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…

on the way to work today I started thinking about how I search for people who have heroic qualities. It’s as if I need someone to champion – a person who speaks his/her mind, who makes the right not the easy choice, who resists the temptation to fall into what is expected of them and refuses to compromise his/her soul. I look for someone who will grow and challenge himself/herself, acknowledging that to change one’s mind is not always a sign of giving up one’s beliefs or morals, but is often the bravest and rarest of acts.

I find myself looking deeply and honestly at my friends and have to turn the scrutiny upon my own life. Do I know my own faults? Am I aware of how I treat people and how it affects them? Do I find these qualities in myself?

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…

i just wanted to say that i will miss you. this is the only way i know to communicate with you now that you are gone. you love blogs, creating sites, making them user-friendly and doing it the best way.

it was one moment, a horrible fateful moment where so many things went wrong and you are the one who lost. i’m just not ready to believe it’s true. i woke up this morning and had to convince myself that it wasn’t all a dream. the worst part is that you are in the best shape of your life and the best part is that you live your life doing all the things we list on 43things. you live it as if it was your last day and tuesday – it really was the last day.

i will miss your voice, your laugh, how you always wait until everyone has had one piece of birthday cake until you ask for seconds, how we talk about random stuff over a cup of tea mid-morning, how you get off your bike to walk to the deck with me at night, how you get so excited and ask me to come see the newest video of your grandson – you are so proud of him and it makes me smile to see your eyes light up with joy. i will miss how you challenge me, test me and make me a better and smarter thinker.

you are present tense to me. you cannot be gone when we all know you so well. i know that you will let us know that you are ok – some way, somehow.

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.

my baby brother is graduating from college tomorrow. i love him so much, i feel so proud of the man he is becoming.

he’s my favorite traveling partner, favorite person to play ball with, favorite person to play videos games with, listen to music with, and just do nothing with – and i’m so glad we spent our childhood together.

i know i am lucky that we have a close relationship – and i look forward to the good times and bad we will go through together for the rest of our lives.

why does it feel so good to drive with the windows rolled down on a sunny day, my dog sitting beside me in the passenger seat and me singing my favorite songs loud enough for all to hear? i was going to my parent’s house on Sunday on just such a day and was overwhelmed with how free and alive i felt.

life doesn’t make any sense to me. we spend hours and days and weeks and years working for a paycheck to support families and lifestyles that we have little time to enjoy. and i feel the time – i feel restless, continually fighting to be who i am without wax.

but i love the moments when i am happy to be right where i am. these moments find me in the car, drifting along in a kayak on a river, any time i’m near a body of water, laughing with friends, running on trails, anywhere in the mountains in NC.

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…