It’s one of those
things that you try not to realize when working in a company, but there’s
always someone up on the chain above you. Unless you’ve got a major title like
CEO or anything else like that, there’s someone in management above you, and
it’s always a weird day when you catch management focusing on you.
Part of you wants to
freak out, because you’re just one of the little guys. There’s a bunch of
people that are like you, and for some reason you’re the one that they decided
to single out. It only gets worse when they learn your name. It’s like being in
grade school and the principal knowing your name. You hear them say your name
and the only response that your little fourth grade body can come up with is to
freeze in one spot and try not to pee your pants. Then you try to avoid them.
You come into work a different way, you make it seem like you’re super busy, and
then of course they send their secretary over to pull you from your job (or
class if we’re still using the 4th grade analogy).
It’s just a weird day
when people that you think have better things to do than to bug you, decide to
spend any amount of time on you.
While on my swim team
in high school, our coach liked to describe how hard we were supposed to push
ourselves during a specific set. Warm ups were something like 15%, drills were
30-40%, some would even push us up to the 60-70% range, and then there were
sprints, and those were at 100%.
I never gave a true
100% during practice
A true 100% while
sprinting in swimming would mean that every single muscle in my body was dead,
that I would need to stop and do nothing for a minute. I had done 100%’s before
during competitions, and those 100%’s were entirely different from what I was
giving at practice, because in practice, I knew that I still had a half hour
worth of drills and practicing that I was going to have to go through, and I
wasn’t about to give 100% when I knew I still needed a few percentages
afterwards.
The honest truth, after
thinking a bit about it tonight, is that I don’t think that I’ve done an honest
100% on anything lately. An honest, full fledged, 100%, nothing holding back,
trying with everything, throw caution to the wind, full retard of a try.
Everything that I could think of, I willingly cut myself some slack and didn’t
push as hard as I could have, and I don’t know why.
My work, I could work a
full shift, I could push to move over to a different area that’s been needing
me since I joined the Visa team, but I don’t. I stay where I’m at, and even
where I’m at I rarely do an honest 100% day, I always phone it in and slack off
at work.
Writing? I haven’t done
a 100% on that for a long time. I know that I can do better at that.
Being a husband? I
phone it in so often on that one. I know I should be better, but I just don’t
do it because I’m lazy.
Church stuff? I have
done close to 100%, I know that I can, and I know that I should, but for some
reason I just don’t.
Nothing within my life
is something that I’ve committed to, it’s really sort of weird now that I’m
thinking of it. You’d think somewhere in there I could say that I tried with
everything, that I gave it my all, that I couldn’t have done anything else, but
I don’t have that. There’s not one thing that I can think of that I didn’t cut
myself short on, that I didn’t take unnecessary breaks from just because I
wasn’t ‘feeling it’ or some other lame excuse.
It’s important to
understand that just because I’m not giving 100% does not mean that I’m not
trying. I’m still giving some good percentages for some of those categories,
but it’s still not that all-important 100%.
I don’t know if it’s
I’m afraid of what the results would be (in a good way) if I did go full retard
on something, or if it’s me being afraid of what the results would be (in a bad
way) if I did go full retard. For example, writing – if things go exceptionally
well because I put in everything that I can, there’s a whole new level of
pressure and stress that gets put into my life. However, if I dump everything
into it and nothing happens, then that means that no matter how hard I try, I
don’t have what it takes, which is depressing in it’s own right. By not trying
all of the way, I avoid the best case scenario because I’m flawed and I don’t
try as hard, but at the same point I miss the worse case scenario because I can
always sit back and say that I didn’t give it my all, that there was something
missing in the big picture and that if I just try a bit more next time that
that will be the time that it works.
Even things that I know
that I shouldn’t be afraid of the 100%, like the church, fall into this
pattern. I don’t do 100% and I get to be average, hide in the background and
not pull much attention to myself. I do the 100% and suddenly things start
happening, promises start being fulfilled, and people start looking, and I
don’t want that. I don’t like addition problems.
I know that I should
step it up, that I should be giving it everything that I have in the areas that
are important to me, and trying to do everything that I can to achieve my
worthy goals, but at the same time, I really don’t want to because if I do the
consequences are going to possibly be ones that I don’t want.
It was a slightly
funny, but slightly sad situation that we ran into today while driving around
Las Vegas. Alicia was talking about going to a restaurant, and having something
set up so that at a restaurant you could put a bunch of smaller parties, or
even solo diners together and force them into a family setting dinner where you
have to share things and eat around a bi table. The idea was to get ten people
that didn’t know each other, and share in a big meal, and then she said, or you
could just get ten people that you knew together and do the same thing, it
doesn’t have to be ten strangers. This brought up the awkward topic because I
said something along the lines that I wouldn’t be able to do that, and Alicia
doubted me.
I didn’t really want to
push the topic beause I ddidn’t want to argue about how few friends I had, but
her limitations were this, it had to be in one area, and they had to be people
that I would like to at least eat a meal with, they didn’t have to be my
besties, but they had to at least be someone that I could share a lunch with
without wanting to hurt people.
Even by those
standards, I’d need to drag in some strangers into the meal to make it work.
Let’s go into the two big areas that I have friends, or at least people I could
sit down and eat a meal with; Las Vegas and Utah Valley. Of course I’m not counting
Alicia in either one of these groups because the entire point of this was
talking about having a table of 10 full of friends, not a table of 10 with your
friends and then the person that you want to spend the rest of forever with.
Yes, she’s my friend, but she’s also so much more, so she’s not on these lists.
Las Vegas, the friends
I could have dinner with is nice and short, David, Chad, and Danica. Out of
then table for ten, we’d take up 4 of the seats and need 6 more strangers to
tag along.
Utah Valley (Provo,
Orem, American Fork, and all of that junk that sort of just melds together) is
a bit closer to the ten - Josh, Seth, Brandon, and then if I’m really pushing
it I could go with some people from work and include Dylan, Jared, Kyle and
Brett. With me included on this table for ten, we’re eight strong, and still
need two strangers to round out the table. The biggest problem with that table
for eight is that I wouldn’t want the first group to interact with the second
group, two completely different set of relationships between those groups.
You can try to pad the
numbers with former bishops, current bishops, elders quorum leaders, old
co-workers that I haven’t seen in years, or even trying to double the numbers
by including spouses that I have no relationships with other than the fact that
they’re married to the person that I am friends with, but that just seems to be
skirting around the fact that when hunting for people to fill a table for ten
that I would have to go outside of people that I consider ‘friends’ and stretch
it to include anyone that I have a slightest relationship with, if even
tangentially. Don’t get me wrong, some of those tangential people are nice, and
they probably have hearts of gold that I could easily add into the short list of
friends, but as of right now, if you have to ask simple questions to me like
what did I major in, you’re most likely not someone that I’d consider a friend.
It’s not like I’m asking for them to know my life story, but simple basic
details about my life are sort of required to be friends in my mind.
There’s a difference
between people being friendly, and people being my friends, and sadly (only
slightly, I’m not too bugged about it, I just wanted to do the actual math to
see if I was right because Alicia seemed to be so certain) in one area I could
not sit a table of 10 with me and my friends.
I’ve been stressing out
a lot lately about this story. Everyone that I talk to wants to read it, and
it’s one of those things that I’ve been working on for my master’s thesis and
it should be amazing, so I’m afraid that it’s starting to get too much hype.
