Objects in mirror are closer than they appear.

On my drive home from zeroing my rifle today, I thought about firearms and tools.

I’ve always purported firearms as tools, especially to my more skittish friends that were wary of my interest in firearms. And they are: a firearm never hurt anyone on its own. A gun left alone won’t do anything, but the moment someone lays a hand on it, it becomes a potential danger. And the gun doesn’t care who is pulling the trigger (unless it’s a Lawgiver) meaning that it has no partiality. It will assist anyone in their task, whether that task be a good or evil one.

Then I started thinking about tools, the slang expression for people. I’ve called many people tools throughout the year without much thought to why they are tools. It was always just a gut feeling, and it was usually on spot. I realized today why, at least for me, those people are tools. They are weak-minded or have no backbone, and are easily influenced by stronger opinions. They are the type of people that annoy by never being sure of anything, or always agreeing with me. People without principles. In a sense, they can be swayed easily to side with anyone. Much like guns, they can be utilized to align with good causes or bad ones.

Ten days ago, my blog turned one year old! I didn’t even realize it until today, when moving home marked the official beginning of summer for me.

It’s been a good year, to say the least. I met great people, met even better friends, learned a lot academically and personally, did a LOT, and stirred up my share of the pot on campus.

The year was so dense and intense that I don’t remember the beginning or middle of it too well. It was very dynamic, and there isn’t one thought or word or description to sum it all up.

I don’t know what to say about this year, really, except that I grew.

I made better friends, friends that lasted longer and meant more to me.

I had fewer friends than before because I focused on the ones I had instead of trying to go out and get more. I was truer to myself, less concerned with upsetting people, and I made a lot of people angry. And I turned off a lot of other people that normally would have been ok with me. But I think it was necessary for me to explore that and not try to be nice and accommodating like before. And being truer to myself, on the flipside of pushing a lot of people away, showed me who my true friends were.

Friendship - Canon EOS Rebel XTi with 35mm f/6.9 at 100 ISO

I think I’m addicted to online shopping. I can’t stop buying things. Good thing I’m still saving money.

Who knew that 3-week old rotten food smelled like bleach?

I feel like the frayed end of a rope. One more day of school. I’ve been going strong all year, and I think I’ve found my limit, or at least the point when I start to lose focus.

It’s funny how much a one hour conversation can reconnect friends. I sat down with a friend to discuss subletting my apartment to her, and it felt like I had finally had the conversation that I wanted to have with her since she got back last term. Friendships are never permanently lost, even if they fade for days, weeks, or even months at a time. I just have to remember to keep my mind open. And you just have to do the same.

I need the summer off to think. If all goes well, I’ll travel, write, read, and photograph.

These last three years have been amazingly transformational for me. I’m curious and excited to see how I change next.

A friend from Arabic recently told me that my blog had become more and more negative over the year. That got me thinking that I haven’t been posting as much when I am not in a severe rut, simply because I cannot bring myself to justify using the time when I have so many other things to do to finish up the year.

Hence the increasingly negative tone: I am not becoming more and more depressed, I just am not writing as much when I’m not down.

But here’s a more positive note:

Some of the best things that I have done for my life during college:

Army ROTC
Telling
Oregon Commentator
Buying a Digital Single-Lens Reflex camera
International Student Orientation
International Student Association

Even a year ago…

I used to be such a dork.

I was scared and unsure.

I was nicer but becoming meaner.

I was definitely not as strong as I am now.

But at what cost has that come? Sometimes I feel like I have lost touch with a lot of people.

To Be Continued…

This basically depicts what is happening to me right now:

I am not motivated. I’m losing confidence in myself, in how I deal with situations, and in how I treat people. Everywhere I look, now, it seems all I can see are people who were once close to me that now have moved on, or have found other people that they get along with better. Honestly, I feel like I’ve lost any kind of interest that I used to have. I feel boring.

This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with this. But before, instead of looking within and trying to figure out how to change myself, I think I’ve tried to stay strong (stay the course), be more confident about myself, and not worry about the people that didn’t appreciate me or couldn’t deal with me. And I think I’ve gotten worse because I haven’t been as willing to change or adapt myself.

Or maybe, I’m just too absorbed into issues about myself, and need start caring about other people more. Either way, I need to do something about myself and my situation.

I am way too overloaded. And I am not doing a good job of managing my obligations and time, either. For instance, I’m wasting time blogging right now when I could be sleeping or studying for Arabic tomorrow. I literally blow hours every day that could be spent reading or writing. However, I’ve realized that I can’t be focused all the time, and that my mind and body has its limits as far as concentrating energy goes, and while I’ve maintained it pretty well throughout the year, I think the threshold has been dwindling slowly.

And so while urgency and obligation scream at me from the back of my head, I have been taking indeliberate breaks all week when I should have been reading up on the Battles of the Somme or studying for my next vocabulary quiz. I haven’t daydreamed nearly as much as I have this week, and I frequently find myself wandering off into the summer, traveling, or thinking about next year, or a number of the interpersonal issues going on in my life. These breaks that I am taking, both mentally and physically, aren’t so much as nice as they are necessary.

Speaking of traveling, as a quick note, I’ve discovered that I am eligible for Space Available flights, which are open seats on military transports going basically anywhere that there are military airbases. So that means I could hitch a C-130 going out to Hawaii, or a C-17 flying to Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. For free.

Relaxing amid the chaos and overload and urgent obligations has yielded me a realization about all these friends’ issues that I’ve been dealing with. Indeed, it is a realization that I have stumbled upon time after time, and I come closer to fully believing it each time around.

