What it means to be alive, and my story so far.

Storytelling is intrinsic to the human experience.

I am here because I would like to share some ideas, some doubts, and some small tidbits of joy with all of you. I hope that in the process of doing so, I will come to better understand myself and the puzzling world in which we all must try to live.

The most obvious thing which we come to associate with a person is their appearance, so here's me.

I'm actually quite camera shy

I like to dye my hair to match motifs and themes in my life. Pink is a bit of a long story, so I won't get into it right now.

To give you an idea of the things I might be writing about in the future here, I will also mention a few hobbies and interests of mine: I like to read novels and I like to play video games. It might be a little early to say this, but I really hope that one day I'll be able to independently develop small-scale games myself. If I make any progress, I'll be sure to let you all know!

I also like to collect succulent plants, and my favourite kind of tea is hojicha.

How I like to spend my leisure time

Recently, my growing interest in blockchain technology has led me to find this website. I hope to be able to learn a lot here about cryptocurrencies and upcoming innovations in blockchain applications. I believe that Steemit has the potential to become an amazing platform for people to share their values and thoughts with each other. It will be very interesting to see where this all goes, I think.

To leave my post at just that feels sort of underwhelming, so I am also going to tell you guys a secret: I find my life to be incomprehensible.

Currently, I am finishing up a bachelor's degree in physics (and this is actually the most comprehensible part of my life), but I have had the privilege to spend the past year away from school. During my time away, I was deeply absorbed in trying to find answers to bothersome questions which I suspect must sprout like weeds in everyone's heads: What am I doing with my life? What do I need to do in order to be happy? Just what is happiness? If I can't be happy, how can I live my life in a way that I can feel at peace with myself? And so on, and so forth.

The year went by rather quickly.

There are definitely more than a few stories worth telling, but I would like to write a little about the present first. Today was the first day of class at my university. Nothing extraordinary or notable happened; I greeted classmates I hadn't seen in a year, briefly and unenthusiastically explained my absence and how I had been travelling and soul-searching and doing a variety of other clichéd gap year things, collected my course syllabus printouts, and jotted down a few email addresses and important dates. It was, as far as first days went, about as average as humanly (or perhaps I should say, studently) possible.

Okay, maybe it's a little bit incomprehensible, but it's only the first day of class!

However, as I left the lecture hall of my last class, I realized that something felt very different, and very strange. It was a feeling of anticipation, but it had nothing to do with anxiety or excitement over the new semester. Until that moment, I had asked myself repeatedly, almost desperately, whether my year off had helped or hindered my personal growth, or if it had only put my entire life on hiatus, and I was actually the same person from one year ago. I think that maybe, it finally occurred to me that the last possibility was not a real possibility at all. People are always changing, aren't they?

... Well, I think I will end things here, as the feeling which I experienced today is still quite a mystery to me, and I think I will need some more time to process it. Thank you for staying with me up to this point. I'm feeling a bit sheepish after having written such vague-sounding things towards the end, but life seems to be a rather incomprehensible tangle of stories, and this one is mine.

~ Mel.