Dear Accountancy

When I look at you I am dispassionate. Joyless.

They told me, Accountancy is something you treat with passion and love. I'm sorry, but I find that unimaginable.

This is why I am contemplating divorce. But because I'm a silly whiny coward afraid to venture out to the path more prone to lower salaries, I probably won't.

-

Dear Self

I think you have so many issues, you can start a lifetime subscription to an anthology of depressive narcissism.

-

Dear Me

You are loved.

(But still so lonely i wish i learn what it is like to love, falling. i feel nothing.)

-

Dear Me

Don't forget who you were. Sometimes when you look back and see old friends you haven't met in a long while you wonder if you truly missed them or the times back in the past where an incrementally younger you laughed and joked and loved the same stupid things.

All we have is time. This is precious - such is youth that the passage of a few months feels like a decade of change.

-

Dear Me

It is alright to trust. It is alright to give your heart even though people might not reach out to catch it, dropping your palpitating flesh on the ground between you both. It hurts, but love and friendship is born of trust.

(but sometimes you feel it's you, insurgent, foreigner, against the world.)

-

Dear Me

Stop angsting and get back to fair value changes.

Studied for my sociology module and it's kind of sad how I prefer my sociology module over my core business modules.

Anyway, sociology is about the deconstruction of commonsensical values that have been inculcated in all of us since young. Then I remembered, smiling wryly as I read over my notes:

When I was young, mummy told me girls should dress like girls and wear skirts and pink. I very pointedly made it a personal mission to wear severe colours like black and jeans. Retrospectively, that was just the start of my teenage rebellion.

Since then, clothes acquired a greater symbolic significance to me, far beyond mere accessorising or vanity. Sure, its function is to make the wearer look presentable and fit into the larger social perspective, but for I who had not been able to select my own wardrobe until I turned eleven, clothes were an avenue of rebellion, a subtle middle finger, an expression of who I thought I was and wanted to be. From that time and every time I pick my own clothes and wear them, I am cultivating my own persona. I am myself.

And this is why I take pride in dressing well. This is why I bother to dress up for class everyday, whether it takes place at 8am two hours away from home.

What is your clothing story?

Hello everyone. I'm back.

I left my stories behind just after I finished O Levels. I expressed my anxiety and fears. It turned out I needn't fear.

I graduated the top student in English Literature for 2010, with a perfect L1R5 score. I debated between Raffles Junior College and Victoria Junior College (capitulating to the fact that my Chinese stinks and I might as well enjoy myself and truly belong in a more 'English' environment) and ended up choosing Victoria which was a mere 20 minutes away by bus.

I won't lie. It hasn't been a very smooth journey. So to all the prospective O level students who are reading this in hopes of a glimpse into JC life, please look forward to the myth-busting about JC.

Did your teachers tell you that O Levels is manageable but you needed to study hard so you get into a good junior college? 

Partly true. O Levels were manageable compared to the A Levels. I'm perfectly serious, even if you think that right now I'm just being patronising, speaking from the high throne of "great experience". Alright then, hard proof. I took Biology (because I loved it!) for O Levels and A Levels, and I can tell you that my file of notes for a single years' notes for Biology in JC is equivalent to four times the thickness of the O Level Biology textbook. To fully understand the implications of this, consider the functions of the textbook. It records facts and concepts you need to learn for the major exams. Definitely, in order to pass the Os with flying colours, content mastery is the basic prerequisite. You will be cramming two years' worth of content for your O Levels.

Now, consider the fact that my file of notes for ONE YEAR is FOUR TIMES the thickness of your O level textbook. Definitely, this means you will have to master content in greater complexity and quantity than ever. And yes, you do have less than two years to do it since the A Level exams start in November. Your memory will be pushed to the limit, and so will your stamina and discipline. Trust me, you'll need it.

Unfortunately, content mastery is simply the basic prerequisite. Perhaps now, more than ever, you start to feel the heat and rigour of O Levels, which is ten times more arduous than PSLE. If PSLE tests recall, and O Levels requires you to recall facts and apply them to certain situations, A Levels will be nasty. You will have questions on situations you have never learnt before in your notes, and to answer, you'll simply have to use your content knowledge AND link this knowledge to the situation provided. This application of knowledge is definitely called for more so in the A Levels than the O Levels.

