Life Update

i want to make a blog when i turn 21 about what kind of advice i'd give my kids when I was twenty-one.

Does that make sense?

I want to give my kids the advice of their twenty-one-year-old father.

I'd like to write a book to my future children, while I'm twenty-one-years-old, about life and living.

Of course, it's going to be silly and seriously flawed, and they probably shouldn't actually take most of the advice I'll give, but I think it'll be funny and heart-warming for my kids to read what their dad thought of them before they were even born.

Does that make sense?

Like, why do you want to do this?

Because I like making mental notes about how I am now and thinking to myself, When you're a parent, your kids will think just like you do right now.

I think it'll be something special for them to see what their dad was like when he was younger.

To relate to me as I am now, in addition to as I will be.

Why?

To enlighten them;

to show them that they are not the first to experience turmoil and confusion and anger and horniness and fear and chemically imbalanced joy and withering loneliness:

that they are part of a human chain that is constantly being added to, generation after generation;

that I was once them, and they will one day be me.

In the end, that's okay, because that's the way life is.

Life is so goddamn beautiful

because death is inevitable:

because we are connected to everything only once, and everything is the briefest flash of life.

List of

--Statistics final tomorrow
--Dungeons and Dragons meeting tomorrow; don't have anything solid planned
--spring semester a week from monday
--have to file a graduation request for my AA
--keep checking to see if I've been accepted into university
--file federal aid papers
--think about what i want to do the rest of my life
--think about how to pay for graduate school
--think about how to pay for next year's tuition
--think about finding a job after graduate school
--worry about living with my parents until i'm 30
--worry about making money in ten years
--worry about not having enough life experience if i want to write for a living
--worry about writing for a living
--worry i'm not a story-teller and never can be
--think about why i still blog
--think about why i don't read more often
--worry about becoming dumber everyday
--worry about my car breaking down
--worry about diabetes and other health conditions when i'm older
--think about if i'll ever get divorced
--worry about ever getting divorced
--worry about becoming just another statistic
--think about living my life as i see fit and screw statistics
--statistics final tomorrow

life/death (taxes)

     Everyday is new and different. Thousands of days make up our lives. We can suffer for one day and feel free the next. We can cry for hundreds of days or laugh for hundreds of days, and in only one day everything can change. Life cannot be planned, for life is spontaneous. In its spontaneity, life is wonderful and thrilling and painful and horrific. Why is life so many emotions and feelings combined into one? Why is everyday new and different? Why do some people suffer more than others? It doesn't seem fair. Actually, it's not fair. Why are we concerned with what's fair and what is not fair? Civilization and peace and everyone getting a piece of the pie, no matter how thin. Life is not fair because eventually everyone loses it. We can even plan our own death. In a way, death is the only thing we have control over. We can choose death; I know it doesn't seem like a real choice, but it really is the one thing that when we do it, will stay permanent. But then, choosing life must be a form of control as well. We choose to live or die, wake and sleep, collapse or stand. If our choices are live or die, then we always have a say in the matter of our life as long as we don't choose death. Eventually a stiff wind comes and extinguishes us, but in the meantime, we're choosing to live, to keep going, to post-pone death until we don't want the choice to choose anymore or life gets us first.

John Lennon--Mother

Honest Work-out Goals

I have bony shoulders. This bothers me because one day I'll have a girlfriend, and when I do, I'll want her to feel comfortable putting her head on my shoulder. I don't want to stab her through the eye with my bony shoulder. I guess this is really only a skinny guy problem, but it's still a problem. We can measure the size of the problem, but we can't know if our solutions will be big (or small) enough to solve them. We should still try though.

Over the next semester, I'm going to work-out with my brother's equipment in my backyard. One of my many goals is to have girl-approved-for-head-resting shoulders. Another one is to feel more confident in my physical appearance. A third is to have a stunning jawline. A fourth is create a healthier life-long attitude toward exercising.

Also, I realized tonight I am not emotionally stable enough to have a girlfriend. One day I will be, but not soon.

I'm titling this, 'Breeze through Meadows washed afar on stormy beaches, Part II: The Nervous Awakening'

Sometimes it feels like I'm not the same person everyday, you know? I look at old things I've written and go, Is that how I really felt? Did I really think like that? To be honest, it's embarrassing because I feel so much older and wiser than myself even three months ago. I'm never comfortable with myself. That's not true: I'm comfortable with myself when I don't give a fuck what people think of me. (Should I cuss so much? Sometimes I feel like I need to emphasize things and I guess I'm too lazy to find the words.) When I stop caring about the opinions of others, when I stop filling my brain with their thoughts and their opinions and what I imagine them to think and perceive: this is release. I get trapped in imagining the opinions and thoughts of other people that I don't act like myself around them. I act like them. Or at least how I imagine they act.

Will I ever understand other people? I don't understand people with different viewpoints than me. It sounds closed-minded and perhaps lazy, but sometimes I'm like, How do you think that's a good idea? Or, Why are you so stupid as to believe that? I feel insecure about myself, which is why I'm so quiet around new people, and which is also why I try to withhold judgement: I don't have any moral high-ground with which to pick-off people's faults.

Today, possibly for the first time in my life, I imagined having a family: a wife, a home, and kids. It felt so good. It felt impossibly good, like I was fulfilled for the first time. I realize I'm not a kid anymore; I'm nearly twenty-one, and while that may seem young, no one's gonna cry for me if I fail in life, if you know what I mean. No one's gonna hesitate to throw me in jail or see me as less than a threat like they would a child. I guess all of us twenty-year-olds are somewhere in between adulthood and childhood. Older people expect you to be responsible like an adult, but still see you as less than a person. Like how people treat teenagers and children: less than human. But I'm not a kid, and I'm not an adult: I'm a twenty-year-old nobody living at home. What am I doing here?

