Irrationality and Inevitabilities

Everyone has their things.  The things that, for whatever reason, are far scarier for you than they seem to be for everyone else.  Diverse methods can be prescribed to soften the stimulus, but in most cases, the anxiety is annoying but not crippling enough that they seek help.

As time rolls on, the changes of life come to us all.  From watching our elders, we can find out approximately the life we will be existing in years from now.  We delight in the pleasantries and fear for the problems.  Unfortunately, neither emotion can change the rate nor inevitability of the coming future.

For me, one is a rock and the other the hard place.  I have an irrational distaste of exercise.  I'm uncomfortable just watching people exercise, so you can imagine how difficult it is to exercise myself. At the same time, I fear for both my health and my appearance.  I want to be attractive, and for a male, the standard attractiveness includes visible muscles.  I realize that there are different preferences and that I shouldn't worry about what other people think, but I'd like to look better, if only just to be happier to see myself in the mirror. Additionally, being healthy would be wonderful.  Unfortunately, I can't get myself to pay for healthier food nor take the time to cook it.  Add my poor diet on to my resistance of exercise, and it's surprising that I'm not worse off than I am currently.  By my observations, being healthy will only become more difficult the older I get.  If I can't maintain proper balance now, what chance do I have of health when I am older?

I've had many a daydream of finding someone to help me.  Someone that would for whatever reason say, "Hey, I want to help you become more healthy."  Of course, I probably underestimate my own resistance and negativity should that situation occur.  I've had excursions of exercise both by myself and with friends.  Neither endeavor ended too poorly, but neither kept up all that well either.

This is one of those moments I want a house all to myself.
I could have a little exercise room, and no one would need to know how frequently (or infrequently) I used it.  I could have a nice kitchen that would adhere to my own standards of cleanliness, and I could make food without anyone else there whenever I felt like it.  I could have multiple floors so that I could bound up and down the stairs all day.  I could have a space to live fully uninhibited by concerns for inconveniencing others.
Soon enough, I hope, a house of my own will be an inevitability.

I'm Low On Black Ink

I haven't written too much lately.  It might be, quite happily, because I no longer consistently feel drowned by darkness and pain that begs for escape into the internet.

As is to be expected, perfection is unattainable as ever.  The moments where I find my irrationalities flare into monstrosities, rare now though they may be, are still terrifying.  My strength of spirit still wanes all too quickly and leaves me despondent and irritable with only a brief exposure to drains I have yet to understand.  In the newfound comfort of acceptance, there are still the stings of negative emotion that have no answer.  And even in that endeavor, I am not finished, for I still berate myself for my reactions - neither accepting nor fixing them.

Let me not lead you astray - my life has continued it's fortuitous trend of always getting better.  I can say that I am happier now than I remember being in any other stage of life.  My hope is that I can still write, and do so eloquently, even though I do not have the agony to propel it.  To kick off this new age (which is appropriate, as I am almost 22 now), let me share some of my current musings.


Relationships are interesting, varied, complicated, and worth much more than a thousand words.  It would be fascinating to cultivate each one thoroughly, but alas we have not the time.  So instead we have shallow plots for certain friends, and deeper ones for others - the number of each kind of plot within one's own greenhouse varying based on personality.  I have had quite a number of delightful relationships to nourish, yet in all of them I've found duality.  While it is not certain, and I'd say highly unlikely, that one relationship can produce all the forms of negative emotion, each one is guaranteed at least one (and probably has more).  I cannot say I like the irritation, guilt, suspicion, pain, anger, or sorrow that they bring, yet at the same time, I see that it is objectively incredibly impractical to dismiss them.  The reason being: they give positive emotions I don't have words to adequately describe.  I don't understand it, which I don't like, but I know it exists.  There is something to caring for another person and having them care for you.  Even better, each set is different.  The feelings of comfort, excitement, joy, and worth that I receive from one relationship cannot be remotely duplicated by another.
In knowing that getting rid of relationships, especially well-developed ones, is a terrible thing to do, I mourn the ones I have lost.  As time progresses, things change.  Literal distance makes figurative closeness difficult.  A plot in your garden needs a matching one in theirs to flourish.  People change, including you.  I miss many people, when I think about them.
The world is scary and dark sometimes.  Philosophies of reality and reason vary widely, and each is more frightening and disheartening than the last.  But in those times where reason makes emotion cry, it is good to remember those we love, in any capacity.  "We are lost and found, but love is gonna save us."

