The world is beautiful, and it is in crisis.

These days, I'm in awe of the world. I'm in awe of the beauty and the torment we as a collective put into the world. Some days, there is so much beauty and wonder and goodness. Some days, there seems to be nothing but devastation. We are seemingly at a standstill. Or maybe it is me at a standstill, unsure of how to feel and how to act. I only want for things to turn out alright.

The world is beautiful, and it is in crisis. 

I'm trying to be more mindful of where I stand in the world, what I do to the world. It's been a slow journey. I admit there are things and habits I will never be able to change. For example, one of my pills is in a sheet of 10. I take 5 pills a day, so every other day I throw out this sheet of garbage. It is inevitable. I can't stop taking my meds. There are things I try to do. That's all we can ever really do.

In the last few weeks, some things brought perspective. I finished Sapiens (I & II). I thought it did a wonderful job of outlining the existence of Sapiens and all we have done to change ourselves and the world. It is informative and witty. It ends asking about the next steps, and what those look like. It ends by acknowledging how scary these next steps can look. I went to the Anthropocene exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario last week. Anthropocene is what our human epoch is called. Humans have caused irreversible changes to the Earth. Some of these changes are beautiful. They look stunning, but beneath the beautiful aesthetics, the Earth is hurt. The animals are disappearing. Cities grow bigger and tighter as more and more people are fit into ever-dwindling, ever-shrinking spaces. It turns out we cannot escape our mess either.

I went to see Blood Orange this week. I have almost no photos - certainly no good photos. I was just trying to enjoy the show. To live my existence instead of photographing every minute. To experience fully instead of partially, missing so many details. It was a truly beautiful concert. It felt like an otherworldly experience. It was transcendent, ethereal. Blood Orange is much better live. The music is good, but it is a different experience to hear it live. He is amazing, the instrumentals are amazing, his backup singers have the voices of angels. I felt the music vibrating on my skin, into my soul. When I heard it, I almost cried. There can be so many things we do wrong, but this - that moment - cannot be wrong. Nothing quite so beautiful can be wrong. It was so, so lovely. So, so transformative.

I wonder if I am simply in a time of transition. A lot feels so tentative. I am in flux. A wave of change. I'm rounding 25 soon. It may be the most exciting year yet. This year has been full of dramatic changes. I'm so far away from where I was last year, and yet so much feels the same. I live in the same place, have the same clothes, my body is mostly the same. I did another year of school, I quit a job I had for almost three years - a family of almost three years, I'm working in a different job and industry, I have so many new friends. I'm in a different financial situation. So much has changed and will continue to change.

I'm rambling. I don't know what I am trying to say. The world is beautiful, and it is in crisis. I am in crisis, but standing so tall.

PROUST Q&A

FROM VANITY FAIR: The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlour game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature. 

I first saw the Proust Questionnaire in MK and Ashley's Olsen one book, Influence. They answered the questionnaire themselves as well as giving it to the interviewees in their book. Somewhere under my bed in an old shoe box, I have old Proust Questionnaires that I've filled out over the years. I think it's interesting to see how our responses change over time. What influences us over the years? How has experience, society, fear, love change us? The Questionnaire featured in Influence included different questions but these are similar.

From October 2017, here are the questions and my answers. I encourage you to think about these questions, answer them. See how they change. My answers now certainly aren't the same as my answers at age 16.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Between adventure (seeing new things) and staying in bed with a special man.

What is your greatest fear?
Being abandoned.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I'm an awfully shy person.

What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Lack of kindness.

Which living person do you most admire?
My mother - for all her forgiveness, strengths and failures.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Clothing.

What is your current state of mind?
Between restlessness and tired

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Beauty

On what occasion do you lie?
When I feel that the truth cannot satisfy.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
My skin.

Which living person do you most despise?
At this point, my last manager - without much vengeance but for the sake of the question.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Kindness, patience, thoughtfulness.

What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Strength, courage, recklessness.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
My own indecisiveness

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
San Francisco and art

When and where were you happiest?
I am happiest when I travel, but I am pretty happy now. It feels like all the pieces of my life are falling into place.

Which talent would you most like to have?
Patience

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I wouldn't be sick.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Surviving the most disastrous year of my life in 2012

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what would it be?
A cat or some part of a forest.

Where would you most like to live?
San Francisco, Vancouver, right here in Toronto

What is your most treasured possession?
All my journals, some of my books

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Feeling as if you're not quite good enough/ feeling immense blinding physical pain

What is your favourite occupation?
Lover

What is your most marked characteristic?
Cheeks and snark

What do you most value in your friends?
Kindness

Who are your favourite writers?
Murakami

Who is your hero of fiction?
The damaged.

Which historical figure do you most identify with?
I'm not sure.

Who are your heroes in real life?
My mom and my best friend

What are your favourite names?
Those named after cities and places

What is that you most dislike?
Entitlement

What is your greatest regret?
Doing too much and not doing enough; all the ways my heart is broken, all the ways I didn't like it open

How would you like to die?
Without stuff left to do

What is your motto?
The rose is without why.

Be curious, not judgemental.

