the total perspective vortex

The first real post.

I can still remember the way i felt just before i started law school. I was enchanted and illusioned by the promise of a whole new start in life. I was going to sign up for anything, learn everything, get to know everyone and become a lawyer in the process.

A very dear friend of mine, already thoroughly jaded from 2 years of uni life, did try and warn me to lower my expectations. After all, i'd had the same feelings before jc, and look what happened there. But i suppose, after looking forward to it for more than 2.5 years, i had just invested too much emotionally in the picture perfect image i had created for me to dismiss it.

Well, suffice to say, my friend was right. I don't want to revisit all the things that have happened over the past few months, but i guess i have no choice if i want to move on. I'll leave the sordid details out and just list down the lessons i've learnt for future-me to refer back to.

As usual, my pet peeve has come back to haunt me. It's happened so many times it seems like a bad joke. I really am at a loss to explain why i always seem to put my trust in the wrong people and things. Christ, even my driving instructor is something of a fake, i think he's actually a bookie (or senile). Seriously though, i need something other than wikihow guides to tell me how to pick my friends. (Although i must say the guides have been very useful thus far)

I guess the trouble is i'm always too excited or anxious to get to know and accept people, without taking a step back first and asking myself, are these really the kind of people i like to spend time with? If only i'd taken the trouble to do this in the past, i think most of the hurt feelings and awkwardness could have been avoided.

Which is why i'm putting it down in words here. To remind myself. (Duh) But after this time i really do feel i've changed. I've become much more wary and taciturn, more of an observer than a participant. Before i sign up to help out in activities like law camp or for pro bono, i find myself checking the lists of people who've already joined to make sure i can get along with them.

Is this the way to go? Or am i just dooming myself to social isolation and being the guy who never gets invited to any of the cool parties? (Fortunately in this day and age we have facebook to tell us if we're being left out)

To be honest, i don't know. But i tried the earnest 'let's all sing kumbaya around the campfire' approach and it didn't work. I went to such lengths to ingratiate myself with people that i risked looking like a sidekick. So i guess i don't really have much of a choice. Che Guevara once said, we have to learn to grow hard without ever losing tenderness. Living as a Marxist revolutionary in the jungles of South America, i guess he knew a thing or two about finding the right people to trust.

I know this post sounds awfully childish and asinine but i hope that i'll be able to look back at it one day in the not so distant future and laugh at what a sob story i was back then. And so, i hope 2010 brings better people into my life.