Getting Old

It's 11:26 on a Friday night and I've found myself in my room on my laptop, browsing websites about video games and listening to a few albums for the majority of the day (the past seven hours to be precise). I woke up on Nick's couch cold and sore from the night before. I turned 21 yesterday and I had a great night, thanks to some really great friends of mine. I could go on in detail about what I had to drink, the conversations held outside over a few cigarettes, or the forgotten walk back, but I'm certain that no one truly wants to read about it.

I haven't written anything in over two months. I felt that by officially declaring a hiatus that I could absolve my usual guilt of never bothering to post. It's worked surprisingly well, but I've got far too much to say to not write anymore. I've got a ton on my mind right now and I'm prone to getting exhausted and giving up on long posts, so we'll see how long this turns out...

I'm not sure what being 21 really means to me. It was liberating to go out to the bar and feel that much closer to what our society has established as adulthood. I'll never have to worry about any sort of underage drinking again. I sure don't feel like an adult though. I don't do enough, I'm not independent enough, I can't handle responsibility well enough, I'm too childish... I could go on about my anxiety towards my aging, but it makes it sound worse than it is. While all of these thoughts run through my head from time to time, in truth I'm generally happy with where I'm at and how I feel about my life. So far I've managed to get by in life by just winging it all, and I'll keep that up until it fails me.

On a similar note, I'd like to get more involved with something I consider worthwhile. I've been doing a lot of thinking about what defines me. I would generally refer to myself as "a nerdy and somewhat hip guy who digs music, gaming, eating, and the company of others" or something like that. The thing is, I don't feel like that actually paints a decent picture of myself. Now, I realize that the essence of a person can't simply be put into words. The thing is, I know that certain things are important to me, but I'm not sure how to describe them. I think the happiness of ourselves and others is the most important thing we can strive towards in life, because if a person has a true happiness then I can't really see what else they need. Happiness is something that is brought to us by many different sources. Some people seek accomplishment, recognition, fame, peace, etc... It's not as simple as buying the world a Coke and calling it a day. Anyways, I want to do volunteer work for Make-A-Wish foundation. The things they do for children constantly bring a smile to my face and I think the amount of effort that goes into ensuring that these kids who often won't get to live the same sort of life as others are given a wonderful life-changing experience is simply beautiful. I plan on starting up once I've returned to Bloomington.

Bloomington gives me a good starting point for my next bit of (it is at this exact moment that my long post exhaustion is kicking in, so...) rambling. I'm extremely excited to move into my apartment. In exactly three weeks I'll be spending my first night there. Bloomington is a wonderful town and I miss it. I miss the places, the atmosphere, and most importantly my friends. I love my friends in Beech Grove to death. They're the best friends that I could ever ask for. The difference is they can come spend a weekend in Bloomington. Richard can't exactly drive up from Tennessee every weekend. I haven't even been able to see John. It'll be so nice to be able to spend time with them in a place of living that I can call my own.

That being said, this has been one hell of a summer. We've (me and the guys) watched all of Avatar, went late night swimming, been mugging (not mugged thankfully), drank together, eaten our body weight in 50 cent wings at Buffalo Wild Wings, met several great musicians at some amazing concerts, and just hung out and had a good time. I've enjoyed not having any school work to stress about and at the beginning of the summer, getting away from Bloomington and getting back here was exactly what I needed.

The end of the school year was a rather large time for me in my life. Breaking up with my girlfriend of nearly four years changed a lot in how I lived my life, both on a physical and personal level. I've tried hard to make myself into a better person, to change the aspects of myself that I don't like. I feel like I've been somewhat successful in this while also realizing some other problems I've had along the way. Nobody is perfect, even if they spend their whole life trying to fix their flaws. I feel that by at least being aware of one's own faults, they can be lessened if never truly fixed. Changing who you are on a fundamental level isn't as easy as just wishing it that way and being done with it.

