I really don't think I'm going to go to school tommorow. Today, I guess, whatever, wednesday. I only have classes three days a week so I feel kind of bad about not going, which is probaby why I havn't missed any class yet, but its starting to get to a point where I feel that if I keep showing up every class I'm going to go nuts. I don't really know why that is. I want to blame it on laziness, but I don't really think thats it. Its just stress, I think, getting there and participating in discussions and trying to take part in something that I don't really feel a part of. I was thinking about why they give us a month off in the winter and three months in the summer and why professors take a year off every seven years and I realized that there is a lot more stress involved in the academic world than it seems like there should be. I wonder what that is. Maybe its just all the time you have to spend working away from the school, and then just being there around a lot of other people that are getting progressively more and more stressed as time goes on. Spring break is when were supposed to take a moment to relax. I used to think it was almost silly since I would rather have just gotten out of school a week earlier, but now it makes more sense. I think thats why so many people in the business world have to change professions every ten years or so, and why they have tendancies to just sort of freak out after a while. Its the same thing really, your at work or your at home working on work stuff or thinking about it and you stress yourself out and then you go to work where everyone else is in the same mindset. Of course they don't get all the time off that college students get. Really I'm surprised there aren't more office shot outs, it seems like a lot of people would get to that point. Not that I think its a good thing or anything, but I'm just saying that it seems like it would happen. But maybe the world of business is less stressful than study. I mean, in business its the same thing over and over everyday, so its more boring but at the same time less taxing since you know exactly what is expected of you and you know how long everything takes, etc. So maybe thats why people can deal with those types of jobs a lot. but there is the stress, i don't know. I'm just talking in circles now, trying to figure it all out.
I've been a little freaked out lately about this whole graduation thing. I really have no idea what I'm going to do. I want to move, go somewhere new and exciting. Or at least new. I have this vision of myself in a little house just outside a small town somewhere. I don't know what I'd do for work in this situation, but it sounds nice. Small and cozy and comfortable. I could just get a cheap place and work in a diner or something and focus my real attention on getting something written and published. I was looking at job postings for college grads and there wasn't a single thing that I could find that really appealed to me. Maybe I was just looking in the wrong spot, but I've spent a couple of years thinking about what I was going to do once out of college and I've come to the conclusion that there really isn't any job out there that I know of that I'd actually be willing to do. I say I could work in a diner because if I'm not going to like what I'm doing I want to have the least amount of responsibility. Also, I like the idea of me being in a little small town diner, just being part of the background in a little community. I don't know why that appeals to me so much. I've also thought about moving to England to do the same thing, just with more british accents. I'm not sure if thats going to work out, but, hell, i could call the whole thing a cultural experience if I did it that way.
Fuck, I don't know. graduating, its a thorn in my side. I've never really made a big life decision before. I mean, not really. In high school I always took for granted I was going to college. I took for granted I was going to UNR, I didn't even apply anywhere else. I don't know what my GPA from high school was, or my ACT or SAT scores, those numbers were never important to me because I didn't have any real significance. They were just things that I did without thinking about it that lead me into reno to go to school at unr. I chose my major, but a major isn't really that big of a deal, I don't think. It can make a difference if you have a real solid idea of where you are going, but if you dont than almost anything will do, all thats important is the degree, the type is negligable. So now suddenly I'm realizing that I have to make a choice that is really going to affect where I go from here. And I have no idea what the fuck I'm supposed to do with that sort of responsibility. And I am tempted to think that my idea of going to a small town and taking a job with no responsibility is a non-choice. But then I think, hey, I'll have a college degree, and I'll be going to paupers way, I'll be living life close to the bottom in order to reach for the stars, as it were. I think if I choose to go with a more career oriented job type then I am going to get stuck in it and before long I'll be middle-aged and wondering what the hell ever happened to my hopes from when I was my age. I really don't want to look back in thirty years with a lot of regret. And even if I do end up with that business career model at some point in my life, a few years to figure shit out is just what I need. Hell, its what most people do when they get out of college, another one of those little cliches. The decision is a lot harder from the first person. From an outside perception it seems so easy, I've guess I always assumed I'd go on a little soul-searching journey after college, but actually getting ready for such an adventure is driving me nuts. But I suppose I really did make this choice a long time ago, now I'm just freaking out because I'm realizing that I'm going to have to go down a road that I'm not familiar with at all. But it will work out, I'll be just fine.
There are a lot of odd little moments in your day that make you wonder about the nature of yourself. Not in a spiritual way, but just as a self that other people perceive, more accuratly, how they perceive you. I've had several moments in the last couple of days that have called into question who I am in other peoples minds, what type of person they see me as. I don't know if my brain is just reading into everything, and strangly at that, but I'm getting a lot of weird readings lately. A level of, dare I say, respect, from people I didn't really expect it from. I don't know, I'm starting to feel a little more confident in myself, which is a strange feeling, and I like it.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Rambling man
Sometimes I feel like I'm not really living right now. Like I'm just looking back on this moment from some time in the future, but its so vivid. And so dull at times. Why would I be remembering this? I don't know. Sometimes I feel like I'm in a sitcom. Weird little things that I can easily overreact to happen. Then the rest of my time is down time. If you condense everything down to part of a half hour show half the weeks out of the year its more than enough. Maybe I'm really only alive for a few minutes every week. Maybe the rest of my life is just filler. Maybe I'm sitting somewhere right now watching the clips of my life. Maybe I'm just remembering what supposedly happened inbetween. How do I know that any of the rest of it really happened? How do I know when I am on camera? How can I tell when I am only alive in my mind?
I'm not trying to be philosophical, really. I'm not trying to get at a higher truth, really, anymore than I am trying to understand my existence as it is right at this moment. I suppose that really is a higher truth than anything else I could be thinking or writing about. How do I know that I didn't already write this? I feel like I am writing it, yet in a few minutes I will only have the memory of writing it. How do I know I'm not just remembering it right now? Maybe I am philosophisizing, I suppose I am, theres really no other word for it. What if this is the first moment of existence? A little out of what I was just speaking of, but it relates, since then everything that I am remembering now about my life is a false construct, and so this familiar feeling of typing is actually a completely new experience for me. But what if existence hasn't even started yet? What if this is only part of my backstory. Sometimes I think of myself as a character in a book. We think we understand this character and we sometimes get a lot of their past, but did that past every happen? Would the character remember all those little events that get left out of the book, would they just fill those in? Is that what I am doing? Or have I already done that, maybe my story has started already, and I am only thinking what the author told me to think? Or what they think I should be thinking? Why am I thinking philosophically right now? Is it because someone in some meta-dimension is telling me to think about it, or they think I am thinking about it? Maybe I am only thinking this because someone else is thinking it. When I write characters I sometimes wonder how they would feel about it. I guess this was the plot of that Will Ferral movie from last year. What was that called? Whatever, its still an interesting question. I suppose I should watch it and get their take on it. Stranger Than Fiction. Thats what it was called.
I remember when I was around ten or so and almost falling completly apart in the shower one day as I contemplated my own existence. I had to talk myself into believing I still existed. I didn't really mention it to anyone at the time, but thinking back on it, if in fact it actually happened, it occurs to me that it was the one of the first in how I perceive the world. I was thinking today about when I found out there was no Santa. Sometimes I think of that as a critical point in my life. I think it was the first time when I was a kid that I had to figure out what was real and what was not. I had to figure out how to prove to myself what was there and what wasn't. I don't think I ever really figured out how to do that. I don't really study philosophy though. I'm in a class right now and I don't even really like it all that much. I've never been that great of a student. I think too abstractly for scholastic studies. And I have a tendancy towards laziness that has prevented me from really getting into studies that I should have been doing for a long time. This is somewhat off topic. I think its the way my brain works, how I think, that keeps me from being able to interact that well in this world. I have a tendancy to disbelieve in almost anything, anything that I believe could be santa. It could all come crumbling down around me. But at the same time I have a strong feeling that I'm doing something that relates more to fate, that there is some sort of guiding principle in my life. I think in stereotypes. I am a stereotype in a lot of ways. Its a strange way to live. No matter what I do I can ask myself "why am I doing this? Would my stereotype have done that?" and I often realize that the answer is yes. Why do I have long hair? I grew it out because I wanted to, but the more time I spend thinking about it I realize I didn't really have a reason to do it, and that having it puts more closer to that comic-book-guy stereotype I have put myself into. So I was thinking I could move away from the comics and into other things, literature and what have ye. Of course, there are people living in the world of literature that were at points just like me. I am a cliche. I mentioned my life was a novelty act in my last post, or did I? Maybe I wrote that somewhere else, I can't remember, but I said it, wrote it down. Well its not true. Because novelty implies something new, something slightly different, but it also implies a sense of unimportance, of purposelessness. Maybe in that way I am a novelty act, but in the other sense I am not, I am not new and different, but my experience is different, however slightly. So it is a novelty for me.
Sometimes I wonder if I havn't lived in a world of stereotypes before. I often feel like I've just left this world and come back in different forms. Something akin to reincarnation. I've lived the life of every stereotype. I'm scrapping the bottom of the barrel of possibilities now, perhaps. In my version time is not so static, I can come back at any time, I could have lived through these times a hundred times before. With no memory it might as well have never happened. What about false memory? Does it matter if it happened if I think it happened? Does it really not matter if I don't think something happened? I suppose on both sides it matters if it happened or not. But on both sides the real things that matter are what I feel happened. Truthiness. If I can't perceive it it may be real but does it matter? There are too many questions here. I want to provide myself with answers, but there are none to be had, at least not yet. I feel like if I completely accept myself from an outside viewpoint, see myself for the wholeness that I am, then I can break my mold, go outside what I would normally be compelled to do. So far I am simply following the instincts inside of me, moving blindly towards a destination I'm not sure of. I can see the future, at least my future, if I only understand where I am right now in relation to it. If I could see how every particle is moving and where it is going then I could see the future. Humans are predictable creatures. I am predictable, I am following a mold that was set out long before I got here. There has to be a way to break it, but in order to do that I must discover how I got into it in the first place. And to fully break it I must fully accept that it is there, I must no longer feel that I am acting as an independant person but rather as an organism that is following prescribed instincts. All animals have something that tells them how to act, how to survive. But what when you don't think that just surviving is enough? What happens when you want to make something of life that transcends everything that you ever thought you could do? Maybe I just need to stop and to think more often. Maybe I just need to take action. And maybe I have already started to break free of my mold, simply by acknowledging that it is there.
I'm not trying to be philosophical, really. I'm not trying to get at a higher truth, really, anymore than I am trying to understand my existence as it is right at this moment. I suppose that really is a higher truth than anything else I could be thinking or writing about. How do I know that I didn't already write this? I feel like I am writing it, yet in a few minutes I will only have the memory of writing it. How do I know I'm not just remembering it right now? Maybe I am philosophisizing, I suppose I am, theres really no other word for it. What if this is the first moment of existence? A little out of what I was just speaking of, but it relates, since then everything that I am remembering now about my life is a false construct, and so this familiar feeling of typing is actually a completely new experience for me. But what if existence hasn't even started yet? What if this is only part of my backstory. Sometimes I think of myself as a character in a book. We think we understand this character and we sometimes get a lot of their past, but did that past every happen? Would the character remember all those little events that get left out of the book, would they just fill those in? Is that what I am doing? Or have I already done that, maybe my story has started already, and I am only thinking what the author told me to think? Or what they think I should be thinking? Why am I thinking philosophically right now? Is it because someone in some meta-dimension is telling me to think about it, or they think I am thinking about it? Maybe I am only thinking this because someone else is thinking it. When I write characters I sometimes wonder how they would feel about it. I guess this was the plot of that Will Ferral movie from last year. What was that called? Whatever, its still an interesting question. I suppose I should watch it and get their take on it. Stranger Than Fiction. Thats what it was called.
I remember when I was around ten or so and almost falling completly apart in the shower one day as I contemplated my own existence. I had to talk myself into believing I still existed. I didn't really mention it to anyone at the time, but thinking back on it, if in fact it actually happened, it occurs to me that it was the one of the first in how I perceive the world. I was thinking today about when I found out there was no Santa. Sometimes I think of that as a critical point in my life. I think it was the first time when I was a kid that I had to figure out what was real and what was not. I had to figure out how to prove to myself what was there and what wasn't. I don't think I ever really figured out how to do that. I don't really study philosophy though. I'm in a class right now and I don't even really like it all that much. I've never been that great of a student. I think too abstractly for scholastic studies. And I have a tendancy towards laziness that has prevented me from really getting into studies that I should have been doing for a long time. This is somewhat off topic. I think its the way my brain works, how I think, that keeps me from being able to interact that well in this world. I have a tendancy to disbelieve in almost anything, anything that I believe could be santa. It could all come crumbling down around me. But at the same time I have a strong feeling that I'm doing something that relates more to fate, that there is some sort of guiding principle in my life. I think in stereotypes. I am a stereotype in a lot of ways. Its a strange way to live. No matter what I do I can ask myself "why am I doing this? Would my stereotype have done that?" and I often realize that the answer is yes. Why do I have long hair? I grew it out because I wanted to, but the more time I spend thinking about it I realize I didn't really have a reason to do it, and that having it puts more closer to that comic-book-guy stereotype I have put myself into. So I was thinking I could move away from the comics and into other things, literature and what have ye. Of course, there are people living in the world of literature that were at points just like me. I am a cliche. I mentioned my life was a novelty act in my last post, or did I? Maybe I wrote that somewhere else, I can't remember, but I said it, wrote it down. Well its not true. Because novelty implies something new, something slightly different, but it also implies a sense of unimportance, of purposelessness. Maybe in that way I am a novelty act, but in the other sense I am not, I am not new and different, but my experience is different, however slightly. So it is a novelty for me.
Sometimes I wonder if I havn't lived in a world of stereotypes before. I often feel like I've just left this world and come back in different forms. Something akin to reincarnation. I've lived the life of every stereotype. I'm scrapping the bottom of the barrel of possibilities now, perhaps. In my version time is not so static, I can come back at any time, I could have lived through these times a hundred times before. With no memory it might as well have never happened. What about false memory? Does it matter if it happened if I think it happened? Does it really not matter if I don't think something happened? I suppose on both sides it matters if it happened or not. But on both sides the real things that matter are what I feel happened. Truthiness. If I can't perceive it it may be real but does it matter? There are too many questions here. I want to provide myself with answers, but there are none to be had, at least not yet. I feel like if I completely accept myself from an outside viewpoint, see myself for the wholeness that I am, then I can break my mold, go outside what I would normally be compelled to do. So far I am simply following the instincts inside of me, moving blindly towards a destination I'm not sure of. I can see the future, at least my future, if I only understand where I am right now in relation to it. If I could see how every particle is moving and where it is going then I could see the future. Humans are predictable creatures. I am predictable, I am following a mold that was set out long before I got here. There has to be a way to break it, but in order to do that I must discover how I got into it in the first place. And to fully break it I must fully accept that it is there, I must no longer feel that I am acting as an independant person but rather as an organism that is following prescribed instincts. All animals have something that tells them how to act, how to survive. But what when you don't think that just surviving is enough? What happens when you want to make something of life that transcends everything that you ever thought you could do? Maybe I just need to stop and to think more often. Maybe I just need to take action. And maybe I have already started to break free of my mold, simply by acknowledging that it is there.
Thursday, February 15, 2007
V.D. (The Good Kind?)
Its official. I'm 22 and never have I had a date on valentines day. Its a little past midnight, making it the fifteenth, though I wasn't holding out much real hope since around the eighth. Well, fuck it. The only real reason that this upsets me is because valentines day (or V.D. Day, which is great not only because it repeats "day" but also because it sounds like V.E. Day. Also, Venereal Disease Day, which is also hilarious, in a really stupid sort of way) is the one day out of the year that I would really have a chance to be able to pull off the whole romantic persona thing. I know that I will never be the type of guy that is all fruity and emotional and can really get the women swooning. But on just this one day out of the year every guy is given a chance. Every cliche in the book works wonderfully today. Start out with some flowers and chocolate, move on to the candle lit dinner, champaign, maybe a gift of some sort of jewlery. We tend to think of valentines day as a day created by card companies for women. But I believe that secretly it was created in some darkened basement by a group of men, who knew, knew it through and through, that they had absolutely no idea how to romance women. So for one day, 24 short hours, they conspired to make every lame idea a man has ever had to win a girl over a reality. Its sort of a mystical day in that. Even the most socially inept men out there can't help but succeed on this one day. Well, maybe not the most socially inept, i.e. me, since I am sitting here writing this when the rest of the world is ...in bed.
I bought some easter candy today. You know, shake it up a bit.
Normally on Wednesdays cheb and I go out for dinner, but today I got out of one of my classes and went to the store and ate earlier. I thought at the time that I was only eating because I was insanely hungery. But, upon reflection, something about going out with cheb to dinner on V.D. Day didn't sound like the best of ideas. No offense to cheb, I just don't think I could handle making a lot of stupid jokes whilst couples around us were all romantic. I think it would have put me into some sort of shame spiral. Or I would have punched some jerk out. It would have been funny, but wrong!
I don't know, V.D. Day isn't really getting to me that much. I don't really feel like I am missing out on too much on days like this, a lot of work and spending of money to impress someone that is either supposed to be already impressed by me or someone that I no longer should have to impress. But still, it gets my brain thinking, is this how its going to be next year? And the next? Fuck it, no sense worring about it now, after all, I have a whole other year to work that shit out.
