On Not Knowing

Yesterday I found out that one of the people that I worked for freshman year at RPCC was one of the people who committed suicide last year. I feel confused and mixed about the whole ordeal at the moment. I mean I feel like I should have paid more attention to the newspapers. I mean he was an acquaintance but I feel so pathetic in my passivity over the whole situation. Maybe at the moment I did not have the means to deal with the situation. I think I did actively avoid thinking and just tried to externalize the issue by not paying attention to the people who committed suicide. I hope I can change for the better.

On Weakness

Issues and weaknesses. I feel there is a distinction between having issues and a weakness. Weaknesses to me seem to be exploitable and tend to result in negative outcomes for people as a whole but issues only result in a negative result for oneself. I guess I fine that issues are fine to overlook and weaknesses are not since they can damage more than one person but the hard part is telling when an issue becomes a weakness since I feel the transition could occur very quickly and would only require a few decisions made due to the issue at hand.

On Frustration

I don't understand why I play team games. All it results in at the end of the day is massive frustration on my behalf of why people are bad. I don't understand why I bother to emotionally invest myself in people when I know it will lead to frustration. It's like I cling on to some semblance of hope that they will pull through for me and when they don't I just feel screwed. Maybe I have issues and need to just get over it. Only time will tell.

On Sleep

A few days I was exhausted. I do not completely know why but I slept at 11:00 which is quite amazing given that I usually don't sleep till a good measure pass 1:00. Though on the next morning I was still tired.

On Adulthood

Here I am 20 years old, junior year of college. On the midpoint of what is considered real life and the life of a child. As I struggle for some semblance of adulthood I've come to realize it comes at a cost to my parents. As I grow, I desire more autonomy, I desire to make my own mistakes and to learn from them as opposed to having the right choices made for me at all times. Then again for everyone in that age, that is all we seek. A separation of reliance from our parents. We want and maybe even need to feel independent so that we know when we must enter real life we have the strength to survive. More ruminations on this later I hunger.

On Exhaustion

Two nights ago I stayed up all night studying for an exam and missed 2 classes and the gym for 2 days for it. I realize that until exhaustion I seem to drop most of the good habits that I have picked up and now I have to slowly rework them back into my system. It seems that slowly adding things to my routine is difficult to maintain when I need to break from that routine and then returning to the routine is being difficult as it appears my routine is full of small details. For example, I have not posted much of anything in two days and for that I feel badly. Oh well here's hoping for a good recovery.

On Risking Happiness

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket"

It seems simple enough. This is the main idea behind portfolio diversification theory stating people who invest money into financial markets should diversify their portfolio in as many different markets as possible such as foreign stock exchanges. Anyways today I was wondering if we as human beings do this with our own happiness. We emotionally invest ourselves in different things to spread out the risk of being unsatisfied and unhappy with the outcomes that life hands us. Though sometimes it seems difficult not to invest heavily in certain things such as close friendships and romances after all we cannot always control how we feel. Furthermore stock portfolios tend to have a home nation bias and people do tend to tie up their happiness in close friendships, family, romances, and their jobs. I wonder if it could make one subjectively happier to invest in multiple sources of happiness as opposed to fully investing in one form. I mean payouts are different for each form but so are costs and risks. I seriously considering trying to turn this into an Economics or Psychology Honors thesis but unfortunately as of now these are just observations and speculations into the world and not anything substantial in either field at the moment.

On Dark Times

Recently I have developed a metaphor for dark times as traveling through a tunnel hoping to exit the dark and closed off tunnel. In this tunnel, your mind is locked in by the walls and it is dark and it is hard to see. The question is not, whether or not there is a light at the end of the tunnel but rather where is the light relative to where you are. I should develop this metaphor a bit more but haven't had times. Regardless I feel a lot of optimism rising after all my studying and my test performance which hopefully reality will not put down. Maybe I have already come out of the dark tunnel, I just merely still have my eyes shut.

