Just wanted to say...

This is random. I was just lying around listening to music on the iPod tonight trying to find something poetic to listen to (as I think that much of the greatest modern poetry can be found in songs). I was listening to Ghosts by Mark Geary… It just got me thinking about how fragile relationships are… I mean not necessarily at any given point in time but over the long run. I was just thinking about these lyrics in particular:

“and then after you left the dream was broken \ just your shape in the sand \ no words we’re needed \ I don’t know how much time we’re given \ fighting for your right to fail.”

I was thinking about what Julie wrote in a thread yesterday about not knowing why people come into your life or how long they’ll stay but still treasuring what you have while it exists… This is a hard one for me as in terms of relationships I often just see shapes in the sand that shift away in the wind before there are even shapes there (if that makes any sense and I haven’t carried the metaphor too far), and then I can’t tell what is or whatever was real… Now I’m just rambling… fighting for my right to fail…

Yesterday, July 6th, was my one year anniversay on 43 Things. I remember it was late in the evening when I created my account, maybe 10:30 or 11 PM. I had heard about the site several weeks before from a friend I had at the time who said he had come across it and thought it could be something that could help me since I had told him that I was unfocused. I spent some time thinking about what goals I would like to set for myself but wasn’t sure how committed I would really be or if I wanted to put all this stuff on the internet. Then near the end of last June (not last month but a year ago from last month, just to be clear) I had a bad social experience which made me question what was wrong with my approach toward dealing with people. So, over the next couple of weeks I thought seriously about what I needed to work on to make myself better in my relationships and as a person in general.

My number one goal last year was to learn to swim which I adopted mainly on the suggestion of the same friend who told me about the site and who also told me I should complete at least one of the things on an old list I had put together when I was 22 of things I wanted to complete before I turned 30. One of those things was to learn to swim, and my friend told me that this was definitely within my grasp. My 30th birthday came and went last fall and I didn’t complete the goal, but that same friend had also told me that to keep starting but not finishing things was a serious character flaw. I renewed my focus on this goal again this summer mostly because of what my friend had told me. I want to finish what I start for once and even more significantly I sincerely don’t want to let him down, not that it really means anything to him, but still…

My next four goals were all related to the idea of improving my social skills. They were to be more assertive, to be more trusting, to be more open and honest with people and to learn to maintain and strengthen my existing friendships. I’m still working on being more assertive, which I think can help me in a lot of ways not just socially, but the other three goals I gave up on. After much agonizing and discussion here, I realized that I didn’t have the right mentality to improve on those things and that I probably have some deeper issues I need to work through before I can be successful. I seem to not have the right understanding of what friendship is or what to expect from it, so I’m probably better off thinking about how to improve my life in other ways…

I was chewing gum the other day and was thinking about how relationships with other people are quite like chewing gum. You chew gum until you sucked out all the juice and then you spit it out. People take whatever they need from the other until they have taken all they can and then they let go and move on. I think I could be happy if I could only accept this idea as true and be okay with it. Although I feel like I’m the gum all the time in this analogy, if I think hard and I’m really honest I would probably realize that I’m no different from anyone else and I do the same. I don’t want to be the gum that gets spit out and then annoyingly gets stuck on the bottom of someone’s shoe and that they then have to expend a lot of effort to pry off. I feel like I’m often that person, and I don’t want to be that anymore.

Even if I haven’t made as much progress as I should have in completing my most significant goals, I think 43 Things has helped me significantly in organizing and verbalizing the things I want to accomplish and even if I don’t accomplish so much I have learned a tremendous amount about myself and why I think the way I do. I’m especially grateful for the feedback I get from other users and enjoy the opportunities where I can add value to someone else in a positive way. I don’t have much of a social life so the intereaction here does help to fill some of that gap although I have to be careful to remember that an “internet friend” isn’t quite the same thing as a “real life friend”. People I know in “real life” aren’t particularly interested in the details of my crappy life, but I’m happy to have found an outlet where I can write about it whenever I want and whoever chooses can read about it as they desire to or not. I also like the opportunity to read about what others wish to share about their lives. So, I’m really glad I was introduced to 43 Things…

These thoughts, which are inspired by a song I heard on my drive home from work this afternoon, are kind of jumbled in my mind as I try to spit them out… One of the nice things about having an iPod is that you can literally have an entire library of thousand of songs right at your fingertips. It’s by far my favorite toy. My feature I like the best is the “shuffle songs” option which will play songs randomly from your whole collection so you get to hear things that you may have forgetten about or wouldn’t think of off the top of your head. I had an experience like this today when I heard Clock Without Hands by Nanci Griffith which I hadn’t heard or thought about for a long while. I quote some of the lyrics I’ve been thinking about here:

“I am a clock without hands, no one understands this
That when the autumn comes I see no reason for a fall
Spring can fall to move me with its tulips and its clover
Now the time for love is over
I am a clock without hands
I’m just tickin’ and that’s all”

This song made me think about some discussion I had recently about what conscience means and about how you explicitly shape it by your actions. Now, I started to think about what happens as a result of your inaction or your lack of having something important. I guess I’m not thinking so much about one’s conscience anymore but more along the lines of one’s being or (I wish I could think of a better word without religious connotation) one’s soul. If you’re without something for so long, like love (or even if you have it but it’s not the right type), and you learn to live without it, how do you learn to become open to having and giving it again or to having or giving it at all if you’ve never really had it? How do you stop being “just ticking and that’s all”? I used to think it wouldn’t be so bad to become this way, to feel nothing, because that way you don’t feel the pain which can often make it hard to remember what joy was like. I don’t usually think this way anymore, but my thoughts here are not so solid as of yet…

