Journal Entries

Today, I internally collapsed and embarrassed myself unlike any other days in my Junior year. I’ve been running a club for about a week now, a club that provides volunteer opportunities to high schoolers. One of the mission for my club is to provide flexible hours for the high schoolers, so I failed to judge the stupidity of gen z. I thought they would at least check TEAMS and know that there’s a meeting on Monday. I thought they were at least capable of doing that. Or it’s either that none of the 13 people didn’t know how the club worked. I’m leaning more towards the latter. Either way, 0 people showed up to our meeting, and I ended up calling an emergency meeting with the officers. It’s my first time ever organizing a group of people like this. Obviously, I’m not going to be a good leader. But at the meeting, I got scolded like crazy by the other officers. So I realized after that, the crucial mistake I made for myself that brought my club down to shambles. I failed to communicate and listen to my members. This has been a prominent issue with me. Only focusing on my thoughts, not being able to trust and let other people form ideas that I can incorporate mine into. As a result, I was in the verge of having my club terminated. There are some lessons I learned, thanks to this experience. — Be humble. Simple task. I’m currently a definition of arrogance. — Learn to listen to others. But always know who you are listening to. If you do, you will win. I’ve always been praised by others that I was smart, so I thought so, engraved in my brain. But nobody is “smart”. All of the people on earth lack things. For me, the one I like is coordination. A crucial skill. — Respect other’s opinions and consider it like yours. Even though it may seem oblivious at first, others opinions may matter in the end. Now, hopefully, I get it. Next time, I’ll listen to others and cooperate to overcome a problem. You need to know what things you should say and what you should not say. Always think at least a minute before you talk. New lesson just now. Hopefully this is a good college essay topic. Me, starting to bear responsibilities and becoming a leader in a lot of things, just to fail the first week because of my arrogance and egotism. But I learn. That’s my motto. Without new learnings, you will never become a better person than you were before. Failure is guaranteed in your life, but so are improvements. Knowing that, I’ll never despise failures because they are improvements in disguise. Today was another failure but another lesson. So I’m grateful for that.

Life is a strange thing. At an early age, we don’t take others opinions and thoughts into consideration. As we grow, we learn to accept others. That’s maturing. The more you understand the difference in people, the more you can open yourself to the lessons of this world. Your life will go on despite your failures. It doesn’t matter if you get a B in a class or your crush doesn’t like you back. Life will go on, whether or not you accept it. Things will happen, whether you like it or not. Bad things and good things. But when you age and look back at those thoughts, they will only be beautiful as there were always a lesson to learn from them. That’s what’s so great about life. Nothing is a failure. The only failure is death. As long as you are alive, you are susceptible to change, which has its pros and cons. You can change yourself and your surroundings to some degree. The rest is up to your fate or luck. But, if that’s the case, if you give your all at the things you do, even if you fail, you know it’s not your fault. Of course, you can’t be trying 100% every second. That will burn you out quickly and demotivate you. However, if you live to an extent that you feel proud of the things you did throughout the day, that’s enough. It will be hard. It may feel tired when you give it your all. However, every second, memory is created. Those memories ferment, and some time, when you look back on them, the components of tiredness is gone, and the only thing that remains in those difficult memories are what they led to, not how hard they were. Accept others. Their opinions. Their mentality. Their physical difference. People’s opinions are all different. Even the smallest details of one’s perception can affect their whole opinion; therefore, it is almost impossible for two people to be internally identical. But that’s what makes up this world. If it wasn’t for the difference, this world would be a typical dystopian society in novels. Acknowledging one’s opinions can be insulting sometimes. “How can this person possibly agree with this? How can they think like that?” The truth is, another person is thinking of you like that. Your opinion depends on: Culture, history, parental background, education, financial situation, environment, relationships, material wealth, physical features, innate personality, and others. Even a slight difference can change an opinion drastically. You can never judge a person by their viewpoint or opinion. Consequently, having the most odd opinion is not something you should be judged by. The wrong thing to do is to judge another person by their opinions. In fact, you should never judge people. People are too different from each other; each is a separate world. Judging means judger is correct. However, nobody is correct. Nobody can be judged by anything. The only thing that can be judged are what goes against basic human morals (Don’t kill or harm). Life will go on whether you get a B, get yelled at, fail your SAT, or get your left arm cut off. You can’t do anything about it. Since you can’t, why not make the most of it? You only get one life. Live everyday so that when you die, you’ll have no regrets; you’ll die thinking, “I couldn’t have lived that better.”

