It's too late. But my roommate isn't here, and I don't feel like going to sleep. Thus, I am going to write a bunch of shit in here again. I look back on some of my old posts and realize that HOLY FUCKING SHIT THEY'RE FUCKING HUGE. But you'll listen, won't you?
Should I really care if you want to read all of the musings I write in here? I don't think so. Theodore Giesel p.k.a. "Dr. Seuss" once said, "say what you think, and do what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." If you give a fuck, you give a fuck. And if you don't give a fuck, you don't matter. And if you don't feel like reading this whole thing, I understand that it's a long investment of your time. So don't read all of it. If you do read all of it, I'll assume that A) You REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY like reading, or B) You're obsessing over me and that creeps me out. Stop, please.
There IS a girl I know who really really really likes reading. And she's amazing at it. She puts all of her kindergartener classmates to shame. I don't know if I should write her name on here, because there's a thing called confidentiality and I'm supposed to maintain it as required by my employers, whoever they are. A bunch of people who write a bunch of mandates on paper and give them to people who like killing trees. Whatever.
She used to be shy around me. She thought I was intimidating. Here comes the guy over six feet tall. No one's really sure why he comes here. But he takes the kids outside, one-by-one, like the admitting room into a doctor's office. Not just any doctor's office--the kind with needles. Maybe he uses a syringe to stab kids in the forehead and inject liquid knowledge.
The first time we read together, the first book we looked at wasn't a story. It was a series of words with a picture above it representing the word. Normally, what I'd do is ask the kids what some of the words were, and what letter it started with--we'd use it for letter sounds. THIS girl was reading every last word, breezing through with no mistakes. She went on to read some storybooks. Flawlessly. I was happy. Not only had I found someone whose skills were impressive-- I had found someone like me.
I read Charlotte's Web front-to-back when I was three years old. That's what my mom tells me, anyway. I guess I sort of remember it? The English language was like a puzzle to me--a puzzle I HAD to solve. I wouldn't rest until I got it right.
And now here's this girl. Way ahead of the rest of her class. I could tell she was bored. I had been in her position before. She had little opportunity to move ahead of her class, though she was very capable of doing so. She was bored, like a puppy in an enclosure in an animal shelter waiting for a home. I had to do something.
Some carry iPods with them wherever they go, but I always have a notebook with me. I love to write, and I love to give my neverending thought a place to manifest itself in the real world. I like to explore things that can be seen on paper, like geometry, maps, songs, poems, prose, and whatever randomness that can be written.
On the bus, where there are only strangers to potentially comfort me, I open my notebook and turn to a blank page. With a mechanical pencil in my hand, I sit there with my open notebook and I'm comfortable. I feel safe, safe from the danger of having ideas that spontaneously come to my head become lost forever because they were never written down. Sometimes I won't even write anything, but I'll just be sitting there, thinking. But I'm comfortable.
When I go to the elementary school, I bring a bus schedule and one of my notebooks. I noticed that the smart girl was having trouble with words with double vowels, like "ea" and "ou" and "oa." So I wrote down some words in my notebook and asked her to read them. If her class wasn't going to lead her to make progress, I certainly was going to try to.
As we read more and more, she began to like it more and more. She felt like she could finally be free to be herself, as opposed to trying to dumb herself down to someone she wasn't while she was in the classroom. I know what it's like to be confident about what you can do, and feeling like showing the world what you can do. I want all the kids I tutor to feel that, including her.
Now, she's all smiles around me. She waves, and we actually have somewhat of intelligent conversations. Yes, intelligent conversations, and she's only six (or almost six). I say this because she structures her sentences intelligently and carefully. And when she expresses friendship toward me, I feel that it's because I did something for her.
I'm just glad I could help someone and that I could do it well.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
I learned two things from two people last night (as in one from each person).
But before I continue, plug: http://tinychat.com/welcometogoodburger This is the name I intend to keep on my tinychats, at least until I get bored of said name.
