Fuck.

I hate that I can only perceive things in relation to how they affect me. It's really all we can do, isn't it? I mean, I don't know how other people feel, what they think. The first thing that comes to anyone's mind is how something is going to affect their life.

I feel selfish and egocentric in the worst way.

Something peculiar happened to me.

So I thought I would write it down. I scribbled it rather hastily because I'm quite busy with everything I have to do for the end of the semester, so it's not well written and I don't think I got across exactly how odd it was, but whatever:

I've noticed that I've been eating alone more often lately. I decided to take a seat in the dining hall at one of the smaller tables, it always feels odd to eat by myself at a table that can fit 10 people. Among the rows of tables pushed up against the wall I found an unoccupied table at the very end, the table closest to it had a lone student eating there as well. I sat down with my back towards him, I've always felt that it would be quite awkward to sit facing another person that was eating by themselves while I ate by myself. Two people sitting like that, looking at each other as they ate, it would just make more sense for them to sit at the same table. In any case, as I sat down I realized that the other chair at his table had a jacket on it, apparently he wasn't sitting alone. As I started to eat my food I looked up to stare at the newly falling snow through the window. My neighbor's tablemate had returned and the two struck up a conversation. I soon realized that the two were somewhat of a couple. Perhaps it was an early date, that is if you can consider going out to dinner at a dining hall a date. The conversation they held was an interesting one for a date, the girl had asked him when he first found out what her name was. I felt like it was something you'd see in a movie, probably a quirky and arty romance. He went on to explain himself, but I didn't give the conversation much attention so a lot of it passed through my head. Mostly I was gripped with wishing that I could have that conversation with someone. I thought of what had happened to start their relationship. Perhaps the boy was interested in this girl, maybe they shared a class or studied in the same part of the library often, she must have recognized who he was over time as well. Somehow he had found out her name, I almost wished I didn't fail to hear this part because it honestly intrigues me now, and had started talking to her. Now here they were, on a date not even a couple of feet away from me. I recalled girls from my classes that I was interested in, girls that I had passed often while walking about campus. Could the same thing happen to me? Just how had he figured out her name, asked her out to dinner? I quickly finished eating, I never like to take too long when I'm eating by myself, and got ready to leave. As I turned to walk by my neighbor's table I noticed the seat that was empty when I arrived was empty again, she must have gone to get something else. As I passed the table from around the corner came one of those girls that I had passed by often on campus, one who I was rather smitten with. For a slight moment I thought it a sign but then I realized she was getting ready to sit down in the unoccupied chair. As I walked outside I felt the cold of the snow that was starting to nest itself in my hair.

Today I got upset and wrote this.

It's in an odd style, I'm not sure what happened:

I don't care, it's a simple a matter as that. Why should anyone take offense to that statement? I'm my own person and I keep on living, that's what I'm concerned about. I'm still here. I still have to keep living. I have obligations such as those to uphold. It's not easy, living, but I keep at it. In order to keep at it, I stop caring. Things happen, I try not to care. People around me seem to care, but they don't have any real connection to it. How do you have a connection with another person so easily? I find making connections like that quite difficult. I'm not very good at it. Other people apparently find connections simply in proximity, or through watching someone on the television. Miles and miles can separate you from someone on a television, yet people still feel a connection? To me that's a disconnect. The more I see someone on a television the more removed I feel from them. I know they're not part of my life and I'm reminded of that fact every time I see them on the screen. To me, they're nothing more than the screen, nothing less. They are the screen and I am me. I can touch the screen, but it doesn't mean I'm touching them. How can you make such a connection? There are billions of people in the world, I only feel connected to those that I know, that I see, that I touch, that I feel. When I can reach out and touch someone on a regular basis, I know that I've made a connection with them. When I hear someone's name or see their picture often, I know I haven't made a connection with them. How do they do it? How do they make that connection? Affiliation? There are plenty of people affiliated with various things that I am a part of, I'm not connected to them. We're simply at the same place, or do the same things. That doesn't mean I know them, that doesn't mean I'm connected to them. I worry about the people I know, the people I touch, the people whom I can make laugh, the people who make me laugh, the people who comfort me, the people whom I feel the need to comfort. The people whom I feel the need to comfort, that is the basis of my connection. Life itself is one large disconnect, from billions upon billions of people, numbers unfathomable to me. How could I possibly connect with someone based off of such arbitrary things? I can't feel for everyone, it's impossible. The sorrow would be overwhelming, unbearable. I only care about the people who I'm connected to, the ones I already care about. I can't simply start caring about someone that I had maybe heard of once or twice before just because something happened. I'm sorry. Hate me, I don't care. I really don't care.

