A journal

i went out and bought myself one today. this blog has become more personal than i intended and there's just some things i'm learning that i would rather keep to myself. less opportunities to be hurt. more people read this than i would like, and to be honest...there are just some things that i need to write about that i would rather keep to myself. actually, there is a lot that i'm realizing i'm going to start keeping to myself.

i'm not done with blogging. but this is going to turn into more less personal things...more general thoughts and ideas about life, things I read, things I learn, people I encounter. things that have a little less insight into me and a little more into life itself.

A Deprivation of Sense

I just finished reading this novel - it was shocking, challenging, vivid, and moving. It's no wonder it was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It's like nothing I've ever read before. I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone - the themes and the commentary stretch across the years and assert their relevance regardless of the time.

I was skeptical while on the first page, reading the work of an author who uses no quotations, relatively little line indentations, and excessive commas. But by page two, I was hooked; Saramago had sucked me in with his detailed writing. It felt like I was sitting on the street corner, watching the first man go blind and lose his primary means of sensing the world around him.

It's one of those books that each reader will get something different out of depending on where they are and what they are dealing with in their life. But it is books like this one that make me love reading so much more than watching TV or a movie; the story is so much better, and open to so much interpretation. It might not be a book to take out and read on the beach over summer (well, I would do it, but that's not to say it would be everyone's first choice), but it's definitely one to add to a "To Read" list.

Very, very thought-provoking to say the least.

It's one of those 'I refuse to do my hair' sort of days.

you know what i mean? i was lazy enough and i just sat and looked at it for long enough that not only was a bun and a head band the only thing i had any time for, but it seemed to be the only thing that was worth my time at all. i'm just very restless today, i've got a lot on my mind, and something like doing my hair just seemed so trivial. well, if we're going to get specific, even getting out of bed seemed trivial today, i could have been content with lying in bed and just thinking all day because that is truly what i feel like i need to do.

i'm driving myself mad though...with all this thinking. i suppose it's good for me to get up and go do things that have to be done, because it gives me a break from all this thinking. but then, it's not a total break because all it takes is one thing as a reminder before i find myself off in my own little world again, zoned out to what i really should be paying attention to. even as i'm writing this, i have various other windows open with lists of things i need to do and things i need to say, music that reminds me of other things, and my brain spinning around through it all plus some little side details. it's rather exhausting. i can't help but think it would be at least a tiny bit mellower without the 'final-month-of-the-semester' stresses.

i was supposed to be doing my quiet day today, but i woke up this morning and for whatever reason, i just knew today was not the day. i've been struggling with being alone with myself lately, and i knew that a day of isolating myself from communicating with my friends wouldn't be what was best for me right now. i've been toying with the idea of if me choosing not to do it on the day i had planned is really defeating the purpose. but i don't think it is. today is a day where i have a lot more mandatory communication than other days, which is one reason i think a day with more typical silence-fillers would be fitting. but also, sometimes you really just do have to take care of yourself first right? i could take that advice in more than one aspect of my life right now...but we know how good i am at taking my own advice.

you know what else is funny? say, you want to talk to someone about something. but you're afraid how they will react to it, or if they'll even be willing to talk to you at all. you come up with all the possibilities of what could go wrong in your head - they could get mad at you, it could ruin your friendship, they could see it as totally different than you do, you could totally mess up everything you wanted to say, etc. but if you try and reverse the roles, like if you say "well, what if [so and so] wanted to talk to me about this? how would i respond?" you know that none of those terrible things would happen. you wouldn't get mad at them, you wouldn't allow something like that to mess anything up, and you would be totally understanding.

but somehow that isn't enough to convince you that what you have to say is okay. what the heck. the human brain is so strange, well at least my human brain. sigh.

I am an emotional eater

but only with ice cream. i will admit it. it just makes things feel better and not as daunting or scary or sad.

now don't try and reverse this and think that every time i'm eating ice cream that means something is wrong. no no no. i really do love ice cream.

it's because i love it so much all the time that it is my number one comfort food. it's a temporary fix, but it gets the job done.

well shoot.

i'm hoping my instincts are going to be wrong on this one.

within the matter of five days, i've found out my ex-boyfriend may actually be back in town for the summer, after i've spent a whole 8 months effectively distancing myself and being very happy with that success. and then, today, come to find out, the only guy i've successfully dated (it's over now) since the ex-boyfriend is applying to work at the pool i work at WITH his then ex and now current girlfriend.

that may make no sense to you. all you need to know is that it has REALLY BAD POTENTIAL. yes, it also has the potential to be nothing at all...but the fact that there is even a little bit of bad is just more than i wanted.

sigh. maybe there's some greater good behind all of this. i sure hope so. i'm not seeing it now, but maybe i will a little later. jeez criminey. :/

Quiet Time!