The first:
I always thought that there were certain friends of mine that I influenced, and they slowly became more like me as time went on. I wasn't sure what to think about people looking at me and trying to become more like me, because, well, I'm not so perfect. I used to think that certain people liked what they saw in my personality, and they wanted to take pieces of it and make these pieces part of their own respective personalities.
Now I know that what I thought was mainly wrong. I wasn't influencing others to become more like my own character, I was merely making them comfortable expressing those pieces of their own personality that were like mine. They weren't taking from my basket of personality traits; they were only looking at some of the things in my basket of personality traits and saw that some of the traits in their own baskets were the same as some of those in mine, and thus they felt comfortable sharing the ones we had in common.
I know that there's sort of a refreshing feeling you get when you find that some unsuperficial trait that you have, some piece of your individuality, is the same as someone else's. It gives you a confident feeling about the random musings you have come up with. It's kind of like doing your math homework and then comparing your answers with one of your classmates. Chances are, if you and your friend both got the same answer, you must be on the right track.
This knowing that you must be on the right track can also apply to the feelings and thoughts you have everyday in a social context. I was elated to discover that my friend Dave was into writing music for RPG-style video games. It's somewhat of an interest I've had, but I thought it was weird until I met someone else with the same interest, especially when he actually writes the music and does an amazing job of doing so (many of his songs are on iTunes for your listening pleasure). I've had a lot of strange opinions that I've come up with, but many of them have been validated by other people I've connected to, and nothing beats the feeling of finding someone else with your same quirky interests and thoughts. Because that's when you go "FINALLY! MAYBE my thoughts and ideas aren't total shit after all!"
So now I realize that I wasn't influencing people to become more LIKE me, but they were just no longer holding back their personality traits that are like mine because they had a series of revelations in which they went "OMG Paul and I have something in common, and now that I know that there is someone else with this same personality trait as mine, I am going to make it known that we have this same trait AND I am not going to hold back this personality trait anymore!"
Specifically, I'm talking about Dave. I always sort of thought that Dave, coming from somewhat of a religious family, never swore. But when he's around me, he does sometimes. I didn't know if he was observing my propensity for swearing and wanting to become acquire such a propensity, or if he just had the propensity to swear hidden deep inside of him and I didn't know it. It turns out, that the latter option was the correct one. And I should know that Dave, as a thoughtful guy, should have the capacity to invent his own personality based on his own perceptions of his mental tendencies with flying colors. It's not like I could have doubted that though. I should have realized that he was just being himself in the first place, and that he was only letting himself to be free to express his inner more obscure personality traits after seeing that I had the same ones.
2. It's important to take charge of your own personal situation within broader social situations. In other words, if you're thrown into a large group of people, figure out what you believe would represent your own interests and the people around you like the most, and then go fucking do it! At least that's what I should be telling myself. This is because I'm more into having a small number of close friends rather than a large bunch of acquaintances. I'm not into big parties--I'm into learning about people, one by one. Everyone is a mystery, though sometimes the mystery is more easily solved with certain people. Hell, some people don't have a mystery to solve (cough superficial cough). But people with mysteries interest me greatly, and I want to get to know them.
But before I continue, plug: http://tinychat.com/welcometogoodburger This is the name I intend to keep on my tinychats, at least until I get bored of said name.
The first:
I always thought that there were certain friends of mine that I influenced, and they slowly became more like me as time went on. I wasn't sure what to think about people looking at me and trying to become more like me, because, well, I'm not so perfect. I used to think that certain people liked what they saw in my personality, and they wanted to take pieces of it and make these pieces part of their own respective personalities.
Now I know that what I thought was mainly wrong. I wasn't influencing others to become more like my own character, I was merely making them comfortable expressing those pieces of their own personality that were like mine. They weren't taking from my basket of personality traits; they were only looking at some of the things in my basket of personality traits and saw that some of the traits in their own baskets were the same as some of those in mine, and thus they felt comfortable sharing the ones we had in common.
