Life

Since the last time I've blogged I've been through a lot. There's just something magical about the world we live in. In the past 4 years I've spent in college, examining myself, reexamining myself, looking at the world, and now finally accepting the world for what it is- I realized that it all up to me to decide my fate and where I go in life. It's not just about being a deep introvert constantly thinking about things, there's a whole other world out there that we don't know about.

I think a few months after my last blog I had begun having some very bad anxiety issues... That spring semester that I had gone through went extremely badly. The reason? The realization that I cannot continue with the lifestyle I had been living in the next oncoming years. Things were going to change, whether I liked it or not.

As I pulled myself out of this phase, I once again understood how little I had experienced with "living". I realized that nearly everyone around my age was going through the same thing, unless of course their circumstances greatly differed from mine. But for the most part, nearly all my friends and acquaintances seem to have been going through a period in their lives where they start to really worry for their future as I had. Nearly all of my friends that I had in high school ended up enjoying the club life, parties, and weekly trips to the bar. I too enjoyed them to some extent, but I never had constant streams of pics of myself at fancy clubs as some of them had. Some are still partying, some have gone off the radar, those that have gone off the radar are most likely going through what I went through.

I uttered the words out my mouth "I'm finally 21!" before and now I'm telling myself "Holy shit I'm 21, I have another 9 years before I'm 30". Countries have different regulations concerning the official age of adulthood, but the transition from teenage adolescent to a fully conscientious adult is unfathomably huge. There are people who do indeed reach that stage early in their lives, but for most others it may take much longer, in unfortunate cases, some don't ever get to that point in their lives even venturing in to their middle-ages. But it's this transition that's so important to become truly happy with yourself in life.

Mmm this blog has been coming off very preachy. The reason for all this revelation is all because of how I pulled myself out of my rut. I spent the past few years constantly re-examining myself, as is evident on the history of this blog. I had my retarded moments, my crappy epiphanies, and dark times when I just looked out the window and only saw black and white.

I realized it was time to move on. And take on the world for what it is instead of just isolating myself. Recently in my life I've be going through some huge up swings. I landed myself an excellent position in an IT department at a rapidly growing company, and I've made a HUGE decision for myself when I graduate from school.

I've decided to enlist myself as a Marine Officer after graduation. This is an option for grad students as most others have join the Marines as "enlisted". Marines coming out of boot camp are FIT. Much more so than any other branch, making it a very respectable branch. They're the branch of our military that is on the front lines before the army and the everything else. That said it isn't easy to join, and it certainly is not easy to excel. I only feel that I will be happy if I can put myself to such a challenge and come out of it successful, anything less and I'll be back to the same joe schmoe I was and many other people are. 

I've already started preparing, adding tons of cardio to my weight lifting routine. Basically along with lifting I'm running 3 miles nearly everyday, and over the course of the next few weeks I'll be upping that mileage to improve my time during the 3 mile run for the real deal. I can say for a fact that I have never been so physically and mentally healthy in my life until now. Getting that office job, 9 - 5, AIR CONDITIONING (note I worked in a sweat shop beforehand), has been a huge morale booster. Took me months to land a job, glad it all paid off.

Pretty much everything that you have witnessed in this blog site was my growth of maturity through college. EVERYONE will go through this, not just as I have but in their own ways. You're not ready for life just coming out of high school, especially if you haven't lived with a lot of true hardship in your life. You will continue to grow through your 4 years of college. You may be like my friends, partying all the time, going to bars, or simply just traveling every goddamn corner of the world. But eventually things around you will settle down, and you'll have to THINK just as I have about where you really want to go with your life. Even for people who believe they have it all figured out, they don't, there will always be so many challenges to come for them. These challenges will break them down, and they will have to learn to come out of it, but when they do, they will be happy.

This will be my last blog post. However maybe a year from now I will come back to say something! This blog is precious to me. It truly is a journal that I can use to look back on, and learn from. A year from now my circumstances will be COMPLETELY changed from what they are now at this very exact moment as my fingers pound my mechanical keyboard. I may be a Marine, I may be a depressed otaku, I might even be dead OR I might even achieve something beyond my wildest dreams. Life is beautiful, not matter how bad things can get there will always be light at the end, and you can reach it as long as you try. If you're not happy with where you are now, you have to ACT to move on.

The purpose of life, at least for me, is to seek true happiness.

God speed, thank you for anyone who reads this.

