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| I want to tell the truth.
I want to crush all the fibers that hold me so tightly to my past.
I want to cut away these chains and escape.
I want to build myself a new life without this shit in it.
I want to escape. | | |
| This is a long, pedestrian, ineloquent rant about why I suck. I wrote it as a process so I haven't even bothered reading it; it may not even make any sense. I don't really care. Only a handful of people I know even write in Xanga anymore, so I don't know why I wrote this in here other than a vague feeling that when I put things out in the public domain, it helps other people understand me better - not that you would want to.
Friendships.
So I've been back from my 3rd semester of college for 1 full week now, and now, bereft of car I had been desperate to get out of this rather comfortable house that has become my physical prison. I got that chance today by going to dinner with some good friends, and... as I sat there, a crushing realization dawned on me. It wasn't that I was indifferent to the conversation around me, or that I was only mildly amused by the bantering - I wanted to go home again. After sitting at home by myself, desperate for companionship, I went to dinner with good friends, and I felt distant, apathetic, annoyed - I felt like I wanted to be somewhere else. I came home, and sitting here, another realization crept up on me; if someone told me right now, that I had to go back to school, I wouldn't mind. There's really nothing left for me here.
I don't mind cheerful banter- with acquaintances, it's my primary form of communication. What disturbed me so profoundly is that my best friends have changed - I have changed so much that they can't read me, and I can't read them. These are the people that I could trust with my life, and now the gulf that separates us seems vast. I talked to Jason about this, and he said that history doesn't do anything for long term human relationships. Best friends are so because of circumstance, be that the fact that they live close together or they have similar personalities, or their parents are good friends, etc. The biggest negative factor that drives away friends is change, even in relationships with significant others, people, especially at our age, often remain in love because their personalities happen to fit - but because they change, they find that at some point they're no longer in love because the person they fell in love with is a different person now. The people with the most success with friendships tend to be those who are flexible enough to accept change in others.
"i'm not saying that you just sit back and let these things happen because this is not a world of perfect information and at times you have to approach a drifting friend and give them the chance to understand and know a new you. then again, there are moments when you feel they've had the chance, but they can't grasp it and then you have to realize that the time for that friendship has gone and so you have to let it go slowly slowly"
Of course I want to be as empathetically flexible as possible, but right now the sense of loneliness is immense. There was a time when I could approach my friends and be forthright with them, I could open myself up and tell them how I felt. I don't didn't think I have a single friend with whom I would feel comfortable doing that today. I know I'm not the easiest guy to be a friend to - I'm quite emotionally unstable/unpredictable, oftentimes a loner, and usually downright stupid with friendships, but knowing that doesn't really make it any easier to deal with the fact that I sit here at night in a silent house and wish I could be a different person so that I would be flexible enough to stay close to those I care about.
Anger.
I've been quite angry and frustrated at myself for quite some time now for a plethora of reasons. I've been frustrated by my inabilities to build and maintain lasting friendships as I mentioned, and I've also been quite aggravated by my failures to improve myself at all academically and intellectually. I don't really feel strongly enough about my academics to expound on that subject other than to say that my failures here have continued and grown in my college experience, and I'm throwing away my future for a series of hedonistic orgies. I don't know if I can be disgusted enough.
Intellectually, however, my anger is perhaps just a thin veneer to hide from myself the horror I feel when I think of how totally and absolutely my mental faculties have eroded. I will be arrogant here because it is the truth of how I felt; I once thought that my mind was of a superb quality, that though I wasted it, what everyone said to me was right - if I somehow stopped "slacking" I would pull myself together and enjoy unparalleled success. To think of it, they may have been right. I don't know. All I know now is that when I talk to people who I once considered my equals mentally, I want nothing more than to end the conversation as fast as I can and to fling my body off some tall precipice to be dashed upon the waiting rocks. I have seen, without illusion, what I have become, and I would run to my closest friends, to a girlfriend perhaps, and seek refuge and strength to rebuild - but I have no such shelter. I am face to face with the person I have become, and as I turn to flee I find that I am with my back to a wall. I cannot rebuild - the thought of building a castle again with the pebbles I have left as remnants reduces me to a cowering child.
I mentioned my frustration to Gealbert, and he responded thus:
You're on the right path because anger leads to change. Or maybe anger is the sign of a thoughtful person who has clearly thought enough to be dissatisfied with something.
Before this anger peeters out into self-loathing once more, I have to give myself a path towards the change that I seek. I've made a tiny bit of progress, but I constantly find myself sliding back. I had a plan to study over this break that went to hell 2 days in, and I planned on exercising and eating healthy, which I haven't even been able to implement. I decided to try and get some financial matters in order, and I realized today that I missed a payment on a credit card 8 days ago because I hadn't set up the automatic payment plan I thought I did. All I've really done thus far is avert disaster and write about how I'm going to change things. Worthless words. All of my words are. Whenever I make a new plan, everyone tells me about how "this is just another one of your grand pronouncements that amounts to exactly nothing in the end" and yet for some blasted reason, I kept thinking that if I threw myself against a wall over and over, by the 20th time, something would have changed. Something has. I'm sick of throwing myself against the wall. Perhaps I'll just quietly throw my hands up in surrender and disappear with naught but a few bubbles of air to mark where I drowned in my own inadequacy.
