Uncertain

Sometimes I wonder if I’m holding on to something that is no longer there anymore. Maybe I only saw what I wanted to see, and maybe now I see things for what they really are. Or maybe I’m just over-analysing things. Of late, I have become rather unsure of myself. Uncertain about where my place is, about where I stand, about what I see, and about what I know.

Which partially explains the recent lack of blog posts. I type something out halfway, and then I read it and think to myself, “Do I really want to say this?” or “Is that what I really want to say?” and the blog post is abandoned. Having talked about things with people curtails the urge for me to blog. Sometimes, the mere act of typing my thoughts out onto a screen is enough. I don’t feel the need or the urge to actually post what I write.

But I digress. I see this never-ending flood of work that comes in every week, and wonder to myself why I even bother sometimes. Why is it that now, when I actually decide that doing my work is important, and when I do actually get down to doing it, I find it so much harder? It seemed so much easier before, when I just left work undone. Back then, even though I hardly touched my homework and didn’t know what was going on in half my classes, I actually felt somewhat intelligent. Now, I actually know what’s going on in all my classes, but I detect in my mental faculties a lack of sharpness.

It could be that now, I actually know what I don’t know. I used to satisfy myself that I could not expect myself to know anything since I didn’t do any work whatsoever. So maybe now that I actually am keeping up, I expect myself to know everything. I never used to be like that. It could be due to the demands of the school calendar; there is no time to catch up since exams start right after the last day of school.

Underlying all this is the nagging feeling that intellectually, I just don’t feel I’m at my best, and I struggle to find a way to rediscover the form that I once had. I even fear that might not even be possible anymore. To add to all this, I honestly have no clue how I should even go about trying to find that form again. My mind feels dull, and though the academic results seem to indicate otherwise (for now at least), I feel I am capable of better, and my inability to rediscover my best frustrates me.

Coherence escapes me, and my readings on liberalism beckon, so it’s back to work. Again.

Back to school

As I begin to slowly settle back into school, I'm both excited and apprehensive. Excited because there are lots of interesting courses that I'm doing, and yet apprehensive because all of the courses I'm enrolled in require lots of work. There are no public holidays this school term, not a single one, and so we have a one week "spring" "break" in February, "spring" because spring in Montreal isn't really spring - January and February are the coldest months in a year, and "break" because, well, there are no classes. But not having classes doesn't mean that you don't have loads of readings, assignments, papers due and midterms right after.

It is only the 2nd day of school, and I already have deadlines for 3 assignments, 3 papers, an oral presentation and a group project. Not to mention the labs, tutorials and reading for class. And most of the profs in my classes have decided that posting new assignments every week or so is the "in" thing, and have decided they want to be cool and funky too. And who could forget the final examinations. Whoo-hoo.

On the other hand, part of me is, for reasons not very apparent to me, quitely confident that I will manage all of this somehow. Maybe it's because with almost all my first sem grades in, I'm doing alright. Not fantastic, but not too shoddy either. So if I've done it once before, I probably could do it again. But just because I've done something before, doesn't necessarily mean that I'd like or want to do it again. Then again, I don't have all that much of a choice.

I'm probably just over thinking things, but that's what this place is for. Catharsis. I just need to vent.

I'm not all that coherent today, and if you're confused by me, well, that's the point. That's exactly how I feel. Confused.

2006

Happy New Year Everyone!

I haven't blogged in the last 3 weeks or so of December 2005 mainly because my brain just shut down after the madness that is McGill final exams. Anyway, just to update, I went to Quebec City and Ottawa to relax after exams. Quebec City was really pretty and really cold, pictures are up on the flickr account. Ottawa was boring, and had a rather British feel to it. Not many interesting photos from that trip, so I didn't post them on my account.

Christmas was spent in Montreal, went to St Patrick's Basilica for mass on Christmas Eve, and it was the nicest Christmas mass I've been to. Christmas dinner was beef rendang, grilled salmon and some nice rose wine. Not quite the traditional Christmas eve dinner with Grandma's cooking, but close enough. Snow on Christmas night made it really beautiful, and a white Christmas to remember.

Laksa for dinner on New Year's Eve, and went to Old Montreal to catch fireworks to usher in the new year. The fireworks display was really nice, and it was pretty cold too, so didn't hang around too long to indulge in the revelry.

So 2005 has come and gone and it has been a pretty good year. ORD'ed in May (ahhh, the smell of freedom is oh-so-sweet), went over to McGill at the end of August, and now have completed my first term of University. Not all my grades for the term are in yet, but I'm doing alright.

Hopefully, as school picks up again my brain will too, and I'll blog a little more frequently. But then again, my course load is a little heavier next sem, so I will have to see how things go. I will try. I promise. I know some of you come here quite frequently, so I'll try my best to keep this blog updated.