Now, on the JC thing. I am not entirely sure I have sufficient authority to speak on the matter given that my experiences are coloured by the fact that I am in one of the top JCs in Singapore. However, simply being in a good junior college is not the end-all to your problems. It does not ensure a completely smooth course to university and your chosen career. What I am saying is your JC experience and achievements will solely depend on your discipline, strategy, outlook and degree of participation in activities. There will be no one handholding you and chasing after you for missed assignments. Yes, you can skip lectures, and I readily admit I have done so, especially in the latter part of the year where revision lectures were going on and I had a Biology test to study for. The onus is on you to make the most of your JC life, and make your future.

I know people - classmates, friends, friends of friends - who didn't do well enough at A Levels to go to university. Yes, that can happen, and will happen if you do not put in effort to study. We have already established that the content load in JC is many times more rigorous and challenging than that of O Levels - and to master said content, time has to be invested proportionately. You thought O Levels was bad? At JC, every day was O Levels - I have never studied so hard in my entire life! This lamentation then became one of the most frequently uttered and groaned in varying degrees of exhaustion, irritation and hysteria, especially when deadlines are looming and you have three essays due.

I didn't get the most out of my JC experience. I say this because VJC is known for its 'fun' spirit and emphasis on 'work hard; play hard'. While all my classmates and friends can certainly testify to the former, there are far fewer who agree to the latter. My experience was all about working hard: I stopped going out on weekends to finish my numerous Math tutorials and Literature essays. I studied or did homework during breaks, right after eating. Everyday, I did homework till finally collapsing into bed at night. Unfortunately, such mental exhaustion does not naturally resolve my insomnia issues, which I came to accept.

Are you afraid now? Don't be. There are opportunities, but I didn't take them simply because I am an introvert. VJC is all about camaraderie and supporting each other - we will have chartered buses to take us to sports events where our schoolmates compete, impromptu cheering after the pledge is recited, celebratory occasions where the teachers' band will perform. We will have concerts to organise and participate in, the famous music fest, and assorted carnivals. We will have long runs for charity and opportunities to go overseas on exchange. We will have class dinners and lunches, even breakfasts. We will celebrate birthdays in the loudest of ways: in class, in the canteen with a cake. We will have class outings on e-learning days where we were supposed to stay home to learn but we decided we'd much rather learn about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. We will also have weeks off for Project Work (the A-level subject), where we could organise our own schedules - it could be work in the morning and a movie in the afternoon. The opportunities are there and dizzying. There is greater flexibility and leeway, greater school spirit and fun to be had.

I did have some fun, but I worked like crazy. It was simply one commitment after another. I participated in the Writers' Circle, Subjectif (which was the school newsletter everyone either ignored in their imboxes or never heard of), and much later, the infamous Garden in a Bottle project a.k.a myplnt. In some ways it was fun, and my efforts paid off: I became the vice-president in Writers' Circle, a student facilitator where I taught an A-level Biology topic to my peers, and a student leader of the marketing department of myplnt, where we manufactured bottled plants growing in special agar and sold them in public spaces. At the World Orchid Conference of 2011, we sold all our stock and even got business offers!

When summarised into pithy sentences, my experiences seem fun. In some ways they were. In most ways they were gruelling. Behind the scenes there was planning and editing, organising and liasing with vendors for market spaces and works done.There were the folding of boxes and the packaging, there were the intensive training sessions where we had to master the content and more in order to educate our peers. I remember days where we stayed back to make that stupid video for our students' elearning, where we answered questions on the interactive platform and researched the mysteries of radiation and mutations. Apparently radiation will cause adenine and thymine to be more 'sticky', so during protein synthesis the polymerase cannot 'read' the base and will simply substitute another base in place. This is a mutation - it can be silent i.e. does not show any effect because either the protein is non-essential or the amino acid made has similar properties to that of the original, a truncated protein if a stop codon is made, or a nonsense mutation where a completely different protein is made which will alter cellular physiology. It was a lot of hard work.

Happily though, I should think the commitment is less than sports, music or dance CCAs, so I did get a rather impressive resume despite investing less effort.

JC teaches you how to think and reason. My academic writing has improved leaps and bounds. The first term, you think it is challenging, but please, you've barely started. If the difference between PSLE and O levels is a gap, the difference in rigour between Os and As is a gulf. You will struggle with the content and get confused. You will find yourself having to sacrifice some sleep and weekends to get tutorials done. You will stare with devastation at your first test results. And it will get worse, before it gets better.

