We’ll meet at the intersection, once in a while

Adult friendship is so different. We’ve known each other since we were in middle school. We met every day, we hung out in the same circle. There’s no distinction about friend group as we all share that big one circle. We see each other through every phase of evolving (I deliberately chose this word because we all know how brutal adolescence can be).

Time flies and so many years later, we meet once in a while, at most twice a year, not once. There are so many “your friend groups” and “my friend group” formed in the time that we do not see each other. We each have so many lives that are unknown to each other. Every time we meet at the intersection, we perhaps share only a little piece from our many lives that the other has no idea about or does not keep tab. The struggles we face, the little or big issues we have with our many lives are often left out, or we don’t find the need to mention. What has become our shared topic? The stories from the past and the people that we know but no longer in contact with from the past. Every story has been retold so many times, but it will never fail to bring laughter to the table.

And even though we now have many lives that are now unknown to each other, we will still always meet at the intersection, once in a while.

The End of the Holiday

It’s like a toxic relationship; you know going back does no good, but still you’d think it might be better if you had a place to go back to even though the place is dull and everything is stale.

You contemplated whether it’s right to go back. You can predict everything that will happen, and you know it will do you no good, but you go back anyway because you don’t like the feeling of being lost.

To quit out of your own intention is different than to be terminated not out of your own will, but you need to trust the process and trust the motto “everything happens for a reason,” and it’s all for the better.

Take a break, anxious people.

Done and dusted

Quite literally. I left this job in the middle of our office renovation. For the past month or two, me and my coworker are working in a dusty environment because of the renovation work that is happening at the back of our office.

Holiday ahead, knowing that I don’t have a job to go back to it’s also very freeing in some way. (I am weird maybe)

I want to stop, wait and think for a bit before jumping into the next cycle.

I don’t know what is ahead of me and what’s in store for me. I am not expecting a lot but I also don’t want to stress myself too much till a point that triggers another bout of anxiety which will eat up my happiness.

And even though it eventually fell back to the same routine, it’s fine for me too. I have way past the age of “if it’s not something new, I don’t want it thank you”. Mostly because I know that no matter where I will be, as long as I stay true to myself, I will always create a unique path that is suitable for me and the one that I am more than happy to walk on.

But what if, it’s better and different this time?

I truly hope so.

wrapping up

in every sense and every way

My reading increase exponentially this maybe I should thank this to my anxiety. I often turns to words and stories to try to ease my anxious mind. I am happy that I read much more this year but at the same time I am not happy that I myself got bother by a lot of things that I can’t control hence trigger my anxiety. You just can’t have the best of both worlds.

Stand and perform on a stage again after almost a decade. I hope to do so more often next year.

But I am glad that besides this year felt like a blur and it seems like it’s just a lot of things blend together, life is still happening elsewhere regardless.

Happy New Year.

hit me hard and soft

It seems I’ve been in a cloud for most of my adult life, and it reached a tipping point last year. I had been wanting clarity since then. I went to this flea market last year, and there was a fortune-telling stall set up at the event. This was basically the whole point my friend and I set out to go in the first place.

This is how the fortune telling works: they have a whole tear-off calendar for this year and what you need to do is choose a date, write down three things you hope to learn in next year (2025) and they will take the elements and draw on the calendar page that you chose.
For me, I don’t have a particular date in mind, so I ask them to choose for me. 10/10 was what they picked for me. When I ask why, they said 10/10 (ten out of ten) means perfect, which I like it a lot. I had always wanted clarity, towards anything that chained me down or had me confused, as much clarity as possible, it would be even better if it could be transparent, 100% clear and 0% confusion.

I kind of got what I wished for after that prediction was made. Like I mentioned before, I had always wanted clarity, the more the merrier, but what I didn’t realize at that time is that clarity comes with realization and realization usually mixed with pain and heartache. You can’t only want to have all the good and discard the bad; it always comes in a package.

First, I found out and second, I deny. My brain formed this crazy web basically catching and collecting anything that might be related, and I put in some work to either trying to find “evidence” to prove or dismiss. Most of the times it was just echo, no concrete or solid answer will ever appear or present to me. I might just never got one, doing all these crazy works for nothing but just to pass times.

Ten months since then, even though my grip has loosened a little, sometimes when I am at my high point of anxiety and need something to distract me or let me stay afloat in the dark ocean of my mind, I will still wander back to this very issue. It might still be going on or has long fizzled out; I might never know, just as I didn’t know then that clarity brings me pain rather peace to my mind most of the times.

