Free to Fall

After free-falling for a good 3.5 years in NUS, I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Past three weeks have been madness... presentations, write ups, essays come in different combinations, but always 2 per week.

The Thursday that passed marks the day of my LAST solo presentation ever in NUS, on free will in Paradise Lost? Damn. I can't even find my own Paradise (still trying). I may be spouting rubbish at the lectern, but who care? Finished in record time, with the usual minimal sleep the night (morning) before, the end of presentation is a blast for me.

I need a change of environment.

"What's your passion?" the TV blares. Really, what i want is a nice good life, an okay 8-5 job with an okay salary, and someone nice to share it all with. Deceptively simple.

So unless MOE forgot that I "deferred" my teaching appointment till this year, I am really going to have a 7-infinitum o'clock job moulding some kid's future.

In the current depression, i find that bad news trumps everything. ST and other laves on the sad economic realities day after day. Over-reactions aside, I think there is this interesting trait of some people. They imbibe these realities and use this currently bad environment to define themselves; by bemoaning sad economic realities and their jobs not being stable and/or they can't find a job after they graduate. Being part of an economic reality does not mean one hides from being cautious and alarmed, but it also means one need not be over cautious and be drawn down into this whirlpool of fear. Especially when one's young, about to graduate, and has relatively smaller money responsibilities. Losing or not getting a job ain't as hard in youth than when one has a family to feed and a roof to secure. Better know what one wants in life now, make all the mistakes and discover solutions, than to face mid-life crises later on...

who do you wanna be?

Take some time oh people i know, to adjust mindsets and delve deeper into discovering the Self. Find out more about interests, strengths, weakness, and discover the idiosyncratic ways which one functions by. And then (re-)evaluate. Do not do what Delueze and Guattari (yea 19th Century module Audrey!) posited, that in a capitalist economy people becomes automatons--little machines--operating as cogs in the larger machine of economy. Even Milton's Satan found his new aim in life screwing up Adam and Eve after his fall from Heaven. Discover your strengths, change spending patterns, do not tie your life up totally with this capitalist-consumerist reality we live in. Watch a movie (pirated if needs be to cut costs), read nice books and generally spend quality time alone or in good company. There has to be more to life than that measly job, or money, or grades. That is something i hold on to, however tenaciously.

And then things will get better. Say, if it's already so bloody bad as the news have shown, it can only get better.

And cheer up Ms 2eyes&asunflower. There be better days for us all. We'll make it, with sugarcane juice.