I bought some easter candy today. You know, shake it up a bit.
Normally on Wednesdays cheb and I go out for dinner, but today I got out of one of my classes and went to the store and ate earlier. I thought at the time that I was only eating because I was insanely hungery. But, upon reflection, something about going out with cheb to dinner on V.D. Day didn't sound like the best of ideas. No offense to cheb, I just don't think I could handle making a lot of stupid jokes whilst couples around us were all romantic. I think it would have put me into some sort of shame spiral. Or I would have punched some jerk out. It would have been funny, but wrong!
I don't know, V.D. Day isn't really getting to me that much. I don't really feel like I am missing out on too much on days like this, a lot of work and spending of money to impress someone that is either supposed to be already impressed by me or someone that I no longer should have to impress. But still, it gets my brain thinking, is this how its going to be next year? And the next? Fuck it, no sense worring about it now, after all, I have a whole other year to work that shit out.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Uncomfortable conversations with strangers
This semester is already starting to take its toll. And if we don't get no tolls we don't get no rolls. See what I mean? I can't even keep a coherat thought together for longer than a sentance. I do like spring rolls.
I am a fucking idiot. There, I said it. Paul was right all along. I finally had an opening and got to talking to a girl I've been angling for a reason to talk to for the last couple of weeks and suddenly I found myself standing in an elevator realizing I had blown my chance. Fuck, I've never been very good at flirting, and she was probably out of my leauge. Hopefully when the next oppurtunity like that comes up I won't make the same mistake. Knowing me I probably will.
Right now I should be writing something other than this. I'm working on this story that I think is going well but it is taking forever. I have no idea where to go in the story now. I was planing on turning it in tommorow, but now it looks like I'm going to have to turn something else in. The problem is that I feel that my writing has become something of a novelty act. What I'm working on has more substance, but its not ready! If only I had another week. So of course now I have to turn in another novelty act. My life is a novelty act.
I'm getting tired of getting shaken out of sleep by explosions. The fucking construction crew is still blowing rocks right outside our apartment. This morning the first thought that went through my mind as I woke up was "that was a big one." Then, in my tiredness, I thought "this is like living in a war zone," of course I corrected myself since there was virtually no chance of the explosion coming for me here. But I thought about what it would be like to be woken to explosions, much bigger ones, in a war zone. Then I sort of drifted back to sleep but I realized that that would really suck. I was wearing my WAR t-shirt (its a band shirt) the other day and was asked why I was supporting war. Its a good shirt, like someone that supports any war is just going to wear a shirt that says WAR. Thats right. War. I fucking love it. Why else would I wear this shirt. I don't even care what war. 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American, fuck it, bring it on mother-fucker. Its all good.
I wonder if mother-fucker really is a hyphenate or if it should be just one word, probably two seperate words. I'm not going to look it up though.
My mind is completely blank when I try to think of anything else to say. So the end, I guess.
I am a fucking idiot. There, I said it. Paul was right all along. I finally had an opening and got to talking to a girl I've been angling for a reason to talk to for the last couple of weeks and suddenly I found myself standing in an elevator realizing I had blown my chance. Fuck, I've never been very good at flirting, and she was probably out of my leauge. Hopefully when the next oppurtunity like that comes up I won't make the same mistake. Knowing me I probably will.
Right now I should be writing something other than this. I'm working on this story that I think is going well but it is taking forever. I have no idea where to go in the story now. I was planing on turning it in tommorow, but now it looks like I'm going to have to turn something else in. The problem is that I feel that my writing has become something of a novelty act. What I'm working on has more substance, but its not ready! If only I had another week. So of course now I have to turn in another novelty act. My life is a novelty act.
I'm getting tired of getting shaken out of sleep by explosions. The fucking construction crew is still blowing rocks right outside our apartment. This morning the first thought that went through my mind as I woke up was "that was a big one." Then, in my tiredness, I thought "this is like living in a war zone," of course I corrected myself since there was virtually no chance of the explosion coming for me here. But I thought about what it would be like to be woken to explosions, much bigger ones, in a war zone. Then I sort of drifted back to sleep but I realized that that would really suck. I was wearing my WAR t-shirt (its a band shirt) the other day and was asked why I was supporting war. Its a good shirt, like someone that supports any war is just going to wear a shirt that says WAR. Thats right. War. I fucking love it. Why else would I wear this shirt. I don't even care what war. 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American, fuck it, bring it on mother-fucker. Its all good.
I wonder if mother-fucker really is a hyphenate or if it should be just one word, probably two seperate words. I'm not going to look it up though.
My mind is completely blank when I try to think of anything else to say. So the end, I guess.
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
Career Day
I awoke from a series of strange dreams to find myself thinking about Alan Moore and a new Leauge of Extrodanary Gentlemen. Not the movie, the comics, which were fantastic, though highly disturbing. Much like the dream. Sometimes I get good ideas that would require me to steal concepts from much more talented writers in order to achieve. Maybe I'll just find a way to write him with my idea.
I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. Everyonce in a while it occurs to me that this is my last semester at school and I have no idea what I am doing later. In a way it seems like its a good thing. I compare it here to marrying your high school sweetheart. You may fall in love and then move in together and a few years later you are laying in a bed with a woman you know better than she knows herself and yet you just aren't feeling the attraction there anymore as you realize that the boy that fell in love with her in high school is very different from the man you have become in the years since. And the two of you just aren't right for each other anymore. Thats how I feel about trying to decide what to do with my life. How do I know I am going to want to be doing anything I might want to be doing now in a couple of years? I often think about what type of person I am going to be at 30, I imagine that this 22 year old version of me and the 30 year old version are going to be very different people, as I already feel a lot of disconnect from who I was in high school, and that wasn't even 5 years ago. A constant in all of this is that I still want to write, but unfortunately that just isn't a career I can jump right into. I have to be good, and I have to get a little lucky, and even if I got to be fairly well known I may still not be making enough straight off the writing to only do that. I guess thats what I'm trying to figure out. What do I want my backup career to be while I work on my "real" career?
For a while I thought that I would probably just put on a suit and tie and go in for some interviews and get an office job. There is a level of office work that I don't really mind doing, that sort of mindless pushing of buttons. But then I had to take this Information Systems class and I have to work with all of these Microsoft Office programs and, although some of you may not believe it, I really don't get really angry all that much more anymore. I used to get pissed off at almost everything, but now, now I'm a lot calmer, choosing snide remarks and sarcasm about things I don't like rather than anger. Yet those fucking office programs had me wanting to punch out my monitor and storm out of the house. And I've only spent a couple of hours using them so far. If I had to deal with those things, and phone calls, and other employees, and all that other office related crap, I think I would turn into one of those guys that was always just shaking with anger and everyone in the office was sure I was walking through that front door one day with a machine gun. Do they even still make machine guns? I mean, I call a machine gun anything that shots a lot of bullets rapidly, but I think they only make, like, asault rifles now a days. Machine gun sounds a lot cooler, and scarier, yeah, just walk in there with a tommy gun, now thats a weapon. What was I talking about? Yeah, I don't think I would be actually any threat to my coworkers, but I would think now that I could last maybe a week before I just stood up and walked out and never came back. Not to mention I am developing an affinity for quitting. I almost want to take a job just so that I can quit.
So I have no idea what I am going to do. I was thinking about that Comic Book shop but I have a problem with commiting myself to one store, one town, for at least ten years right out of college. I think I might want to move around a little, find a town or a city somewhere that I really like being in and then set up shop there. Reno and I have had a good long run, its time for me to be hittin' that dusty trail.
I wouldn't mind working on movies. But I don't want to live in LA. Thats problamatic. I mean, I wouldn't mind being a peon in the movie business for a while and trying to work my way up, but I don't think that I could handle doing it in LA. Just not worth it to me. Or I could be an astronaut. No, actually I couldn't. It kind of sucks wanting to have a career in the creative fields because you have to be realistic and know that you aren't going to just get right in on it. It takes some time, you need those other jobs. I'm restating this for some reason I havn't thought out. You know, there are really only three types of jobs that I would probably be qualified for, White Collar (low-level), Blue Collar (low-level), and Retail (low-level). Maybe I'll get a job as a waiter in a fancy resturant. You have less tables to worry about and since the food is more expensive the tips even out to really busy resturants, and sometimes could be a lot better. I'd have to be really nice to people, that could be a problem. I think I could pull it off, I'm usually nice to people, even people I don't like, not really because I think I should treat everyone the way I want to be treated or some crap like that but rather because I discovered that it is a hell of a lot easier to be nice to annoying, strange people and then polietly excuse yourself from their company. If you try to get rid of them by being a dick it just makes them angry and the whole situation gets out of control. So I just exchange a few words, ask them a question or two, and then pretend to get a phone call or something. So, point being, I could probably get a job as a waiter, I think I've got the attitude down. But that isn't something that I would want to do for more than a year or maybe two at the most anyway, so that is problamatic. I don't know, I just don't know. It seems like there should be some sort of field that I wouldn't mind working in and that I would be willing to go into for a while after college, but I really just keep coming up blank. I think I just don't want to work. I need to work out a way to do that. Maybe I'll get an online job, sell adspace or something. Well, thats sort of an office job. Son of a bitch.
I've got nothing. I'm going to go now.
I have no idea what I am going to do with my life. Everyonce in a while it occurs to me that this is my last semester at school and I have no idea what I am doing later. In a way it seems like its a good thing. I compare it here to marrying your high school sweetheart. You may fall in love and then move in together and a few years later you are laying in a bed with a woman you know better than she knows herself and yet you just aren't feeling the attraction there anymore as you realize that the boy that fell in love with her in high school is very different from the man you have become in the years since. And the two of you just aren't right for each other anymore. Thats how I feel about trying to decide what to do with my life. How do I know I am going to want to be doing anything I might want to be doing now in a couple of years? I often think about what type of person I am going to be at 30, I imagine that this 22 year old version of me and the 30 year old version are going to be very different people, as I already feel a lot of disconnect from who I was in high school, and that wasn't even 5 years ago. A constant in all of this is that I still want to write, but unfortunately that just isn't a career I can jump right into. I have to be good, and I have to get a little lucky, and even if I got to be fairly well known I may still not be making enough straight off the writing to only do that. I guess thats what I'm trying to figure out. What do I want my backup career to be while I work on my "real" career?
For a while I thought that I would probably just put on a suit and tie and go in for some interviews and get an office job. There is a level of office work that I don't really mind doing, that sort of mindless pushing of buttons. But then I had to take this Information Systems class and I have to work with all of these Microsoft Office programs and, although some of you may not believe it, I really don't get really angry all that much more anymore. I used to get pissed off at almost everything, but now, now I'm a lot calmer, choosing snide remarks and sarcasm about things I don't like rather than anger. Yet those fucking office programs had me wanting to punch out my monitor and storm out of the house. And I've only spent a couple of hours using them so far. If I had to deal with those things, and phone calls, and other employees, and all that other office related crap, I think I would turn into one of those guys that was always just shaking with anger and everyone in the office was sure I was walking through that front door one day with a machine gun. Do they even still make machine guns? I mean, I call a machine gun anything that shots a lot of bullets rapidly, but I think they only make, like, asault rifles now a days. Machine gun sounds a lot cooler, and scarier, yeah, just walk in there with a tommy gun, now thats a weapon. What was I talking about? Yeah, I don't think I would be actually any threat to my coworkers, but I would think now that I could last maybe a week before I just stood up and walked out and never came back. Not to mention I am developing an affinity for quitting. I almost want to take a job just so that I can quit.
So I have no idea what I am going to do. I was thinking about that Comic Book shop but I have a problem with commiting myself to one store, one town, for at least ten years right out of college. I think I might want to move around a little, find a town or a city somewhere that I really like being in and then set up shop there. Reno and I have had a good long run, its time for me to be hittin' that dusty trail.
I wouldn't mind working on movies. But I don't want to live in LA. Thats problamatic. I mean, I wouldn't mind being a peon in the movie business for a while and trying to work my way up, but I don't think that I could handle doing it in LA. Just not worth it to me. Or I could be an astronaut. No, actually I couldn't. It kind of sucks wanting to have a career in the creative fields because you have to be realistic and know that you aren't going to just get right in on it. It takes some time, you need those other jobs. I'm restating this for some reason I havn't thought out. You know, there are really only three types of jobs that I would probably be qualified for, White Collar (low-level), Blue Collar (low-level), and Retail (low-level). Maybe I'll get a job as a waiter in a fancy resturant. You have less tables to worry about and since the food is more expensive the tips even out to really busy resturants, and sometimes could be a lot better. I'd have to be really nice to people, that could be a problem. I think I could pull it off, I'm usually nice to people, even people I don't like, not really because I think I should treat everyone the way I want to be treated or some crap like that but rather because I discovered that it is a hell of a lot easier to be nice to annoying, strange people and then polietly excuse yourself from their company. If you try to get rid of them by being a dick it just makes them angry and the whole situation gets out of control. So I just exchange a few words, ask them a question or two, and then pretend to get a phone call or something. So, point being, I could probably get a job as a waiter, I think I've got the attitude down. But that isn't something that I would want to do for more than a year or maybe two at the most anyway, so that is problamatic. I don't know, I just don't know. It seems like there should be some sort of field that I wouldn't mind working in and that I would be willing to go into for a while after college, but I really just keep coming up blank. I think I just don't want to work. I need to work out a way to do that. Maybe I'll get an online job, sell adspace or something. Well, thats sort of an office job. Son of a bitch.
I've got nothing. I'm going to go now.
Thursday, January 25, 2007
Do you remember when we used to dance?
This week was kicking my ass. Seriously, you'd think three days of school wouldn't be that bad, but it was really getting to me. It could be because it is my last semester here and I am unsure of what to do next. Really I think it is because that I can't deal with this fucking school anymore. I'm ready to move on, even though I don't know what to do next. I just have to get through one more fucking semester. I reached a point this year that I felt that I had the college level of education already, and everything else was just a technicalities till I got my degree. I still feel that way. I'm going to learn more this semester, sure, but its not really stuff thats going to open up my mind anymore, its not going to help me in the rest of my life all that much more than if I just was done already with the classes I have already taken. But, fuck it, I'll just give it all I've got, fat bottom girls, you make the rockin' world go round.
I just watched the 40-year-old virgin again tonight. I saw it a while back and wasn't a huge fan, but after watching the Office and Little Miss Sunshine I was willing to give Steve C. (however you spell his last name) another go. I really enjoyed it this time out. I think it was just a mood I was in that made me dislike it last time. I think I saw it as making fun of us nerdy types, but watching it again I realized that it was all about accepting us nerdy types and realizing what we have to offer. But more than all that it just really made me laugh. Hard, and loudly. And it got me thinking about my own life and what I've been thinking about for a while.
Sometimes I just really want to be miserable. Sometimes I want to inject suffering into my life. And its not because I enjoy it, because I don't, but rather because I've always wanted to be the disturbed artist, the genius trapped in a world of pain of his own making. And I know it sounds strange, but really, I've been all about punishing myself in various ways for a long time, trying to make myself unhappy, mostly on a subconcious level but I can tell I'm doing it when I reflect on my life. I worry that if I don't have enough pain in my life then I won't ever be any good at writing. Something about the locked away loner maverick writer idea got in my system and made me want to slowly destroy myself. And I've been doing that. But that isn't who I am, not by a long shot. I may have the ability to write, but I am not one of those people that must suffer for their art. I was watching that movie and laughing and it occurs to me that I don't want to write something that is an amazing, moving piece of literature about pain and death and loss, but rather, I want to write something like the 40-year-old virgin. I want to write stupid comedies. I'd much rather make someone laugh for a couple of hours than make them think for a couple of hours. Last night I was thinking about trying a tactic, which I may still try, which was to write literary steak (i.e. really meaty plot, big things happening, all sorts of emotions and what have you and big life shattering things) covered in literary frosting (i.e. silly, goofy, slapstick comedy). I have no idea how to go about this, but I did write a few things that dealt with really big issues that were an infusion of the melodramatic and the comedy. People told me they hated the tonal shifts in the stories, going from something serious to something silly. But I think with what they were saying about the things from before I can bridge the two much closer together, get the two conflicting types of stories working together. It will take some time, but it will be fun. And of course now with my realization that I much rather be happy and make others happy then try to prove myself as an artist I'll go for an all out comedy if the other part isn't working out. I think I can do it. I kind of want to start right now, but I think I'll wait for till tommorow. Maybe right out a few ideas and maybe a bit of an outline tonight. I don't normally use outlines, but I think for something like this I'll need one.
I had a dream last night about me making certain choices in my life. For once in my life a dream actually made sense to me. I was making a stupid choice in the dream and regreting it as soon as I did it, and although I won't get into the specifics of the dream since it was long and complicated and mostly dull, I think it was what helped me to come to this conclusion tonight. That and a perfeclty delightful afternoon/evening with cheb and food and cheesy movies. I'm tired of being in a bad mood all the time, its time to kick up the endorphines.
I just watched the 40-year-old virgin again tonight. I saw it a while back and wasn't a huge fan, but after watching the Office and Little Miss Sunshine I was willing to give Steve C. (however you spell his last name) another go. I really enjoyed it this time out. I think it was just a mood I was in that made me dislike it last time. I think I saw it as making fun of us nerdy types, but watching it again I realized that it was all about accepting us nerdy types and realizing what we have to offer. But more than all that it just really made me laugh. Hard, and loudly. And it got me thinking about my own life and what I've been thinking about for a while.
