My mom thinks that I have a restless spirit. She says that if I'm not talking about traveling, I'm talking about looking for a new place to move to.
Well, looks like that restlessness has found its way into my virtual life.
This will be my last post on blogger. New blog at Any Other Business.
This is Kuro, my brother's little black mutt. I've grown quite attached to this dog. She's a happy dog. So full of energy that she doesn't walk or run, she either bounces or scurries. She doesn't get along very well with other dogs and her best friend is Sparta, the acrobatic cat. Yes, she's a little odd but she loves her humans wholeheartedly and trusts them completely. The perfect dog in all ways except one: she's rather dense.
I like smart dogs. The quality that endears me most to the German Shepherd breed is their ability and eagerness to learn. However, I have found that Kuro is nothing like a German Shepherd in the brains department. She's not interested in learning commands or in figuring out tricks but what she lacks in learning ability she makes up for in congeniality. The expression you see in the photo is the stock greeting all of us get when we approach her. One that practically yells, "You're here! You're here!" Sometimes she gets so excited when she sees us that she can hardly sit still.
It's made me wonder if perhaps the thing that makes her so lovable is the one that makes her inferior to smarter dogs. Maybe she's such a happy dog because she hasn't got much going on upstairs and therefore the highlight of her day is when we appear. Of course, this results in her being terribly boring, though good humoured, company. Aren't the human parallels here obvious? The most interesting people are also usually the grumpy, stand-offish ones. The most affable people, on the other hand, make for pleasant company but only if taken in small doses. There's the risk of the awkward silence that follows when the conversation runs dry after pleasantries, small talk and exchange of news is done.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this. It's just got me thinking about happy people and grumpy people. Would happy people (or happier people) be the ones who are unconcerned/indifferent about things outside of their immediate existence? Or maybe they're not unconcerned, but they've somehow come to terms with the way things are and have decided that they'd rather focus on happy things. Kind of like some sort of Zen Buddhist life philosophy. Imagine a world where everybody had that kind of mindset. John Lennon's "Imagine" paints a fairly good picture of what it could be like. Though, it also asks the question of who then would pursue change? How would we advance? Change happens because people are dissatisfied with the status quo. That's why people wage wars, start revolutions, invent things, push boundaries and all those other things that make us superior to other life forms. A lot of bad comes with the good but that makes the mechanics of change all the more important.
When one of the men tried to force himself on her 28-year-old daughter, the enraged woman kicked and punched the men. Seeing her getting more violent and aggressive, the men fled.
LOL! Good for that lady! Taking money's one thing, but those idiots forgot that Momma Bear's gonna take care of her cubs.
On a more depressing note, however -
The scumbags seem to be moving north. :S"... the men were seen speeding off in a Proton Wira Aeroback which had been reported missing in Johor."
There's a word to describe insomnia. Crushing. That's right, crushing. There's a weight in that darkness you see when you close your eyes as you try to fall asleep. The more frustrated you get that sleep is just out of your grasp, the heavier it becomes. I know that weight. I know it well. Do you? It's OK if you don't. Really, it is. Just don't pretend that you do. 'Cos I'm irritable when I can't sleep or haven't had enough sleep. And you pretending that you get it when you don't just makes me want to scream.
Don't tell me that lack of sleep shortens my life span. 'Cos all I care about when I can't sleep is actually getting some sleep and not what may or may not happen in the next 20 years to come. Don't tell me to go see a doctor. I have before. All I got was drugs that made me feel like someone other than myself the next day. Maybe I'm seeing the wrong doctors? Maybe so. But I don't particularly like them. So the thought of having to wade through a whole throng of them just to find one that'll help isn't particularly appealing. This especially when I'm irritable and half-witted from lack of sleep. Don't tell me what to do to help me sleep better. It doesn't matter if your aunt's cousin's co-worker tried it and it worked for him. I don't even care if it worked for [pick your favourite celebrity]. I refuse to listen to quacks. This even more so when I'm irritable. I might humour you if I'm in a good mood but that's rarely the case if I haven't been getting enough sleep. So please, please just keep your suggestions to yourself. It's most likely that if it's worth anything I've probably tried it before in the past 10 years of this plague. And don't, whatever else you may do, suggest counting sheep. This, I beg of you.
