Me Being Serious

Random, But Not So Much

Females with emoticon frowns as their away messages. Males with rap lyrics. Subtle and not so subtle pleas for attention. And I guess that makes me feel better about being lonely. Because at least I’m not alone in that.

I’m listening to “Girls”, thinking about a girl.

I think about Austin, Texas. The wild west and what can possibly be out there for me. And I wonder if the lone star state is a good match for the lonely.

A girl I find unattractive asked me if I like to cuddle. I said no. Just in case she had the thought of cuddling with me in her head. That sounds mean. But that’s fucking life.

At times I love being solitary. At times I feel like I’m in prison. Even though I’m the judge, jury and the prosecution. Rarely the defense though.

Sometimes I get to thinking about whether I use commas right all the time. I doubt I do. And I guess it bugs me. Like, I kinda wanted to put a comma after “defense” in that last passage but it didn’t feel right to me.

I wonder if I’ll ever be the social creature that us humans are supposed to be. And I’m not sure how I feel about that.

What makes you happy? What excites you? Those are difficult questions to answer if you’re me. Being devoid of excitement seems to be standard for me at the moment.

Complications

Who woulda known that a gchat woulda been a casket for a friendship turned complicated.

It’s hard to be friends with someone you feel so strong about, that they’re different from a contact, they’re someone you’d write a song about.

When you feel that way? It’s easy to only see the sky as grey when they’re away.

But it’s almost always temporary, almost never does it stay.

When you tell someone you love them, in that way, it’s hard to keep the distance emotionally.

And when you don’t? It’s game over. I still remember the planes I took and the layover.

Still remember the bed and the way my arm would hang over, her body.

Still remember the convo’s the e-mails and calls. The skype, the typing, the writing on the wall.

Of course forever I’ll remember it all. 6 months ago I woulda curled up in a ball.

But I guess I did change. So did she. So did us so, so did we.

Complications from complicated human beings.

Scribbles

It’s hard out here, and you don’t have to be a pimp to realize that.

You spend 15 minutes filling out an application only to never hear from that employer looking for employees. And see, I’m tired of wearing the same tee’s.

And it’s not like I want 15 minutes of fame, and it’s not like I sit around playing Madden games.

I really want a 9 to 5. Not like I want a NBA deal and teammates to high five.

I feel like Kanye took my mic but I never got a moon man. Can only afford the cereal that got the wrong tucan.

Nah it’s not that bad but it kinda is though. Life’s beating my ass but it never gave me the biz though. Never gave me a job, no.

This ain’t a sob story, it’s kinda just a rhyme. To articulate my mental state and time.

They say stay on your grind but I hop scotch on it. Guess that’s why what I want, I ain’t got it.

Bravery

Writers aren’t brave in the physical sense. They’re not brave like firefighters rushing into an inferno, or brave like a soldier on the front lines. They’re brave as in braver than you the reader who just comments on others writing.

I don’t think writers get enough credit for the way they stick their necks out there, put their ass on the line and stand up to any criticism that may come their way. Writers put their thoughts out there, thoughts that are restricted by their vocabulary, thoughts that become permanent once they are on the record. They show their hand and then critics or people who have strong opinions but no real critical skills have the opportunity to cherry pick whatever they please. They can twist words around, point out every little flaw and in doing so make themselves look more competent.

Bullshit. That’s what that is. The thing that sparked this particular piece of writing was this great piece about why newspapers are failing:

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/five-key-reasons-why-newspapers-are-failing#

The comment that kinda frustrated me was the first one. What kind of empirical data could the author have provided to support his opinion? Are there studies supporting what he’s saying? No. Why? Because we are seeing the change with newspapers first hand. And how could he provide more evidence than he did? It was an article based on his own experience and opinion. Is there a way we can prove that most newspapers are trash when it comes to actual reporting? No. Because I belive that is all opinion.

Ugh. I’m already tired of this topic already. Just had to write something about how some criticism I see is totally worthless.

All My Friends

(Listening to LCD Soundsytem’s “Sound of Silver”. With an emphasis on the track “All My Friends”)

“Pain is weakness leaving the body”

- Unknown (because I’m too lazy to look up who said it first)

Facebook double-checked to see if I really wanted to delete our “connection”. I said, yes. Yes facebook. I do want to delete our connection.

Facebook confirmed our “friendship” three or so hours earlier, although we knew each other much, much longer than that. And at times we were much more than simple friends.

We were more than buddies or pal’s. We were more than numbers in our respective cell phone’s. Despite everything that happened I can confidently say I believe that. We were more than just two people with a simple connection. Facebook has no words or options or categories that can fit when trying to describe “us”.

Despite my unnecessary quotation marks that are there for mere emphasis. Despite my halting sentences that are much like walking behind someone on the street who randomly stops…and starts. And stops.

It’s weird when friendships or relationships for that matter degrade into something other than what they were. It’s weird because of the aftermath. You wonder what you should hold on to. What physical things should you keep, what should you dispose of? What e-mails if any should you keep? Should I keep this card, these pieces of paper, this book that I read? Should I keep this bookmark I accidently never gave back to you?