I know that there's sort of a refreshing feeling you get when you find that some unsuperficial trait that you have, some piece of your individuality, is the same as someone else's. It gives you a confident feeling about the random musings you have come up with. It's kind of like doing your math homework and then comparing your answers with one of your classmates. Chances are, if you and your friend both got the same answer, you must be on the right track.
This knowing that you must be on the right track can also apply to the feelings and thoughts you have everyday in a social context. I was elated to discover that my friend Dave was into writing music for RPG-style video games. It's somewhat of an interest I've had, but I thought it was weird until I met someone else with the same interest, especially when he actually writes the music and does an amazing job of doing so (many of his songs are on iTunes for your listening pleasure). I've had a lot of strange opinions that I've come up with, but many of them have been validated by other people I've connected to, and nothing beats the feeling of finding someone else with your same quirky interests and thoughts. Because that's when you go "FINALLY! MAYBE my thoughts and ideas aren't total shit after all!"
So now I realize that I wasn't influencing people to become more LIKE me, but they were just no longer holding back their personality traits that are like mine because they had a series of revelations in which they went "OMG Paul and I have something in common, and now that I know that there is someone else with this same personality trait as mine, I am going to make it known that we have this same trait AND I am not going to hold back this personality trait anymore!"
Specifically, I'm talking about Dave. I always sort of thought that Dave, coming from somewhat of a religious family, never swore. But when he's around me, he does sometimes. I didn't know if he was observing my propensity for swearing and wanting to become acquire such a propensity, or if he just had the propensity to swear hidden deep inside of him and I didn't know it. It turns out, that the latter option was the correct one. And I should know that Dave, as a thoughtful guy, should have the capacity to invent his own personality based on his own perceptions of his mental tendencies with flying colors. It's not like I could have doubted that though. I should have realized that he was just being himself in the first place, and that he was only letting himself to be free to express his inner more obscure personality traits after seeing that I had the same ones.
2. It's important to take charge of your own personal situation within broader social situations. In other words, if you're thrown into a large group of people, figure out what you believe would represent your own interests and the people around you like the most, and then go fucking do it! At least that's what I should be telling myself. This is because I'm more into having a small number of close friends rather than a large bunch of acquaintances. I'm not into big parties--I'm into learning about people, one by one. Everyone is a mystery, though sometimes the mystery is more easily solved with certain people. Hell, some people don't have a mystery to solve (cough superficial cough). But people with mysteries interest me greatly, and I want to get to know them.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
I'm not sure how legitimate it is to make the judgment that getting an amount of sleep divisible by three hours is the best way to wake up refreshed and feeling positive. All I know is that my average night of sleep isn't going to yield such an amount of time sleeping unless I cut it down to a flimsy six hours. At this point, I have to stay up until 2AM for that to work, because I wake up at 8AM. I may be able to pull this off because me roommate is absent at the moment. FOR THE GOOD OF SCIENCE I WILL PARTAKE IN THIS EXPERIMENT! Getting to know my sleeping tendencies is always a good thing so I can make healthy decisions in the future.
So yes, mom, I am actually trying to convince you that I am making myself healthier by staying up later. XD
This weekend I went to an opera. It was a new experience. I learned that Mozart operas are a lot like Linkin Park. The intensity is high, but it's ALWAYS HIGH; MONOTONOUSLY HIGH. And thus, even though it's stimulating and involved, it's BORING. And ALL THEIR SONGS SOUND THE SAME. It gets old after about 15 minutes (or 15 seconds with Linkin Park).
Other things I did: Watch a movie, play Age of Empires 2, and spend over 2 hours straight in the piano room. In doing that last one, I started figuring out a third Imogen Heap song by ear, "The Walk." I had already figured out "Hide and Seek" and "Come Here Boy."
So yes, mom, I am actually trying to convince you that I am making myself healthier by staying up later. XD
This weekend I went to an opera. It was a new experience. I learned that Mozart operas are a lot like Linkin Park. The intensity is high, but it's ALWAYS HIGH; MONOTONOUSLY HIGH. And thus, even though it's stimulating and involved, it's BORING. And ALL THEIR SONGS SOUND THE SAME. It gets old after about 15 minutes (or 15 seconds with Linkin Park).
