Yesterday I went to sleep at 3 am after saying I was going to have an early night. I was only able to sleep at 4 am.

Tossing and turning but the sleep never came, I tried it all. Counting, switching pillows, changing orientation, no matter what I tried I just couldn't bring myself to sleep. Until I did. I slept 7 hours and woke up at 11, but it felt like I slept 5. The whole day I had a headache, only alleviated by going outside for a quaint sunset stroll.

It was a slow start to the day. After making my morning coffee, I sat on my bed just reading John William's Stoner and I made some good progress. I don't know if I mentioned this before, but I created a new habit for myself which is the act of not instantly turning my computer on as soon as I wake up. I allow myself to either, write in my journal, or read a book, just to slow things down and indulge in something disconnected from technology. Now if only I can stop going on my phone in the toilet...

Today I watched a movie, 'At Eternity's Gate' directed by Julian Schnabel featuring Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh and I just thought that it was funny that I've seen Willem Dafoe's face being covered in dirt in two movies now, The Lighthouse and now this one. It was a good movie by the way.

Decided to draw him, since graduating, I've probably been drawing like every single day, incredible how much you can improve when you've got nothing but time, I've drawn in my sketchbook probably 6 days a week, even if its only small things it all adds up. When you start seeing in shapes it feels like the world opens up.

However, because I've been so obsessed with drawing it feels like writing has taken a back seat. I don't want it to.

I need a schedule, long are the times since my days were scheduled. Honestly, even university wasn't all that scheduled. The early mornings were somewhat similar but by the end of uni I gave up and slept through them.

Isn't it incredible that we used to wake up at like 6-7 am and be at school by 7:45-8 am?? I did that everyday for like a whole decade and now I can't bring myself to wake up before 9 am if I'm lucky.

I've begun to grow complacent with disorganisation. I need structure.

I feel like I've said this before. Am I repeating myself?

Today I went to the Yoshitomo Nara exhibition and I'd say I had a pretty good time for my first ever art gallery/exhibition experience.

While I was there I was kinda lost and was just walking around not really knowing where to start, but just trying to take everything in. It felt awkward taking pictures, but now I regret not taking more. As it was my first art gallery in earnest (outside of school trips more than a decade ago), I tried to really interface with the art in front of me and try to take everything in.

While I was there I honestly struggled to conjure up anything really profound, I could sense a deeper complexity to paintings and installations but I couldn't derive any deeper understanding from within myself.

Walking through the gallery, I walked past some pieces he made using cardboard and stopped myself from thinking "Damn, they just put up anything" and tried to think about why it exists here, and what purpose does it serve.

Then I realised that maybe this isn't just a display of what is considered his best work, but all his life put out to bare. Next to the entrance was a wall of his record collection, the art that inspired him, right in front of the door, a house, small, cozy, and rustic, cluttered and lived in, one that represented something. What exactly? I didn't know, but it had felt to me something that was probably intimate to him. Drawings and sketches in pencil or in pen, shared the same wall as large canvases, made beautiful by layers of paint and I thought, "Ah. So this is how it is".

Or maybe I'm wrong. I don't know.

When I came across the 'STOP THE BOMBS' and 'NO WAR' pieces, I couldn't help but lightly scoff in my mind thinking it must surely be satire?

Perhaps years of being on the internet has made me jaded to performative centrist pacifism, but maybe to a wider audience simple gestures like saying war is bad may truly be profound. Or maybe it just isn't that serious, it was only two pieces of a few dozen.

Holy shit, I think I've become pretentious.

I did get a coaster and a postcard set which is really cool. The postcards are of Yoshitomo Nara's works and of exhibition pieces and looking at them I now truly understand why going in person to see works of art are so important.

The postcards, as cool as they are, don't do the paintings enough justice, I mean you look at it in person, the colour of the eyes, the softness of the strokes, I mean I get it now, I get it.

