Of My Moleskine Notebook

Everyone is talking about what a year it has been to them. They write long detailed posts in accepting and un-judgemental prose; an air of wisdom through experience tousled around their images of memorable activity during the year. They write about the events that have defined them, and the people they have loved and lost; the music they had made love to or cried over, and for those whose purpose is to write about issues : The Financial Crisis and The US Elections.

To be very terse; I find all these articles and posts annoying. This is simply due to because – unlike most of the general human population – I have not thought of the year in retrospect, and am completely too chicken to even start.

There is just far too much to rant/blabber/cry about this year and the fact that my life and the lives of people around me are going to change in the New Year, is just too overwhelming to try to capture on paper without sounding contrived.

Then there’s that whole “oh this time last year I was..” going on in my head. It’s really, to be honest, a bitch.

This time last year I had a crazy sleepover with two of my closest friends. My parents were away and had given me complete dominance of the house for the night they were away. So the girls and I cooked steak and pasta, ate vanilla ice-cream while watching The Notebook; and fell asleep on the floor under the make-shift tent we made in my room.

The room was a patchwork of tablecloth and bedsheets tied and hung through the window and bed; and as we stared at the ceiling listening to Kevin Drew with lazy japanese origami lanterns hanging overhead; our bodies made shadows through the fabric; illuminated by the warm glow of a lantern.

This year my parents are going away again, but all my friends are off gallivanting abroad or are already busy treading the paths set up for their new lives. When they come back in the New Year, I would then have already started my trek in a new land; whether I end up at boarding school or not.

It’s really discomforting this situation I am in at the moment. I have yet to receive a reply to whether or not I will be accepted into that boarding school, and in the midst of that anticipation; I have far too much time in my hands and so start thinking about the what-ifs to if I stayed on here and attend a college in Subang instead.

Then there’s that whole TOP 10 CDs of 2008! Or my Top Ten Movies, Books, Songs, Bands.. and so on and so forth. To some people it may not make any sense to why it might matter. In my opinion however, pop culture chronicles our lives as a time line lying in the background. While we all have our own lives completely independent to any influence of the overplayed 1# hit on the radio, our daily existence at that moment in time can always be put into context by remembering generally where we were, what we were doing when everyone was singing Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl. Give me a few more days, maybe then I can write this post.

The thing about doing all these flashbacks, retrospectives and looong ardurous essays on existence in mid December is that it is a necessary catharsis, a way of letting go before moving on to the new year. It’s as if we just need to compile a short recap on our growth as individuals before we seal the book of memories shut; before stuffing it at the back of the bookshelf.

Some would call it a Briefing on The Economy, A Retrospective of Cultural Events 2008, The Academic Calendar, Highlights, or What I Did This Year OMG!. But be it a long article in the FT, or an unreadable post (perhaps like this one) on a blog; it’s in essence the same thing.

We all need to lick our wounds before we head on to the next fight. In the new year.