It's Tense

With only a few months left in my undergrad career, I've found myself a bit stuck between times.

The farther I look into the past, the darker it seems to have been.  While this does mean that my life has been on a continuously upward trend, I still have hiccups in the present, and sometimes I wonder if the wounds I don't even remember still sting.  Bad things have happened.  Good things have happened.  I was occasionally brilliant.  I was occasionally idiotic.  The past is a mishmash of the great and terrible, and it's completely frozen.  Not a single atom twitches in the tapestry that stretches on endlessly behind us.  It's easy to wonder what the present would be like if the past were different, but alas that is an experience we can never have.  In the face of an impossible desire, some would say that it's best to just let it go.  As for me, I still see value in dreaming.

The present is interesting in the theoretical sense, because the "true present" exists in such a small time frame that we can't actually distinguish it.  So I'm considering the present to be the true present plus the relative past.  Once again a flexible definition, but that allows for extra analysis.
In a restrictive definition, I'm typing and listening to music right now.  I do love music, and have a habit of staying up late trying to find something to do so that I can continue listening.  I feel a little off, but that's why I'm writing a blog post.
In a larger sense, the present is full of tasks. I didn't really spend the long weekend in the most productive way possible, but I still got a few things done.  I'm frustrated over the difficulty to get a recommendation for my application, and I've got one last plan before I give up.  The nice thing is that whatever happens with that, I've got to move on pretty soon.
The present is uncomfortable.  I guess that's why we keep doing things.  If we were satisfied we'd relax in our stasis until time forced change upon us.

The future is basically blank.  I have a few possibilities I've considered and done some preliminary planning for, but at this point nothing is certain.  I really hate when people ask about what I'm doing afterwards because I don't have a solid answer, and feeling stupid is my second-least favorite feeling.  [Jealousy being the most horrid.]  All I know is that I want to be happy, and that I think I can get that to happen.
I don't think I have big control issues, as I can be quite fine relinquishing power to someone else, but I'm excited to have my own things.  I will always be a subject of the system, being fed by growers and preparers that I do not know, never fully able to enjoy complete solitude.  Yet I believe there to be a comfort in knowing that you make enough money to support yourself in this world.  I want to be productive.  I want a company or some such to benefit from my continued existence, even if only as a lowly peon.
And above all, as much as we'd love to marinate in perfect comfort, there's something to be said about having change.  I think I'm ready for one.

Forgotten Amazing

Sometimes things don't quite make sense.

Pains and aches pop up out of nowhere, and surges of energy appear randomly.  My psyche sometimes falters without a cause, and I fail to find a chain of events that could possibly have caused the shift.

It lets me wonder, what if there's something else?  A future I already know but don't think about.  A past I can't quite remember that hasn't forgotten me.  An alternate dimension that needs me.  Or has rejected me.  Or is ambivalent, but affects me all the same.
And with the far-fetched mystical glimmer, there's the hope that nothing is truly impossible.  That dreams, no matter their wildness, can come true.

Fantastic People

I know many of them.

It's almost uncanny.  The amount people I know well that are absolutely amazing.  I know some who have gone through some terrible times and have come out a hero.  I know others who seem naturally gifted with a glorious personality.  I wonder what I am to them.  I wonder if they feel like I'm as wonderful as they are.  I also wonder why I know them.  Why am I placed in the path of amazing people?  It is a happy thought that I might be there to uplift them, and together we can increase our already incredibly potential.  However, it is equally likely that I'm just the opposite.  Every hero needs a villain, and a sympathetic one makes an even better story.   What if, in the grand scheme of things, I'm simply a problem to be solved?  A tangled mess of thorns along the path of life, whose only purpose is to ensnare the feet of the destined.  An existence made solely so that others can have something to overcome?

