the exciting life of thoughtseaker
riding in my favourite bus to work, i sit in the 6th seat from the front, on the 2nd level, on the right side. the harsh sunlight hits me and blinds me in 15s intervals and i think about the sunny shades that i left at home.
i see all these cars and motorcycles and other vehicles zooming along with my bus on the road, and thought: they are all hustling along with me. just another tuesday, another day to show up at work, at school, at wherever life needs you to be at.
oh how mundane it feels.
i’ve taken this route every single day in the week including some weekends, for the past 7 years. riding along everyone else, showing up at 8.30am in the morning. and then slugging back home only at 6pm. i’ll only be home around 7pm.
i’ve seen someone ask — we need to be at work by 8.30am but why aren’t we already at home at 6pm? sometimes i think about that more than i should.
probably, if i had a camera to take a photo of myself every single morning, it’d showcase a bright, young lady so eager to show up to work, slowly transiting into a woman who drags her feet some days, with tired eyes and a more exhausted soul. and that latter is me, 7 years in the making.
and so i find myself asking — hey self, why is your life so boring? it’s so mundane, so routine — there’s nothing much to look forward to, nothing exciting. but it sure feels a teeny bit better knowing im not alone:
what is it that is missing? what is my life lacking of? maybe i’m not doing enough fun things? i listed down some fun things to do with my also-bored-with-life friend. woohoo, am i cured?
definitely not.
and being the rational and objective person that i am, i have to find the root cause of this. because i haven’t always been feeling this way.
and this is where i just want to sit, pat myself at the back, give myself a hug, and probably eat a cotton candy in the shape of a flower with colour rings, huge enough to cover my face, yet not enough to cure the sadness in my heart. (yes, it exists — i’ve tried it! crazy stuff)
my life is ‘boring’, because im too exhausted. too exhausted to do the things that matter most to me.
well, i was kinda hoping for a more dramatic or incredulous reason… but sorry folks, here’s the reality.
a desk-bound job doing creative work *coughsalonecoughs* all day long, 7 years long, sucked the life out of me. commuting to the above-said soul-sucking desk bound job sucked the soul out of me. and here i am, wondering, just where in the world is me.
i lost myself to creating things for others — all the while suppressing my own wants of creating things for myself. getting distracted with deadlines, with perfecting my craft, with dealing with horrible and terrible and truly Toxic people (yes, that T word is out), i kinda joined the dotted-grid paper and became one of the dots, alongside the hundreds of dots on the dotted paper.
no offence to dotted papers, i love them.
you go in for the ride, so full of vigour, so fierce with passion, so strong so fast — but maybe too fast. and then suddenly, life just halts and you look around you and be like — where the hamburgers am i??? suddenly i’m in between the crumbling buildings of Cobb’s old dream projection he made with Mal in Inception. but only, this time, there is no ‘kick’ to wake me up.
no other kick than myself.
/pausing for impact/ (actually, pausing because the weight of these thoughts weigh down on my heart and i’m taking a few deep breaths)
so let’s turn this around. right?
but it’s so hard to unlearn and relearn life. i’ve sent countless of job applications. i’ve tried to do life differently. and some days hit me hardest when i realise nothing is coming back to me. it’s like life is set in stone and i have to just accept that this is my reality.
but i know better than to succumb to that. i know that i am in charge — apart from Allah, of course — and that i am not a tree; i should move. and i am moving. i know i am, even with teeny steps that might not even be visible to the naked or fully clothed eye.
as of now, i’m concocting some things in my cauldron. i mean, what do i have to lose, right? in other words, GO JE (which means, just go (for it)). in other words, again, bangun pagi, let’s go!
so how did i end up writing about my ‘exciting’ life?
a special mention to Feetri Rahim, my honeybee — it truly has been awhile since i’ve written here, or anywhere at all really.
and if you reached here, thank you for reading — and i truly appreciate you for spending time to read till the end. because in spite of a boring life, i love writing. and i loved writing this. and you are supporting me by reading.
thank you.
