bookstores and hides all other copies* Oh darn, I gave away that it's a book. SHOCKER.

More geeky and exciting news will be forthcoming soon! I can't put everything in the same post or else I'll have nothing left to talk about later!

This post is brought to you by Spoon, because there was never really any question as to what song I would choose, was there?

Redefining Happiness and Truth

I knew it would only be a matter of time before this blog inevitably came back to books. We've just read Brave New World in English and now we're discussing it. It's one heck of a strange read, let me tell you, but there's a lot of interesting concepts that can be drawn from it. There's nothing like a strange, futuristic world that has nothing to do with you to make you reflect on your own situation.

A big topic of discussion in today's class was the concept of dystopia versus utopia. Of course, over all, to us, the novel is definitely dystopic. People are enslaved by their conditioning and their own contentment, meanwhile human nature is being systematically denied and controlled, and the entire world is run by 10 World Controllers. But to the majority of people in that world, is it really bad? If happiness is all we live for, why should they fight a government that serves to make them happy? Can they be truly happy if they don't know what it's like to not be happy? If all the factors for happiness are present, and they're told they're happy, are they actually happy? It's a mind-boggling concept. And of course, what makes truth? If we believe something to be true, does that make it a fact or only a belief? People believed the world was flat once, and accepted that to be true. And why shouldn't they? Who knows what humbug we believe today that future scholars will laugh at us for? Maybe the sky isn't blue. Who ever looked at the sky and said, "That's a nice colour, I'm going to call it B-L-U-E. Bloo. That sounds good." To be honest, "bloo" is a strange word. We believe our planet exists in a system of planets that rotates around a giant, burning, glowy orb, and yet most of us have no concrete proof of it. Sure, reliable scientists tell us there's proof out there, but we've never seen it for ourselves. We believe it because we've been raised to know it's true.

We found it very hard, in class, to separate ourselves as readers from the perspective of Brave New World's general population. To us, their world is an incomplete, machine-like place. But to them, there's nothing wrong with it. As individuals, they have a good life: They're happy, safe, entertained and healthy. It's only at the larger level that things start to get problematic, and the sacrifices, dangers and hypocrisy come to light. That's why Huxley's imagined government would be so effective: On a whole, they wouldn't have to control rebellion very much, because nobody would have any motivation to rebel. Of course, there are exceptions, but that's what the book is there for.

It's been an interesting topic, and book, to discuss. And it's only gonna get more crazy from here, kids.