Sometimes I just really want to be miserable. Sometimes I want to inject suffering into my life. And its not because I enjoy it, because I don't, but rather because I've always wanted to be the disturbed artist, the genius trapped in a world of pain of his own making. And I know it sounds strange, but really, I've been all about punishing myself in various ways for a long time, trying to make myself unhappy, mostly on a subconcious level but I can tell I'm doing it when I reflect on my life. I worry that if I don't have enough pain in my life then I won't ever be any good at writing. Something about the locked away loner maverick writer idea got in my system and made me want to slowly destroy myself. And I've been doing that. But that isn't who I am, not by a long shot. I may have the ability to write, but I am not one of those people that must suffer for their art. I was watching that movie and laughing and it occurs to me that I don't want to write something that is an amazing, moving piece of literature about pain and death and loss, but rather, I want to write something like the 40-year-old virgin. I want to write stupid comedies. I'd much rather make someone laugh for a couple of hours than make them think for a couple of hours. Last night I was thinking about trying a tactic, which I may still try, which was to write literary steak (i.e. really meaty plot, big things happening, all sorts of emotions and what have you and big life shattering things) covered in literary frosting (i.e. silly, goofy, slapstick comedy). I have no idea how to go about this, but I did write a few things that dealt with really big issues that were an infusion of the melodramatic and the comedy. People told me they hated the tonal shifts in the stories, going from something serious to something silly. But I think with what they were saying about the things from before I can bridge the two much closer together, get the two conflicting types of stories working together. It will take some time, but it will be fun. And of course now with my realization that I much rather be happy and make others happy then try to prove myself as an artist I'll go for an all out comedy if the other part isn't working out. I think I can do it. I kind of want to start right now, but I think I'll wait for till tommorow. Maybe right out a few ideas and maybe a bit of an outline tonight. I don't normally use outlines, but I think for something like this I'll need one.
I had a dream last night about me making certain choices in my life. For once in my life a dream actually made sense to me. I was making a stupid choice in the dream and regreting it as soon as I did it, and although I won't get into the specifics of the dream since it was long and complicated and mostly dull, I think it was what helped me to come to this conclusion tonight. That and a perfeclty delightful afternoon/evening with cheb and food and cheesy movies. I'm tired of being in a bad mood all the time, its time to kick up the endorphines.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Its Two A.M., The Fear is Gone
So I'm back. For good, yo. At least for a while. Three weeks is the longest I've been out of Reno pretty much since I moved here. I always think that I really hate it in Reno but when I come back from being gone it feels so good to be home that I think I'll never leave again. Not seriously, though, I know I want to live somewhere else after college. Which, if things go well, should be after this semester. I just don't know where yet. But I'll find a place I suppose.
Its getting late. But Hawaii time is two hours earlier than it is here, so I'm still awake. Well, obviously I'm still awake. Or at least I would hope that I was still awake.
The last two weeks were fairly illuminating for me. I got some insight into myself. Which was frightning but probably good to know. One thing I will share was that I thought that I got kind of the short end of the stick when it came to relating to other people in my family because my sister always has had a lot of friends and seems really socialable and I've never really been that way. But I found out that her relationships are just as, if not more so, screwed up than mine. She just is more open about how she is feeling and thus why she has so many people that she can talk to. I'm a lot more inward than she is. But neither one of us has any real understanding of what it means to be in a relationship, and if we really care for someone we can never really let them in. It all goes back to parenting, if you ask me, which you didn't but if you are reading this then it is implied that you would be interested in what I think.
I'm sitting on my ottoman, which is fairly uncomfortable, because JJ and Cheb are having a little bible study something or another thing here tonight and are using my chair. Its not a bible studie, just intervarsity kids doing a team building thing. Or something. I havn't really been paying attention. My brains been going nuts playing songs lately because I havn't had a chance to listen to my music for the last few weeks so now I'm chillin' with some Allman Bros. and I think some of The Who is up next. I actually heard a bit of Baba O'Riley (some people know it as "Teenage Wasteland") today and I really wanted to hear it. Oh, its so pleasing. There are so many small things I miss about home when I'm gone. Not least of all is being autonomus. My god, take my advice and only go on week long trips with your family after you turn 20 or so. I mean, okay, most people probably like being with their families more than I do, but still, two weeks is a lifetime, even when its warm and you can go swimming in a non-heated pool at 10pm and not feel cold at all. In the middle of january. Yeah, its nice, but I'm used to seeing my family for somewhere around four-six hours at a time four or five times a year. Okay, I see them more than that, but really, in small doses I don't mind. Two weeks was way too much for me to handle. I had to opt out of several adventures because I couldn't handle sitting in the car with them for a couple of hours then going on a hike with them then lying on a beach with them then hiking back with them and then getting in the car for a couple of hours to drive back with them and then get home and be with them at the end of the day. I don't think I could spend that much time with my friends all at once. In fact, I'm fairly certain I couldn't. And my friends don't bother me nearly as much as my family. It was also a little awkward because my dads girlfriend was there for half the time.
My headphones aren't working right.
We went to the Green Sand Beach, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Green Sand, believe it or not, crazy. Its about a 2 1/2 mile hike to get to it if you don't have 4-wheel drive (which we didn't) and the walk feels at least twice as long because the whole way there you are right on a very unprotected shore of the ocean and you get serious winds in your face the whole way. Even when you aren't going up hill it feels like you are. And when you are going uphill, well, it sucks. Anyway, we got there and it was this little beach and there was enough people there to make it seem crowded and I was kind of annoyed. Then we had to make a freaky journey down a cliff side to get to the actually beach, which was harder because I was fairly wiped from the walk there. But we got on the beach, I took off my shoes, threw down my towel and fell asleep in the warm sun and woke up about a half hour later when I heard a big group of people set up camp right next to my head. Some girls started singing the Indiana Jones theme song and I opened my eyes to see who was singing and suddenly nakedness filled my eyes. I sat up and the group was about twenty-thirty people, over half girls, and all of them were very attractive and completely naked. They were running around, frolicking in the surf, rolling in the sand and rubbing that green sand on their naked thighs, well, that was only one of them, but still. I've always dreamed of waking up surronded by beautiful naked women, I just never thought it would actually happen. So that was a good day.
Its just, the right side of my headphones isn't coming through at all anymore, I wish I knew were my other pair was.
We didn't go to the volcano. Last time I was there we went but we didn't get to where the lava was actaully pouring in. There was that Deep Thought that went "If you ever drop your keys in molten lava, let them go. Because, man, their gone." So I've kind of always wanted to drop some keys in lava since then. Perferably keys I didn't need. But we didn't go because it was about a four hour drive there and a four mile hike over increadibly uneven and pointy lava rock. We found a quintessential Hawaiin beach. Only about a half mile hike over lava rocks. You get there and there is perfectly white sand and only a couple of other people (also some naked girls, but not nearly as many and not nearly as frolicky) And you can swim in the waves which are big enough to be fun to jump into but not so big they try to drag you down.
I could deal with the headphones if I had a chair with a back on it, I like to lean back as I type, and if I can't do that I slouch, which hurts after a while.
We went snorkeling a lot. At a beach and we went on a snorkle boat which takes you out and lets you go swim around in a part of the ocean with no waves and a lot of visibility. Its fun to look at the fish but they kind of freak me out. All ocean life freaks me out a little, its not that I'm really scared of it for any real reason, its just that I think fish have it out for me or something, and some of them have mean looking faces, and they swim along by you and glare. Really, my favorite part of going is just to look at the girls swimming around looking at the fish. Seeing girls underwater is pretty cool. Because their hot and their swimming around and look all graceful. But the big thing they just look different then they do on land, which is really why I like to watch them underwater. I also like to watch them on land walking around in bikinis. I always care a dozen times more about the girls on the beach then I do about the beach.
I don't have anything new to complain about after that paragraph. So, uh, don't you hate pants?!
I just had the weirdest sudden memory spark up, but its really hazy. I think I was drunk and talking to someone, I think the song I'm listening to now must have been playing, which is kind of weird because the song is "Twilight Zone" not the theme song, the Golden Earwig version.
I had a bit of an awakening one day on the island. Theres something that I think I've got to do. Its really weird because I don't really know if its a good idea or a really bad, really, really bad idea. But I've thought long and hard about it and I'm going to do it. No matter how insane or retarted it sounds at times, I think its the right thing to do. Sorry I'm not being more specific, but its possible that some people read this blog that I don't know about that if I were more specific then it could maybe cause a problem and more than that I just don't feel comfortable talking about it in such an open forum. So why mention it at all? Lets call it a baby step towards being able to open up about what I'm thinking and feeling a little more often. But not to everyone, and not about everything. I think I've mentioned I use this blog to practice being comfortable letting other people get to know me better than I have been letting them in the past, so this is just another part of it.
That was the end of this post. I've been writting for almost an hour. And to be honest I wrote for about a half an hour before I started over on this post. I mention this for two reasons, the first is that because you havn't been reading for an hour, it may have just felt that long. The second is that it takes me a while to update sometimes and the reason is because it takes me so long to write a single post sometimes, and sometimes I'll write for a couple of hours and end up not posting anything at all. So there is a process that goes on. So just keep that in mind if I don't post a new blog anytime soon.
Its getting late. But Hawaii time is two hours earlier than it is here, so I'm still awake. Well, obviously I'm still awake. Or at least I would hope that I was still awake.
The last two weeks were fairly illuminating for me. I got some insight into myself. Which was frightning but probably good to know. One thing I will share was that I thought that I got kind of the short end of the stick when it came to relating to other people in my family because my sister always has had a lot of friends and seems really socialable and I've never really been that way. But I found out that her relationships are just as, if not more so, screwed up than mine. She just is more open about how she is feeling and thus why she has so many people that she can talk to. I'm a lot more inward than she is. But neither one of us has any real understanding of what it means to be in a relationship, and if we really care for someone we can never really let them in. It all goes back to parenting, if you ask me, which you didn't but if you are reading this then it is implied that you would be interested in what I think.
I'm sitting on my ottoman, which is fairly uncomfortable, because JJ and Cheb are having a little bible study something or another thing here tonight and are using my chair. Its not a bible studie, just intervarsity kids doing a team building thing. Or something. I havn't really been paying attention. My brains been going nuts playing songs lately because I havn't had a chance to listen to my music for the last few weeks so now I'm chillin' with some Allman Bros. and I think some of The Who is up next. I actually heard a bit of Baba O'Riley (some people know it as "Teenage Wasteland") today and I really wanted to hear it. Oh, its so pleasing. There are so many small things I miss about home when I'm gone. Not least of all is being autonomus. My god, take my advice and only go on week long trips with your family after you turn 20 or so. I mean, okay, most people probably like being with their families more than I do, but still, two weeks is a lifetime, even when its warm and you can go swimming in a non-heated pool at 10pm and not feel cold at all. In the middle of january. Yeah, its nice, but I'm used to seeing my family for somewhere around four-six hours at a time four or five times a year. Okay, I see them more than that, but really, in small doses I don't mind. Two weeks was way too much for me to handle. I had to opt out of several adventures because I couldn't handle sitting in the car with them for a couple of hours then going on a hike with them then lying on a beach with them then hiking back with them and then getting in the car for a couple of hours to drive back with them and then get home and be with them at the end of the day. I don't think I could spend that much time with my friends all at once. In fact, I'm fairly certain I couldn't. And my friends don't bother me nearly as much as my family. It was also a little awkward because my dads girlfriend was there for half the time.
My headphones aren't working right.
We went to the Green Sand Beach, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Green Sand, believe it or not, crazy. Its about a 2 1/2 mile hike to get to it if you don't have 4-wheel drive (which we didn't) and the walk feels at least twice as long because the whole way there you are right on a very unprotected shore of the ocean and you get serious winds in your face the whole way. Even when you aren't going up hill it feels like you are. And when you are going uphill, well, it sucks. Anyway, we got there and it was this little beach and there was enough people there to make it seem crowded and I was kind of annoyed. Then we had to make a freaky journey down a cliff side to get to the actually beach, which was harder because I was fairly wiped from the walk there. But we got on the beach, I took off my shoes, threw down my towel and fell asleep in the warm sun and woke up about a half hour later when I heard a big group of people set up camp right next to my head. Some girls started singing the Indiana Jones theme song and I opened my eyes to see who was singing and suddenly nakedness filled my eyes. I sat up and the group was about twenty-thirty people, over half girls, and all of them were very attractive and completely naked. They were running around, frolicking in the surf, rolling in the sand and rubbing that green sand on their naked thighs, well, that was only one of them, but still. I've always dreamed of waking up surronded by beautiful naked women, I just never thought it would actually happen. So that was a good day.
Its just, the right side of my headphones isn't coming through at all anymore, I wish I knew were my other pair was.
We didn't go to the volcano. Last time I was there we went but we didn't get to where the lava was actaully pouring in. There was that Deep Thought that went "If you ever drop your keys in molten lava, let them go. Because, man, their gone." So I've kind of always wanted to drop some keys in lava since then. Perferably keys I didn't need. But we didn't go because it was about a four hour drive there and a four mile hike over increadibly uneven and pointy lava rock. We found a quintessential Hawaiin beach. Only about a half mile hike over lava rocks. You get there and there is perfectly white sand and only a couple of other people (also some naked girls, but not nearly as many and not nearly as frolicky) And you can swim in the waves which are big enough to be fun to jump into but not so big they try to drag you down.
I could deal with the headphones if I had a chair with a back on it, I like to lean back as I type, and if I can't do that I slouch, which hurts after a while.
We went snorkeling a lot. At a beach and we went on a snorkle boat which takes you out and lets you go swim around in a part of the ocean with no waves and a lot of visibility. Its fun to look at the fish but they kind of freak me out. All ocean life freaks me out a little, its not that I'm really scared of it for any real reason, its just that I think fish have it out for me or something, and some of them have mean looking faces, and they swim along by you and glare. Really, my favorite part of going is just to look at the girls swimming around looking at the fish. Seeing girls underwater is pretty cool. Because their hot and their swimming around and look all graceful. But the big thing they just look different then they do on land, which is really why I like to watch them underwater. I also like to watch them on land walking around in bikinis. I always care a dozen times more about the girls on the beach then I do about the beach.
I don't have anything new to complain about after that paragraph. So, uh, don't you hate pants?!
I just had the weirdest sudden memory spark up, but its really hazy. I think I was drunk and talking to someone, I think the song I'm listening to now must have been playing, which is kind of weird because the song is "Twilight Zone" not the theme song, the Golden Earwig version.
I had a bit of an awakening one day on the island. Theres something that I think I've got to do. Its really weird because I don't really know if its a good idea or a really bad, really, really bad idea. But I've thought long and hard about it and I'm going to do it. No matter how insane or retarted it sounds at times, I think its the right thing to do. Sorry I'm not being more specific, but its possible that some people read this blog that I don't know about that if I were more specific then it could maybe cause a problem and more than that I just don't feel comfortable talking about it in such an open forum. So why mention it at all? Lets call it a baby step towards being able to open up about what I'm thinking and feeling a little more often. But not to everyone, and not about everything. I think I've mentioned I use this blog to practice being comfortable letting other people get to know me better than I have been letting them in the past, so this is just another part of it.
That was the end of this post. I've been writting for almost an hour. And to be honest I wrote for about a half an hour before I started over on this post. I mention this for two reasons, the first is that because you havn't been reading for an hour, it may have just felt that long. The second is that it takes me a while to update sometimes and the reason is because it takes me so long to write a single post sometimes, and sometimes I'll write for a couple of hours and end up not posting anything at all. So there is a process that goes on. So just keep that in mind if I don't post a new blog anytime soon.
Monday, December 11, 2006
If you play this blog backwards, it says "Make me a sandwich"
Oh, ethical dilemma, how I loath thee. Okay, so its not really an ethical dilemma, more of a spiritual one. Or something. Right now its a quarter to 11 and I need, really, really need, to go to my eight o'clock class. But I so want a diet coke right now. Really, really want diet coke. But if I drink it then I'll be up till 1 or 2 and then I'll either sleep through my class or show up and not remember a damn word that he was saying the whole time I was there. Man, this is annoying. I havn't been to that class in over a week. What the hell was I thinking when I signed up for such an early class? I know what I was thinking, but still, it doesn't change the hurt. It wouldn't have been as much of a problem if I just was able to get used to a schedual of getting up early, but when you have five days a week that the earliest you really have to get up by is one in the afternoon and only two that you have to be up early, it throws you off. I am literally on the verge of failing that class, which by all accounts should be a no-brainer of a class, because I havn't been able to get there very often. And when I do show up I'm usually still asleep, basically. Its like having a dream about being in class, only I'm fully clothed and the girl sitting next to me never actually turns into a giant spider that knits me a scarf. Although I can tell she's thinking about it.