On my way home I went to a stationary store and got a Pilot Iroshizuku ink after I realised I don't have any blue inks. When you get into fountain pens, its only a matter of time you also get into inks.

A very expensive hobby for an un*mployed soon-to-be graduate.

Originally my plan was to get a retail or a service j*b after my graduation ceremony to primarily fund my trip to Viet Nam and potentially a masters degree. Now I might need to start checking indeed earlier than I thought...

Summer heat in London sticks to your skin like a miasma of sweat and dirt. There's no aircon anywhere either so you can't escape it.

I woke up this morning with tears in my eyes and a head of hair damp with sweat.

For some reason I had a dream that my dad died. I don't remember my dreams often, probably about 1 dream every 3 months I remember when I wake up. This heat is really bringing out something odd, and apparently its going to get even hotter.

Good news though, my father did not die.

I've been playing Death Stranding a lot recently and I struggled in the beginning but after I escaped the first map, the game has really come alive, building roads, using other people's structures, its a really fun game even if the story is out there. We need more freaks like Kojima in gaming.

I watched as the time limit for this trainee/internship application went by. I stared at the clock as the digital numbers changed in the corner of the screen, unable to earnestly answer in 500 words or less why I want this j*b when in truth, I don't.

Immediately after, I lamented the missed opportunity and a flash of scenarios unrolled in my mind, of what was to be and what ultimately wasn't.

This was unfruitful.

Speaking of fruits I ate frozen durian and sugar apple today, YUM!!!

The mosquitos are out and they are dancing, fat with blood, under the blistering summer's sun.

I had told myself in the midst of dissertation hell that as soon as all my exams are done, all my university obligations are over, I'd start fresh, first by cleaning my room thoroughly. Clearing out the old, rearranging the new.

Throwing away old worksheets and papers from university and I can't believe it. My heart started aching a bit. For as much as university caused me pain, and for as miserable as it made me, it was still 3 years of my life and where I met most of my friends.

I sat there for a second in a bittersweet remembrance and then I threw it straight in the trash.

Something new I've been doing recently is looking up "shit to do near me" on google.

As such I am now going to see a Yoshitomo Nara exhibition next week.

I know nothing about him or his artwork other than seeing it on the internet and thinking “Oh it's pretty cute”, other than that, nothing. In the spirit of spontaneity however, I am going to learn about him for the price of £17 (with a full-time student concession).

I am steadily chipping away at the paltry sum I have remaining from my government mandated student maintenance loan. I may just have to job search sooner than I expected.

I just came back from a live art drawing session and it was pretty fun, the first thing like this I've ever done and I'm excited to do more.

There is a world in which I am free, I know it. I just have to reach out and take it for myself.

Finally got myself to go to the used bookstore I had been meaning to go to for months since I saw it probably last year, and damn... I ended up getting essentially nothing.

I underestimated the strength of today's sun, and was sweating the whole time I was in the bookshop, I probably should've taken my jacket off, but it was a pretty small store and the space was cramped enough as it is and I didn't want the pens in my pocket flying around when I take it off, and so I suffered in silence.

I felt it a waste to just go home with having been in the store for 30 to 40 minutes doing nothing but looking at the rows and rows of used books and choosing nothing so I hastily settled for books I picked on a whim in 3 or so minutes and ended up regretting my purchases almost immediately. At least they're incredibly cheap.

I should probably start going to a library. I'm steadily amassing a collection of books that I don't really want to have.

Whenever I go out and meet people from the smallest situation like a nod on the street to social events I always end up doing what is essentially a post-match analysis of how I behaved to try and see where I went wrong or where I went well. Will you believe me if I say that I'm not nearly as neurotic as you might think? Or maybe I'm projecting what I think you're thinking?

Anyways, things I need to improve:

Better timing of saying hello, adding a "how's it going?" or a "how's your day been?" to my initial greeting and not being attentive enough and engaging in minor conversation. I never quite know how to enter a store I've never been into before, but I saw a woman who entered the store and asked what exactly this store was and I was in awe. You mean you haven't done research looking at the google reviews and mapped out the optimal ways to get there days in advance? I've got to add that to my repertoire, that's new tech to me, a type of spontaneity I need to indulge in in my life. Random woman who likes her coffee with milk, I salute you for you have shown me the path.