Other things I did: Watch a movie, play Age of Empires 2, and spend over 2 hours straight in the piano room. In doing that last one, I started figuring out a third Imogen Heap song by ear, "The Walk." I had already figured out "Hide and Seek" and "Come Here Boy."
Monday, November 9, 2009
Welcome to the revamping
I WANNA KNOW WHERE THE GOLD AT
I-
I WANNA KNOW WHERE THE GOLD AT
Sorry. I was just jammin' there for a second.
I tried to focus I REALLY TRIED. And I still feel underconfident about this exam tomorrow. I hope it all goes well, because I am going DIRECTLY to bed DO NOT pass go DO NOT collect 200 dollars after I write this blog post. And spellchecker is underlining "underconfident" in red because it's not actually a word, but FUCK YOU MICROSOFT I USE MY OWN DAMN DICTIONARY AND MERRIAM AND WEBSTER CAN EACH GO FUCK A CACTUS.
ON that note...
I think our apartment for next year is reserved for us to sign the lease! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY PARTYYYYYYYYY Me Dave and Zac. Aww yeah. Shit's gonna be SO cash.
I realize I never expounded on the second thing I learned about myself in that last bit. I also realize that as this blog is associated with the name "paulthemapguy" which reflects my minuscule internet persona, this blog may be easy to find by way of stalkers. Oh well. If anyone is that desperate to find out more about me, this is a treasure trove, or even better, an avalanche. I like the "avalanche" metaphor better because it implies that this blog can easily be overwhelming to someone who doesn't know what he or she is getting into. So it fits.
To all of my close friends to whom I can trust the knowledge contained within this blog, welcome, and realize that you have been chosen. You have reached a certain threshold of trust that most everyone else hasn't. Feel free to read all of this from here on out, as long as you don't blatantly expose this blog to ANYONE you know. And since I can trust you with the knowledge herein, I'm sure I can trust you to keep your mouths shut about this, too.
This is for me to vent, and it is for you, in case you want to keep up with what happens in my life. If you ever want to ask me "what's up?" here is your answer (and "not much" is never an adequate answer, contrary to popular belief). This is for you, the true friend, because you deserve it (unless you're one of the mofos who stumbled upon this site by chance, in which case GTFO).
The next post is an extensive one.
I-
I WANNA KNOW WHERE THE GOLD AT
Sorry. I was just jammin' there for a second.
I tried to focus I REALLY TRIED. And I still feel underconfident about this exam tomorrow. I hope it all goes well, because I am going DIRECTLY to bed DO NOT pass go DO NOT collect 200 dollars after I write this blog post. And spellchecker is underlining "underconfident" in red because it's not actually a word, but FUCK YOU MICROSOFT I USE MY OWN DAMN DICTIONARY AND MERRIAM AND WEBSTER CAN EACH GO FUCK A CACTUS.
ON that note...
I think our apartment for next year is reserved for us to sign the lease! YAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAYAY PARTYYYYYYYYY Me Dave and Zac. Aww yeah. Shit's gonna be SO cash.
I realize I never expounded on the second thing I learned about myself in that last bit. I also realize that as this blog is associated with the name "paulthemapguy" which reflects my minuscule internet persona, this blog may be easy to find by way of stalkers. Oh well. If anyone is that desperate to find out more about me, this is a treasure trove, or even better, an avalanche. I like the "avalanche" metaphor better because it implies that this blog can easily be overwhelming to someone who doesn't know what he or she is getting into. So it fits.
To all of my close friends to whom I can trust the knowledge contained within this blog, welcome, and realize that you have been chosen. You have reached a certain threshold of trust that most everyone else hasn't. Feel free to read all of this from here on out, as long as you don't blatantly expose this blog to ANYONE you know. And since I can trust you with the knowledge herein, I'm sure I can trust you to keep your mouths shut about this, too.
