Picking myself up

I haven't been feeling like myself for the past year. I don't know how or when did I start becoming a stranger to my own life but one day I just realize that the person I currently am is an unfamiliar character. Of course most people would say it's just because I'm transitioning to adulthood but if being adult means that I need to lose my own identity, please stop time- I don't want to grow up. So I guess that this is not due to my transitioning process. I don't want to grow up into a stranger. This is basically the reason why I am not in the UK. Well, at least on the surface, it's easier for me to say that I need to settle with myself and I want to be in a familiar environment so I can find myself again. 

A couple of months ago, I picked up a book from the self-help section thinking I needed it after reading the title. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. After reading a few pages, I realized that I need some sort  of a happiness project myself. Because it is hard to be happy without being me. A few chapters in, I start to list down or remember the things I enjoyed doing before I finished my SPM. Why SPM? Because the last time I remembered completely being myself was in highschool. 

Most people would think being away from home would be the perfect escape. That was the total opposite for me. I dreaded my college life. We could barely go out, so I rather stay in my room on days I can't go back to Shah Alam. I didn't join many club activities - there were only two clubs in the whole campus.... I studied when I got bored (that is how boring my college life was) But hey at least I got good results because of that. 

Then it was university, living out of the country, six thousand miles away from home. First year was interesting, I tried a lot of stuff, made a lot of first times, joined student societies. But after a year of being away and all those new feelings fade out, I was succumbed to sense that everything around me was overwhelming. Not a happy kind of overwhelming but an 'oh god why am i here' kind of overwhelming. 

So after listing down the things I used to love doing in highschool, I realized that I haven't done those things in years, or maybe just done them once in a while. Thus, this was where I though that I need to start my own happiness project. Picking up all the old stuff I used to enjoy and trying out new stuff too. One of the stuff I used to enjoy was documentation. It sounds super lame but I enjoyed documenting every event that I went to, every interesting thing  that happens and I always had my camera with me so there was no moment not captured. I guess that's why I've been blogging since I was 12 years old and this blog is still up and running (well, not really running, but it's still here tho), I've just enjoyed documenting life events and eventually reading it back again. 

I guess I gradually stopped when social media platforms became bigger because Twitter and Instagram was supposedly an easier place to share what's going on around you but now I realize that it's not the same as blogging. You can't post as long as you want, you can't post as many photos as you want. I usually share stuff that happened to Twitter in little threads or posts but I don't really read them again because they're along with all the other nonsense I tweet and retweet.

So I'm gonna start documenting my happiness project and continue blogging again. I even actually came up with a name for my project :- feticia's felicity. I aspire for this to be a journey of self rediscovery. I'd love to pick up all the things I enjoyed doing and even try new things. Until I get my feet back on track, this series is going to be a reminder for me to continue finding myself. So yeah, again, to the people wondering why I'm still in Malaysia, this kind of explains it in the simplest way.

Til next time, 

feticia. (Fathishah)