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via my blog at http://silent-harmonics.blogspot.com/2010/01/2wenty-1en.html.
Also, I have a Twitter (mostly about entrepreneurship, marketing, and social media). You can find me here: http://twitter.com/crave_blue
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| When I was little, I used to love balloons. One of the happiest sights I could see was my living room covered in balloons. They didn't have to be helium balloons, they didn't have to float. I just liked the magic transparent ephemeral quality they had.
After a party, I would sometimes play a game with myself where I'd run around and pick up all the balloons on the ground and throw them up in the air. As soon as I threw one I was reaching for another one, and if any of the balloons started floating down I would hit them up towards the ceiling again. The goal was to have the fewest number of balloons on the ground. I would be running around the room, half hunched to pick up balloons and half flinging my arms into the air to keep them afloat. If any balloon landed on the ground again, it looked and felt dead in my mental schema. The act of making them float in the air, of maintaining multiple balloons as they drifted slowly but inevitably downwards at different times, was the activity that spurred so much adrenaline in me.
Now it seems I've applied this spirit to my life. I'm always involved in activities, always taking charge, always seizing things when they come my way. When there's an open space in my schedule, I feel empty and useless. When an appointment is canceled, I search desperately for something to do. The more activity happening in my life (of things that I enjoy, not things I have no interest in), the happier I am. So I'm part of clubs, I work, I take the lead in group projects, I volunteer. I plan parties, I schedule lunches, I read biographies and history books and business books. I brainstorm for entrepreneurship and I write songs. I shop and I search for recipes to try.
Productivity is one of the highest virtues in my moral code. Someone who accomplishes a lot, and who loves every minute of it, will be someone I can always look up to. I will never stop being in awe of entrepreneurs, who make something out of nothing despite the tremendous odds and despite easier ways of making money. I will always have respect for presidents and for radical corporate C.E.O.s, who have the unique incredible power of bending the vastly stubborn and often ignorant/narrow-minded views of their constituents or shareholders to put into action a directive they believe in. They possess an unbelievable willpower, an unstopping view of what is right and what is possible. They have to play the game of keeping hundreds of balloons afloat, and more -- they have to do something akin to standing in a lake and parting the water with their hands. It seems impossible -- you use your hands and try to push the water away from you, but of course it just effortlessly refills the space it left. But if you limit yourself to what is practical, what is modest, and what is akin to cruising in your car's momentum without hitting the accelerator, why try at all? You should reach for the stars. You should never stop dreaming about the possibilities. You should always give your best, and put passion into every work you do. To me, that is the prime cause of being heureux, of being glücklich, of being happy. To me, the joy of living, the joy of having been born in this time and place, must stem from the infinite possibilities open to me. There is no single path that will bring you to your final happiness. Never give up.
By the way, the old American Dream of a house with a white picket fence and two wee children has long gone. The true American Dream is the ability to pursue happiness, in whatever form that takes for us.
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I think my eventual claim to fame will be that I break a world record for number of blogs.
My new blog, Ever After, where I blather about daily life and how boring it all is and somehow turn my boredom into interesting writing, is a sequel to The Bohemian Semester. Some of the latest blog entries feature a Polish guy I met, wiki-ing the word "penis" at work, using wine glasses as huge fiery suction cups on people's bodies... yeah, I think that's enough.
I think my latest get rich and famous scheme (I literally have at least two a week that I seriously obsess over) is to write an award-winning blog satirizing my business school experiences. So much to satirize, so little time. But first, a trip to China, then a month of hectic school, then two weeks running away to Australia. Not entirely sure how I'm going to get all my shit done, especially with my aggressively growing dream of starting my own business before the school year ends.
In other words, I am as arrogant and crazy and delusional as ever. How are you?
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I am tired of humanity. I'm tired of the fruitlessness and pointlessness of life, and the fickleness and triteness of society.
There is no point.
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| I haven't done this in a while, and since I've been sick with food poisoning and it's midterm week coming up, I think I have a good excuse. Anyway, I went back five years and this is what I found:
http://www.xanga.com/radiance/70174592/item/
Context: March of freshman year of high school. 2004. I'm going out with Hall and I think the "let's study" reference has some weird sexy connotation to it, which shows you HOW COOL I was back then.
Fucking adorable. Poop on a stick and pickup lines. Featuring Jason, Arthur, Hall, Marcia, Dave, Andrew, Alee, Jialu, Billy, and Deb... | | |
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