This is for me to vent, and it is for you, in case you want to keep up with what happens in my life. If you ever want to ask me "what's up?" here is your answer (and "not much" is never an adequate answer, contrary to popular belief). This is for you, the true friend, because you deserve it (unless you're one of the mofos who stumbled upon this site by chance, in which case GTFO).
The next post is an extensive one.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Things I've learned about myself
Jesus Fuck, it's been a long time since I posted something here. But I need to throw something out there for only my close friends to know.
Tonight was the annual barn dance, a night full of friends, dancing, chatting, and awesome. I learned a few things about myself tonight.
1. I am not materialistic
2. I have become colder as I have gone through experiences in which something terrible happens
3. I don't know how to handle being in limbo between friends and dating, and I need a decision one way or the other
Evidence:
I am not materialistic. I invited Erika to come along on the barn dance, and since she wasn't a resident of my dorm which sponsored the activity, she had to pay $5. I just covered her and bought her ticket. She asked if I wanted $5 to compensate. I told her I didn't care, and she didn't give me the $5. This is weird, because she would usually be more persistent in paying me back. I think she was testing me to see if I would resent declining her offer.
I have grown to expect everything due to all sorts of table-turning debacles I have witnessed in my life, and this has made me colder. I spent a good 10 minutes nonstop spilling my guts out about three friends I had that did things to themselves that turned their lives around, whether for better or for worse. One joined the marines, ditched, fled home, then fled to Canada in lieu of pursuit by the U.S. government. He could have served 18 months in the brig if he was caught. He recently married a Canadian woman, with the intent of becoming a Canadian citizen. Another friend has just been declared pregnant suddenly, and is going to give the baby up for adoption. And it was someone who always seemed to me to be very tame and reserved. Third, another one of my friends traveled far to his relatives' place of residence with a complex developed in his mind that he needs to somehow turn his life around. He proposed to his girlfriend and has never told me the news, though we used to be best friends. And he has submitted paper work to the U.S. Air Force and will be called in within the next 6-8 months, having always known the tragic debacle that happened to my first friend.
Yet somehow, I wasn't appalled by any of it. I've always accepted that I'm not very good at predicting things. But when people make terribly large changes to their lives that I don't agree with, I figure that it'll be their loss in the long run. Some people don't have the capacity to learn in any other way but the hard way, and still others seem to never learn.
I talked to the girl who got pregnant on the phone, and for some reason, I didn't even ask her how the hell she managed to get herself in the situation, nor did I reprimand her for doing so. I don't think I need to tell people when they fuck up. If they do fuck up, they should realize it, and rectify their personal ideology so that they make sure never to fucking do it again. If they don't realize it, then they're fubar: Fucked up beyond all repair. If you can't realize when something goes wrong, then you're done for. This is because learning happens in three ways: Learning from mistakes, learning from observation (of things other than mistakes), and learning from being told something. The first is "the hard way," and the last two are "the easy way." Apparently, she didn't learn the easy way. So she had to learn the hard way. But if you can't even learn the hard way, then there's no way for you to learn. And if you can't learn, then you'll just keep doing damage to yourself. The girl, I'm sure, is learning the hard way. She's learned so much in life, I know. I can't wait for these 9 months to get over with, and I'm sure she can't, either, with an intensity that I can't even imagine.
Whether you're learning the easy way or the hard way, you should always make it a point to learn things about yourself. I always try to learn things about myself--that's why I record things in my blog and through my videoblogs. And I try to learn these things about myself so I can correct the things that I don't like and make sure to emphasize my strong points. My friend who fled the Marines was not proficient at learning things about himself. I know this, because this guy was intolerant of any authority above him, especially those who were relatively less intelligent. I knew him since second grade--in junior high he would cuss left and right, and get detentions left and right just for being rebellious against teachers he didn't like. One time he slammed his locker saying "Damn locker." A teacher he wasn't particularly fond of walked by and asked him what he said. He repeated the two words right back to her face. She gave him a detention, and he shrugged adamantly. My mother actually asked him to his face if he had any fucking idea what he was getting himself into. The Marines' training camps were places where absolute idiots would scream in your face orders of various kinds, and no matter what they were, you, the trainee, had to comply. This was EXACTLY the situation I knew he wouldn't be able to stand. So how could I, knowing him, have expected him to be able to stand months upon years training under the very conditions he was notorious for rebelling against? And sure enough, he deserted his training camp near San Diego on an Amtrak train back to the Chicago area, and days later he fled to Ontario.
