2012

It’s been fourteen days since the new year and I haven’t had the time (and will) to embark on the “ritualistic auditing” (I need to stop running my life like a corporation) that I always do for previous years. You know, the reflective, sober and contemplative piece detailing the achievements and missteps of the preceding year, not to mention bringing back last year’s resolution to the table and nervously running through the list to see if any of them accomplished.

Last year has been one of the most accomplished years, and the single most important drive was to be able to leave my current location and go to a “big city where dreams come true”. I remembered sleepless nights, stress, the occasional “falling apart” feeling, the frequent “glass half empty” disposition, tears, fears, depression, car accident, arguments, flaring tempers, insomnia, career burnout, and yawning on the job. In exchange, I won some awards, published a pop song, became a music arranger, acted in a play.

Quantifiable accomplishments aside, I was officially labelled “socially inept” – to quote a certain someone, verbatim, while others used the term “socially awkward”. Usually it didn’t irk me one bit as I’m (thanks to years of reading highly venomous books) convinced that nice guys don’t get corner office, and that the future belongs to controversial, often iconoclastic people. Apparently, Steve Jobs isn’t nice too. Look how he is now posthumously glorified and his products unprecedentedly worshiped.

I must admit that I do care and it is beginning to induce a need-to-do-something -about-it sentiment in me, all because I, by some fateful turn of events, befriended someone, a friend. He showed me what friends are for. Admittedly I have not reciprocated his goodwill in equal magnitude. I haven’t learn how to react to his kindness. I am used to dealing with people who wants something from me and would exploit me for their ends. I’m not going to pretend that the world works on the basis of altruism and genuine goodwill.

I can’t say for sure if this friendship is a blessing, for it completely shook my confidence for my worldview and my justification of my lifestyle. It forces me to review my ambition, my reckless Type A-ness, my priorities, and my alone-but-not-lonely decorum that I had lived by for most of my life. Suddenly I became less confident. I became purposeless and questioning. Eventually I spent a good few months trying to seek (re-seek?) those. Purpose, confidence, answers.

On new years eve, I spent time cleaning my room and throwing away many stuffs that I keep for remembrance. I’m not sure why. Perhaps there was just too many baggage, physical and emotional that I didn’t want to bring into the new year. As I reluctantly drag the trash bags towards the trash outside, I had an inner resoluteness to be a better person. I wanted to start start all over and do it without the baggage of my past.

Moving forward, I haven’t had any yearly plans. Something which I’ve grown wary for I haven’t in full achieved last year’s resolution. Though I have migrated to a more-manageable quarterly system of setting goals (Ok, I really need to stop running my life like a corporation) in which I aspire to continue making headway in music industry and be a confident person by the end of the first quarter of 2012.

Happy new year.

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