Above all, please don't tell me to go to bed. It just makes it worse. What do you think I've been doing if not tossing and turning IN bed? You mean well, but you just got me out of that semi-conscious state I've been in for the past hour and a half to read your text message. Now I'm fully awake and blogging. At least I still get some rest in a semi-conscious state. Now I'm getting none.
Right now, I need to be up and about in about 3 hours and have had a cumulative total of about 7.5 hours of sleep in the last 2 days. I yawned once 4 hours ago. I wish I would yawn again. The problem is, I'm feeling more awake now than I've been feeling all day. It's not that I'm not tired. I am. There's a weariness in me that's eating at my bones. I feel a strain in my neck and my eyelids feel heavy. I'm just not sleepy. Yes, they can be 2 different things. So do you understand yet? I like sleep. I enjoy it immensely. I like to think that insomniacs are the people who enjoy sleep the most. There's nothing I'd like to do now more than to bury my face in between my pillows and drift off to slumberland.I want to sleep but I can't. Sometimes I drift in and out of semi-consciousness but it's not sleep. It's even more frustrating than being fully awake. Please understand, I'm not trying to be mean and I don't like myself when I'm like this. But you being you when I'm like this makes me even worse. *Sigh.*
It's nice to know that you care. I'll probably appreciate it more once I come out of this bout of sleeplessness in a couple of days. But for now, thinking of you creates knots in my neck and increases the acidity levels in my stomach. I know I'm being unreasonable and I promise I'll be a better person once I get some sleep in a couple of days time. For today though, I'm struggling under a crushing weight. So just for today, please bear with me. Distract me with talk of inconsequential things. Preferably funny. Let me have my coffee and sugar-laden foods without lecturing me on what they do to me. I know what they do. They help me gather some of my wits about me during the day. They make me less crabby and feel less like I want to scream when you tell me that I should do something about the insomnia. Sorry for being self-indulgent. I promise to be better in a couple of days time.
I'll go back to tossing and turning now. See you in a few hours.
Yes, it's in full swing.
Over the past few months, I've had the chance to sit down with a few friends who are about my age and started their first professional post-undergrad-studies job around the same time I did. The general feeling that seems to be weighing us down is this sense of discontentment. About, say, 4 years ago, most of us would have been raring to take on the world, excited at the prospect of job hunting and calling ourselves engineers, lawyers, accountants, marketing executives, etc. Fast forward to the present, these same people are sitting down at the end of the day asking themselves, "Is this it?" "It" being: go to work, get shafted by crafty colleagues, shit on by boss, stay late to file seemingly redundant paperwork, go home, eat dinner, watch a little TV, sleep and repeat from top. On top of this monotonous routine, there are bills to pay, loans to try not to default on, the current recession, the only-now-slowing inflation, the possibility of being given the axe at work, the rising unemployment rate (i.e., the how soon will I be able to find another job if I'm given the axe question) and most pressing of all, the question: "Will I go mad if I keep at this?"
I know what my father would say about all this. He'd say that that's adulthood. What's my point? I don't really have one. But if I did, I guess it would be... life sucks.
Talking about points, even as I'm typing this, I'm wondering if there's a point to blogging. I don't have anything profound to share with the world. I'm not particularly articulate with my thoughts. And I certainly have no interest in telling everyone what I did today. Does anyone even read this? And I'm surprised at myself. Why the sudden rant? It's almost beyond ranting, it's becoming whiny. Yikes...
The needle on the mood-o-meter entered the red zone a few hours ago. It's Sunday night and I'm dreading my weekday routine. Then again, maybe it's hormones. Maybe I should just delete this whole post, shut down my laptop and go to bed.
But I don't want to be that kind of person. The kind of person who just whinges about things and expects the world to provide an answer. So the problem then becomes, how do I NOT be that person? For all our higher education, my generation was never really taught how to grapple with big issues or really hard times. We were never forced to confront them, the way our grandparents' generation was with events like WWII. We take everything for granted. My parents' generation doesn't take industrialisation lightly. For them, this was what propelled the economy and created jobs. My generation thinks working in a factory (even at executive level) is for dweebs. Afterall, only bankers and consultants make big bucks, right?
ugh.. it's too late to be playing devil's advocate with myself. I think I really will shutdown and go to bed.. maybe I'll continue this another day. It's weird that after such a long hiatus from blogging the first thing to come out from me is a rant which I can't even finish... pathetic.