I guess the lesson here is that you can never determine your purpose in life if you never continuously take notes and observations about your own true character. He made a failure of a decision because he failed to recognize his own rebellious and adamant tendencies. This lesson also applies to figuring out your own brain. I personally know that I am a visual, spatial, mathematical thinker. I know that I like maps, and this is tied in with the modes of thinking I just wrote. I know that my purpose in life should take advantage with my enhanced ability to think visually, spatially, and mathematically. Therefore, I have accordingly made the decision to study civil engineering. It fits me, and I know that it fits me because I have been trying to figure myself out since I was a small child. I'm lucky that I knew to figure myself out at such a young age, because so many people--adults, even--don't realize how important it is to try and figure out how their own minds work. Instead, they just try to follow popular culture, and try to develop their own personality based on the norms suggested by society. These people are the tools.
There are tools, and there are the people I define as "nerds," with the nerds being the people who are genuinely right in the world. They are enlightened, and they know that who they are on the inside isn't determined by what anyone else tells them. They embrace their true character, and they don't give a shit what effects society could potentially have on it. I know this because the nerds are the ones who have passions that are unique, and they thus have unique talents and abilities that not everyone has. And I know that these are the right kinds of people, because without them, we wouldn't have any of the conveniences we have today. All of the things that you haven't invented, created, or conceptualized in your lifetime that exist today, were created by nerds. Most likely, you don't know how to build a computer. You don't know how to design a spaceship. You don't know how to blow glass. These things were all created, invented, and conceptualized by people who are smarter than you in their respective fields: the nerds. And without them...where would we be today?
Yet for some unspeakably wrong reason, people condescend toward the nerds.
That doesn't make any sense, does it?
You know you're talking to a tool when he or she acts condescendingly toward people who have unique interests. I've learned this over the years. Everyone knows I'm that kid who likes maps. I've gotten mixed responses from people on the topic. Some tell me "that's SO COOL!" Others look at me as if to say, "why the hell would you do that?" It makes it easy for me to tell who my real friends are. Friends are people who support you, and like you for who you are. And the right people are the ones who are accepting of people with unique interests, because, as I said before, the people with unique interests are the ones who create, invent, and advance society forward, thus serving a purpose in this way. So, by sharing my strange interest with potential friends, I easily sort out the right people into the category of eventual friends; i.e. the right people are the ones who become my friends, and the inverse.
What we should all do is try to learn those things about our true character. This way, we can know which of our tendencies are negative and negate them, and we can find out our positive tendencies as well so we can take advantage of them, manifest them, and serve a positive purpose in the world. It didn't work for my friends I mentioned at first, but just know not to do what they did. Do what you can to serve a better purpose, and make the world a better place. I sure am trying.
This is my religion. I have no formal religion, and I intend never to partake in one in my lifetime. These are some of the ideas I live by. This is one of the books of the New Testamant, except in my religion. It's part of my personal Bible.
Tonight was the annual barn dance, a night full of friends, dancing, chatting, and awesome. I learned a few things about myself tonight.
1. I am not materialistic
2. I have become colder as I have gone through experiences in which something terrible happens
3. I don't know how to handle being in limbo between friends and dating, and I need a decision one way or the other
Evidence:
I am not materialistic. I invited Erika to come along on the barn dance, and since she wasn't a resident of my dorm which sponsored the activity, she had to pay $5. I just covered her and bought her ticket. She asked if I wanted $5 to compensate. I told her I didn't care, and she didn't give me the $5. This is weird, because she would usually be more persistent in paying me back. I think she was testing me to see if I would resent declining her offer.