College

Not as life changing as I thought it would be.

I mean it's different, but the whole sense of new and fresh beginnings doesn't actually happen.

Oh well.

New beginnings with the new school year, hopefully.

That's my plan at least.

I have accomplished little to nothing this summer.

One week left until I move in to school and then I start classes next Monday. I haven't done anything productive this summer or did any of the things I said I was going to.

Here's a list of what I did manage to do:
1. Sit around a lot learning about random information.
2. Watch a few odd movies.
3. Invest far too much time in video games.
4. Grow a beard (this isn't so much an accomplishment as it is me deciding I don't like shaving every day).

I feel a bit more awful about this because of an experience I had today. Not to go into detail or anything, but it just struck me how there are some people in my life that really do care that I'm happy and that care about helping me live a comfortable life. Much more comfortable of a life then when they were a child, a teenager, or a young adult like I am now. I feel like it's not right for me to accept anything from people who have worked hard all of their lives and still don't have that much to show for it.

I have no ambition, I'm lazy, I mope around a lot, I complain about things far too often and sometimes I just don't even care what happens to me. I don't really deserve anything. There are people out there in life that deserve much more than me and don't get it.

I guess the thing is, I don't really know what I'm doing with my life. Sure I have some plans but I have no idea how they are going to work out and there's a part of me (a large one at that) that doesn't even care if they work out or not. I feel as if I'm just going along wherever life is taking me without really taking much direction, and yet people are still trying to help me along.

I feel horrible when other people want me to be happy and go out of their way to try and help me be happy because sometimes even I don't care about my well being at all.

Why should others be concerned for someone who has already given up on himself?

It's taken me a while, but I've reached some conclusions.

It's a natural part of life really, for any human that is. People slowly drift apart. In my case, and maybe some others, it can also happen quite abruptly. The bottom line though is that people drift apart. It's just what happens. Time passes slowly, we live quite a long time and the fact of the matter is we can't always be with the people we want to be. It happens for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it happens for no reason. Life keeps creeping along though, myself floating away in one direction and you in another. We all have our paths, some straight and narrow, some erratic and jittery, some hesitant; there are as many paths as there are ways someone can live their life. It's because of that path that we can both run into each other and run away from each other. The only constant is that life continues.

Life continues and sometimes you don't have any say in your direction, you can't stop yourself from drifting away from those you want to be with. That's half the problem. The other half is that you lack control over the lives of others, you can't catch them and make them stay. Sure you can reach out and try to grab a hold of them, but it doesn't always work.

There are a few forms of distance we experience on an everyday basis:

Physical distance. You have to move, other people have to move. Jobs, schooling, family, there are many reasons.

Emotional distance. We can be physically close yet remain distant from each other. Arguments, lack of communication, there are many reasons.

Temporal distance. This is the oddest type of distance. Sometimes we just don't live in the same time as each other. Some people have to work for a living, some people are still in school, some people have started families, some people have become very mature. People will always have different life experiences and sometimes it separates them from you. It's not that you're far away, or that you don't feel the same way you used to about someone, it's just that you can't understand them. They're at a different point in their life than you are. They understand and look at the world differently than you. This is perhaps the one type of distance we have the least amount of control over and it's possibly the greatest distance you can experience from someone.