So I'm drinking a diet coke now. And you can all just shut the hell up about it. I've run into a problem in my personal life that I can't quite seem to get perspective on. And its not my out of control cafine addiction, that I have plenty of perspective on. No, it just something that I've tried talking to several people about and I guess I havn't been able to get any leverage on it. I shouldn't bring it up since I really don't want to talk about it here, where it can be read by all, but I do bring it up because I want to talk about it a little bit, and at least talking about talking about it is something. Usually when I'm in a situation like this I can just go with a gut instinct and even if it turned out to be wrong I can feel confident that at least I tried something that didn't work out, but this time I'm just having a hard time figuring out exactly what my gut is telling me. I'm so conflicted. Its like theres a spiderweb of potential problems. Like if I remove the wrong strand the whole thing will come down. Then I think, wait, thats not how spiderwebs work, you can take out a strand and the rest of it is intact still, thats why the designed the internet around spiderwebs. So then that confuses me further. I don't know, I was trying to do some soul searching on last night and I don't really think I came to any answers. I took a shower and was thought "its been a really long time since I sung in the shower." And then thought "that is the saddest thing I've ever said." And I know I thought it and didn't say it, but thats my thought quote. Then I was sitting with my head hanging over my arms and thinking and wishing there was some sort of a sign that would lead me to an answer and I looked down, and I swear to god, the dripping water from my hair had made a perfect little frowning face on my forearm. Four smaller dots of water for the mouth with two bigger ones for the eyes. And then I moved my arm and the left "eye" ran down my arm and I watched this sad little face on my arm shed a single tear. I don't know if that was a sign, and it certainly didn't shed much light on the situation, and I know it didn't help anything.
Fuck, good lord, I was getting pissy today, and yesterday. I've just kind of been in a bad mood for the last couple of days and I think it has a lot to do with not being able to get my life moving forward. I also think it has a lot to do with finals. I hear people say how hard finals are being on them, and usually I think I hold up pretty well comparitively, but this year I've just kind of hit a wall. But I'm getting there, I've got work left to do, but I have till next monday for a big project, so that will be enough time. But good lord, I just looked at my final schedule and it came to my attention that three out of the four I still have to take are at 7:30 in the fucking morning. Three of them. Three of those mother fuckers at 7:30. And two of them are this week. Oh, that makes me feel so good, right now. Fuck. I don't have to do anything but show up for one of them, but shit, I still have to show up. The other one I have a fucking test. And a portfolio due. Such rubbish. At least I don't have to worry about the third early one till next week. That doesn't really help me all that much. But at least that one is for my 8am class, at least that one makes sense. I have to show up at 7:30 for a class that doesn't normally start till 11. Lame! God, it will be so nice to be out of this semester, it has been a pisser. It feels like its been going on forever. And ever. And ever. And ever.
And ever.
I really want to be done. Maybe I'll just start staying up all night so that I can make all my early finals and I'll be wide awake since I've been up all night drinking coffee and playing video games and everyone will be all like "oh, I'm so tired" and I'll be all ready to go and I'll laugh at them for not being as cool as me. Of course, the last twenty times I've tried to pull an all-nighter I end up getting bored and tired around 3:30 then I fall asleep and sleep through my classes. So maybe that isn't the best idea. But it could work, I could start tonight, and then just go for a week on a really weird schedule and then I'd be done and it wouldn't involve me dragging my sorry ass out of bed at the break of fucking dawn. Maybe I should put some more thought into this.
We've once again come to the end of my blog. Another long rambling post. That really accomplished nothing. And pretty much just bitched about a couple of things that no one but me would ever care about. So another successful posting for me.
So I'm drinking a diet coke now. And you can all just shut the hell up about it. I've run into a problem in my personal life that I can't quite seem to get perspective on. And its not my out of control cafine addiction, that I have plenty of perspective on. No, it just something that I've tried talking to several people about and I guess I havn't been able to get any leverage on it. I shouldn't bring it up since I really don't want to talk about it here, where it can be read by all, but I do bring it up because I want to talk about it a little bit, and at least talking about talking about it is something. Usually when I'm in a situation like this I can just go with a gut instinct and even if it turned out to be wrong I can feel confident that at least I tried something that didn't work out, but this time I'm just having a hard time figuring out exactly what my gut is telling me. I'm so conflicted. Its like theres a spiderweb of potential problems. Like if I remove the wrong strand the whole thing will come down. Then I think, wait, thats not how spiderwebs work, you can take out a strand and the rest of it is intact still, thats why the designed the internet around spiderwebs. So then that confuses me further. I don't know, I was trying to do some soul searching on last night and I don't really think I came to any answers. I took a shower and was thought "its been a really long time since I sung in the shower." And then thought "that is the saddest thing I've ever said." And I know I thought it and didn't say it, but thats my thought quote. Then I was sitting with my head hanging over my arms and thinking and wishing there was some sort of a sign that would lead me to an answer and I looked down, and I swear to god, the dripping water from my hair had made a perfect little frowning face on my forearm. Four smaller dots of water for the mouth with two bigger ones for the eyes. And then I moved my arm and the left "eye" ran down my arm and I watched this sad little face on my arm shed a single tear. I don't know if that was a sign, and it certainly didn't shed much light on the situation, and I know it didn't help anything.
Fuck, good lord, I was getting pissy today, and yesterday. I've just kind of been in a bad mood for the last couple of days and I think it has a lot to do with not being able to get my life moving forward. I also think it has a lot to do with finals. I hear people say how hard finals are being on them, and usually I think I hold up pretty well comparitively, but this year I've just kind of hit a wall. But I'm getting there, I've got work left to do, but I have till next monday for a big project, so that will be enough time. But good lord, I just looked at my final schedule and it came to my attention that three out of the four I still have to take are at 7:30 in the fucking morning. Three of them. Three of those mother fuckers at 7:30. And two of them are this week. Oh, that makes me feel so good, right now. Fuck. I don't have to do anything but show up for one of them, but shit, I still have to show up. The other one I have a fucking test. And a portfolio due. Such rubbish. At least I don't have to worry about the third early one till next week. That doesn't really help me all that much. But at least that one is for my 8am class, at least that one makes sense. I have to show up at 7:30 for a class that doesn't normally start till 11. Lame! God, it will be so nice to be out of this semester, it has been a pisser. It feels like its been going on forever. And ever. And ever. And ever.
And ever.
I really want to be done. Maybe I'll just start staying up all night so that I can make all my early finals and I'll be wide awake since I've been up all night drinking coffee and playing video games and everyone will be all like "oh, I'm so tired" and I'll be all ready to go and I'll laugh at them for not being as cool as me. Of course, the last twenty times I've tried to pull an all-nighter I end up getting bored and tired around 3:30 then I fall asleep and sleep through my classes. So maybe that isn't the best idea. But it could work, I could start tonight, and then just go for a week on a really weird schedule and then I'd be done and it wouldn't involve me dragging my sorry ass out of bed at the break of fucking dawn. Maybe I should put some more thought into this.
We've once again come to the end of my blog. Another long rambling post. That really accomplished nothing. And pretty much just bitched about a couple of things that no one but me would ever care about. So another successful posting for me.
Friday, December 08, 2006
This thing must be
I hate the near end of the semester. Usually by this time I've been mentally checked out for over a month and I have more crap that I have to get done than at any other point in the semester. The real pisser is when you get to that point at the end and look at everything you have left to do and you remember that you have had many of the assignments since the beginning of the semester, and the putting of them off has finally caught up with you. Like a bastard child, it always seems to find you at the worst point in your life.
Josh recommended Trans-Siberian Orchastra to me after my last post, and I'm listening to them now, and I have to say, I really am enjoying them, especailly "Mephistopheles' Return," which I am listening to now. They sort of remind me of Tenacious D, just because of that bravado and passion for something that you can tell they are just having a really good time with. It makes me smile.
I've been thinking about why I havn't had a girlfriend for so long and I got to thinking about the nature of myself and of relationships. I've become such a loner since I've gone to college, and really the seeds of lonerdom where there long before college, going back even to elementary school. But now I just don't see people as often as I used to and it makes me notice how much more time I am spending by myself. It occured to me that the reason I may not have a girlfriend was, well, the obvious not sociallizing with people, but more than that it has more to do with me never really being properly socialized. I'm kind of like a dog that was raised on the streets for the first couple years of its life then sent to live with a nice family. Even though I can adapt to the nice home environment, I still shy away from people and hide when company comes over. The dog in me still senses danger when there isn't any. I don't know, my family is a bit strange, I don't think any of us really knows any of the others. Were all isolated, and I think I picked up on that at a young age and just stayed away from lots of people, learned to be comfortable around myself. It creates problems for me when I do have problems because even though I've been trying to work on asking people to help me with my problems, I still have a very closed off nature to my emotions. I see another dog running around the neighborhood and instead of running and playing with it I hide in a closet because it might kill me over some kibble. It sounds ridiculous, and people would probably just say get over it, but its hard to fight your nature. Ironically, the reason that whenever I post a blog I'm always talking about my emotional states is because I'm trying to get more comfortable with putting myself out there. I think I've mentioned it before on here, but these blogs are more for theoropy than they are for entertainment. I hope they can be enjoyable to read, but I understand that they probably seem a little dull and repedative most of the time. Whatever, it makes me feel better about myself and more comfortable around other people so a little bit of a dull post is just something you'll have to suffer through.
I was talking to my mom yesterday and she knows I hate wal-mart and she confesses to me when she shops at wal-mart. I'm slowly getting her to stop shopping there, and tell her all my anti-wal-mart facts whenever I have a chance. But last sunday I was up in Truckee for a dinner and a study group and the lady that lived there was talking about how hard the town has fought corporate interests trying to come into the town. and how successful they have been. They had all the business people in town fighting banded together against the places coming in and they have been winning and keeping Truckee unique and local. And I realized how much I really miss independant towns. Going to fallon the first thing you see now is the wal-mart, then you pass fast food resturants and walgreens and all that other crap, and the quant little town that was fallon is now just like every other town in the world, taken over by the same shops as every other town. It makes me really sad to not see the diversity that I once could have seen going from town to town. I try to shop independant whenever I can, but my main purchases are gas, groceries, and the books. I get the books at Sundance, but where can I get groceries thats independant in reno, I ask you? And gas? there are probably independant gas stations, but even then they are just selling corporate gas. I don't know, its frusterating. Its already at a point where every town looks almost identical, and pretty soon we are just going to have one uniform city, and everywhere we go it will be exactly the same. I need to start a coallation to retake the US in the name of independance and individuality.
Josh recommended Trans-Siberian Orchastra to me after my last post, and I'm listening to them now, and I have to say, I really am enjoying them, especailly "Mephistopheles' Return," which I am listening to now. They sort of remind me of Tenacious D, just because of that bravado and passion for something that you can tell they are just having a really good time with. It makes me smile.
I've been thinking about why I havn't had a girlfriend for so long and I got to thinking about the nature of myself and of relationships. I've become such a loner since I've gone to college, and really the seeds of lonerdom where there long before college, going back even to elementary school. But now I just don't see people as often as I used to and it makes me notice how much more time I am spending by myself. It occured to me that the reason I may not have a girlfriend was, well, the obvious not sociallizing with people, but more than that it has more to do with me never really being properly socialized. I'm kind of like a dog that was raised on the streets for the first couple years of its life then sent to live with a nice family. Even though I can adapt to the nice home environment, I still shy away from people and hide when company comes over. The dog in me still senses danger when there isn't any. I don't know, my family is a bit strange, I don't think any of us really knows any of the others. Were all isolated, and I think I picked up on that at a young age and just stayed away from lots of people, learned to be comfortable around myself. It creates problems for me when I do have problems because even though I've been trying to work on asking people to help me with my problems, I still have a very closed off nature to my emotions. I see another dog running around the neighborhood and instead of running and playing with it I hide in a closet because it might kill me over some kibble. It sounds ridiculous, and people would probably just say get over it, but its hard to fight your nature. Ironically, the reason that whenever I post a blog I'm always talking about my emotional states is because I'm trying to get more comfortable with putting myself out there. I think I've mentioned it before on here, but these blogs are more for theoropy than they are for entertainment. I hope they can be enjoyable to read, but I understand that they probably seem a little dull and repedative most of the time. Whatever, it makes me feel better about myself and more comfortable around other people so a little bit of a dull post is just something you'll have to suffer through.
I was talking to my mom yesterday and she knows I hate wal-mart and she confesses to me when she shops at wal-mart. I'm slowly getting her to stop shopping there, and tell her all my anti-wal-mart facts whenever I have a chance. But last sunday I was up in Truckee for a dinner and a study group and the lady that lived there was talking about how hard the town has fought corporate interests trying to come into the town. and how successful they have been. They had all the business people in town fighting banded together against the places coming in and they have been winning and keeping Truckee unique and local. And I realized how much I really miss independant towns. Going to fallon the first thing you see now is the wal-mart, then you pass fast food resturants and walgreens and all that other crap, and the quant little town that was fallon is now just like every other town in the world, taken over by the same shops as every other town. It makes me really sad to not see the diversity that I once could have seen going from town to town. I try to shop independant whenever I can, but my main purchases are gas, groceries, and the books. I get the books at Sundance, but where can I get groceries thats independant in reno, I ask you? And gas? there are probably independant gas stations, but even then they are just selling corporate gas. I don't know, its frusterating. Its already at a point where every town looks almost identical, and pretty soon we are just going to have one uniform city, and everywhere we go it will be exactly the same. I need to start a coallation to retake the US in the name of independance and individuality.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Christmas at Ground Zero
Right now I am listening to metal versions of christmas songs. Including such classics as "Silent Night (Rocks!)" and "Another Rock and Roll Christmas." Normally I stay away from christmas. I was really planning on doing the same thing this year, but I don't know. Last year I remember I took my last final of the semester and as I walked back to my car I felt a little light headed. By the time I got up the stairs to my apartment I was so dizzy I could barely stand up. It was about five pm and I walked in my room, fell onto my bed and slept for the next fourteen hours. I awoke feeling refreshed, not entirely, but enough to drive to fallon, where I was attending my mothers cancer surgery the next morning. We got her home after the surgery and I slept for another ten hours, waking up and trying to help my sister with my mom other things that had to be done. I was driving around town smoking as fast as I could and blasting "All Around the World" by ATC and pretending not to be sick since my mom was really the one that was sick. And she had to go back in for another surgery and I sat in the waiting room playing rummy with my dad and sister. As soon as the surgeon came in, who, by the way, looks and acts a helluva lot like The Todd on Scrubs, and let us know my mom was okay I went in and visited, then my sister went in to say hi and I got in my car and drove home, where I ended up in bed for the next week. I don't really remember christmas last year. I remember sitting by a tree and handing presents that to my family that I had unceromoniously drapped wrapping paper on since I was too tired to wrap them. I remember that as my family ate traditional christmas foods I stuggled to get down a couple of swedish fish, which by the way are not that tasty when you have to swallow them without chewing because when they get stuck to your teeth you don't have the energy to get them off. And then I slept. And I slept. And somewhere around the 29th I got up and walked downstairs and saw my mom up and around and gave her a hug and told her I was going out for a couple of hours. And I drove around listening to ATC and smoking as fast as I could and thanking christ that christmas was only once a year.
So I suppose the reason I'm not really dreading christmas this year is because I did miss it last year. But I don't know. When I was battling with the forces of christians and trying desperately to seperate myself from them I saw christmas not only as something I didn't want any part of because of the religious conotations, but I also used it as a focul point for what I saw as everything that was wrong with their religion. The pure marketing, the shop till you drop, the only time in the year when people are nice to poor people. I remember reading an article around that time that said that people were actually bitching at soup kitchens because the kitchens wouldn't let them volunteer on thanksgiving because they had too many people signed up already, and the kitchens suggestion that they come by almost any other day of the year to help out. People didn't like that idea. The point is, there is a lot wrong with the religious part of the holiday, but according to some people jesus was born in july and the only reason we celebrate it in december is because it was the big pagen, or whatever they were called, druids maybe, celebration time. So they just changed the name and said it was about christ now and to deal with it. Now I suppose thats what I'm doing. I'm just going to celebrate it and forget about the reasons other people are celebrating it and they can deal with it and I can deal with it and everyone can deal with everyhing.
This Metal Christmas album isn't very good. I was browsing around the torrents today and I came across an album called "Impeach My Bush" and the band name sounded familiar to me and I knew I had at least one or two of their songs and I downloaded it and forgot about it till it was done then threw it on and in the first song this fake gangster-rapping female voice is talking about how sex is awesome and if they don't like it they can "Impeach My Bush." Well, the genius of this, and believe me, you have no way of seeing this coming, the amazing thing was that at one point near the end of the 49 second song, they cut out the "My" so she was saying "Impeach Bush!" I tell you, I never saw that coming, no sir. Of course, after that 49 seconds of confusion I looked down the list to see what other songs of theirs I had and I remembered suddenly why the band Peaches sounded so familiar. "Suckin' on my titties like you wanted me, calling me all the time... What else is in the Teaches of Peaches? Huh? What?"