Life as an Introvert

今を生きて－Asian Kung-Fu Generation

This song is notoriously hard to find...

http://musicpvmw.blog86.fc2.com/blog-entry-8528.html

I've been a fan of that band for so many years now... I probably love them the same way middle aged people love classic rock.

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Lately I've been coming to terms with a lot of things in my life or at least I think I have. Nothing seems to be in the ”100% certainty category” anymore, especially because I've been contemplating "Life" in general (sometimes I feel like a mountain hermit). My world is small and feels closed off, but really it isn't all that closed off at all.

For the past 2 weeks I haven't talked to my IRL friends very much. Besides a few instances of Facebook or Skype chat, I have been keeping to myself. After reading a forum thread about introverts I realized how many points made in the opening post rang true to me. I've always known that I was an introvert but I never really delved into it and examined myself in that light. Basically this is how it goes. Introverts are not anti-social, they just have a short battery life when it comes to socializing. The way I compare myself to that is how I go out and go party on rare occasions or something as simple as going for lunch with my mates. I can't do it often but I relish the time I spend with my friends when I do. But too much exposure is stifling. I hate myself for doing it sometimes, but I just shut myself in. When my battery is recharged, I come back out of my cave refreshed and ready to take in another dose of "Life".

Coming to terms with that has been difficult. However in the past few weeks of shutting myself in, I've made a few peculiar acquaintances online. Playing an old game called Quake, now remade as Quake Live, I joined a clan on a whim and met some interesting people. This wouldn't have been possible if I had been playing more mainstream games such as SC2 or LoL. Quake is over a decade old, and so there are quite a few older players still playing it. 

I've been happily talking to a 38 year old father, an odd gamer lady of 27 years of age, a guy just slightly older than I working night shifts in tech support, and your typical 15 year old kid. Quite the combination isn't it? I'm used to talking to my usual mates over Skype, because well, I've known them for years and I know them IRL. But this was obviously a new experience for me. 

I still drink. No "buts" about it, I just drink because I enjoy it and it doesn't seem like I'm getting away from it anytime soon... But it's really nice to have a drinking buddy. Even though its over a voice chat haha. Even so,  the experience of drinking with someone online is very real, or surreal I should say. The 38 year old father and I seem to get along quite well, we share our stories, talk about the game we play, we drink, and most importantly we laugh. Plus the fact that there are other members of the clan in the same voice channel makes it all the more merrier. The fact that I could interact with all these different types of people made it very "fun" for me. 

So what's the point of all this? I guess I've begun to accept myself a little more. Lately I've only been trying to change myself, which just isn't working. I don't operate the same way as other people do. My bro and his girlfriend go out so often, I look at that and shake my head and say "No, sorry, that's just not for me." I feel like if I want to go on with life without feeling restless and full of anxiety, I would need to correctly identify with myself. The foundation for my life has already been laid down, that is something I cannot change. Right now I just need to slowly lay down the bricks and understand each and every one of them.

Professors

I wish that there were more capable professors in my university. Or at least I would hope that I would be more likely to stumble across them. The problem I find with my experience is that I have never been challenged on a consistent basis. My last post was on my quip about how easy Information systems was. I don't want to sound so repetitive but the course work was not very demanding at all- even when the professor said it was going to be demanding, or maybe that's because I'm so damn comfortable doing presentations and coming up with ideas for a project in a case-study.

Today marks the last day I will spend in an Accounting course, besides doing the Final (I also noticed I begin blogging when Finals roll around, lol) next week. The professor I had for the course was exceptional. I enjoyed it despite hating Accounting through and through with all my heart. I like it when professors actually give a workload that you would just about expect going into "coolidge". Not to say that this isn't the case at many other universities and different fields, but being a business major, you just don't get enough work. I feel like there's still room for small projects, or just anything to tickle your brain. The brain needs activity, some stimulation.

I like to look at it like I look at running long distance. You can't just get out there and run 6 - 10 miles a day and act like it's nothing. It's easy once you've built up that endurance and the know-how of doing so. In real life there will be many times when you will be stressed.and you'll just want to quit. Sure there are people out there who can just keep chugging along and do their thing, but there's so many more who cannot. "Stress Test" that's what I'd like to call it. School should be a stress test, if you can handle the stresses in school life, and even develop enough maturity to grasp the reality of it all and subdue that stress, then you're going to have better approach to life than most.