It’s starting to get to the point where I’m trying to make something that I’d
like, but I’m afraid that everyone that has been around me has too high of
expectations so it won’t be worth it. Every time that I start writing in it I
start to wonder, am I rambling, am I putting enough details in, am I explaining
enough am I showing other things, am I writing the story the way that it needs
to be written, am I putting out something that is a good definition of what I
can do when writing?
I can’t just write to
write. I can’t write because that’s what I’m thinking and I want to get it out,
I’m writing now because it has to be the best I can do, I’m not comfortable
with my skills because I’m constantly second guessing myself. I’m constantly
thinking about what if what I’m writing isn’t good enough? What if this never
has the opportunity to get published? What if. . . ? That’s the question that I
touch every time I open up that document, what if. I can write a whole bunch of
other things, like this blog for example, but that story, that story is what
everything is revolving around, that is what I went to school for, it should be
amazing. It should be memorable, it should be everything, and I’m deadly afraid
that it isn’t, and that’s when it gets scary, because instead of thinking about
the story and trying to write the story, I’m thinking about all of the
technical sides of writing, I’m thinking about the techniques of writing, I’m
thinking about the mechanics of a sentence and the mechanics of a story arc
instead of just telling the story like it needs to be told. I’m thinking about
if the character arcs make sense, I’m thinking about everything in the world in
that story besides the actual story, and it’s making my writing that much
worse.
Writing isn’t fun right
now, and I’m afraid that it might never be fun again. It’s fun to write what I
want to write and not have to worry about publication, it’s not fun to think
about if what I’m writing is going to pay bills and get me any sort of income.
I know that Alicia loves me and would love me if I’m a failed author, but she’d
sure love paying for all of that master’s degree if I could actually use it and
didn’t show nothing for it. It’s always depressing to know that I’ve been
working on this thing for TEN YEARS (seriously, I have been, I started writing
the concept of DA ten years ago, did a first draft of if 8-9 years ago
(sometime on my mission) and then it sat around and I restarted it a year ago).
It’s a different draft, trying to use everything I learned, and making it a
legitimate story, but I’m just worried that I’m not up to it. My confidence in
myself right now and my writing ability is not that high.
I hate visiting family.
This is what happens when I visit family, I second guess myself.
Today at work I was bouncing along to di.fm/hardstyle in my seat, and it was in the middle of some screechy lines from Scantraxx, but I turned it up so that they could hear it. Because the song was trying to be pumped through low quality headsets at max volume it only made it worse, and that's when the weird looks started because if anything, the song did not sound bouncy.
It was sort of hard to explain it to them and have them listen across the room to my headset so I finally just had to send them a link so they could listen too. It's one of the difficult things about music, if you catch it at the wrong part, or hear it coming from poorly made speakers, it can ruin your entire perception of the artist, genre, and song. It's easy to make assumptions, but ultimately the best way to understand a song is to sit down in a quiet room with a set of good headphones (for example - http://en-us.sennheiser.com/shop ) or a good quality set of speakers (computer speakers don't cut it) and then listen to the song. It's ridiculous to realize just how much of a song you're missing because you can't hear all of it.
It's a little lame that it's happening on a Thursday, but today is my wedding anniversary.
Yay!
It's so crazy to think that we've been married for 5 years. Part of it feels like it's only been two or three at most, but at the same time, it feels so much longer than 5 years. Either way, happy to be with her.
When talking about friendships that went down the drain and not really knowing the exact details of them, I've got me one of them!
There's a lot to this story, and some of it gets weird, and fuzzy in my mind, so I'll try to tell it as best as I can remember it.
Spencer and I were best friends while growing up. This is to the point that in some of my earliest birthday pictures, in the crowd is Spencer sitting next to me, or at least pretty close. He was always part of my life, but the thing with Spencer was that due to birthdays we were a year apart in school. My birthday was in march, his in the fall, and so he was a year behind me in school, but that never really stopped us from hanging out and getting in trouble. The weird part about it, because of where we lived and the way school lines were drawn, we were never actually in the same school together. Part of me thinks that things could be completly different had we been in the same school, part of me thinks that I could have reigned him in a bit because I could do that.
You see, when we finally hit puberty Spencer was a huge kid. There are fat kids, there are 'big boned' kids, but he was 6'1 or 6'2, broad shoulders, big chest, and just a huge kid. The thing was, that he had the brains to match the burly jock exterior. Meanwhile I was 6'1, and 150 pounds on a fat day and super nerdy. I was nerdy to the point that I went to nationals for a science competition, and in one of them actually placed decently well. I don't know what it was, but when we were together, I got him to calm down and think, the problem was that when I wasn't there, when I couldn't get him to think straight, he'd idiot out and make poor, rash, choices.
For example - we were in the same boyscout troop. One summer I didn't go to scout camp because I had a summer job lifeguarding. He decided that it was a good idea on this week long camping and hiking trek to bring two pairs of boxing gloves and have boxing matches every night without the leaders knowing what was going on. Violence and stupidity were his go to answers. Around me, he'd actually do something bigger with his life. On his own, physical violence worked for him. Around me, he wanted to become a chiropractor. On his own bruises were a common thing. Around me, he'd at least sit down and try to think about the bad choices that other people around him were making, like his brother.
It wasn't until my first year of college that Idiot gained his name. It was his senior year in high school, no one was there to call him out on his stupidity that he would actually listen to, and stupid things happened. A series of stupid comments, and stupid actions got him the nickname behind his back of "Idiot".
I came back for one summer between college and my mission and things had gone from best friends to me not being able to stand being in the same room as him. Then I went on my mission. In the first 9 weeks of being gone, I got a letter from his parents wondering if I knew where he had disappeared to, I didn't. He bounced around the country, and even did a trip to Africa, and did nothing with his life.
Then came the letter. Out of the blue, without talking to him much, he sent me this letter telling me that everything I had done was wrong, that he never agreed with anything that we had grown up learning in church, and that he was through with it. After that, we didn't talk, and really I haven't said more than a dozen words to him since then. We went our separate ways, but then things got weird because he got married, straightened out his life, and even got back into going to church. . . but he never really did anything that he was planning on. Part of me really wants to sit down and figure out what in the world happened to him and at least get on the same page again so we can be facebook friends, but there's been too many burned bridges and it's been too long of doing our own separate things that I really doubt that there will ever be a time that Spencer and Adam will be Spencer and Adam again.
Words of wisdom:
- If you suggest for me to do something more than what I'm already doing in my life, for me to believe you, and maybe even recognize your suggestion, you're going to have to tell me when I'm going to do it.
I do not understand when people say that I should write more, that I should go to meetings at the job center, that I should apply for more jobs, that I should job hunt more, that I should sleep more, that I should do _________ more.
I agree, if I had time, I'd love to job hunt more.
If I had time, I'd love to network and try to find jobs in my field that are what I am looking for.
If I had time, I'd love to sleep 8 hours every night, however that's not an option.
Sure, I could disregard my wife, not talk to, interact, or be with her to give me more time to be selfish and do something else, however call it crazy, but if I only see my wife, awake, for an hour or two a day, I'm going to try to spend that time with her, NOT doing something else.
