The past couple months have been quite interesting, and not at all in a good way. It’s taken quite a while to claw myself out of a very dark place, all the while under immense stress from both work and ballet. Which makes me wonder why I chose a hobby which I knew I’d be bad at, and why I keep at it — a clear sign of my masochistic tendencies. My health is slowly failing me; it’s probably a bad sign that I need an inhaler just to start the work day, and that I feel nauseous and short of breath while at work. (I still can’t tell if the nausea is from coffee or rejection.) I’ve been constantly on the verge of tears, just so frustrated with everything in my life, which maybe is a promising sign in the sense that to be frustrated means I still care about something, right? That my heart hasn’t completely ossified?
Not all is doom and gloom, though. I’m genuinely excited that a friend has proposed hiking the John Muir Trail this summer, even if it depletes my vacation days and then some. There’s nothing like buying a bunch of ultralight backpacking gear to brighten one’s mood (and empty one’s wallet). Plus I heard that there’s a USGS store in Menlo Park which has all the 7.5-minute topographic maps for California. I’m eagerly anticipating going and purchasing a bunch.
I admit that lately there have been days when I pretty much lost all hope in life and strongly considered quitting everything and moving somewhere far away, and it was only then that I realized how badly I need to keep hope alive. Maybe it’s stupidly obvious that one needs hope of a better tomorrow to get through the drudgeries of an imperfect today. But I guess my life really has been quite blessed, much as I complain about it, and most of the time I don’t really need to think about hope.
I am probably one of those guys who lives too much in the future and not enough in the present. I have all these plans and dreams for the future, and when they start failing or becoming infeasible, my world collapses. Despite the knowing cold and finiteness of life, it’s really hard to not think about the future when the present seems so incomplete. So I guess I do need to spend a little time nurturing those hopes and dreams instead of hiding behind this giant wall of work. And it’s comforting to hope that one day I will meet a girl even more wonderful and beautiful than ___, and that she will find me wonderful and beautiful, too.
Luckily, hope springs eternal, and it renews itself.