obscure-academia

[obscure-academia]

[obscure-academia]

[obscure-academia]

Another TFIOS post because this book just has so many quotable lines 😅

Sometimes life doesn’t go the way we want it to go *cough* *cough* (omg I just realized how accidentally bad of a joke that was I’m so sorry but now I can’t bear to remove it) and we blame ourselves again and again and again, trying to find where we made that crucial irreversible mistake.

But sometimes...the mistake wasn’t ours to make. I hate that almost as much as knowing it *was* actually my fault. I hate the feeling that I have no control over my fate, my destiny and yet...it can be oddly freeing. It encourages me to live life to the fullest every day *because* I don’t know what lies ahead (putting that into practice is a different story though ehe).

Regret is a heavier burden to bear than powerlessness I think. I’m sure Hazel Grace and Augustus didn’t think that as they raged at the stars for the life they didn’t have. But in the end, wouldn’t you rather rage at the world than rage at yourself? That doesn’t mean it’s easy to accept our inability to control everything that happens to us, but it helps. It really helps.

I’m not sure where the direction of this entire rant went but we’re just gonna roll with it.

~athena

[obscure-academia]

Ehe I did this a while ago and it’s definitely not my best (why did my handwriting change so much uwu). It’s a lovely excerpt though, isn’t it?

~athena

[obscure-academia]

...ya think? XD

A pamphlet from a completely different crisis (the American Revolution) hundreds of years ago but I’m sure this line is relatable to nearly everyone right now. I’m not sure how much more soul-trying I can handle though :/

Amidst the chaos of 2020, I’ve started to see historical events differently. It’s deceptively easy to view them as brief occurrences in somebody’s life since we study it that way- consolidating decades into a few general characteristics and phrases. But history from the first person is truly eye-opening as one realizes just how complicated the events of one year can be...

I’ve grown to appreciate the intricacies of history too, rather than merely an overview. A single year is a remarkably complex story in itself. In the grand scale of time, the past 8 months and counting are negligible, hardly a speck on the abyssal plain. But to the individual, every day brings new challenges in an ongoing battle for survival where the enemy is a shapeshifting hydra - circumstances change rapidly but the problems are infinite and relentless. Countless lives have been irrevocably altered by this pandemic, and undoubted many more will be if they have avoided its grasp so far.

Innumerable major events have happened this year, but in the end...which ones will even make it to the history textbook? Warrant a passing mention, if any mention at all?

~ athena

[obscure-academia]

One of my favorite sections from this book! It reminds me of those moments before quarantine hit where my friends and I were hanging out together, young and happy and free, living in a world where bad things were never permanent or unfixable. We felt absolutely unstoppable...infinite if you will.

~ athena

[obscure-academia]

*probably won’t write a full-on essay every time i post, just every now and then…I usually spill my thoughts out as I write :D*

Quote from the movie version of my all-time favorite American novel, which very well might be my favorite of all classics, The Great Gatsby. This book was so much deeper than I thought it was when I first heard about it in 6th grade, and has taught me so many lessons about chasing fame and the perceived notion of being widely respected, as well as the realities of the American Dream (which I’m NOT saying is bad, the book shows both positives and negatives about it–I have some fairly complex opinions on it that I’ll probably write about in a later post). At any rate, I can say that this book is singlehandedly responsible for my disdain for fame (wait no, might have to take it back to 90% responsible, Gilderoy Lockhart’s quote in HP and the Chamber of Secrets–”Fame is a fickle friend, Harry” affected me a lot as well, but only after I read The Great Gatsby so technically it can still be 100%?).

Anyways, this quote by Daisy is likely the deepest thing she says in the whole movie, and although it isn’t in the original book it still embodies that yearning sentiment from Gatsby and Daisy, and it shows how much Daisy truly loved the time she had with Gatsby but unlike him, she doesn’t think the past can be relived. It’s a pretty fundamental character difference that I think one could argue led to (at least in part) the terrible fallout that occurs in the last couple chapters of the book. I could overanalyze this book for days (which I shall proceed to do lol), but for now I’ll just say, you simply won’t get the full effect of the line without searching up the scene itself…the combined effect of the camera angles, the soundtrack, the symbolic green light, etc. really hits different (or perhaps that’s just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

~ athena

[obscure-academia]

Sooo quarantine has really gotten me into the academia subculture and after a long intense soul-deep debate between light and dark academia I’ve finally settled on ‘obscure’ and started a Tumblr and Instagram (@obscure_academia) XD. I’ll try to post new notebook quotes daily :)

This is one of the first notebook quotes I ever wrote and it’s not very good, but I’ve always been too nervous about sharing them with others, and I suppose I’ve finally worked up the courage to start a blog after being inspired by a 20% Time project involving weekly blogs that I did in English last year.

This quote always hits me deeply when I think about it because it reminds me of all the regrets I’ve accumulated through life, and the countless moments when I wish I could’ve chosen to walk all the diverging paths and could only travel one. Even when I accomplish something I’ve been working towards, I often feel like I could’ve done better, worked faster, or reached higher, and these words are a reminder for me to just be satisfied with what I’ve achieved.

For me, this quote teaches me to be content with the past and let bygones be bygones or else I may soon find I will never be content with anything I do. As much as I like to deny it, I have a perfectionist nature and the thought of not always making the right choice, saying the right phrase, or doing the right thing rankles me so much more than I want to admit, even though I have obviously made bad decisions many, many times. We’re human, and sometimes we make the wrong choices, and that’s okay.

~ athena