Would it change anything if they found their way into my trash bin? Would I feel bad about these things laying amongst tastykake wrappers, shredded bank statements and magazine subscription inserts? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But perhaps. So I don’t place them there.

It’s weird also because life is weird. And a part of me still has no idea what my future will hold and a part of me entertains the thought that we could communicate again. Not sure that it would be beneficial for either of us but still, it’s entertained.

She was the only friend I needed at that moment. It was unhealthy but she was all I needed.

I don’t regret anything about it.

The heat from my laptop is drying my hands as I tap on these keys. So I dip my fingers in my glass of water and try to hydrate my palms by rubbing the water against them. And then I remember what her skin felt like. And her hair. And her lips. And her body. And so on.

And then I stop.

True Story

I once tried to get Tao Lin to sign me to his publishing house. His assistant said he’d holler back in like 6 months. Srsly. hehehehehehehe

Showing My Age

I’m starting to show my age in two ways. I’m showing that I’m young and still have a lot to learn about a lot. And I’m also showing that I’m pretty mature and wisened by the realities I’ve experienced in life. Let me explain.

I’m 22 now. And I haven’t seen a college classroom since I was probably about 20. I’ve seen one job since then. I’ve seen tons of ideas and wishes and goals and dreams float across my mind like clouds in the sky. I haven’t accomplished them though. And now I feel like I have one foot in that parents/older people/”real world”/Charlie Brown Grown Up Voice bear-trap.

There are times when I just think to myself, I’m not gonna accomplish my goals. And those kinds of thoughts are totally self-fulfilling. When you think it, you do it and when you do it, you are it. You are a failure. Actually you’re not a failure, well, at least not in my case. You’re just a “never tried’er”.

It’s easy to say you tried and that you did your best, even when it may not be the truth. And it’s easy to blame externalities, and emotions and fears because they are all strong opponents to face. But the true successes, the winners, the goal accomplishers, the people that wake up before their alarm clock goes off everyday, and they wake up with a smile? Those people push through that fear, that self-doubt, that pessimism, the alternative options that look so much more comfortable and they win. They get to the finish line and they learn that they were the only person they were competing with in that marathon. All their rivals were fictional, all their rivals were invisible, all their rivals put together couldn’t even fit in one tennis shoe on the starting line.

I suppose this is just me talking to myself and telling myself what I need to do. It’s time to put myself into over-drive. It’s time to feel the burn, the pain, the stress (the other kind of stress, the stress that comes from going after something you truly want).

I just heard the starting gun.

What I Learned

I learned that you can suppress something, try to bury it under heaps of memories, stash it in the darkest confines of your mind. You can absorb hours of meaningless entertainment or media and try to throw it on top of that carcass you’re hiding in your head. But it will never be enough and the hole you dig will never be as deep as it must be.

Those thoughts, those experiences, those memories that you’re trying to dispose of will always rise to the top, like cream or froth or a dead goldfish. That’s not how you get rid of problems. Suppressing them is a temporary fix that hurts you in the long run. The best way to dispose of it is to not want to dispose of it. You face it. You learn from it and learn why you want it gone so bad.

I also learned that you shouldn’t look for solutions to problems. You should look to prevent things from becoming problems and then you will never need a solution.

It’s amazing that we act so surprised when we encounter certain problems. It’s as if we truly didn’t see them coming. And some things you really can’t see coming. A sudden death in the family, a plane crashing into your house, a random crazy harming you in some way etc. But a lot of shit we deal with on a day to day basis could have been solved before it screamed in your ear with ten exclamation marks for a solution.

Take relationships for example. When a relationship is going south, our mental compass tells us that is so. But a lot of us will dismiss it and say it’s nonsense or this or that. Anything that can be used to distract you from what is coming if you don’t change a thing.

I guess we all have communication problems. We are afraid to speak up and figure out where these issues are coming from when we are dealing with another person or even when we are dealing with ourselves. We get too comfortable. The status quo is safe. We love routines, even when we fail to start healthy or positive routines for ourselves, we have other routines going on in our lives.

Raphael Saadiq is one of my favorite R&B/soul singers. Way back in 2002 I bought his album, Instant Vintage. A song on that album has stuck with me for 7 years now. The song is called “What’s Life Like” and it has a line that goes: “you gotta be real with yourself, cuz you’re living in a jaded world”. That line is very relevant to what I’m talking about. You do have to be real with yourself. You have to be honest about every little thing that goes on in your life or else you’re gonna get hit with a ton of bricks multiple times in your short time on this planet. And it will only be your fault.

Unfollowed

Unfollow Friday. The place where avatars put on masks. The place where anonymity is used to cloak those that want to attack others for not being anonymous enough. Are you different from someone else? Does your personality not mesh perfectly with another soul on tumblr? Well, it’s alright, dedicate a paragraph to bringing them down a notch. Even if you really have no idea of what notch that person is starting from.

To unfollow someone is not enough. We must announce that we are unfollowing. We must announce that someone does not live up to our expectations though they likely had no intentions of doing so in the first place.

You gain a sense of importance when you can manipulate snark filled paragraphs to cause an effect in someone else.

Tumblr is a high school to those that want to make it one. Tumblr is an outlet to those that want to make it that. And Tumblr is just a website to those with both feet stuck in reality.