I'm going to be having a quiet day soon. I won't do any talking, outside of when I am directly asked a question by a professor (or other mandatory encounters of the like). I probably will take another break from Facebook that day as well, for the reasons listed on my previous blog about saying goodbye to that world.

I'm doing this for two main reasons. One, I feel that people are overly dependent on talking in their every day lives. Most of conversation is unnecessary; it is primarily a bunch of filler conversation because, in general, people in this day are really uncomfortable with silence. Silence is almost always described as "awkward," but I really don't think it has to be that way. I think it becomes awkward because people make it that way, but there is really nothing wrong with it. It just means there is nothing of big importance that needs to be said. It doesn't have to imply that someone is mad at someone else, or annoyed...it doesn't have to mean that someone is too bitchy, or too good to talk to someone else...it really doesn't mean anything at all!

Reason number two is, I am guilty of sometimes talking a lot. I consider myself to be a good listener as well, but sometimes I wonder what I may be missing from other people because I'm so busy thinking about the next thing I'm about to say, or even sometimes just plain talking over people. So I just want to listen better; if I don't allow myself to talk, listening will be all that I can do and maybe I'll learn something new. Maybe I'll realize something interesting that I never knew before about a person. I don't really know what to expect yet. Maybe I'll realize some of what I tend to say really doesn't always need to be said.

I think I'll do it a week from today. And maybe a few more times in the months after that. Depending on how the first few go. I'll write about it of course. :)

Perspective

So I had an interesting conversation with a friend today. I verbalized the way I view certain things about love; not something I do very often. It's not that I don't want to, it's just not something I think about consciously communicating about. Sometimes I just think what I think about things and don't wonder about if it's the way other people see it. Not that I'm not interested in the way they see it - I'm always interested in what people have to say - but I don't think my point of view would be all that interesting to them.

It started off talking about who falls in to the category of "my type." I've thought about this before, not so much recently, but in the past because I've listened to friends use the phrase in describing others. And I came to the conclusion that I don't have one. Everyone I've liked, or loved, or dated, has been totally different from all the others. Sure, anyone can find and draw a similarity between almost any two people, and that is no exception in my life. But in the big picture...nobody has ever "fit" into a single stereotype, or a single role. I just like who I like, and I love who I love; I don't pinpoint certain things about them that I love. If I love someone, it's quite simple to me. I just love them. And I think that is enough.

From there we ended up talking about how my perception of love has changed over the years. As I grow up, my idea of love matures and develops with me - the love I claimed to have felt for someone in the 8th grade is not what I would consider love by my standards today. The love that I felt in high school is even drifting farther and farther away from my current definition. I do not doubt that I loved those people then, I loved them in whatever way I knew how at the time. I think thats what everyone does. It's easy to excuse your feelings as, "Oh I thought I loved him, but now I know better." You only know better because you have grown up and learned, but at the time, you did love him in whatever way it was you knew how to love.

So stemming off of that, my general opinion of marriage, at least in the past year or so, has been centered around this maturation of perceptions and attitudes and understandings. When you get married to someone, you are in love with them at that moment in the way that you know how to at that time. Staying with them means that, despite of all these changes, you still love them. It's like, the connection you feel with the person you're serious in a life-time-sort-of-way about, is so powerful, it surpasses the changing definitions of love you encounter through-out the rest of your life with that person. Isn't that crazy? Some of this might be underdeveloped still, in a conversational manner, but just the thought of it is so large that it's hard to comprehend it all at once.

That is why I believe love is unconditional. Generally, unconditional love is associated with accepting another person despite their flaws, quirks, mistakes, and oddities because of the love you feel for them. That is all very true, but I think that is only an aspect of unconditional love. It also means that you are willing and able to love this other person regardless of your own condition, including your changing attitudes and perceptions. If you can love another person even as you are experiencing changes in yourself, I think that is what completes this idea of unconditional love.

So, that's where my mind is tonight. I'm not so sure anyone else even wants to hear all that, which is why I share it on here because I know it's relatively unknown. I just want to have it written out, you know, to remind myself every once in a while, or to allow myself to think a little harder about certain aspects. Or even just so a few years down the road, I can remember how I thought when I was 20...and see how much, or how little, I've changed.