I haven't played Assassin's Creed in more than a month

The yearning is real

I devised a new song+exercise routine last night

The morning after, walking hurts, sitting properly hurts. So it's effective.

TOM honours+self-reflection on my leadership of TOM team

I am so proud of our team. It was a beautiful way to end my final year of doing TOM. (Year ten is the oldest grade a team member can be.)

Honours, whilst not going through to state championships, is basically a title equivalent to highly commended, and is used sparingly.

Given the rushed circumstances of our long-term challenge presentation (finishing props and learning lines the night before,) I am proud that my team still pulled together to present a play, as well as work co-operatively enough, to receive honours.

My team consisted of two year sevens-Rutika and Phoebe, two year eights-Lucy and Angela, one year nine-Cecile, and two year tens- Evelyn and myself.

As team captain, I viewed the performance and cooperation of our team during the six weeks as a reflection of my own ability to pull together the minds of seven talented and creative people with such varying personalities, and make something wonderful happen with what we had to offer.

We had good ideas. But it was very rushed. I will accept full responsibility for that. I made two blunders:

1. I only made half an hour a week for regular meetings.

In retrospect, I should've held the first two or so meetings in person, so everyone could get to know (or re-know) each other. After everyone was comfortable, I should've just used a lot more email communication to aid in our development and exchange of ideas.

You see, I only wanted meetings where everyone was there, so everyone could stay in the loop about everything. The only day where every single one of our team members was avaliable for a meeting was Wednesday lunchtime. Not good for fast progress.

2. I was reluctant to proceed with an idea unless all seven people agreed.

Because our team was so out-and-about, and hard to get to (some didn't check their emails too frequently, and everyone was busy during most lunches,) this made collective team agreement very slow.

If I could do it again, what I would've done is had the majority of people agree- minimum four people- and go forward. If one of the three objected, they could do speak out. Getting four people's confirmation is faster than seven.

What I liked, which I ultimately think had a huge role to play with our honours, was my risk taking.

I rushedly wrote the script over the course of the weekdays before the TOM weekend. Whilst not the most realistic nor my best work, I do not think I could've really have done better given the circumstances I was under.

Then, two days before the TOM Sunday, Evelyn rewrote the script, nearly competely.

I was in a dilemma. Whilst hers was much better quality than mine, it was just so... late. I was afraid it would not be that familiar to our heads, with such a short notice.

I took the risk. I ditched my play. Evelyn wrote half the script and sent it out Friday night. I finished the other half and sent it out late Saturday afternoon. I spent Saturday night finishing off props and attempting to learn my lines, feeling my sanity trickle away. I felt like an iPhone because my sanity-battery was running very quickly.

The fact I stayed up until 3am, and woke up at 6am did not help at all. (As soon as I arrived home later that afternoon, I showered and slept for three hours. Amazing three hours.)

However, I think it was a good risk as it was a much better quality performance.

I thank my team for making my last year so awesome and worthwhile.

Getting emotionally invested

Sucks. You see, when good stuff happens between us two, it's the best. I'd go as far as to say sanctuary. Our stolen nights of talking, our ability to form such a fast bond, our wanting to forgive and learn about the other.

But when bad things happen, man, does it redefine the words "shit storm."

Tournament of minds is tomorrow

Excited. It's my last year ever doing it. I love my team this year and working with them has been enjoyable. They have given me a worthwhile experience as their team captain, and I hope they can say the same about me.

Apparently my parents are taking me buying $2 of chocolate very seriously

I had to go down and I had to argue why I wouldn't gain back the weight I lost from $2 of chocolate.

Shut up. You don't even know how much I've reduced my chocolate intake. I'm proud of myself.

Lovely how when I was going through a few-month-long, genuinely upsetting existential crisis last year no one in the family made such a big fuss, even though I repeatedly plead for help. Buy $2 of chocolate, and I get lectured for five minutes and hit with a backscratcher.

