Consistency and Focused Expertise

No matter how many times I hear that 'consistency is key!', it is just so~ challenging to practice it in real life. I've always known that writing is one of the only ways to document the random, little tidbits of our life — which are most prone to be forgotten — well, writing, taking pictures and posting them on instagram, making video diaries, etc, etc. But still... no video or photo with short captions can adequately capture our consciousness and thoughts at the moment the way a writing can.

And yet, despite knowing and believing that, I have struggled to write consistently throughout the 26 years that I've been living on Earth. Obviously the early years could be excluded since baby Tiara had not known how to write, speak or understand people's language yet, but the point I'm trying to make is that I've been looking at several blog posts these days.. and found mine woefully lacking.

....which is embarrassing coming from a girl who used to write 200,000 words each week just to entertain a very niché audience (ahem... that one hit DP fanfic... ahem) and who used to have a dream to become a professional writer back in the Harry Potter days.

I still have the writer dream, though, just not for writing fictions. I want to write something technical and educational so that people could learn something out of it. I want to publish more SCOPUS-indexed papers! 

Hey, maybe I'll do a section on this blog specifically focused on reviewing SCOPUS journals from various disciplines.

I'm starting to realize that one of my biggest regrets is not documenting enough of my past — apparently those memories do fade with time :(

However embarrassing or not-fit-for-instagram my past has been, they're still mine. They're still filled with love from my family, my friends, with laughters, with so precious, beautiful time spent and shared together. I didn't realize it at the time when it was the last day of high school, or like when it was the last day of university, that those times were something I would never get back.

So I'm scrambling nowadays to find every bit and piece that I could recover, every single memory that illustrated who I was back then. Oh wow, I was so different back then. I've grown up so much!

It's amazing to see how God's hand has directed (and is still directing) this amazing journey we collectively call life.

So here I am, trying to be more consistent in writing and journaling. Cause I don't know where else to go. I've tried medium.com back in 2020 since all the tech hype was there, but I could only manage to document one entry — which is great! Yay 2020 me :p but could be much better~

I've tried doing this on VSCode and GitHub too (lol, weird choice, huh?); my justification at the time was that I could try practicing pulling, making a branch, committing, and pushing stuff using git — and at the same time populate my GitHub activity page superficially (please, this is a bad bad behaviour 😅) — but in the end I could only be inspired to do two entries. Those 2 entries have been reposted here too! The exercise might be good for me but whenever my VSCode crashed or I forgot to commit and push (as a way to 'save' the working document), I would loose all of my progress and that's... pretty discouraging 😭. And all of these complications ended up discouraging to my flagging consistency to write back then.

Inspiration and consistency. I realized that these two belong to opposite ends. Consistency does not and cannot wait for inspiration, and while inspiration might be at the beginning of a consistent habit, it is rarely the cause or the common factor of being consistent. 

I've done blogger and blogspot before, back when I was so enthusiastic about being a writer — and that did give me some measure of consistency. You can see my entries on my previous two blogs (there's a third blog too but it was managed together by an ex. That could be kinda... awkward 😶 But it is still nice to revisit to remember time bygones). Those two blogs, however, are so drastically different than what a personal blog would look like. The first is meant for public consumption — now when I read it, it feels like I was trying to hard to be accepted into popular journalism back then, I ended up writing stuff that are far from personal. Everything feels edited and optimized, unlike this blog which is free writing ha! Conversely, the second one is too personal. It's about my struggle with eating disorders... I should one day go back and give a proper finish for that blog.

See, the thing is... I'm not very good at staying in the present moment. My mind loves to wander about the future. Back before, my way of thinking was sort of like... life begins when I have lost weight.... or when I have finished my bachelor study.... or when I have moved away from my hometown, etc etc. 

Now that I (very thankfully) reached a point where some of my prayers have been answered —sometimes I wonder what 16 year-old me would have thought of 26 year-old me —I'm realizing that by not enjoying the present moment, I've lost so many moments already.

It's time to rectify that, isn't it?

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You know it's funny. I've been writing this post since Friday last week, then it's Friday night full of quality time with boyfriend, and a weekend full of activities from morning until very late evening. That includes eating (I really, really need to get back into IF relatively soon for next month's graduation photoshoot), staying at my boyfriend's apartment (ssh!), working out at the gym, ballet class, church, and even studying >.< —or more like, I study and try to write a research article while he watches me 😶 sometimes it's funny how my profession is somehow more study- and time-demanding than his >.<), so long story short... I ended up postponing this update until today on Monday. Of course, I couldn't type this blog while with him since there's so much private stuff that I've written here.

Remember how once in high school, my very private diary got out and it was hunted by everyone in class? 😭 Remember when Agnov once got the diary and ran to the boy's bathroom then I had to kick and break the door to chase him? Remember when Monic apparently got an excerpt and she eventually apologized —years later — for infringing my privacy?

Yeah, don't want that to happen again =_=

I've set a goal for myself to finish at least 2 blog posts and 1 research article per week and look at us now 😂 What I thought was easy turned out to be quite hard to fulfill.

So I'm now finishing this entry somewhat halfway-done, really apologize for that. This is getting too long already anyway >.< That's been one of my writing weaknesses honestly, and hopefully in time, my writing and structure organization will get better :')