I could be a real jerk to my family and leave them as soon as my wife gets home so that I can do what I want to do for a few hours, but that isn't the best option.
I wish I could do more, but unless someone is watching Addison or I stop trying to go to work, I'm pretty set on my schedule.
Long story short - don't tell me that I need to do more unless you're willing to figure out where in my life that something more is going to fit. Thanks for the advice, but I didn't ask for it and there's no room for it in my life right now. Please come back when there's less balls in the air that I have to try to juggle.
This one, unlike some of the others, I've got a chunk full of stories for. Yay for this one! Now the bad part about this is that I was expecting it to be double lives that were not as serious as the show goes into, but we'll do the happier, funner, more exciting less crazy, double life. There is the secret assumption that I have in my head that one of these days my parents are going to run around and finally let it out of the bag some huge secret, but whatever, we'll just jump into the fun story of Adrillf.
I've given a few different stories about where Adrillf came from, and why it's the name that I've adopted. One of the partially true stories that it comes from is that it's a character from a story that I wrote that I really enjoyed. Partially true, Adrillf was a character that I played in a D&D campaign, and was actually my first real character.
The group of Joe, Jack, Bane, Malbro and Adrillf was the first, and most memorable D&D group that I have ever played, and Adrillf was me. The story of Adrillf took time to tell, it took a group of players and hundreds of dice rolls, and Adrillf became less of a D&D psionic, and became a pure teenage escapism of me and what I wished for and wanted in my own life. That's where the name came from, but then came the double life when college happened.
At college I had to get email accounts, AIM log ins, online character names, and a bunch of other e-names, and I was in need of something that I could remember and of course meant something. I didn't want something that was ridiculous (I'm looking at you bkinferno2504) but also that wasn't something lame (yup, I've got that now adam.walters702), and so I got something innocuous - Adrillf. Something close enough that you could assume that it was a name, but also just odd enough that it was personal, and I knew that no one would ever have it on any server or email service I signed up for because I came up with the character, and his name.
There, on the internet, I ran into something that people have ran into before - internet anonymity. This is the curse that comes in the youtube comments sections, in the forum trolls, and the teenage boys playing CoD telling you just how much fun they had with your mom last night. It's the concept that online, you're free from society, there's no legal system, there's no responses to your actions, and there's nothing that is stopping you. If you want to run around and say that everyone is being stupid, you have the right to do so, or if you want to run around and be the nicest person in the world, you could do that too. The internet, because it has no actual social interactions on it, i a place full of anonymity, and instead of becoming the jerk, the troll, the idiot, the angry gamer, or any of those other typical stories. I became Adrillf.
Adrillf came alive on the forums of glowsticking.com. I was a thing called a post whore. I posted all day, all night, on everything that I could find. I talked to everyone, joked with everyone, and commented on everything. I was the internet version of a social butterfly. Even at one point, in the casual, informal section of the forums called the sandbox, I was the father of a made up family called the Post Whore Family. The music, the dancing, the partying, the friendships, it was perfect for me. In reality, I was stuck at college trying to understand life, and I was quiet. Adrillf was bouncing off the walls with activity, having fun with people that he had never met, and it was me.
Time has gone by, and you'd expect me to grow out of this phase of having a secret life, but Adrillf is still alive and doing well. Playing a video game and need a character name? Automatically it's Adrillf. Screen name for anything that isn't serious? Adrillf. RO? Adrillf. HoN? Adrillf. Strife? Adrillf. PSN? Adrillf. I am still Adrillf, and it's who I am, it's to the point that in public that if I was walking down the street and someone called me by the name 'Adrillf' that I would respond to it. Adrillf is not just a name online, after having this name and this personality for such a long time, Adrillf is me . . . just not to my family.
It's something that I think will always sit inside of me. I was an elder for the church, but Adrillf was still there. A college student, a newly wed, a father, a mormon, and everything else that I am, but I'm also Adrillf, and I don't think that my biological family has a clue about it. My wife, she sort of gets it. She recognizes the name, she knows where it came from, and she knows that I've put it partially behind me and not pushing the personality of Adrillf out on the internet. However, my parents, I'm 99% sure they couldn't tell you a thing about it. They'd recognize it as my email address, but not much more than that, and honestly, I'm okay with it. I'm okay with having this segment of me, this section of my personality that is my double life. I like being able to wear a suit and tie and have a room full of people think that I've got my life together, and have them never think that I'm also Adrillf.
They're short teachers. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/education/wanted-2000-new-ccsd-teachers and I just happen to be qualified and have enough education to teach. I would like to teach, but I also wouldn't like to leave behind Addison and Alicia, which is what taking that job would mean I'd have to do. With that in mind, I'm not taking it. I know that I'm going to confuse the people in charge of applications and that they might get mad at me, but it's not worth it. Big picture, I can stay in Utah and work at ROI, or whatever comes my way. Teaching for CCSD isn't big picture, that's short term, small picture, and I was just too stupid and too hard headed to admit it to myself. I always knew that it wasn't supposed to happen, I just needed to step back away from it and see things on a bigger scale.
Big scale, I need to be with my family.
Big scale, it's more important to be with them, than get a slightly better pay check.
Big scale, something might happen in Utah.
Big scale, I don't want to force the move to Vegas, and then (hopefully) a year later force a move to somewhere else where I get a teaching position that I actually want, and am not (sorry Alicia for these words, but it's partially CCSD and partially because it's high school level) settling for.
Now, I just have to come up with an explanation to CCSD HR about why I'm taking away my application a second time. I'm thinking about going with I got a position where I'm currently living that would make it so I wouldn't have to move.
Hopefully this realization will help get rid of the stress eye twitch. Useless information, but when things get really stressful in my life, and it gets really bad, my right eye gets a twitch in it, a muscle spasm that I can not control. Lately it has been hitting me HARD, and on top of it, I've also been getting the nervous, stress, insomnia where I can't do anything including sleep, and that's never fun. Hopefully, fingers crossed, coming to this realization and pulling a leap of faith Adam move that I have a bad habit of pulling, I'll just take the dive and things will work out, because that's what is supposed to happen.
Tragedy happens, life sucks, it's not fair, and no one enjoys the hand that they're dealt. Everyone doesn't like what they're going through, but some are gifted with the ability to come out the other side of a tragedy laughing about it and seeing humor in the horrible things that have happened to them. You and your brother get diagnosed with terminal cancer and you watch as they die from it while you're still alive? Sure, some people can still find humor in that.
I am not one of those people.
When things go bad, when things get icky, and you want to do anything but laugh, I don't find the possibility of ever laughing. I'm sure I could try to lighten the mood and get a laugh track going on in the back of my mind to all of the funny things that I could talk about, but I can't help but see it as more tragic than it is funny.
Sentenced an 8 month pregnant woman to go back to jail because she broke her parole and couldn't hold a job? Tragic, not funny.
Getting my masters so that I could get a job and then being strapped for cash and unable to pay bills because I can't find a single company that is willing to hire me? Ironic, but not in a funny way.
Marrying me best friend who I trust with everything in my life, but coming to the realization that she does not trust in me. Sad, without a hint of funny.
Spending two years of my life in hopes of it being my 'best two years' but coming out the other end with close to nothing tangible to prove from any of it. Depressing, a good waste of time, but it still can't be funny.