On Maturity

Maturity is when you can look back and not feel ashamed of the things you've done. Today a friend of mine found an old Xanga of mine and I read over all of the posts I made. My grammar was atrocious, I hope it is better now. I surprisingly do not feel ashamed or embarrassed about any of the information posted there despite caring very much about the opinion of me that the friend that found the Xanga has. There are quite a few melodramatic posts in there that I am not proud of but I believe I am mature enough now to accept that I was once like that. In another moment of maturity, I think I am slowly trying to let my feelings of her go and move on with my life. She does not give relationships a second try so I guess it may be for the best that I slowly drain out any hopes I have. It has been about 6 months now and though we only dated for about 3-4 months but I have always been one to fall hard despite never being able to show it. There are times I feel like I feel an emotion so deeply that the feeling overwhelms me to the point where I stop feeling. It will be difficult though, a part of me really does wish to remain friends as I suppose that is the mature choice but I find it difficult with my lingering feelings. I feel like my only options are just feel this way forever but endure for the sake of the friendship or push her so far away that I forget. For example, after she found my Xanga, I asked her not to read it just yet. I could not really stop her but I just wanted to be the one to go through the pages and posts first. She gave me a link to one of her's and as much as a part of me wanted to read it to get to know her past better, my feelings told me it would not help my situation. It is a bit sad that my feelings for her only matured after she broke up with me but I guess this suffering is something that results in maturity. She read a list to me yesterday night about suffering for one of her papers. My conclusion from it was suffering is pain and we subject ourselves to mental and physical anguish because that is how mental and physical strength is gained. I am grateful to her for the suffering she has and will put me through because I believe when I reach the light at the end of this tunnel, I will come out a better, more mature person, I am only sad that I could not convince her and/or that she chose not to be beside me when I do.

On Being Vague and Mysterious

Every time after I act mysterious and vague, I wonder why I am that way? Maybe I feel I am slightly more important or get a kind of rise from it. Or it is a means of my trying to make up for my inferiority complex? I have tried many options on trying to overcome said inferiority complex and as is quite obvious none have worked so far. But I feel a strange bout of confidence at times but that seems to be more of a circumstantial feeling. I feel like a good majority of my fear of social rejection has disappeared but my social courage has yet to. I often wonder if I actually need it as I have no idea what I would do with said social courage but I guess I should learn to feel some more feelings first. But in the spirit of mysterious and vague, I am getting a lot better at feeling emotions at the cost of losing control for example yesterday I went out into the middle of the night from about 9-10 because of love on a relatively hopeless search but I felt that I needed to do it to just feel my own emotions. It felt nice afterward to warm up. I will work on the mysterious and vague thing/building more confidence/courage as the days go by.

On Forgive and Forget

Forgive but never forget. Especially when it comes to yourself.

On Starting Over

I want to start over at the beginning of who I am. But this time with much more experience and knowledge of how, what, and who I want to be. It will not be easy, there will be many times I am tempted to revert to who I was and without a real cataclysmic event I have little motivation to stay focused but I will try my best. It will be difficult to explain to those around me what the hell I am doing and why but I find it hard to put my feelings into words as always and my mind needs this refresh. Slowly but surely I will try to edge myself onwards towards this simple but distant goal and then maybe reintegrate myself with everyone.

The Feeling of Hope

"Hope is life" or something along those lines is what a friend of mine told me today and the other day not directly but translated from Latin. Hope plays a motivational role. It drives us to achieve something that we may not without it. In fact, I wonder if anyone would bother with anything if they did not have some semblance of hope that they would even succeed. I guess hope is intricately tied to the what the two would be tied in retrospect. So I suppose we hope for hope to drive us forward. ill in that manner. Thus when we lose hope, we lose the will to go on. So that does make good sense.

The Feeling of Feeling

Sometimes we can control how we feel, other times we cannot? Why? What makes a situation or circumstance such that we can or cannot control how we feel? I truly do wonder.

On Fear

Yesterday in the Daily Sun, a guest columnist openly confessed her feelings for someone she had been drunk texting and said it was preface for her feelings and included an afterword in which she essentially made it even more clear. Now this is brave after all how many of us will publish and let the world know that we are attracted to someone just so that one person can have it clear. She did allow her name to be published which I greatly applaud. So now I wonder what drove her to this? Did her fear disappear or did her confidence appear?

