1/2 of a glass.

Why do I write. Why do I write...in a blog. God knows I'm not an "author", I don't have a published novel or a major motion picture script in the works. I'm a student, one of millions of people in their 20's with probably the same thoughts and problems running through their heads just like me. What do I tell the world that I consider to be so important that I simply MUST share it with the world? Maybe to speak for those who can't. I'd like to think that because I can write, I should write, even though that really doesn't apply to everyone.. especially this kid in my English class. I am not any more worth your time than your favorite book or a good cup of hot chocolate. I want to feel more outgoing I guess - less like myself and more like a world-changer or a troubadour. Or at least I do until I grow tired of it or I simply don't have the time to anymore.

I can't think of any reason that people would want to know what my life is like from my perspective - and I'm not a nearly good enough writer to even make my perspective come completely to life. At times I think I make my life look more like a rerun of I Love Lucy... except I'm single and don't have that many friends.

People tell you that no human is perfect, all of us our flawed. But it's like we purposefully choose not to believe that we aren't perfect beings sometimes so that we can live, if even for just a moment, in our heads' version of our great life. Like when you meet someone really interesting for the first time and first start hanging out together - you see all these qualities and all of their talents within seconds of meeting them. But after a month or so those talents fade to the background, and as unfair as it is, you can really only see their flaws for a certain time. I think that we should keep people in limbo as "an acquaintance" until we get past that flaw stage, and all of their talents and flaws become one person who is still unique and valuable to your life. I suppose that's really unfeeling of me in retrospect. The thing is, I'm so sensitive inside but I have this hard and scratchy surface that I use as armor to protect me from befriending the wrong people, having a bad experience, getting hurt.. I fix little parts of myself. Like an inchworm. In some ways I started from nothing, actually I was negative nothingness: I managed to fuck my life up before it had really started with a momentous event. My enlightenment. Or at least, one of them, because I'm pretty sure that I'll have more - because we all change from day to day, month to month, or in years. When we're ready. Or when we're given a chance.

I say that I am an inchworm, but really I feel like I'm only inching along on one path, when I'm meant to be straddling two. It's like you have two sets of lives, and your happiness depends on the existence of both of those roads at the same time in your life without any potholes or roadside robbers. I wish someone would acknowledge how hard it is to even keep on one of those roads, and how sometimes you can't even get on foot on the other road because it actually depends on something that is out of your control. Out of your control... CONTROL. I have control over how much responsibility I take in my life, how much advice I give, how many times I smile in a day. I think inside I want to believe that I have control over my happiness too... so I'm choosing to feel like I'm partially empty inside.

I'm not unhappy, I don't know. I don't really know what actually eating down happiness feels like. I think I get tastes of happiness, like at the ice cream store with those little spoons. Enough to tell you that feeling that way is just good. It just feels good.

So I get this taste of happiness and then I work so hard to feel it again. But it's like you can only really control half of that happiness. The other half, when you're young, it's timing and circumstance and the orbit of the moon and the sun and stuff that like. Because we're all waiting around for something. Somehow it all comes down to the fact that we all want validation for what we have accomplished. Some people want to know that they have made a difference after they recycled all of those bottles, others want to see the smile on someone they made laugh, but at one time or another we just want someone else that we respect, that understands or at least tries to get our struggle to succeed here and there in our life. And loves us for it. Because every day that you wake up alone, and succeed alone, and sit alone, it only feels like one day more of waiting. I think we really are that selfish, and I think that's okay. That's okay that we want more and that's okay that we feel like someone else is fucking us up because nobody who wants to keep going on living wants that much weight on their shoulders.

It's like I spend my entire day wedged between two feelings, one of longing for someone to notice me and the other is hoping that people don't notice my faults. It feels like self-consciousness is like wearing faults on your sleeves. That when people look at you, they can read you like a book and they can sense your fear and your anxiety and they are completely turned off by it.

So I wear an invisible suit. And I live my life entirely hoping that someone was born to break it, or at least to try. And they'll find me. Soon. We're all victims of something at some time.. but nobody likes to hear a victim so we all just "shhh" until that comet hits. Close your eyes, put your arms out, and feel your way out until someone grabs you and tells you to open your eyes.

I should try not to be so introspective at this time of night.


As I look at these words they start to become kind of a white wash and melt together, making no sense to me whatsoever the second time through. The only thing keeping me from deleting them is really just pure laziness, or because I need to.

You're too young to be a philosopher.