I want next year to be amazing. I want to live it as a person who has grown over a summer through life events and personal insight. I hope that I can live up to my expectations for myself.

This ended up pretty long... Sorry about that!

A Hiatus

It's not that I ever make posts here anyways, and it's not that anyone would check to see if there were new posts, but nonetheless I'm throwing this out there:

I'm not going to be writing anything here for the foreseeable future. I've just had a tremendous amount on my mind lately, much of which I've been writing down for myself in a private blog to just look over and contemplate. I feel that anything I post here would be insignificant or unimportant or something of the sort. I just have no desire to write about trivial things that very few people read anyways. I'd love to come back to this and actually write consistently, perhaps even something that people would be interested in reading. Even making a post this long about a hiatus is borderline-narcissism at best.

Thanks for whatever you have read. I appreciate it.

Denny's Sucks

This is scientific fact. I just wanted to make sure I had this on some kind of record, because it's very important that people know this. Their food costs too much and tastes awful. If you like Denny's, you're wrong.

Just making sure we're all clear here.

But Let Me Tell You This...

So, in the last post I made I said something about trying to be a better person. I'm pretty pleased to say that so far I've been doing a decent job of that. There are still a lot of things I'd like to be doing differently, but I'm taking this thing in small steps, trying to rid myself of bad habit or make things better in a slow natural progression. So far, I've:

1. Gotten more involved with school things. I'm a member of the Computer Science club and I've been having a lot of fun with it. I went to a workshop/conference for it today and it feels really good to be networking and around people who share similar passions.
2. Started taking the stairs to my dorm and walking everywhere. It's a minor change but hopefully will help me get a little more fit.
3. Quit smoking. I was never addicted so it's not like this is difficult for me but it'll still again work towards improving my health.
4. Cleaned my room. This place got totally overhauled. It's completely clean now and I fully intend for it to stay that way for a good long time. 
5. Started getting eight hours of sleep. I need to not fall asleep in class or be tired all day. This should help.

Again, I plan on doing more (working out, learning bass, etc...) but I'm not at all unhappy with my start.

I also still plan on blogging more. Eventually.

Oh, I Would Kill For The Atlantic

So a lot of you are going off to college or are already moved in there. This is exciting! Fun, new, frightening, liberating, etc... All sorts of words I could throw out there. I figured since I did the whole "new to college" thing last year, I could maybe throw together some advice based entirely on my first year at IU. This is straight from my personal experiences, what I did, wish I would have done, done differently, etc... I hope it helps!

• Take advantage of all the events going on around campus for delicious free food. I can't tell you how much free food I got last year. I got free pizza like once a week, free wings a few times, I even scored some Chinese food in there! On top of the food, some of the events themselves are fun. I watched a movie about World of Warcraft addictions (and scored free Domino's), a bunch of Asian people singing (and scored free Chinese food), learned about sex (twice, and scored free pizza twice!), I could go on, but you probably get the idea.
• GO TO CLASS, UNLESS YOU ARE 110% SURE YOU DO NOT NEED TO. I skipped Calc a few times because it was boring as hell and I felt like I knew the material. I did NOT know it well enough and ended up getting a C+ and not getting into the business school and having to change my major (which all worked out fine, don't worry bout me). You have a metric butt-ton of free time, going to class will be worth it.
• Meet new people! You'll be surrounded by thousands of them, don't be anti-social! None of my Beech Grove bros went to IU, so I pretty much had to make new friends. Luckily for me, this was really easy because it turns out if you just talk to a ton of people you find cool ones. I've met some of my best friend at college. 
• Get to know your campus. Getting to class is so much easier when you know what buildings you can cut through. You get a better idea of where to hang out with your friends, where to sleep in-between classes, etc... Sleeping in the Union was my favorite thing to do at IU. I don't know about other colleges, but at IU some people sleep just in the grass somewhere. It's really relaxing.
• Don't eat too much! Food is good, especially when you have fake college money to spend on candy and beef jerky and soda everyday, but you'll soon discover that the Freshman 15 is very real. Maybe that's because I had chips and salsa and candy and whatnot EVERY NIGHT EVER, not to mention I actually ate two full meals a day every day. Still, I gained weight. Don't let it happen to you!
• Get to know your professor a little. If you need an extension on an assignment or something, it'll improve the odds greatly. I'm not saying that you need to become best friends with them, but if they at least know your name, you'll be better off. 

