what happened in the first half of school in sem 3.2? (part 2 - socials)

in no particular order: 

recre bball: i went once and never again. in my defence right, it was on tuesdays. on three tuesdays my corp sust product group wanted to have interviews with retailers, on one week mpsh was closed, and on one week it was cny. so i was only able to go once but skipped that one bcuz i was frankly a bit lazy AHAHHA. but the people there rly q competitive ngl...they all got exp and i was rly reminded of how unfit i was and how long i hadn't played basketball

softball: wah the membership this sem drop A LOT SIA like 40%...idk why but lowk i think is cuz a lot of ppl grad and the open training was damn late? and also the payment felt later this year...idk ngl was also abit angst cuz trainings were only like once a week on average now instead of twice a week...but ig circumstances made it hard for that exco to have two trainings. ig its hard to accept but its smth that u have to swallow bcuz there isnt much alternative? i mean not that i blame the exco...its just that sometimes the cards life deals u just happens to be one of the shittiest possible hands. well at least the team bonding was kinda fun i earned 28 dollars at the blackjack table...

but anyways then i joined injae's external baseball club LOL officially a penguin! but idk bruh baseball and softball q different ah...still takes some getting used to and i havent been able to attend every session because of other personal commitment so...well hope i can attend the remainder

co: ngl this batch of exco really gives me hope. like i havent seen a batch so dedicated in trying to find gigs and also having new marketing ideas, new merch, and also generally a very ambitious but infectiously optimistic attitude. maybe this is the turning point aft whatever happened in 2024...but okay cny performance felt really minimalistic this year...idk if its because there are just so few members remaining (i swear its a recurring theme unless u r one of the most popz cca's in smu) and was also damn difficult to hear myself because 1) i wasnt mic'ed and 2) i was beside the cello which was mic'ed but even they could barely hear themselves (and i could also barely hear them so idk...)

dating/love: went out for a couple of dates with this hinge girl...progressing decently well i think we have some commonalities and share some brain cells its just a pity its a long distance...situationship? because she is completing final sem overseas...but i think the main thing is i also confessed to this other girl i met irl and i kinda have overthinking thoughts over what is going on rn (and u see this is the reason why i never wrote this chronologically - because i need to conceal identity but i also need a place to reason out my thoughts...yes it has been going on for a while but i'm still kinda trying to figure out how to move on...and to the person that this is addressed to - if u read till this part ermm....u can read the next paragraphs but its just gibberish of what we kinda said with an additional side of my own thoughts)

so in case nobody knew: i am evergreen (apparently some ppl dk what this means), and i have never confessed to a girl that i like her. but idk some part of talking to someone online but then also realising u have a romantic idea of spending time with some other person irl...its kinda cute from the outside but i swear from the inside it is just a stormy sea. udk how to balance it, udk how to drop one if u ever need to choose one over the other and its just an entire mess. and i guess that was me. i met irl girl sometime last year and so we knew each other for a few months already. i only met online girl this year so technically we havent even known each other for 3 mths (its been barely 2). 

after life happened in 2024 and after some consideration by admittedly telling half truths and half lies to see what my chances of success were, i did decide to ask irl girl to be more than friends. i did think that there was a high chance there was nothing in between us but i thought there was a small chance she wld say yes. boy, i was wrong. maybe im delusional, but it definitely wasnt as hopeless as whatever other crushes i had before. anyways, since we were already very close friends, we kinda said okay we can still be close friends and i did say that i would need time to process but i wouldnt crash out. if im being rly rly honest here (because thats the point of this blog), i think the immediate aftermath of spending time by myself meant that i had a lot of dangerous thoughts about what the words actually meant. and the ironic thing is irl girl told me my biggest weakness is overthinking and I FUCKING STARTED OVERTHINKING WHATEVER WAS SAID. okay ig this is how confessing and getting rejected feels. i feel like after consolidating my thoughts, it made me realise the following: 

1) if a girl has always, to your knowledge, been truthful to you, you have no reason to think that she isn't being truthful to you after she rejects you. maybe some of the words said are coming out of another person's mouth, but she will filter to say only things that she believes regarding this...complication with the guy. and so whatever she says is genuinely what she believes even if it is a mix of her own feelings and advice other ppl have given. and ik irl girl is truthful af and has alw been (one of the reasons i liked her in the first place anyways)

btw unrelated but this truthful factor does not apply if u asked a girl if she likes anyone and she says no, but u found out the answer is actually yes - this is the exception to the rule

2) if she says 'it is nothing against you' irl and on text, it probably means it is nothing against you. UNLESS 1) doesn't apply to you and/or u said/did smth rly fked up in the past 48 hours before u hung out with and confessed to the girl and yknow for sure the girl's opinions of u changed. (edit: and ik i can be a fked up person and i did probably say at least one fked up thing but she has always insisted that there is nothing against me as a person from her pov, so the chances of me being cooked here is low, but time can always change things so i know that there is a chance i do get cooked still)

