36+37

36. What’re your goals and plans for the rest of the year? (04/03/2023)

Lose my virginity. Complete my memoir. Get 6 packs. Go to new york. Live in my own room. Be more funny.
Doing a memoir, getting a 6 packs, going to new york, and living in my own room are achievable goals with clear steps. Putting in the time and work is the hard part. Me putting in hours everyday typing out lines and lines of random thoughts about my life and trying to piece them together into what I call a "memoir' is difficult. Me going to the gym and working out consistently with a diet plan is also difficult. Assuming everything goes as planned, you get into a steady rhythm, and doing those things everyday doesn't seem as bad. I don't have to find extra motivation to do them, I just do them because I have been doing them for the past weeks consistently.
Going to new york and living in my own room is not necessarily difficult, but finding the money to purchase them and getting the good deals is the hard part.
Losing my virginity and being more funny is a lot more difficult. There are no clear steps toward achieving them and there is no guarantee I might be successful despite how much time and effort I put into it. Everyone else might tell me its easy because they have done it before. However, I haven't and that makes all the difference. In life, most things are easier the second time you do them, and those two goals aren't the exception.
I just realized that this post sounds very negative. I have a bad habit of only opening up about negative stuff I went through like bullying and my depression. However, I don't really open up about positive things either. Now, I am wondering if I have any positive things to open up about. Actually, some of my favorite hobbies include stargazing, watching the cities light up from an airplane window at night, and being a car passenger on a long car ride through cities and forests. All of them include me just relaxing and having a nice view. No exams or homework to worry about. No parents' lectures to listen to. Just me and the beautiful view for me to admire.
One extra goal for me is to also open up to others about positive events in my life alongside negative ones.

37. In what ways does journaling surprise you, or what unexpected things have come up for you? (04/03/2023)

Journaling is increasing my self-awareness, especially of past events that I overlooked. I often blamed my strict Asian parents for being the root cause of my introvertness and social anxiety but I realized it wasn't the full picture. During one of my journaling sessions, I dove into my past especially into my 7th grade experience. The betrayal and bullying was another root cause for the social paranoia. While I had strict parents at home, I was still outgoing at school until that year. Ever since, I have been trying to recover from it, trying being the key word.
Another thing I realized is I only know how to open up about negative events in my life but not positive ones. So now, I am journaling with the intention of finding stories about myself where I felt genuinely happy. It's not going to be easy, but I will give it a shot.
Journaling has also given me something to talk about. Journaling definitely feels different compared to a diary. In diary, you only talk about things happening on a day-to-day basis. In journaling, you allow yourself to express your thoughts and emotions whether its about what happened today or what happened years ago.
I am terrible at expression but I am a good listener, so journaling helps me compile my thoughts into conversations I can use later. For example, I can journal about playing chess as a kid, and talk about it when I am playing it with someone else later on. I would have preferred to just skip the journaling part and do the speaking directly but my years of social self-isolation has made that almost impossible.