I'm not even going to lie---I'm starting to feel very burnt out with respect to the daily writing. It should be evident from the type of writing I have been putting up these days: really short single-paragraph monstrosities, and the deluge of six word stories that I just put up to cover up for this week.
There is, of course, a reason behind it.
Procrastination.
I have meant to write down the abbreviated history of the epynomous City for my NaNoWriMo 2014 piece, ``Tales of the City'', meant to be a part of an entire novel that is entitled the same way. But life got in the way and I never could bring myself to sit down quietly and write it down. Perhaps I will have better luck at it this upcoming week.
I have been examining quite a few life questions over the past week, which unfortunately resulted in my brain overheating and landing me in a semi-delirious state as I try to keep my poor brain in working order for the work-related matters while at the same time allowing myself the capacity to think about the life questions that I had unconsciously chosen to work on this week.
Maybe writing it down here would help push it off my brain and let it have more rest instead of getting all beat up.
The big life question is that of marriage. I was trying to determine my views on marriage and what it meant to me. The overall consensus I got from my thoughts was that I was amenable to the abstract principle governing marriage, that is, the idea of having a spouse who is one's co-pilot on the journey of life to share weal and woe with, a partner-in-crime, a confidante, a friend, a soulmate. However, the implementation of marriage was rather abhorrent to me---the whole ritualistic behaviour prior to marriage (the courtship, stupid excesses in the form of the wedding banquet, all the bullshit involved in the ``trials and tribulations'' that is common in my particular region), the completely imbalanced partnership contract (strong bias towards favouring the woman in any conflict whatsoever thanks to outdated Women's Charter laws that still pretends that there has been no progress in women's rights), and the ritualistic behaviour after marriage from others with respect to progeny (``hey when are you having your first child?''). I'm not even sure if putting up with all that kind of crap is worth the benefits that come from being with one's spouse.
And don't get me started on serial monogamy. It's depressing how people get involved in a marriage with the idea that they would divorce eventually. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't like that kind of marriage. I'd rather stay single if I have to put up with serial monogamy as the alternative.
The second big life question is that of my base of operations. I was trying to determine if I should stay on in the SIN city, or move elsewhere on a permanent basis, or even to live a more itinerant lifestyle, going to where the problems are. I am currently in the first of three options, and I know friends who are in the other two categories. One chose to move elsewhere on a permanent basis because it was clear that given his interests, staying in Singapore would be a complete waste of time. One chose to live itinerantly because he never felt that he had a place that he could sink his roots into and call home, more of a side effect of his upbringing than anything else. I have some roots here, and it is hard to determine if they are worth staying for on what is effectively a ship that is starting on its sinking run should no positive change occur. It's one thing to be a second-class citizen in one's adopted homeland, but it's another thing altogether to feel the same way for one's original homeland, a sentiment that I am finding hard to ignore these days. And I don't mean just the large numbers of foreigners-turned-permanent-residents/citizens---I am also referring to the second/third/fourth generation locals who have been on this same island all these times as well. I feel marginalised even among my own people.
The true trade-off is between familiarity/confidence against sustainability/the unknown. Still no answers here, of course.
And that's all the catharsis I'm looking for, perhaps. I'll try to write up the abbreviated history and push them out piece-wise for this week. Let's hope I can do it.
1 comment:
The whole point of marriage is to signal commitment. If you allow people to have kids or knock each other up then break up without penalty, you end up with lots of abandoned kids and single pregnant women. One could always let natural selection take its course and end up with uberKinder and uberFraulein and/or very monogamous males. But it seems we chose instead to keep Man's fickleness in check with legislation. The rituals, superstitions, celebrations, etc. are probably just ways for society to dress up the embarrassing reasons for this institution so individuals feel better about being part of it.
As for where to stay, you already know that a common approach to sampling a large space is to perform Monte Carlo.
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