Procrastination

[tarigwaemir]

Lowell House on the Feast of Ste. Adelaide

The lack of motivation continues! I finally tried the mochi ice cream at Boston Tea Stop (the bubble tea café in Harvard Square) and found it to be delicious though expensive. -_- Also tried the honeydew tea and found it to be too sweet. Next time I'll stick to honey or green apple.

I was taking a look at some entries from my freshman year, in 2003 and 2004, and noticed that not only did I post more often but I also wrote rather incessantly about everything I thought about, particularly everything that was happening in real life. I wince a little looking at the candor now, although I think I still continue to have that tendency to not hold anything back. Odd because I do consider myself fundamentally a reserved person. Anyway, the style of my journaling has changed considerably since then, possibly because my friends list has expanded over the years, and I feel like I'm writing for a different audience now. I do always write for an audience in my LJ (albeit sometimes only for a specific subset of the friends list depending on the post). I wonder what would happen if I tried to keep a personal journal again, where I wrote for no one but myself. I did that during high school (on the computer, not on paper) and would periodically delete everything I wrote because the barefaced honesty embarrassed me. Silly isn't it, given that no one ever saw it except me? I guess the benefit of a paper journal is that it doesn't allow for such self-revision, but I've never been good at writing on paper.

It really is a strange tension (dare I say "dialectic" with a straight face?) because a part of me believes that it is polite and decorous to not expose (and impose) your inner thoughts, while another part of me believes that you ought to not hide from but face yourself directly, including all the embarrassing or immature or petty or even just overly navel-gazing thoughts that you'd like to pretend you didn't have. I think that in the past two or three years, writing fiction has become a way of resolving this tension (a "synthesis" if you will): I can express the thought but also disguise it. The goal becomes to evoke the emotion in the reader without ever having to confess to it personally, sometimes without even mentioning it at all.

You know, this semester has been very strange overall. I mean, in terms of schoolwork, I've taken it easy so I don't feel stressed out or helpless, but I've felt unusually off-balance most of the semester. Nan and I were talking about how an ideal state is an empty mind, which is when we are most happy and at equilibrium. I wish I could drain out my mind right now. Perhaps I should take up meditation as well, although what I really need is, say, three or four days in total silence. Maybe even a week.

Anyway, I continue to be bored. Ask me questions so I can waste more time procrastinating on this paper! ^_^

Yours &c.

Comments

[klio911.livejournal.com]

hmmm, interesting re: journal and audience and stuff. and how personal what you write is. i went through some phases of paper journal-writing, and even then i never liked to write super-private stuff. partially because i am paranoid, and partially because writing stuff down is similar to saying stuff out loud--makes it more real, and can be kinda freaky. for me anyway.

[troisroyaumes]

I type much faster than I write by hand so I dislike writing on paper. But yeah, I'm paranoid too, and any journal files I have are either buried in an obscure folder within folders or passworded in such a crazy fashion that sometimes I can't access them anymore. XD But yes, I agree, writing stuff down is rather like saying it out loud, which is why I find it cathartic but also horribly embarrassing when I go back to look at it. LJ is slightly less embarrassing because I do try to write for a public, but I think I've gotten a lot more discreet over the years so looking at past entries can be really weird for me. ^_^

Psst, ask me questions too! XD Also, I put up photos from the final party, if you're curious to see.

[tryogeru.livejournal.com]

Gah, I don't even *want* to go back and read the things I wrote from before. However, I am constantly attracted to the idea of a journal, purely because I need something like it to remember the things I've done, because otherwise I'd forget. I would love (and have waiting for me a really really nice journal to begin) to write it out physically, but my handwriting is so awful I feel like it's a waste to write on such pretty paper...::sigh::

[troisroyaumes]

Yeah, that's the other hard part about a paper journal; you feel like you should write in perfect calligraphy in order not to desecrate the nice pages.

I usually don't mind going back a year or so to read past journal entries, but when I go back two or more years I start thinking at my former self, "Wow, what an idiot! Shut up, silly girl."