Existential Crisis

Get ready, guys, this is going to be a long one.

Let me start off by saying – for about the hundredth time – I apologize for my recent absence. I’m not going to make up an excuse – you’ve heard it all before (although, in case you forgot: school, instruments, sport, reading, etc.) But, but, but… Exciting news: I will be posting a new review on 1 March (this Saturday). But I can’t tell you what for. But be excited anyway.

Back to the problem at hand.

It’s around 10 p.m., and I just got home from a practice for our school’s annual production. As one does when one gets home at 10 p.m., I picked up my Music books, and began to cram frantically for the opera terminology test I have tomorrow, while simultaneously trying to check Twitter, my e-mails, WhatsApp, and occasionally counting the ceiling tiles.

So there I was, casually minding my own business, when – BAM. Existential crisis.

If you have never yet experienced an existential crisis, you must be a unicorn. That’s the only explanation, really. Or else, maybe your time has just not yet arrived. But do not worry, my fair child. It will come soon enough. *cue evil laughter and thunder crashing*

The Urban Dictionary gives the following explanation for an existential crisis:

“A deep, obsessive concern with unanswered questions about the meaning of life and existence, resulting in the disruption of one's daily life and characterized by long or short-lasting bouts of apathy and depression.”

Okay, so this may be the denotation of an existential crisis, but I don’t find it all that accurate. My definition is a little different.

Imagine: You’re sitting quietly, working at your desk and generally just staying out of life’s way, when suddenly your mind freezes. You look up, and the sudden realization comes to you.

You are totally, completely, utterly irrelevant.

Like, imagine that song on your iPod from 2005 that you always skip past but have been too lazy to delete – that’s how irrelevant you are.

You’re as irrelevant as a dead earthworm buried five kilometers underground.

You’re as irrelevant as the apostrophe on a twelve-year-old Tumblr user’s keyboard.

You’re as irrelevant as Will Smith’s other son (look it up - he has three kids: Trey, Willow and Jaden.)

So you sort of just sit there letting your brain freak out about how nothing you’re doing will ever matter in the world, and how society’s pretty much the worst thing that’s ever happened to the human race because how are you supposed to be yourself when there’s always something society expects you to do and why is school even important if you’re just going to end up working at Mac Donald’s anyway and what if Physics is all just a lie we’re being told to keep us from finding out the truth of the universe –

You get the picture.

So eventually you sort of just:

As a teenager living in this beautiful modern world with so many wonderful distractions and attractions, I am not afraid to admit that I have been through this very procedure at least three times. This month. I am in no way proud to admit that at one point I must’ve stayed on the floor for about forty-five whole minutes just letting my brain freak out about the future, and how I was so irrelevant in The Big Scheme of Things, until I eventually had to pull myself up in search of a Hershey’s Cookies and Crème bar. (Let’s face it, at times like these, only chocolate can ease your pain.)

I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to give an inspirational message about life, right?

Umm…

Well, firstly, don’t do this:

You’ll get dirt on your face and you’ll smell like floor, so that won’t help you make a good impression on people.

Secondly, worrying about the future – among other things – is just about the most useless thing you could ever do. Ever. Ever. Think about it – what use is it going to have to worry about something you’re not even sure will ever happen? Life isn’t supposed to be that hard – just take it one bit at a time and don’t expect too much from yourself. We’re all only human. Nobody seriously expects you to do fifteen subjects at school, and pass every single one of them with 100%, and then go on to become the greatest physicist the world has ever known. And if they do expect that from you, it's not worth listening to their opinion any more, because they're obviously delusional and need to be checked into an asylum.

Lastly, and most importantly, always make sure you have something in your house that will be able to get you up off the floor and back to normal again. Well, I say “normal”, but I mean in a state of… not lying on the floor. If that makes any sense whatsoever. And you can interpret that to mean something really deep, like there’s always a silver lining or that mush we’ve all heard before, but in reality I just mean that you’re not seriously going to get off that floor unless you know there’s a tub of ice cream as big as your head downstairs.

I wish you well with your future existential crises.

P.S. Pictures are taken from danisnotonfire’s YouTube video on his own Existential Crisis, which actually relates a lot to what I was saying… Watch it here.

Everything that's wrong with the world

I’m sitting in bed on a Tuesday morning (as one does when one is home sick with kidney issues) and basically just telling myself off because of the lack of reading and blogging that I’ve been doing recently. Naturally, when one is home sick, one usually spends an unhealthy amount of time on the internet, watching TV, eating, and generally just not doing anything vaguely useful or helpful in terms of “planning for the future” and “being productive.”

It was when I was doing such things that I started trying – and failing – to brainstorm creative and mind-blowing blog ideas in an attempt to procrastinate for just a little longer. A little idea was sparked that I should write about everything that’s wrong with this world, but to be honest I really wasn’t inspired, so I decided to waste even more of my time on YouTube.