On Self-Respect

Recently I have come to feel that self-respect is a more developed/mature form of pride. But I feel strange when I come to times that I should be more childish and just enjoy life. I feel like I am throwing away my self-respect but am I really throwing it away, is what I wonder? I am beginning to feel as if my inhibitions are not a result of my not wanting to throw away self-respect but more of my not having enough self-respect to act like a fool and still know that deep down inside I am not a fool. Maybe there is a fear of losing who I am as I am decently happy at the moment and I guess I fear losing this happiness chasing another but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

On Being Alone

So today I went to a Phoenix concert. First music concert ever, so congratulations to me. Jump, dance, rock out for a bit so I am happy. Funny thing is I went alone and just rocked out by myself and I realized why I do not attach to people easily. I fear that the happiness that I feel attaching myself to people would destroy my ability to be happy alone. So what to do about this fear? I mean in terms of psyche there is a lot at stake. I risk my ability to be happy alone which is arguably an infinite guarantee as far as I know and put that happiness into someone else's hands. I guess I should try to find a balance but so far that balance has not been easy. I will try to figure something out.

On Forgetting

So yesterday I pretty much forgot to post. A friend/coworker once told me that we forget because we do not care. Back then I disagreed and a part of me would still like to disagree now but over the years it has been a losing battle. The excuse "I just forgot" really does translate to at that time I just did not care enough to remember. So where does that leave us when we forget important things our loved ones remind us to do? I would like to think that it is not the people we do not care about but maybe their message because it is quite difficult to care about everything someone says no matter how important they are to us

On Caring

Every morning I wake up believing that humanity is good but something through out the day makes me wonder what in the world is wrong with some people and then it is a hop and a skip to people are dumb and I hate them all. I think the interesting part is I care which makes me dumb. So I came to the conclusion that people are dumb and I am dumb for caring that they are dumb which makes me a part of people. At this point, I am just frustrated at myself and my naivety in believing in and caring for people in general.

On Lies

I lie to myself everyday. Why? To make myself feel better in the short run. I wonder how much harm I actually do myself with these lies in the long run. I think at the moment I just do not have the heart to forge forward but I do not know where to find the heart and where to find the purpose. So maybe the reason we lie to ourselves is so that we can slowly build up the strength of our heart or maybe we merely seek to delay decisions and required actions. Life is difficult, I wonder if the experience of life is really the same given it were easy.

On the Faint of Heart

There are moments when I look back at myself and wonder if I could have been a better or more courageous person in my own eyes. These moments often occur on elevator rides where I believe a more mature and wiser me would just chat with people on the ride up but sometimes I just fail altogether in trying to talk to the other person. I feel like what I lacked at those moments were heart and not courage. I just did not feel like being a better me. It was not fear of social rejection that stopped me but just not having the heart to start the conversation. I wonder if there is truly some kind of meaning that I am looking for in here.

The Feeling of Nothing

The feeling of nothing is strange. Sometimes to feel nothing is hardest thing to do but other times to feel nothing is the easiest thing to do. Why can we not help the things we care about but chose to escape to feeling nothing when we are suppose to care? For example, if a friend does something that bothers you, why can you not help but feel annoyed but maybe your friend is in a dire medical condition and you feel nothing, distancing yourself from your friend because it hurts too much to feel. I guess what I truly wonder is can you truly help how you feel, if not then who or what can, and if so how do you?

On the Hapiness of Others

Happiness and laughter is contagious. The happiness of others often make us happy. Strange that sometimes the happiness of others however can lead to other emotions such as sadness and anger. These situations do occur hopefully less frequently than being happy for others. But maybe the few difficult times of being happy for other people stems from a sense of selfishness or jealousy. The sadness felt at others' happiness however is an interesting thought. I think it stems from a feeling of being left behind by that person as they maybe have succeeded at something and you do not feel the same sense of success behind it and maybe a pressure to be as successful.

On Rules

I find it undeniable that as we go through life we set rules and boundaries for ourselves to help us define to ourselves who we are and what we believe in. But then I ran into wondering about the question of if these choices define us or are we define ourselves through these choices. I do not know if that question will amount to anything but moving on to my main point. I feel there are some rules and some rigidity that we live by that when we are older, wiser, and more mature (and by when I mean at about 60 years and up of age) that we may wonder was there really a point to it. That in a sense is the answer to the question of do the rules we live by define us or do we define ourselves through them as we could be different if we did not follow such rules.

On Courage

Life takes courage. The courage to just be and just live. But mustering courage is difficult because being courageous requires leaving safety for danger. Hopefully I draw courage from the right sources.

On Life

Wouldn't it be nice sometimes to just not have to live life? Maybe that is what people mean when they say they want a break from reality.