☘️ juni-personal ☘️

wk_05; reformatting . . .

over the past week, i have reformatted & wiped my lenovo thinkpad t480s a total of 6 times.

  1. windows (to dual boot with nixOS)
  2. custom microwin install (to dual boot with nixOS)
  3. nixOS with encrypted btrfs (by itself).
  4. arch linux with encrypted btrfs (install #1).
  5. arch linux with encrypted btrfs (re-install #2).

and finally (hopefully): 6. back to microwin, to dual boot with encrypted arch linux on btrfs, using omarchy to set up my DE and largely avoid slipping into endless ricing hell)

if this sounds insane, it's because it very much is.

it's because i very much am.

and i think it quite perfectly reflects the state that my mind has been slowly sliding into, during this two week period in between jobs.

somewhat ironically, this nebulous "state" is also encapsulated within several videos that i've been listening to or have stumbled upon during my daily wanderings – but in particular, one unsuspecting "minecraft" video simply titled "you're scared of being ordinary, aren't you?"

Yet at the same time, some part of me whispers: no one will remember this. No one will care. It's like a curse of self awareness. You can't just live. You have to live knowing that you're living, and constantly questioning if it's enough.

Comfort is a blessing. But something about it scares me. It felt like giving up. It felt like the quiet death of wanting to matter. Learning to make peace with being ordinary.

i cannot just "install an OS" and start "using my computer" for the things i actually want to do.

i must instead plan for every possible outcome and prove to myself that i can do it all; full disk encryption, embracing new exciting filesystems & their capabilities, optimising for both testing windows-specific features & esoteric games yet primarily looking to daily drive a linux-based OS that's not "for beginners".

because i am so pathetically, desperately scared of being, seeming "ordinary".

because i already feel like i'm not enough, that others have to make more and more concessions to both tolerate and support me existing in their lives, and that i must somehow repent, or compensate for this perceived burden that i place upon those i love by merely existing.

proving to others, but most importantly (selfishly) myself that i deserve to exist.

by being... well, in this case. being able to chain together abstract, "complex" logic to install several convoluted combinations of... fucking operating systems.

i... hope that i can learn to embrace the latter parts of the video, though. because... those are what i know to be true. from a purely rational and level-headed perspective, and is what i would always, always preach to others.

Yes, I don't want to go gently into a life that feels like it was on autopilot the whole time. But maybe that's the trap, maybe the problem isn't that were "ordinary" or "extraordinary", but maybe it's that we've convinced ourselves that it has to be one or the other, when in reality it's both. We're ordinary in lots of ways, and extraordinary in a few. It's just that we only see the extraordinary parts of other people, because that's what gets shared.

And sometimes the things that really make someone extraordinary and things you can't measure. It's not followers, achievements or money. Sometimes it's just the way someone makes the people around them feel.

Maybe being unforgettable doesn't mean being remembered by millions. Maybe it just means mattering deeply to a handful of people.

i am not the unicorn. i am ordinary in the large majority of ways. but i am extraordinary in a few, and to a select few, and that is okay. no, more than just okay - it's something to cherish. my very ordinariness makes parts of me shine that brighter, for who i am.

~ juni.

Maybe my most significant problem is that, as my brother once said, my soul won’t fit through my mouth. Instead, my spirit seethes in time with the beat of undistilled and uncommunicated feeling. So many people have left my life through a door that won’t open again. So many people have left my life through a door that I myself locked behind them, and I called that independence, I called it victory, instead of giving up. But still I think of her, still I retrieve the thought of ice from my pocket when I need to remember what it is to be clear and perfectly legible, to be honest and forthcoming in that honesty, that is, to be true. To be ice unrobed into liquid and then back into the red.

The Return to: Nostalgia, and Minecraft.

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