Digging the truest grave inside

Many bits inside of me have died since 2007, but they were all things that don't change me as a person. Beaten and battered as my innards are, metaphorically – and to some extent, literally – speaking, I remain as Ian Chee. But recent events and the revelations that come with them had made me realize that circumstances will change me into someone that is only Ian Chee in name.

As a contributing member of society once again, my daily routine is: wake up, go to work, come back from work, and spend the last three hours of the day on my own activities, one of which is used for cleaning myself up after a long day and having dinner while the remaining two will almost always be on playing video games. Which is Warframe, as of recently, since I can’t be bothered to be fighting for the TV on a weekday evening.

Then at some point I met up with a few engineering student-friends to find out that they were in the multi-level marketing business. This hit a nerve in a way that, because they spent more time – and more money – on their piece of paper, they are entitled to a higher salary and, in my mind, less work for that as well. Turns out I was half wrong. Yes, they do get paid better, but they work their usual 9 to 6 and then have time for themselves. The only difference is that they will sacrifice their hobbies – assuming they had any to begin with – and invest that time into this MLM business.

Or maybe they didn’t have any hobbies to begin with, and saw this as a way to fill up their extra time in the day and make extra cash in the side. I choose to not do the same. Because I my motivation lies elsewhere, but also because I have more things that I wish to do than I have time to do them. I won’t consider them hobbies – even if they are by linguistic standards – because they are what define who I am. As a person fixated on personal identity, this is something that does not change in the same way that the fact that I must breathe, drink, eat and sleep to survive does not change.

Most of what time remains as my own in the day, I spend on playing video games, as I have mentioned. But there are other things that I wish to do that I don’t want confined to the weekends. Things like my harmonica – especially when a song that I want to play is not the C or E♭ major scales that I’m used to – and my dream of publishing a novel which I refuse to give up; both of which is currently held back because of my obsession with video games. The alternative, of course, is regressing into a ‘filthy casual’, as netizens call it; picking up games to finish and drop once that is achieved, instead of juicing its money’s worth out of it, which is expensive. Unless I resort to the obvious solution that is piracy which, isn’t cool because no multiplayer, among other things.

As I ponder upon this quandary of mine, I realize that circumstances can change one’s personality, and more often than not, for the worse. I am reminded of the words of two writers whose works I used to read, and still do when I can find the time. Jeremy Clarkson and Raja Petra Kamarudin wrote that having a different perspective from before is not hypocrisy, but growing up. As true as this is – as growing up means being less of an idiot, and being wiser does give you a different perspective of things – I am very inclined to disagree, for reasons that I am unable to explain with words. Even now that it has happened to me, I still feel like gutting myself than admit the truth in their words.

I mentioned that my motivation lies elsewhere, and that is making my dream of being a published – and best-selling, if possible – author a reality. It’s not something that gets me up in the morning, but it’s something that does keep me from going completely mad. Then I hear said friends saying this side income that they’re earning is what actually gets them motivated enough to start the day. I then wonder if I’m too short sighted to realize the bleakness of the future, or that I simply envy their optimism towards this MLM stuff, which has drawn its fair share of flak, and not without good reason.

Perhaps it would make sense if I mentioned at this point that while I do take some pride in my realist stance, I do wonder where I stand on the continuum of the two extremes. I pity those who view the world pessimistically, and while I do envy those who are optimistic about it, optimism itself disgusts me. This is probably something to do with me envying the bliss brought upon by ignorance, but being disgusted by ignorance itself. Of course it is always the success stories that we hear when we want to convince others of our cause, but perhaps what optimists often conveniently forget, is that for every success story like Robert Kiyosaki or Donald Trump, there are thousands, if not millions of untold blunders and failures.

And on that reality checking bombshell, adieu to y'all.