I miss coffee and better days

I've put up a lot of bored effort to personalize this wall that used to be bare, in a spare room at home. I initially planned on converting this room into a studio, I was in the process of completing my equipment when the virus happened.

Two months and counting into community quarantine has let me reflect on my life in general, from the years my mind allow me to remember. It's quite alarming how thinking can eat you up isn't it? I've been the type who never gets bothered by anxious thoughts but being stuck in the cycle of everyday, looking for something new but never really gets it, wanting to go somewhere but won't be able to get there, seeing blankly on what to look forward to, it's just driving me mental at the moment.

Just when I was sure of what I wanted to pursue, just when I have plans layed out for the next 3 years at least, everything in the world just had to be on pause. It feels like time stopped, but we continue to grow old anyways. It's just so frustrating to be stuck in something we have no control of, and had to get by with whatever we have left.

(late post, drafted late 2018)

I’m fascinated by how much I learned about myself this past year. I opened it with a super detail-planned flight to Seoul with all the selfish love I’ve only experienced for the first time. It felt so good to spoil myself with whatever I want to do, wherever I want to go, be whoever I want to be.  It felt too good to be selfish, for once. It felt good to let go of the unnecessary guilty feeling of obligation to do things for others. It just felt right to be just me and the rest of the world I have yet to see. I started the year happy and contented with being alone and unbothered. My heart felt at rest, calm, but still warm.

Fast forward to a few months and a heartbreak after, I’m closing the year with, surprise, another trip to Seoul. This however is my most ridiculously spontaneous flight SO FAR. I applied for visa 1 week before my half-heartedly intended flight, booked the ticket 2 days before, without visa confirmation, and finally got my passport back 4 hours before my flight. I stayed in Seoul for TWO FUCKING DAYS man. I really wanted to punch myself in the gut.

But then who cares? I wanted to feel the ice of the first Seoul trip I had. The genuine happiness, the self love..  then again when I came home after the solo trip, I realized that you can’t get self love from places. You don’t get love from places at all. You get memories, adventures, experience but you only get love from yourself. 

I’m not saying it’s impossible to fall in love with a place, or to meet the love of your life a thousand miles away from home.  I’m just saying that as long as you build that love from within you, you can bring it to places, maybe even leave love in those places, and that’s how going somewhere else becomes meaningful.