The First Stupid O'Clock of the Year

Well well well... it's stupid o'clock. Whatever should I do?

Ideally, I should go sleep. But as the season for feeling old rolls about, I cannot help but think about feeling old.

This year is special though. The time duration between regular New Year's, ulang tahunku, and 春节 is probably at its shortest of about a month between the earliest event and the latest event (citation needed). That makes the profound aging effect hit me a little harder than expected.

I'm not in anyway depressed, as far as I know. A little melancholous perhaps, but definitely not to the level where I am actively sulking. I mean, I am already considered a middle-aged man for all purposes and intents---give me another few years and I would soon be in the age demographic of the neither here nor there, the so-called 不惑之年.

Melancholy strikes me because I realise that in many ways, I'm kind of a failure for not accepting/following society's expectations. I was supposed to head on to get a PhD and return as some kind of research hero for SIN city, but at best I was just some weird software engineer who helped build a system that could never reach the full potential of scale and use because of where it was designed and built in---the constant posturing for ``strategic reasons'' was never fully backed by the resources and management oversight needed to truly bring the system up to fulfill its namesake.

Peers of my age group have already gotten married, with some of them having their second or even their third child. Yet here I am, having spent five years in a long term relationship with nothing left to show of it, and my heart numb enough from the experience that the phrase ``我心已打烊'' makes perfect sense, even though I truly haven't committed myself to the single life just yet.



For the confused, that video (assuming it remains up) is the earworm that has been stuck for nearly thirty years that I only managed to find today---《我心已打烊》 by 叶瑷菱. The lyrics, as obtained from MyMusic, is as follows:

我曾有过那么一段
背着阳光横过沙漠
只为了找寻爱神的梦幻
爱神的模样
我曾有过那么一段
踏着星河奔向穹苍
只为了逃避死神的追寻
死神的挑战

岁月带着微笑
又将春天吹干
而我只有茫茫然
无奈的回头望
挥别了梦幻挥别了忧伤
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊
我心已打烊我心已打烊
我心已打烊

It's by no means a comforting piece of music, but it does seem to capture that melancholous feel that I have.

A while ago, I had put away Twinkletoes, my emperor penguin plushie. I was at home, not on-site at the customer's place, and most definitely not under all kinds of unreasonable pressures both implicit and explicit that I needed Twinkletoes for that reassuring hug.

I found myself retrieving him from my wardrobe two days ago, and giving him a tight squeeze for a short while, before carefully putting him back.



Watching the first serious original song from the HololiveEN -Myth- crew also brought out more of those melancholous thoughts due to the heartfelt lyrics that encompassed the hopes of Myth through their ups and downs being the pioneer gamble of a Japanese technology-turned-entertainment company to break out of the typecast and head into the wider world.

I also found myself just thinking about various futures like the way the Myth crew did, but those thoughts never truly got far because of the fog of uncertainty partly due to the management-by-committee approach of handling the pandemic, and partly because the already present ills of society have finally showed up in their true form when the usual fig leaves are blown askew due to the very same pandemic itself.

I turned to my God, and He gave me some comfort. He is close, yet there is still a distance between He and I. I have comfort knowing that my far future is certain with the salvation that came about through Jesus, but my near future is less so. Each day is just a careful movement from one state to another, until I am exhausted and turn in for the night, just to repeat it all again the next day, if God is willing.

And that is why I merely have that melancholous feel, as opposed to an outright depressive episode. I have no expectations on what can/will happen on ulang tuhanku---like the New Year's, it's just another day that needs to be gone through. Is there anything in particular that I am looking forward to?

Sadly, not really---none of the things that used to spark joy are present any more.

Anyway, that's all I have for this instalment of stupid o'clock. Before I finally get some sleep, I'll just leave Jude 17-22 as my parting thought.

Peace.