Today...

Hi, blog. Just dropping by here to say that I finally bought books using my Fully Booked GCs! I am so tired because I spent almost two hours just thinking and rethinking my choices! But in the end, I finally decided on:

• Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
• The Help by Kathryn Stockett
• Persuasion by Jane Austen

I hope I won't regret my choices. Aaaaahhhh

No IDentity, No entry

There were two moments that occurred over the course of the past few months that made me realize what I probably should have realized a long time ago- that I don’t have an identity/personality. I’ll just skip the part where I write about those incidents because I know how self-centered I’ll sound if I start telling those stories. Let’s just say that those incidents involve me obsessively worrying about other people thinking that I like certain things that I don’t really like.

I guess the problem lies in the fact that I’m scared to get out of the neutral ground. I always want to seem nonchalant and I really don’t express a lot either because I’m scared of my taste being judged poorly or because I’m afraid to be thought of as pretentious.

Those two incidents made me think that maybe it would be nice if the people who live by me in close quarters would know my cup of tea. I know this shows extreme symptoms of the “Special Snowflake Syndrome”, but it’s just annoying when people get the wrong idea about you and thinks that you’re the kind who likes this band or crushes on that certain celebrity even if you’re not.  Our preferences say a lot about us. Choosing is a way of making a statement to the world of who we’d like to be. This involves taste and opinions- things through which people tell us to express ourselves.

The fact that I worry about being thought of about liking things that I don’t really like means that the version that I have of myself in my head is a version completely different from what other people see. It is this way because I don’t make sure that I exude the personality that I want to exude. I know people will think of each other in whichever way they want no matter what, so there’s really no point in trying to do something about it. But when the reason why people have the wrong idea about you is because you’re always wearing a paper bag over your face, then maybe there’s something that should be done about it…

I’m not saying that I already know what to do, though. I mean, I’m writing these things right now and I’m still keeping this blog a secret…   :p

The Great Gatsby Quotes

"There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air."

"...I was going to bring back all such things in my life and become again the most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man'. This isn't just an epigram- life is much more successfully looked at from a single window after all."

"I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

"And I like large parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy."

"There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired."

"It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment"

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”

Ok, I'll try out optimism

I am feeling strangely optimistic at the moment. It's weird! Really weird! After spending two and a half months bumming inside my room, I just about started thinking that I could never ever associate "I" and "optimistic" with each other. But here I am today, feeling positively hopeful about things!

I have to admit, though, that the pessimistic glands in my brain still secrete out some negativity from time to time. I do feel like this brand new optimism of mine won't last long. Good habits are about as difficult to maintain as how easy it is to fall into bad and old ones. I think that since school has just started and nothing's stressing me out yet, I can say things like these. But at the moment something goes wrong, I fear that it will be like as if a final thin thread has broken. I'm probably just fooling myself. (Or it's probably just the effects of rewatching Awkward. It did give me slight optimism too after I watched it the first time. haha)

But then again, that's the thing with this brand new optimism of mine- I feel like I've finally learned enough to fight ugly negative thoughts. Right now, I feel like I've had enough reminder and I will finally get things right. The ugly thoughts are there, but now I feel like I won't be easily forgetting how to counter them with being positive.

Phony

After reading J.D Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" , I feel like I've grown a distrust of just about everything. It has become quite an easy habit of mine to be quick to doubt one's truthfulness and to brand everyone and everything as a phony. I know, I know, saying that I've become such after reading Salinger's novel is such a phony thing to say. As a matter of fact, I feel like a phony for writing this, and even more for actually saying that I feel like a phony for feeling like a phony. Ugh.

I go through my Facebook and Twitter timeline and think that everyone's a phony. I watch entertainment shows and think that celebrities are such phonies. I'm even beginning to think that Taylor Swift is such a phony! I sometimes even feel like my parents are phonies. I feel like a phony for caring too much about whether I'm being a phony or not.

You see, the real phony is me. (Yes, I do feel even more like a phony for saying that!) But it's the truth! Because I realized that I actually can't recall the book's ending. I only vaguely remember there being a little sister involved, but aside from that, I really can't remember how the story concluded. Here I am feeling like Holden Caulfield when actually, I don't think I got a good grasp of the point of the book. I only got the whole "everyone's a phony" part and nothing else, I guess.

That is why I'm a phony. I am a phony, one that needs to read the book again.