The feeling is something I’ve experienced before. I smell the air and I almost recognized it. My senses are somewhat calmed and I feel at peace. In front of me, long tables occupy the spaces. To the side, stacks of bookcases neatly piled up. I look around my environment. Students occupy some of the tables. Their academic arsenal strewn all over the table ; highlighters, pencils, correction pens, calculators, stacks of lecture notes, textbooks, some photocopied.
I smile to myself… it’s definitely that nostalgic feel alright.
I have mentioned before in my entries in the past ; I have always found the library to be a place of sanctuary – my sanctum ; and I have to credit this ‘sacred affection’ to my university days in Canada. It was being exposed to a REAL library which blossomed this affection and deep sense of appreciation for the library.
Having the day off, and not wanting to waste it, I decided that instead of working from home (yes, yours truly still had some unfinished (and never-will-finish) business with his work-related project) I would spend the whole day in the library.
Not to say I can’t study at home, but for some uncanny reason, I find home to be not an ideal place for me to study. Despite having all my facilities at home, I still thought it would be a wonderful feeling to rekindle that ‘library love’ again.
Well, I'm already into my 4th hour here and I still don’t feel compelled to leave, even though it’s close to lunch time. I have been engrossed with my work for more than 3 hours without much distraction (which is a real wonder for me considering I can rarely achieve this triumph feat if I were to study or work at home).
The library that I’m currently in right now is actually a university library. In the past, I have frequented only the local municipal libraries and the feeling is definitely poles apart. I can’t quite reason out the stark difference between a university and a municipal library, but I’m guessing it’s to do probably with the crowd – university library predominantly sprawled with uni students and municipal libraries, well more of grandparents with their grandchildren.
And perhaps again given my appreciative sense of academia, (I’ve named it my 3rd love after God and my family), I find the university library to be generally more appealing.
I have a fond fascination of narrating to people about why I love the library. Some find my fascination and affection for the library to be stupendous; some just call me a freak. Either way I can’t and won’t blame them at all. The library afterall is ‘boring’ if you think about it. There’s really nothing to do except read or study or work. No instrumental music to accompany the budding scholar as he works through his calculus assignment. There’s definitely no chatting allowed, which would definitely make things dull in the first place!
Aha, but that’s where everyone, or at least most people get it wrong. The library is more than just completing a task.
To use a simple anecdote, consider an aspiring or a professional footballer and a football pitch. When the footballer trains, in a way he is working ; he is there for an objective, perhaps to work on his dribbling skills or his physical stamina. Whatever it is, he is working. And he might just enjoy the particular activity he is undergoing. To him, being on the pitch is 2nd nature, feeling the fresh air, or the warm sunshine radiating to his face ; yes it’s tiring and exhausting, it is frustrating when you find you’re missing your header passes or you’re not heading properly. But the very fact you’re trying hard to get better at your game, and because you’re in your ‘space’, you just love the whole feeling. The tiredness, the frustration, those are just part of it which makes the whole experience an intimate and passionate one.
Likewise the same applies to me in the library. Yes it is tiring to just keep on thinking and working, or frustrating when you’re trying to think of how to solve the problem. And yet, in the midst of the exhaustion and frustration, there is joy. Joy in the process of achieving something, be it whether its researching an term paper or writing an article there is joy.
4 years have already passed for me since I left my university days, but that nostalgic feeling still lingers on. In some ways its exciting, and in other ways it’s a relief. It’s exciting simply because I know the time is near for me to return to back to grad school and today being here in the library offers that ‘sneak-peak’ excitement that awaits me when I return back to my 3rd love. It’s a relief because I still haven’t lost my forte. Granted that I’m not actually working on an academic project right now, but the heart and the determination is still there, despite being in the working world for quite some time now.
I’m just glad I got to experience this nostalgic moment today.
If you can read this message SUCCESSFULLY, that means something ; it means that my w.blogger, which is a nifty offline blogging tool I just downloaded is working properly and is able to sync and publish whatever I've written offline straight into my blog without having me to log into my actual blog 
It’s been an awfully long time since I’ve really just blogged. Most of my previous entries were quick entries. You could tell it was lacking something…perhaps these last entries of mine were sans reflections?
Indeed my writings for this month has been sans reflection. I haven’t really had a decent time to sit down and blog. Even right now as I am preparing to churn out this piece of entry, I’m doing it ‘offline’, as in I’m not typing it on my blog as it’s so freaking slow to even open up my own page.
It’s frustrating when you really have the urge to blog and just as you want to pour your hearts contents and crystallize them into words, your freaking blog won’t just load up, no matter how many times you hit F5 (the refresh button).
Anyway beggers can’t be choosers, hence better for me to pen down my thoughts on Word then just conveniently shut down my laptop. Yes I do feel slightly guilty when I don’t blog after a long lapse. I do realize the unauthorized ‘blogging truths’ or the ‘blogging principles’ which states that one should blog when one feels the need to do so.
Well I feel the need to do so every once in a while, but work commitments and other ‘life’ commitments permit me sometimes from doing so. I guess it’s alright to close one eye and just take it easy once in a while, but let me just say, like all other things; when not done for a long time, it becomes hard to get back to the routine, the same can be safely said about blogging, at least from my humble perspective.
And that’s why in some ways, it’s important to get the ‘blogging engine’ inside of me going and churning out more entries.
Anyway this entry is just to pretty much welcome me back (yes very vain I know!) from my absence of blogging. I’m just glad the 1st part of my project deliverables are over, of course there’s a 2nd , which is thankfully the last part of my project deliverables coming up soon, but alas I’m trying not to think too much about it.
There’s a book I’m reading now; it’s quite a popular book written by Dale Carnegie, and no it’s not How to Win friends & Influence People (although I must say that’s one superb book!) ; the book has to do with how to worry less and live more and it’s quite a practical book. It has about 9 principles, and I think the 1st principle is quite apt for this moment: Live in Day-tight Compartments.
What this simply means is to live today and today only and not worry about tomorrow or yesterday. Like how large oceanliners have compartments in its hull where with a touch of button the captain can shut off compartments completely, likewise we should also learn to shut off our yesterdays and tomorrows. Not to say we shouldn’t reflect on them; in fact it’s good to always draw from yesterday’s lessons to prepare a better tomorrow, but there’s a difference when it comes to getting all worked up and worrying uselessly about yesterdays past and tomorrow’s future.
I will close this entry with a quote from the chapter : Our main business is not to see clearly what lies dimly at a distance, rather to do what clearly lies at hand
Live your live to the fullest, but at one day and one step at a time!
P/S – It felt good to blog the last bit of this entry, truly felt like myself again