This path of thinking is just as self-centered as the previous hope of inherent glory.  Maybe it's better to believe that I don't have a purpose at all.  There is freedom in such thought.  Yet with such freedom, I am devoid of a basis.

Meh.  I'm tired.  Tomorrow things will be normal as ever, and woes of theory and imagination will be swept up by the quietly incessant tide of monotony.   Goodnight all.

Imminent

"The end is near!"

A funny statement, and potentially always true, since near is relative. Given that there is an end worth of being deemed "the" end, it is closer now than it ever has been, assuming linear time progression.

But honestly, I don't think that's what we really fear.  Most people don't fret about the final moment.  Instead our waking nightmares are visions of that wobbling first domino.  That event that indeed happens soon, and said occurrence will logically cause a cataclysm.  With our limited ability to predict, it's hard to see other paths existing at all, much less being probable.  Additionally, we cannot flesh out the entirety of our existence at any given future time.  As much as the devastation we fear could become a reality, reality will likely give us some unforeseen compensation, even if it's only as small as a bar of chocolate.
Other times we feel that the chain of events has already begun, and we are now simply carried through it to it's final conclusion.  This is the "never" of our doubts.  The things that will never come to pass because the trail we are on does not go there.  However, paths do diverge in yellow woods, and there are choices still to be made.

The inescapable truth is, life will always have its sorrows, and will always have its joys.  No person is devoid of all, for in depravity the smallest of blessings is magnified, and in bliss perfection cannot last.  Even so, the general has never barred the specific.  Hope and dream for things yet to come.  Worry and plan against what might go wrong.  If you find your mind starts to unwind, return to what you know, how you feel, and something specific you want.  

Oh, the Flames that Warm the Heart

Today, I was mad.

Twice actually.  The first was a simple simmering: a defensive reaction to an unpleasant situation.  It lent itself to smart remarks and sarcasm with just a bit of bite to it, and although it was fun, it wasn't superbly satisfying and left me unsettled in the end.  Yet it left no scarring marks in its swift departure.
The second was the return of an old friend.  Again an unpleasant situation with no one to blame, but as the conversation drew on my will to protect myself grew, and fire grew with it.  In all fairness, there was no fault.  We were operating under different assumptions.  Under his, I was wrong.  Under mine, he was.  And with neither taking on the assumptions of the other, no progress was made, as is to be expected.  I appreciate his attempt to rectify what he sees as a problem, as I hope (but do not believe) that he is grateful for my attempt to demonstrate that the problem lies elsewhere.

The point of this post is not the discussion, but the walk home.  On a chilly fall night, the light wind slipped through my jacket, but I could not feel it.  I was warm.  My core was alight in defense of self, and nothing could dampen it.  My veins coursed with glowing heat, and my brain buzzed with a taste of invincibility.  Could such a feeling lend itself to trouble?  Most certainly.  It has many a time in my past.  But now I see that I was blaming the wrong sentiment.  Anger is most certainly my friend, one of my truest.  It sticks by me no matter the rationality.  It maintains the belief that I am not only worthwhile, I am fantastic, and with head held high challenges all naysayers to defy it.

The true culprit is impulse.  However, impulse isn't always bad.  As it is, impulse relies heavily on luck, and thus it has a fickle success rate. When tied to any powerful emotion, it considers greater risk.  While the reward could potentially be great, the loss that often follows is devastating.  As a child, impulse control is feeble, but as we grow, we learn to better rein in our instant desires.  As an adult of sorts, I can welcome the presence of emotions and of impulse, trusting myself to handle them well.

Maybe this means I am not as good of a person anymore.  That I have withdrawn myself from the porcelain man I have revered: he who is kind and calm in all things, is slow to judge and quick to assist, strength combined with meekness, the daring soul with a heart of gold.
I have given up on seeking that kind of perfection.  Instead I live in reality, where I am flawed, and there are many things I cannot do, or at least cannot do well.  Where I will not rise to immeasurable success because of my inabilities.  Where some will dislike me.  Some will not care about me at all.  Where there is no escape from the harshness of how things are.

Surprisingly, I've found myself happier now than I have ever been.
Welcome back, Fury.  I've missed you.