As I sit here laying down the foundations for my personal journal, I find myself at a loss as to how to write my first entry. The questions "where does one start?" and "where does one start right?" continue to haunt my thoughts, reminding me of my hopeless need for perfection. I admit my aversions to writing and that my skills are only that of a beginner's, mediocre at best, but I cannot inhibit my longing to paint my life with prose or photograph these small moments with metaphors, similes, and other poignant phrases--regardless of how utterly frustrating it is searching for the precise words for these clashing, intangible emotions. There is a beauty to reading, to writing, to discovery; I should not shy away out of unnecessary fear.
But where do I begin?
I can only begin by beginning.
Even though this is an online journal, fit for wandering eyes and curious visitors, my true audience is myself in a not-so-distant future. I write to myself and for myself. Why should I care of strangers who are not me and do not live my life. Only fools attempt to please others while losing themselves in the process. It is madness. It cannot be done. I hope to one day read over these pages and calmly smile to myself as I attempt to understand this portrait of my youth from yesteryears. The perfect way to live life is to live it as if it will be lost forever. For every experience there is only one moment and in that one moment is it most valued. Through this journal, I record my eyes, my thoughts, my emotions, and all within myself. Through this journal, I record my life.
Time is so precious. There are so many other things I should devote these seconds, minutes, and hours to, but this, too, is important. If I am anything, I am first and foremost human whose life-time occupation is that of a student, a disciple of the world who simply wishes to examine the values and potential of human life. My knowledge, I certainly know, is horribly limited, but I hope to quell this parasitic ignorance that feeds upon my mind, growing horrendously larger and larger over the slothful years. Man cannot survive except by gaining knowledge, and reason is his only means to gain it. Reason is the faculty that preceives, identifies and integrates the material provided by his senses. The task of his senses is to give him the evidence of existence, but the task of identifying it belongs to his reason, his senses tell him only that something is, but what it is must be learned by his mind. This is man's greatest privilege and most crucial attribute; I will not shame myself in letting it go to waste.
What I only want is to see everything, experience everything, be everything. Ever since I was a child, I knew this was an impossible task, and I often despair at the magnitude of absolute failure. Yet as the years roll by, I understand now that it is the small possibilities, the small achievements that give life meaning. Anyone who sets out to solely make a name for himself will fail, trapped in a vicious cycle of loss and loneliness as he wonders when and where he has lost his own happiness. That is who I was, and that is who I am now. And that is who I will no longer be. In my adolescence, I've always known I was far too impressionable, far too easily influenced by others, hence I shut myself away from everyone and everything in an attempt to develop my own persona. Yet through my own isolation, I only became partially made, living a half-life full of hesitation and fear--leaving things half-done and unfulfilled. Soon as I lost my trust in others, I lost faith in myself. I only want to live my life again, building the self within me through what the world has to offer and understand what it is to be at peace with oneself.
Answer the question: Have I lived my life?
For the past eighteen years of my existence, I do not feel I have accomplished anything. Perhaps in writing this journal, I may pass the verdicet of my judgment upon my life as an answer to this question. I cannot predict as to what this journal will evolve to, but I can only say that it will grow on its own accord--breathing whatever life it manages to capture. All that I truly hope for is a place where I may sincerely express myself truthfully. There is still an underlying sense of anxiety flowing through my hands as I write this first entry and as I ponder the future of this journal. This hesitation, this introspective opponent, is my greatest inhibition. I understand that only I control my inhibitions; they do not control me. For now, I can only plunge forward, writing whatever I need to write and confessing whatever I need to confess.