on passion

eyedrops 5

i found this in my drafts from the start of march, sending it now at the end of april… i wonder how your 2022’s been? have you been healthy, sick, at the start of something, end of something, middle of something?

ever since i moved to nyc and started full time job and since the past 1.5 years of rest, my relationship with time keeps on changing. thinking about time sometimes paralyzes me and sometimes grounds me. its as easy for me to muster up a feelings of impending doom and wish for death as it is to muster up feelings of sensible confidence and wish for life… as much as ive been staying positive and as much as i love some things, as much as i want to feel the satisfaction of my thoughts and feelings coming out in the exact right phrasing i so desperately need… sometimes my best is being honest with myself in the moment — i am annoyed, i am confused, i am hurt, i am sad, i am sick, i desire something i don’t yet have.

,¸,.·’ ‘·.,，¸,* ..0* * °°°°* * ..◦* ＊*✩ ̩̩͙*˚…。，。 ___ —

its 15:44 07.03.2022 im writing this while i watch people skate in a circle at maria hernandez park… its making me want to skate. i walked here aimlessly while thinking about passion

growing up i was never a passionate child who loved something actively… i didnt care to do too well at anything. i was always looking for shortcuts in order to deliver the minimum viable product in class and to my parents. i spent all my free time on mild activities like read, write, take photos, take videos… (define “mild” though)

one time in high school someone looked at me at the snack bar and said "you're so nonchalant" and i thought that made me cool. i held onto this statement as a compliment for a long time. but now everyone i look up to are the least nonchalant people ever. if theyre even nonchalant at all, their nonchalance is towards everything besides the one thing they cannot live without. so in a way, their nonchalantness about all else is a side effect of their passion (theres a lot of people i admire who are like this, but now i think of suga, happy birthday) i want to care, i want to be passionate, i want to love doing something so much that nothing else matters besides my chance to do it a lot

but part of me just feels so mild no matter what i love, and part of me is also always looking for examples to discount my own love of things, looking for ways to shame myself into staying nonchalant even though i’m not. i’m not! i care a lot about so many things and im expressive

rather than being a desaturated or muted color, these days i want to reflect light and be translucent. something that hasnt changed since age 16 is my love for sparkle. i’ve always really, really, really loved sparkle glitter. i love watching the sun reflect on water, i love glitter makeup, diamonds, rain on asphalt, shimmering stage costumes, flash photography in front of a mirror, glowing filters, fireworks, these symbol dividers…

·͙*̩̩͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩̥͙ .・゜゜.·:*¨¨*:·.・*̩̩̥͙˚̩̥̩̥*̩̩͙‧͙.・゜゜・　　・゜゜・．*ੈ✩‧₊˚

looking back at high school in retrospect i can discern patterns of what i loved, how i wrote my ib thesis in english about kazuo ishiguros grasp on memory, how i felt blown to pieces by never let me go (the novel), how i picked “wind” for my theme for two years of ibhl art, how i joined backpacking and venture clubs and liked to climb things and how i wrote and read and documented everything. but back then, i didn’t connect these tendencies with my identity, i didnt lean into what made me like myself and i didnt like myself anyway

i still feel like a mild person, i'm interested in everything but never enough to dedicate myself or return again and again without distraction. how do i be passionate? how do i keep my words to myself? maybe my desire to experiment comes from this mildness and indecisiveness. because if it's not one specific thing, then it's everything… am i just distracted? how do i focus? these days though, i’m finding the list of things i want to be shrinking slowly, consolidating into something that has weight in my palms. i’m getting better at ignoring unnecessary media, tasks, and unnecessary imaginations of myself that distract me

im still learning how to not feel shame to love things i love. how to not be embarrassed to show up uninvited amongst people i want to be associated with. how to exist somewhere because i want to not because my presence is actively desired — like, you can only become desired if you first show yourself. how to immerse myself in the communities i want to be in without feeling like i am someone that stands near a wall at a party. these days i don’t prefer walls as strongly anymore and i’m also less adamant on getting window seat during a flight

…（ ꒰ .·:*0¨◌ …︑ ༘︒⚬∙︓·⠄ :·. ꒱ … ◌.·:*0¨◌ ꒱ …。。◌ ）

i think its important to validate passion even if its for a short period of time. any amount of passion is passion. my mom labeled me constantly as someone who has 三分鐘熱度 (three minute passion), i think it made me doubt myself in many ways. can i be passionate about something? maybe it made me rebel, like ok, if you say i only keep at things for three minutes ill just do nothing instead. now i would say to her 三分鐘也是三分鐘… three minutes is three minutes… more than 0 minutes…

rm said its hard for him to say “i was so happy” when thinking back on a memory bc theres always shadows and darkness even in the happiest times. im also someone who has reservations about these declarations because im always feeling a lot of things at once, the same way i always want to try a lot of things and be a lot of things.

this used to be my Ultimate Excuse — “i’m not passionate about one thing because i am full of contradictions and i am a lot of things and everything so i am not one thing”. this was truly my Ultimate Excuse to do nothing and lean into nothing (and feel no joy). if you’re many things, each of those things is one thing. i tried to bs my way into not being passionate or not loving anything because i was afraid to just say simple truths like “i am a writer” “i am an artist” “i am a friend”. these days, i am particularly remembering how i am a daughter and i am a granddaughter… i miss my mom and i miss my grandmas and i want to spend more time with them in this life.

somehow whenever i feel like i want to declare my love for something, i always have to add on something else that dismisses it. i have to think more on this intense urge i have for everything to be casual. am i still too afraid to fail?

anyway, rather than to ask if you’re happy, rm said he would rather ask if you love this moment. love isn’t about just being positive or negative, assigning yourself as happy or unhappy, okay or not okay. love is being grateful, being glad, being present because it will always serve you. i don’t like everything i love or enjoy everything i love, but i still love it all the same. i wrote in my 2022 learnings note that “acceptance is not approval or agreement”… the first step to be passionate is to accept yourself!

** °.。，「 *࿐. ❝0 ⋆࿐，。˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚ ❞ ◦˚ ༘♡ ⋆｡˚ ❞ ◦

i saved this tweet years ago but it often comes back into my mind. to me its about how learning leads to solidification of your knowledge which allows you to be more declarative (“I know this” “I love this”) but that confidence can lead to ignorance about how disparate knowledge flows and relates to each other. somehow this makes me think of perforated lines

a significant part of education is teaching you to see categories where you previously saw a spectrum. you get enlightened, but also develop blind spots where the categories meet. - @mmay3r

i want to be educated enough to see categories where i previously saw a spectrum, but i also want to be soft and shimmering enough to continue to gravitate towards that spectrum, even with my expertise

　 ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ ҉ 𓂂 ₒ ° ҉ 　　˚｡⋆ 0𓏧҉ ◌ 　˚｡⋆ .゜・゜ ҉ .. ◌ °.ㅇㅇ。 𓂂

passion is something that requires no justification, like wanting to orgasm, wanting to let go, wanting to belong, wanting to improve. im passionate about looking around me

annoying how everyone assumes if you're not aiming for a specific title you aren't acting ambitious enough. that's a crazy limited conception of power that assumes strength comes purely from legibility. it doesn't. in fact, illegible power is often stronger bc it goes unchecked - @mollyfmielke

i enjoy feeling inspired even if I do nothing about it… what's wrong with staying inspired all the time and just enjoying that anyway, why do u have to make things legible to be valid?

in mandarin, passion fruit is called 百香果, which translates to "fruit of a hundred scents"

mad @hqdam

my brand = being me

February 13th 2022

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softly wondering what you are passionate about and what declarations you would like to own,
mad