how many times have writers said "writing is my life, it's all i really wanted to do."

i called home today (chinese new year and all), and it wasn't very long. thinking of the various things that i could have said (mom/dad! the girls here suck (hypothetical whining). i have no food. i am hungry. i am failing to understand my math tutorials! i'm going to fail! why does everyone have so much energy? why don't i get good luck? i need more money!) you know... that's what a support system is for right?

but i find myself not letting past more than the occasional grumble, and it's the same, my parents re-assuring me that everything is good, and even in soulful email exchanges where there is the occasional hint of despair everyone puts a brave face on at the end. we're not jumpers, and we greet happiness with a smile instead of jumping up and down. i mean we could, but you'll find me smiling rather than jumping out and down most of the time.

i have learnt to let go a bit more nowadays i guess. maybe it's more due to circumstance but yes i do tend to write things down now and let them go. (although they may recur later on, but at least not in the immediate future). it's amazing because if you look at all my failed attempts at diaries, stories and chronicles, it's all because i wanted to do something with them. "i want this and this to be a record of my life." "i want this to express this." nowadays, with the pressures of time, i just come online from time to time to write, sometimes in bursts, but rarely with pretensions of grandeur, not hardly anymore. i have learnt to compartmentalize a little (with lapses in worser weeks), concentrating on matrices or whatever it is i have to do in my head and when everything is messed up, to come here and clear it up a bit. and then i can go back and it won't get in my way.