A Confessional

I read, “Unless it’s mad, passionate, extraordinary love, it’s a waste of your time. There are too many mediocre things in life; love shouldn’t be one of them.” I watch the finale of How I Met Your Mother again. In the third to last episode, Ted, the show’s protagonist says, “Because love is the best thing we do.” I cry for an hour and a half and I am still sitting in bed with a stuffed red nose.

Because love is the best thing we do. Because love should not be another mediocre part of our lives.

I am half sitting, half laying in bed. I am naked and I have a cup of my favourite peach chamomile tea with honey. I am trying not to cry again. I am not sure why I feel so emotional tonight, but I might cry again.

I went on a date today and it didn’t go so well. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t well. It wasn’t good or passionate or even intriguing. It was so boring and dull. Across from me sat someone who was nice, who was smart and sensible, not unattractive. I will never see him again. I didn’t think he was funny. I didn’t think he was interesting, or fun, or wild. I always thought to myself I needed my men to be reckless. He inspired nothing. There was nothing wrong or different about him, or the situation. He was well and good, but he inspired nothing. It was mediocrity.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been revisiting older pieces of writing. Vivid writing about old memories, so vivid that the memories soothed by time now come back forcefully. I am thinking about the boy I so innocently liked in my first year. I am thinking about the way we hung out and talked about music and movies and politics. I am thinking about the hours and hours and hours we spent together but never kissed. I am thinking about the way our friends and acquittances always wondered about whether or not we were dating. I am thinking of sweet Dalton and sweet me. I am thinking about Richard, the last guy I really dated - almost two years ago. I am thinking about laying in his bed, over the bar crowds and the screaming party. I am thinking about the way he used to talk to me, the way he used to look at me. I am thinking about the way he once traced my body. I am thinking about the way I thought about how nothing was quite right, but I didn’t want to give up on the comfort of having someone, of being with someone. The hope of someone. And then I think about Phil. I think about Phil and the fucking nightmare of a mess he left me.

My heart is heavy. I am 23 and it feels like I’ve been dragged through the mud too many times. I am 23 and my body deteriorates far more quickly than my age suggests. I am 23 and my heart is shattered, too jagged and confused to know anymore. I am 23 and I’ve never been in a serious relationship. I am 23 and I am still so hopeful but I don’t know how to get the pitter-patter feeling anymore. I don’t know how to feel excited about someone anymore. I am 23 and wondering how to resuscitate myself.

Tonight in between crying and here, I try to find an older couple who used to photograph themselves. They’re gone. Recently, I have a conversation with someone whose photography I have long admired. So much has changed. So many people have left. So many relationships have changed. So many circumstances have changed. Life has changed. The world around us has changed.

I am struggling. I am doing better. I have a bit of a sense of direction again. I am going back to school in the fall, for a path that is a bit clearer than it has been in years. I have a few good friends who are supportive and encouraging and present. I have stopped fucking in an effort to forget or replace. But what has began to feel more solid and smooth, has stripped away the passion I once felt. I have left behind a lot of friends because I didn’t want to explain myself one more time. I have almost stopped dating completely. I don’t feel the same passion or drive towards the arts. I have become complacent and grow more and more tired. I grow less and less inspired by life, and the people and movement around me. I want to resuscitate myself but I do not know how.

I want love. I want good. I want passion and drive and spirit and adventure. I want something that makes me feel alive. I am 23 and I feel like I am wasting away.

Personal Essay

Last Monday, I had to write a personal essay for a school application. The question asked who I was, what my story was, and why did it bring me here to this program. The essay was to be graded based on comprehension of task and storytelling ability as well as basic spelling and grammar.

The essay was handwritten in about 30 minutes. It was to be a page and a half, single-spaced.

Here is roughly what I wrote about:

• My name is Annie Chen and I am applying to the Copywriting program. 
• For so much of my life, I have written. It is my personal and academic life. It is the stack of black Moleskine journals sitting on my shelf. It is the countless hours sitting in plain, uninspiring old gymnasiums writing 3-hour exams for my political studies degree. 
• Writing is describing everything since I was 16. It is my first degree, my first heartbreak, my first time having sex, my first time living on my own. It is all the moments of joy but also wrinkled with tears. Some of my Moleskine journals are bursting at the seams, filled with personal anecdotes and movie stubs. 
• Writing is my political studies degree that I cannot even call a science. It is countless hours of writing in exam rooms, and watching the sun rise as I try to finish my next paper that does not include much bias. Political studies is arguing for a point, but it is not to show too much bias. It is to convince someone, but to do so without too harsh of an opinion. 
• I have struggled for almost two years since I graduated in June of 2015. I have struggled trying to rediscover my bias, my opinions, my passion. My political studies degree has stripped me of my bias. It has stripped me of the indignation and fire of the 16-year-old. I want my bias back. 
• What better way is there than advertising, where bias and persuasion is set and undeniable?

This is some of the points of my personal essay. I compared my personal writing to my academic writing. I talked about the bias present in my own writing and the bias that is supposed to be hidden in my academic writing. I talked about bias as a sense of direction, and one that I have since lost after being told that it cannot be shown. I say that I enjoy writing, and I want to rediscover it. I want to go to the Copywriting program. 

On February 15th, I was emailed my offer. Starting September 2017, I will be going back to school.