Don't give me any of your "we care for your health" shit. If you did, you would let me avoid staple foods like rice and bread in order to avoid carbohydrates on a daily basis. Yet what do I get given as food? Rice and bread. It's not even an opinion I got off the Internet, I was directly told to avoid carbohydrates by two doctors.

I bought chocolate off my brother and told him not to tell my mum and I'm hearing my brother tell my mum the truth right now

This bitch gon feel the consequences

When your sister walks in on you singing Britney Spears with lots of emotion at 11:59

Last Friday night (I did not party)

It was the last day of junior maths tutoring at my tutoring centre. I've been in three different classes throughout my junior maths years, and I've only been attending my final junior class for one or two months, so I was not that sentimental about leaving.

The teacher is not one who is too good at bringing the pupils together, and the pupils themselves aren't too talkative, so whilst I did have my own circle of friends, I did not feel very close to the class at all.

The final lesson was very...mundane. Our teacher told us he was glad to have taught us, to say hi if we saw him around, and to graduate high school. I thanked him for teaching me as I left.

Then I went next door because that's where my old class was (before I got graciously kicked out for my incompetence,) with intentions of thanking my previous teacher.

To my pleasant surprise, I found my all time favourite teacher at the tutoring centre (who left in 2013) had come back to visit, see his old class graduate. Even though he left a year ago, we still kept in touch via phone.

We talked about things for the next twenty minutes or so, from what was going on in his life and his job, my life and my education, and how he thought I was going to go in senior high school.

What made him my favourite teacher was that I was the most comfortable around him. I could talk to him like a friend (I didn't go all-out colloquial though, because he's still my teacher) but still maintain my student-teacher respect for him.

My favourite and most memorable teachers all have this particular characteristic. (He does it best though.) Those who I can talk to with ease, much like you would a friend, but still maintain respect for (they are a teacher after all,) and look up to. In my opinion, those teachers deserve a lot of respect as they successfully juggle the fine line between friend and teacher.

I finally left as the other teachers were starting to leave and the centre was shutting down. I thanked him for being a good teacher who taught many students through the years including my sister and I, I thanked him for finding potential in me where others saw a desolate wasteland, I thanked him for making his maths lessons very entertaining not just for myself, but for our whole class.

With one final bow, I walked out the door. Within the next three months, we're probably going have at least one phone conversation, but talking to him was still a good closure.

Maybe I'm being a sentimental person here, but it was a good closure to my junior years at my tutoring centre and in a way, reminding me of my imminent senior years of high school.

Last Friday afternoon

I had a few things on my mind and was in a quiet and contemplative mood, so I pulled out a piece of paper and started pouring my thoughts out.

A friend of mine called James came down and sat next to me, and asked if this was my personal daily diary of some sort.

"No," I told him, "I have an actual diary I write in at night. I just have...a lot of thoughts going on right now."

Usually James and I are pretty talkative, but we were both in a contemplative mood on Friday. He listened to his music, I wrote.

---

Basically what happened was that Hannah decided to completely fall for a boy who didn't reciprocate her feelings but was still a lovely boy and made time for her and made her feel very special and nice.

I got a little possessive if you could say so. It's not very often a boy gives me such nice attention, and makes me feel special and everything. Not only that, but he himself was a bit of a vulnerable character-quiet, shy, a little awkward at times. A little bit of a sensitive soul who people were a complete asshole to. So I guess a little bit of a "big momma bear" mentality kicked in as well.

The problem was that I became too emotionally invested and reliant on him. Small misinterpreted actions and words made me sad, but I would not tell him. Sometimes one of us would screw up, have our actions or words taken completely out of context, and we'd be either very sad or very mad. (Usually I was mad and he was sad.)

Ultimately it became too toxic for both of us. Whilst most of the time we provided a lovely friendship for each other, we were both getting too hurt from each other when we did argue.

Him with his unintentional and clueless words. He didn't know the power his words held over me. Sometimes they could dampen a whole day for me. They could brighten up a bad day, and make a good day bad.

