lehohoho

[lehohoho]

December 13th, 2022 - old journal in the closet

I was rummaging through my closet for a scarf that I hadn't worn in a year. On the bottom of the bag, I found my old journal, dated from October 2019 to April 2021.

I leave all my journals at my parents home because I had moved to a different place seemingly every year. And each time I moved, I discarded much of my possessions.

The journal starts with me living in Newark. It's filled with distrust of myself. From my older eyes now I see it was just voices echoing in my head.

- October 31st, 2019 - In Neapolitan series Lenu and Lila don't see each other for years at a time. Each growing into their own persons independently. Can i say their friendship lacks depth? What is the balance between myself and how much i give of myself despite not enjoying doing so. I am not at ease.

...

In my conversations with my mother, she is specific and anecdotal. i am general and philosophical. When i ask her about the poverty of her hometown she talks of the people she knew who couldn't get out and the women who have. I ask her about the difference b/w the two. She says hardwork, a passable husband, and luck. I reply about the systematic trappings of poverty, the flow of money and capital funneled through banking systems and government owned enterprises. How common people seemed to live so terribly even in the wealthiest nation in the world. She ignores me. She lives amongst the lives of people, and i seem to only enjoy the idea of people.

...

His parents hoped he wouldn't be a criminal, serial killer, or pedophile. My parents didn't even entertain those possibilities. Letting me know that it is in me to finalize our pending family dream. To start a large corporation, to be a ceo. That to stay in corporate salary is to settle and a waste of a life and our ambitions.

- November 9th, 2019 - Harlem by Langston Hughes

what happens to a dream deferred does it dry up like a raisin in the sun or fester like a sore and then run

does it stink like rotten meat or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?

maybe it just sags like a heavy load

or does it explode?

- November 12th, 2022 - `Latency read memory (1mb)

L1 cache = 0.5 ns L2 cache = 7 ns (14x L1 latency) main memory = 100 ns (20x L2, 200x L1) read 1mb from SSD (~1GB/sec) = 10 ms (4x memory)`

- November 22, 2019 - `I studied mechanical engineering so at-least 3 of my classes any given semester were physics or math related. Math had the most straightforward assignments, forthright in its formulaic repetition. Physics problems were archaic, contrived scenarios with conditions intended to simplify calculations. The first year I started, i immediately looked for answer keys.

- Dec 4th, 2019 - 1180 Raymond, a towering apartment complex. The tallest residential building in Newark, New Jersey. On its 30th floor, lights shine upwards illuminating the top four floors. A lasting symbol of Newark's well-to-do families. The building is imposing, unchanging, and telling. It says, "I will never change. Residency here is stability. It's comfort. It's lasting.

It reminds me of beauty and the beast. That era of architecture, inaccessible grandness. It belies the warmth of my apartment inside. Inside it feels like home: an isolated, clean, and thoughtful existence. On the outside a cold, unmoving and respectable exterior. The tower of 1180 Raymond embodies where my life is headed to. "

- December 11th, 2019: short stories - I had this idea for a short story. It's about if property ownership was democratically allotted, and every 10 years, land would go up for election at local municipality. We would elect landlords instead of the market. ... I like to start writing short stories. Small tweaks to society and economic structures that change how we live. I remember the Ted Chiang short story about lookism. If we were able to prohibit surgically the release of chemicals that respond to physical beauty. If we didn't' discriminate based on uncontrollable traits of physical beauty.

[lehohoho]

re-reading freetoattach on avoidant attachment.

[lehohoho]

This is one of the best years of my life. The time i’m living in now.

September, 17th, 2022

On Wednesday, on a walk as the sun was setting along Fulton market in chicago.

I thought of how this year. The time I’m living in. It is one of the best years of my life.

I thought of other years in my life. The ones that left positive impact on my life. My junior year of college when I felt like i fit in. My year in Los Angeles after years of feeling stuck in a cycle of uncertainty. Have you ever felt yourself stuck for so long that you questioned whether this was it. It didn't matter where you went or what you did. Your life didn’t feel right but this was just your personality. This was life. And then you realize it wasn’t. It was just a situation. That was LA year.

I feel so good this year. I enjoy my job and I’m so grateful to have this outlet for my time and creative energy. I have people around that are living lives that I respect and I feel myself becoming more like the parts of them I admire.

I’m going to Europe for the first time in a month. I’m driving through Canada back to New York in a week. I’m going to live in South America for two months in the winter. I plan on being in Beijing china in less than a year.

I thought about how my best years, in hindsight, I was so focused on the future. That those were my best years because my future at those times seemed most promising. The future came and it honestly wasn’t better. But it was the feeling of hope that my life would be different. That I would be different.

