Starting again

Looking at this blank page, unable to concentrate on one clear line of thought. Too many changes to recount here, only thing that matters is to start again.

Life is good, and when it’s not, it just is.

Wow, I’ve come a long way

It is the year 2013 of our Lord, and after going back and reading all of my old posts I have one verdict: damn. Everything is so dark and depressing, I clearly wrote all of those with a drink in my hand around 3 am. The summer of 2012 was a bit of personal purgatory for me, I had forgotten how much writing I did during that time. The summer of 2013 on the other hand has been blissful. I’ve spent a lot of time at Ocracoke island, and enjoying the company of my wonderful girlfriend Dorian. I’ve graduated college and now I’m trying to make it as a Navy diver before November. In light of these changes and moving forward with life, I came back to my blog with the intention of creating a new blog  with a new direction and get back into the discipline of writing. So with that, I bid this blog farewell and move on to what will hopefully be a more fulfilling project.

I hate sunshine and giggles

Is it wrong when you begin to loathe happy people? Is there something in the selfish human brain that says, “hey, I’m not happy so no one else should be happy either!” I guess it is something with the ego, that when it gets bruised you start to hate sunshine, giggles, and especially seeing other people happy. Or is it simple jealousy? “Oh, they are having fun, why can’t I enjoy life?” Or even just plain bitterness that is sucking away the joy of being alive. If you are experiencing these symptoms, the only thing I’ve found so far that cures me is a strong drink. Which is very sad but true. A good rum and coke puts a grin on my face and I stop caring about everything. Moral of the story…don’t let life get you down or you will start drinking.

The End.

 

What is love?

Love is being afraid, love is climbing a tree and feeling the limb break as you reach the top. It shakes you and spins you around, until you forget which way is up and which is down. Love consumes you, love makes you or breaks you. Love is the great unsolved mystery that makes life worth living. Love can drive minds and hearts to such despair as to take their own life. Love is the great equalizer, love is what makes us human.

There will be a time in life when you will meet someone. Someone that falls into your life like a shooting star and can never be forgotten. Their entrance may come unnoticed, subtle yet sudden and you wonder where they have been your whole life. You will quickly fall in love with this person, for better or worse, but you don’t care because the act of loving them while you can far out weighs the many risks and dangers. Passions flare and sparks fly, you become ensnared in this crazy dream. It may end suddenly, it may last a lifetime, you may depart each other with joy or anger, and you may find each other again in life or death. But one idea, one fact that is certain, is neither of you will ever be the same again, and you both become better people from having shared your lives for however long.

Lack of motivation and the loss of a soul

We’ve all had that feeling. That “I don’t think I’ll get out of bed today” feeling. The “do I really have to do that right now?” when you only want to sit and watch the world go by. Despite always feeling terrific whenever I actually do something ahead of time, I remain a stubborn slow poke when it comes to ever doing anything. Especially writing, oh man I can never force myself to sit down and write anything. Whenever I think, “oh I should really work on a story/blog post” I instantly find something else to do, usually unproductive.  Yet…there is something deeper than laziness. Something about life as a whole has lost its luster. I simple don’t find many things to be interesting or exciting anymore. It’s like the volume on everything has been turned down and the color drained. This feeling comes and goes, so maybe it is only depression and boredom. There is another feeling that keeps scratching at the back of my mind though.

It may be strange to say, but I feel that my soul perished some time ago. Since that mark in my life, my true self has sat watching me carry on forward into life, and only in death will my body and soul be rejoined. A backwards way to look at things indeed, but I cannot help but feel that I am watching myself from a far place. My soul and mind are no longer one, what remains now is the flesh but the spirit has sat down by the wayside. My flesh has carried one without the soul, and now one watches the other and waits for the day when they will be whole again.

No way to test the validity of that of course, it is only a feeling after all. Or maybe depression is only a symptom, and that when your soul departs, depression is the wound left behind.  I’m sure I could get some support for this idea. Only now I’m curious as to what cures depression. I’ve avoided medication of any kind and managed just fine despite the whole “life is drained of all color” and general depressed feelings. Working out and being active helps, and I know dieting has an effect as well. Writing is a big part of what keeps me in order and gives release to most things.

So who knows, maybe if I find an end to my depression I will get my soul back.

Life, death, and a legacy.

Life is one cruel hop from the cradle to the grave. For each piece of heaven that I have been given, I must always suffer a bit of hell in return.