You know, its pretty popular to dis the president these days, and I'm all for that, but at the same time I'm wondering what the fuck is wrong with people? Honestly, he's doing the exact same thing now that he's been doing since the beginning and its only now that its getting popular to not like him? Right after 9/11 I checked some of my favorite Bush bashing sites and most of them said "this site has been taken down out of respect for blahdeeblah." I don't know how those sentances ended, I stopped reading after took down. But I was telling the computer not to do that to me. I was telling it "this is the time when we need to be most mocking Bush!" Because I knew, and I was 17 and I hadn't been paying any attention to politics for more than a year at that point, but I knew that it was going to be more important to keep the government in check back then than it would be later. Shit, if people were as pissed off at him for not preventing it instead of stanind behind him then we wouldn't be in the mess were in now, and with any luck neither kerry nor bush would be in the white house right now. But I'm as much to blame as anyone else, I suppose. I didn't start an anti-bush campaign at the time. Of course, had I done it it wouldn't have matter because no one would have been paying attention to it. Unless I really pissed people off with it and then it became a big controversy. Okay, so I should have done something back then, and it may have made a difference. And it may not, but I won't know now so all I can do is bitch. Of course, if I as a high school student with no real background in politics or journalism, and no national forum (other than the internet) to go after the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, had little chance of doing anything. But if CNN, if NBC, if all those other fuckers had been questioning him then like they were supposed to be because the media is supposed to act as a watchdog for the government then we could have stopped the Iraq invasion before it began. Fuck, on bush's watch thousands of people are killed in two of the nations biggest financial symbols and everyone lines up behind him? What is with that? Seriously, what is with that? Because it doesn't make a lot of sense. Listen, if I were in charge of graveyard security at a mall and someone drilled a whole through the wall and walked into Macy's and stole thousands of dollars worth of jewels or something people wouldn't be saying "we need to stand behind this security guard in these confusing times." Yeah, I'd be fired, or suspended, or otherwise penalized. I certainly wouldn't have the highest approval rating of my career right after it happened. God, sometimes I wonder if we humans even understand the concept of democracy. Maybe we are just followers. Something bad happens and we hide behind the guy who has the most guns. Makes sense, but it doesn't really help to create a good society.
Thinking back on where this blog started and where that last paragraph ended I realize that I'm only a few cliches away from having an Ultimate Blog. Lets see, I've already got a holiday story (which also counts as current events right now), a family sickness, a personal sickness, a political rant, and a discussion of new music. What am I missing?
So there is this girl... okay, I'm too tired to go much further with this blog joke right now to really go for the whole "girl lamenting" section. Plus, I can't really have the Ultimate Blog without talking about suicide and how I was totally snubbed at the movies by Beccy even though she was with my ex and, oh my god, did you see what she was wearing? I could have died! Oh, I know, bleh! etc. Also I need to add more :)'s. Or maybe some *<8-} (clown!). Okay, thats enough.
So I suppose the reason I'm not really dreading christmas this year is because I did miss it last year. But I don't know. When I was battling with the forces of christians and trying desperately to seperate myself from them I saw christmas not only as something I didn't want any part of because of the religious conotations, but I also used it as a focul point for what I saw as everything that was wrong with their religion. The pure marketing, the shop till you drop, the only time in the year when people are nice to poor people. I remember reading an article around that time that said that people were actually bitching at soup kitchens because the kitchens wouldn't let them volunteer on thanksgiving because they had too many people signed up already, and the kitchens suggestion that they come by almost any other day of the year to help out. People didn't like that idea. The point is, there is a lot wrong with the religious part of the holiday, but according to some people jesus was born in july and the only reason we celebrate it in december is because it was the big pagen, or whatever they were called, druids maybe, celebration time. So they just changed the name and said it was about christ now and to deal with it. Now I suppose thats what I'm doing. I'm just going to celebrate it and forget about the reasons other people are celebrating it and they can deal with it and I can deal with it and everyone can deal with everyhing.
This Metal Christmas album isn't very good. I was browsing around the torrents today and I came across an album called "Impeach My Bush" and the band name sounded familiar to me and I knew I had at least one or two of their songs and I downloaded it and forgot about it till it was done then threw it on and in the first song this fake gangster-rapping female voice is talking about how sex is awesome and if they don't like it they can "Impeach My Bush." Well, the genius of this, and believe me, you have no way of seeing this coming, the amazing thing was that at one point near the end of the 49 second song, they cut out the "My" so she was saying "Impeach Bush!" I tell you, I never saw that coming, no sir. Of course, after that 49 seconds of confusion I looked down the list to see what other songs of theirs I had and I remembered suddenly why the band Peaches sounded so familiar. "Suckin' on my titties like you wanted me, calling me all the time... What else is in the Teaches of Peaches? Huh? What?"
You know, its pretty popular to dis the president these days, and I'm all for that, but at the same time I'm wondering what the fuck is wrong with people? Honestly, he's doing the exact same thing now that he's been doing since the beginning and its only now that its getting popular to not like him? Right after 9/11 I checked some of my favorite Bush bashing sites and most of them said "this site has been taken down out of respect for blahdeeblah." I don't know how those sentances ended, I stopped reading after took down. But I was telling the computer not to do that to me. I was telling it "this is the time when we need to be most mocking Bush!" Because I knew, and I was 17 and I hadn't been paying any attention to politics for more than a year at that point, but I knew that it was going to be more important to keep the government in check back then than it would be later. Shit, if people were as pissed off at him for not preventing it instead of stanind behind him then we wouldn't be in the mess were in now, and with any luck neither kerry nor bush would be in the white house right now. But I'm as much to blame as anyone else, I suppose. I didn't start an anti-bush campaign at the time. Of course, had I done it it wouldn't have matter because no one would have been paying attention to it. Unless I really pissed people off with it and then it became a big controversy. Okay, so I should have done something back then, and it may have made a difference. And it may not, but I won't know now so all I can do is bitch. Of course, if I as a high school student with no real background in politics or journalism, and no national forum (other than the internet) to go after the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, had little chance of doing anything. But if CNN, if NBC, if all those other fuckers had been questioning him then like they were supposed to be because the media is supposed to act as a watchdog for the government then we could have stopped the Iraq invasion before it began. Fuck, on bush's watch thousands of people are killed in two of the nations biggest financial symbols and everyone lines up behind him? What is with that? Seriously, what is with that? Because it doesn't make a lot of sense. Listen, if I were in charge of graveyard security at a mall and someone drilled a whole through the wall and walked into Macy's and stole thousands of dollars worth of jewels or something people wouldn't be saying "we need to stand behind this security guard in these confusing times." Yeah, I'd be fired, or suspended, or otherwise penalized. I certainly wouldn't have the highest approval rating of my career right after it happened. God, sometimes I wonder if we humans even understand the concept of democracy. Maybe we are just followers. Something bad happens and we hide behind the guy who has the most guns. Makes sense, but it doesn't really help to create a good society.
Thinking back on where this blog started and where that last paragraph ended I realize that I'm only a few cliches away from having an Ultimate Blog. Lets see, I've already got a holiday story (which also counts as current events right now), a family sickness, a personal sickness, a political rant, and a discussion of new music. What am I missing?
So there is this girl... okay, I'm too tired to go much further with this blog joke right now to really go for the whole "girl lamenting" section. Plus, I can't really have the Ultimate Blog without talking about suicide and how I was totally snubbed at the movies by Beccy even though she was with my ex and, oh my god, did you see what she was wearing? I could have died! Oh, I know, bleh! etc. Also I need to add more :)'s. Or maybe some *<8-} (clown!). Okay, thats enough.
Monday, November 27, 2006
I want to get a suit. I don't know if I'd wear it, or when I would, but since I was in high school I've wanted a plain black suit. Something like the Blues Brothers suits. I was watching something with a guy in a plain suit and thinking how cool it would be to get one of those. One day I went into a suit store and tried one on. I couldn't afford it though. The reason I want one is because its just so simple. Black and white, narrow tie, nothing fancy, no frills, but it still looks good on almost anyone that wears it. I like things being simple.
I am tentatively happy right now. Things tend to be looking up. A hint of a more optomistic time is in the air. Many times I think of myself as the type of person that is always looking at the downside, cynically thinking about the way things are going to be. But at my core I've always been insanely optomistic. There are more times than I care to recount when I've thought that everything was going to work out just fine. The real problem is that I think that all the time and then things do work out. As much as I want to become a pessimist I just can't make myself do it. Stupid life's been too good to me. I don't know whats wrong with me. I think I have some sort of romantic idea of being some cynic but in reality I'm completely the opposite. Maybe I think of the people who are always happy as crazy people. But things go my way when I need them to, and it makes me all the happier.
For some reason almost every Monday night I make coffee or drink three times the amount of soda I normally do even though I know that I have to go to bed early so that I can get up at some ungodly hour. And tonight was no exception. So I'm sitting here, already knowing that I have to be up in six hours and also knowing that I probably won't go to bed for another hour or two. I can understand morning people, they get up and get going and have the whole day ahead of them to do what makes them happy. But my best times in life are late at night. Theres a calm in the world at night that doesn't exist in the day. Its just a quiet, easy feeling. My mind wanders, I feel more like myself. I figure morning people must have times like this during the day, finding that calm in the hecticness of everything. And so I can understand not getting someone like me who likes the night. But then I wonder if we aren't just different breeds, morning people and night people. I wonder if people who enjoy the day ever really feel that same calmness that I'm feeling. That same sense of oneness with the world around them. I never really feel right unless I'm thinking abstractly about something or another, unless I can't think a sentance all the way through to the end. Even as I'm writing I'm just writing whatever the next word is, I really don't know half the time what I'm talking about, and if I try to stop and think about it I can't really keep my thoughts together and I have to start over because I won't know what I was talking about in the first place.
A song just came on my playlist that I've heard probably dozens of times over the years and I just realized that I have no idea who its by, I have no idea where it came from, and I have no idea what language its in. I think its French. I don't know though. The name of the file is just gibberish, and I don't mean its something I can't understand because its in another language I mean its gibberish. Someone playing with character map. Every letter has an umlat or an accent on it. I never really thought about how very strange it is that someone would name something like that. I don't think its French anymore. I don't know what it is. I don't think its French though.
I'm kind of fading now. It's probably for the best for me to try to get some sleep. What I hate more than anything though is laying in bed for hours and not being able to get to sleep. I hate that feeling. Thats another thing I like, not worring about going to bed at the same time everynight. If you have to get up early you have to go to bed at a certain time, but if you don't have anything to do till the afternoon you can just go to bed when it suits you to go to bed. Speaking of suits, I want a plain black one.
I am tentatively happy right now. Things tend to be looking up. A hint of a more optomistic time is in the air. Many times I think of myself as the type of person that is always looking at the downside, cynically thinking about the way things are going to be. But at my core I've always been insanely optomistic. There are more times than I care to recount when I've thought that everything was going to work out just fine. The real problem is that I think that all the time and then things do work out. As much as I want to become a pessimist I just can't make myself do it. Stupid life's been too good to me. I don't know whats wrong with me. I think I have some sort of romantic idea of being some cynic but in reality I'm completely the opposite. Maybe I think of the people who are always happy as crazy people. But things go my way when I need them to, and it makes me all the happier.
For some reason almost every Monday night I make coffee or drink three times the amount of soda I normally do even though I know that I have to go to bed early so that I can get up at some ungodly hour. And tonight was no exception. So I'm sitting here, already knowing that I have to be up in six hours and also knowing that I probably won't go to bed for another hour or two. I can understand morning people, they get up and get going and have the whole day ahead of them to do what makes them happy. But my best times in life are late at night. Theres a calm in the world at night that doesn't exist in the day. Its just a quiet, easy feeling. My mind wanders, I feel more like myself. I figure morning people must have times like this during the day, finding that calm in the hecticness of everything. And so I can understand not getting someone like me who likes the night. But then I wonder if we aren't just different breeds, morning people and night people. I wonder if people who enjoy the day ever really feel that same calmness that I'm feeling. That same sense of oneness with the world around them. I never really feel right unless I'm thinking abstractly about something or another, unless I can't think a sentance all the way through to the end. Even as I'm writing I'm just writing whatever the next word is, I really don't know half the time what I'm talking about, and if I try to stop and think about it I can't really keep my thoughts together and I have to start over because I won't know what I was talking about in the first place.
A song just came on my playlist that I've heard probably dozens of times over the years and I just realized that I have no idea who its by, I have no idea where it came from, and I have no idea what language its in. I think its French. I don't know though. The name of the file is just gibberish, and I don't mean its something I can't understand because its in another language I mean its gibberish. Someone playing with character map. Every letter has an umlat or an accent on it. I never really thought about how very strange it is that someone would name something like that. I don't think its French anymore. I don't know what it is. I don't think its French though.
I'm kind of fading now. It's probably for the best for me to try to get some sleep. What I hate more than anything though is laying in bed for hours and not being able to get to sleep. I hate that feeling. Thats another thing I like, not worring about going to bed at the same time everynight. If you have to get up early you have to go to bed at a certain time, but if you don't have anything to do till the afternoon you can just go to bed when it suits you to go to bed. Speaking of suits, I want a plain black one.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
A posting thingy
Since I last bitched about my computer crapping out it got worse. And I paid a large fee to try to fix it. Now my computer is somewhat more functional, but it still doesn't work the way I want it to. To tell you how bad it is, I'm writing this in IE, not Firefox. Firefox does not want to work with my system anymore. Also, normally I'd be listening to my music right now, but iTunes isn't working on my computer either. I may have fixed the root of the problem for iTunes, but I havn't reinstalled it. I guess I just don't want to think that it may not work if I reinstall it. But I'll get it going soon, I suppose. No reason to not listen to music just because my computer has taken a turn for the worse.
I'm officially burnt out of school now. I've been going four days a week since early July, with only a week long break in the middle. On the up side I should be able to graduate next semester. On the downside, I hate my fucking classes. I found out I have to take two more crap classes, by which I mean low-level classes that are going to teach me what I already know and are going to bring my GPA down because I don't care enough about them to show up for class and do the homework. Mind numbing classes, thats probably a better way to describe them.
I havn't written much in the last couple of weeks. Not just here, but in my own writing. I go through phases with it. Somone came in to give a presentation about something in one of my classes today and he mentioned that he had published a book in high school and he just published another one. Its impressive, no doubt, but there are just those people out there I guess. The thing it got me thinking about is if I'm ever going to really be one of those people that can actually write something and put everything into it and really create something. This person, who was probably about the same age as me, had all ready put the time into creating two books, and I just wondered if I was ever going to have that dedication. Maybe not. I don't know, I'd like to think I do. I hope that I'm just not there yet. I hope that I'll get there.
Lately whenever anyone starts asking me what I want to do after college I tell them that I want to open a comic book shop. I don't know if I ever will open a shop, but it is something that I have thought about doing since I was in junior high. My mom told me that she heard some where that when you have a big commitment sort of idea that you should let it nest inside of you for 9 months and then see if you still want to go through with it. I've wanted to do it for, lets say, 10 years now, so I guess I should have made a decision on it by now. But in reality it was never anything that I could put any serious consideration into until recently. Something about graduation being around the corner got me thinking about it in real terms. Getting a business plan, getting the money, getting a location, getting the comics. Since it seems like a much more possible reality I have decided to give it the nine months that my mom suggested, mostly because I'll still be in college for about six months anyway. I don't know how to really think about it really. I mention it to random people sometimes just to see what sort of reaction I get. Most people seem impressed, or surprised. But mostly positive feedback. So who knows, maybe next year we'll all be hanging out at my shop and I'll be telling you all to buy something or get out.
So since that last paragraph I have reinstalled iTunes, and it is working pretty well, although there is some strange lag going on. I think it will take care of itself in the next few moments. There it goes.
Did you know that Boy scouts have Copywrite Protection Merit Badges now? I wonder if they are trying to institutionalize children? Probably not, maybe its just a coincidence.
If you have some time to relax coming up I would suggest that you pick up a copy of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon. It is currently in contention for my favorite book, I would need to reread both of them to really decide (my current favorite is Catch-22, which I also suggest everyone reads). On a side note, I just checked on Amazon and they have tons of used copies of Kavalier and Clay as low as $1.37, so you really can't go wrong. Anyway, go forth, read!
I'm officially burnt out of school now. I've been going four days a week since early July, with only a week long break in the middle. On the up side I should be able to graduate next semester. On the downside, I hate my fucking classes. I found out I have to take two more crap classes, by which I mean low-level classes that are going to teach me what I already know and are going to bring my GPA down because I don't care enough about them to show up for class and do the homework. Mind numbing classes, thats probably a better way to describe them.
I havn't written much in the last couple of weeks. Not just here, but in my own writing. I go through phases with it. Somone came in to give a presentation about something in one of my classes today and he mentioned that he had published a book in high school and he just published another one. Its impressive, no doubt, but there are just those people out there I guess. The thing it got me thinking about is if I'm ever going to really be one of those people that can actually write something and put everything into it and really create something. This person, who was probably about the same age as me, had all ready put the time into creating two books, and I just wondered if I was ever going to have that dedication. Maybe not. I don't know, I'd like to think I do. I hope that I'm just not there yet. I hope that I'll get there.
Lately whenever anyone starts asking me what I want to do after college I tell them that I want to open a comic book shop. I don't know if I ever will open a shop, but it is something that I have thought about doing since I was in junior high. My mom told me that she heard some where that when you have a big commitment sort of idea that you should let it nest inside of you for 9 months and then see if you still want to go through with it. I've wanted to do it for, lets say, 10 years now, so I guess I should have made a decision on it by now. But in reality it was never anything that I could put any serious consideration into until recently. Something about graduation being around the corner got me thinking about it in real terms. Getting a business plan, getting the money, getting a location, getting the comics. Since it seems like a much more possible reality I have decided to give it the nine months that my mom suggested, mostly because I'll still be in college for about six months anyway. I don't know how to really think about it really. I mention it to random people sometimes just to see what sort of reaction I get. Most people seem impressed, or surprised. But mostly positive feedback. So who knows, maybe next year we'll all be hanging out at my shop and I'll be telling you all to buy something or get out.
So since that last paragraph I have reinstalled iTunes, and it is working pretty well, although there is some strange lag going on. I think it will take care of itself in the next few moments. There it goes.
Did you know that Boy scouts have Copywrite Protection Merit Badges now? I wonder if they are trying to institutionalize children? Probably not, maybe its just a coincidence.