I’m really in a bad time to be writing this, so I’ll keep it short. I had a dream yesterday, in which I died. Nevertheless, the dream continued. I kept existing as a spirit in the world, interacting with the other deceased. From the outside, it may sound like fun and exciting, adventurous dream, but as the one who died, it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I’ll write how I died: I was competing in a squid-game-like competition for some reason I don’t know of (it’s a dream, of course I don’t know why I’m doing stuff). It was like an arrow-shooting contest. When it was my turn, I went up to the stage with a couple others, and started shooting arrows at a target far above us. It seemed like the only survivor would be the one to hit the target first. Me and the others struggled to hit the target. Mom was watching from the crowd. After a few seconds, when all of us had failed, the platform dropped, intending us to fall to our deaths. As I fell, gravity accelerating me downwards to the clown-like floor that clearly showed something opposite to death, my eyes met with my mom’s. At that instant, I smiled, and whispered, “I don’t have any regrets.” Then I died. Happenings after that are vague. I don’t exactly recall what I did, but it wasn’t boring stuff. A few hours later, I woke up, feeling uneasy and melancholy. The most clear moment of that dream was when I was falling toward my end, where I met eyes with my mom, reassuring her that it was okay. My death was okay. It was just so. I missed this point, but as a spirit, right after I died, I went to my mom, bowling her eyes out. I guess I really do focus on living without regrets. As of now, luckily, I don’t have any regrets. If I died right now, it would be all good. All good. I noticed a habit of myself constantly seeking validation for myself. I thought I was confident all along, but this proves not, I guess. When I get to know a person who seems better than me in any way, I try to think of my specialties that fills in that gap between me and them. For example, if they are good at an instrument, I try to make up to that difference in knowledge my assuring myself that my math skills make up for it. This is something I’ve been doing for quite a while, constantly attempting to put myself above others. But it’s wrong. What truly makes a person better than others? Nothing. It’s like literature. No literature is really the best. No media is the best. They can’t be the best. The reason why this world exists and is so diverse is because nothing is the best. We are all equal. More than that, you can never put a human being above another human being. Our default setting is to assume that everything is about us, for us, to us. But who runs their phones on default settings? We cannot compare human beings. It is just so. Just so. From now on, I will do my best to scrap those thoughts that I use to validate my abilities. I will especially not use those as an excuse to promote my static journey through 2026. Instead of bringing other points about myself to make up for other’s greatnesses, I will acknowledge that we’re both humans and know that it is so. I should focus on myself in order to grow, while knowing that not being than others in a certain categories do not bring my human qualities down. As of now, I’ve not focused on my goals. From my perspective, I’ve not grown, I’ve not changed, I’ve not secured, measured, explored, initiated. But that’s okay. What really matters is things like this entry. Reflection. Your life doesn’t erase itself as time goes. It stays there, and it exists, and it freezes. This only gives a perfect opportunity to reflect.