Perhaps being bored makes me dramatic, or I just enjoy writing dramatic thoughts, more like both I think. As of late I have been thinking about death. I’m not even that old in years yet, but I have come to grips with just how short life is. I am mortal, and could leave this life at any moment. This instant, tomorrow, the next day, it is an ever hungry beast waiting outside my door. Yet I do not fear it, for I understand and accept that death is the end of all things. I will always fight to survive, I will never give up my life easily, but when the time is finally up I will go willingly, and even be anxious for that final experience we face in life.

I don’t want to die in a hospital, or inside if it can be helped. I would hope that I die outside, peacefully or at least well. If I were to be struck down in my house or indoors and had any strength left in me, I would do everything I could to get outside and die beneath the open sky. I want a good death, and I suppose everyone wishes for a good death. To me a good death would be a quick, painless death, or at least just quick. Maybe a moment to understand that my time has come, but I do not want to lay in a bed surrounded by family waiting for me to finally die. I had my time with them in life, but death is my journey and I wish to take it alone. That to me would be a good death.
Now granted I speak and think of death, this is true, but I do not wish for it. I simply have accepted that I will and must die. This reinforces that fact that I have only one life to live, and must do what I can with it. This has led me to thoughts of what legacy I am leaving behind. Do I have a legacy to speak of yet? Some family will do my memory honor, but that will die with them. I have had an impact on the lives of a few people perhaps, but probably nothing very profound. Seems to me I must have children, write provoking literature, or do something that otherwise makes my name worth remembering. If I must die, I could die at peace…but I would regret that I meant so little to so few. Perhaps if I do live longer I can either forge a legacy or perhaps in death I will see what sort of legacy I have already made. I may find that the little things I have done are more important than trying to become great. That by not becoming great I had a more profound impact. I only what to feel that I mattered, that I did not exist and fight for nothing. Most people do have children and leave a lasting legacy through them. They may be good parents, and good parents will raise good children who will be good parents to their kids, and the cycle continues. God knows we need more good people in the world. So I do think parenting is a worthwhile legacy to devote yourself to. What are we then if not flesh and blood, to give our love and devotion to another and birth children to carry on small parts of our genetic legacy. To teach our values and lessons to our children so that generations later, despite being long gone, part of who we were will live on.

I messed up, I made a mistake, and I lost you

Funny how things end up. You go from staying up all night with someone to being up all weekend because your mind is tormented by those memories. When we met, it was perfect. Never had I been so lucky before in my life. Our first night together could not have been made any more beautiful. Things only got better from there, the times that we shared had ups and downs, but we were so happy. Yet there was a flaw from the start, and it only cracked the whole thing apart in the end. I fucked up and broke your heart. I’m pretty good at that, not the first time I’ve let someone down. Now where are you? In someone else’s arms, I doubt you share my agony. I can’t seem to forgive myself for what I’ve done, what I’ve lost. Songs, smells, candlelight and memories, they either enrage me now or I burst into hysterical laughter instead of tears. I doubt crying would help me any. So I turn up the music and down another drink to your love and beauty, I’ll get over you eventually. For now though, I’m plagued by dreams, sleepless nights, and a fire in my gut. Call me pathetic, dramatic, weak, I don’t care. Every man has felt this for some woman sometime in their life, damned fools that we are. I only wish that I had not hurt you, and that circumstances had been better for us. I miss you darling, and I only hope you are happy where you are now.

Repressed memories and writers block

Oddly enough, I absolutely dread writing. Does anyone else get this? “Oh, I love to read and write, I wanna be a writer one day, etc, etc” but when it comes time for you to actually sit down and write something it scares you shitless. Perhaps it is only me, but I do recall reading a short piece written by an editor of National Geographic in a 1977 issue. He wrote that every author should have a cluttered house, that needed to be swept and cleaned, and have the roof fixed and the gutters repaired. That way, they would always have something to procrastinate that big writing assignment they had to finish, instead of having a neat tidy home with no obstacles between them and the chore of writing. The article even had a little cartoon that was quite funny. It made me feel better hearing those things from a National Geographic editor, so that does mean I am not the only one who both loves/hates writing, but I still feel silly for it. Which leads me to the conclusion that I must have some sort of dark repressed memory attached to writing, and it is that memory that is pushing me away from the chore of writing. Hmm…let me open the back door of my mind and see what I’ve got back there….

