Goodbye 2019: A Year Of Just Trying

People like to describe their years in singular words. Good, bad, etc. But, how can you make a concise description of one year or 52 weeks or 365 days or 8,760 hours?

The concept of a new year as a milestone and as a time for making resolutions is a bit strange for me. We wait for January 1st to hit, and then it will finally be our time. We will then become this better person, but that's not really how it works does it? The way I see it is that this is the most celebrated example of procrastination and shows of a lack of earnestness towards true self-betterment. Like, if we didn't have the concept of years or new years, when would you ever make an effort to achieve your goals or would you not even try anymore since the symbolism and expectation is gone?

Using the concept of time, as a reference for reflection is fine, but we've evolved into using anticipated years, milestones, or events for a reason to be finally be doing something. You propose this amazing agenda that you're not really genuine and contrive this picture of a person who is serious about getting their life together. And who's to blame? It's this jaded society we live in. We love the term "later" and make procrastination into this sort-of meme. It's presented to us on a larger scale that we don't even notice we're doing it. We've become too desensitized to it, and it joins all the really serious stuff that we desired or cared about that have become facetious. Why can't we just realize that our goals are completely independent of time? Can we just try without hesitations and do something for ourselves?

I don't mean to sound like I'm ranting, but it's definitely this wake up call to our subconscious. What I speak at this moment are things that are relevant to me and my conscious understanding right now. In the next couple of months, this may not be such a big deal to me, because nothing in life really stays relevant forever, but it might hit home to someone who reads this in the next five years or I don't know. Our experiences are subjective, and my purpose of this is to relay the most authentic and sincere person I can be, and I can only do that through narrating through a confined window of time and experience. Talking about myself in the beginning of the year and what I specifically learned then is not how to do it. Not that those lessons weren't important, but I'm honestly not that old to have a memory that I can portray as a good lesson, because there is a lot of naivety there. To me, with everything that happens, it snowballs into who I am now. The experiences just gets added on and on, and you become wiser and wiser.

So let me just say, my year overall was fine. Just. Fine. A lot of bad. A lot of good. It was genuinely normal. Life's about balance. At times, we try so hard to make things special, but I don't think it could be over that long of a period of time. I don't think anything sticks out to necessarily make it bad or good. I mean I lost a family member, parted ways with a good friend, worked really hard and saw no return, but I also went and saw my two favorite bands play live, saw my favorite musical and watched another one which I absolutely loved, went to New York City again, started a blog and wrote tons.

Why do we measure our years with adjectives with either negative or positive connotations?

In art, there is a saying that you're only as good as your last performance, and that is how we subconsciously look at life and years. Do you honestly have a bad year or life or are you struggling in present time? We sometimes examine the things by the endings or the last thing that happened. What is happening now to us.

Look at life like a mountain that never ends, not a staircase to eventual rest where each year represents a step in which one stops, examines, and judges. Life has no reassuring settlement. You don't need to look back; you just need to move forward.

I reflected back to my first few posts, and I can see a lot of growth in my maturity and my mindset that I'm incredibly proud of, but I'm not going to rest on what I've witnessed to be a noticeable change. I'm going to keep trying and trying to be better, because it never really ends. I still have lots of problems, but as long, they are not the same ones, then I am fine. That's what growth is.

Well, I do still have a constant fear of the future. I saw it in my birthday post. I was someone who worried a lot. I worry about a lot of more present things now, but the future lingers and sometimes catches me off guard and brings me a lot of anxiety, as I know the days are numbered until I have to make a real decision on where I wanna go with my life.

And there it is; me looking ahead at a destination.

Here's how I've been trying to cope with this anxiety. I still haven't fully internalized it, yet, but I keep going back to it to reassure myself, and it's something I wanna share with you.