But yes, unfortunately we all haven't had this type of education, or maybe we simply weren't disciplined enough to take it. In my case I certainly wasn't disciplined enough. In high school all I ever did was sleep in class, I probably clocked the most hours slept in school in my year. So I never had to deal with much stress besides tensions with my family members. So as a result I had the problem many of us have, procrastination, the avoidance of something that is causing you stress even though you have to face it sooner or later. Learning to deal with it is not an easy process, it takes time for most. Gradually however we begin to realize that doing shit sooner rather than later is so much better than do it last minute.

However I'm a bit of a hypocrite since writing this blog when things need to be done is technically procrastinating haha.

Finals week

Quite a lot of things on my plate this week. A presentation tomorrow, an exam on Thursday, and tooons of studying to do. How much of it do I want to do? Hm, none of it haha.

But there's always a limit to laziness, or at least my own self-imposed limit. Eventually I sit down and grind everything out. I'm also really glad that enjoy typing out long papers. The analysis, the delivery, it's a nice a tickle to the brain. Anyways I was thinking to myself today about how easy my Major is compared to many other majors. 

Information Systems is different from Information Technology. Or should I say the term IT is basically an umbrella term for several branches of Computer Technology related "stuff" and IS is sitting just under it along with Computer Science and Computer Engineering. Although I say IS is relatively easy to work with in University, that doesn't mean it's not important, because really if it weren't important then why is it in the curriculum.

It's an odd relationship of how the workload of a Major has is compared to what you would actually do out there in the world. For example I've noticed that my friends whom are medical students, and grads have their work cut out for them pretty straightforwardly upon stepping onto the plate in the world. One of my friends is a pharmacist, he works late night graveyard shifts a few times a week, simple (yet important) work and he gets paid loooooads. But getting this job required more years in Uni and a ton of actual hard studying and exam taking to achieve. Going over to my field, Information Systems, all I really do is play around with some big conceptual things in business and system development. Then I have use the concepts I have learned to analyze data, and mold it all together into my own short thesis. According to how well I can conceptualize will determine how well I'll do when given actual project to work on in a corporate setting, supposedly.

The only problem with that is the fact that designing and developing a system software is very broad plane to walk on. A lot of things can happen, a lot of things go wrong. You can't effectively train for it, you just have to experience it. Maybe for that reason IS seems so easy as a Major, maybe people haven't found a good way to gauge your competency in IS.

This all only occurred to me once I swapped over to Computer Science for my minor. That shit is hard as fuck.

This Blog

Yeah, I knew it was nice to keep this blog. I don't post anything much anymore which is plainly obvious here but having that thought in the back of my mind that it is here is nice.

It's almost like it was yesterday when I first started "coolidge". Up to this point many things have changed... and many things haven't. I try to approach this blog with positive outlooks. I've noticed during my freshmen year I was a little overly pessimistic and unrealistically ambitious. To counter balance it all, I became more optimistic and far less mister conquistador. But that didn't work out either, I became lethargic and stupid. So once again I have come to this blog again with my mind full of regrets and restless thoughts.

If I had a timeline, with an embedded graph gauging how much maturity I had over the years even including high school, it'd  be a horrible looking upward climb to where I am now. When I look back it's like goddammit what the hell was I thinking? Whether it was years ago, or a few months ago, the question had remained the same.

Pessimism is a necessity, optimism is a luxury, and ambition is something you can have once you understand the first two concepts. That's something I've come up with in order to better protect myself.

When I look around me and I see happy people, I suddenly realize that only 1% or most likely 0% of these people are actually happy. There's always something egging their minds. There is always something. For a select few their issues may be jokingly called "First World Problems" but for many others it's far more morbid. More likely they are only smiling to protect their sanity. Depressing ain't it.

I used to set personal goals for myself. Whether it was drawing, writing, gaming... I do it for a while but now I can't seem to focus entirely one single personal self-improvement project. After a bit of thought I'm thinking to myself "Is this what I really want to do?" The thing about that question is that I believe it may be a trick question. I've answered this in the past with the logic: if it is something you enjoy doing, do it and keep doing it!; but I didn't answer the whole question. Is this what I really want - that is what needs to be taken under consideration. I can't answer that right off the top of my head, it is one of those damned philosophical questions that can't be completely answered through logic and rich linguistics. I think that this can be only answered with actions and once the dust has settled, the thought of "Is this what I really want" should never come up unless someone walks up to you and asks you that specific question. You simply just keep doing it. And in writing this I realize that people can do this already are truly blessed. Without being able to understand this concept I feel like you're just doomed to some empty feeling in your Heart sooner or later in life.