I just don't see the funny. I really wanted to try to take any of those stories and try to make them funny for this post, try to make myself smile as I thought about them, but as I drafted different versions of this, trying to think funny, trying to show humor, trying to get the audience at the Un-cabaret in my head to chuckle along with me as I told my sad story, I just couldn't get it done. I could go into tragedy and just pray that timing would save me, because let's be honest, a lot of the radio show as really tragic, but just said with a forgiving audience and a comedian that knew timing, but I just can't convey that through words.
As fun as it would be to dig through the memories and try to tell stories about growing up, my family then, or my little family now, I just don't think I can get humor to ever come across in something that is by it's very nature not funny. No matter how hard I try, my wife telling me that if I take a job that we'll most likely be divorced in under a year isn't funny. Having her point me to that job telling me it's an option, and THEN telling me that isn't funny. My life, from what I can see of it, doesn't have comedy in it; it has anguish. I wish I had the ability to laugh my way out, to see the funky shaped forest through the trees but I just can't. Tragedy is tragic, it does not matter how long you wait for time to go by, it never becomes humor, and to think that it does only degrades and minimizes whatever you have gone through in your life.
Sorry for the downer post, the more and more I run through these radio shows the more I realize that I must actually live from a 4-6 because I just can't do some of them.
I wish I could be cavalier about going into job interviews, and saying that I wasn't rattled by them, but I have a big one tomorrow morning, and I even did all of my nerding out early tonight so that I could get to sleep so that I could be ready for the interview, but this one is getting to me.
Applying for jobs has hit that stage where I'm starting to doubt myself and I don't even want to apply. I was qualified for a lot of the jobs that I've applied for, only gotten interviews with a few of them, and I'm still sitting where I'm at. There has to be something wrong because if it wasn't wrong, then I SHOULD have a job by now. It's gotten to the point where I'm applying to jobs that I don't even want, but have qualifications for just because I want to see if I can get a job offer.
I don't have a job, so there has to be something wrong. Jobs can't be wrong because I have the qualifications required for them, the experience they're asking for. My resume can't be wrong because it's great enough to get me interviews. That leaves one thing left, the interviews. They have to be wrong, because up to this point the interview has meant that the company thinks that I'm interesting enough to talk to, but then they take a serious look at me and BAM there goes every last chance of me getting the job.
On top of that, money just got tight around our home. Between my job and Addison's day care we're breaking just about even between those two, and that leaves us not much else to work with. All of Alicia's job is paying bills, and we're not saving much/any of it. It's getting to the point where it hasn't been said yet, but the logical deduction is this - either I get a better job so I can contribute more, or I stay home with Addison more so that her daycare doesn't eat as much of our income.
This lead to one of the weirdest and scariest ideas from Alicia that I've heard in a while - I go down to Las Vegas and teach for CCSD. They need English teachers - http://ccsd.net/employees/resources/pdf/desc/lp/secondary_teacher_english.pdf and I could fill the position, if I just talk to a person in the district and push a bit, I'm about 98% sure that I could get a job, but I'd have to do it now, and I'd have to push hard. The only down side to this? I'd have to leave Alicia on her own with Addison, I'd live with my parents until I could find a place, and I'd be teaching most likely in a high risk school where my students are all borderline drop outs, under reading levels, and have no clue what I'm doing in the least bit. Sure, I'd get money for it, and sure, it'd be nice to do, and if I was living in a fantasy world where only I mattered, I'd do it in a heartbeat, but then the simple truth comes out that I have a family and I'm a father and I need to care for them, and the question is asked if I can care for them better when I'm in a different time zone but providing a bigger paycheck, or can I provide for them better when I get a horrible paycheck but can at least help care for my daughter and keep Alicia from going insane?
I wish I had an answer to which one I should follow and right now I'm stuck in this paralysis of it all. I can't go to sleep because I have to figure out what to do next, I can't stay awake because I have the interview, I can't write on DA because I'm distracted by this whole job situation, I can't focus on the job situation because I don't know if I'll do well tomorrow and have a new job, I don't want to get my hopes up so I should put in for CCSD just to play it safe, I don't want to put in my application and really push for CCSD because I have no clue if that's what I really need to do, and now I'm stuck, on my couch, trying to get the initiative to do something but the paralyzing pressure from everything else making it so that I'm going through my Facebook page and Imgur for the fifth time tonight even though I know that nothing new is going to be on either one of them and best case scenario they just help me push a few minutes to the side that I won't have to think about things.
It's moments like this that I started writing.
Writing, books, games, everything that I love to do comes down to escapism. I don't like this, so I'm going to write something that I do like. I'm going to play a game that has a story that I do enjoy. I'm going to read a book that makes sense and is controlled. I'd normally run to the escape route and try to disregard all of this junk in my life. This is when I become anti-social, I clam up and bunker down into a safe routine. This is when I would put on headphones and turn them up to max volume no matter where I walked. This is when I want nothing new, I don't talk to anyone, and I dump everything in my brain that's not being used on school or work onto something that isn't real, but I'm supposedly an adult now and have to deal with it, and I don't like it.
This is how I would like to start my mornings. . . . okay I already do with my car stereo and driving to work, but to have a sound system to blast along with, yes. So much yes.
I'd have to have a shower afterwards, but yes, yes, yes. It'll never happen in PG, but yes. This.
The goal is that I have this thing finished and at least given a once over to make sure that major errors aren't in it by the end of the month, that's going to require some serious planning and knowing exactly what I'm going to do next in the story so that when I sit down to type, I'm not tempted to start lurking through IMgur, or Facebook, or even play an hour and a half long game of HoN (Yes that happened tonight too, it wasn't that bad of a game, I somehow found myself in a five stack with some decent players and even got to try out Magmus, honestly I can see the power that he can provide, he just has some serious manna issues to deal with).
So to fight the procrastination in the future, I'm going to procrastinate right now by outlining the rest of the story. Hopefully tomorrow when I sit down at night and stare at my computer I'll be thinking about this and jump straight into it and have a productive night of writing, instead of contemplating wither or not Midnight Club LA really deserves the Nintendo Hard title that some people talk about it with, but then again I checked my % completion and I'm only 25% in, so I don't know exactly what it'll look like when I get further into the game.
One more day stuck in the castle
Kendel is stuck out with he king, no worries about him out there, he just wants to know what's happening back with the group.
Pia, Britney and David get together and do a brainstorm session, now that they're back togehter, and tey're all sane, they get the ball rolling on exactly what is going on and where they are headed.
Britney has secrets from the duke and when he's planning to attack, it looks like he's going to attack in three days from when they're talking because that's when the king should be the furthest away and the timing should be right for the attack.
College
Doors are still locked
Kendel gets caught up on everything and what happened while he was away. Gets upset at David.
Yelling through the doors, they start planning for the 20's and exactly what they need to do there to catch the thief. I need to go back and re-read and see where Britney was in trying to befriend them, or even see what the plan was before so that I can make things match, I can't remember what I had them doing and the path that they were headed down for this (this is part of the reason that I didn't want to write because I didn't want to go back and read quite yet, but I didn't want to go forward in fear that I'd get it entirely wrong than what came in the opposite direction)
Either way, get them to make a solid plan on how to get things moving in the 20's, don't plan much for the castle, just get Kendel caught up.