On my first major Chemistry exam, I earned a 60 out of 100. The scores only dipped from the first term. I started to just borderline pass Chemistry, despite my stellar grades in O Level Chemistry (and yes, I did get that A1. I loved Chemistry).

I struggled and panicked and practiced my way to get a C at prelims. I thought I was done for. I had no hope ever of getting an A at A levels. Despite that daunting thought, I struggled and persisted in completing the five year series and the prelim papers of other schools during the month-long study break. You think one month is more than sufficient? It isn't - I actually had to get up early at 6 a.m. every day to study, and sleep promptly (or as much as I was able) by 11 p.m. I cooped up in my room, which by then was a forest of notes, past year exam papers, answer keys and post-it notes covering facts I kept forgetting. I memorised my notes from the start to the end, drawing countless diagrams. It did pay off - to my great astonishment I got an A for Chemistry at A Levels, despite my fears.

You will struggle. My story has a happy ending: I worked hard and it paid off. I graduated with straight As, and would have gone up on stage if not for that irritating B3 for Higher Chinese at O levels.

Secondary school students can stop reading here, because this is where things get personal.

I did it. I'm still pretty shocked today by my string of As because to my mind I couldn't have done so well, especially for Chemistry and Mathematics which I was weakest in. I found the exam papers difficult, though I managed to complete them on time. I made my share of careless mistakes. Results day, and I was a bundle of nerves, shaking legs and cold hands. The moment in the hall when I screamed with joy upon seeing my certificate is one I will always remember - the relief, the knowledge that all the doors were flung wide open and the tears of joy. I had opportunities. Law school became a distinct possibility, along with medicine. I applied to Law and Dentistry, as well as the scholarships. Meanwhile, I secured internships, working at law firms while taking leave intermittenly to prepare my applications, go for interviews and do a spot of travelling.

What followed was sadness and uncertainty.

I knew it. Early May, the letters of offer would be released. I received one from SMU Law, one from Yale-NUS College, and exactly none from NUS Law. On 8 May where I received a call to attend the concurrent degree interview, I knew what happened.

There is no concurrent degree for law.

There is, however, a concurrent degree program I listed as my third choice: NUS Business Administration (Accountancy) + Masters of Science in Management.

Law school was out. Either the interviewers found me lacking, or my essay was not good enough in the reasoning test. I was in denial. I refused to believe it.

That denial was abruptly shattered on 21 May, when I received an email of congratulations from NUS inviting me to a tea session at NUS Business School.

I was devastated. I was in Taiwan then, when I decided to check out the news on my phone. I was still in denial, hoping against hope that I would get into NUS law school. I cried.

27 May 2013, and I received a letter of congratulations telling me I had a scholarship to study Accountancy. Though it is indeed an achievement, I didn't feel any joy - just bitter irony. I got what I wanted - but not for the course I wanted.

1 June was the deadline. I has a mere 5 days to decide what the hell to do with my life.

Those days were stressful. I cried and sobbed and was generally a wet blanket. I asked friends for advice. I asked God. I asked my parents - both of different opinions. One said the scholarship was a magnificent opportunity and a career boost. The other told me to do what I liked, because a scholarship cannot change the bitterness of misery.

I ended up choosing the scholarship, because I didn't really like the impression SMU gave me, because it is reputation-wise not as strong as NUS, and because I found commercial law boring - heck, looking at the titles just turns me off. Thus, it is indeed great irony that I will study what I know I won't like.

I admit it. I regretted it and it agonised me, haunting me in my waking hours. I knew it wasn't right - intrinstically, I rebelled at the thought. Those days spent at law firms - I was kissing it goodbye forever. Today, this knowledge that I am my own misfortune still haunts me. My heart twinges at it. I know I have made a mistake.

I could have gone to Yale-NUS College, which logically is the best choice given my talents, personality and the fact I needed time to grow and discover myself, but I didn't. The opportunity of tapping into Yale's extensive network slipped by.

As I flip through the matriculation packages, the Yale-NUS one tugs at my heart. I could have gone, I could have been.

So much regret, so much tears.