Ironically, the link that I just so happened to click on turned out to be Justin Bieber’s music video for Confident… Let’s just say I was inspired to rant. A lot.

So without further ado, a list of things that I think are wrong with the world:

#1.  People who bend the spines of books.

#2. People who don’t like Disney movies.

#3. People who kick puppies.

#4. People in general.

#5. Love triangles.

#6. Supernatural love triangles. 

#7. The sound electric keyboards make when you have your headphones plugged in and there's no sound coming out of the speakers so all other people hear is "click clAng clang clang click click clonk clinkclinkclinkclink clANG.".

#8. Having to go to school in winter and wear a skirt.

#9. Having to go to school in summer and wear a skirt.

#10. Having to play tennis at 6 a.m. on a Monday, wearing a skort. (Skort + 6 a.m. + physical exercise = epitome of Satan.)

#11. Having to go to school.

#12. Having to wear a skirt. Just because I am a girl.

#13. Skorts. (For those of you who don’t know, a skort is the love child of skirts and shorts, for all your feminine sporting needs.)

#14. Physics homework.

#15. Maths homework.

#16. Music homework.

#17. History homework.

#18. Homework.

#19. Those earrings that stretch the piercing in your ear so you could practically fit your finger through it.

#20. Justin Bieber.

#21. Books that get turned into movies starring Kristen Stewart.

#22. Locked Wi-Fi networks.

#23. That thing Kindle for iPad does when it logs you out and you have to re-download all your books from the cloud.

#24. Pens that have ink but refuse to write.

#25. Erasers that smudge all of your work.

#26. People that scratch my CDs and DVDs.

#27. People that borrow my CDs and DVDs and then don’t put them back in the box (resulting in scratched CDs and DVDs – double sin).

#28. Sporks.

#29. Broken lever arch files that have all your Music notes in – meaning you have to CUT OPEN THE FILE OH NO OOPS YOU BROKE YOUR NOTES AS WELL LET’S JUST RIP DOWN ANOTHER FOREST SO I CAN PASS MUSIC YAY. (Sorry.)

#30. People who mistake bass guitars for regular electric guitars.

#31. Guitarists who want to play your bass guitar, and end up abusing your bass guitar because JUST BECAUSE YOU PLAY GUITAR DOESN’T AUTOMATICALLY MAKE YOU A BASSIST. OKAY? OKAY.

(Side note: Yes so maybe those two were inspired by true events at an orchestra festival this weekend, and maybe I am still seething… I’m sorry for the Caps Lock abuse.)

#32. People who say, “Ohmigod I love that band!!11!” but when you ask them what their favourite song is, they don’t even know one song by that same very band whom they “love!!1!”… *mega facepalm*

#33. Society.

#34. Valentine’s Day.

#35. People who think John Lennon led the Bolsheviks in the Russian revolution.

#36. People who think Charles Dickens came up with the theory of evolution.

#37. People who mix up “your” and “you’re.” (Quick recap: “You're failing at life because your grammar is terrible.”)

#38. People who mix up “their,” “there” and “they’re.” (Once again: “They’re over there because they’re worried your stupidity will negatively impact their sanity.”)

#39. The idea that reading books automatically makes you a nerd.

#40. Lizards.

#41. Rain spiders.

#42. Chocolate chip cookies that are secretly raisin cookies in disguise.

#43. Money.

#44. The fact that Call of Duty Ghosts is not available for PS2… (So what if I want to play COD on my pink PS2? So I actually have to buy a whole new PlayStation just to play a stupid game? Is my pink PS2 not cool enough for COD any more? Fine I’ll just sit here with my Call of Duty 3 and my non-wireless remotes and shut up because I don’t have a PS4 *cries silently into remote*)

#45. Flappy Bird (THAT game… That game is EVERYTHING wrong with the world.)

Ok I’m going to stop there because I’m getting the feeling maybe people will think me a little cynical after about ten pages of ranting about Valentine’s Day, society and grammar… Don’t judge me. I am in an extremely cynical mood. I promise I’m not always like this.

Also, I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that is not wrong with the world at this current moment is 5 Seconds of Summer’s new single ‘She Looks So Perfect.’ Unfortunately, because the band is SO INCREDIBLY disorganized, you can only listen to it on YouTube for the time being (click here to watch the lyric video), but you can preorder the singe here and their EP here. And note that I am not to be held responsible for ruining your life, because it’s such an amazing song that I couldn’t listen to anything else (even All Time Low or Green Day or any of  my other mild obsessions) for about three days after hearing it. I love it.

Feel free to comment on whatever you think is wrong with the world… We can be cynical together! And subscribe to get notified every time I post a new blog or review (which will hopefully be more often than my recent posts… I’m sorry. Again.)