and the year ends in blue

The year starts in green, as it is the color of hope.

I was hoping for a fresh start, and I did have one. The year began with a change. Everything felt so foreign, yet deep down I knew it was all I was longing for. I needed the change. The pretty little anxious part of my mind was screaming—what if this wasn't the right choice? But the excitement was way stronger than the doubt, so I decided to dive head first and sink myself in this new routine.

2018 is the year of fixing and repairing. I had to get myself together, and I knew exactly that with change came adaptation, and with adaptation came healing. I needed to set myself straight, and at that moment, I knew that this change would be the best way to kick off the journey.

I got myself a wonderful job. No, I was actually getting myself a career. It wasn't much but it was all I needed—more than enough to be the first step to fix the dysfunctional part of me who was supposed to be an active contributor to the society, not a burden for the taxpayers.

Okay, it wasn't that dramatic but you get the point. But, if there's one thing you need to understand about the world is that it doesn't always work in your favor.

Flowers bloom. Flowers wither. With every summer comes a winter.

(God, I love this line. Good job, me.)

Just when I thought that I had my life back on track, it left. I was pointing fingers at the sky, thinking, "Hell, no. I just got back my dignity! You can't just take that away from me." But, you see, there is no point of yelling and cursing since these would only drain your already-scarce energy. So instead, I let myself skip the second, third, and fourth stages of grief—I just went straight from denial to acceptance.

I mean, really, ain't nobody got time for grief. I got back up as fast as I slipped, and it was too easy. You should try falling on your butt while skating. That honestly hurts a lot more. But only then I realized that, man, no wonder why everything was surreal. It was indeed too good to be true.

I had plans, despite having no guarantee that I would stick to them; but I had plans. Everyone has one, or two, or hundreds of them. It's been a while since the last time I felt so secure, thinking that from then on, like in games, there would be a checkpoint from where I could always start over. All could fail but I had this one shelter that would never fail me. But it did fail, so I was left to wonder and search for another.

Now that I think about it, everything has come in full circle—but it all happened too fast. Now that I looked back at the year as a whole, I am now getting back to square one. Hello, 2017 me. It's me again. No wonder you look familiar.

I am now left with the task to reimagine myself, to repaint life with a shade of my choice. There is freedom on one hand and oppression on the other. I have the freedom to choose which shade of grey to use. I can even choose a whole different color—be it red, yellow, or blue—but I have to be quick or the paint will no longer be wet enough to taint the old canvas.

But the universe made the choice for me. I was opting for white, for I was craving for purity in this polluted world. I wanted to be clear for once. I wanted to wake up with bliss and a content smile knowing that I have found my gravity.

But the universe made the choice for me, for they knew the answer was not lying on tranquility. They had to remind me that it was not so difficult to find peace in chaos. I just had to find the correct order, so they decided that the color should be blue.

Blue is the color for peace—but they forgot I was human. I wasn't just a speck of dust. I am a speck of dust capable of feeling. So when they decided that the year should end with blue, I was feeling things that I wasn't supposed to. Maybe the year has to end with blue so I could finally find peace on the next stage of life.

So I decided that maybe we could make this a lighter shade of blue

—and the year ends in blue.

This Post is Not Scientific

We're only like, what, 12 days into the new year and I already splurged my money on books, which doesn't sound too terrible when you think about it but when you're into imported non-fiction books, it surely does harm your bank account... and I will only receive my paycheck in February. 

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I am extremely thankful to find this particular gem among rows of motivational books at Books & Beyond. It's Carlo Rovelli's Reality is Not What It Seems: the Journey to Quantum Gravity.

Me? Astrophysics? 

Probably not the best combination but I couldn't find anything more appealing than the thoughts that—correct me if I'm wrong—space is not simply an empty vacuum but a gravitational field in which matters pull and be pulled in the universe, that the stars we see up there are really actually their past, or that special relativity basically shows that perspectives are everything but the speed of light is literally always the one constant in a sea of variables.

I am glad to find another physicist, another storyteller so brilliant he makes physics so enchanting and so simple to even an idiot like me, someone just like Neil Degrasse Tyson, one of my favorite people on the planet.

It's ridiculous how I got this newfound love for astrophhysics at the age of 23, and it completely changed the way I see life and the world I'm living in because the universe is actually a 3-sphere, which completely blew my mind the first time I read it because now it makes sense how spacetime is finite and infinite at the same time. It's like we're living in a giant ball located somewhere in an even more giant ball.

Nowadays, when I see things around me, I couldn't help but try to mentally strip everything down to atoms. If I were to die, will my atoms really vanish or will they dismiss then and rearrange some new form of life on Earth? Does anyone ever really die then? When I see the moon, I couldn't help but think of how matters create curvatures in space, that the moon orbits our planet simply due to the shape of these funnel-like curvatures and the planets orbit the sun in a similar fashion.

Spoiler alert: Einstein published three life-changing scientific journals at a tender age of 25 and perfected the theory of general relativity ten years later. Meanwhile, I will turn 24 this year and I just started a full time job while trying realy hard to keep my anxiety on check. Ah, self-deprecation doesn't feel too bad when you compare yourself with a genius.

Whatever I said in this post may not be the most scientifically accurate thing you'll see on the internet, but I just want to express how grateful I am to even get to see the glimpse of the beauty of physics considering how extremely lacking I am in the field of science. But, you know, even Einstein, Albert freaking Einstein, was struggling with maths. At least, I've taken my giant leap. I actually made an effort to understand a subject I used to despise with all my heart because this time, I actually got a crush on it.

I should go and finish the book before I spit out even more nonsense. Good night.

Oh, and yes, this post is an excuse to put the magnificent picture above from NASA's badass Spitzer Space Telescope of dust covering the center of our galaxy on display.