Monthly Archives: June 2010

Jun11

Annoying Cultural Stigmas

Posted on by
Annoying Cultural Stigmas

I’m not sure what it is about it that makes me think that I’d rather not belong to something that I have no choice but to be apart of. Much of it has to do with the apathy that fills in the gap between when you’ve just been introduced and before you realize that you actually have something in common. Being stuck in that point for a long period of time just makes me wish I had something better to think about. But that is the thing with meeting and getting to know new people. They are always this figure of light in the shadows, smiling and talking, but nothing makes sense, there is no connection other than the fact that you happen to cross paths.

From my prospective, I tend not to have any noticeable holes to fill until I start to make room for someone, then I realize that it is worth making room and it flows from there. But to have made room and then realized that they’re blocking another door is troublesome. Especially when they bring their friends into the mental sphere and cannot help but show how much more in love with them they are than they are with me. Not everyone does it, so why do some do it? Do they not realize that I’m sitting here wondering when we’re going to exist together in the present? No, probably not. That’s why it doesn’t work, there are too many of them on the periphery, too many comparisons, too many that came before, and too many to take in.

Information overload and “I’m exhausted, leave me alone”. I know to stick to my own introverted kind, but it is the extroverts who speak up and question me and suck me into their world. They enjoy the seeking as much as I enjoy being found.

Jun7

On Trying New Things

Posted on by
On Trying New Things

Expectations can be rather confusing once one asks: where do they come from? Ideas. Sometimes created by you, other times from external sources. To try to never expect something from someone or a certain situation is rather difficult, for example, when some one asks me to participate in something, I am naturally going to inquire about the details of the situation. From there I formulate an expectation of what I am getting myself into for preparation purposes. Sometimes I am happy with the outcome, sometimes I am not…it is difficult to figure out exactly why.

Some people are more accurate in projecting my level of enjoyment in events, other people (I have learned through trial and too much error) to just never join them.  That’s why I am trying new things: to see if I like it or not.

Sometimes I don’t realize that I’ve been trying new things again. New things just pop up and lately happen to randomly happen within a small amount of time. I don’t realize until after the fact that I have tried three new things and the reason I’m confused over my experiences of them is that I happen to try three new things in a row that I didn’t enjoy very much. I didn’t really realize the trend I was on. So, essentially, I need to keep trying new things until I find some new things that do leave me feeling cheery. I have this habit of sticking to the plan, and sometimes when the plan doesn’t happen, I only make it worse by trying to figure out why the plan didn’t happen. When in reality, there was no plan, just an idea that would have been better to take with a teaspoon of salt.

Jun7

Not Being Able to Manifest the Fun

Posted on by
Not Being Able to Manifest the Fun

Lately I’ve been getting really excited about my plans, then walking away from the event feeling rather, well, bored or let down or like I just wasted my time or wasted someone else’s time. I’m not sure what the problem is. I’m excited to get out and do things, but I just don’t seem to have as much fun being out as I do when I’m home doing my own thing (practicing the drum, working on dance moves, reading, listening to songs over and over and over again). I don’t feel closed off, like I’m totally willing to be talkative, but I guess there really isn’t much going on that I can expressively share aside from the usual routine of school and work.

The problem is that I don’t have anyone to dance and play the drum with: those two things are literally all I want to do. I can’t even imagine having someone to dance and play the drum with. Like I’m not even sure I would enjoy that because when we’re not dancing and playing the drum I’d have to entertain them (they’d be house guests obviously) so then I couldn’t just naturally move from one activity to another without running a plan by the person. My free time is either doing what someone else wants to do or doing what I want to do… I have a hard time compromising because another person’s presence takes up space in my brain and diminishes the enjoyment of my usual alone time routine because I start feeling guilty that I should be doing more to entertain them. Which usually leaves me feeling even worse because I’m not very good at entertaining people who can’t entertain themselves.

I’m tired of feeling bad after situations that were meant to make me feel happy. Like those people who talk really big about cool plans, but never actually implement them, or if they finally do, it isn’t until way after my excitement over the idea has dissipated.
Or even worse, feeling bad because I realize the happiness was only a momentary disillusionment from reality….like “Damn it, there are other things to consider, and those other things really bring the whole idea down.”

Sigh… everything has this filter over it today. Aside from my school project (my abilities there left me confident and pleasantly surprised) the rest of the outside world just isn’t doing it for me. I finally step out of my bubble and end up seeing no point in being there.