I had plenty of breakdowns. I cried, I regetted, I tried to find an escape road. Now, applications for UK universities are still open. I still have a shot at school in Exeter and Bristol. But -

I don't know.

I'm too coward to take the risk of spending 40,000 euros a year (which is more than my accumulated tuition for my offered degree in Singapore), for something I may turn out not to like.

I'm too coward to take the risk of living in a foreign environment and going where people are so different from me and each day is an exercise in culture shock.

I'm too coward to ask my parents to pay for my tuition because it is very difficult to study and work at the same time. Exeter is top-tier, unfortunately, it isn't as well-heard of in Singapore. Would I be able to get into the Magic Circle? I don't know.

Too coward. Too stupid. Too foolish. Too blinded.

Everyone tells me to accept my choice. It's quite difficult even if I know I am letting my opportunities slip past.

I am my own downfall. This thought, this regret at letting opportunities pass by drove me into depression. I thought of suicide and did have the urges on a particularly bad day. (even if it is not as serious a situation as most suicides.) I was diagnosed with mycoplasma.

But today I still live on. I am glad that I was too much of a coward to actually jump, and too methodical to just die impulsively. I planned extensively, wrote the note. I planned to go on my birthday. The circularity amused me - born and died the same day. It would be as if I never existed.

Today, I am alive. Today, at least, I feel cheerful  and hopeful and I don't think about suicide and death. Possibly it's mania because I am feeling invincible now.

So this post ended on a personal note. It is no longer a note to secondary school students. It is a confession of truths I am afraid to tell - my suicidal thoughts, the knowledge that something is wrong with me, the crying jags.

This is the reality I am living. This will be the story of my present reality, recorded for prosterity on the Internet. Should prospective employers see this, then may this let them know: Today, I have conquered my own mind. I have lifted myself from the pit. I have struggled and cried but matured along the way. I win.

Ahhhh... it's been so long since I've last written. I blame O-levels, my really busy first year in Junior College, and tests, exams, more tests, more exams, and so much work up too my eyeball I'll be lucky if I even find time to clip my toenails. Ahem.

Unsavory talk aside, today I have (finally!) something to whinge about. The all-too-popular Singaporean grouse: the education system.

As our overseas friends will know, Singapore has an education parallel to South Korea and China: we depend very much on rote memorising, practice and more regurgitation. If our ministers this year tell you that they will be "placing more emphasis on holistic development", don't listen to them. That is an outright lie phrased in a myraid of different ways, and trust me, every one of those permutations will include "holistic", "framework", "all-rounder" and "nurture individual passions" and whatever educational mumbo-jumbo the Proud Arrogant People (not so proud nor arrogant after this year's iconic watershed election, but I digress) to pacify us commoners.

The maraschino cherry on the ice-cream sundae is, when questioned on the alarming numbers of children having to turn to private tuition to cope with the syllabus/ to stay ahead of the pack, our beloved education minister's response is:

"Oh, we aren't as bad as the Koreans."

Trust me, that's not reassuring at all.

I mean, come on. They have cram schools, which are essentially sort of private tuition centers students attend after school hours in hopes of cramming enough to get into a prestigious university. And entrance to these cram schools, diabolically enough, is based on results. Kind of makes you wonder if there is tuition for getting into a cram school, isn't it?

This reasoning, that "we aren't as bad as the Koreans", is akin to saying "Oh, you know what? The American debt isn't that bad, and our high unemployment rates are actually quite tolerable -- I mean, we aren't as bad as Rwanda/ insert-random-African-country-with-high-poverty-rates!" It really pisses me off. Why compare yourself to someone worse off in an attempt to mollify your ego? How hypocritical authorities are! When they're ahead of the pack, the newspaper headlines will proudly run their achievement for the entire bloody nation to see, but when they are somewhere at the bottom? "Oh, no, actually, that standard is irrelevant! It cannot be applied to this country's context you see, (insert some obscure, twisted tautology reminiscient of Catch-22). At least we aren't as bad as ______."

Sweetie, by pointing out the failures of another, you aren't exactly justifying why you are better. This reasoning is ridiculous, and I do wish to slap everyone who uses this argument.

Today, the Straits Times ran a very interesting article. "Homing in on homework!" goes the caption. The article when on to describe the beleagured students, the frenetic parents, eyebrows furrowed, as they passionately proclaim the multiple horrors of the current syllabus and how today's children have too much homework, blah-blah-blah. Yesterday's article was about parents taking enrichment classes on how to help their younger primary school children in their multiple subjects.

