A lot too has happened in my life since I stopped updating the journal regularly, but here are a couple of the highlights. First, I got engaged to Stacy,

and I am to be married later in the year!

Second, I quit my job late last year to try and make it on my own. I was quite brave and sure of myself when I first quit, but after a couple of months of making little progress on my ideas, I’m starting to get a little antsy.

I guess that’s how it is with life. It’s trivially easy to keep things emphatically static. Change, on the other hand, takes serious effort and is as daunting as it is exciting.

Oddly enough, I have a feeling it’s all going to work out just fine.

Recently, This American Life released another wonderful episode—#460: Retraction—after discovering that Mr. Daisey had fabricated many of the details making up the heart of the previous piece. This episode, rife with awkward pauses, attempted to separate fact from fiction as the host and correspondents of the show confronted Mr. Daisey.

Huzzah for journalistic integrity, if that is something you care about. But that’s not how we roll here on actuality.log, where the story is always more important than the facts.

I leave you with a select quote from Mr. Daisey that adequately captures my feelings on the matter:

“I think I was terrified that if I untied these things, that the work that I know is really good and tells a story, that does these really great things for making people care, that it would come apart in a way where it would ruin everything.”

If you’re interested in following further happenings in my life, add me to your circles on Google+. If you aren’t on the network and would like to get in, here’s an invitation.

Happy stalking!

While retreating into a shell often works out (perhaps after some turmoil), there are times when I concede that I just can’t do it alone. I lack the life-experience and a certain width in my world-view to truly grasp and work through the happenings around me. So, on occasion, I do the next obvious thing: turn to the people I’m close to and try talking to them about it. Unfortunately this hurts just as often as it helps.

Therefore, I’ve found myself trying something different these past weeks: turning to popular culture to see current society’s take on affairs. I figured maybe I’ll then realise I’m not so special. Maybe my experiences aren’t actually so out of the norm. Maybe all the ecstasy and turmoil I supposedly go through every day are just regular moments in an average person’s life.

This has led me to voraciously consume a lot of media: the quirky wit of Woody Allen’s movies, the blatant awkwardness of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the pithy realism of Marc Maron’s comedy, the intellectual frankness of Noam Chomsky’s writing. (Why is it that older Jewish guys seem to have a monopoly on neurotic, egocentric cynicism?) And maybe I’m cherry-picking my sources, but their observations seem to suggest that what I’m going through isn’t so abnormal. It is just that life isn’t always easy, and expects some degree of openness to change; not everyone has this. Honesty and intimacy in relationships doesn’t come for free; not everyone is willing to put in the effort. People know that they should pay attention to their heads, but listen only to their hearts at important moments. In short, it is clear that life isn’t perfect.

All I need to realise, I suppose, is that being happy comes when you decide to look beyond the imperfections and appreciate life for what it is.