Songs often make me think about things or maybe it’s the mood I’m in at the time that makes me ponder certain ideas more… this is just one of those times…

looking at my list of goals, most of them are 100% easily obtainable and i guess people must wonder what i do with my life if i can’t go out to the library ten minutes away to get a card. or that i can’t simply put on some shorts and go for a jog at night or before school. or that i haven’t been able to go get my driver’s license even though it’s been over two years since i was able to. or to even go shopping – one of the most easiest things in the world – for a prom dress. my prom is in a month.

there’s also my community hours which i’ll never finish.

i don’t know. i just don’t know. i sit here and get nothing done, nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing.

I was driving around earlier in the afternoon listening to a song called Mirror, Mirror by Whiskeytown, Ryan Adams’ old band, which is about a guy who looks at himself in the mirror and contemplates how he has become so detached that he doesn’t recognize himself anymore. These lyrics in particular stuck with me:

Tell me something about what I saw in the face of a man
Who once felt it all but feels nothing today

How do you become someone who can feel nothing? I think the song is about a guy who realizes that this has happened to him without consciously trying, but I wonder if you can consciously achieve this. It’s good to feel a full range of emotions, I think, but to experience only a certain type of emotion most of the time is not so good. If what you feel most of the time over long periods of time is not happy and it impedes you in some ways from being as productive as you could be and the negative is always stronger than the positive, how do you become someone who doesn’t have to feel anything anymore? Or, maybe better, how do you become someone who can really live despite whatever emotions you have? I have just been thinking about this…

When I could be thinking of any number of other things more productive to what’s happening immediately in my life, I often go to bed lately thinking about this question and not knowing exactly how to answer it for myself… I’m totally replaceable at my job (most of us probably are… which come to think of it is probably a not such a bad thing). I don’t have any original, groundbreaking ideas that contribute anything new or special to society… I can’t figure out how to properly relate to other people in a lasting, meaningful way, so nobody depends on me… really… Nobody really needs me, and I can’t make myself important to anybody… Well, I’m a consumer, which I guess counts for something since it supports the economy and helps contribute to people’s well-being, but frankly just one person doesn’t mean much in those terms… I wonder, what am I really worth?

I’ve been reading fateaccompli’s dream journal and in so doing it’s forced me to be conscious of and give more thought to my own dreams. Over the past month, I’ve had one dream, exactly the same dream, three times. It’s about this person I know that clearly in real life I must need to talk to but who just seems to be out of reach. In the dream, I have something to tell him. I’m not exactly sure where we are or what it is I have to say, but he walks briskly away from me and never looks behind when I call for his attention. Finally I jog to catch up and surpass him, and I’m standing in front of him, and I ask him why he won’t listen to me. I see this look of disgust and hatred on his face that I had never seen him with in real life. He doesn’t say anything to me; he just glares and then spits on me. That’s when I wake up.

I also dream this other scene not really as a dream in and of itself but as a random fragment within other dreams about the same person. He says something to me (what I don’t know), but whatever he says isn’t complete. There’s more I need to ask him. I call him back, but it’s as if he doesn’t hear me. I follow him and call his name but he never turns around. I reach for his shoulder, but he’s never within my grasp. No matter how hard I try I can’t get through to him…

it’s been a long time since i’ve gone through a nervous breakdown. it was pretty bad, all the crying and panic attacks for a couple days, but i think the worst of it is over now.

i’m just glad this time i didn’t do anything stupid – and that it wasn’t set off by anything highly depressing. it’s just a way to deal with myself at times, it’s good to get crying done with so i can live for a while without tears.

that sounds kind of depressing but i’m a lot happier thinking the crying is out of the way and i can go and think, “why should i cry more?” when i feel the urge.

(:

Needless to say since I live in LA, I spend a lot of time in my car sitting in traffic, and during this time I listen to a lot of music. Sometimes talk radio feels like a waste of time and news on NPR gets too boring and I’m too drained to listen to my Chinese lessons on CD, yet I can always find enlightment somehow in the poetry of good songs. Mostly I listen to stuff on my iPod since it’s hard to find quality stuff I like on commercial radio and it’s too inconvenient to carry around all my CDs.

Earlier in the week, I was listening to a song called Black by Pete Yorn, which I have listened to a lot since I first got the album it is on in 2001. It seems to be about this unfulfilled yearning you have when you are in your early twenties that I am or was able to relate to. There are these lyrics that he sings in particular that got me thinking: “Waiting for a bottle of truth, I’m just a lonely guy in my youth…” I was thinking about this and realize that at 30, even if I still relate to these lyrics, I’m not exactly in my youth anymore, and I wonder if I’m too old to be feeling like this. I don’t feel “old” and don’t think of myself that way, but I also realize that a certain stage of my life is over and that I should have a different mindset now.

I wonder, do you reach a point where you realize that certain opportunities have passed you up, and so you reach a certain acceptance that you are stuck with who you are and where you are at? I was also listening to a song with that theme called I Taught Myself How to Grow Old by Ryan Adams, where he says, “I taught myself how to grow / Now I’m crooked on the outside, and the inside’s broke…” Of course, you could always change certain aspects of yourself and in the future be less “crooked” or “broke”, but can you ever really completely break away from the experiences that got you to where you are at today? I wonder…