Pretty things

A lot has happened since I last wrote on the blog.

For one, I’m now officially unemployed, yeppie! I’m still dealing with residual memories and habits from the job. I’m also having some hives and rashes from antibiotics allergy. So anxious to have them cured already, but I am also aware that your body is not a perfect machine. Gotta give it some time. So the same goes to my mind. I might need at least half the time of the two years I spent there to unlearn everything.

Friend W got a pretty good opportunity, in my opinion. Really happy for her but at the same time am getting anxious about my own status. Not exactly anxious to get another job immediately but still. She said, “Look, stop saying that I’m lucky. I’ve worked really hard on building my profile and working towards becoming an independent artist. It’s not luck.” Fair enough. I just thought, well then, have I been doing the same? Have I been sticking to my own principles and not going with the flow? Have I really been building my own brand?

Not exactly.

I’ve always been an opportunist. I grab whatever seems like the best for me at the moment. I have no principle whatsoever. Cannot wait. Or rather, cannot dare to wait. I’ve been a good girl, yes, and I’ve been eager to please. Too eager. Too eager to do nothing for and by myself.

If I had a brand, I suppose I would want it to be: sleek, logical, orderly, but also artistically rendered.

Bauhausy, that is.

In an alternative universe, I would be an architect. But this is too far from where I am and what I have right now.

In an alternative alternative universe, I would be a political statistician. The schemer for the politician. Ah, that would be also ideal.

I’ve always been an indecisive person—as in, I’ve never rejected math or the arts completely. I’ve hung onto them.

I suppose that’s what I’ll be looking for. Something in between.

But I also know that I need more qualification to be trusted. Or to have a stand on anything. If I learned anything from the previous job, it is that you must have a qualification to go anywhere good. If not, no matter how much you complain, you’ll be forever tied to the company and the longer you stay, the more difficult it is to leave. It’s like being in a marriage for the money, when you are completely jobless and must endure your husband.

Gosh, if you ask my ultimate value, the very one value I will not give up for anything, it’s definitely freedom. Qualifications grant freedom.

Apart from qualifications, I suppose another path to freedom is indifference. Isn’t that what Stoic philosophy is all about? If you only cared about the wise way, the virtuous way to do things, then what you’re doing really doesn’t matter that much…

…of course, I’m not at all wise. And I do care tremendously about many things that a wise person wouldn’t.

Ultimately, I think I’m interested in fine things. Fine designs, fine aesthetics, fine crafts. I’m interested in the real potential to develop into a trove of fine things. There are things that are ugly outright and you know you’ve reached a dead end the moment you see it. There are things that are fine and complete and there is nothing else you can do to render them more beautiful. By definition, such things are divine.

In the human world, there is a third kind of things, which is fine things in progress. It means that there is not one taint of ugliness or atrocity. It is not yet exactly fine yet, but there is potential. Either it has a clear quality of becoming fine, or the “thing” is not yet well-formed but it’s clearly magnificent. Or both, in-between everywhere and nothing has ruled out its potential yet.

What happened last Sunday, by the way, was an atrocity. It used to have an in-between quality, with glimmers of fineness. But then the other party put an end to it all.

I never thought writing would be useful in any sense. This is not a therapeutic post.

I’ll probably end up with a regular, boring, soul-crushing job. But I’m still hopeful. Seeing that my best friend could get it, I think I could, too.

Orderly, reasonable beauty, that is all I am looking for.