20's
Set up the sting (whatever the steps were from above)
Sting (it works perfectly except for one part where David, out of desperation tries to use a spell from the castle to help him out and he's not sure if the magic worked, or if it was just luck that things worked out the way they did.
Cops catch the thief, Omel goes down with a fight, he gets shot, no more for them to deal with because Omel is dead.
This can take two or three days in the 20's without interuption from the other dreams if needed.
Castle
Two more days until the attack
Kendel tries everything to get the king to start heading back, he stays out.
David starts researching trying to find anything in all of his books that magically could help stop Omel, Pia tries to suck it up and be a princess to try to see how the state of everything is, and make sure that there are friends somewhere within the castle that are looking out for her. Britney, is with the duke making sure that they always know exactly where he is and what he is doing so that there will be no surprises.
To be continued when I'm at work and have nothing to do.
Okay, to be entirely rude, and sort of heartless, Robin Williams Died, or rather, he committed suicide. I get it, he's dead. I get it, he's a great guy who did some really funny things,
And here comes in the insensitive side of me-
I don't need to hear about it every where I go. I get it, we lost a good comedian, and it's sort of ironic that the comedian was sad in his personal life, but that does not mean that I need to hear it from every single person online. I know that I'm only adding to the hype of him online, but let's be honest, I hit an all time high yesterday with 10 (that's right 10!) hits on this blog. Apparently one of you really wanted to keep reading about the Christmas Olympics. I'm not too worried about overflowing too much of the internet.
The other thought in my morbid little mind when faced with this, is that I hope that when I die I can get even 1/1,000th of the response that he got when he died. I don't plan on being a world figure or being influential in the lives of millions, but I could at least go for putting a dent into a few thousand people's brains by the time that I've gotten grey and old and can't remember how to tie my shoes anymore.
This was a weird one because it was all about the year 1995 and in 1995 I was 9 years old. There isn't any other link between the stories, other than talking about what happened during that year. I wish there was a better theme for the show, because memories of 3rd grade aren't crystal clear, but trying to look back at it I think I have something. Luckily for you, I remember a good story from 3rd grade that actually might play well with the life I'm in now days. The more I go through this idea of using the program as a series of writing prompts for personal essays or whatever else you want to call these, the more I see it as a horribly good thing. It's amazing because they have to come up with unique topics every single week, but also horrible because there are going to be some that I simply have nothing for, luckily this is not one of those that I have nothing for.
My First Writing Group
I don't remember all of the details, I don't remember why we were doing it, and I'm pretty sure that it was only about a page long, but 3rd grade sits clearly in my mind as the first time I wrote a story.
Rewind back to me being 9 years old. I'm the weird kid at school, nerdy, but the grade schoolers didn't quite know how to approach the nerdyness that was me, so I just kept on rolling as me. The only weird part about my 4.0 GPA in grade school (that promptly tanked as soon as hormones and middle school came around) was that I was absolutely no good at spelling. Writing was my weakest subject. Ironic now, I know, but I take it to be like my backhand in tennis. It used to be the worst shot in the world from me, but because I drilled it so much and focused so much time on it, it slowly became what I'm strongest at.
With that in mind, I was super proud of what I had created. I worked hard on it, I thought that it was top tier stuff, and I was ready to have other people in the class review it so that they could mark off on nothing on it, because it was perfect. Like I said, I was a little nerdy, and also a little cocky about it too. We sit down in the group and one of the stories that I had to go through and edit was missing something! I was so proud of myself, the story had a sentence that wasn't a full sentence. It didn't have a capital letter to it, but instead started off with three periods. I mean, come on kids, even I knew that sentences didn't start with periods.
Thus started a debate between me and the girl on if you could start a sentence with three periods. In my world, sentences had to start with a capital letter, have something doing something and then end with either a period, question mark or exclamation point. If there was anything that I learned in second grade it was that a sentence had to have those things. After making enough noise and neither of us backing down we took things to Mrs. Dagger (considerably less awesome than her name builds her up to be) and that was my first introduction to the creative writing rule that you can break just about any rule that's in existence if you have a reason for it.
You can have a sentence that starts, or even ends with multiple periods . . . you just have to make sure that it makes sense. It's one of those things that you don't get taught that early on when writing, and luckily in my first (or at least one of my first) writing groups I learned that you can be creative with creative writing. You have to know the rules, and you have to follow the rules, but if you feel like breaking out of them every now and again, and you have a good reason to, then go ahead and be creative and do something different.
I can't remember much from third grade, but I do remember having that argument, and knowing that I was right, knowing with everything that my teachers had taught me, that what was on the page wasn't a sentence, and then learning at the same time that words don't always have to fit into the rules. There were other small things about that school year, like how Mrs. Dagger would take roll, but learning that words can do weird things if you know how to use them right, stuck with me.
Lately I haven't been writing that much in DA, because. . . well. . . because I didn't know why, until I just got over the hump.
I enjoy writing the characters together. I enjoy having them yell at each other, work with each other, and be in the same room together and bouncing around between them, but where I was I broke them apart, sent them to different corners of a dream, and even silenced Pia. It was at that point when I couldn't have them as a group and I had to spend time in one of their heads for far too long and they're still separated (they're going to be like that until the big finale), but then I got Pia's mouth back and I remembered just how much fun she is to write when she's not broken.
For those wondering, the picture is the image search you get when you google search Pia, this is actually a bit more around what I invision what she looks like, but not as round a face, but still this flavor of socialy awkward. Thank you google search, "Philosophy student".
Racing games, I haven't touched a serious racing game like this (I've done go-kart E for everyone games that rubber band like no other) in a long time, so with this one getting off of the bookshelf and into the system, it's an interesting look into the world of racing games.
Remember how I like story lines? How that I'm a sucker for progression in characters or locations or whatever it might be?
Yeah, there's none of that.
You have a car, you have a phone. People call you on the phone and tell you that they want to race you. Why? Because you race, and that's what you do. There's no story, no reasoning behind anything, the only real challenge of the entire thing is a new track or a new car that you have to race against. The cops are a joke, you can get out of any ticket ever, there's no real consequences for any of your actions, it's built around the entire basis that you want to race people and so that is what it's going to do.
The graphics are amazing, the the soundtrack as you drive around is crazy diverse, but at it's core the game does not try to hide the fact that it's a racing game and that you're only there to race. Which leaves some questions to be answered. Midnight club? It's not only at midnight that you race, and there certainly doesn't seem to be a club anywhere in the game. Even a loose organization of people that could constitute a club at school doesn't even make it into the game.
You can do a lot of things, like customize your ride and make it look like a one of a kind beast . . . but there's no reason to do it. You don't unlock anything special, you don't go faster, and it's purely cosmetic, so I just stick with a stock paint job and rims.
The only part about the game that I've got a small beef with is that coming from a RPG player who is used to grinding holy cow do they use the same race tracks over and over again. You know, for being a racing game that has the ENTIRE city of LA at it's finger tips to make tracks through, it likes to send you through the same intersections, the same paths. It has the possibility to take you on a tour of the entire city, and instead it chooses to do limited, small routes that link together in the same exact ways.