Already been a month since I last wrote my entry. Jeez. Time flies. I’ll summarize this weekend in a short and sweet word: Horrible. I’ll start with Friday (since the same’s afternoon counts as a weekend): I mundanely got home and was left with nothing to do. In the middle of nowhere, my dad got a heart pain and went to the hospital. Then, I took a nice, warm bath for an hour. My mom said she was gonna cook steak but was too late; my tutoring session was at bay. So I had to eat some spaghetti and meat before going into tutoring, and after an hour, bunch of [REDACTED]’s underlings started spamming the iPad, and I misclicked the “pick-up” button, therefore getting kicked out of the session. I couldn’t join back. Had to end the session prematurely. Then I had to write down all the solutions for the practice tests by myself. Then I went to sleep early because I had a track meet the next day. Meet didn’t go too bad honestly. It was alright. After, I had tons of stuff to do like the usual weekend, but I accidentally fell into a deep slumber, snug as a bug in a rug, for 5 whole hours. When I woke up, I wasn’t even hungry, yet I was forced to eat steak because I only get to eat that once every month or so. Then I spent the rest of the night doing work and other things. And today, [REDACTED] didn’t even join the session, I was left with millions of stuff to do, including study for Calc BC, Physics, and AP Lang. In the middle of doing my work, I fell into a task paralysis and started picking my toenails. Ripped one clean off the bone. It bled so I had to apply bandage and some antibiotics. I did eat some good food, ngl. But then I had a horrendous physics tutoring session. Didn’t understand crap and was left thinking if I’m gonna even make a 2 on the AP Exam. I probably won’t do good unless I do the things listed below. Then I doom scrolled for 40 minutes and started some weekly Sunday grooming time. The shaver started rusting for some reason god knows what. Then I got out of the nice shower, tried to open up the shaver and clean it, but then cut my thumb, bled pretty fast so I put hella pressure on it until my joints felt numb. Thankfully, bleeding stopped, but it disabled my left hand. I tried putting on my new spikes but my feet are too wide to fit in that cylindrical hole. Had to refund both. And now I got a busy-ass cortisol spiking grade depending reputation depending week waiting right in front of me, starting tomorrow. OK. Got it. At least, I’m going to write down the stuff I’m going to be doing starting tomorrow to avoid getting a 2 on the AP Physics Exam. — As soon as Mr. Whatever finishes going over the curriculum, I’m going to start watching the AP Daily videos for some stuff I could’ve missed. — Before [REDACTED] finishes going over everything, I’m going to review his questions. I’m going to ask what I don’t understand to MathGPT and [REDACTED] if I really don’t get it. — As soon as he finishes, he’s going to hopefully start spamming AP questions, so while I’m going over the videos, I’m also going to be spamming the questions, so that’s good. — I’m still going to study outside of spamming questions, though. Probably gonna designate days which I’m going to study which AP right after SAT. There’s a possibility that I’m going to eat dinner with the Korean presidents after the parent’s open night on Thursday this week. Lol. My first time 회식. Anyway, bad weeks like this exist. Was this a balance for all the fun I was having before? Well, I wouldn’t say I was having fun, but at least nothing really particular was happening. That’s happiness, isn’t it? Sometimes, days like these are required in life. But no matter how many times these things happen, as long as I try my best, it’ll be fine. Even if it doesn’t, who are you going to blame? Fate? Can you really blame fate? In ten years, hopefully I’m going to be alive, driving a BMW M3 Competition through the night streets of some city. This entry’s purpose is to reflect back on the terrible weekend I had. Nothing special. There won’t be any philosophical insights or anything. Let’s just try to get back to the peaceful cycle, shall we? At least after this week, because in the next five days, I got: BC quiz Physics test CSF interview MMSS application shenanigans Korean parent’s night Track meet Beginning of SAT studies And more probably Perhaps I’ll find peace within this chaos. I wish. I’m still seeking for a mindset that will tranquilize me, aren’t I? After all, your mindset controls everything you feel. If you can control your mindset, happiness will a piece of cake. I guess thinking of your dreams sometimes is a great way to lower your cortisol just by a bit. It’s a good refresher to all the thoughts about the near future and the present. Just imagine how all the pieces of the close future will fit together to hopefully… achieve my long-term goals. FYI, they are not that complicated. Get a wife by 30 Get a BMW M3 Comp by 30 Have a stable income, of course Not be infertile. I wanna see miniature Robin. Nothing too weird or complicated, right? Yeah. Will failing my BC quiz on Tuesday affect any of this? Is such action consequential? That depends. OKAY. So there are three types of actions, indeed, as I classify. They are these: — Consequential actions — Inconsequential actions — Fate-dependent actions First, consequential: a consequential act, for example, is watching YouTube until 4 a.m. on a school night. This is obviously going to have a visible impact on the day after, isn’t it? An inconsequential act, for example, is throwing out a gum wrapper instead of keeping it in your pockets. This will not affect anything whatsoever in the future. A fate-dependent action is failing my BC quiz on Tuesday. Yes, I will still have an A, but my grade will get close to the curve, which means the rest is up to fate to decide whether I fail the following tests, in which my grade will drop down to a B. These are the current classes of acts I consider. Now, I better get to sleep because my bed time is definitely a consequential act. I don’t know when the next entry will be. Perhaps a week away? A month away? I am not sure. However, I’m sure that it would be okay. I will still keep on breathing, living, working, trying, improving. And in a decade, I will have moved towards my goal, and in two decades, who knows where I will be? That’s what makes life so thrilling and engaging, isn’t it?