He wouldn't know that his harmless joke could make me lie on my bed and silently cry, leaving me with puffy eyelids the next morning.

He similarly didn't know that sometimes, when my family was arguing and my house was falling apart outside my door, conversations with him grounded me and stopped me from running to my grandmas house.

I wasn't much better. I overreacted and mad him feel like shit for something he had no idea would hurt me so much. It had to stop.

---

I might look back at this event when it's all over and laugh at it. I might not completely get over it. I don't know. All I know is that it's been emotionally taxing for the last few months and I had to do something about it before it completely consumed me.

I was in a constant cycle of denial and acceptance about the whole... issue. Sometimes I would think I was doing the right thing for myself and adopting the right attitude to it. Sometimes I wouldn't.

Subconsciously, I have been doing what I am doing now about my issue for a few months now-decreasing emotional investment, getting over the whole thing. But was I consciously aware of that?

No. I was having a battle with myself about the whole issue; whether my actions and ultimately the path I put myself on was the right thing to do.

And then on Friday, whilst writing everything out on the train, my subconscious and conscious thoughts... lined up I guess. A solution to everything came up.

Cut emotional ties with him. Keeping friendship is preferred, but not necessary. I chose to try to keep the friendship.

You know, actually coming to that conclusion after months of confusion and denial and acceptance and whatnot was very satisfyingly tiring.

I leaned on James' shoulder, tired. James is pretty accommodating with me doing these things, as we do these sort of things frequently.

So he leaned his head on mine, and soon flopped an arm around me, his hand resting on my hip. It was really comforting, just knowing that there was a big friendly person called James next to me that cared for me and comforted me.

I don't know why, but I started crying. Not loud and mourning. Just a small stream of tears, coming out of my eyes, travelling across my nose, down my cheeks. I guess it was from the whole revelation, the solution to most of my emotional troubles for the last few months had finally come.

Not only that, but the overlying knowledge of how difficult it was going to be. You can't just cut off your emotional ties with someone you hold dear just like *that.* It's just not possible.

It's only been four days since Friday, and a few months since I've been subconsciously cutting off emotional ties, but my instincts were right, it's hard.

Sometimes I look back at it all and how close we used to be and I get sad. Sometimes I feel like he doesn't care for me as much as he used to, and that sucks as well.

I understand that we probably are going to distance a little bit, with my whole "emotional detachment" thing. A little voice, the small voice of the "big momma bear" reserved for him-is a little reluctant to let him go. But it's for the best of us, and I can only hope our friendship will remain good and true.

Give away something which I no longer need : 2/50

Today I gave my old recorder to my cousin who is starting her secondary education at my school next year. Recorders are a staple part of school culture, accepted by year sevens and thoroughly despised by all others.

Sometimes I get mad at people because I think they're being an asshole to me

Then I take a ten minute breather, where I sit back and think about everything I said, and everything he said, and our reasoning in our arguments

Then I realise that I'm being a pretty big asshole too, if anything.

Currently writing a list of fifty things which make me happy

I'm currently on number forty-one. I've realised a few things along the way.

When I started, words and scenarios were flowing. It got slower in the early thirties. Not because it's hard to make me happy, but sometimes, when the feeling of "happy," can come accompanied with so many other feelings, that "happy" gets drowned and pushed aside in favour of all the other emotions.

I had to sift through events, scenarios, memories which bought positive emotions, and distinguish which ones came with happiness, and which ones just came with positive feelings.

Not only that, but "happy" can come in many forms. For instance, sometimes I'm happy when lots of things are happening all at once and everything is fast paced. Yet meditation and slowing things down also makes me happy. It really depends on the situation. Sometimes a certain thing is welcomed in some scenarios and not welcomed in the next.

Something I was surprised by was my lack of material things that were on the list. There are materialistic things in the list, like candles and the giver of life Assassin's Creed.

However, things which I generally buy when I am going out and I've come to associate myself with-like earrings and shoes-somehow didn't pop into my mind once over the month it's taken me to write forty one things which make me happy.