Oh god…no…NO! AHHHHH!!! MAKE IT STOP! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I CAN’T SEE ANYMORE, MAKE IT STOP, MAKE IT STOP!

Whew…Okay, turns out I have many bad memories attached to writing, most of them relating to college, critical ex-girlfriends, and reading a draft written by a classmate and you suddenly realize your writing is shit and they are a god of the English language and will one day get a movie deal while you piddle away at a shitty blog.

Yeah…writing is not a game for pansies, there is much suffering.

Well that is my post for the week, I am starting to consider renaming this blog “The random musings of an angry drunk” but there may still be hope for me.

Ok, I’ve got to post something today

Basically, I’ve been bored and kind of blue this week…or weekend…I’ve lost track of time, I only know when I’m suppose to go to work. Back to what I was saying, I have not posted anything lately and I don’t want to slack off again, so I am going to try to make something up. I have not had any motivation to do anything, so I feel like if I force myself to do something it might help. So yeah…I have been working as a lifeguard and mowing grass and changing light bulbs for Anson County. I’ve been avoiding my wonderful bottle of Kraken rum, as it could be the cause of my current blue funk? Maybe not, I’ve only had a couple mixed drinks over the course of a week…Yeah, I guess it isn’t, but still I don’t want to be drinking because I feel down, I want to drink because I feel like having a drink, not because I am bored/depressed. Well that’s 162 words of talking to myself, I think that almost counts as a post. I had some lofty thoughts I had thought about sharing…but a lot of it was either hateful or really deep and like the rum, I would like to avoid that for now. Okay, I guess I can crack open one egg, since most people have figured this out anyway, and I would feel better having released some of my feelings.

I really hate the bible belt.

I’m not an atheist (yet) but I have pretty much renounced every bit of my faith that I grew up with, and at one point was very devout and passionate about. Hell, I wanted to be a missionary, that was my calling in life at age 16. Perhaps I should have stayed on that path haha. I mean it would have been quite a life to lead, and even if everything you believed was rubbish, at least you did something with your life you thought was meaningful. Also on that note, most of the work missionaries do (at least that I know of) does have a positive effect on peoples lives. The same could be said for America, and I do say COULD with much emphasis. Because I do hate the bible belt, and all these hypocrites, fanatics, and outright morons. I hate the church, and I think we could do without quite a few of them. I left the faith partly because of the people, and partly because I did not want to be a hypocrite. I do not agree with everything in the bible…I do not think that god is all that perfect, considering that he shows many of the traits that we humans are not allowed to have like anger, pride, jealousy, oh and lets not forget,  genocide. Perhaps I am being quick to judge; but that is for me and god to work out I suppose.  So yeah, I tried very hard to follow the word and do what I was suppose to do, I really got quite passionate about that stuff, but…I had doubts, I had questions, and the church hates those things. So I said enough is enough, and honestly, I have been much happier for it. I like sleeping in on Sundays, and I like being able to live in a way that makes me happy without worrying about things.

In many ways, I am comforted by the fact that there could not be an afterlife. It makes this life that much more precious, and it is soothing to me that once I die, I am dead. That is it, everything will finally fade to black and be over. And if I am wrong? Oh well, guess that is part of the journey. I will not live in fear and misery over something imaginary. I will live in a way that makes me a healthy and happy person, and live in a way that contributes to the well being of other people and the continuation of our species.

To each their own.

Why I’m looking forward to watching my friends grow up

In the next few years I am expecting there to be several big moments in my life. Hopefully a couple of them will be finishing college and finding a cool job near the ocean, but there are some others that I get excited thinking about at night.

Like when my friends and brother get married. Oh man am I excited for that to happen! I’m pretty much against marriage for myself, just not something I want to do, but now when my buddies get hitched I’m probably going to be happier than they are about it. I’m not sure why, I guess because I will enjoy living through them in a way, I may never get married or have kids, but when my friends do it will be just as exciting for me as for them. In fact I am thinking about getting some fine liquor and save it to celebrate the occasions. Have different bottles labeled: Alex’s wedding, Alex’s first child, Doug’s wedding, Doug’s first child, Dom’s wedding, Dom’s first child, etc. I should end up with about eight bottles I think, need some for my sister as well.

Maybe other people feel the same way about their friends, I’m not sure since I’ve never asked anyone. I know for me though, it is the most exciting thing about life for me. Getting to see the guys closest to me grow up and have families. I’m really looking forward to it.