We experience some sort of distance from every single person we've met in our lives in one form or another, even if it's only temporary. Yet again, life still continues as these distances grow.

And you know what? Maybe that's the problem.

You can never go back, you can never say the things you meant to say, you can never do the things you meant to do. Instead, you can keep living your life wondering what would or could have happened. You can keep looking for those people from your past and you may indeed find them again (in one way or another), yet you can never find the person you lost. The simple fact is, they're another person now. They've changed, you've changed, it's not the same. Those things you wanted to say? The things you wanted to do? They won't have the same impact. Time degrades the meaning of things.

So instead you keep living, looking for that person from your past, hoping to find them. Not the physical person, but the person they were. The problem is you're never going to find them. Never.


My point is: there are so many things I wish I had done for the people in my life, so many things I wish I said to the people in my life. I still know some of these people and I've considered going back to them and doing or saying these things, but it's pointless. It won't be the same. I'm going to keep making these mistakes and keep looking for people I'm sure to lose in the future... but at least I understand what's happening and why it's happening.

Maybe one day I'll learn to do and say the things I want to in the present when I want to do them, when I want to say them... when they'll mean exactly what they're supposed to mean.

Hm.

For 20 years now I've always felt like I've wanted to somehow do something bigger than myself, become someone bigger than myself. It's only now that I realize I just want to do something that is myself and be someone that's just myself.

So much for doing anything

I'm bad at it all. I feel like I've regressed in many aspects of my life.

I can't sleep.

More realizations.

Apparently I can write down and say that I'll do things, but that doesn't mean I'll actually do them. So far I'm not really making any progress with any of my goals and have mostly been holed up in my house like a hermit this summer.

I'm getting that ever so familiar feeling of restlessness that I don't feel like doing anything about. Despite being so familiar it's quite hard to explain.

Dammit.

The Great Gatsby

I finally read it. Not quite sure what to make of it. I know it's supposed to be about the downfall of the American dream in the 20's, but I feel it could be summed up better as 'rich people have affairs and get into trouble while a upper-middle class man narrates and gets caught up in their problems'.

Maybe I'm biased. I suppose it does get across the feelings of being rich in the 1920's. As for the American dream, I don't think anyone can even define what the American dream is, so how could you comment on what this book says about it? Obviously Fitzgerald probably has a different opinion as to what it is than I do. I guess I believe it's equality for everyone, and Fitzgerald seems to think it's something else, maybe being poor and having the chance to become rich.

But then again, that's all it is, luck, chance. You could work hard every day and not get rich. You could work harder than the rich and those who become rich and still suffer and starve.

So I think the American dream never really existed, that sounds right to me. It's impossible. It was never shattered, there was never a green light on the other side of the bay. There's simply people on one side of the bay and people on the other side of the bay. People on one side of the bay stare all day at the other side and hope to get there, while the people on the other side never look back and only care about what's happening on their side. Some people set out on boats to get to the other side but the wind is almost always too strong for them to cross, once and a while the wind happens to favor one boat, suddenly they've made it to the other side and they never look back and claim they made it there on their own power.

If I had to say the American dream is anything, it's that: Hoping the wind is generous to you, then when it finally is claiming that there is no such thing as wind.

Obviously I'm making generalizations here, but I believe this to be true for the most part.

The Bystander Effect or: Diffusion of Responsibility or: Somebody Else's Problem or: The Exact Opposite of How I'll Live My Life

Pardon my use of Wikipedia to define these terms.

The bystander effect is a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals are less likely to offer help in an emergency situation when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely proportional to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.

Diffusion of responsibility is a social phenomenon which tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. This mindset can be seen in the phrase "No one raindrop thinks it caused the flood".

Somebody Else's Problem (also known as Someone else's problem or SEP) is an effect that causes people to ignore matters which are generally important to a group but may not seem specifically important to the individual.