That's probably all I got, at least for now. I don't really have advice for those of you staying at home and stuff, seeing as how I didn't do that. To my friends who are in/have been to college: any other suggestions?

A Small Pondry

Is there anything that any of you that read this would like to see me talk about?

Food? Music? My personal life? Anything else?

I'd greatly appreciate comments on whatever you'd like to read about from my perspective.

Thanks!

Why I Currently Suck

I think that above title is probably appropriate yeah... This post will be dedicated to how my summer has been, but more importantly, why I suck right now and generally need to stop sucking.

Also, it feels real good to be posting after such an extended absence. I gotta do this more!


Over the summer, I've done a lot of cool things. Some of the ones I can think of are as follows (more may be added at a later point, as this is also something of a personal reminder):

• Went to King's Island with Phil, Anthony and Splinter
• Lots of late night White Castle
• Got mugged at Central, spent all night at the police station
• The party at Anthony's
• Infiltrated South Grove
• Swimming and tanning with Kyra
• DnD with the usual gang

I also have a good amount to look forward to, such as my birthday, Taking Back Sunday and Muse, Captain America, and a good 'nother month of shenanigans.

HOWEVER, I AM A LAZY BASTARD. I have become so incredibly useless during my summer. I will now present the world with a list of reasons I have been a piece of crap (I may again add more later):

• I haven't blogged in two months
• My clothes have generally resided on my floor
• I still haven't checked my stuff for next school year
• I still haven't called Alienware back about this thing's failures
• I didn't get my job back, probably because I waited over a month to call
• I've been waking up between 12-2 every day
• My room is an absolute wreck

Sweet God... It actually looks even worse when I've put it out there. Anyways, I have got to not do this. I'm hoping to start by posting this whole thing, but that's just a start (actually, I also did laundry today). Ideally, I'd get up at a decent time tomorrow, make a phone call, check the web, and then clean my room. That is totally not going to happen though.

I'm really not sure why I got so damn lazy. Maybe it was the absolute freedom of no school or job or anything. Maybe it was the sudden lack of stress. Maybe it's because my food intake has been cut in half. Nevertheless, I'm most certainly disappointed in myself. I could be, should be better than this.

Whatever, you all get the point.

I'll make sure to try harder to keep you informed on more crap about myself that you don't care about!

Making You A Better Person

Alright people, listen up! Firefox 4 is available. It is tremendously faster than Firefox 4 and look beautiful. It manages your tabs better than ever, is more compatible with today's web standards, and did I mention it's beautiful?

Download it now people.

NOW.

A Call To Arms

What would I change in the world, if I could?

I don't know, that's a huge question. I mean, shouldn't the obvious answer be to solve world hunger or even world peace? Those are stupid answers, I think. Conflict is inevitable and as a result, everyone cannot truly be equal. It's a wonderful dream to be sure, but not feasible, not in this world.

I wish I could free people from the stress that modern society creates.

Think of all of the things you've had to go through in life that were stressful. I mean, I'm in college for God's sake. The complexity of IU is baffling. Covering all of the costs alone is incredibly hard just to start. You've got loans, grants, FAFSA, scholarships, bursar refunds... Past that, you've got the stress of all of your classes. You have to do good, or else you'll be permanently affected. You may lose scholarships or not be able to get into the school you wanted to. You also have to actually know what you want to do in life. If not, you may have to change your major and take an extra year or perhaps summer classes.

All of this is done in an attempt to get a well-paying job. Even then, it's more about who you know.