The only other odd thing about this game is the RNG. The time of races, the weather, and even the traffic is randomly generated every time you race. For some of the more difficult races it's not a question of if you can beat the other racers, it's a question of if the RNG elements will be nice to you and give you the edge over the NPC's. It also doesn't hurt that the computer is a cheating bastard. Sometimes it works within the normal laws that you have to work under, but other times cars that should never pass you wizz by you without a second thought. You can be in the lead by 10+ seconds the entire race (10 seconds at 100 mph is a good distance) but then the rubberband snaps just as you're getting close to the end and you get wiped off the face of the earth by cars that happen to be in the worst spot possible on turns that would require Asian level reflexes that the computer can speed by but send you spiraling into a nasty slow motion cut scene of your wreck. It's honestly better to be in last place for most of the race and then use the rubber band mechanics to your advantage at the end of a race to take first place from the cheating NPC's. It's not so much a question of skill as it is a question of if the game is going to be nice enough to set the RNG in a way that will let you win.
Not going to lie, when I first saw this episode, I was thrilled that it was about quilting, because I actually had a weird story from my family and growing up me, that could work with quilting. But then I started to listen to the stories, and got a bit sad, because instead of talking about quilting, and how I know how to make, sew together, stitch, back, tie and do everything else in the world of quilting, it was in fact about quitting.
Now you might think that it'd be weird that they'd have a radio show all about quilting, but come on, one of the first ones that they produced was about poultry, so I was open to it being about blankets. The only hard part about it being changed to being about quitting is the weird fact that I haven't really quit anything before.
They talked about quitting jobs - all of my jobs I've ever stopped going to because I moved, could no longer work there (grounds crew at college) or got fired from. I've never actually turned in my two weeks notice and quit. Relationships I've never quit on because I've only really had one relationship. Books, I don't quit on, I finish them cover to cover. Movies, plays, friendships, contracts, and just about anything that I can think of, and I haven't quit it. I've let things decay in the background from lack of attention, but I've never been in the middle of something and quit it.
The quilt that I was originally going to write about, is actually pretty true to my history of quitting. Long story (that hopefully will come around at a later episode that is actually about quilting) but around my 16th birthday, I had to block, back, and ultimately hand quilt an entire queen size quilt. It's a weird story, but I did it. I hunted for fabric, blocked them together, sewed the entire quilt together, backed it, put it in frames and then started in on quilting. I had help from my mom, but I did my part and didn't quit. Finally when it came down to binding the edges my mom stepped up and said that she'd do it, and that's where my quilt has been sitting for over a decade now. Completely finished except for the last step because I walked away and didn't want to finish it. I didn't quit mid way, I didn't try to stop, I did the work, have the quilt, but it's not finished.
That pretty much summarizes all of the things I quit. I did them right, and then something else came up and just took me away from them. Tennis got replaced by school. Writing one story would slowly get replaced by doing something else, and the list goes on. You could try to say that I quit some things by finishing them, like how I quit college because I no longer go to college, but I finished that, there's nothing more for me to do there as a student. I wish I had a good story here about something that I quit, a hobby, a friendship, or even a job, but there really isn't anything in my life, besides bad habits, that I can say that I really quit. Sorry for the short post, but I just don't have anything about quitting, quilting on the other hand, that could get interesting.
Fun side note, in the back of my mind, I really do want to make my own quilt again. I don't know why, but to do a simple block pattern, nothing too fancy, and just make a big, king size, super fluffy patchwork quilt. I doubt I ever will just because of time, but part of me really wants to knock something out like this one more time just to prove to myself that I can still do it. Maybe that could be on the topic of me quitting, sometimes I quit before I even start things. I have a lot to do on 'to do' lists, but rarely do I actually start any of them for my own personal reasons.
When growing up, I didn't realize how weird my Christmases were, they were just Christmas the way that Christmas should be done, but after getting out of the house, and going to college and having to spend Christmas with families that were not my own, I realized just how much my Christmas was a weird event, and it explained a bit more of why I didn't quite get it.
That's the thing, Christmas at my house was always a big deal. ALWAYS. To the point that when growing up, even well after the period where I should even be thinking anything about Santa Clause being real (sorry kids), a punishment for not getting good grades or being rude around the house was that Christmas was going to be postponed. The weird part about that was that for a few years we moved Christmas two or three days later because we wanted the after Christmas sales to buy gifts for each other. But the hype of Christmas wasn't what made my Christmases weird, it was what happened during Christmas break.
Christmas break was when the entire family would be stuck together. Mom wouldn't have to work, the kids would be out of school, and Dad would typically take off a bit of time to be there too, and our family can't really quite do family at a normal level and that's when the weird starts to leak out.
First, there is the traditional Christmas Olympics. No, I don't mean winter Olympics that show up every four years, I'm talking about the Christmas Olympics. Now don't confuse these with the Thanksgiving Olympics because those are a shortened weekend warrior bastardized version of the official two week long Christmas games. Before Christmas break would even start, at least five events (as picked by each member of the family, hopefully doing something that they could win at) would show up on a large sheet of paper taped to the wall with brackets next to them. If you didn't know any better and you weren't paying attention you'd think that it was March Madness and we were posting up who we thought was going to win, but again that's a different holiday tradition (yes that's a holiday in my family. . . or at least March Madness is for my mom, not quite sure about how my dad feels about it).
Now, you have to remember a few things about these Christmas Olympics. First - this was started when we were small kids. This tradition was meant to keep the little ones busy instead of just sitting around punching each other. Second - we were in the desert, normal winter sports don't apply. Third - the more random and obscure the competition, the better. See rule #1.
When I talk about random Olympic games, let's go back and revisit a few of the classics of the Christmas Olympics. Balancing a broom handle on your open palm, you drop you loose. The sock matching competition, get 12 random pairs of socks and see who can pair them the fastest. The Lego shuttle shuffle - put five lego bits across the room and you have to run over, pick them up, and put them back into their tub of legos using only your feet. Then, of course, we can't forget the year that my wife joined in and was a write in on the bracket and cleaned house on the book balancing competition and played a game of Uno (which was also part of the Olympics, but a different game) while balancing a book on her head. She was doing so well in the book balancing she decided to double down and play some Uno to pass the time.
When you pick out the games you try to stack the deck in your favor. It has to be random, because we almost never use the same game twice, but at the same time, it has to be competitive enough that everyone thinks they have a shot. The most recent version of the Olymics had me signing up everyone for a speed typing competition to see who could get the fastest WPM. This might sound unfair but considering my mom made it a point to make sure all of the kids could at least do 60 wpm, it was bragging rights time as I stepped up and pulled out a 110 wpm session.
The Olympics are weird enough, but it doesn't stop there with the Christmas break. There's the angel food cake decorated with a nativity scene on top that is Jesus' birthday cake that we sing happy birthday to on Christmas Eve,
the Christmas puzzle that is either bought before the break or given as a Christmas day present that has to be the hardest puzzle you can find (the harder, the better, there are still stories told about some of the hardest puzzles we've ever done) and must be completed before break is over, the double Christmas trees which lead to a double Christmas (morning Christmas and afternoon Christmas), the cooking traditions which include a very specific menu and who must cook which dish and if they're not there can't be cooked (my dish is rolls, I don't show up for Christmas and they have horrible store bought rolls) and let us not forget about the Christmas nativity pageant.