The only thing I remember, with much incredulity, is how a mother recounts her helping her primary two son with his math homework, only for the poor boy to return home in tears as the answer was correct but the method wrong. I imagine she used algebra instead of whatever modelling method schools currently employ.

This is ridiculous. It is MATH, for goodness' sake. There are multiple solutions to a task. So what if I choose to approach a question differently? Must I be wrong? Simply because majority of a population designates an answer as right, it does not make the option right. That option is simply more popular. Why must we follow a specific way to solve problems. If I can obtain a solution from algebra or logarithm or what-have-you (assuming all my steps are perfectly accurate, with no inconsistencies) instead of modelling, am I wrong? Simply dismissing a solution as wrong because it does not follow the standard - THIS is what is wrong with the education system.

You want creative thinkers, yet thinkers who follow the limits and established boundaries. You want out-of-the-box solutions, yet the solution has to meet stated criteria, or follow the path verified as the 'right, true' path. Dear education ministry, please make up your bloody mind. It's like saying you want a painting in red, yet no trace of red must be seen. How can one be creative if every step must follow a regulated process? How can one think differently from the pack and learn to approach a problem from another angle if you inculcate in them from young the merits and rewards of following a rigid guideline?

HOW CAN A METHOD BE WRONG? THERE IS NO RIGHT OR WRONG METHOD, BUT RIGHT OR WRONG ANSWERS.

ARGHHH THIS REALLY RILES ME UP.

And parents still wonder why their children aren't creative enough, and bosses continue to outsource jobs to foreigners because "Singaporeans tend to be very bureaucratic and follow a rigid, top-down management. They have no independence. Now, Americans, foreigners - THEY are hungry. They are willing to approach the problem from another angle. They have initiative."

When will those happily shaking their feet in ivory-carpeted offices realise that it is not out of a lack of initiative, but rather a problem of 'nurture' that is causing generation after generation of Singaporeans to be so fearful of offending the status quo?

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot and then jabbing it repeatedly with a knife to ensure the wound doesn't heal.

Speaking of creativity, I was talking with my friend a few days ago over lunch in the canteen. Her sister works in a primary school as an art teacher. She told me something unbelievable: that art is taught in an extremely rigid structure. Basically, every week they would be colouring or doing some artwork from an art workbook, and taught the myraid ways of colouring. "Oh, but Authoress," you must no doubt be thinking, "that doesn't sound too bad! In fact, it sounds quite useful!"

Oh, but it is bad.

Every single week when a different colouring style is taught, the students can only colour their picture in that style, nothing else. No doing it differently. No experimenting. Just follow-the-teacher.

It really amazes me, the extent of rigid frameworks has even permeated one of the freest subjects - Art. Art is about the expression of oneself. It has no restraint, you can do whatever you wish and colour how you like. Of course, many art experts will disagree with me, they feel that for good art, it must reach a certain standard or embody a certain quality. But essentially, art is free, it cannot, and should not ever, be regulated. That is why people are still debating whether that display of a latrine is considered art.

What next? First you regulate our expression, then our thinking. Is the government going to go around regulating the way we dress? The way we choose underwear? The way we shower?

"First, ma'am, you should brush your teeth, and the toothbrush should employ a back-forth motion precisely thrice per tooth. Then, you wash your face..."
"But I like to wash my hair, then my body and face, and let the conditioner set while I brush my teeth. It saves time."
"Ma'am! Deviation from the Laws of Normalcy is highly illegal! That's a fine for Subversion and Disrupting Civilian Life and Harmony!"

Speaking of laws, I never understood how on earth they are going to regulate homosexual sex in our penal code. How on earth would they know whether or not you have sex with someone of the same sex? By conducting some nightwatch programme where the police patrol and knock on every single door to check?

I can just imagine this line:
"Excuse me, sir, we are just here to check that no illegal penetration occurs."

How catch-22.

The tuition situation is ludricuous. Let me deconstruct the situation.