Things I did good:

Smile.

For the longest time I used to purposefully have a scowl on my face or a tinge of annoyance visible regardless of my actual mood because, genuinely, I had felt that being unapproachable was the only way to survive in a school ecosystem that relentlessly mocked the outgroup. I was never in the ingroup, but if I could avoid being in the outgroup, I survived. I made having a quiet presence a skill, whenever people would say "I didn't even know you were here, or I didn't even know you talked", I took pride in that.

Now, I am in the process of 'Unlearning the Scowl', and being a sociable person.

Those were dark times in my life. Not just for who I was, but for everything. Alas, it is in the past and here I am. For a while I tried to block out most of this stuff from my memory to a pretty successful degree that I almost never thought of or looked back at this time, but now in my own introspection of my life in the hopes to attain happiness with myself I realise I can no longer run from this period in my life and try to understand it.

I have nothing to say recently, because nothing's been going on.

I really need to send that email to start volunteering at that park. Initially I only applied at the start of the year because I thought it would do me well for my resume/ C.V., but now I'm thinking I just need something to get me going out and about. I don't know what to do to turn going out into a habit, every time I go outside I have a good time, even if its just a walk, but I never am able to muster up the will to do so, lazing around is just so much easier.

I'd go out with my friends if I could, but my friend group has naturally drifted apart and the two that I'm closer with, one's is in another country and the other, I just can't think of anything I'd want to do.

It seems odd, but I struggle being friends with people individually. I thrive in a friend group, a group chat, but I never find myself reaching out to individuals and keeping up conversations in DMs. It's weird because some of the best conversations I've had are the one-on-ones with these friends, on the way home on the train, talking about the future and our struggles, or by ourselves at night laughing over stories.

It probably is just as simple as saying, "hey wanna do something?" and I'd probably get a positive response, but the question is, what do I even want to do??

Sometimes I wonder if being someone who thinks all the time is a bad thing. Well, maybe not a bad thing, but I think I would be a happier person if I didn't think all the time, if I just let things happen. Spontaneity only exists to me for making bad decisions, and poor financial purchases, I wish I could just do things and not think about them.

You would not believe the day I had today.

For about 80% of the day I spent it doing nothing, I went to bed at 4 am last night so the whole day I was barely half awake just going through the motion when at around 7 pm my mother asks if I want to go to the local Vietnamese grocery store with her. Initially I said no, but feeling like I hadn't done much that day, I agreed to go.

The last thing I expected to happen is that I would have to administer CPR on the owner of the store after she collapsed at the front door and stopped breathing. I'd rather not get into details, but I'd like to say, for the first time ever doing CPR, I think I did an okay job, it truly is all thanks to the emergency ambulance dispatcher who guided me through it, but damn what a surreal thing to happen on such an unsuspecting day.

What an odd world we live in, I don't think this is the excitement I was quite meaning when I said I want a more exciting summer.

If you're wondering, she's fine. Or at least as fine as one could be from an event like this, matter fact when she refused to leave to the ambulance until she could lock up shop and that meant scanning all the remaining customers goods.

What an awkward conversation I had trying to make small talk with the EMT while the lady was calculating how much my mother's groceries cost.

I don't think I'll truly process this for a while so apologies for the light tone, on other news I finally completed the first volume of my journal.

I started journaling on October 2023, around the same time I started up this website. Both this website and my desire to journal came from a yearning in my heart to be creative. The reason it took me nearly two years to finish my first journal is because I was on and off for many times where studies got in the way, or I just plain forgot or didn't want to. This year, however I really picked up steam and have been regularly journaling except for the dark period of dissertation times and now I have finally completed it.

Time to start volume 2.