When you sit alone, holding nothing but your thoughts, the mind plays records with occasional skips, some skips that make sense and some that don't but that you feel will ultimately, have meaning. Whenever I know I'm going to sit still, I put on my headphones and sit back, awaiting the next adventure that my imagination so eagerly creates for me. It has always been like this. Since I can remember I have been retreating from reality, back into myself and my thoughts, painting prettier pictures of my life for myself so as not be to be disappointed by the real one that lies outside of my fantasies.

Of course even without the music I would still retreat inside, playing my own film of life, but as anyone today will tell you, no movie is complete without mood music.

Victor Hugo said that "music expresses that which cannot be put into words, and cannot remain silent." It takes a composer to put the complexity of human emotion into notes, a performer to translate it to the masses, and a writer to describe it in words that are understandable to the rest. Even the best of the best could not describe the intense phenomena that is human life.
It is not until you are alone, with nothing but these thoughts, that you realize and regard the importance of each moment, acquaintance, thought, feeling, adventure, conversation, etc. I believe everyone practices this art of inner voicing, and I don't suppose to be the only one who just simply adds music to it. I'm not a particularly complex individual in the real world, but in my thoughts I can weave the scenes of my life together to make tragedies, inspirational tales, romantic comedies, and anything in between.

I can experience the most vigorous sides of anger and feelings of injustice and helplessness, as well as nostalgia that in today's society would only be considered cliché and overused during these times by myself. I don't have any special powers, I'm not a prodigy of musical languages or an especially astounding character among people my age. But that does not stop me from being alone in the right that I perform this ritual so often and seek to understand and convey it to people who do not seem to notice that they too have this ability, they too are made from the same stuff as me even if they do not wish to see it or do not think to experience it.

Sometimes I wish that I could play the music on loud speakers in the sky all day to my life. Each scene or part would correspond perfectly with the genre, making it easier to experience life with more gratitude and awe. Gratitude. Gratitude. Would we act differently if this were the case? Of course not, no one person is made the same as the next, my own mother does not understand the importance of my intrinsic retreats. I can only hope that the more I experience, the more I read, the more I listen closely and learn, the better I will become at helping her to understand why it's necessary. This is me as a person, I cannot become what I want or do what I know will make me happy without constantly replaying the good and the bad lessons and experiences that I have had. This is my tool for forgiving myself for my mistakes, congratulating myself for small endeavors, for reminding myself to feel lucky for the people that I know and the seconds that go by.

We are the but a piece of sand in the hourglass of history, and yet it has commonly been for an individual not to understand what they have around them until their later years. Of course enjoy life to it's fullest, but the younger you realize what 'the fullest' means the more you will be able to influence a few more grains of sand later on. If Shakespeare had written 20 more plays, if Keats had penned but a few more metaphors, if Darwin had discovered Evolution but a mere 10 years earlier... what could they have contributed to today. We all have something to say, and some of us want to say it forever, for why do we have children but to teach what we have learned to someone who can continue to carry it long after we're gone.

I bring a new meaning to the nature of indulging. I have been accused in the past of devaluing myself out of habit for everything that I do, the reason I can never see the truth in this statement is because I indulge inwardly in a way that no one can see. The nature of indulgence in my mind is reading historical romance novels, watching my favorite movie, pretending to be someone else for a while, laughing about nonsense, wallowing in my loneliness, experiencing my anxiety, unabashedly crying for no reason, eating candy, purposefully showing off my knowledge on a certain subject out of pride, taking a nap in the middle of a day, going to bed too late.

But of course, I do not have the vocabulary or the age to fully understand and fully translate who I am and what I believe in. I don't know what to call myself that does not sound like it is dripping with self-pride and disdain for the ungrateful. I'm riddled with wrong in me, I make conscious mistakes, I have lied, sometimes I am phenomenally greedy. I experience. That's a neutral statement about myself that I can live with. I think I experience. But of course, I'm greedy for more of it.

If you have answers to any of these questions, you're my hero.

If we are all supposed to be inherently good, why do some of us turn out bad? What makes some people evil? Some people hate? Some of us love blindly while others of us never trust, never give an inch for fear of being robbed of a mile? Why did some of our ancestors kill and enslave and destroy while others philanthropically fought for the underdog, gave hope to those at the bottom? Why does music move some people to tears and euphoria when others, who are listening to the same thing, are not penetrated by the notes and harmony? And why, oh why, does communicating with another person have to be so hard? They are made from the same stuff you are, why should we not fit together like pieces of a puzzle?

