journal.coffee

What? No paragraphs. No witty puns. No metaphors that blow you away. The problem with being decent at articulating what’s up and what’s not is that it feels like the end of the world when you can’t do just that. Here’s a random photograph. Here’s a wasted text box.

A little exaggeration never hurt anyone. No picture was as colourful as it looks now. Everything needs a little post-processing. Life is similar. Memories and nostalgia are, logically, a post-processing of our lives. Nothing was as vivid as we think in hindsight. Your hometown wasn’t heaven way back when. Life wasn’t easier way back when. It was all pretty much the same. Time, as it turns out, is a unique preset. The only filter which infallibly enhances the good parts while healing the not-so-good ones. The result is a rather radiant, colourful and larger than life polaroid of memory.

People have a tendency and rather, an innate need to make everything seem like it’s a bad thing. Anything that is ideally a good thing is somehow turned into a word of shame.

However, it has come to my realisation that people can only view someone else through their limited perspective. When people face something from beyond that view, they try and turn the context negative, hoping their own limitations are well-hidden beneath it. That isn’t the case though for it is far more evident to you of how you have transcended such people.

In encounters and situations like these, don’t scream and beg them to see things your way for it will only reinforce their stance of negativity. Socrates has a thing or two to say about that. Instead, ignore them and keep going. They’ll come around in due time.

As someone once said, you cannot force open the petals of a flower.

Have you ever wondered what a moment of inspiration feels like? Well, hear me out.

You’re going home tomorrow, it’s been a while and you haven’t felt that great about anything you did lately. Then, three things happen almost spontaneously, like some predisposed plan, some grand scheme.

You get a coffee and have a great conversation with your barista, you come out and play a song on your phone and as you look up a plane passes under the moon. In one fell swoop, everything aligns perfectly, it all just fits somehow and you smile like you’re the happiest person in the world.

There’s no magic pill and it isn’t grand like what they show in the movies. It’s in the seemingly unimportant or in the mundane.

Inspiration is a series of gears, very small and insignificant, working together, one cog at a time, moving a machine which is, unlike their individual selves, significant and important.

That’s what a moment of inspiration really feels like. It is any moment where you’re completely in the present, absorbing and embracing every little thing like there was nothing else to do.

It hits you and all of a sudden you feel inspired. Then, you do whatever you’re good at; you do you!

Today I realised that I’m not as impulsive as I previously believed. It’s my decision-making process which is rather quick. I used to make rash decisions once upon a time. However, that changed gradually as I grew up. Now, I make moderately calculated decisions quickly.

Good design is working within specific constraints to fulfill a particular purpose or task as well as you can. My process relies on that philosophy. You may think otherwise and that is fine, if that works for you.

The way I see it, if you’ve acknowledged the basic premise and you have mapped out your constraints well, the only thing left between that decision and you is action.

Everything after that basic process, the back-and-forth questioning, the constant begging for random advice and so on is superfluous. It’s unnecessary. It’s clutter. It feeds on your inaction. It’s a feedback loop.

I don’t understand sitting on something for a month and then doing what you would’ve done anyway. Why waste the time? Just do it. Nothing’s going to change next week, month or year.

If anything, the constraints will be the same, if not tighter. The premise will remain the same. You’ll still be at square one. So, roll the dice already. Push the domino, see how things fall. Then, improvise.

If your design is flawless, you wasted too much time on it.

Life is full of character breaks. Those are the moments we remember, to be honest. The times we didn’t act like our usual selves to become something more, something better.

So, if you’re stuck with the stuff which you said and believed in some time ago and believe otherwise now then by all means, break free.

Break your character to build your character.

You know who I despise? Overly-friendly people. I have nothing against being cheerful but have you met that one person who just won’t stop smiling, or talking to you like you are the most beautiful panda cub on the planet? I hate those people. I hate them because I know for a fact they’re faking, and I cannot tolerate that.

In fact, I’d take a person with a crooked smile, whose face betrays their words, over an audaciously and annoyingly smiling person whose tone, not words, are overly positive. I have nothing against positive words, but that cringeworthy tone that screams “Oh, I’m from the land of rainbows and everything good in the world”, that tone riles me up.

I hate overly-friendly people because they’re not real; they’re trying too hard. It isn’t the angry, frustrated, or the frowning you should look out for. On the contrary, it’s the Mr. Sunshines you should keep an eye out for.

There’s a reason stereotypical serial killers are shown to pretend to be (overly) good; it’s quite frankly the easiest thing to emulate.

This isn’t the end; this is just a small part. Move forward with balance and stability.

(A description of the first tattoo I ever got done.)

They say “no man is an island” quoting a poem they haven’t even read or felt. Yet, isn’t it in the nature of our planet itself to spread out? It all began with Pangaea splitting into Gondwana and Laurasia, then them into the seven continents we know, then the borders arrived.

Separation to become a completely different being is in the very nature of habitable life. Why fight nature then? Why fight history? Just let it run its course.

If you ask me, every man is an island, drifting apart from places he can no longer call his own, and over time, drifting toward better, newer horizons, becoming something completely new and magnificent in the process.

I think when people say your 20s are the most important years, they aren’t exaggerating. I’ve just spent a year or so in the bracket and there is an ever-present uncertainty. However, with that uncertainty comes a lot of energy and opportunity.

So, it feels like everyone is doing a lot and yet, it feels like none of it is going anywhere. This is perhaps the time of our lives where everything changes quickly; interests, majors, jobs, passions, lovers, habits, everything.

We’re at our most malleable and yet, we don’t lack identity like we did when we were kids or rebellious adolescents. We’ve made a rough sketch, perhaps a line art of the final thing and we’re working on the picture, slowly yet steadily.

Every day is a roller-coaster and the peculiar thing is that you don’t know what coaster you’re on until it’s dusk and the day descends to its end. It is then that you realise whether the ride was worth it or not. Then, you wake up again, buy a ticket again, get on the coaster again and be surprised again.

It’s uncertain. It’s exciting. It could be amazing. It could be devastating. The catch is that you’ll only know once you’re through with it.

That’s what I believe. I’m not sure what will happen. Who is, right?

I don’t get flowery language. Someone may have the correct word. Perhaps, there is no other word that could mean exactly what they want to say but is it any good if no one gets it?

Language was never solely about finding the right word. Rather, it was about saying the right things to the right people at the right time. At least, that is what I believe. I have a liking to the simpler things in life. So naturally, I use the first word that comes to my mind. The right word comes to you, like the ones you just read and the ones you are about to read.

I have nothing against words. Every word is beautiful, and some words are obviously more accurate than the others. However, the way I see it is that if someone spends more time on the dictionary than on your message, I think you’ve failed. If your sentence is unable to give context to that one long word you’ve squeezed in it, why bother writing it?

Someone called me a poor man’s Bukowski and I didn’t mind. “I’m only twenty-something-years-old”, I thought, “I have a long way to go. Countless pages to fill. Countless years to go unnoticed”.

I guess I’ll take a gap year. Travel maybe. Focus on the writing. I’ll work on myself with all the time I’ll have. Does that make sense?” I asked. “Send me a postcard from every place you see”, she said as I smiled sheepishly.

Let’s pretend to be connoisseurs of what we love. Art, words, technology and the fuel behind them.