1) Parents are unhappy because their children are overworked, and they are unhappy that the schoolwork is "too hard".
2) Therefore, parents send their children for many tuition classes, supplementary classes, extracurricular classes ("to unwind"), and buy a lot of assessment books so their children can come up top. This also explains the power of Popular and its increasing expansion of assesment book aisles, one shelf for every subject at every level, sometimes more. And guidebooks. Let's not forget the prolific 'underground' trade of past-year examination papers.
3) Parents force their children to do these extra homework, adding on to child's burden
4) Children cannot cope, cannot finish schoolwork/try too hard to finish all the work and neglect other key areas of development e.g. ability to do housework. Parents write angry letters to Straits Times mourning children's inabilities and how they are 'spoilt'. But that it irrelevant.
5) Go back to (1).

At the root of the problem is simply an overemphasis on paper credit. Every single year parents nod along solemnly as school principals outline how they are going to develop the child's other skills. Every single year as examinations draw near the speech is quickly forgotten and parents/ teachers pile on more practice papers so the child can stay ahead of the population. What results is that the child gets steadily overworked. Should the child survive, if you're lucky you'll wind up with a prodigy a la Tiger mum's kids, if you are unlucky you'll get another automaton who will be unemployed after graduation from university and have the huge university tuition debt to contend with, while bosses outsource foreigners who are 'hungry' and 'flexible'.

That is your child's future. That is my future. To stay ahead of the curve I'll have to go to a more prestigious university, ideally in the U.S., and then I'll have to borrow to meet the 40,000+ tuition at a reputable university. If I wanna be successful and rich, I'll have to be a doctor, so let's say I study for about a decade. That amounts to 400,000+, excluding travel fees and housing and miscellanous spending like enjoying the big city life of US, going snowboarding and whatever activity I can't do in tropical Singapore, which is the whole point of studying overseas and not in NUS or NTU. Assuming I'll have to get attached to a hospital and be paid peanuts, and steadily work my way up (IF I find employment), I'll bet I'll be fit to retire by the time I pay off my debt and have a somewhat normal semblence of a life.

So don't begrudge your doctors and lawyers. They deserve earning a lot of cash, primarily because most of the cash probably goes towards paying taxes, their infinitely more ginormous education debt, and staying au courant of the latest medical technology. Correct me if I am wrong but that's what I think.

The only way for me to be debt-free by the time I'm in my thirties or fortiesis if I join the flesh trade!

(Note: I'm just joking. Please do not join the flesh trade.)

Man, if life as an angsty teenager sucks so bad, I don't even want to know what life as an adult would be like. I'd give anything to go back to my whiny, whingy days as a secondary school student when life's biggest problems was getting into some prestigious writing program and attempting to prove my worth. In between verbally assaulting anons and acting like an unlikable, snarky smartass with an ego problem, life was so much simpler.

Labels: education reflections straits times newspaper

I apologise if some parts of this post do not sound altogether coherent, or are even grammatically incorrect (O! The horror!).

While lying awake in bed with nothing better to do than to reflect on life and life's great problems (tried thinking about determinism and such other great philosophy concepts but I kept getting off track - the more analogies I tried to draw up to understand the concept, the more the concept slips away from me. I swear that the ancients simply enjoy working complex issues into even more complex sentences to torture lesser beings a couple of centuries later. First comes the figuring out of the language, then after the language you gotta figure out what the hell they're talking about... fun, yes, on a lovely afternoon, fanfiction-less, but very much sweat-inducing and sleep-chasing at 3 a.m.). Ahem. It seems that I have managed to meander about the subject without actually coming into contact with the subject matter.

Okay. I was in bed, yeah? Let's return to that. I don't look particularly ravishing in bed or anything, but lemme get to the point. So I was reflecting on my writing and the various ills of my writing attempts recently and my lack of talent and shameless purple prose, then one thing led to another and I thought back on the feedback given to me by various teachers + well-meaning people who have read my work and given me feedback.

The general consensus was that one: my language was complicated. Two: my concepts aren't helping any. Three: My characterisation, or lack thereof, was piss-poor. Technically they did not say the third, but my Arvon tutor more of less implied it, and I do agree with her. The only 'gift' of mine, if it may be termed that way, is my way with imagery, and nowadays I don't even have that.

So now you see the nascent link between my earlier seemingly desultory ramblings of philosophy and my writing.

In short, Good imagery + convoluted writing + near ostensible lack of plot + poor characterisation = purple prose.
Then, the most recent development: cheesy imagery + bad metaphors + nonexistent symbols + putrefying characterisation + no plot at all + no emotion + trying too hard = Stephenie Meyer.

