Cases are rising in Australia—vigilance is slowly falling back in the household. The vigilance never left, but is it reverting to one that I think most here simply do not understand. Like when I tell people my mom used to make me do leg stretches to grow taller. What?

In all honesty, I would feel confident to say that everything I am doing is wrong. Is this when happens you are privileged and depressed? This existential complex, this desire to fail, this stubbornness to suffer so that people can see you suffer? Again, as I am reminded from Fleabag, it might just be my personality.

Now that I’ve forsaken most social media, creative endeavours, and most importantly, an invitation for an audience, I’ve realized I am miserable. Yet, going back to all those matters, I am unsure of the purpose as well. The one person that’s ever cared for my art as a whole has departed. The two other people, my parents, care for them on the condition that I keep it a hobby. It is hard for me to get over that right now, despite of how silly my grudge is. I don’t want any WeChat praising right now, it feels like a form of exploitation. You deserve someone better; I feel as I have lost all my dignity; two more drawings please, here I’ve picked them for you.

Reading Alice Munro these days is extremely thankless. I never realized how… harsh, the stories, the characters are. I keep on thinking however, these characters actually don’t have it the worse. For example, they get their stories told, at least.

I don’t think Munro’s story would fare very well with the woke TikTok generation. For example, Munro never treats whiteness as something ironic. Well, she needn’t to nor does she have the opportunity, because it is a given in the stories. I’m not sure how long it’ll take me to unlearn my liberal-woke tendencies. I can’t help but think that way. Still, it’s a good trait to have. A question of survival.

I wanted to say survival is also a reason I left social media. I pity that I’m not on it anymore, but I also pitied myself plenty when I was on it. It is hard to feel like you’re the only in the city that can’t lead a normal social life. Suppose it’s something I can feel reasonably proud about too. This attempt to fix my self-absorption, this desire to decrease unnecessary cynicism. My means do mean well, in my mind of minds.

I have been and am wrong in so many ways. I sit on this chair, I type these words, and I wonder when I won’t have to cry so much about these things anymore.