If you have some time to relax coming up I would suggest that you pick up a copy of "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay" by Michael Chabon. It is currently in contention for my favorite book, I would need to reread both of them to really decide (my current favorite is Catch-22, which I also suggest everyone reads). On a side note, I just checked on Amazon and they have tons of used copies of Kavalier and Clay as low as $1.37, so you really can't go wrong. Anyway, go forth, read!
Friday, October 27, 2006
To rock around
My computer crashed. Well, more accurately, I crashed my computer. It's a pisser. Not because I can't get it working now (I'm using it right now, yea!), but rather because I lost a year and a half worth of journals that I kept for myself, and because I lost all the fragments of stories I was (at one point or another) working on. I have all the full stories saved on the internet in case of incident, but not the fragments. It's really not that bad, though. It's like starting a new character in an RPG. You don't have all the high level stats or all the cool weapons, but you know where to get them. It's a fresh start. And maybe it really is a good time to start over. That is my optimism, at least. I guess that is really how I deal with loss. I just shrug and say "better get going on going forward, than." I don't know. I'm done to one Grandparent in my family now and I've barely shed a tear for any of them. I've often wondered if there was something wrong with me because I wasn't that sad at their death, but then I realized that that is just how I deal with it. Time to move on, forget about the past. Maybe that means that there really is something wrong with me, but at the same time I think that it is better than most people deal with death. When I die, and hopefully that won't be for a very, very long time, but when I do die I don't want everyone all sad and unable to move on. Life moves quick, even if your someone like me that spends most of their time by themselves reading and pondering the nature of the world, and its better to get going forward than to lament the people that have come before you and live in that sad state of knowing that they are gone forever. They are gone, they aren't coming back. It's sad, and it can be lonely, but you have to press forward, you have to make due with what is left because that is really, really all there is.
So me loosing some documents on my computer doesn't really compare to the loss of life. I know that. But I think the comparison is there. People who can't stand loss can't stand loss. It doesn't really matter what it is, all that matters is how they deal with the loss. I don't know, its a strange cycle, the circle of life, as it were. Its something we all have to deal with more than we would probably like in our lives. I'm just trying to put mine in perspective.
I did almost nothing today. I didn't read, I didn't write. I played some video games, I watched some DVD's, I slept. It was such an unproductive day that I felt that I had to have worked at it to make it so unproductive. Laziness is an art form.
I need to write a story for my class my Monday. I have the weekend to work on it, but I have some other homework to work on as well. More so now that I've lost my documents. I think I will write a spooky Halloween story. We were talking in my creative writing class about what the point of being a writer was. The prof was saying that if you didn't love it, you just couldn't do it. But he also said that if he hadn't gotten a book published when he did he probably would have given up too. So its a lot of luck, there is skill, there is talent. But a lot of luck. Before I was always trying to write things that proved I had the talent, that with a little honing in on my skills and a little bit of luck I was going to be a great. But thinking about what he was saying, and thinking about my own desire to write, and thinking about everything that makes me want to think of myself as a writer I realized that I am just going to write things that I enjoy writing. I hate going back, I hate revision. I think that is why I won't ever be able to be a great writer. I love just going with whatever I said the first time and whatever poor word choice and gramatical error that entails. Really, my brain works fast, and I can't ever hope to write fast enough to keep up with it. A great story idea will become old news after a day or two. Even if I wrote non-stop I would never keep up with everything that is going on in my head. So I think that is why I really hate revision, and that is why I just want to have fun with my writing, which is why I want to write a Halloween story. I came up with the idea this afternoon and didn't get around to writing it but I think that I will write it tomorrow and then just be done with it, although I would have to revise it for the sake of a grade in that class, I think I could have some fun revising something that didn't really mean a whole lot more to me than a few hours of typing. I don't know if any of this is really making sense to anyone else, I just realized. I should probably move onto the next topic.
I think a lot about our world and how it would be if I was someone (or I met someone) that grew up in the 18th century in the pre-U.S. and how anyone from them would relate to our world. Microwaves, TVs, Refrigerators, Computers, the internet? Those things would seem completely alien. But then I think, well, they are simple enough in concept and conceptualization, they are things that are made to interface well with users. You give someone a few months to get used to the "dialect" that we use now a days and give them a few crash courses and they would get used to our technology with no problem. That is a comforting thought to me, I don't know why. I think it is because I sometimes worry that humans are moving further and further away from their roots and that we are living in a society that no one in any other time could ever dream of living in and then I think, well, yeah, they may not be able to dream of living in it because they don't have the reference points, but once they were giving those reference points they could assimilate pretty easily. It just makes me feel more connected to the past maybe, I don't know. Anyway, I like the idea.
Enough rambling for one night, I will try to be more on the ball and update this once/twice a week as I was trying to do earlier. But don't hold me to that.
So me loosing some documents on my computer doesn't really compare to the loss of life. I know that. But I think the comparison is there. People who can't stand loss can't stand loss. It doesn't really matter what it is, all that matters is how they deal with the loss. I don't know, its a strange cycle, the circle of life, as it were. Its something we all have to deal with more than we would probably like in our lives. I'm just trying to put mine in perspective.
I did almost nothing today. I didn't read, I didn't write. I played some video games, I watched some DVD's, I slept. It was such an unproductive day that I felt that I had to have worked at it to make it so unproductive. Laziness is an art form.
I need to write a story for my class my Monday. I have the weekend to work on it, but I have some other homework to work on as well. More so now that I've lost my documents. I think I will write a spooky Halloween story. We were talking in my creative writing class about what the point of being a writer was. The prof was saying that if you didn't love it, you just couldn't do it. But he also said that if he hadn't gotten a book published when he did he probably would have given up too. So its a lot of luck, there is skill, there is talent. But a lot of luck. Before I was always trying to write things that proved I had the talent, that with a little honing in on my skills and a little bit of luck I was going to be a great. But thinking about what he was saying, and thinking about my own desire to write, and thinking about everything that makes me want to think of myself as a writer I realized that I am just going to write things that I enjoy writing. I hate going back, I hate revision. I think that is why I won't ever be able to be a great writer. I love just going with whatever I said the first time and whatever poor word choice and gramatical error that entails. Really, my brain works fast, and I can't ever hope to write fast enough to keep up with it. A great story idea will become old news after a day or two. Even if I wrote non-stop I would never keep up with everything that is going on in my head. So I think that is why I really hate revision, and that is why I just want to have fun with my writing, which is why I want to write a Halloween story. I came up with the idea this afternoon and didn't get around to writing it but I think that I will write it tomorrow and then just be done with it, although I would have to revise it for the sake of a grade in that class, I think I could have some fun revising something that didn't really mean a whole lot more to me than a few hours of typing. I don't know if any of this is really making sense to anyone else, I just realized. I should probably move onto the next topic.
I think a lot about our world and how it would be if I was someone (or I met someone) that grew up in the 18th century in the pre-U.S. and how anyone from them would relate to our world. Microwaves, TVs, Refrigerators, Computers, the internet? Those things would seem completely alien. But then I think, well, they are simple enough in concept and conceptualization, they are things that are made to interface well with users. You give someone a few months to get used to the "dialect" that we use now a days and give them a few crash courses and they would get used to our technology with no problem. That is a comforting thought to me, I don't know why. I think it is because I sometimes worry that humans are moving further and further away from their roots and that we are living in a society that no one in any other time could ever dream of living in and then I think, well, yeah, they may not be able to dream of living in it because they don't have the reference points, but once they were giving those reference points they could assimilate pretty easily. It just makes me feel more connected to the past maybe, I don't know. Anyway, I like the idea.
Enough rambling for one night, I will try to be more on the ball and update this once/twice a week as I was trying to do earlier. But don't hold me to that.
Friday, September 29, 2006
I wonder if he cares about anything else, or anyone
I think that the popularity of Star Wars can be attributed highly to the quotability of the lines. In New Hope, almost every line can be easily remembered and quoted, often out of context with substantial meaning. In the next two there are easily over a hundred quick quotes to pull out, not quite but the movies in whole aren't as quotable as the first one, although this does lend itself to better quotes when they are spaced out. I was thinking about what lines one could quote from the first three movies and the first thing that popped in my mind was Jar Jar. I would never actually quote Jarry, but his are the most easily remembered lines in the movies. I think this is why the new series failed to impress the previous fans. I just read a line in the book I'm reading that said something to the extent of "Repitition makes it real." I think it was the repitition of the lines, which lead to the repeadet watchings of, which lead to the obsession.
I had a couple of bad days this week. Today I just let myself play video games for hours so that I wouldn't have to deal with thinking for a while. The distance of the video games helped quite a bit. I've been going after this same type of girl for the last couple of years and yet never really actually getting anywhere with any of the ones that I find, which are rare little gems that occasionally drift my way. How gems drift I havn't the slightest. But I run into them from time to time and recently I found another and attacked the problem of these ellusive girls as head on as I could and it sort of backfired. I think I learned something from it though. I have a lot of mental blocks. I build things up in my head. I have a whole unspoken unknown to anyone but me subplot going between me and this version of the girl in my mind and I never actually want to do anything with the real person because it would screw up whatever I have going in my head. It sounds stupid, I just idealize certain women though and reality can never live up to it and I'm smart enough to know that so I just avoid reality, leaving me with a vein of regrets that runs deep. Head on is better, band-aid metaphor. Excuse me, adhesive strip metaphor.
I realized that the story I turned in to my creative writing class is going to get me in a lot of trouble. The biggest reason is that I feel it is going to be perceived somewhere between "pretty racist" and "get the fuck out of here you goddamn racist motherfucker." Its a surprisingly large scale between those two, though, so we'll see. Its not that I meant it to be racist, just the opposite. But then I didn't know how to do it without it being offensive. Really, really offensive. Cliche piled on stereotype offensive. I'm not really sure what I hpped to accomplish with the story. It was just one that wouldn't seem to go away, I had to finish it and I had to have some people read it and tell me what they thought. So we'll see. If you see paul yelling my name and holding a pitchfork than the lynch-mob has begun, make sure to get front row seats.
Taking a sip of my diet coke I scrolled through what I have talked about thus far in the blog. Its amazing that I can function as a person when my thoughts bounce so rapidly from one thing to another. I was playing Oblivion the other day and mike was watching and he had to keep prompting me as to what I needed to be doing, I would just be frolicing around talking to people and jumping up and down just a few minutes after I declared I was on my way to do something. Normally I don't have that mike voice reminding me what needs to get done. Its bizarre how the brain works, I have no ability to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes at a time and yet I have somehow managed to come almost all the way through college. I must be doing something right. Maybe I have add. Or ADD. Its weird how that works. Like if I said, dna, you'd be like "what" but if I said DNA you'd be like, "oh." The irony of losing track of what I was talking about while questioning my ability to stay focused is not lost on me. Maybe I don't have add.
Erasing a paragraph that once stood here I realized how far off topic I had gone in just a few short minutes. Somehow I was debating the essence of meaning while at the same time trying to nail down a daily schedual for myself that didn't involve a lot of wasted time. I think the two were in contradiction to each other.
I had a couple of bad days this week. Today I just let myself play video games for hours so that I wouldn't have to deal with thinking for a while. The distance of the video games helped quite a bit. I've been going after this same type of girl for the last couple of years and yet never really actually getting anywhere with any of the ones that I find, which are rare little gems that occasionally drift my way. How gems drift I havn't the slightest. But I run into them from time to time and recently I found another and attacked the problem of these ellusive girls as head on as I could and it sort of backfired. I think I learned something from it though. I have a lot of mental blocks. I build things up in my head. I have a whole unspoken unknown to anyone but me subplot going between me and this version of the girl in my mind and I never actually want to do anything with the real person because it would screw up whatever I have going in my head. It sounds stupid, I just idealize certain women though and reality can never live up to it and I'm smart enough to know that so I just avoid reality, leaving me with a vein of regrets that runs deep. Head on is better, band-aid metaphor. Excuse me, adhesive strip metaphor.
I realized that the story I turned in to my creative writing class is going to get me in a lot of trouble. The biggest reason is that I feel it is going to be perceived somewhere between "pretty racist" and "get the fuck out of here you goddamn racist motherfucker." Its a surprisingly large scale between those two, though, so we'll see. Its not that I meant it to be racist, just the opposite. But then I didn't know how to do it without it being offensive. Really, really offensive. Cliche piled on stereotype offensive. I'm not really sure what I hpped to accomplish with the story. It was just one that wouldn't seem to go away, I had to finish it and I had to have some people read it and tell me what they thought. So we'll see. If you see paul yelling my name and holding a pitchfork than the lynch-mob has begun, make sure to get front row seats.
Taking a sip of my diet coke I scrolled through what I have talked about thus far in the blog. Its amazing that I can function as a person when my thoughts bounce so rapidly from one thing to another. I was playing Oblivion the other day and mike was watching and he had to keep prompting me as to what I needed to be doing, I would just be frolicing around talking to people and jumping up and down just a few minutes after I declared I was on my way to do something. Normally I don't have that mike voice reminding me what needs to get done. Its bizarre how the brain works, I have no ability to focus on one thing for more than a few minutes at a time and yet I have somehow managed to come almost all the way through college. I must be doing something right. Maybe I have add. Or ADD. Its weird how that works. Like if I said, dna, you'd be like "what" but if I said DNA you'd be like, "oh." The irony of losing track of what I was talking about while questioning my ability to stay focused is not lost on me. Maybe I don't have add.
Erasing a paragraph that once stood here I realized how far off topic I had gone in just a few short minutes. Somehow I was debating the essence of meaning while at the same time trying to nail down a daily schedual for myself that didn't involve a lot of wasted time. I think the two were in contradiction to each other.
Friday, September 08, 2006
Who cares about Dwight Dortch
Today in the store I walked past the row of frozen piazzas right after turning the corner from a display of huge bags of M&M's and ice cream scoops and began to wonder how the hell anyone was supposed to be thin in our society. I mean, I understand it if you want to get thin because you want to compete in sports and need to be in shape, or if you are trying to attract more mates to you, but what if you just want to lead a somewhat more healthy lifestyle and to not have to feel like crap about yourself? That isn't to say that I wouldn't want the ability to attract a girlfriend, it simply means that it isn't high enough on my motivational scale to actually work my ass off five days a week and eat next to nothing just so that I can achieve that end.
Recently I was hearing that something like half of, or more than half of, Americans are overweight now. I think a large part of the reason for me to suddenly want to lose weight is so that I am not in the majority. I've never had any interest in being in the majority. I suppose it has something to do with my desire to think for myself. Most people want to think for themselves, and do, and still fall into the majority, which is fine. But if you want to keep yourself thinking for yourself you have to make sure you are on the outside of what the majority opinion is. Not because it is always wrong, but because once you let yourself fall into being constantly around people who share your exact opinions on social/political/religious ideals it becomes irrelevant to think of those ideals critically. There is no longer that need to think about why you believe what you believe, and you fall into the trap of just going along with the crowd. It's a dangerous thing that. "But Matt," you may be asking, "if everyone thought that way, then it would be a majority opinion and then what would you do?" But if everyone thought that way then there would simply cease to be a majority opinion. If everyone thought the way I do then there would be about 18 different political parties with an equal chance in every election, if everyone thought that way we wouldn't have to believe in one thing just because we believe in another.
For example, I was told to take a test that would tell me if I was a conservative or a liberal. I refused to take the test, the main reason being that they had a scale of 1-4 and the option to neither agree nor disagree wasn't there. Secondly, the test was set up in such a stupid way that you couldn't possibly get a "liberal" or "conservative" score, because the questions were set up in a way as in order for you to get those scores you would have to both hate change and love change, and a few other stupid ass things that would but you in direct conflict with yourself. Also, since the first 6 questions were clearly the "conservative" questions and the second 6 clearly the "liberal" questions, it was very easy to make your score whatever you wanted it to be. You have to throw people off otherwise you are just asking them to tell you what they think they are rather then to test what they are. Okay, I got way off topic in this paragraph, so I will bring it back to what I was talking about. Being a nation as we are, we are forced to think of ourselves in two categories, liberal or conservative. There was no 'moderate' score to that test, there was no 'green party' it was all just one or the other (I know green party is liberal, I was making a point). Since the 2004 elections I've felt like shit because I voted for John Kerry even though I really, really, really hated that guy. And honestly my vote could have gone towards a much more worthy cause of voting for a third party that just was trying to get enough votes to get on the ballot in the same way as the democrats and the republicans are. I hate the two party system so much, a three party system wouldn't be that much better, but at least you could get a lesser of three evils instead of a lesser of two evils.
Also, I really hate politicians. I mean, with a passion. And I don't mean just corrupt politicians or politicians that aren't in line with my beliefs, but I just can't believe that the people we are forced to vote for are the very people we should all hate the most. I'm sure everyones had experience with a moron that sucked up to everyone and got further than they should of just because they were so good at "playing the game" while dozens of more qualified, and much more dignified, people sat by because they refused to compromise themselves just to get ahead. These are the people that should be in office, not the idiots who know how to wear just the right color tie and when to fly their private jets to disaster zones to get some good PR. The people that should be in office are the people who probably are repelled at the very thought of being in office. We should make elections like jury duty. You register to vote and you go on a list, then you get picked out of a hat, they take a look at you and if there is no reason why you couldn't be mayor/senator/president you are thrown into it and serve for a couple of weeks or a month before we grab someone else off the street and force them to do it. Hey, it worked in Rome (Or ancient Greece, or somewhere. I didn't just come up with the idea is all I'm saying).
