Perhaps I've found the answer that I've been seeking for quite a while thus far: the missing piece in the jigsaw puzzle of my life, the missing link in the chain after chain of inexplicably frustrating events that I have been fumbling my way through in life in the past year or so; and it lies in: the heart and the mind.

I guess I have not been putting neither much heart nor thought into most, if not all of what I have been doing lately, even possibly in the past few months, if not for the past year and beyond.

My brain's been languishing a lot, and after slightly over a year and a half in the army, I think the brain atrophy is finally getting to me, after I stopped fighting it all.

I'd thought that things would perhaps be better for me if I stopped thinking so much about things, if I did not contemplate my every action, and the action of every person around me so much--if I just learnt to be more accepting of what others did as just "what-they-do", and if I just "went with the flow", did things as I judged/deemed appropriate/correct at each point in time.

I'd thought--perhaps that would finally lift the pall of gloom and general state of default unhappiness that I've found hanging around me since certain traumatic events of half a decade ago that awoke me to this aspect of my personality/life.

I'd thought, quite incorrectly now I've come to realise, that thinking, leads to unhappiness; because despite not thinking, I'm still not much happier in general, I'm not much more satisfied with life in general, and on the downside, life feels even emptier than ever without all the thinking.

I guess all this realisation has been in the works--first sparked off by my avoidance of a head-on debate with Gerald over ICQ about whether we ought to bother ourselves with matters of our alma mater, about whether it all affected us--somehow I just didn't want to deal with my own emotional attachment to the school, to my times there; I didn't want to rationalise things; I just ran away from it, applying my new implicit principle of leaving things alone.

The problem, hasn't been the thinking--the problem, has been the content of my thoughts--the way I allow things to become compartmentalised, to let singular, isolated issues pull me down, crumble my entire being and tear me to bits. The problem, too, I guess, has been about thinking too much, not knowing when to stop the thinking (once again the underlying themes of moderation and recognition of times to apply this moderation as the important keys to managing life come in, sadly, haha).

Again, I guess the realisation of the problem has been one that hasn't been a sudden bolt out of the blue either--and the solution, is quite apparent too--changing the way I think, letting things spill over, helping myself to find strength and confidence from within.

Seeing the pictures and photographs taken by people on the online photography forums that I hang around so much these days, just reinforced the fact--after looking at picture after picture that did not appeal to me, I suddenly realised why they did not appeal to me--because no thought went into them, and consequently, there was nothing that the picture had to say to me.

Suddenly, it struck me that the problem with me these days is not that I have no energy, but that the very activity that gives me energy--thinking and contemplating about things, has been taken away from me--I have shut myself up, stopped myself from talking, taken away the very voice inside of me by not thinking and so switching off that voice inside of me, even if only inadvertently.

And I guess that's the very reason why I've become sick of photography too--because I've stopped thinking about it, because I've no longer anything to say through it. It's not just about being trigger-happy with the shutter; it's also about running away from yourself, from working hard to try to say something, because of all the times you've failed to say what you've wanted to say.

The point is to work hard at it, stay determined--to work hard at deciding what matters, at thinking through what it is that matters, at entangling the feelings from deep down inside, from deep within, and then articulating these through words, through actions.

That is the way I have to live my life to feel fulfilled, I guess--sorting through and thinking about the feelings to decide what matters, and to then act on those things that matter.

Sounds great. Sure. Words are always easy in coming about; but these words have already taken long enough a time to surface, what about the actions? Haha.

Great.