Oh no. I'm turning into her. *rips hair off and screams like a banshee*

Now you know why I am so bloody miserable. Writing was all I had to distinguish myself, a part of my identity. I took pride in it. "I'm a writer, and a failed poet," I would announce proudly to whoever I met. "That's why I'm different. That's why I have crazy ideas and want to try them out. That's why I meander off sometimes and stare at people and their smiles and frowns and bad hairdos. That's why I stay up at unearthly hours in the morning to blabber. That's why I use such odd words to express myself, and have an strange opinions.

You'd think that I would feel right at home with a group of fellow writers. Oddly enough, I didn't. I felt like a nervous thumb sticking perpendicular to a fist, a bump on the road, a curve in a spine. I felt like my lips were melting, or perhaps they were sewn on in thick, controlled stitches like patchwork dolls. In short, I felt even more out of place, even more an oddity, even more useless and undeserving of whatever I've managed to achieve. I have an inferiority complex a mile wide and an ego made of plastic containers bought at the dollar store. At first glance it looks sturdy and perfectly normal, able to withstand normal pressures, then you pour hot water in to sterilize it first before readying it for the cocktail of life there's the smell of melting plastic hooking its fat fingers into your nostrils and the bottle is a little bent, a little warped, never quite the same despite the damn hot water being there for a few seconds.

I have a lot of cause for blame. I know I shouldn't be whining about it like a petulant five-year-old who's denied ice-cream before dinner, because there are people out there with fates worse than mine, like abused spouses and child prostitutes and muzzled whores and the many people out there with relatives in hospitals. People with AIDS or cancer or some other animal disease gnawing at their eyes and voices. I know all this, but sometimes being mature is kinda difficult. Something has got to give.

You know when you're a kid looking at mummy or daddy or watching those movies you'd think how glamorous it would be to be an adult - no supervision, being able to walk to the local cornershop without someone tagging along, earning your own money, voting, marrying, falling in love, buying a car, buying whatever you damn well please. Movies and adults, sadly, don't really show the tedium of being one. The neverending bills and work and more bills and taxes and hungry mouths and a marriage, maybe dying or soaking up shadows of people's insecurities, things people throw in closets and lock them there so they don't have to deal with it now, but eventually they run out of space and everything comes spilling out. No, movies don't show that - even prisoners of afganistan or russian spies, in movies, are still amazingly beautiful and they somehow get their happy ending at one point.

I'm tired I guess. Part of it is physical, because I really should be sleeping but my brain is like this hamster which overdosed on crack and is still hallucinating lovely dreams of purple afternoons. Some of it is borne from frustration - frustration at how stuff you imagine never quite turn out right when you apply it to paper or onto Microsoft Word. Characters which refuse to walk off the plane of your mind and slip into neat rows of characters (pardon the weak pun) and spaces, instead ambling off like a past thought and burying themselves somewhere in the graveyard between subconciousness and forget-ment. Forgetment sounds nicer than forgetfulness and forgetting and forgotten, anyway. It's like the process of forgetting, but past tense since the present is the future's past (I probably sound like an idiot) but less past than 'forgotten', which is a definite. Nevermind. I'm confusing myself too.

Perhaps my age is an advantage. I'm not too sure how many people look back to their teenage days and wish for it, but it's still a pretty crucial growing period. Since I'm in this minty stage I might as well use my perspective to my full advantage and capture the prevalent sentiments of hope, of fear as well as impetuosity of teenagers. I think I know why most of my writing failed. I failed because I did not fully understand the issues I was writing about - huge, life issues like love (bloody difficult to define and capture), hatred and family. Rootedness. Responsibility. Lust. Sure, if I'm a good enough writer I can fake it, but I find myself lacking. I find that the pieces I wrote on a subject matter I've had the opportunity to examine up close and lend my own perspective are actually my most successful, and not those where I tried biting off more than I could chew. Teenage jaws are still in their formation period, I guess. My jaws are too small, I can't bite into the core of the matter, the glistening, golden bead every poet wishes to touch and present in their cushioned stories.

I guess it is only when you, as a writer, as a person, understand an issue, then you can properly teach or share your perspective. It wouldn't do to come off as brash and ignorant.

I need sleep.