This is my life right now. 10 hours of studying. Studying motivated by something unknown, a non-physical quantity that only exists in my head. I can’t quite put it will into words. It’s not pressure. Some of it is. But pressure isn’t the only reason why I sit my ass down and study like a Korean highschooler every single day as an American highshcooler. No, it’s different. Maybe it’s inertia. That’s what I thought it was. I may be wrong, but that’s the most prominent theory I have right now. Inertia is the difficulty to stop a moving object. Everything in your life has inertia, according to my hypothesis. Your emotions, sleep cycle, work-time, stress management, friendship… they all have inertia. And it’s also accompanied by tendency to move into equilibrium. This is not related to physics at all btw. We all naturally move to equilibrium, no matter what it is. Your brain considers everything an equilibrium once you get used to it, and inertia develops there. Once they all develop and stabilize, that’s when subtle peace and happiness kicks in. For example, an African that regularly lacks water every other day has the same happiness as me, who gets to eat whatever I want, and buy whatever I want. It sounds absurd, but that’s the basis of my theory. I shall call this: The Theory of Internal Inertia and Equilibrium That’s tuff. Shortened to: TIIE This is the summary: The mind always succeeds at finding emotional equilibrium and developing an inertia at the same. This is also a must-know theory for another theory: The balance of emotions in life. But we’ll dig into that at the later days. This has also been in my head lately: What am I putting all these work in for? 5 hours of studying everyday. 5 hours of squeezing my brain, trying to figure out an answer that contributes almost nothing to my learning abilities. I know the answers and their solutions. I just repeat them mindlessly. One reason for why I do that is for my own satisfaction. You could say I’m a workaholic in that sense. A weekday without studying at least 4 hours, and I feel guilty and useless. I feel like a failure, my life has been ruined. I know this is bad, but my mind has already established an inertia. What a BS excuse. But I also think this workaholic state of mind isn’t even that bad. If I didn’t have this mind, all I would be doing right now would be scrolling on TikTok. At least I replace those with studying. So, ultimately, I am doing this all for some temporary satisfaction at the end of the day. It’s really not for any eventual benefit. It’s nothing different from gaming all day. It’s for temporary happiness. Wait, that’s a bad analogy. Because I actually don’t want to study, but if I really don’t, I feel horrible at the end of the day. Though I don’t want to do it, I still do it, because that’s what gives me a purpose everyday. So, I do something I don’t like, and I feel satisfied. Is that a masochist behavior?? Hmm.. Anyway, I do - and I feel +. They cancel out. All this is for nothing, really. I’m just a chud. Even if I go to some community college, if I apply TIIE to that fate, it ultimately comes out to be meaningless. Or meaningful, depending on how you interpret it. But I really do wish that at the end, I achieve my ultimate goal of a family and house and a stable job. I really do hope that it all leads to that. And a M3, preferably. Perhaps that’s what I think I’m working towards, but I’m just walking in the same place over and over again.