There's, of course, the church nativity where the sheep are small little four-year-old kids that are waving to their moms in the audience, and then there's even the live nativity in a church parking lot complete with donkeys, camels, and a group of guys dressed in white robes standing up on top of the church with a giant spot light in their eyes trying not to get vertigo as Handel's Messiah is blasting over the loud speakers, but this is my family we're talking about, even that isn't weird enough. This is the family ran Christmas pageant. Each year, one of us was in charge of organizing and directing a Christmas pageant that would star our family. We'd get together, grab the costume box, and dress up to reenact the nativity scene from the Bible. If that wasn't weird enough, because 4/5 of us are super musically inclined, we would even have music to go along with it. Gwen would play something on her violin, my mom would accompany us on the piano as we sang from the hymn book, I'd pull out my cello and dig my way through a song that I'd never see again for another 365 days, and Katie (not to be outdone by just how weird things were going) would bust out the beer bottles.
Now, let me start this by saying that Katie, the middle sister, when she was younger, would play her oboe as part of the musical section of the pageant, but one year while in high school she decided to mix things up and started to collect bottles. Without any warning, during the pageant she pulled them out, handed each of us two of them marked with tape that had a number on them and water filled up to a precise pre-measured location to produce the note she was looking for. With a small lesson on how to blow on top of a bottle to get the right notes to come out, we were given a sheet of paper that had a list of numbers on it and she directed us in piping out Jingle Bells on bottles. This was such a hit, every year that she's around for Christmas, it's a must have as part of the show.
This is all perfectly normal for my family, and I'm sure that as I sit here writing this list of weird things my family does just for the Christmas holiday, that I'm missing at least a handful of them, in fact instead of modifying the list above, I'll just add a few down here - the 12 days of Christmas where we get 12 gifts and then drop them off at a person's door and run (there are different variations on this, most years also included putting a scripture that was related slightly to the present on top of the gift, and I mean do mean SLIGHT relationship. It's hard when you go to the dollar store to find 12 of something that you think might be related to the scriptures, but thank you Proverbs and Isaiah for giving us scriptures that can be interpreted to mean just about whatever you want! Next, is the Christmas card wall decoration. My mom would save the Christmas cards that she got for a year, and then cut the front of them off, tape them all onto a ribbon, and then hang them on the wall the next year. All of the generic pictures of trees covered in snow and Santa hung from one (or sometimes two) strings of thin ribbon. Next - the piano student Christmas recital. When younger, my mom taught piano lessons to a lot of kids, and each year she would pack all of them into our front room and have a Christmas recital. Last, but certainly not least, was the fire place. Remember, this is Las Vegas winter. The coldest that it would get is maybe late at night when it could freeze a puddle, but it'd get up into the 50's or 60's by noon, but each year for Christmas we would have a roaring fireplace.
With all of those traditions, and with Christmas never being associated with being still, it was a mild shock to me my first Christmas married with my wife. We told our families that for the first year we would do all holidays by ourselves as newly weds. That first Christmas, alone, in our tiny apartment, was one of the weirdest experiences that I had ever had.
Christmas was relaxing.
Instead of feeling forced to keep moving. To have to prepare musical programs, to have to worry about having to sit through another viewing of White Christmas and hear my mom sing every, single, song, or trying to find a book to read to make it look like I was doing something, I could just sit. I could sit and enjoy the time away from school, and it was a break. I still can't remember all of the details, what we ate, what happened, or anything like that, but all I could remember was while sitting around watching TV with Alicia lying against me, I looked at the empty wall and wondered if I could take her at a competitive game of folding the laundry.
Catching up on all things sci-fi and enjoying every second of it, but I can't help come up with characters or stories when watching series, and so here I sit, unable to sleep because I have this story, or at least this character bouncing around in my head, and instead of sleeping, or even working on DA like I know I should, I'm cranking out this bad boy. I don't quite know where it's going, or what it's going to become, but I just want a bit about being an empath.Turns out there's a lot of music references in this, so I'll be all multi-media happy and try to link in a bit of the music I'm talking about.
Empath
The best way I can explain it is through music. Imagine a world where everyone carried small pocket speakers with them that played background music depending on what was going on in their lives. If they're happy, then their speakers play happy music; If they're bored, the music gets irritatingly boring. You wouldn't ever have to ask 'how are you doing?' because you could know exactly what is going on by just listening to the music they had on play. With enough practice, and knowing what certain people have for music preference, you'd start to pick up on smaller things with their music. They might be playing a happy song, but you know that with them, when they're playing that particular track, it's not happy they're feeling, but annoyed. Then there are people that can't seem to figure out which album they're listening to, and just as you think they're going through a hip-hop phase and you're starting to get use to that background music any time you're around them, they start blasting country for no good reason. That's what it's like to be an empath, or at least that's the way it is for me.
Let's make one thing super clear right now, telepathy and empathy are two separate beasts. I've never met anyone that's either a telepath or an empath, like me, so I can't say with perfect accuracy, but empathy is feelings, the soundtrack surrounding people, you get the general feel of what's going on, but there's not a chance in the world that you're getting precise details unless everyone else turns off their speakers, and you spend a solid hour listening to the music of a person for a long time trying to figure out what in the world is going on in their life where it's okay to loop the opera Carmen with the Beatles, I Want to Hold Your Hand.
Telling people that there's a difference, always brings up trying to compare the two of them. Both of them are intrusive into a persons feelings, and both of them people think are totally made up or just a cheap trick, but the difference to them is a big one. It's hard to explain the difference to a person who hasn't really had to go through the pain of what it means to be an empath, or what I'd guess is the frustration of having to be a telepath. The difference, from what I could guess is where I have to deal with music, telepaths have to deal with people talking. They don't have to guess, they don't have to filter through the hints of the messy world of feelings, they get direct thoughts. Empaths have to deal with theme music constantly playing, but telepaths have to deal with people always talking to them, saying exactly what is on their mind.
The second thing this always brings up when people finally believe me that I'm an empath is how cool it must be. Wow! You're an empath! Isn't that awesome? It's like you're a super hero!
No.
No it's not.
It's nothing like that.
Okay, I lied, there are moments where it absolutely kicks butt and you feel like a super hero. There are moments when you walk into a room, have a conversation and know exactly to the second, when a person is lying to you. To play poker with a group of friends and know when a bluff is coming is devastatingly powerful. Playing with a toddler and having their parents not know why they're crying, but you just know what they're feeling and what to do to fix it without ever having them say a word to you makes you a super baby-sitter. Then there are animals. I could go on for months about how awesome animals are. Do you know how much easier it is to be around animals when you know exactly how they're feeling? And then compared to stupid people who can't figure out what in the world they're doing and the music they're playing is jumbled and constantly on shuffle, animals call things out from a mile away. Then there's the fact that they can tell when you know what's going on. People don't believe you when you say that you know how they're feeling, that you can hear the music that they're playing, but animals they get it. They totally get it when you tell them that you understand what they're feeling. I've never once had an animal have doubt and do the mental equivalent of saying , 'no you don't, you never could understand what I'm feeling'. There are honestly times where you get done with a day and you feel like you should have to hang up your cape and take off your tights because of how awesome the day was, but those are few and very far between.
What people don't tell you about being an empath, and that cool ability to hear everyone's theme music as they walk around, is that it never turns off.
Do you know how amazing it would be if I could turn this stupid thing off? How much happier I would be? How less frustrated I would be with people? If I could turn this off, I don't even know what I would do.