**I'm going to reference The 1975 lead-singer, Matty Healy, for the next parts, but for good reason, he's a person that I love to watch interviews of because he's so insightful and honestly has helped me a lot. I've gotten this self-discovery mainly through him. I've just internalized his experience and applied it to my life. Here are the most profound things that he's said and stuck with me.**

Quote from RadioX Interview: Matty Healy talking about the idea of destinations // Link to video if you want to listen instead, timestamp: (1:10:22) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKJ7YngV2xY

Two Quotes from British GQ interview: One relates to the previous quote and the other concerns the idea of happiness // Link to video if you want to listen instead, timestamp (34:44): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx5LlcPJjZc

So, how do I interpret all of this?

You know, I am happiest when I am doing something where I feel like I serve a direct purpose. I want to write so many things in my life. It's crazy, and I find no limits to where I may go. There is no denying that I am an art, English, social studies type of person. Like, I can't fabricate this lie and live it for the rest of my life that I'm going to be noble and fit everyone's expectation of a cookie cutter child who practices medicine or does engineering for a living. It's not me, and it's never been me. And my astrology app (I'm not really into astrology; I just like the daily wisdom it gives me) told me: "The greatest source of your suffering is the lie you tell yourself." That is true. I am happiest when I am doing this, creating art. Not going to school, pretending to everyone I will be the next Stephen Hawking or Elon Musk. I want to be like Matty Healy, Greta Thunberg, Saoirse Ronan, and Freddie Mercury but be me, the next Katelyn Cao.

Happiness is a product of purpose, not the other way around. They can coexist, but I guess being a spectator who is happy is worse than someone who is doing the things the spectator is watching. I found that when I was most angry was when I felt useless and I couldn't do anything. I realized that pretty recently which was a hard learning curve, because you kinda get remorseful by how you act and how it's portrayed to other people. You can't dwell on it but, I choose to refocus this anger and counteract it with what it truly wants: to create-- and I've got some pretty angry and passive aggressive writing in the books.

The things he spoke stuff with me and made me feel not so alone. Like loneliness isn't really a thing. Everything is up there. In your head. Well, he didn't exactly say that, but he made me feel as though intellectualizing things that are meaningful and understanding everything in a non-biased way, not through what media and culture has told us, breeds a version of ourself that lacks worrying over things that never really matter.

I used to not live, because I worried for the future. That I might get success and then what? That I would, what, get a degree and then what? I can't look at it in that way anymore. It's brutal. You know, all a person can do is try. If you try and keep your head away from looking where you might go, you'll get to that place you were talking about without realizing it.

One thing, I would like to say is that every though I said I've loosened on school and how I approach it, in terms of my mental well-being, I haven't lessened on my writing that much. My service, though, is split among too many projects, I'd say. But, there is a real earnestness for me when it comes down to it. This is me. It is a piece of me that I hope one day that I get to share with the world. I want to make my one life a good one. Today, we live in a simulation consumed by deliberate designs to waste time and influencers who promise us nothing but nice photos and envy. I've been trying to cleanse myself of social media, because we all know it's bad for us. It's our vice that we don't want to talk about. Don't give me an influencer, give me an artist! Give me inspiration to choose to create a better world and art to facilitate emotion and hope. Make things beautiful, not contrived. There is a misunderstanding out there of our reality.

I just question myself a lot, which I suppose is a good thing. Because it creates less waste and bad feelings. But when I reach a point when I have nothing to question and I can trust my instinct more to make the right decisions, I suppose that's what they call adulthood if that really exists, too. Or maybe it's something else like maturity. Maybe just life being life.

I wrote a piece a few months back talking about how I am at peace with myself. The writing was honest at the time and most of things I talked about still apply to my life today. But, I won't lie and say I am still at peace with my self like I was in March. That would be impossible. I think the human condition includes constantly be in and out with oneself, thinking at one moment I am content and excited and at another, be harsh and displeased. It's something normal and nothing wrong. We just need to try and understand ourselves the most and be kind to what our minds and hearts feel.

These are the things that have been going around my mind lately. It's exhausting to remember all these things, but life itself is exhausting. We must try to make every moment beautiful if we can't then what's the point? This decade is going to bring lots and lots of things that I cannot even imagine, but if I stay in touch with myself, trust my instinct, and really stick with what I love. There can be no wrong can there when you're being honest. The same goes for anyone. Thanks for coming along.

-Katelyn Cao