You go through all of this simply because the way our modern world is set up. I know the education system is different in other countries, but wherever you go the end result is that you'll have to go through a lot of work just to attain what is considered to be a good life by society.

It isn't just the school system that I take issue with. Think about the minimum wage job you may have had or attempting to file taxes. Life is complicated. It's stressful. It loads a ton of expectations on you with seemingly little results.

Why is it that we never seem to be encouraged to pursue happiness in our lives? What if we honestly don't want to go to college or get a high paying job?

NOTE: I am resuming writing this after a few days. I've had time to clarify my thought and am in a different state of mind. Let's see how this goes.

My issue, ultimately, is that I believe people in today's world are often unable to attain happiness due to the amount of stress and conflicting ideals that the world throws at them. We spend so long going through the system that's been established to bring us to adulthood, doing our critical thinking about life and the universe on the sidelines. It's so difficult to get even an idea of what to do with our lives, let alone of the significance of what we choose to do.

...Shoot, this whole thing is unorganized. It's a mess-and-a-half. It's a combination of my school-related stress and my recent philosophical quandaries. I'm going to give this whole "change in the world" thing another go when I have a better idea of what exactly it is. Until then, enjoy my semi-coherent rambling.

Responsibilities Of Many Kinds

Right now, I should be writing a paper for X-100, Introduction To Business. I will, sooner or later. It will get done, as will my other work. But it seems so pointless, so shallow...

I've been thinking a lot lately, about all sorts of things as evidenced by an earlier post. My current big question is this: What is my responsibility to this world?

Do I owe the world or the people of it anything? Should I be striving for the betterment of mankind? If so, how? There are many things one could theoretically do to attempt such a thing. I could educate myself politically and vote informed or even attempt to enter the system to make our country a better place to live. I could start a business with the intent of providing the world with a product or service that would better it. I could do all kinds of things, but ultimately, is it my responsibility?

What about my responsibility to myself? My desire for personal happiness and fulfillment? When does that factor in to my decision-making process? Likewise though, if all of my actions are self-serving am I selfish? Does it make me uncaring of the world around me?

What if absolutely everyone was self-serving? Wouldn't we all be fine then? I mean, if we were all held responsible for our own personal satisfaction and only our own, we wouldn't have to feel bad if others were in a bad situation. Of course, we DO feel bad, so that's a moot point. For that matter, I'm not saying that we shouldn't feel bad. Au contrair, I personally believe that by attempting to provide happiness for others, we can find peace for ourselves knowing we're doing something...

By saying that, I acknowledge that I believe a person to have some form of debt to the world around them. However, now there is the issue of what is truly important in life. Assuming that I should be helping others, is happiness what I should be attempting to provide? I find happiness to be a good goal, as it encompasses all sorts of options such as financial stability, equal rights, or even just someone to listen. What if I'm wrong though? What if the overall goal of humanity is to accomplish something and our personal happiness is insignificant to this goal or perhaps something that is supposed to be obtained through a pursuit of it?

By now, I must admit to a bit of weariness and am going to conclude this post. Any of you who read, I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

Why I'm Better Than A Few Of You...

This is why.

I checked the statistics of my blog, and found out that some of you are using Safari or, godforbid, INTERNET EXPLORER.




Sheeple, it is not 2000 anymore. You have several internet browsers you can choose from, and the flaming sack of crap that is Internet Explorer is not a valid choice. I know some people prefer Google Chrome, and a few of you like Opera, and that is fine by me. What is NOT fine is that some of you are willingly using a browser that is:

• Slow
• Ugly
• Vulnerable
• Out-Of-Date

If someone told you that if you just drove your car down to the lot they would replace it with a Ferrari, would you hesitate? No, of course you wouldn't. And yet, you willingly stick with an inferior browser.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

There, I even put a damn link for you. If those Internet Explorer and Safari numbers keep going up, I'm going to be really, really disappointed.