Sharing the superfluous

I've lost all my interesting.

Several different factors in my life have come together to warrant my fate, which is the inevitable demise of interesting thought. Okay, that's an exaggeration of course. I'm not brain-dead or anything. I still have witticisms in my brain. But unless big events happen, I've lost a lot of my ability to think of creative topics and important issues to discuss whether in the blogosphere or just in daily life. I've lost my interesting, as I said earlier.

So much in fact, that I'm now repeating phrases when not even an entire paragraph has passed. This is becoming ridiculous.

Yesterday I wrote about embracing the mundane as opposed to striving for interesting and exciting events in your life. Today was just another example of how that's true. I went to a Japanese summer festival with my grandma - the second one of my summer. Without incident, I managed to spend the entire day outside of the house having a nice time with nothing particularly extraordinary to report back.

A few days ago life was crazy. It's in these moments that I feel the need to speak up, to share, to make myself heard even when no one cares to listen.

On days like this, I still want all that. But I have no reasoning for it. I have no morals to teach, no stories of interest to share. I just want your attention. Is that so much to ask for?

In a way, this is more akin to what normal blogs contain. They're slightly dull and repetitive. Unless something fascinating happens, there isn't anything to blog about. A normal person would take this as an opportunity to stop blogging. I'm not a normal person. I want to at least keep this up for 365 days. I will not be thwarted by an afternoon that is lacking in philosophical conclusions.

With all that said, I realize that I never quite explained what it is I did today besides the very bland description of "summer festival" for the Japanese community.

The Obon festival is a yearly tradition in Buddhist temples in which people come together for food consumption, family bonding, dancing and games. Or at least that's what it is in the community I've grown up in - I'm not sure how it goes down in Japan since I've never been to an Obon festival overseas.

It's a great tradition, though, for reasons beyond the surface level observations. Past the games where you try to win a goldfish for a pet or the big round tables where you sit and eat udon with people you've never met before, this is an opportunity to reflect on lost loved ones.

I guess I'd forgotten that aspect of it until today when I was dancing with my grandma at the festival and they had a moment of silence as well as a reminder of what Obon actually represents.

Even on this day where I complain about the lack of self-reflection, a few seconds were taken out to have me thinking about life.

And now that I think about it, there were other moments of my day that played a similar game.

This morning I woke up from a nightmare in which I was driving my dad's car to work and when switching lanes rear-ended someone, making me the perpetrator of a car crash less than a week after my actual one. Thank God it was just a dream, but the fright I felt at being held responsible for damage to someone else's car reminded me of how lucky I am in my position as a victim of a minor car crash.

Later in the day I was thinking about boys and crushes and stuff along those lines (I'm a girl, I'm not always profound). And after a lot of thought on the subject, I realized that I hadn't thought about my ex-boyfriend, the one who haunted my thoughts for months post-break-up, in quite a while. It was so refreshing to know that I'd started growing out of him like I wish I had the minute we'd broken up. He certainly wasn't my thoughts as soon as the rejection was uttered.

I guess I still feel to some extent that I've lost my interesting. When the biggest events of your day are a repeat summer festival, a bad dream and actively not thinking of something/someone, you know your life is growing dull. But why do I need to be interesting? Or why do I have to come up with morals? There are so many people who write blogs that have no purpose. They're just for kicks.

Sometimes I should use this thing just to tell you all about what my day was like. That's what journaling is for, so why can't that be what this blog - which is a lot of rambling as it is - is for too?

From now on I'll leave room for that usage of The Songs of Spring. Just like it's not always important to be interesting, it's not always important to be serious about your endeavors. I've written some heavy material on these pages, but I'm prepared to share the superfluous too. So get ready starting now.