But right now, I feel good about my life. I feel so grateful for the life im living. Im living a beautiful life. And it feels right. It doesn’t feel like im craving myself to fit into a screenplay of a character I admired. Im doing what I think i want and im more confident in myself.

[lehohoho]

Warm rain

#pascalcampion

[lehohoho]

“I’m serious about this: never take life advice from people who don’t know what they care about and don’t understand what makes them happy. These people have no agency. They have never in their life exercised their will to actually obtain something that gives them joy and pride. They’ve relentlessly exercised their will to obtain things that they like the idea of, that they think they “need.” They always think pleasure is a sin. A common argument: “If I wanted to be happy all day, I would just sit on the couch and play video games. Happiness is not the point of life. The point of life is [greatness] [ambition] [fidelity to tradition].

[lehohoho]

Loneliness comes from being unable to communicate things that seem important. I am overwhelmed by the impossibility of articulating the truth, knowing that the truth is subject to change.

https://ava.substack.com/p/on-non-attachment

[lehohoho]

“Jeff, one day you’ll understand that it’s harder to be kind than clever.”

[lehohoho]

Jan 12, 2021 - My 20s has been filled with resentment and irritation towards my parents.

People say parental love is even more intense than romantic love. I don’t think i will ever understand how much my mother and father cares for me until I (hopefully) have children of my own. In my romantic relationships there is always one side that cared more and it never felt good to be on that side. This one-sided balance is far more exaggerated in parental relationship. I could go months, possibly even years without speaking to my parents, and to be honestI would only spordically feel a loning to see them. My parents weren't around for most of childhood and teenage years, so i suppose, I learned to live and cope without them. Now as they’ve gotten older, and less excited about their lives, they have started to taken interest in my life.

My 20s has been filled with resentment and irritation towards my parents. At their heavy-handed approaches, their relentless pressure for me to get married, and the realization of all their shortcomings . I have internal conversations with them oftem. And increasingly these conversations turning darker and more morbid.

"What do you know what’s for best for me? Look at your marriage. Each day spent belittling each other. You had me early in your life, in your 20s, and what was the result? You two were largely absent in my life until you were 40s."

Degressing into perhaps when you're older I will think the “best for you” is to be put into a room guarded by people we paid to make sure you are forcibly fed three meals and only let out of the building for a hour a day and two hours on the weekend for the rest of your life. You may not want it but people will believe, too, that it is best for your health even if it’s terrible for your life. But that’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? That other people agree. Other people with no stake in your life. I’m ashamed at these thoughts, that i would even conceive of hurting them through threats. I decided not to call them until I found words that weren’t so hurtful to describe the anger and resentment I felt building up.

They called everyday. Incessantly asking if I had messaged the girl my uncle, who was like a father to me in high school, had forwarded me the number of. I replied by message that I was busy and didn’t want to talk, if they had something urgent to say it now. They tried to keep me on the phone, asking me why I had been so busy these days. I told them, I wasn’t that busy but that I was mad, and i didn’t want to say words that I didn’t mean and couldn’t ever take back. They asked why I was angry. I told them that I couldn’t talk about it yet because in my rage these words were would hurt them and myself. And once said they couldn’t be taken back. They told me everything is okay that they had my best interest at hand. My dad spoke on about how i was already in my late 20s and when else would i get married. He said, jokingly, that my mother was getting calls from so many places and that perhaps it was sign. I couldn’t utter a word, even a sound felt heavy, and i hung up. I called them back two minutes later because it felt wrong to hang up like that, and unnecessary painful to leave it at such rude and ambiguous note. My mom picked up and said it’s okay you don’t have to do anything you don’t have to do. I replied that in a week, she’ll have either a bad dream or a whisper from a acqcuitance, or dad will have a bad feeling, and we’ll have the same conversation again. What is even the point of a family, if this were anyone else I could leave, block their number, and be done with this. I thought about what if I just throw away my number, and leave for five years, get away from this, and reconnect with them after, I said this quickly, in a breathe. They didn’t reply for a couple seconds, and I added, it’s all empty talk. She said it was okay I didn’t have to do anything I didn’t want to do. And my dad said if you don’t want to there nothing to do about it. The reiterated these sentences, reformulating them, and i didn’t say anything. I knew, they won’t be able to control themselves, that we will revisit this conversation. My dad, then, talked about los angeles cove cases, and we spoke about driving and meeting up in texas. I wanted to see Austin and Houston, emphasizing that Houston didn’t have any zoning laws. It was getting late, and so we said goodbye and ended the call.

[lehohoho]

[lehohoho]

I love to see anyone hustling, their energy is positively contagious but, "You don’t have to monetize your joy." You can "enrich your life without any expectation that it will help you pay the rent"

[lehohoho]

[lehohoho]

dear.b_

[lehohoho]