I realize that it's hard to understand what lies beneath the skin of another individual because of the scars that are not apparent to the naked eye, but what makes some people sit in silence their whole lives untouched and unloved, while other people somehow seem to effortlessly find what they need?

Why is everything seem so much worse, so much more emotionally taxing, at night?

What is it about the companionship of animals that make humans complete? Do they need companionship too, or are we the only ones? Why aren't all animals like that?

How can I spend 55% of my day in my imagination, and other people can't? How do they escape the harsh reality?

Did the guy who invented the gun have an idea what his invention would do to the world?

Why do people continue to smoke when the evidence of it's effect on the lungs is everywhere?

And here's a picture of a dog who has gotten stuck.

If I ever voiced my inner-most thoughts, I'd be in prison right now.

As humans, we are taught to be polite and kind, and to never hurt someone because of that pesky "Golden Rule" that you are told about in Kindergarten. As a result, as humans grow they learn, or attempt to learn, the practice of not voicing your inner most thoughts in front of other people at the risk of hurting feelings. It's always about feelings with us... I love feelings, to be sure. But I don't like being reminded that the people I hate have feelings too. So we're at this difficult age of young adulthood and we've been taught to successfully "bottle and push", bottle our feelings and push them aside. Is this healthy? Perhaps not, but we have seen what the physical expression of inner anger can do in our society by the wars that have broken out betwixt enemies.
Today, I have decided, I am going to break the mold for just one moment and get some of my inner-most feelings out there. Without this knowledge and this look into my black soul, I would never be able to figure myself out and change what parts of me may be hurtful in the long run, right? So I've compiled a list of things that I've noticed just today about my inner-most feelings and how dangerous they really are:

I'm an angry person....really, very angry; in the sense that if given a weapon of choice and the person with whom I'm angry at (in a life without consequences) I'd probably go for the gold. However in this life there are consequences and I'm not the kind of person to hurt someone intentionally just because my anger has gotten the better of me. No! Remember the part where I bottle things up just like the rest of you? During the course of the day I took an internal survey as to what angered me the most throughout the day: survey says..... people! People, and then a close second is generally annoying sounds and third would be service people. But essentially people.

Some of the traits in people that make me the most angry:
incompetence
inconsideration
complaining
laziness
naivite
blatant disregard for the feelings of others/impoliteness

Okay.. most of these feelings, I have noticed have the ability to be adjusted by the person who is displaying the particular trait. If up to me, I would beat them senseless until those traits were rectified and then, and only then, would I let them breathe the same air as me.

This all makes me look like I hate people, but I really don't. What I hate is the fact that people are born into the world of choice and chance: but much more choice than chance. The kinds of choices that are the easiest to make are usually the ones that people completely ignore...WHY!?!? Because they are either soulless or too lazy to do so. For instance, doing something nice for someone every day is not only good for you, but it can make that persons day. Every day, and this is true, I make sure to say something nice or do something for someone that I don't really know that well because afterwards when I walk away from that situation I feel 40% better about the day. This takes literally little to no effort on my part to say something like, "Have a great night!" to the girl at the counter, or to do something for someone, like clean something of theirs and not say anything.
It makes me beyond angry when I look around and realize that people actually believe themselves to be above this kind of reciprocal treatment. It could be the parents fault, it could be the person themselves' fault - whoevers' fault it is, the treatment is the easiest thing in the world and yet people hate to be told what to do or how to act; so we go on forever and ever living at the mercy of the dispassionate majority. Wonderful.

I'd like to just point something out about my resentment and how I don't think it's adding to the problem that I rant about.. my resentment is not based on ignorance. Actually, quite the opposite. I make it my duty to read and observe and learn about those around me who I respect and love and even those people who I don't even know. I'm pro-kindness and pro-consideration and my resentment and anger is based of the fact that I don't see those traits in the people around me. Does that make me a bitter individual? Perhaps... But I would rather preach on and continue to be angry in order to turn a couple ears instead of living like a sheep among the masses of ridiculous people that I observe every day.... sheep. all of the them.

I think it's important that we think and visualize this thought for a moment... so here's a picture of some sheep:

"Sorry about this, whale. We have to blow your head up."

