Sometimes I'm a sad character.
I want what this computer can't give me.
I've been increasingly withdrawn today.
I want that which is elusive and seemingly unreachable - my untapped potential.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
What I regret.
I decided a long time ago that it's silly to regret. Unnecessary because every choice you make brings you to where you are right now. Until recently I haven't had trouble avoiding regret, but there is one thing that trips me up and has for the past year or so. It is one of the biggest things that has brought me to the place that I am in now.
Fall of 2006 marked an important time in my life. I started to question the direction of my life and everything around me. I wanted to take a step back and reassess where I was going, and feel like I was the one in control of this life I was living. I reached out to the people around me for advice. I felt like I was waking up every day directionless and confused. I wanted to take a break from college, to take a few months, just work and play music and not worry about school work, remember why I was in school in the first place.
However, when I asked the people whose opinions on the subject I valued the most - parents, grandparents, advisors, many adults I have known for awhile - they all discouraged me from taking time off school. They said I should keep working toward the goal of a degree. They filled my head with worries like, "What if i leave school and never finish my degree?" "How will I afford to go back to school if my parents stop supporting me?" "How will I succeed in the world if I don't have a degree?" "What if I become a bum by just sitting around playing music and enjoying myself for 6 months?" "How will I expect to get a job someday if I enjoy traveling and 'flying by the seat of my pants' so often?"
Even now as I write it, I feel a twinge of anger at those thoughts they introduced me to. Here are the people who are supposed to help lead me to myself and all they have for me is worry. I come to them telling them what I think I need and they make me doubt myself further. Which leads me down a more directionless path.
So I stay in school. I take less and less hours each semester. I kind of have a job. I kind of play music sometimes. I kind of work on my portfolio. I kind of graduate.
They are kind of proud of me for that. They give me gifts for kind of graduating and kind of completing something.
And the whole time I feel unfulfilled.
I find myself half-graduated, but with an incomplete in one area that just weighs me down more every day. This project I have to do, this town, this existential crisis I'm floating around in. I have all this graduation money. I want to use it to hit the road and get the hell out of dodge for awhile.
I tell my trusted advisors. They tell me how disappointed they would be if I followed my heart into that scenario. They want me to finish my degree for real. They want me to work toward the goal I've been in pursuit of for 5 years.
But what goal? I don't feel like I have a goal. Whose goal is this? Mine or theirs? Why do they need me to do this so badly RIGHT NOW? Why can't I do it on my own time and have them be accepting and encouraging of that? They didn't help me, they just pushed me when they should have listened. And now here I am.
BUt you know what? I really can't regret it. The reason that the people I need to have faith in me don't encourage me to follow my unconventional ideas is because I have never shown them what following my heart can do for me. And the reason I haven't followed my heart is because they have discouraged me on behalf of their potential disappointment. So something has to give in this negative feedback loop that I now find myself in.
So, trusted advisors - prepare to be disappointed in the near future.
Fall of 2006 marked an important time in my life. I started to question the direction of my life and everything around me. I wanted to take a step back and reassess where I was going, and feel like I was the one in control of this life I was living. I reached out to the people around me for advice. I felt like I was waking up every day directionless and confused. I wanted to take a break from college, to take a few months, just work and play music and not worry about school work, remember why I was in school in the first place.
However, when I asked the people whose opinions on the subject I valued the most - parents, grandparents, advisors, many adults I have known for awhile - they all discouraged me from taking time off school. They said I should keep working toward the goal of a degree. They filled my head with worries like, "What if i leave school and never finish my degree?" "How will I afford to go back to school if my parents stop supporting me?" "How will I succeed in the world if I don't have a degree?" "What if I become a bum by just sitting around playing music and enjoying myself for 6 months?" "How will I expect to get a job someday if I enjoy traveling and 'flying by the seat of my pants' so often?"
Even now as I write it, I feel a twinge of anger at those thoughts they introduced me to. Here are the people who are supposed to help lead me to myself and all they have for me is worry. I come to them telling them what I think I need and they make me doubt myself further. Which leads me down a more directionless path.