Jun6

Boredom

Posted on by
Boredom

It is 3am and I’m wide awake because I passed out at 7 or 8 when I got home from drinking. I’ve been laying in bed 1) thinking about how comfortable it is and 2) wondering what actually excites me in life. There are so many things I do that really are only interesting because they get me moving and out of my room. But do I actually enjoy it? that is a very different question, usually my response is, “I had a good time,” which is true but most of the time my head is still in another place or wishes to be for some reason.

It is that feeling of being 100% absorbed in something that I actually crave; that is difficult to obtain with other people around. Often I think that the people I’m hanging out with would enjoy themselves more if they were hanging out with someone else who is more entertaining. Maybe I’m just bored with myself sometimes so I assume others must be as well. Actually it is really a compatibility issue because more overtly social individuals need to be entertained to have a good time. They also need you to be over the top in explaining situations you enjoyed otherwise they don’t see the fun in it and respond with suspicion.

I think it is my knowledge of these overly social types that makes me wonder if I could have had a better time. I just see how other people “enjoy” situations more than I did and I wonder what I missed. But it isn’t that I didn’t have a good time, it is just that I didn’t have a good enough time. I think someone would have enjoyed themselves more with different company because I am not always that interested in social activities unless I’m extremely interested in hanging out with the parties involved.

I’m rather apathetic towards most people, like always have one foot on the ground and take it all with a grain of salt. I just don’t really want to be connected to anyone (aside from family) any more than I already are. Some sort of freedom from being defined by my friends. I don’t really know what to do about it, or if anything needs doing. School is good because it gives me a reason to hang out with people and a base for something to talk about.

The worst is feeling alone when people are around, because when I feel alone, I want to go be alone and that is often difficult when someone is relying on you to maintain your attention to the fact that they are there with you in the moment. Like if driving in the car and the other person wants to talk and I’m just zoned out, then I have to deal with the other person not being satisfied with my entertainment skills, when I really would rather be relaxing somewhere or practicing a new dance move in my room.

The problem with relationships is that I usually wonder why the person is hanging out with me and I usually don’t have a very good answer to that question. Just killing time, I guess, with something to do and someone to do something with. I think I’m just lacking adventurous excitement and the feelings involved. It all comes back to me being immobilized until I finish school. It is a personal choice and these are just the side effects of that choice that I must bear to accomplish my goal. I’m almost a year in and I have a year left, so it should go by fast. I have a lot of things to look forward to this summer. That dance workshop in July up in LA, getting these summer school classes out of the way, so the future doesn’t seem so grim, neither really does the present. There is just some left over dread from the past in dealing with people that comes up after certain interactions that makes me feel unsure of myself, but in so many other ways, I’m fine. I just wish I could go back to sleep.

Jun4

Day Dream Derivatives

Posted on by
Day Dream Derivatives

There is a certain pattern to daydreams that I’ve taken note of lately. As with anything that has been occurring for ages, but only recently has become worth noting, this pattern has become a problem (without the negative connotation). “Problem” meaning simply something to solve or get something extra out of because the pieces just don’t fully make sense with my current mode of thinking.

The pattern is as such: a outside occurrence (trigger) gets me thinking of some story to keep my mind occupied or distracted. The topic is of no consequence, the only criteria is that it fills me with some sort elation and intense need to play out the entire story over and over until all the loose ends are figured out and I have one linear daydream. The process is the best part, I get to feel all sorts of emotions which my everyday life doesn’t have (perhaps I don’t actually want in my everyday life) and I’m the one creating the story so I can imagine all sorts of possibilities that are off limits to the put-downs of outsiders. Of course when I encounter a situation in these daydreams that I dislike, I can still play out the drama, but then later decide that I wouldn’t want that to happen so I can go back to any part in the story and recreate the ending from there. I imagine I could write real stories this way… I would just have to record my voice because typing takes too long. Who knows, people may like it, the only problem being that I use real people as characters in these day dreams so I’d have to disguise them somehow. (I know, I’m not supposed to mediate on real people, I know I know, bad habit, because it distorts my perception of who they really are…but that is for another note)

Anyways, so that is the daydream pattern. Probably not too dissimilar to your own. But the “problem” comes along when I realize that my end product daydream is actually obtainable for me and I would really like it to happen. There is one piece that lets me know whether or not the idea is actually capable of happening: The beginning. Often these daydreams start as some sort of life altering event occurring that takes me into a whole new world or stage of life. Like, Prince Charming shows up and I suddenly don’t mind giving up my single freedoms… that sort of “outta the blue, completely change of behavior and outlook on things” type of cheesiness. (Day dreams are full of cheesy scenarios, don’t try to ly, I know yours are too, I blame Disney).