Heya. Only 4 days since my last “entry” where I crashed out?? That feels like a month ago. What was that even about? Right. It was about [REDACTED]. She’s gone now. I have fully recovered, thankfully, thanks to [REDACTED]? I just opened this journal because I wanted to lay down the feelings I feel as a free man. Free of [REDACTED], and also free of work. These days, I barely have school work. This week, I had a few, like Guiding Minds report, etc.. Honestly, it doesn’t feel that different from back then when I did tons of work… How does my mind even work? Does this mean that I’ll never get to be happy? But honestly, I do feel a bit more relaxed and laid back… maybe that is what happiness is like? Pretty sure not. My point is, unlike before where I thought about this time I would be the happiest person on earth, I’m not… Let’s think like this: let’s assume that right now, it’s March, meaning that tomorrow, I would probably be studying for maybe 4 hours: AP Calculus, AP Physics Review, homework, etc. Let us reimagine what I would feel if I have a day like that ahead of me… Now, come back to yourself right now, in the current moment, May 30. Tomorrow, I go to church, and probably do nothing for the rest of the day. Maybe work on Korean poster for [REDACTED], scroll on TikTok, eat, scroll, watch anime, idk. I feel the same. The emotions I have the night before a hard-working day and the emotions I have the night before a boring-ass day is the same. But it’s always like this…. I mean that every night, I really don’t feel anything.. it’s always when I’m at the moment that I feel good or bad, you know what I mean? Okay: tomorrow, I’ll probably be driving. I’ll be coasting through Hawthorne blasting King Gnu. But if today was March, I wouldn’t feel that freedom and happiness. That’s what makes a difference. The moment. How I spend THE MOMENT. THE moment is everything. The moment is what separates a good life from a bad life, in my life. Some time this week, I sat on the benches in front of Bada Coffee. Man, I should start writing journals in my phone to record exact moments. That time when I was sitting in sunlight, sipping coffee, knowing that I only have a very few work to do… that was true relaxation that I forgot having right now. Looking at the cars passing by, looking at the sunlight beaming… that was true freedom, true life. Hey, Robin in 20 years. I don’t know if you’ll be reading these journals. Probably not, assuming you lost your iCloud account. But if you do, it’ll be a miracle. I bet you’ll be crying then, reading these thoughts and experiences YOU felt as a 17 year old. That’s right. A 17 year old. Do you remember? Do you remember forgetting? I’m right here. A 17 year old Robin. What has happened since then? I have no way of knowing. You’re a time traveler, Robin. You’re looking, reading. You’re experiencing the past once again. I’m currently sitting on my bed, for some reason listening to Alicia from the Expedition 33 soundtrack, rubbing my feet together, feeling the night breeze through the open window, rapidly typing on my M3 MacBook Air, with one lamp illuminating the room. Tomorrow, I wake up at 8 and go to church. My APs are over, meaning my classes are over. You probably won’t remember this moment, but it was here. Has it been 10 or 20 years since? When you are reading this, have you achieved your goals? Do you have a wife? Children? A nice car? How much money do you have? Are you fine? Answer all these questions. All of them. I’m dying to know as the 17 year old YOU. See ya.

Tomorrow is a big day. I haven’t said this phrase in a hot minute, huh? Well, it’s arguably true that tomorrow IS a big day. I got senior sunrise, AP Lit essay, and a haircut. And perhaps a bit of chill session during Physics C:M. I need to go to sleep really, but I’ll talk about senior sunrise for a bit. That’s the whole point of the entry.. I honestly never thought I’d go to these senior events I deemed as “stupid.”—especially during sophomore year. But now, my perception has changed. I want to go to these big events and socialize. I want to make new friends and connections. I want to see the sun rise—not just because it’s a daily occurrence—but because it’s accompanied by friends. That’s exactly what I want, and what I’ve wanted all along—companionship. I’ve drowned myself in one during COSMOS. Now, I seek it once more. That can be fulfilled tomorrow I hope. Honestly, I wouldn’t go if I didn’t have anyone to go with. But I have [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED], and… maybe [REDACTED]? Probably not. Just those 3, and possibly I’ll get to say hi to [REDACTED] and some others I know. I just hope I have a good time, not regretting the choice to wake up at 5:45. Tomorrow is also AP Lit essay—first one. I’ll be brief here. [REDACTED] is a harsh grader from the way she graded the examples presented to us, but that’s fine. I’ll just let it loose and let my inner voice work. That’s why I can say I’m actually excited for the essay… I’ve read the book, and I’ve paid attention to the classes. How could I possibly get a horrendously low grade? It’ll be fine—you’re a writer. An experienced one, at that. The thing is that you’re more of a creative writer than an analyzer, so I may have to incorporate that into this structure slop tomorrow. Somehow. It’s getting late. I must sleep… the best way to prepare for the essay tomorrow is to sleep, after all. “When you sleep, you die. Once you wake up, you are reborn.”