And if that isn't going to happen then we need a new election system. It came to me in a dream (actually a daydream, but close enough). Instead of voting for a person or even a party, the voters would go down to vote and get a ballot with about 30-40 different issues that are likely going to need to be dealt with by the government within the next term. We take a look at these issues, pick the ones we think are the most important, the ones that are least important, and the ones that could go either way. Then we get to our personal politics, with another series of questions that ask things like "abortions = good or bad (circle one)." We have the people who want to get elected do these same tests, maybe slightly different in that they would be looking for what they thought people cared the most about and what they would work the hardest for for the people instead of just personal politics. Once all the "ballots" are filled out they get tallied and the politician most in line with what people think and feel strongly about goes into office. Of course this system still needs some tweaking, but its just the starting idea here. And that way even if a total tool gets into office at least we know that he knows what people really care about and has at least claimed to do it. It would also be an effective way to stop the non-stop campaigning that goes on, and all the negative adds, which would be replaced with adds that were talking solely about issues and not about politicians. No more "Dwight Dortch is a man of the people, he's from Nevada, he's a really nice guy," no it would be "This nation is addicted to oil and we need to vote on the issue of electric cars and solar power" and things of that nature, because you wouldn't be selling a person you'd be selling an idea. Which one of those two quotes seems like it has more relevance to what really should be being talked about in a democracy? And who the fuck cares about Dwight Dortch!?
This proposal seems to work well in my mind because it takes the focus off politicians and turns it into real democracy in action(!) and allows people a more active rule in what they are voting for. I was thinking about a person, we'll call him Peter, who is a voter, and votes in every election, but not always for the same party. You see, Peter is an independent, but this doesn't mean that he doesn't have strong values. He has six prime values that are more often than not the deciding factors in elections. Peter is Pro-Gun Control, Pro-Environment, and Pro-Social Welfare. He is Anti-Big Government, Anti-Abortion, and Anti-Sexual Education (I realize that I am showing my colors a little bit here by giving all of his liberal parts the "pro" tag and the conservative ones the "anti" tag, but its not really meant to be mean, just to clarify the difference). Because of this Peter can't vote for one party over the other because although he is for half of their politics, he is against half of their politics as well. So who is he supposed to vote for? He has to vote for the person that represents the three parts of their party the best in his mind. But how does he know this? All he has to go on is this stupid little pissing contest of who can make themselves look the best in the spotlight. So more often than not he's really just voting for the politician that comes off the best in their ads and not the one that is 'most qualified' or really holds their beliefs better. Have you guessed who Peter is? He's middle America (shocking!). Middle America generally doesn't agree exactly with the two parties on everything, but they pick a side and go with it despite the fact that some of them may actually feel that abortions might be murder and don't really want them to be continued despite the fact that they also want to help the environment. Wait, no, despite? That can't be right, because those are totally different ideas. Shit, how did I make that mistake... oh yeah, those two issues are one in the same because all liberals and conservatives think the same way on every issue.
That's really all I've got to say on the subject for now. And I hope that this has been informative to anyone who wanted to know why I just don't give a shit about politics anymore. Its not that I don't care about society, but that I just fucking hate politicians.
Recently I was hearing that something like half of, or more than half of, Americans are overweight now. I think a large part of the reason for me to suddenly want to lose weight is so that I am not in the majority. I've never had any interest in being in the majority. I suppose it has something to do with my desire to think for myself. Most people want to think for themselves, and do, and still fall into the majority, which is fine. But if you want to keep yourself thinking for yourself you have to make sure you are on the outside of what the majority opinion is. Not because it is always wrong, but because once you let yourself fall into being constantly around people who share your exact opinions on social/political/religious ideals it becomes irrelevant to think of those ideals critically. There is no longer that need to think about why you believe what you believe, and you fall into the trap of just going along with the crowd. It's a dangerous thing that. "But Matt," you may be asking, "if everyone thought that way, then it would be a majority opinion and then what would you do?" But if everyone thought that way then there would simply cease to be a majority opinion. If everyone thought the way I do then there would be about 18 different political parties with an equal chance in every election, if everyone thought that way we wouldn't have to believe in one thing just because we believe in another.
For example, I was told to take a test that would tell me if I was a conservative or a liberal. I refused to take the test, the main reason being that they had a scale of 1-4 and the option to neither agree nor disagree wasn't there. Secondly, the test was set up in such a stupid way that you couldn't possibly get a "liberal" or "conservative" score, because the questions were set up in a way as in order for you to get those scores you would have to both hate change and love change, and a few other stupid ass things that would but you in direct conflict with yourself. Also, since the first 6 questions were clearly the "conservative" questions and the second 6 clearly the "liberal" questions, it was very easy to make your score whatever you wanted it to be. You have to throw people off otherwise you are just asking them to tell you what they think they are rather then to test what they are. Okay, I got way off topic in this paragraph, so I will bring it back to what I was talking about. Being a nation as we are, we are forced to think of ourselves in two categories, liberal or conservative. There was no 'moderate' score to that test, there was no 'green party' it was all just one or the other (I know green party is liberal, I was making a point). Since the 2004 elections I've felt like shit because I voted for John Kerry even though I really, really, really hated that guy. And honestly my vote could have gone towards a much more worthy cause of voting for a third party that just was trying to get enough votes to get on the ballot in the same way as the democrats and the republicans are. I hate the two party system so much, a three party system wouldn't be that much better, but at least you could get a lesser of three evils instead of a lesser of two evils.
Also, I really hate politicians. I mean, with a passion. And I don't mean just corrupt politicians or politicians that aren't in line with my beliefs, but I just can't believe that the people we are forced to vote for are the very people we should all hate the most. I'm sure everyones had experience with a moron that sucked up to everyone and got further than they should of just because they were so good at "playing the game" while dozens of more qualified, and much more dignified, people sat by because they refused to compromise themselves just to get ahead. These are the people that should be in office, not the idiots who know how to wear just the right color tie and when to fly their private jets to disaster zones to get some good PR. The people that should be in office are the people who probably are repelled at the very thought of being in office. We should make elections like jury duty. You register to vote and you go on a list, then you get picked out of a hat, they take a look at you and if there is no reason why you couldn't be mayor/senator/president you are thrown into it and serve for a couple of weeks or a month before we grab someone else off the street and force them to do it. Hey, it worked in Rome (Or ancient Greece, or somewhere. I didn't just come up with the idea is all I'm saying).
And if that isn't going to happen then we need a new election system. It came to me in a dream (actually a daydream, but close enough). Instead of voting for a person or even a party, the voters would go down to vote and get a ballot with about 30-40 different issues that are likely going to need to be dealt with by the government within the next term. We take a look at these issues, pick the ones we think are the most important, the ones that are least important, and the ones that could go either way. Then we get to our personal politics, with another series of questions that ask things like "abortions = good or bad (circle one)." We have the people who want to get elected do these same tests, maybe slightly different in that they would be looking for what they thought people cared the most about and what they would work the hardest for for the people instead of just personal politics. Once all the "ballots" are filled out they get tallied and the politician most in line with what people think and feel strongly about goes into office. Of course this system still needs some tweaking, but its just the starting idea here. And that way even if a total tool gets into office at least we know that he knows what people really care about and has at least claimed to do it. It would also be an effective way to stop the non-stop campaigning that goes on, and all the negative adds, which would be replaced with adds that were talking solely about issues and not about politicians. No more "Dwight Dortch is a man of the people, he's from Nevada, he's a really nice guy," no it would be "This nation is addicted to oil and we need to vote on the issue of electric cars and solar power" and things of that nature, because you wouldn't be selling a person you'd be selling an idea. Which one of those two quotes seems like it has more relevance to what really should be being talked about in a democracy? And who the fuck cares about Dwight Dortch!?
This proposal seems to work well in my mind because it takes the focus off politicians and turns it into real democracy in action(!) and allows people a more active rule in what they are voting for. I was thinking about a person, we'll call him Peter, who is a voter, and votes in every election, but not always for the same party. You see, Peter is an independent, but this doesn't mean that he doesn't have strong values. He has six prime values that are more often than not the deciding factors in elections. Peter is Pro-Gun Control, Pro-Environment, and Pro-Social Welfare. He is Anti-Big Government, Anti-Abortion, and Anti-Sexual Education (I realize that I am showing my colors a little bit here by giving all of his liberal parts the "pro" tag and the conservative ones the "anti" tag, but its not really meant to be mean, just to clarify the difference). Because of this Peter can't vote for one party over the other because although he is for half of their politics, he is against half of their politics as well. So who is he supposed to vote for? He has to vote for the person that represents the three parts of their party the best in his mind. But how does he know this? All he has to go on is this stupid little pissing contest of who can make themselves look the best in the spotlight. So more often than not he's really just voting for the politician that comes off the best in their ads and not the one that is 'most qualified' or really holds their beliefs better. Have you guessed who Peter is? He's middle America (shocking!). Middle America generally doesn't agree exactly with the two parties on everything, but they pick a side and go with it despite the fact that some of them may actually feel that abortions might be murder and don't really want them to be continued despite the fact that they also want to help the environment. Wait, no, despite? That can't be right, because those are totally different ideas. Shit, how did I make that mistake... oh yeah, those two issues are one in the same because all liberals and conservatives think the same way on every issue.
That's really all I've got to say on the subject for now. And I hope that this has been informative to anyone who wanted to know why I just don't give a shit about politics anymore. Its not that I don't care about society, but that I just fucking hate politicians.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Part Two
This is the third and hopefully last attempt at getting this part two out there. I wrote one when I was frusterated with life in general and the other ended up being a complete tangent that I felt was left better for another time, since I knew if I posted it I would never get back to the original problem that was vexing me last time I posted here.
Of course, this isn't going to be a direct sequel, as it were, to my last post. I've vented enough about my family for now, and therefore think its time to vent about myself a little more, thus keeping it close enough to be called part two.
After my last post I was thinking about my temperment and why I much more rarely seem to get pissed off at anyone or anything anymore. I actually meditated on it for a while, which was a trip because I hadn't done that for over a year. I don't know if I meditate in the way that monks and whohave you would teach it, but I just clear out my mind and go for that calm, trying to take a peek into whats really inside my head instead of just what comes out at the higher levels. I got snapped out of it the first time, not thinking I was in any sort of a trance and found a strange calm had completly washed over me, but my head was still swimming, so I went back inside my head and think I nodded off for a while. When I suddenly snapped back to reality it was right after some voice in my head said "Come with the question you've answered, leave with the question you've seeked." I have no idea what the hell that was about, maybe I was asleep or deep in trance, but either way thats what I came too with. I've been wondering about what it may have meant though, I mean, it sounds like something one of those zen people would say and yet who knows if its gibberish or not? Maybe its something I heard or read somewhere. Anyway, all I can read into it is that there is something about denile going on in my mind, which is something I've been wondering about for a long time.
You see, I'll tell people that I'm happy, but I'm not, and problably havn't been for a long time. When I came back and was calm I realized that the reason I don't get pissed off at people all the time now is because I've always just been mad at myself, and now my anger turns to depression when I feel it. I'll still get angry sometimes, but for the most part when I start having those things pop up I just get depressed. And then I'll eat, or I'll drink, or I'll smoke and brood about what I hate about my life. All my anger is turned inside, and when you add that whole thoughts that I must be denying something within myself it all sort of starts to make sense. But I've come to a conclusion, now brace yourselves, ready? Okay, I'm Fat.
I'll give you all a second to take that in.
Okay, apart from wanting to use the Family Guy quote there, I really do think that most of my problems can be traced back to a serious issue I have with my own weight. And I honestly do try to keep it at bay from time to time, but I never seem to be able to really lose the weight that I want to get rid of. When I look in the mirror I'll tell myself that its not too bad and that I'll eventually get to that point where I'm doing something about it, but I havn't gotten there yet, and I think that I need to take a stand and just be at the point where I am doing something about it rather than procrastinate, ignoring the obvious problem and imagining that its not really there, going on with my life like nothing was wrong. Paul and Tracy gave me "Silent Bob Speaks" for my birthday and I was reading about his weight problems (which he talks about with much more humor than I am, but he's funnier than I, so it's okay) and I realized that no one wants to think of their weight as a problem. No one wants to do anything about it because to do something about it is to admit that you have a problem with it. I think thats whats been my problem for a long time. When I was in San Diego I ended up watching an episode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" with a married couple losing some weight and for some reason that show really got to me and I started thinking seriously about my weight. I went and found a little electronic scale and stepped on it and all it said was "Err," which I assume means 'error' but could also be the scale straining against the massive weight that was placed on it (err.... god, get off! err!) I tried working out this summer, I tried to watch what I ate but I always fall back into my deviant ways in what most psychologists would probably call a "shame spiral" in which you relapse, and then, feeling bad about the relapse, you just continue the habit further because you feel like your such a fucking failure. Or something like that. And it is hard to change a life style, and to give up things we love (like food) in order to do something that doesn't seem to have a direct immediate effect on our health but will have effects latter, but hey, later is later man.
Anyway, I was thinking about this for the last week alot, and in the last few months I've been seriously thinking about how I am to go about losing the extra weight and I realized after reading Kevin Smith's article about it that the best way to go right now would be to go with my first instinct and talk about it openly in some way that I'm comfortable with, i.e. on my blog, where I can say whatever I want and not have to feel to bad about it.
So why now, all of a sudden? For one reason I made a goal a few years ago that I would be in a least moderatly good health when I left college, and secondly, my pants. When I first moved up to Reno four years ago my mom came in and took me shopping and I got a few shirts and about 6 pairs of pants. All the pants were the same size and all were the same company. They all fit then pretty good, maybe a little loose, but for the most part they fit well. Well, since then I'm sure I've put on a fair amount of weight, and maybe in my few spells of trying to diet and exercise lost a little and then regained it, but through it all I've worn those same pants, almost everyday, whenever you see me in jeans you can be sure they are one of those six pairs. But lately I've noticed that they are starting to pinch a little bit, and some pairs that I don't wear as frequently and thus don't stretch out are getting harder to zip. And I've said to myself "I'm not, under any circumstance, going to stop wearing these pants, and if I get to fat to wear them, there I can never go out in public because I won't be wearing any pants."
I've tried exercising, every couple of months I go at it for a few weeks or a month and then I loose interest in exercising and just stop doing it for a couple of months until I start feeling bad about it and go back for more, but the infrequency of it all isn't really helping me. So I'm not going to do that right now. I really think if I am to be serious about getting the weight off I need to do it in a way that I can keep up for long enough for it to actually do something. Which is why instead of just going hardcore to the gym for a few weeks and eating whatever the hell I want I am going to start with a diet. And to start it off with, as I've already decided and started to impliment, I am giving up fast food. Its a small gesture maybe, but I eat a ton of that crap, I mean, I'll sometimes eat only fast food for a week, well, I'll have one meal a day thats fast food and then I'll go home and snack on some crackers and cheese and drink some diet coke. The crackers and cheese and diet coke probably don't hurt too bad, but the fast food does bad. And when I'm not eating that I'll get a frozen pizza and eat a whole pizza in a day and top it off with some ice cream. A fucking wonderful habit that I am also breaking with my ban on fast food. I stopped eating fast food for a month and a little change when I first saw "Super-Size Me" and I don't know that I lost much weight but I started feeling a bit better, and my diet seemed to be a lot better. But at the same time, I know little about nutrition and I'm lazy about what I eat, which is why last time I went to the store I bought some PB&J and some cereal and non-fat milk and tried to make that more of my diet. Speaking of which, I believe I will make myself a PB&J right now...
Okay, I'm going to hold off on that because I need to leave the house in about fifteen minutes and I want to finish up before needing to slip just this part of my conversatation into part three.
I think what I am trying to get at with all this talk is just to let people see why I am worried about this and why I really want to loose some weight. I also am saying this in case you call and ask me to go to dinner or something and I sidestep the issue and say that I don't want to go to out because I have cramps or some shit like that, or maybe that I broke my leg and I'm also Polish, so I can't go out on (whatever day it is). Why Polish? I really don't know. But the thing is the fast food fast is only the first (hopefully) part of my planned diet. You see, like when scuba divers are coming to the surface and have to stop every ten feet or so to reclimatize themselves to the changing pressure, so am I trying to get to a point where I can break the surface and be eating well and exercising and really losing weight, and the first step is to cut a bulk of the junk food from my life, once thats gone we'll move on to trying to actually eat healthy, with fruits and vegetables and everything.
Most people make resolutions at the new year, when asked by Tracy last new years what my resolution was I said it was to "stop making resolutions." But really I just don't like new years resolutions, because the new year is too abstract for me. But I've made my own little resolution which is that by my 23rd birthday I will be healthier and lighter. Which is why I'm starting now, a few months ago I think I said to myself I need to lose 30 pounds by winter break, that probably won't happen, but we'll see, it could I suppose, but my goal now is at least 50 pounds gone by 8-31-07. And from there hopefully whatever more I need to lose to get down to my 'ideal weight.'
So, yeah, thers part two. I think next week I'll go back to some randam crap that I normally talk about, but there may be a part three in the next month or so. But look forward, for now, to me bitching about my classes and people in said classes as that will problably be my choice topic for the next couple of weeks, as it always is when I schools going.
Of course, this isn't going to be a direct sequel, as it were, to my last post. I've vented enough about my family for now, and therefore think its time to vent about myself a little more, thus keeping it close enough to be called part two.