3) 'lmk if u need help' - look people can be nice. ppl SHOULD be nice. but a girl doesnt owe it to a guy to offer help after she rejects him. a girl isnt expected to say yes to a guy asking her out, right? so she can say no, and being able to say no means that this is very similar to an internship (more on this later) rejection email - the employer is not expected to say yes, and so offering help isn't a necessity. drawing relevant parallels help. but personally i think irl girl tried to balance this out by not offering too much help too fast, but also just letting me know she is there, which i am grateful for

4) 'i came into this friendship as just friends and was never looking for anything additional' - i think this is the hardest part to rationalise out. because yea if u alrdy form a solid friendship based on what you look out for in a friend (e.g. trust and helpfulness) then you form your friendship based on that, and everything after is based on just being friends. but unless u r on a dating app where u r 'just looking for fun/new friends', then u wouldnt know this until u confess to that person. 

and then u start to wonder, what if we just try things out and/or we start a new chapter as smth more than frens? i alw thought it was smth like two besties having an argument, a falling out, a reconciliation, and then moving on with life learning from the experience and becoming better people after it. but i realised that actually, it isn't a relevant parallel. sure, girl was never looking for anything additional. just like two close friends arguing, they were never looking for anything additional apart from being close friends. but where is the moving on with life learning from that experience while remaining the same? truthfully, i cannot expect a girl to just uproot however many months or years of friendship rooted in trust, confidence, hope, helpfulness, and empathy (and whatever else) and add a new branch called 'relationship' that is not the same. i am effectively asking her to reframe her mindset to spending time with me as a partner. 

also yes, this is different from a guy asking a girl out and the girl says yes because she didn't set boundaries as just friends and is instead the 'yes im looking' or 'if it comes it comes' type. it is all about expectations and circumstance - if your expectations of being a close friend is high and your circumstances when meeting were tough, then you can't realistically expect someone to reframe their mindset. which, unfortunately for me, is what happened here.

other miscellaneous overthinking: 'is she slowly drifting from me for our sakes and she wont come back' and 'is she gna get advised to drop me as a fren because of the way this turned out' and things like 'oh does she even want to talk to me': 

first one depends on how awkward it is in the immediate aftermath and how truthful the person is. even if it is fking awks but you have a high level of truth in communication, at least there is still chance to lower the awkwardness by properly communicating in future whenever the time is right to restart communications. and given we r highly truthful (aside from me creating some lies to judge my success probability) and not that awkward, we should be fine

second one: that's just toxic friends. and if your crush had a lot of toxic friends then u r attracted to red flags. and i think im not so i cant help with this (edit: idek what i was typing for this before...i realised it barely makes sense LOL i need to elaborate: if u did nth wrong and u hv alw been nice n genuine but other ppl still recommend the girl to drop u, then thats toxic; but if u did smth rly bad, then its on u. and if u refer to edit above for main number 2, then yea it might be valid to drop me as a fren)

third one: probably, but everyone just needs time...though i would say it doesn't harm to send a message to checkup on life after a week? or to send other memes. BUT IT ALSO APPLIES BASED ON MISCELLANEOUS NUMBER 1 and MAIN NUMBER 2

..whew that was a long relationship reflection. ngl i nearly did spiral/crashout but luckily i started this journal entry on time...which i then decided to go to sleep bcos i did need some shuteye before packing and going back to sg

idk ig a coach's first foray into the actual gameplay is always challenging right? i mean to always watch ppl talk about love from the sidelines and then realise when u wna enter one, that whatever u said and whatever u think u knew does hold true to an extent depending on ur beliefs but it also depends on how u approach love in the first place. ig if u take it as smth sacred, its probably worse because u aren't the type to play around and u dont actly open ur mouth unless u rly see smth in the long term. 

meeting with people and friends: i've always cherished ppl who r able to accept me for who i am. im nowhere near perfect yet people stick around. and i think thats what friends really r. when people come from overseas uni bcuz of exchange, or becuz they r intl students, and they still wna see u even if u hv spent time apart, i think each time it happens im so grateful that they havent just drifted. and ofc alot of this is down to me being a very sentimental person but i just appreciate ppl who r alw there. so to the other three horsemen, to the two softballers that i hv nvr seen since i became exco but yet we still talk, to the two international students in australia, to the operational minions, thank you for being there. and i hope that even when time moves on as when im typing this, we still stick together. and for those that i havent been able to meet bcuz yall r overseas or busy w whatever life-altering goals u r tryna meet: im rly looking forward to see u guys soon bcuz it rly has been too long. 

and the funny thing is, going out to meet these people the past two months has been breathtaking. i wld nvr hv done my nails for cny (and got railed by my mom for being feminine and not portraying a good image) if not for abby psycho-ing me to just try it (even if she admits she wasn't being srs LOL); i wld still not have had a photobooth pic (the kind with the drapes at events dont count im solely referring to those photobooths u see in malls) if i hadn't gone out w reiko (and ofc i prolly wouldnt have gone to patrons day if not for reiko AND abby); i wld not have tried new food if not for caitlyn (thanks ms (mini-)influencer)...and yea its just great having u guys in life im actly lowk gna cry when i think about all the moments ive had the past two months with everyone and...yea im really grateful for u guys *hugs*

- steve, end of part 2 becuz i nd to go out now to do some final sight-seeing and so part 3 will be on sydney trip and internship