A dystopian feeling

Many days melted into just one single day, literally but not technically. This surreal feeling caught me off guard. I woke up a couple of hours ago, had lunch about two hours ago, dozing off in the office in the afternoon onwards, got out of work on time, stuck in the traffic for about an hour and in my car, hoping tomorrow is the school holidays because in that way I can get home quicker. I do spend time doing meaningful activities (in my sense) every day and every week but part of me can’t help but wonder if there’s something more I can do with the hour that is in between?

Putting things into perspective

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Slipping through my fingers

This is posted on my substack on 28th May 2025

I am currently reading the book My Friends by Fredrik Backman, and I am 41% into the book. It is a book about starts with a painting, childhood, about one not necessarily eventful but unforgettable summer day and friends, but we will dive into that another day (mostly when I finish reading). 

The particular summer afternoon in the book is about when they were all fourteen years old, so as I read this book, I thought about my own fourteen-year-old. 

Where was I when I was fourteen? I was in what the US education system calls eighth grade. I was in the last class (that has less to do with grades though I am not much of a student with good grades). Our class has roughly forty-five students. Most of them were from the class I was in my previous year, and we also have some of the students who are retaking their eighth grade. 

That year was a spectacular year, it was the year when I first taking writing diary seriously (because blog wasn’t a thing back in those days so do the internet). With newcomers and old faces there will bound to be drama, class fight and when you were fourteen, under the influence of the popular Taiwanese romantic drama, interest in dating starts to soar. 

I was placed among the new faces and old classmates. I have this instinct, I don’t know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, I always knew which crowd to run with, and I know when not to rub someone the wrong way. Sometimes I got teased by some of the newcomers, mostly just friendly tease but still, I can’t say it didn’t bother me at all back in the days, but on the flip side, I also know some classmates who we didn’t necessarily get along with actually secretly, actively cover up for me so I don’t become a big target of bullying. Some day there will be books flying across the classroom, and some day it will be chairs that get thrown above my head. Maybe or maybe not, when you were fourteen, you always dreamed of becoming the prettiest, the most popular girl in the class, the one that everybody takes a liking to, the one that knows when to sit still and look pretty. My fourteen years old was mostly surrounded by a group of friends, a group of friends that I was really close with, seven or eight of us, we did everything together every day and not leaving anyone behind. One of my friends in our group ended up dating another boy from the same class and since then, whenever we hang out, there were always a few of us + her boyfriend, which we didn’t mind because he was also our friend. 

Looking back now, it feels like the year went by so fast, but it was such a long year for me at the time. Sometimes I will feel so unsafe I will dread to go to school, but part of me is also feeling excited because every day is an unpredictable day. I wanted that year to pass so quickly, but at the same time, I wanted time to slow down too, not because you will never be fourteen again, but also, you know, you will never be surrounded by that same group of people again. 

At the end of that school year, some of them dropped out because they didn’t passed the grade and the rule in our school was that you couldn’t retake a grade twice, me along with almost everyone in my friend group move up to ninth grade, some of us were still in the same class but most of them don’t anymore, from classmates we sees everyday to become acquaintance that you occasionally passed by and said hello on the hallway. We never got together again like back when we were in the same class. I remember there was one classmate who organized a trip at the end of eighth grade. I remember I wanted to go so badly, I wrote a letter and put it in one of the drawers for my mom to discover when I was off at school, asking her to let me go, but I didn’t end up going. 

I don’t keep in touch with almost all of them now, I don’t keep in touch with a lot of people from my years in school. Those whom I still keep in touch with now have already become my closest friends. I am almost two decades away from those days. I am not even friends with them on Facebook or Instagram because I deactivated the account that I used during my high school days. I have this habit that I will deactivate an old account and register a new one, or switch platforms for blogging from time to time. I heard about some of them sometimes from my friends and the last time I checked some of them have family with kids, some are striving and some are lost to the sea of the internet. Those kings that we worshipped or that one high school crush we had have nothing special to us anymore now. 

Sometimes I wonder where I stand in someone’s memory? “Does anyone have a secret crush on you?” One of my friends asked me a long time ago. “It wouldn’t be a ‘secret crush if I knew’.” I said. 

You will never know who has you on their mind, be it for a temporary one or for as long as this life will go on, for at least once, you were someone’s special. 

Thanks for reading! If you were in the same class as me when you were fourteen or fifteen, just know that I am grateful to you who were once in my life. 

I decided to stop

I just posted a blog post on substack

Substack

After a couple of years of blogging with WordPress, I have decided to give substack a try. I will still come back here to writing something from time to time.

My substack: rinandrin.substack.com