musing

Hmm.

It is immensely satisfying to have a long, hard, stressful day and to come home at night and know that it’s almost done, and you’re still okay. There’s something so comforting about the knowledge that you can live with routine, really get into it and be fine, despite the fact that it’s difficult. It really makes you proud of yourself to know that you can look at the things you still have left to do in a day and be able to organize them rationally and logically without freaking out or hyperventilating.

I rarely experience this feeling, being the bundle of nerves, hormones and moods that I usually am. I normally cannot really shake off the annoyance or the bad mood that clings to me. But once in a while, there is this feeling of peace that settles over me despite knowing that the day is not quite done yet, that I still have things left untended to. Knowing that I still have yet more to do tomorrow and not freaking out about it is a rare things as well.

God, being a teenager is weird – it’ll be pretty sweet to be able to say one day that being in a good mood is the norm and that bad moods are rare and not quite as spur of the moment as they are today.

Long Nails – What a Chore!

Friday night! Time to go out and meet people! Right? Right. So what does one do on this night of all nights of the week? One would want to look good, look cool, look awesome. A small, but crucial detail arises – WHAT should I do with my nails?!

If you’re like me, you really like the idea of long nails, but maintaining it is a bit more of a problem. My nails go all over the place – sometimes they’re long and pretty, but even then they’re not filed well and half the time I have two weeks-old polish on them. Like now. Now would definitely be one of those times. Some little red patches adorn these untended, unhealthy nails of mine, and it looks frankly quite horrendous.

Well, that’s easily fixable. Pull out the nail polish remover and scrub scrub scrub away. Amazing how persistent this icky old nail polish is… Ah! There, it’s all off now, though there are still red stains on my cuticles. Oh well, I’m putting black nail polish on anyway. And my pinky-nails will be green. Because I’m weird. Applying nail polish now, steady and easy… Left hand done! Now to the right. This is harder, my left hand is a bit shaky, but ah, there, relatively OK looking.

Now, I just need to be careful not to put my nails near anything… Ho-hum. Oh dang, how did THAT happen?! Urgh, now I have to do that nail all over again! Out comes the nail polish remover again…

Does this happen to you? Half the time I get so frustrated at my ruined nail polish that I just scrub all of it off and say to hell with it.

Painfully Wonderful

There is something especially wonderful about the pleasures one can find in states of great pain. Pain is not a thing that most of us appreciate, nor should we. It’s something our body does to let us know something is wrong – we’re stepping on glass, the music is too loud, we’re straining our muscles too much.

However, migraines are a pain which no one really understands. Scientists and doctors haven’t quite figured out why people get them or how to cure them. As a sufferer of such pains, I will describe them briefly, as they are similar to many other pains that we can have: Constant pain, seeming to go on forever, causing panic and calm alternately. It is a pain which heightens the senses, causing every glimmer of light to be blinding and ever stir of the breeze to be deafening. It is a pain that makes you aware of the blood beating a steady, constant path in your body.

And it is a pain that can make you appreciate things more than you thought possible. When in a state of great pain, every single relief is a blessing, a thing to rejoice over. The slightest chill in your arms make you smile as the heat of the pain eases for a moment. The feeling of calm that washes over you as you fall asleep makes you sigh with gratitude. The distraction a book offers makes you feel languid and serene as you concentrate on something outside of your pain. These things are what make bearable the knowledge that you live with a shadow of immense pain ready to pour over you at any given moment.

Power of the Will

Isn’t willpower a strange thing? Sometimes just getting out of bed feels literally impossible. No matter how many times you tell yourself that on the count of ten you’ll get up, you still end up lying there for another minute, or two, or sixty. Then again, sometimes doing something like a physical workout takes no willpower at all and you just go and do it and deal with it and get it over with.

If only we knew how to turn our willpower on and off to suit our needs. If only we could keep our wills strong when we’re trying to outlast someone in an argument and stand up for ourselves. If only we could give up our stupid stuborn wills when we know we’re wrong about something.

Oh wait. We can. Willpowers ARE under our control in the end. Dang, there go all my excuses for doing/not doing things.

A Good Day’s Work

There is a certain feeling of satisfaction that we get after accomplishing things. For instance, if we get a good grade, a promotion, help someone with something important – when we do these things, we feel pleased, happy, content. I don’t know WHY we feel like that. It’s not as if our survival depends on such things. If anything, eating, drinking and breathing are things we get only minor satisfaction from.

Sometimes just knowing we got the smallest thing done makes us happy and satisfied. But seriously, why? Our basic instincts don’t call for us to strive towards anything. That’s what makes us human of course, or one of the things at least – the fact that we do strive, we have goals and wants that extend beyond our basic needs for survival. What a wonderous thing evolution was to bring us to this state.

Then again, when I look over at my cats and see them smiling just because they’re sleeping in a comfortable position, it makes me want to forget all goals and just become a creature of habit and instinct who doesn’t need to do anything more in life than eat, sleep and get scratched behind the ears.

Body and Mind

Sweat dripping down my brow and stinging my eyes, muscles cramping and aching, feet pumping along despite the myriad blisters – there is no feeling so satisfying: being in control of your body, utterly and totally, knowing it will obey you despite it’s pains, despite it’s aches.

Then again, there is also such wonder in letting go of such control. Giving yourself up to complete languor, as when falling asleep after a long and hard day. Knowing your body has reached its limit and surrendering yourself completely to a motionless rest. Letting your muscles and limbs twitch as they will, random currents running from your brain to every joint and fiber of your body.

It’s incredible to think what strange vessels our bodies are, capable of every sort of odd movement and feeling, all coming through these invisible, unconscious decisions and chemical reactions that we cannot ever feel.

I think this is the beginning of a wonderful friendship.

Or not. We’ll have to see about that.

As this is my first post, I should explain a little bit and see if I make sense. At least to myself.

I’m eighteen years old, I just gradutated high-school a couple months ago, and I live really far from the US. I’m American, I plan on going to college in the US but I have a year to go. A year during which I’ll be working in crap jobs and not doing much of anything. Maybe partying some.

I need something to do in this year. I need a project. So this will be it. I’ll try to do this and I’ll see how it goes. My ultimate goal is to buy a domain and open my own website, a blog that won’t be in a common-use blogging website. But before I get anywhere near that sort of commitment, I have to see if anyone in the world will give a damn about what I’m writing.

What will I be writing? Well, as the title might have tipped you off, I’ll be writing random musings. I’ll focus on a topic every post and write about it. It will be silly, stupid, slightly ignorant, but all in good fun and all of it reflecting my actual thoughts and opinions on things.

The topic of this first post was obvious I should think – I really don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I’m going to try to do it anyway.