Jan 26, 2005

A New Blog

Hello world. So it's almost the one year anniversary of my blog. The first post was on February 26, 2004. Exactly one month from today, this outlet for my thoughts and ruminations will be one year old.
In that celebratory vein, I'm making a few changes to this. First, as you might have noticed, I changed the template to Blogger's rounders3. This is semi-permanent, as I'm going to be changing it up a lot over the next month; I'm going to add a menu bar with drop down menus for links (something that I've been lacking for a while), previous posts, and archives. The tagboard will be added back in on the right hand bar. That's the design.
I put Ha in charge of music, so she will kindly update the music on my blog to reflect the posts (or her mood, whichever).
So look out for those changes, and I'll definitely be back for an anniversary post, if not before.
Cheers!

Jan 17, 2005

17

2005. A new calender year, a new life year.

January 15th. My seventeenth birthday. Lackluster Math & Science tournament, followed by absolutely wonderful surprise birthday party. Taboo, table tennis, Napoleon Dynamite, cake, pizza, guitar, shoes, giveaways, hiding, piano, and a very special birthday wish. Thank you Pranay and Ha and Joy for inviting everyone. Thank you everyone for coming: Pranay, Spandana, Milan, Farrukh, Blake, Liz, Ha, Jordan, Tram, Chris, Easton, and last, but most definitely not least, thanks to my wonderful parents for planning everything, for the hilarious lies to explain away Ha's phone, for the lame excuse to get me out of the house, for the cake, for the memories...

It had to be my best birthday ever.

2005. This is my year.

Jan 11, 2005

Fixing It

To everyone who asked me about the previous post, or offered their help, or gave me advice, or just plain listened to me...thank you from the bottom of my heart. You guys must be the best friends in the world.

Okay, all sappiness aside, yes, I had a problem, and due to some thinking on my part, and talking on my friends' parts, I'm on the way to fixing it, I think. It's going to be hard, and it's going to require some sacrifices, but it's going to be worth it in the end (sound familiar, ha?).

What had happened was, my life finally caught up with me. From sleep to academics to friends to debate to AIM to SATs to viola to Region to Math & Science to everything else that's floating around in my world...it all just hit me simultaneously. And it all started to hurt. It just...hurt.

That's still there, but I'm trying to not think about it, and to fix it at the same time. With both of those, I think I'm going to be okay.

Jan 7, 2005

Recognition

I hate this.

I, admittedly, crave praise. It's just in me; it's a part of me. But it's not just recognition by other people; it needs to come from myself. It's like I have these inbuilt standards that I have to live up to, otherwise it all sucks. Everything's just wrong. And I guess that's how things are right now.

Right now, I get recognition for academics. I'm number one in my class. But what is that, really? I know I'm going to get a spiel from a bunch of people as soon as I post this, but here goes anyways: once you're here, it's not really that great. I mean, what have I learned? The last ten years of my life have taught me how to bubble in lettered circles on an answer sheet; I'm good at taking tests.

And it's not very fun. Doing "good" in school doesn't mean that I'm smart, or intelligent, or that I know the U.S. History book by heart. It just means that I know how to take multiple-choice tests. I know the system, and even though I don't cheat, I still know how best to get around in it. But what have I learnt through all this? The system. That's all. Nothing that I can claim to be my own, nothing that's really me. Just an arbitrary "education" system.

I can't take this anymore. It's ripping me up inside. Every couple of weeks I have a bad two or three days, and they're horrible, and even though I get better afterwards, they keep on coming back. And every time, it's just more and more frustrating. Not with anyone, not with anything, but with myself. And this just isn't working for me anymore. It has to change NOW.