21 February 2016

Recently I've been getting sick so often. I think I've actually gotten sick once a month ever since like December of last year. I think Junior year is really taking a tole on me, which is funny because I've literally been hella slacking off. Like I literally have done nothing. I feel like I haven't learned anything new from half of my classes (APUSH, HAmLit, and Japanese) this year. I slack off in Biology too, but at least I feel like I'm learning something or another in that class. I honestly don't know how I'm going to do these AP tests. Like I said, taking APUSH was a product of listening to my sister, and for once, I wish I hadn't. Normally it's fine, but this time it was a mistake that I will regret for my entire existence. Well, probably not, but it definitely feels like the worst mistake of my life so far. Then again, I say that about most things. It just feels like such a prolonged failure.

I'm also not sure if I regret quitting piano. I feel like I liked piano but not enough to practice it often enough to justify paying so much for classes. I still remember the day I quit and how much I cried. It was losing something that had been a part of my life for so long. I could tell my piano teacher was so so disappointed in me, and I just didn't know what to do because my dad really wanted me to just quit since I wasn't practicing. Maybe that will be my greatest regret. I feel like I really did have a talent for piano; if only I had the drive to practice more. That seems to be a constant motto in my life. "If only if only if only..." I always say or think things, but I never am able to actually accomplish anything in the end.

Anyway, I went on a huge digression. Basically I've been getting sick really often and it's just pissing me off. These days I feel so tired and unwilling to do anything (even more than usual). I'm pretty sure I gained like 200 pounds, and right now my body feels all sore and stuff. It's disconcerting. I keep thinking, and my dad keeps telling me, that I should exercise more. I always think to myself wow I should just do some jump-roping, but I always end up not doing it. Like I can't find my jump-rope. Even if I could, I would probably jump like 20 times and then give up. I'm just not a very dedicated person. In short, I'm really damn lazy.

I always seem to get sick before/during/after events I'm looking forward to. Like honestly what's the deal with getting sick before a trip, or before a break, or during a break, or during your birthday that also happens to coincide with a break. No bueno.

Today a lady from Girls Who Code called my cell phone to ask me if I was still going to submit my application since the deadline is in like 10 days. I know, and honestly I should have finished it by now seeing as though I started it on the first day possible. I really want to go. I think these people really care—at least they do enough to call me just to make sure I know what's up—so I think it'll be a really enlightening and fun experience. I've never applied and have never gotten into it anyway, so I'm so afraid that I will be rejected since it's my last year. I wanted to apply in 10th grade as well but I only found out about the program after the applications were already due. It was a real struggle.

It's making me anxious because I want to turn in something good, but I'm not my smart and accomplished friends. I'm not Dhanya; I'm not Shuge; I'm not Chung-Min; I'm not any of these people. I don't understand how to search for opportunities. I always wait for things to come to me. My dad always told me when we played tennis that I have to run to the ball because the ball won't just come to me. I need to chase what I want because my dreams won't magically appear in front of me. In that aspect, it's as if I can't run, which isn't exactly far from the literal truth.

I always try to be as genuine as possible in my applications for things because I feel like if I'm not, then that means that, if I get in, I got in based on lies. I want to be there, not only because they think I belong there, but also because I really think I belong there. I think I do belong in all these different places, and I also think that that's the problem. None of these people are going to know who I truly am—as cliche as it sounds. To them, in the beginning, I'm literally just a wall of text and some left aligned formatting above anything else.

It really goes to show how powerful words end up being. Although I don't think I'm a terrible writer, I don't think my writing ever evokes any emotion out of people. It's always pretty generic and boring; it doesn't stand out from a crowd. And isn't that the most important thing? I need my applications to stand out from everybody else, or at least the majority of everybody else. I'm always so astonished when I read something that makes me feel furious, despair, excited, or that floaty feeling you get when the story is over and you are left there alone debating your entire existence, wondering how it was all possible. And I do wonder: how do these writers do that. How do they make me feel such sweeping emotions with just a few words—just 26 letters arranged around in various ways. I want to be able to do that. Even just a little. I want to be able to make someone out there feel something when they read my stupid ramblings.

I don't have many intense troubles in my life. I'm not a very creative person either, so I'm not that great at conjuring interesting stories, whether they end up being true or not. I just always feel like another person's life is so much more interesting, or so much better than mine. But I guess that's most people. Rarely are people ever happy with what they already have. A simple example is when I constantly hear people with straight hair say that they wish they had naturally curly hair and people with curly hair say that they wish they had naturally straight hair. Now, I personally am happy I have straight hair, but I'm not that focused on my looks anyway since there are worse things about my looks than my hair I need to worry about, but I definitely hear a lot of people say various things along those lines.

I don't know how this post diverged so much from just trying to rant about how I've been getting sick so often. But, in the end, I supposed it's all connected in a way.