The thing with “the beginning” is that it cannot be planned as such. One cannot plan sending in a resume in response to a simple Craigslist job ad and suddenly having the job of your dreams, because things like that tend not to happen on cue. But once you do have the job of your dreams you can work with it, but there is no viable way of getting it suddenly or with luck.

What I am saying is that those sudden things you would need to happen in your life to get you to the next phase or step cannot be planned for because who knows if and how they could actually start to happen. But sometimes you do actually have a “beginning” that is reasonable and involves simple action on your part to get the ball rolling. Those are the viable daydreams to focus on, because you can actually make those happen, or at least take steps to see if you were right in believing that you would actually enjoy it if it did happen.

So “the beginning” is actually the last step in the dreaming process for me. I’ve got to play out the normal, nitty-gritty aspects of an idea to see if I like the idea before I can even think of where to begin, otherwise I would keep starting a whole bunch of things only to find out later that I don’t actually like doing it. And I’ve done a lot of pretty awesome things in life so far, so I don’t doubt that this method didn’t contribute to all that. There are probably other ways of getting me into action, but so far, my mental forecasts have done the job well enough.

Jun1

The Apology

Posted on by
The Apology

Apologies have so much power. I love apologizing to someone who as just lost a couple points of my respect just to see how they take it. It is funny to see how their whole attitude changes all of a sudden. It went from a situation where no one had yet admitted fault and both parties have looming thoughts of “oh shit, I hope I’m not going to be in the doghouse for doing that,” to “yeah, you did mess up, but it is okay I forgive you.” Whoa, just because I apologize doesn’t mean you didn’t mess up either. And I know you know that you were no angel, but you’re not that smart to have fooled me into disregarding your rather ridiculous behavior.

The funny thing is that I am not talking about one specific situation here. I have a couple in mind actually, all with different parties involved. Taking the blame, to cite a useful example, is actually a very powerful maneuver when I intend to no longer upkeep a relationship with someone. They walk away all proud that they were right (silently thanking god that I didn’t call them out of their fears) and assume, for a while, that my silence is an indication that I am somewhat shy about crossing their path again, leaving me plenty of time to move along with my life without bother from said individual. (Note: this doesn’t apply to you if I still talk to you, and it took rather monumental incidents to illicit this type of extreme I am referencing here, but this was a natural reaction out of me before I realized that it causes problems leading to further analysis in hopes of finding a better way of reacting to such situations).

Sounds harsh, but that’s the difficulty in accepting an apology from someone else. (I’m talking about real apologies from real emotionally heightened situations, not just, “sorry I didn’t mean to bump into you just then.”) In accepting an apology, I do not see how to continue on past that actually. Like, “Okay, I accept your apology, but that doesn’t mean I can act normal around you again.” This coming from someone who actually has never mended a real broken relationship (except for one sorta, which I have no idea how that happened… probably because I have no idea how the relationship really started to begin with and I am rather blurry on what the actual context of the relationship really is/was.. oh right, I fell in love with him rather suddenly, I don’t know why…moving on…). I don’t know what else to say other than, it is over when it is over unless I can somehow manage to dream it back to life. But if I can do that, I’m obviously not over it.

Jun1

Jealously Part III

Posted on by
Jealously Part III

There was a point, rather far in the past, where I was extremely jealous. This point in my life always comes back to plague me because nothing was actually solved at the time, I was simply “forgiven” for my horrifying emotion and all continued on with this situation pushed under the rug of our minds. My previous ponderings of jealously have lead me to believe that whenever I feel jealous, it is a signal that something in the relationship (whatever kind of relationship) isn’t actually working for me, and the emotions are just projected onto another party to formulate a cause for the emotion. The cyclical aspect of this is exactly what doesn’t make sense about it. But it was all I could come up with at the time.

Further pondering has lead me to a different approach, one that presupposes the jealousy. For this particular situation as well as an unfortunate second, I made one rather large error. That error being that I was under the impression that specific actions towards me were under the definition of the relationship I was in with said individual. In actuality, those actions were being given to me as if I was just an ordinary friend. Like, I thought something specific meant something special, when it really didn’t. Which explains why, when another person was treated in said manner, I was a little more than butt hurt about it. But then again, said individual was rather opportunistic… so I think this whole thing is an even bigger waste of my time. Yeah, I’m not even going to finish this thought for you.