Special. Normal.

It's interesting to note that people often flip between wanting to be special and wanting to be normal.
Usually this comes in resistance to being more special/normal than you want to be.

Personal example (rare for me, isn't it?):

I had a talent show to practice for, and my hula-hoop routine requires a lot of space.  Unfortunately, space cannot be found without people in it, so I had to practice outside.   Small guy.  Big hula hoop.  Dancing.
Not exactly the most common occurrence.  Thus I attracted the stares of the passerby coming and going.  I got a couple waves from people I knew, but I had headphones in and was able to justify ignoring them.
My only thought was, "GO AWAY!"  I'm lucky to be nearsighted so I didn't see if the stares were in amazement or derision, but I didn't like the attention nonetheless.  My drive to do well at the show beat out my social paranoia, but even so I still felt the desire to just be normal.  Don't stare at me.  Don't leave me.  I'm understandable.  I'm relatable.  I'm normal, I promise!

On the other hand, this post was sparked by a statistic I fit.   As one thing leads to another x% of people who do la-di-dah do ho-di-ho.   Great.   I'm in the x%.  Just like anyone else in my position.   The threat of being too normal is arguably scarier than the threat of being too special.  If you are too normal, then you are replaceable.  Worth little.  Common.  One could even say that as a cookie cutter human being you lack any innovative ability.  You are simply a product of your environment.


Extremes are nearly always detrimental, and this case is no different.
We don't always get to choose how "special" or "normal" other people feel we are, but maybe in this case it's okay to bite into the sickeningly sweet repetitions drilled into our heads by pastel colors and geese in hats: We get to choose how special or normal we think we are, and that's enough.

Housing

GYAAAAAAAAAAAAH.

Why is this housing business such a mess?

First I had to find housing.
Then I signed a contract and paid the deposit (this was back in February), but they changed their schedule so they didn't have sp/su housing.  But they still had my deposit.
So I looked to other housing complexes under the same management so I could transfer the deposit.  Found one I liked.
Then I was going to have a friend stay with me for spring only, so I had to find a spring-only contract.
Luckily, there was one with a different complex owned by the same management.
Contract signed, deposit on it's way to transfer.
Friend decides not to go spring.
Housing complex gets sold to another management company.
Contract signed with place I originally wanted to live at, and attempt to cancel contract with spring-only place.
Old deposit "in process of refunding" - AKA no clue where it is.
New contract needs to be signed by place I like, then I have to pay a deposit to them.

And I'm getting kicked out of my current residence in approximately 15 DAYS.

Gah.


But hey, if money and contracts are my current worries, I'd like to think I'm not doing too badly.

Broken or Lost or Never?

{See?  History does repeat itself.  I'm writing two posts in one day.}


Sometimes I wonder where the best spot is if you can't have something in its full effect.


Is it best to have its resemblance in a broken form?  To acknowledge that what you've got isn't all it's cracked up to be, but at least you've got "it", if only in name?

Is it better to have had it once and have it leave?  So that you can remember how it once was and still believe you could have it again?

Is it best to never have had it at all?  To not understand what it feels like at all, but to live vicariously off of others?

Would one be better off left cynical and wondering if it would be better not to have it at all?

Would one feel best wallowing in the past with the full strength of memory assaulting you?

Would one be better with the ignorant dreams that frustrate the mind and fill the heart with doubt?

Can it be fixed?

Can it return?

Can it be found?

No one can really ever know, because you can only be in one state, and the grass-is-greener principle keeps most people thinking the other two have it lucky.  At any rate, all three options hurt tremendously.

Again

History repeats itself.  We've got millennia of recorded evidence proving that.

It's a strange phenomenon.  The same old song and dance to a new tune in new shoes.  Everything pans out the way it did before, but the notes sound so different that it doesn't seem that way until you look back.

Even so, the only thing that is constant is change, so one could argue that history never repeats itself, as no two circumstances are ever exactly alike.

Yet I find it so tiresome to look in the mirror and find myself repeated forever.  Even worse is to look through the mirror to the future and see the past repeat in a quaint little pattern again, and again, and again.

Again and again.

Progress

Life is not a straight line.
Our reckoning of time makes a continuous function that is arguably differentiable, but it is certainly not a simple equation.