In a sentence these all essentially equate to one thing: Doing nothing to stop something that is happening right in front of you just because there are other people around (who also happen to be doing nothing).

I refuse to let this happen to me. I know it's against my very nature as a person, I'm usually quiet, I don't like to draw attention to myself, I don't like to interfere in random people's business, I don't like to speak up in a crowd. At the very same time however, I would hate myself if I ever stood by while something horrible happened to someone else. I'm honestly not sure what I would do myself if this happened to me, I'm pretty sure I would completely despise myself as a person.

What does this all mean? If I ever see someone in trouble, in need of help, in dire consequences, in any sort of situation where I can personally do something, I'm going to do something. I'm going to speak up, I'm going to get involved, I'm going to take action. I don't care if it's someone simply tripping and dropping their papers everywhere or if it's something much more serious. I don't want to be that guy who stands by and does nothing. So many people do nothing. I want to do something.

I just want to help.

I'm going to help from now on.

60 miles away

Some 60 miles away about 300 kids are probably having one of the best nights of their summer.
Some 60 miles away from them I'm sitting at home doing nothing.
Some 60 miles away in another direction resides the biggest and liveliest city in the country.

I think this sums up my current state of life.

P.S. Is it possible to enjoy life without money?

Upon realizing my language requirements have been completed since high school.

Apparently passing French 3 despite only having taken 2 years of French in high school, i.e. starting with French 2 and then taking French 3 afterward, counts as taking 3 years of a language at the high school level. My advisors throughout my secondary-education career kept asking if I had taken 3 years of language in high school and I honestly replied "No, I haven't." and thus they cast me down the dreaded path of learning an entirely new language, Spanish.

Two years later, two years in which I struggled to pass two semesters of Spanish, dropping the first level and taking it again, then doing the same exact thing with the second level, I graduated from community college. The other day I sat down at UConn and went to sign up for classes at my orientation. "Have you completed your 3 years of high school language?" "No, but I did take my first year of Spanish at my former institution." "Oh, well you should sign up for the next Spanish class you need now and base your schedule around it." So I took the advice of the graduate student who was my temporary advisor and signed up for Intermediate Spanish and filled my schedule in around it.

Last night I got home from orientation with a horrible headache and passed out on my bed for a good 5 hours. Upon waking I went to see what in my UConn online account had been unlocked, here is roughly what went through my head as I perused (I did in fact peruse as in look through it extensivly, not glance over it as many people tend to use the word to mean nowadays) the website:

Hm, what couldn't I get into before? 'My Academic Requirements', oh wow, this looks useful. Oh, look, it tells me everything I still need to take and what I've already completed. Hm, yeah, we went over this in orientation... Right, right, still need to take those, got that done, good, good. Oh. Second language contempency, I might as well click on this bar and look to see what it says. Satisfied. Wait, what? Let's click on this sub-tab. 'student equiv 3 year hs French'.

For a moment I was confused, but then something clicked in my mind, it suddenly made perfect sense. Then, out loud, at 1 in the morning as I was overcome with a horrible feeling due to all my struggle with a foreign language for naught, all the pointless stress, all the wasted time:

"You're fucking kidding me."

I lied.

I didn't run today. I didn't write today. I didn't even read today.

My leg still hurts from attempting to skateboard the other night and I figured I shouldn't mess with it just in case. I didn't feel like writing. I didn't feel like reading either.

I guess it was an odd day, I sat around and did nothing. I contemplated where I was going to try and find a job.

Here's my dilemma: If I get a job my time will be more limited and I'll have a lot of problems with trying to get time off for shows/tour/whatever. It'll be a pain in the ass. If I don't get a job... I won't have any money. Now, this is okay. I've thought about trying to live a simpler life where I don't buy anything. The problem is gas. It costs money to even go places as it turns out. I'll need to go from UConn back to New London quite often next year when I'm at school and I'm not sure how long the money I have will last me for that.