That feels like all.

P.S. I wrote this today in my journal: "Let me tell you something about being twenty: at twenty-years-old, everyone is an idiot; but the ones who stay idiots forever are the ones who think they know it all, or the ones who don't risk it or ask questions."

Let's see what Mr. Walt Whitman says

"This is the female form,
A diving nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor, all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth, and what was expected of heaven or fear'd of hell, are now
     consumed"

More Honest Thoughts

Sometimes I wonder if anything is really valuable except intimacy. That human contact, skin to skin, hands to hands, chest to chest. That human endurance test called marriage. Those head-aching minor issues. Those fifty years together; or twenty-five years apart. Are these the lows or highs of human existence? What do I aim for? Why do I get up in the morning?

I gotta start being more honest, I just gotta. I feel so bunched up, scrunched up. I feel compressed, and that's never a good feeling. I want to learn how to create moving art. I want to make people cry and laugh. I want to connect with people. Oh God, I want human connections.

What else is there to say? This is what I'm aiming for: that human touch, tenuous connection. But I gotta go to school, and I gotta study for my math quiz tomorrow, and I gotta read more books, and I gotta get new car tires, and I gotta fix my yellow teeth one day, and I gotta buy new clothes, and I gotta keep eating if I don't want to die, and I gotta tell the truth to make myself known, and I gotta keep writing cause my thoughts are flooding me, and I gotta go to sleep soon, and I gotta do my math homework. Goddammit, I gotta do math homework. And then what do I do? I keep going to school and keep doing homework--whether it be math or english or history or human sexuality or shakespeare--and I gotta keep attending class and keep learning and keep avoiding socializing and start socializing more. All of these things I gotta do lead me where? Where's the rest for fulfillment? Will life fulfill me as I move along? It feels like I'm wasting away. It feels like all I was born to do is work until my death.

Oh God, and I forgot about showers! I gotta shower if I don't want to smell bad and people to dislike me. It's my humble impression, however, that 99 out of 100 people will never ever like me. So who gives a fuck about them? But showers--still have to shower at least once every few days.

Just had a thought: one thing at a time until I'm dead or happy.

I'm just gonna stop here.

Honest friend talk

My friends are immature, selfish assholes. But so am I. I guess I deserve them.

hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooow!??!

How can anyone not believe in biological evolution? It's like not believing the Earth orbits the Sun. It's like denying Antarctica exists because you've never seen it in person. Evolution has NOTHING to do with God or whatever else your beliefs are. Notice I said beliefs? That's because evolution is not a belief; evolution is a scientific fact, much like how the planets orbit the sun or the existence of Antarctica are facts. Let me repeat that: evolution has NOTHING, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with religion. Evolution doesn't explain how or why life started; it doesn't make claims about the origin of the universe. Evolution answers questions like, "Hey, I wonder why there are so many different kinds of plant and animal species on Earth?". Evolution offers insight into why humans walk upright or carry children for nine months or why we have two ears and two eyes, and so many other facets of life. There is so much overwhelming evidence for evolution that I can't believe people are unwilling to listen and learn about this wonderful phenomenon. There should be no more controversy surrounding the fact of evolution than the historical existence of the Roman empire. Look at the evidence. Look at micro and macro evolution. "Well, show me a transitional instance of macro evolution where one species is turning into another." In other words, show me a duck-dog-platypus-whatever. How else can big changes happen without innumerable small changes? It's like me pointing to a mountain and then holding up a single pebble and saying, "That mountain is made-up of thousands of these little guys." And the other person goes, "What? But that mountain is so big and that thing is so small! There's no possible way those things can create something so different in form and structure and shape and design." Why do we need to vaccinate against the flu every year? Because it changes into different strands. Why do antibiotics become less effective against bacteria? Because the bacteria becomes resistant to the drugs. Why do humans share 97% (or so) of DNA with chimpanzees? Because we evolved from a common ancestor. Let me repeat again: evolution DOES NOT disprove the existence of God, much like how the orbital habits of the Earth do not disprove the existence of God. If anything, it beautifully illustrates the complex and evanescent nature of life.

Quick Thoughts

It's only my opinion, but I think that our overall health hinders greatly on our abilities to express ourselves.

For instance, yesterday I was furious because I felt accused of heinous intentions by some strange girl. As much as I tried to talk myself down, I still couldn't overcome my anger. When I got home, I felt like I had to tell someone or I'd explode. So I told my sister what occurred. You know what happened? She laughed and told me to stop being creepy. She didn't think for one second that I was going to hurt that girl; she thought it was all a joke. And, in a way, it really was something trivial I was angry about. Now, sitting and typing this, I don't even care about what happened yesterday.

Another example has to do with my poor social skills. Whenever I talk to people I don't know, I feel nervous and intimidated. It's something I'm barely overcoming. And you know why I'm beginning to have more confidence in myself? It's because I'm talking to more and more people. It does me no good to decide to avoid social interactions; it only leaves me as I am. However, if I go out and speak to as many people as I can, then, slowly, I can build-up confidence in whatever I'm saying and how I'm saying it.

My point is that human begins need to talk to other human beings to remain sane; human beings need to express themselves to remain sane. If we don't release our emotions--joyous or angry or whatever--then they'll rot inside us and we'll have to carry them wherever we go. So, I encourage everyone to shake off fear and speak your mind. In the long run, we'll all be healthier and happier people.