Cam said to me that "You make your goals and then get lost in the cloud to them and then you feel like a failure when really the fog covers the goal that is 3 feet away"
and it made me feel much better - till now, when I realize that I have never been anywhere near those goals. I have never come close to succeeding academically or becoming a mature person, or being capable of not being a dysfunctional friend. So where am I now? What conclusion have I come to after this stream of consciousness garbage that I've been writing? I am no nearer being a better person. I've written a bit about how I feel in the hopes that it would clarify something to me - unfortunately, all that's become clear over the process of writing this is the enormity of my failures.
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| It has been a while since I last wrote pure beauty into this blog, and to my deepests regrets, it will have to stay that way after this brief entry. I miss the curves of her body, the way she opens up to me, the swiftness and ease with which she moves through her surroundings. From my point of view, and I would think, any point of view, she commands, owns, conquers life. With the push of a button, she has the power to cause catastrophe or create wonders. She alone is my god, my diety, my one and only. She alone can make me happy. She alone can make me eject(ulate). Yet all she does is *chomp chomp chomp*. and it hurts me. </3 | | |
| Wow.
It has been quite some time since I've written on xanga; I considered getting an actual blog, but I don't know if any of my friends would ever check it. If I didn't want input on my thoughts, I would just write in a private journal. At least this way, what I write is kinda out there for those who still use this to read.
So this entry will be in the bauble style that Steph so adores :)
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I'm thinking about privatizing various entries that aren't exactly worthwhile in order to be able to see some of the better writings and musings I've had on here in the past..
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So I've been thinking that I should write down a list of things I want to do before I die so that I can actually start to get to work on them...
I'd like to see the Aurora Borealis or Austrialis
I'd like to tag a building with a laser sometime... (See: http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=396087127&size=l) for an explanation, along with a video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFWcAkxzkv4
I'd like to watch the sun rise over the atlantic, and drive over to the pacific and watch the sun set on the same day (probably somewhere in Mexico)
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I was reading The Economist last night, or more precisely this morning, and damn, I love it so much. Maybe it was the fact that I was reading at 3:00 am, but I was reading one of the first articles, and I was impressed. The topic of the article was how governments and societies can and should deal with the issue of falling populations, and in the first paragraph, they mentioned inflection points.
Now, I realize that this must seem like a hopelessly trivial and inane point to seize on, but it really feels good when literature does not read like it was written for 6 year olds. This isn't really something that should be harped on about, but when was the last time you read a news article or watched TV where they could use terms like inflection points or Malthusian catastrophe, and not have to define them beforehand?
Should it really feel this good when an author takes my intelligence for granted? I don't know, but it most certainly does.
As a side note, I found the following tidbit really interesting: apparently, at the moment, in Japan there are 4 people working for every retired person, but by the year 2050, the ratio will have shrunk to 3 working people for every two retirees.
Now, this doesn't mean I agree with all of what the editors at the Economist write, but I do agree with a good portion of it, and in any case, even if I didn't, it's well researched, well written, fascinating, and insightful. And it keeps me informed. That, in my estimation, is worth quite a bit :) Also, the newspaper Financial Times was one of my favorites, but it got a bit expensive so my parents dropped it...
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I started writing in a small notebook about I don't know, maybe 5" by 8". Basically, every time I have an idea or an interesting thought, I jot it down. My hope is that I'll be able to accomplish a few things through this tactic:
1. I will be able to remember a lot of the cool ideas I have that are just bouncing around my head sometimes
2. I will be able to connect different ideas with each other
3. I will be able to develop a sort of shorthand before I have to start taking notes in college :D
I started it a couple days ago, and so far it's been pretty fun. I've written about my thoughts on the idea that a few hours of solid, dedicated work can trump years of accumulated knowledge from various sources in a desultory fashion when looking at a specific field, I've written about my to do list, and about the economist. Not much, but a satisfying start.
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As for that blog I was considering, anyone have any ideas as to how I might go about doing this, and opinions on whether it would be regularly checked if I regularly updated it?
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Well now, I certainly thought I had far more to write than I actually did. Well, such is life as Mr. Buszka says. It's been fun keeping in touch with him and Mr. Stancavish. I hope to also keep in touch with Mr. Cooper... some of these teachers have really had quite the impact on me.. I'm very indebted to them.
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I have been reading some good books recently, but one that really stands out in my mind is "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" by Feynmann (not sure on the spelling). This book is one of my favorites of all time, and I'm not even a quarter of the way through. It is really a fascinating and wonderful read. I recommend it to anyone reading this entry.
*****
The last several days have been quite fun. I daresay I've undervalued the sheer joy of physical exertion with friends... time to live up my life :)
EDIT: A quote of myself, something I found myself saying today, that I really wanted to share with all of you:
Himanshu: naw
people are all
very similar
we all just hide what we perceive to be our idiocy or insanity
from others
and so we are forever living, seperated by an infinite
distance
barred from knowing how we are all very much the same
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