We only live one moment at a time, and in doing so we can sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture.
When you look at the past couple of hours, not much has been happening.
When you look at the past couple of days there's been quite some fluctuation, but an overall positive trend if you look hard enough.
When you look at the past couple of weeks, there's been a resounding crash.
When you look at the past couple of months, things have been alright.
When you look at the past couple of years, things have been getting better.
When you look at my entire life, things have been going nowhere but up.


Don't let the more immediate negative trends make you believe the entire graph looks that way.

The Perfect Timing of Greg Laswell

Arguably my favorite artist just posted this on facebook:

Serendipitous indeed.

"All of your wallowing is unbecoming"
"What you set out to kill off has been gone some time now.  You've got to come back down."

Playing with Fire

Happiness is somewhat like fire.

Before you refute that (if you haven't already), allow me to give a definition:

Happiness includes any feeling one personally denotes as positive.  This encompasses derivatives such as joy, excitement, fun, and peace.  In addition, parts of the more vague emotions such as passion may also be included.

Being happy is such a desired state that it is arguable that one's own happiness is the driving force for all human action.  Many would agree that the "dark ones of society" are obviously acting selfishly, but I would venture to say that all people, even the most benevolent ones, act the way they do to achieve their own happiness.  This is not a bad thing.  Working towards one's own interests is a wonderful thing, especially when it encourages others to do the same.  The common issue (and the topic of this post) is the duration.

In our search for happiness we commonly give certain levels of happiness to certain events and plan accordingly.  E.g. When one is deciding what cereal to buy, we rank the tastes of different kinds based on our previous experiences.  In addition we compare prices of different brands, assessing both the happiness that could be bought with the money saved and the personal satisfaction from saving money at all.  Our previous enjoyment with risk comes into play as we contemplate whether to try a new box or stick to what we know.

As one can easily tell, even simple decisions can be complicated by the fact that we cannot have every happy event happen simultaneously.  To maximize happiness, we must deliberate.  (Unless of course, deliberation keeps one from happiness and spontaneous action increases happiness by lengthening time of actual use of a happy event, but I digress.)  

Though complicated, these decisions don't have much happiness value tied to them and are generally made rather quickly.  The hardest decisions come from competing events that both have quite a bit of potential happiness associated with them.  Commonly, I've found that a large piece of this competition is in how long the happiness lasts, which is inversely proportional to how much happiness is experienced in a given time period.

Thus the relation to fire.   One can keep a fire going and enjoy the warmth and light it gives, but you could always be warmer by going closer.  In addition, keeping a fire up takes serious effort.  Fuel must be provided, protections must be made so it doesn't get out of hand, and sometimes one must delicately encourage it.  Conversely, a flash fire can mesmerize and warm down to the bone instantaneously.  It doesn't need to last long, so no upkeep is necessary.  One can indeed get burned, and the fire can get out of hand and start destroying things, but that instant of nerve endings telling you you're alive is beautiful.  The most noted drawback is that once one has tasted fire, one is all too quick to do it again.

Our modern media loves the flash fire.  Happiness lives in constant novelty: the new style is what you must have; continual pictures of cats and clever relatable jokes will keep you happy; once one person no longer entertains you, find another; try this, try that, try everything.  Unfortunately, the real world doesn't work like that.  To quote Marina and the Diamonds, "TV taught me how to feel, now real life has no appeal."  Cleaning up the ashes of flash fire isn't generally enjoyable, and most of the time we are encouraged to simply leave it.  SOMEONE will clean it.  Surely.
On the flip side, certian religions and philosophies preach asceticism.  In the fire metaphor, they would dictate that you should simply endure the cold.  You can receive the most happiness by having no outside heat, and thus being most aware of your internal warmth.  To a lesser degree, almost all other organizational schools of thought encourage that one should deny current enjoyment to plan for the future.  The school system is a long and tedious road of telling you, "This will pay off eventually."  Investment plans say, "You don't have enough money to be happy now.  Save it up and later you can spend it on enjoyable things."  Religious institutions teach "You'll be happy in the next life if you avoid x specific pleasure in this one."

For myself, I believe there needs to be a balance.  (Ah yes, the ever defendable middle ground.)
We need to stop and smell the roses just as much as we need to get to work on time so that we can provide well for ourselves.  Never let one eclipse the other.  A charred soul drowning in the fire it constantly yearns to experience is just as pitiful as the dreary world always waiting for that "moment" when one can be happy.

As a final word of warning, please try not to be consumed.  Being eaten by one's own desires, whether in scorching your skin or diligently maintaining can only lead to being broken, lost, and burnt out.