People change, and there isn’t anything that can be done about it. Sometimes the change works with you and you grow together. Sometimes the change doesn’t work with you, and you grow apart. Either way, it doesn’t invalidate the past. Likewise, the past is not a guarantee of what the future will hold. And sometimes…letting go is the hard but inevitable decision.
On the flipside, having not focused on one person so much and not trying to control these aspects in my life as much has allowed me to let go a little bit and see some more of the world that I had been missing before.

1. The calendar in my room has not been turned since February. 

I think that’s an example of how little I’ve been maintaining myself. Just as my calendar has lost touch with time, I’ve lost touch with myself. I’m going day to day, barely keeping up, without a larger vision of what life should be like or a larger vision of what I should be doing or how I should be acting.

3. I am so unmotivated lately. Nothing really seems to matter anymore. I don’t have any sense of urgency or necessity in doing anything. I need something definite, something black and white and clear to deal with.

2. It’s kind of ironic that I’m pushing away the people that I care about the most, and acting friendly and nice to all the people I don’t care about.

Looking at the friendships I developed over this year, almost every one of them feels like they are fading away. And I seem to be doing all the wrong things to try to revive them. I see myself doing many of the same mistakes I’ve done before.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech. My friend Demic organized a memorial service in remembrance of the 32 deaths that day, a year ago.

These moments go to show how fragile life is. How easily life can be snuffed away by the actions of someone else, someone who was also sickened and twisted by things in his life. While Seung-Hui Cho was the killer, he was not without pain or grief. Clearly, he had been lost as well. And all the other 31 victims had so much waiting for them. Life is never long enough.

Somebody spoke at the ceremony tonight, and recited an inspiring Sanskrit proverb:

“Look well to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In it lies all the realities and verities of existence: the bliss of growth, the glory of action, splendor of beauty. For yesterday is but a dream, and tomorrow only a vision. But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this day, for it and it alone is life! Such is the salutation of the dawn.”

Yesterday is but a dream.

Tomorrow is only a vision.

Look well, therefore, to this day.

I must continually remind myself this, but there is but one today. And fear of what may come tomorrow shall not stop me. For then today will have been in vain. Where I am today, who I am today, is a product of decisiveness and not waiting or stopping because of fear. As my mother wisely pointed out to me today, I have learned not to live in yesterday’s memories. And I have learned not to fear tomorrow. I must always remember this.

Carpe Diem. Seize the day.

Stalker - Canon EOS Rebel XTi with 35mm f/3.5 at 100 ISO

I’m getting into Arabic more.

I know because I’ve started listening to Arabic music of my own volition.

On a side note, both my Econ 390 class and my Arabic class have strengthened my conviction that the teacher is just as important and possibly even more important than the class material when it comes to making good students. I normally love Economics, but I’m so uninspired this term. And Arabic is growing on me…

Everything has a cost. Everything. And everywhere I go, anything I do, I see “opportunity cost”.

I distinctly remember having a conversation about elastic markets, the FairTax, and other economics-related stuff…funny stuff.

But it’s interesting, I notice that when I start talking about economics, people make fun of me, judge me, or fake having other conversations. It doesn’t bother me at all, I love economics, but it seems as if it’s not as easy to relate to non-economics majors.

Last night, I lay in bed, winding down, falling asleep. As usual, my mind was sluggishly active. My thoughts were all jumbled with economic terms from studying for my midterm this morning…and in between, one of the last thoughts I remember from last night was…

This school year is literally half over.

It is week five of Winter term…meaning we have five weeks left, plus another term.

Two of the three Psychology professors that I have encountered in my college career have been crazy or way off-center. The third one was deathly boring.

At the behest of Adelle, I sat in on her Psych class today to observe her…very interesting…Psychology professor. I have to say, I quite enjoyed his class. There really isn’t any way to describe it, other than he clearly thinks in different dimensions.

The theme of the class seemed to be that all Psych students just want to learn about Love and nothing else, so naturally, Dr. crazy showed a clip of Buffy the Vampire, griped about his divorce in a bitterly funny way, and offered to hook up two of students that were identical twins (with another pair of identical twins). His logic was that since the genetic makeup of the twins were identical, if one of the twins fell in love with one of the other twins, then the other pair would work out, too. Of his many tangents that were very strange and hilarious, I managed to get one almost verbatim.

You know when you’re in love? You know you’re in love when you wake up, and you realize you’re not in your own bed. And you look over, and you see “Hilton” on the desk that isn’t yours. Then you put your hand down, and realize someone is sleeping next to you. She’s laying right there, looking angelic, and then your memory comes back…”Ohhh yeahhh!” And then on the ground are empty bottles of champagne and condom wrappers, and the furniture is all busted up, and you have bruises all over. And she’s sleeping there angelically, bruised, with a dribble of drool coming from her mouth.

If you haven’t experienced that, then you haven’t been in love. Don’t worry, you’ll be there one day. Oh, and I bet you’re all now thinking, “I gotta go to Vegas.”

ADD is a scam. It does not exist. Remember when psychology was all Freud? And economics was all Harrod-Domar?

Well, ADD is social science’s next big blunder. We haven’t discovered it yet, but it’s total bullshit. I have to think about it more to develop this argument, but for the time being, fuck neuroscience psychology. Not all psychology is bullshit, but the field that says dreams are just random neurons, and feelings are just chemicals, and brainwaves are just electric pulses is full of crap.

In peer reviewing papers for Writing 122, I found myself becoming more and more negative in my criticisms of their papers. Sometimes, I was tempted to completely scathe them in harsh remarks.

I am starting to consider the possibility that I am an inherently mean and bad person, and that I have just been pretending otherwise this whole time. I haven’t even been doing a good job of pretending.

Haha…