I just really like the idea of living a simple life and rejecting consumerism (as much of it as I can). Sure there are some things I could use (mostly guitar related things) but... I don't really need them. I don't really need anything besides a bit of food every once and a while.

We'll see what happens to me, at least, I will.

This weekend.

The weekend isn't even over and I've already finished the two books I wanted to read first this summer. I guess to be fair to those who are reading (from what I can tell, that's maybe two people), so far I've read Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was a good book, though I felt that Foer used a lot of the same elements in this book as he did in his first one, Everything is Illuminated. He did do some work in this book with art and the actual layout of the book, playing around with things that authors don't normally concern themselves with, but I still felt he didn't do many things new compared to his last book. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not, to be honest. I'll probably read whatever book he comes out with next, partially because I enjoy his writing and partially because I'm curious if he's a one trick pony or not.

I just finished What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. I had decided I wanted to start running this summer and thought what better motivation was there than a book by my favorite author? As it turns out, he writes not only about running, but a lot about writing as well. Lo and behold it just so happens to be that I also wanted to start to get back into writing this summer. This led to an odd experience while reading this book, I felt like it was written for me. I know that's self-centered but it spoke to me on many levels. Here was a man who I idolize as an author, maybe even as a person, telling me how he goes about living his life, how he goes about running and how he goes about writing his novels. I wanted to write to him, to tell him all of this, but I can't find any contact information. I realize though, I don't need to send him all of this as it doesn't mean anything to him, only to me. Simply writing it down somewhere (here) is good enough. In any case, thank you Mr. Murakami, you have yet again inspired me.

Speaking of, The Great Gatsby keeps popping up in conversation or I keep reading about someone mentioning it and I continue to ignore it. Once again this happened while reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and I've decided to stop running away from it. I read the first few chapters my junior year of high school, but then my teacher decided we didn't have enough time to spend on it and told us we didn't have to read it, so I stopped reading. Honestly, I don't remember what happened, what the writing style was like, or if I even enjoyed it. I think at that point in my life I still had a struggle with enjoying something I was forced to read. That's something that I've overcome as I've entered college. This is a really long way to say that I'm going to be reading The Great Gatsby next.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to start with a run and who knows, maybe I'll sit down at this desk and attempt to write something?

I wonder how many books I could read in my lifetime.

I finished that one in under 24 hours. I'm pretty sure I could finish any book in under 24 hours, though there might be some extensively long books out there that I wouldn't be able to.

I should go find them.

Realizations

I just realized the plot of this book is quite similar to the best idea for a story I've had.

Sort of annoyed, but then again, is anything original anymore?

It's the start of summer.

I got my rooming assignment 3 months before I should have, with no actual notification, it just popped up. It's where I wanted to be, which is a nice thing to be able to say. I'm going to be living where I want to be living.

I'm starting to read again because I finally have the time. I'd like to read about a book a week, at the least. I've got a couple of shelves in my room devoted to books and I've amassed a somewhat large collection of books that I haven't had the time to read yet. 100 pages into the first book of the summer, one I've borrowed. Next I should probably read the other book I've borrowed, that way I won't have any books I need to give back to anyone. Then I'll probably start working on my pile of unread books. I'm not sure where to start, I've got a bit of a variety: Joyce, Murakami, Pynchon, Lovecraft, Kafka, Sartre. Well, I guess it's not that varied of a selection as the authors have similar writing styles or writing styles that aren't too far off from the 'norm' of my collection. I've got my tastes, I suppose.

Also, I'm starting to write again, as evidenced by this. It's not fiction, but it's close enough for now. Maybe writing here will sprout some ideas. At the very least it could help me learn how to write... coherently. Maybe develop a writing style of my own. I'm never quite sure if I'm emulating the current books I'm reading or my favorite authors when I'm writing. I suppose it's all part of that constant struggle for identity.

Don't expect to see me published anytime soon, is what I'm saying.

P.S. I found it slightly ironic that after I wrote that I went to go click on the 'PUBLISH POST' button.