So I stay in school. I take less and less hours each semester. I kind of have a job. I kind of play music sometimes. I kind of work on my portfolio. I kind of graduate.
They are kind of proud of me for that. They give me gifts for kind of graduating and kind of completing something.
And the whole time I feel unfulfilled.
I find myself half-graduated, but with an incomplete in one area that just weighs me down more every day. This project I have to do, this town, this existential crisis I'm floating around in. I have all this graduation money. I want to use it to hit the road and get the hell out of dodge for awhile.
I tell my trusted advisors. They tell me how disappointed they would be if I followed my heart into that scenario. They want me to finish my degree for real. They want me to work toward the goal I've been in pursuit of for 5 years.
But what goal? I don't feel like I have a goal. Whose goal is this? Mine or theirs? Why do they need me to do this so badly RIGHT NOW? Why can't I do it on my own time and have them be accepting and encouraging of that? They didn't help me, they just pushed me when they should have listened. And now here I am.
BUt you know what? I really can't regret it. The reason that the people I need to have faith in me don't encourage me to follow my unconventional ideas is because I have never shown them what following my heart can do for me. And the reason I haven't followed my heart is because they have discouraged me on behalf of their potential disappointment. So something has to give in this negative feedback loop that I now find myself in.
So, trusted advisors - prepare to be disappointed in the near future.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Sometimes the sky opens up.
I'm ashamed of the amount of time I spend on facebook. Sometimes I limit myself because I think it's getting out of hand. A kind of fasting procedure. I think I've figured out the central issue.
I look to facebook for social stimulus. I don't work in an environment where I see very many people (for more than 5 minutes and more than once in a lifetime) and I'm not a student at a school. This leaves me, at this point in my life, feeling like there is a hole where social networking in real life once fell. I go to Tantra sometimes for the same reason. I just need that consistency of being part of a stimulating community. I need to laugh at someone doing something ridiculous. I need to be inspired by someone else's ideas and creative work and I need someone to ask about where I can find those little thingy's you put in the walls of book cases so the shelves hang up. I need to know how to find adventure and where the party's at.
I use to get all that from school.
I spend a lot of days just bored now, so to speak. Not entirely, but it really makes a person feel old. I don't know about the newest trends or bands because I don't hear about them from the immediate circle of people I see everyday. There's not the constant bumping into each other that I use to get from school and extracurricular activities. Maybe if I were in a band that would be different? I dont know though.
After making this movie this past weekend, I remembered all of this. It was thrilling to be with a bunch of people who were kind of randomly thrown together and working hard toward an artistic goal, exhausting and depleting our bodies and minds but feeling accomplished by the end of the day. So much good mojo flowing back and forth between people. I'm still riding this high from it. Like summer camp. But I truly don't feel like that's a feeling that should be reserved for once a year in the summer. I think we should constantly strive for that zen in the moment totally caught up kind of vibe - the kind that makes you want to look back on your experiences and tell people the crazy story of it all the next day.
Life is captured in these times. It's what we remember - I can think of a handful of times in my life that I felt like this, and all of them were marked by one or all of the following things:
good friends coming together to celebrate something
hanging out with people I just met and realizing we get along like the best of friends
falling in love with someone
doing something otherwise deemed ridiculous or irresponsible: (this next part is self-indulgence, but maybe you knwo what i'm saying...)
staying up til the sun comes up
going to a hotel 20 minutes from where you live and requesting to stay in their finest suite,
drinking a little too much - caffeine, alcohol, milk?
going to a show when you have a paper due the next day
canoing an overflowing river in freezing weather in a boat you can't steer when it's raining
trespassing and climbing public towers and scaffolding
ruining your clothes ie food fight, mud wrestling
going to mardi gras and camping in your car
riding your bike somewhere stupidly far away and having to call a friend to come get you
going out to douchy bars in san marcos and telling people you and your friend's names are mary kate and ashley and you're not from here.
