today i feel like a bon iver song

What I’m feeling right now is in no way novel and thus deserving of preservation in writing, but I’m still going to go ahead and do it because my legion of ordinary thoughts is interfering with the ordinary actions I need to do right to keep going.

Outside, along the 14 lanes and a metro rail track, hundreds of people are zooming past me every minute while I stay fixed to my 13th floor window in Dubai. I feel transient, an ephemeral mote of paint on the backdrop of their lives. They wouldn’t mind if there was a brushstroke missing from the canvas; I doubt they would even stop to notice. This is a depressing, but almost accurate, analogy to my current state of mind.

Another idea I’ve been sitting on for a while is that it is quite amazing how you can almost always forget about, look past, or walk right through something that is putting all its concerted efforts into fazing you. It is amazing because you’re not always capable of doing this. It’s as if you can occasionally penetrate solid walls, but all the walls put on unassuming looks, and they never warn you in advance that they’re ready to betray their elemental make-up for you.

I keep using “you” in my writing not by mere chance, but very deliberately.

I think the best way to get along with people and to find contentment with your own social life is to recognise how obsessed people are with themselves. You are only a design element on their artboard, which they can build and rearrange any way they like. If the feeling of being small upsets you, take it as another wall to walk through. You’ve been walking through the same wall for your whole life, and looking back and realising what you’ve been doing all along unknowingly should only be a testimony to your endurance. Everyone is just so busy with themselves, they’re feeling so much emotions themselves, just like you are.

Sometimes I stare at a Google Docs page and try to force myself to feel something.