I have grown to expect everything due to all sorts of table-turning debacles I have witnessed in my life, and this has made me colder. I spent a good 10 minutes nonstop spilling my guts out about three friends I had that did things to themselves that turned their lives around, whether for better or for worse. One joined the marines, ditched, fled home, then fled to Canada in lieu of pursuit by the U.S. government. He could have served 18 months in the brig if he was caught. He recently married a Canadian woman, with the intent of becoming a Canadian citizen. Another friend has just been declared pregnant suddenly, and is going to give the baby up for adoption. And it was someone who always seemed to me to be very tame and reserved. Third, another one of my friends traveled far to his relatives' place of residence with a complex developed in his mind that he needs to somehow turn his life around. He proposed to his girlfriend and has never told me the news, though we used to be best friends. And he has submitted paper work to the U.S. Air Force and will be called in within the next 6-8 months, having always known the tragic debacle that happened to my first friend.
Yet somehow, I wasn't appalled by any of it. I've always accepted that I'm not very good at predicting things. But when people make terribly large changes to their lives that I don't agree with, I figure that it'll be their loss in the long run. Some people don't have the capacity to learn in any other way but the hard way, and still others seem to never learn.
I talked to the girl who got pregnant on the phone, and for some reason, I didn't even ask her how the hell she managed to get herself in the situation, nor did I reprimand her for doing so. I don't think I need to tell people when they fuck up. If they do fuck up, they should realize it, and rectify their personal ideology so that they make sure never to fucking do it again. If they don't realize it, then they're fubar: Fucked up beyond all repair. If you can't realize when something goes wrong, then you're done for. This is because learning happens in three ways: Learning from mistakes, learning from observation (of things other than mistakes), and learning from being told something. The first is "the hard way," and the last two are "the easy way." Apparently, she didn't learn the easy way. So she had to learn the hard way. But if you can't even learn the hard way, then there's no way for you to learn. And if you can't learn, then you'll just keep doing damage to yourself. The girl, I'm sure, is learning the hard way. She's learned so much in life, I know. I can't wait for these 9 months to get over with, and I'm sure she can't, either, with an intensity that I can't even imagine.
Whether you're learning the easy way or the hard way, you should always make it a point to learn things about yourself. I always try to learn things about myself--that's why I record things in my blog and through my videoblogs. And I try to learn these things about myself so I can correct the things that I don't like and make sure to emphasize my strong points. My friend who fled the Marines was not proficient at learning things about himself. I know this, because this guy was intolerant of any authority above him, especially those who were relatively less intelligent. I knew him since second grade--in junior high he would cuss left and right, and get detentions left and right just for being rebellious against teachers he didn't like. One time he slammed his locker saying "Damn locker." A teacher he wasn't particularly fond of walked by and asked him what he said. He repeated the two words right back to her face. She gave him a detention, and he shrugged adamantly. My mother actually asked him to his face if he had any fucking idea what he was getting himself into. The Marines' training camps were places where absolute idiots would scream in your face orders of various kinds, and no matter what they were, you, the trainee, had to comply. This was EXACTLY the situation I knew he wouldn't be able to stand. So how could I, knowing him, have expected him to be able to stand months upon years training under the very conditions he was notorious for rebelling against? And sure enough, he deserted his training camp near San Diego on an Amtrak train back to the Chicago area, and days later he fled to Ontario.
I guess the lesson here is that you can never determine your purpose in life if you never continuously take notes and observations about your own true character. He made a failure of a decision because he failed to recognize his own rebellious and adamant tendencies. This lesson also applies to figuring out your own brain. I personally know that I am a visual, spatial, mathematical thinker. I know that I like maps, and this is tied in with the modes of thinking I just wrote. I know that my purpose in life should take advantage with my enhanced ability to think visually, spatially, and mathematically. Therefore, I have accordingly made the decision to study civil engineering. It fits me, and I know that it fits me because I have been trying to figure myself out since I was a small child. I'm lucky that I knew to figure myself out at such a young age, because so many people--adults, even--don't realize how important it is to try and figure out how their own minds work. Instead, they just try to follow popular culture, and try to develop their own personality based on the norms suggested by society. These people are the tools.