At first, it's sort of cool being able to hear that the person next to you on the bus is listening to some old school grunge music. Kudos to them. If you were trying to be nice, you could say something to try to get the music to change to something happier, but sometimes grunge just needs to be grunge. It's even cool when you get home and your mom and dad are playing completely different tunes because then you know exactly where they are. Again, if you're feeling nice you could spend time to try to get their songs to sync up, or you could just get over it and head to your room because you know that when Dad is playing classic rock and Mom is playing Madona that there's going to be a fight and you don't want to be in the middle of it. It's nice at first, but first there's the problem of privacy.
Privacy is this crazy little idea that for some reason or another, you shouldn't be inside people's heads. You shouldn't be able to tell that a person is depressed and contemplating a serious amount of self medication through alcohol. There are times that you don't want to hear what people are feeling, especially when it has to deal with you. Go on a date with a person who isn't thrilled with being there, and the only thing you want to do is reach over the dinner table and smack them as they continually play Chopsticks but then lie to you about how great a night they're having.
Then comes the ethics. What in the world do you do when you find out that a person isn't feeling well, even though they don't tell you? What do you say to a person that is lying to you, even though you know that they're lying? When do you step in to help people, and when do you let other people's problems be their own problems? It's an impossible balance beam to walk on, and if you ever try to find a place in the middle it eats at you of trying to figure out if it's worth it to spend time trying to fix someone, and then the debate starts on wither or not you're even meant to fix someone because they might not be broken.
The worst thing that can ever happen to me is getting stuck with a group of people. Small groups, especially small groups of people that I've been around long enough to get used to their favorite songs to broadcast, can be ignored. Instead of knowing that the music is there, it becomes white noise that I can try to ignore, but is always present. That isn't too annoying, the pain comes with new people, or big groups of people. Imagine yourself trying to get to know a new person. You don't know their name, you don't know their personality, you don't know a single bit of information about them, but all you know is that out of that speaker in their pocket they are playing Cotton Eye Joe on a loop. It's impossible to get to know a person on any serious level if for the first hour you meet them, all you can hear is Justin's Bringing Sexy Back.
Then there's the danger of groups that you're not used to. Again, a group that you're used to, and you get used to their songs and can tune them out to a dull roar, but a new group of people - cacophony.
Trying to sit through a half hour of that is taxing, what's only worse is when the person that won't shut up in reality is also playing the most annoying music on top of what they're talking about, and you can't hear physically or mentally, anything else that is going on with the rest of the room.
Then comes the biggest problem, trying to figure out what is 'normal'. After a week or two around family and friends that I want to be able to read, and I think it's perfectly okay to keep those mental ears open to whatever music they're playing and I know ho to interpret every single change of rhythm and style with whatever they're playing, to go back to school to people that I work with and am distant with, normal starts to become very relative. I forget some times that normal means that I shouldn't know some things, that I shouldn't know when people are lying, or that I shouldn't know when someone is cheating on a test.
The worst part about trying to understand what normal is, is coming to the very clear, very specific realiziation, that if you open up your mouth, that if you say anything about what normal is to you, to anyone that is actually normal, they brand you as crazy. You can spend time with a person, learn to know exactly what they like, exactly how they think, exactly how they feel about everything in the world around them, and they get used to you knowing everything about how they feel, but then when you finally admit it to them, when you finally say something about it, that's when you get the crazy card pulled. Being 'normally' empathetic, and caring is one thing, but when you cant' turn it off, when it's with you all day every day, when people just don't know how to turn off their music, and you can't help but listen, that's when normal turns into a padded cell. Honestly, I want to make it stronger, I think that it's an interesting skill,power, gift, talent, whatever you want to call it, but I know that I run the risk of going 'crazy'. With no one else out there willing to step forward and say that they're like me, I'm just the crazy kid who thinks that he's an empath and can feel what people around him are feeling.
There are only so many options to how I can live my life.
I can try to think that it's not there, do everything I can to ignore the music that is being played and be 'normal' while lying to myself about what normal actually is for me.
I can embrace it, and go full crazy town. Be proud that I'm an empath and only thinly veil the truth of what it is that I can do. A lot can be attributed to 'just a hunch' or 'dumb luck'.
There is the option that somehow, someway, someone like me finds me and helps me understand how to balance it. It's cute when people try to help, but really only an other empath would be able to actually feel how I feel with this parlor trick of a super power. The only down side is that the only way to get that, is to push the crazy envelope, hold on to what I think normal is, and hunt down someone that cringes at social gatherings, but seems to know exactly what is going on in the minds of everyone around them.
Mentally, somewhere up in the grey matter that is bouncing around in my head, somewhere in the weird upbringing that is my childhood, somewhere in the great vast nothingness that is me becoming me, I've learned a really weird trait - I don't get angry.
I sort of had a temper, and I used to get angry over small-ish things, but that was mainly teenage hormones, not me, being me. Other than that, it takes some really pointed remarks from people that I actually care about to make me angry.
Kids dying in locked cars? Tragic, but I'm not angry.
School shootings? Again, tragic, but what good is my anger going to do?
Internet stupids calling me names? Annoying, but anger isn't really there.
Not getting a job even though I've gone through all of these interviews? Meh, it'll happen sooner or later, it'll happen one of these days.
Alicia leaving me with Addison? It's my kid, I can't get angry at spending time with my cute daughter.
Having to do laundry? I need clothes, they're dirty, why get upset at life?
Having to do chores? If I don't want to do them, I won't, but they need to get done.
Cooking food, being late to work, not being able to go to sleep, or anything else that people get upset or angry about - meh.
Even something that got me slightly frustrated like having my parents completely dismiss me and the degree that I have earned and the skills that I have, which is disheartening, there isn't really anger there. To get me angry there is a few, very few things that have to happen. First, you have to attack something of mine that I have to have.
Now this opens up a whole other can of worms in trying to understand my mentality, I don't have to have a lot of things. I can live without a TV, I don't need a computer, and I don't even need new clothes. I'm weird and have a twisted eternal perspective, so things are just things. A job (or lack of it) is still temporary, and money is just money. I don't really have attachments to anything I don't have anything that I yearn after, it's just temporary. What I really need is my family. You threaten my wife or my daughter and are serious about it, or if you harm them in any way, then you've got me angry. You want me to see red? Hurt them.
The only other way to get me angry is to be someone who knows me, and is somewhat close to me, and insult me. Insult my religion, insult my intelligence, insult my skill, or insult any aspect of what makes me, me. Now, this is where things have to be specific. If you're an outsider, a stranger on the internet, or someone that hasn't gotten to know what is really going on in my life, shut up and move on, you saying something to me isn't going to get me angry. But, if you've been around me for more than a while, have gotten to know me past my fake perma smile, have ever gotten to see the soft squishy center of me that I don't let out often, and then you insult me, then you'll get me angry.
Other than those things, I don't see the point of anger.
Why get angry over someone driving erratically? Why get angry about a court case that I'm timezones away from? Why get angry about a war happening thousands of miles away? Why get angry over life? It's life, things are going to come up, it's not always going to be the smoothest of trips, so why get upset over one of the bumps?
I don't know what's wrong with me, but I just don't get worked up over things, and I certainly never really get angry.
