Old Sepia Pages

5. persistence

16th july, tuesday, 2019

dear diary,

I'm awkward and possessive about my work.

I don't know why, but I don't allow my parents to listen to my covers at all, and if they really have to, not in front of me at least. I don't want them to talk about it or offer compliments or criticism or anything. I want them to sort of...ignore it all. To pretend as if my talent doesn't exist. I don't know if that makes any sense. I can't even open up enough to watch serious movies with my parents.

I'm like this not only with my parents, but also my friends, to some extent. I don't talk about my work much. Deep down I know that I have to put myself out there if I want to be famous and known, but I just can't do it without feeling like a show-off.

See, writing a novel is not that big a deal. So many people write books, but are they successful? All are not. So what is there to boast about? So many people post music on YouTube. Do they get famous? No. So why boast about that? I can't talk about these because if I fail, people, especially my family, would taunt me forever. If I boldly say I want to pursue music and literature, putting my academics at stake, and if I don't succeed, it will be taken away from me. They will say, see, you are not even capable of doing what you love. You are not capable of making your own decisions, so from now, we will decide everything for you. I keep feeling like I have to prove my worth.

This is the logical explanation behind my shyness. Coming to the emotional one:

I have always thought that I will not let my parents read the novel even when it's published. It just has too much of me in it and I'm not willing to expose myself to anyone that much. No, I haven't been hurt, no cliché like that, I just am not comfortable.

You know that quote from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, "We accept the love we think we deserve"? I think I, too, accept the praise I think I deserve. If I feel that something I produce is not good enough, I can't tolerate anyone praising me. I remember when I picked up singing again 4 years ago. I was terrible, so I used to practice with a blanket covering me so that no one could hear me.

And even if I'm good enough, for some reason I can't pinpoint, I get awkward when people from my family read my work, especially in front of me. I want to run away.

Maybe it's because they don't really understand what goes on in my brain, and I don't think such people have any right to criticize me. They have never appreciated any of my work anyway. They have always been like, "That's fine, but go study now." Or they use these things to punish me when I'm not studying: sometimes they take away the notebooks I write in, sometimes they take away the adapter of my keyboard. And they never support my writing or think highly of it anyway, so why should they know anything about it? I mean, they know that I write online, right? So why can they not let me be when I'm spending time on the laptop? Why do they always question what I'm doing whenever they catch me using gadgets? They're like, "How much time do you need to spend on that phone/laptop? What are you doing anyway?" And then they give me this bullshit that I'm not committed to anything I do in life!

I admit that's true to some extent. But it's not my fault that I lose interest quickly. And anyway, my philosophy is that I should try everything before I decide what's right for me. Now it's obvious that I can't do everything. So, when I feel like something isn't for me, I quit. And I don't see any harm in that.

Dad doesn't see it this way. He believes that I quit when the thing gets tough and because I'm not hard-working. Whenever I say that I want to learn something new, dad's response is 'no' because he believes that I will one day give up on it anyway, so what's the point? THAT'S THE PROBLEM. He's destination-oriented, while I'm journey-oriented. There is a point. I'm learning something and growing, don't you get it? Why not allow me to benefit from my impulsive, sporadic, transient desires to learn something?

Oh, and that's not it. I've been focusing on singing for around 4 years now. But when I wanted to take an expensive music class, he didn't allow me. How dare he say that I'm not persistent when he's the one standing in the way?

I have a solution.

I know I'm impulsive. I know I can't wait to learn something if I've made up my mind to learn it, because after a period, I get interested in something else, and then there's no point in learning it because I don't want to, and hence I will not be able to. So from now, I won't wait. If there's a piano song that I really wanna learn, I'll learn that immediately and not write it in a to-do list and create problems for myself. No more procrastination.

Let's see if this works.

❄️