After my last post I was thinking about my temperment and why I much more rarely seem to get pissed off at anyone or anything anymore. I actually meditated on it for a while, which was a trip because I hadn't done that for over a year. I don't know if I meditate in the way that monks and whohave you would teach it, but I just clear out my mind and go for that calm, trying to take a peek into whats really inside my head instead of just what comes out at the higher levels. I got snapped out of it the first time, not thinking I was in any sort of a trance and found a strange calm had completly washed over me, but my head was still swimming, so I went back inside my head and think I nodded off for a while. When I suddenly snapped back to reality it was right after some voice in my head said "Come with the question you've answered, leave with the question you've seeked." I have no idea what the hell that was about, maybe I was asleep or deep in trance, but either way thats what I came too with. I've been wondering about what it may have meant though, I mean, it sounds like something one of those zen people would say and yet who knows if its gibberish or not? Maybe its something I heard or read somewhere. Anyway, all I can read into it is that there is something about denile going on in my mind, which is something I've been wondering about for a long time.
You see, I'll tell people that I'm happy, but I'm not, and problably havn't been for a long time. When I came back and was calm I realized that the reason I don't get pissed off at people all the time now is because I've always just been mad at myself, and now my anger turns to depression when I feel it. I'll still get angry sometimes, but for the most part when I start having those things pop up I just get depressed. And then I'll eat, or I'll drink, or I'll smoke and brood about what I hate about my life. All my anger is turned inside, and when you add that whole thoughts that I must be denying something within myself it all sort of starts to make sense. But I've come to a conclusion, now brace yourselves, ready? Okay, I'm Fat.
I'll give you all a second to take that in.
Okay, apart from wanting to use the Family Guy quote there, I really do think that most of my problems can be traced back to a serious issue I have with my own weight. And I honestly do try to keep it at bay from time to time, but I never seem to be able to really lose the weight that I want to get rid of. When I look in the mirror I'll tell myself that its not too bad and that I'll eventually get to that point where I'm doing something about it, but I havn't gotten there yet, and I think that I need to take a stand and just be at the point where I am doing something about it rather than procrastinate, ignoring the obvious problem and imagining that its not really there, going on with my life like nothing was wrong. Paul and Tracy gave me "Silent Bob Speaks" for my birthday and I was reading about his weight problems (which he talks about with much more humor than I am, but he's funnier than I, so it's okay) and I realized that no one wants to think of their weight as a problem. No one wants to do anything about it because to do something about it is to admit that you have a problem with it. I think thats whats been my problem for a long time. When I was in San Diego I ended up watching an episode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" with a married couple losing some weight and for some reason that show really got to me and I started thinking seriously about my weight. I went and found a little electronic scale and stepped on it and all it said was "Err," which I assume means 'error' but could also be the scale straining against the massive weight that was placed on it (err.... god, get off! err!) I tried working out this summer, I tried to watch what I ate but I always fall back into my deviant ways in what most psychologists would probably call a "shame spiral" in which you relapse, and then, feeling bad about the relapse, you just continue the habit further because you feel like your such a fucking failure. Or something like that. And it is hard to change a life style, and to give up things we love (like food) in order to do something that doesn't seem to have a direct immediate effect on our health but will have effects latter, but hey, later is later man.
Anyway, I was thinking about this for the last week alot, and in the last few months I've been seriously thinking about how I am to go about losing the extra weight and I realized after reading Kevin Smith's article about it that the best way to go right now would be to go with my first instinct and talk about it openly in some way that I'm comfortable with, i.e. on my blog, where I can say whatever I want and not have to feel to bad about it.
So why now, all of a sudden? For one reason I made a goal a few years ago that I would be in a least moderatly good health when I left college, and secondly, my pants. When I first moved up to Reno four years ago my mom came in and took me shopping and I got a few shirts and about 6 pairs of pants. All the pants were the same size and all were the same company. They all fit then pretty good, maybe a little loose, but for the most part they fit well. Well, since then I'm sure I've put on a fair amount of weight, and maybe in my few spells of trying to diet and exercise lost a little and then regained it, but through it all I've worn those same pants, almost everyday, whenever you see me in jeans you can be sure they are one of those six pairs. But lately I've noticed that they are starting to pinch a little bit, and some pairs that I don't wear as frequently and thus don't stretch out are getting harder to zip. And I've said to myself "I'm not, under any circumstance, going to stop wearing these pants, and if I get to fat to wear them, there I can never go out in public because I won't be wearing any pants."
I've tried exercising, every couple of months I go at it for a few weeks or a month and then I loose interest in exercising and just stop doing it for a couple of months until I start feeling bad about it and go back for more, but the infrequency of it all isn't really helping me. So I'm not going to do that right now. I really think if I am to be serious about getting the weight off I need to do it in a way that I can keep up for long enough for it to actually do something. Which is why instead of just going hardcore to the gym for a few weeks and eating whatever the hell I want I am going to start with a diet. And to start it off with, as I've already decided and started to impliment, I am giving up fast food. Its a small gesture maybe, but I eat a ton of that crap, I mean, I'll sometimes eat only fast food for a week, well, I'll have one meal a day thats fast food and then I'll go home and snack on some crackers and cheese and drink some diet coke. The crackers and cheese and diet coke probably don't hurt too bad, but the fast food does bad. And when I'm not eating that I'll get a frozen pizza and eat a whole pizza in a day and top it off with some ice cream. A fucking wonderful habit that I am also breaking with my ban on fast food. I stopped eating fast food for a month and a little change when I first saw "Super-Size Me" and I don't know that I lost much weight but I started feeling a bit better, and my diet seemed to be a lot better. But at the same time, I know little about nutrition and I'm lazy about what I eat, which is why last time I went to the store I bought some PB&J and some cereal and non-fat milk and tried to make that more of my diet. Speaking of which, I believe I will make myself a PB&J right now...
Okay, I'm going to hold off on that because I need to leave the house in about fifteen minutes and I want to finish up before needing to slip just this part of my conversatation into part three.
I think what I am trying to get at with all this talk is just to let people see why I am worried about this and why I really want to loose some weight. I also am saying this in case you call and ask me to go to dinner or something and I sidestep the issue and say that I don't want to go to out because I have cramps or some shit like that, or maybe that I broke my leg and I'm also Polish, so I can't go out on (whatever day it is). Why Polish? I really don't know. But the thing is the fast food fast is only the first (hopefully) part of my planned diet. You see, like when scuba divers are coming to the surface and have to stop every ten feet or so to reclimatize themselves to the changing pressure, so am I trying to get to a point where I can break the surface and be eating well and exercising and really losing weight, and the first step is to cut a bulk of the junk food from my life, once thats gone we'll move on to trying to actually eat healthy, with fruits and vegetables and everything.
Most people make resolutions at the new year, when asked by Tracy last new years what my resolution was I said it was to "stop making resolutions." But really I just don't like new years resolutions, because the new year is too abstract for me. But I've made my own little resolution which is that by my 23rd birthday I will be healthier and lighter. Which is why I'm starting now, a few months ago I think I said to myself I need to lose 30 pounds by winter break, that probably won't happen, but we'll see, it could I suppose, but my goal now is at least 50 pounds gone by 8-31-07. And from there hopefully whatever more I need to lose to get down to my 'ideal weight.'
So, yeah, thers part two. I think next week I'll go back to some randam crap that I normally talk about, but there may be a part three in the next month or so. But look forward, for now, to me bitching about my classes and people in said classes as that will problably be my choice topic for the next couple of weeks, as it always is when I schools going.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Part One
I just got back from San Diego about two hours ago. On the way back up I got caught up with a sudden stoppage of traffic. Thinking that I was in for the long haul I slouched back in my seat and started to daydream a little about how nice it would be to be home already when suddenly this huge black pick-up in front of me swerves out of the way. Next thing I see is a smaller pickup fishtailing wildly out of control on the other side of the road. It had a trailer with a bunch of construction equipment in it, which was, at one point perpendicular, and another point side to side with the truck, the truck began to rear around to face the opposite direction it had been going, but I turned my attention back to the driving to see another pickup on the other side of the road, this one fully stopped, with a man halfway out the window, arm outraised in the air, not paying attention to what was going on right in front of him with the runaway truck and yelling, just yelling, I don't know what he was yelling with the window rolled up I couldn't hear, but he was yelling at someone on the other side of the road. I turned to see, as I'm slowly vearing out of the way of the out of control truck, to see a cop standing by his car with the lights already on. At first I wondered how he got there so fast but then I saw that there was a dusty old black pontiac wrapped around a telephone pole a few yards away and a long haired kid with the look of someone who had just caught the break of a lifetime standing by. I would have given anything to have that moment in my life caught on film.
Other than that my trip was mostly uneventful. My sister and I clash really bad, I have noticed. I think I understand a little bit better now why, but it still is hard for us to get along with one another. We seem to get along alright with all sorts of other people but never each other. She is so much like my dad sometimes its unreal. Well, my dad isn't like that as much anymore, but she is. What I mean is my dad was the type of guy who would get really pissed off at me for small mistakes and infractions and then when I really screwed up have no idea how to handle it and mostly just ignore it after telling me he didn't approve. Its hard to deal with someone like that, thats just how my sister is. I got berated many times for being somewhat clumsy in her small apartment with shit everywhere (I was there to help her move in, everything was everywhere the whole time) but then I screwed up something on her computer, something that was fixable and didn't cause any real damage, but pretty damn annoying to her and she just kind of shut down and couldn't even deal with me. Maybe its just a symptom of not being able to express herself that well, I think thats how my dad was, but he's been getting theropy for a while now and its really helped him to deal with me a lot more productively. My sister can't do that yet, but she is started school monday to become a Psychologist and will have to get a lot of theropy herself and so she should be able to deal with me in a few years. I realize I am not the easiest person to get along with sometimes, but I like to think that I am fairly transparent in my feelings towards people. If I don't like you you probably know it and if I do like you you probably know it and if I'm mad or happy or whatever you can tell. I don't verbalize it that well, but I try to make it clear, and I think I do a decent job at it for the most part, so one should at least be able to deal with me based on such critera as listed above. Maybe I'm not that great at getting these feelings across, but I do really try to make sure that I am getting these ideas across. I just try not to let shit build up and explode out of me. I think I used to do that, I also used to let a lot more crap get to me which I've been able to avoid for a little while now by simply dealing only with what is happening at the moment and never remembering the bad times. There have been times when JJ and I have gone at it a bit, nothing approaching violence or anything but just yelled at each other for a few minutes and then kind of got through the moment and in the end we came to some sort of agreement or we stopped caring about whatever it was we were arguing about. Later sometimes JJ will apologize or want to talk to me about the argument and what it meant or whatever, not in a bad way, thats just how he does things which works well for him, I think, but by the time he'll bring it up not only will I not be angry anymore I will have sometimes completely forgotten we even argued. That was a long way of illustrating how I have moved more into the moment of emotions and trying not to let them build up. That is something I don't think most people in my family can do, which is why I think I have so much trouble getting along with my sister and why I used to have trouble dealing with my dad. My mom is kind of bad about it but she seems to be forward moving more often than not, just more passionate in the heat of the moment about things. She can let things go sometimes, and not other times. So thats probably why I can only get along with her part of the time.
Sometimes I'll stop when I'm writing one of these long entries that deals a lot with my family because I think that it is rude to air personal business in a place that anyone could perhaps come across it, but then I figure, hell, my family is a big part of my life, I have a right to talk about it wherever the hell I want to talk about my life. So, that being said, I have a hard time getting along with anyone in my family. I told Mike tonight that I thought "That's it, no more family stuff for me!" when I was leaving my sisters and he asked "What? Like quitting or like you've put in all your time and you're all caught up?" And I said, "Both. Like I just paid off my credit card and now I'm cutting it up and throwing it away." Maybe not a perfect analysis, but I'm having a hell of a time dealing with my family anymore, and I'd like to be able to get along with them, but I think I need to be away from them for a while. We're all changing a lot in now, and in the last year or so, and there is just too much going on with them and I have no idea where I stand anymore and I've come to the conclusion that, at current, I am fucking incapable of dealing with these ideas with the people they pertain to so I am just going to go off to my own little world for a while and just try to figure out where I actually stand and bulk myself up, so to speak, so I am ready to deal with them when the time comes. Sometimes I want to join an order of Buddist and live in isolation and meditate and just fucking focus myself. I don't count myself Buddist or zen or anything, I just like the idea of nice, quiet, personal reflection. Every once in a while I will jump out of my head and try to picture how other people see me and I will see something that isn't quite what I was going for, but I don't know if I'm disappointed or not. It's a little weird, I just don't know where I stand. (by the way, this is not a cry for help to a religious person, this is just an honest interpretation of myself, if I want to get religious all of a sudden I will make it clear. I bring this up because I have said such statements in the pressence of religious people in the past (I don't think anyone here, but some people I used to work with jump to mind) and they instantly tried to convert me, and I said I didn't want to be converted and they said "i think you do." but I didn't/don't)
I'm not quite done with this diatribe, but I probably won't get back to it tonight so we can just call this part one.
Other than that my trip was mostly uneventful. My sister and I clash really bad, I have noticed. I think I understand a little bit better now why, but it still is hard for us to get along with one another. We seem to get along alright with all sorts of other people but never each other. She is so much like my dad sometimes its unreal. Well, my dad isn't like that as much anymore, but she is. What I mean is my dad was the type of guy who would get really pissed off at me for small mistakes and infractions and then when I really screwed up have no idea how to handle it and mostly just ignore it after telling me he didn't approve. Its hard to deal with someone like that, thats just how my sister is. I got berated many times for being somewhat clumsy in her small apartment with shit everywhere (I was there to help her move in, everything was everywhere the whole time) but then I screwed up something on her computer, something that was fixable and didn't cause any real damage, but pretty damn annoying to her and she just kind of shut down and couldn't even deal with me. Maybe its just a symptom of not being able to express herself that well, I think thats how my dad was, but he's been getting theropy for a while now and its really helped him to deal with me a lot more productively. My sister can't do that yet, but she is started school monday to become a Psychologist and will have to get a lot of theropy herself and so she should be able to deal with me in a few years. I realize I am not the easiest person to get along with sometimes, but I like to think that I am fairly transparent in my feelings towards people. If I don't like you you probably know it and if I do like you you probably know it and if I'm mad or happy or whatever you can tell. I don't verbalize it that well, but I try to make it clear, and I think I do a decent job at it for the most part, so one should at least be able to deal with me based on such critera as listed above. Maybe I'm not that great at getting these feelings across, but I do really try to make sure that I am getting these ideas across. I just try not to let shit build up and explode out of me. I think I used to do that, I also used to let a lot more crap get to me which I've been able to avoid for a little while now by simply dealing only with what is happening at the moment and never remembering the bad times. There have been times when JJ and I have gone at it a bit, nothing approaching violence or anything but just yelled at each other for a few minutes and then kind of got through the moment and in the end we came to some sort of agreement or we stopped caring about whatever it was we were arguing about. Later sometimes JJ will apologize or want to talk to me about the argument and what it meant or whatever, not in a bad way, thats just how he does things which works well for him, I think, but by the time he'll bring it up not only will I not be angry anymore I will have sometimes completely forgotten we even argued. That was a long way of illustrating how I have moved more into the moment of emotions and trying not to let them build up. That is something I don't think most people in my family can do, which is why I think I have so much trouble getting along with my sister and why I used to have trouble dealing with my dad. My mom is kind of bad about it but she seems to be forward moving more often than not, just more passionate in the heat of the moment about things. She can let things go sometimes, and not other times. So thats probably why I can only get along with her part of the time.
Sometimes I'll stop when I'm writing one of these long entries that deals a lot with my family because I think that it is rude to air personal business in a place that anyone could perhaps come across it, but then I figure, hell, my family is a big part of my life, I have a right to talk about it wherever the hell I want to talk about my life. So, that being said, I have a hard time getting along with anyone in my family. I told Mike tonight that I thought "That's it, no more family stuff for me!" when I was leaving my sisters and he asked "What? Like quitting or like you've put in all your time and you're all caught up?" And I said, "Both. Like I just paid off my credit card and now I'm cutting it up and throwing it away." Maybe not a perfect analysis, but I'm having a hell of a time dealing with my family anymore, and I'd like to be able to get along with them, but I think I need to be away from them for a while. We're all changing a lot in now, and in the last year or so, and there is just too much going on with them and I have no idea where I stand anymore and I've come to the conclusion that, at current, I am fucking incapable of dealing with these ideas with the people they pertain to so I am just going to go off to my own little world for a while and just try to figure out where I actually stand and bulk myself up, so to speak, so I am ready to deal with them when the time comes. Sometimes I want to join an order of Buddist and live in isolation and meditate and just fucking focus myself. I don't count myself Buddist or zen or anything, I just like the idea of nice, quiet, personal reflection. Every once in a while I will jump out of my head and try to picture how other people see me and I will see something that isn't quite what I was going for, but I don't know if I'm disappointed or not. It's a little weird, I just don't know where I stand. (by the way, this is not a cry for help to a religious person, this is just an honest interpretation of myself, if I want to get religious all of a sudden I will make it clear. I bring this up because I have said such statements in the pressence of religious people in the past (I don't think anyone here, but some people I used to work with jump to mind) and they instantly tried to convert me, and I said I didn't want to be converted and they said "i think you do." but I didn't/don't)
I'm not quite done with this diatribe, but I probably won't get back to it tonight so we can just call this part one.
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