There are tools, and there are the people I define as "nerds," with the nerds being the people who are genuinely right in the world. They are enlightened, and they know that who they are on the inside isn't determined by what anyone else tells them. They embrace their true character, and they don't give a shit what effects society could potentially have on it. I know this because the nerds are the ones who have passions that are unique, and they thus have unique talents and abilities that not everyone has. And I know that these are the right kinds of people, because without them, we wouldn't have any of the conveniences we have today. All of the things that you haven't invented, created, or conceptualized in your lifetime that exist today, were created by nerds. Most likely, you don't know how to build a computer. You don't know how to design a spaceship. You don't know how to blow glass. These things were all created, invented, and conceptualized by people who are smarter than you in their respective fields: the nerds. And without them...where would we be today?
Yet for some unspeakably wrong reason, people condescend toward the nerds.
That doesn't make any sense, does it?
You know you're talking to a tool when he or she acts condescendingly toward people who have unique interests. I've learned this over the years. Everyone knows I'm that kid who likes maps. I've gotten mixed responses from people on the topic. Some tell me "that's SO COOL!" Others look at me as if to say, "why the hell would you do that?" It makes it easy for me to tell who my real friends are. Friends are people who support you, and like you for who you are. And the right people are the ones who are accepting of people with unique interests, because, as I said before, the people with unique interests are the ones who create, invent, and advance society forward, thus serving a purpose in this way. So, by sharing my strange interest with potential friends, I easily sort out the right people into the category of eventual friends; i.e. the right people are the ones who become my friends, and the inverse.
What we should all do is try to learn those things about our true character. This way, we can know which of our tendencies are negative and negate them, and we can find out our positive tendencies as well so we can take advantage of them, manifest them, and serve a positive purpose in the world. It didn't work for my friends I mentioned at first, but just know not to do what they did. Do what you can to serve a better purpose, and make the world a better place. I sure am trying.
This is my religion. I have no formal religion, and I intend never to partake in one in my lifetime. These are some of the ideas I live by. This is one of the books of the New Testamant, except in my religion. It's part of my personal Bible.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
What happened to when the word for you was "adorable" A
But somehow things changed to the extent that it's horrible C#m
But now the thought's stuck in my head that you're evil F#m
It shouldn't be there because we're just different people D
And I don't know whose fault that is, if it's mine or yours A
But somehow we ended up closing our doors C#m
I think back and acknowledge all the infatuation F#m
And wonder how we got ourselves in this situation. D E
^chords for what I wrote before
GRR I CAN'T FIND MY NOTEBOOK WITH MY OTHER SONG THAT I WAS WRITING...PENISES.
I'll get back to you on that later
But somehow things changed to the extent that it's horrible C#m
But now the thought's stuck in my head that you're evil F#m
It shouldn't be there because we're just different people D
And I don't know whose fault that is, if it's mine or yours A
But somehow we ended up closing our doors C#m
I think back and acknowledge all the infatuation F#m
And wonder how we got ourselves in this situation. D E
^chords for what I wrote before
GRR I CAN'T FIND MY NOTEBOOK WITH MY OTHER SONG THAT I WAS WRITING...PENISES.
I'll get back to you on that later
Saturday, July 11, 2009
What happened to when the word for you was "adorable"
But somehow things changed to the extent that it's horrible
But now the thought's stuck in my head that you're evil
It shouldn't be there because we're just different people
And I don't know whose fault that is, if it's mine or yours
But somehow we ended up closing our doors
I think back and acknowledge all the infatuation
And wonder how we got ourselves in this situation.
Song lyrics I thought of for no particular reason
But somehow things changed to the extent that it's horrible
But now the thought's stuck in my head that you're evil
It shouldn't be there because we're just different people
And I don't know whose fault that is, if it's mine or yours
But somehow we ended up closing our doors
I think back and acknowledge all the infatuation
And wonder how we got ourselves in this situation.
Song lyrics I thought of for no particular reason
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