I was just about to sleep, lying in my bed, suddenly a strings of beautiful line of thoughts of "I am my art and my art is me" emerged. 1st of January has been a really wonderful day that I was able to produce 4 articles in which I really like four of those, I read it multiple times and it made me feel nice. As much as the Happy New Year 2024: Cheers to be more alive! Whatever that means article was citing parts of me that lived in 2020. It became painstakingly apparent to me that I am my art and my art is me. The "What I learned in 2020" article has served to be a great time capsule for me to remember the past, the things I used to believed in and the choices that I took. The art of the piece was literally me. I wrote that at some point at it represents my true feelings and deductions from my observations, observations of my actions, dedicisions, and perceptions that I have made.
The 2020 Article was also my first ever article that I published to the public, I think if I remember that I plugged a google analytics script into it, more than 300 people reads it or number of unique viewers. The article itself actually have done a very good job of remembering the whole year even if its only written in 7 days in December. Not only it has done the remembering part but distilling it to the point that it's comprehensible in initially 8000 words. Even though it's limitted to the scope of "Things that I learned" but things that I learned is what makes the article meaningful, not only for me but for other people.
I should admit that I went on a radical deviation in late part of 2021 to early 2022. The Happy New Year 2024 says it best
The other quote that quote rang in my head was:
“I always do everything that I do passionately, I have never once in my life, do something or become something just because someone expected me to be that way.”
Though, most important of all, I'm truly honest to myself. That came to be a really strong double edged sword that leads to my suicide ideation later in 2021 where I quite unitentionally betray my own personal philosophy that has woven itself the fabric of my being. The intention became irrelevant as the result is there, I burned it all. I couldn't familiarize myself in the mirror as the strings that has woven my indentity has been burned away from the sparks that I lit from my own hand. I wanted depart from my alienation and suffering.
No one understands what it meant, at least at that time. I couldn't seek for help, every step I took for help just pushes me down to the road of self alienation even more. People told me to just carry my emotional baggage as that's what everyone has been doing. They think that my problem is not much different than them and I'm just a coward for unable to solve my problems. Spineless and a deviation from the healthy human standard.
I didn't get the best help that I needed at that time, at least initially, until the strangers from the suicide prevention hotline came. Writing does not only help me alleviate me from my dark pit of depression but also it helps me find happiness within. I think I could say that I don't really care if no one ends up reading my writings; it's not my primary motivation and probably should never be. Because if I say I write for the amusement of others, the day I stopped receiving positive feedbacks I will simply stop writing. That's not really the way is it? I will stop when I don't feel like it. As long as I feel like writing I will continue to write.
I think one of the strong reasons that I come to really like writing because it's a free dopamine kick. It aligns with my personal philosophy that I want to create something valuable and I don't just write gibberish line of thoughts rather something that I inherently found meaningful that I want to re-read it in the future. Something magical about writing is that it pushes my brain to quite literally be in the flow to produce meaningful line of thoughts that glues higher meaning into the article.
When I put on my website that "I write to better understand myself, immortalize my thoughts, and to take a trip down memory lane full of meaningful ideas." With another gut feeling as a basic assumption that I understand myself very little and as my meaningful experience always grow over time; between meaningful experiences and writing, my meaningful experiences will always have its irreperable lead." Then to be taken in a metaphorical sense, my writing should only stop or have catched up when the day I stop having meaningful experiences.
Though again, meaning is only subjectively perceived by the self. As The Art boldly stated:
The soul crushing questions took a conclusion that in order for life to have meaning, I must believe that meaning is personal and inner, something that I created on my own, something that I assign meaning into it, but in that sense that thing or things must be inherently meaningless before I assign meaning into it, thus life is inherently meaningless.
The human life is nothing less and nothing more than a series of experiences utilizing the sensory perceptions, emotions and thought. The self is nothing less and nothing more than the sum of it's self awareness.
Imagine if you just turn blind tomorrow, your "life" will now feel less of a "life" when its "naturally" compared to the days that you have an eye.
If self awareness is defined as one's ability to be aware of itself and through it, one can make plans and make best assumptions of what one wants to make of itself. Then, the lack of self awareness just defines that one does not make the best assumptions of what one wants to make of itself. While the other end, high self awareness is just one is holding the best assumption of what one wants to make of itself.
And your best should already be enough. We all make mistakes and your best assumption may or may not be true afterall. Beating yourself to the ground is totally unnecessary.
As how I state it on The Happy New Year 2024 article:
As I told my friend who are struggling with his life path on a smoking zone on a central business district: "The world is not going to collapse just because you don't get the job you want, those tall buildings will still be here tomorrow, it's not going to collapse just because now you think the world has become shit. The only thing that is going to collapse is your own expectations."
Expectations rise and fall, but the answer is not to numb your expectations rather to acknowledge the fact that expectations and the emotions that goes with it does rise and fall but that's what it means to be human. You can't be happy if you're never sad as much as you can't be sad if you're never happy. Might as well embrace sadness when expectations fall apart and see it as something natural of the human experience.
And to circle back to the title of the article. All of these things that you've read are what I believe to be right. All of these represent my ideas and inevitably me as a person and what I believe in, at least by the time the article is written.
As much as I have enjoyed diving in to my 2022, 2021, and 2020 articles, I hope my 2030 self would enjoy diving back in to my 2024 banger articles as it was literally me. You are your art and your art is you. Or at least, You were your art and your art were you.