Journal entry from 2017

On the same day that I started this blog, January 1 2017, I also wrote an entry in this little Google Doc I'd started back in the summer that I only wrote a little bit into. Here it is in its entirety:

I feel suffocated by all the things I have to do: I have so many expectations for myself. Why am I not watching more films reading more books learning about more ideas constantly creating and developing..? I think my main problem is recognition, I always imagine myself becoming famous and appreciated and maybe I really need to focus on the means more than the end, on the actual process. I just feel like everything is so urgent. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/02/to-speak-is-to-blunder?mbid=social_twitter I was reading this essay by Yiyun Li in the New Yorker and she talks about reading Katherine Mansfield’s journals from when she was a teenager. I dont know how Mansfield is but I’m almost 18 and although I’m only on the cusp of adulthood I feel like my life is already over. Why did I not do things earlier, faster, better. And I don’t worry about CAS reflections or studying for mocks or…? I guess I’m thinking too long term i have FIVE MONTHS left all I have to do is survive these five months but I feel as though I might Burst I am so desperate to become something great. I started to write absurdist and satirical stories out of self-consciousness because you can’t criticise me if I don’t take myself seriously. My writing is bad and good on purpose. But when I read beautiful things I want to create beautiful things also. I have this desperate need to fill every moment of my life with something meaningful (but I watched the big bang theory for like 3 hours last night…) I don’t feel that I am doing enough there is always someone out there doing more than me doing better than me, I’m not jealous of Lorde who became a superstar at my age I’m jealous of Kelley Dong a random person on Tumblr who writes about film and seems to have things sorted out, I’m jealous of Charlotte, a Chinese-Canadian girl on Tumblr who makes films and plays the piano and makes art and has friends and followers and looks pretty in an ugly kind of way. I know, I know I’m doing a lot but i feel it’s not enough. I guess if I had 13k followers on Instagram assuming ceteris paribus I’d feel a lot more accomplished, this kind of popularity is so superficial but I still find it so important, this kind of validation from strangers, a feeling that you’re appreciated I guess… I do all this and I’m so constantly stressed by my own soul and yet I still spend hours scrolling meaninglessly on Instagram and Facebook why do I feel so disconnected from everything and lost. I never called Obrist and I never will. In ten days I find out if I got into Oxford or not but it does not really matter I just feel… I don’t know there are things that are indescribable I know I know I am still in the “early life” tab on my Wikipedia page and things will be different post-humously. I am really not good at writing in journals. I am so far away from who I want to be. 

I totally forgot that I wrote this, but I basically haven't progressed that much in the past year plus. I survived the 5 months and got into Oxford but do I feel any better about myself? Not really. I'm capital-R Realising things every day but they're really the same things, and I keep trying to improve but it's just baby steps.

I've always been in pursuit of a life that looks cool from a stranger's perspective. I'm trying to stop being so cripplingly self-conscious about what strangers think of me. But all I've ever wanted is for teenage girls, whether now or 50 years in the future, to think I'm cool. To be every girl that I've ever thought was cool.

I saw a book yesterday on Rowan Blanchard's Instagram (another girl of whom I'm jealous) called Theory of the Young-girl and I really really really want to read it. I'm hoping I'll learn something. I don't know what's in store for me in the future.