There are some days where you look around and you can't really find any reason to put any more faith into the human race until BOOM! You run across something that puts some of your faith eggs back into the basket. Today, I had the pleasure of running across a heart warming story of a brave little whale whom we shall name Louisa for the purpose of personalizing the story.
A couple years ago, Louisa, our protagonist, was swimming in her ocean off the coast of South Africa... she was so caught up in the beautiful sun and the coolness of the water that she really didrent was moving until she realized she was indeed in a very shallow area. Now for a while now Louisa has been struggling with body image issues, she has always thought that 30 tons was a bit much, her parents always told her that the male whales prefer junk in the trunk - but some days she felt like she could stand to lose some blubber. But she was only 3 yean't pay attention to the way the currs old, she had time. Except right now that 30 tons was really a thorn in her side because it's quite difficult to get your ass back out to sea with fins and a tail and a fat ass... Louisa decided not to panic, the tide would be rushing back in and she would just sit here in the warmer water and think about whale things until that should come - besides, there's no way she could go in shallower.. Well it turns out ole' Louisa was wrong! When a huge cruise ship came by, the subsequent waves washed her blubbery body some 50 feet towards the beach... in range of some annoying children who were swimming nearby. Maybe now Louisa should panic.. she tried to keep her head and use her fins in conjunction with her tail to ease out at 60 degree angle in order to get her head facing towards the ocean. But for some reason she couldn't concentrate with the enormous crowd that was starting to form on the beach, all of the pointing was incredibly distracting that Louisa suddenly felt quite naked and vulnerable. As any whale is bound to do, Louisa started to freak the fuck out and madly tried to swim towards freedom. With an hour of trying Louisa pretty much gave up and humans started to surround her. Once and a while she opened her mouth and some humans would shove some nasty fish in there... without any condiments. She was being bathed by water bottles which was really absolutely ridiculous because she's 49 feet long. Well these humans started to tie her up and pull her in random directions, pretty much sinking her further in the sand. She heard people yelling in her ear and screaming at each other... she never felt fatter. Well it started to get dark out and she was wondering how pissed her mom was going to be when she realized she wasn't back for dinner when a human started putting something on her head right next to her blow hole. She could feel it was really heavy and really ridiculously uncomfortable, and as she was thinking about how frustrated she was and how much she liked the night sky... her head blew up.


<--- Putting a bomb on Louisas' head. Below: Louisas' blown up head. True Story.

STOP! Before you go to college...

I'm pro - secondary education, obviously, seeing as how I'm am becoming a product of the system. However, sometimes I wonder about the traditions and the frequent 'taboo' that still seems to be a necessary part of co-ed universities in the US. I didn't really realize until this year the things that our parents forgot to tell us, or that the government fails to mention before we pack all of our shit up and try to make new friends or live with smelly strangers for four years both socially within the system, and academically. Here we go, just to name a few that have pissed me off recently:

1. If you want to make money or get a job after college than you have no choice but to either major in business and management or go to a graduate school after spending $125,000 for your undergraduate degree. You see, businesses don't want eager English majors right out of college, they want you to get some experience working at your local Blockbuster before people allow you to join the workforce as a temp. So all of that stuff that you were interested in in college? Forget about it. Throw textbooks away, burn up emails of encouragement from your professors and mentors.. Start working on making a hell of a frappaccino.

2. You know the movies that portray a sleazy Prof-Student relationship and make you cringe over it's immoral scenes and uncomfortable professional situations? That could be you! Ohhhhh, Professors. Unfortunately, we cannot always be taught by 90 year old bats. Sometimes you get an extremely attractive, intelligent, humorous and decently dressed Prof who sometimes is/is not... married. First thing I do when I meet one of these men? Check the left hand... then automatically kick myself for even considering such a "Pool Boy at Sandals Resort"-like situation. Prof's like this are especially attractive when you look around campus and all you see is Frat Boy, Frat Boy, Taken, Frat Boy, Frat Boy. It's refreshing and it's so flattering when they take an interest in your work in their class. But when you start LOOKING for that flattery... RED FLAG!!! Face to face time with your cutie professor could lead to uncomfortable situations. Is he hitting on you? Are you flirting with him? Who crossed the boundary first? Where is the boundary? Did he just look at my boobs? Did I just flip my hair? No seriously... did I just flip my hair? How old am I? Dammit, control your hormones woman!!

(This, of course, has never happened to me........cough.)

3. "Lecture Notes" does not mean "You don't have to come to Lecture".... it means, "You will fail this class if you do not read all of the material suggested to help you in this class and then you'll have to take it over again and that's really fuckin' embarrassing to do when you're the eldest person in the class..."

4. Multiple Choice Exam = Hellishly 4 Hour-Long Exam

5. If your Prof says, "Don't hesitate to come to me during office hours." ... translation: "If you don't come see me in my office with a query or a concern, it'll work against you in the long run of your grade."