fo0d-for-thought - Tumblr blog

[fo0d-for-thought]

Recently, I've begun to understand art, or music, or photography. As an outlet of expression, it always felt inefficient. I always thought - why don't people write instead? Maybe this isn't the reason why, but it seems like past a certain age it isn't okay to put your real feelings into words for everyone to know anymore. And that's real sad. I miss it sometimes. And I'm not sure what to do about it.

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The Happiness Choice

I can’t believe I’m still writing on here, but Tumblr's longevity has outlasted many of my previous expectations and it seems like it’s still alive and kicking - so why not? Not bad for a Yahoo-owned company.

I’m here today to write about happiness. I'd guess that many high schoolers, college students, maybe even 30-year-olds would say that 'all they want in life is to be happy'. It's what parents want for their kids, what (good) people want for their friends. For many, myself included, it is the end all be all, the final goal.

So how do we get there? Hell if I know, but I'd like to think that I'm figuring it out.

The past two years have been . . . interesting. I've accomplished things I never could have imagined I would and experienced some of the most rewarding moments of my life. On the other hand, some of my darkest moments have also been during the past two years. I've feared for my life and gotten my first taste of mortality. I've fallen into depression, anxiety, cried out of hopelessness.

With all this good and bad shit happening over the past two years, I've concluded one thing - that true happiness is an active choice that comes from within. It doesn't matter whether you've gotten your dream job, sit at the top 1% of your LinkedIn network by whatever bullshit metric you've concocted, or just found $1000 on the floor. In my personal experience, two weeks after whatever good thing, I'm back to doom-scrolling Youtube and complaining about gas prices. Alas, the hedonic treadmill.

So it's been about reforming my perspective. Happiness is about waking up each morning, sunny or rainy, and smiling at myself in the mirror for no damn reason. It's about looking around each moment and being appreciative for simply being alive. Unless we are going through truly terrible things, I genuinely believe that all of us have the ability to choose happiness.

Sometimes, I think that all of us put such high standards on ourselves and what we expect our lives to be. We want it to be this way or that way, or we need to look like this, be like this, or improve at that. And then we actually get there, and realize that whatever we wanted was cool, but not THAT cool. And so we're left feeling a little empty, a little deluded. Really, I think that the only thing we need to be...is happy. And we don't even need to do anything to get there. All we have to do is make that choice.

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I gotta say, it’s so weird how sometimes we want to die, but after realizing how close death is you realize how much you want to live

Gretchen Lam

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24

Indescribable how much growth has happened the past year. I feel as if I’m a completely different person than who I was when I graduated. Maybe I’ll look back at 26 and feel the same way.

Crazy.

Life is a ride, man.

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Nothing can make me feel stupid for loving with my whole heart

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scattered thoughts

i don’t trust people with long, painted fingernails

if you want something, you gotta go after it

how you present yourself is incredibly important to how you feel and how others treat you

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Shout it from the rooftops

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1YR

It’s been one year since I started working at Bloomberg. My training class is having a reunion today, but I’m in San Francisco so I won’t be able to make it. It’s hard to believe that it has been so long already.

Tangibly, I don’t feel like I have gained all that much. I’m still single and I still have the same job as a year ago. I’m going to be living in the same apartment with the same roommates and that’s pretty much it. 

Things are different though, I don’t know. I’ve become closer to so many people who I barely knew last August. I know my roommates well now, and we like each other enough to re-up on another 1 year lease. I’ve gotten closer to HZ than I ever expected, and JHR is moving to NY - bringing 75% of 1201 back to the 212. Heem. I unexpectedly started talking to RCM a lot during work, and I also have made a pretty good work friend who I browse reddit with a lot. Life is chill, like really chill.

Everyone says that 23 is hard, but what about 22? Last year may have been the most difficult year of my life. I tried so many different things in an effort to find myself and learned that most of it wasn’t for me. I’m still finding myself, but I’m getting there.

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Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility 

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The more I’m removed from you, the more I respect you as a person. We all have our faults, but you never fail to show me my shortcomings as a person. And you don’t do it through words - you do it through actions. There is no “Phil, you should’ve done this”, you just do what you think is right while I watch. 

I missed you a lot. I took for granted how upstanding my college friends were as people, because honestly a lot of the current people I know aren’t. It’s been hard, man, it’s been really really hard. I realize now that some of the toughest times in my life were when you weren’t around and I don’t know whether it’s a coincidence or not.

But it’s okay. I’m okay. I got through the past few months and I think that I’m good now - like close to really good. It’s like I’ve pretty much found who I want to be and I don’t care about some of the idiots around me. 

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Honestly, I just want to try and be a good person. 

Some days society really wages war with my values. I said the other day, “I’ve been waking up every day and feeling good about myself”, which is true - especially recently. But some days it is a choice. I open my curtains and welcome the sun. I blast some tunes. It is not always easy.

But it has been easier. Every day I think I get better; I rediscover who I am and who I want to be. And I refine it - a little bit each day.

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happiness is:

when what you say and what you think are the same..

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I miss the feeling

of missing you so badly

my heart hurt

of my stomach dropping

when you kissed me 

just as thunder

cracked the sky

What does it take

to find something like that 

again

where do I look

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I tried to be someone else, and I don’t like who I became. I can’t lose sight of myself.

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When I was younger, I used to be really good at managing my stress. Whenever something that was both long-term and bothersome would come up, I’d just tell myself that it wasn’t my problem to deal with at the moment, that future me would deal with it. 

There’s an episode of HIMYM where Ted/Marshall have to decide who gets to keep the apartment in the future, and they conclude the discussion by deciding that it’s a problem future Ted and Marshall will be able to handle.

I think I was inspired by that. The past couple of months, I’ve been having trouble controlling my worries and I’m not too sure why. I think it’s gotten better. Everything will be okay. The Phil of the Future (AY GOTTEM) will be able to handle them, I think. And he’ll probably be better than this current one.

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After nearly 23 years, I’m beginning to understand the phrase:

Blood runs thicker than water.

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