The Blog of Elaine Wang

4 October 2016

Okay, I really need calm down with all these consecutive blog posts but now I'm thinking even more.

I just need to stop thinking.

What's the point of blogging knowing that nobody is reading. Like I ask these questions knowing I'm never going to get an answer from anybody, so why am I asking. Why not just ask some real person out there and not my imaginary friend Lizzy. I'm trying to remember why my imaginary friend is named Lizzy in the first place. I'm pretty sure I made her when I was in kindergarten or elementary school, but Lizzy?? I have this strange feeling that it was the name of one of the bears in that weird bear cartoon.

Another weird thing is that all the traffic on my blog is coming from porn websites. Why? It probably just has something to do with the strange place that is the internet.

Back to the point, some people say that blogging is therapeutic. Is it really though? At some point you have to wonder if having all these unanswered emotions floating around gets to be unhealthy. On one hand, you think that if everyone read your blog, you would be more likely to be fake. On the other hand, if you know nobody reads your blog, you would be brutally honest but who cares because of course you're honest if you're the only one that will ever actually read it. So either way, what's the point if you have to be either fake or just rant about shit you already know.

I know some people aren't necessarily "fake" when they have public blogs with many viewers. I can see how that can make people happy with people in comments discussing and sharing their opinions/agreement. People like it when others agree with them. Not so much when they don't.

I guess running an unknown blog can be cool for purposes of chronicling one's life and reading past posts to see how you've changed. Sometimes I read my past posts and it's like I don't even remember writing them. Or I think about how dumb I was back then.

Thinking more, even when I know nobody is really reading my blog, I still kind of lie to myself. For example, around March of this year, I made a mistake in my math class. I never really wrote out what the mistake was. I still can't write what it was, because I'm afraid of myself. It's like I'm hoping that one day I'll just forget about it, and that will somehow make it okay. I know that's bad. It's like when you're so convinced of your own lie, it becomes the truth. Even though it is still just a lie.

Sometimes I wish people I knew read my blog so they would know how I felt without me actually having to tell them. That's bad too. I should probably just tell them.

I'm a coward.

19 August 2016

I find it often that in Asian culture, children don’t talk about their problems to their parents. I can’t speak for everyone, but this is true in my family. I always find it funny when teachers or counselors at school tell us to explain to our parents our stress, issues, etc. because it just isn’t something my family does. In the end they always tell you that they are doing what they do for your own good. My parents aren’t even that strict compared to some of my friends’ parents, but I still wish I could feel comfortable talking to them when I’m having problems.

In Chinese, the character 忍 means to endure. I noticed that when breaking up the top and bottom characters into 刃 and 心 which mean blade and heart respectively, to endure is effectively symbolized as placing a blade over your heart; in other words, suppressing one’s emotions even though it feels like stabbing yourself with a blade. That is something I found to represent the familial relationships in my culture.

27 June 2016

I think almost everyone already knows about the phenomenon in which we talk about bad things more than the good things. My Biology teacher told us that we should write three things that we are looking forward to/happy about every morning because it would really improve our lives in the long run.

I guess happy things are just boring? It kind of sucks, but it seems like people don't really want to hear about the happy things in life. I mean, I doubt everyone is super sadistic and loves to listen to the stories that make people suffer, but it kind of seems that way. Whenever there's a tragic incident that happens, a lot of people (myself included) scramble to connect themselves to the incident in some way.

"I knew him."

"I was across the street."

"I felt it."

It's okay because it doesn't effect them. We have the tendency to think we are invincible, and during those existential crises we all have, it's kind of unsettling to think how easily we all die. I go through life knowing I'll die at some point, but I don't always actively think about it. Like I'm walking down the stairs at school, and sometimes I just have a sudden thought that 'wow, that dude behind me could just push me and I'd probably die'. I'm walking along a sidewalk and think ' wow, I could just jump to the side and die'. It's weird because sometimes I think I'm not afraid of death, but actually I know I am. I am afraid to die. I am afraid of not knowing what's after death. I'm so accustomed to feeling things as a human, and I just can't imagine being done. Absolutely nothing. Will it feel like sleeping when I'm not dreaming? You wake up and it's kind of like you didn't sleep at all because all those hours just disappeared? Except you don't wake up. But I think it's still different because being dead means your bodily functions have failed you and stopped right? So by then I'm just organic matter. I'm organic matter right now, but I can think so it's weird. I still think it's strange how humans have made so many things like computers and music and all this stuff. I'm wondering how I know how to type this language and read it and know what people mean. It's all just very strange.

Anyway, happy things are boring because they don't really do anything. When I'm sad, afraid, anxious, etc. it's usually for a reason. It's my brain warning me that if I don't do something, something shitty will probably happen. With happy things, it's kind of just validation. I guess we are instinctively more defensive of what we already have because we don't like the feeling of loss. For example, I do homework because if I don't I'll feel anxious because of my grade. Suppose I ended Calculus with an A. I would feel happy for sure, but I mean I already have the A, so why does it matter. Probably for the mental state. But other people don't really care? It's like "Hey man I got an A in math!!!!" "Yayyyy, I'm so happy for you! I knew you could do it!" That's the typical conversation. But that's basically what you expect. Someone tells you they got an A and you say congrats and it's done. There's no feeling of wanting to know more.

I don't really know what I'm trying to say. I just wish everyone could be happier.

[This happened a long damn time ago; I mentioned the profile picture thing in the "Stuff I've Been Thinking About" post and decided that I might as well post my opinion on it here since I was too lazy to type it all there. Blue highlight is me in the first two. In the third one it's mostly me talking so it shouldn't matter that much. I'll highlight it now to make it clearer. By the way, sorry if any of you end up seeing this and didn't want me to post it, but I doubt it. I should probably ask but honestly though.]

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