Playing wingman
skinny dipping at night
letting john-michael krakowski pee on the alamo ( oh wait no osmeone stopped you)
Crown royal + Christmas 2004 + Chronic 2001 + Dance party at Joey Kendall's house
Putting together the most epic birthday party for a certain curly haired person so he will never forget it as long as he lives
drinking whiskey on the hood of your car and watching a meteor shower not knowing what's it's going to lead you to
sailing
dancing outside at a wedding
laughing so hard you pee yourself
going to the kerrville folk festival for the first time
road trips
backpacking trips
hanging out with someone nonstop until you are sick of them
riding a mechanical bull in a sleazy bar\
smoking swisher sweets you found on a sidewalk in a sleezy town
eating food off the floor with someone you just met and not being ashamed.
Some people say it's not a party if it happens every night. I say screw those people.
There are times in life when these times happen back to back. Life is hitting on the one. and there is nothing like it. That's where I wanna be.
So, to quote an old friend - "here's to feelin' good, all the time".
I look to facebook for social stimulus. I don't work in an environment where I see very many people (for more than 5 minutes and more than once in a lifetime) and I'm not a student at a school. This leaves me, at this point in my life, feeling like there is a hole where social networking in real life once fell. I go to Tantra sometimes for the same reason. I just need that consistency of being part of a stimulating community. I need to laugh at someone doing something ridiculous. I need to be inspired by someone else's ideas and creative work and I need someone to ask about where I can find those little thingy's you put in the walls of book cases so the shelves hang up. I need to know how to find adventure and where the party's at.
I use to get all that from school.
I spend a lot of days just bored now, so to speak. Not entirely, but it really makes a person feel old. I don't know about the newest trends or bands because I don't hear about them from the immediate circle of people I see everyday. There's not the constant bumping into each other that I use to get from school and extracurricular activities. Maybe if I were in a band that would be different? I dont know though.
After making this movie this past weekend, I remembered all of this. It was thrilling to be with a bunch of people who were kind of randomly thrown together and working hard toward an artistic goal, exhausting and depleting our bodies and minds but feeling accomplished by the end of the day. So much good mojo flowing back and forth between people. I'm still riding this high from it. Like summer camp. But I truly don't feel like that's a feeling that should be reserved for once a year in the summer. I think we should constantly strive for that zen in the moment totally caught up kind of vibe - the kind that makes you want to look back on your experiences and tell people the crazy story of it all the next day.
Life is captured in these times. It's what we remember - I can think of a handful of times in my life that I felt like this, and all of them were marked by one or all of the following things:
good friends coming together to celebrate something
hanging out with people I just met and realizing we get along like the best of friends
falling in love with someone
doing something otherwise deemed ridiculous or irresponsible: (this next part is self-indulgence, but maybe you knwo what i'm saying...)
staying up til the sun comes up
going to a hotel 20 minutes from where you live and requesting to stay in their finest suite,
drinking a little too much - caffeine, alcohol, milk?
going to a show when you have a paper due the next day
canoing an overflowing river in freezing weather in a boat you can't steer when it's raining
trespassing and climbing public towers and scaffolding
ruining your clothes ie food fight, mud wrestling
going to mardi gras and camping in your car
riding your bike somewhere stupidly far away and having to call a friend to come get you
going out to douchy bars in san marcos and telling people you and your friend's names are mary kate and ashley and you're not from here.
Playing wingman
skinny dipping at night
letting john-michael krakowski pee on the alamo ( oh wait no osmeone stopped you)
Crown royal + Christmas 2004 + Chronic 2001 + Dance party at Joey Kendall's house
Putting together the most epic birthday party for a certain curly haired person so he will never forget it as long as he lives
drinking whiskey on the hood of your car and watching a meteor shower not knowing what's it's going to lead you to
sailing
dancing outside at a wedding
laughing so hard you pee yourself
going to the kerrville folk festival for the first time
road trips
backpacking trips
hanging out with someone nonstop until you are sick of them
riding a mechanical bull in a sleazy bar\
smoking swisher sweets you found on a sidewalk in a sleezy town
eating food off the floor with someone you just met and not being ashamed.
Some people say it's not a party if it happens every night. I say screw those people.
There are times in life when these times happen back to back. Life is hitting on the one. and there is nothing like it. That's where I wanna be.
So, to quote an old friend - "here's to feelin' good, all the time".
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