reflections on the social dance floor.

I feel inclined to both like people and not trust them.

Part of the reason why I had trouble committing to coming out to swing dancing weekly for a long time (aside from becoming busy with things) was that I didn't really feel like I fit in with the swing crowd. Still don't. I always feel like one of those misfits standing off to the side, unable to really socialize with anyone beyond the context of a single dance itself because I have trouble finding much to say to anyone. I can dance okay now and stuff- heck, it was even more difficult when I barely knew anything and always felt like I was letting the follow down from making so many mistakes and not being able to do much- but now I just feel like I can dance around for a bit with someone and then that's it. I can respond well enough if someone else hits up a conversation with me on the spot, but I find that most of the time people on the dance floor are focused on other things or are busy talking to other people they already know anyway.

And after months of that every week, it just started getting lonely, in a way, lonelier than I ever really felt when I was actually alone at home minding my own business. I felt more comfortable dancing with random strangers than I did with the people whose faces I recognized from seeing around every week, who by proxy already knew other people there as well. I may have talked to the folks in the latter category once or twice, but it'd only take another week and then it'd be like we'd never really interacted at all. And that's just awkward.

Maybe it's just my overall mood whenever I'm around people: I'm the kind of person who prefers to be reached out to than to do the reaching out by nature, and when no one interacts with me first I usually end up just standing there awkwardly. It pretty much defines my experience at IV for a good chunk of the time I was there, and a lot of other social experiences. It takes me a long time to warm up to most people in general (and when I actually think about it, it took me a rather long time to actually get closer to most of my existing friends; 5 years, 1 year, 1.5 semesters, and 1.5 years all come to mind).

What it comes down to largely is trust, and I've realized that I take a rather long time to get to a point of trusting people enough to even just talk to them like a normal friend. It's as if you'd need to pass some test or measure of trustworthiness in my head (apparent willingness to reciprocate in conversation; apparent friendliness; etc.) before I'd feel comfortable enough to open up to you, and with regards to the atmosphere of social dancing, it's really difficult to maintain a conversation where you'd get a good feel for those things with another person while the music's blaring and loads of other people are dancing and just running about and whatnot. And sometimes I feel like it's the same attitude that other people have towards me, considering that I'm generally quiet and not very openly sociable to begin with. To me it usually feels like the other person is just disinterested in continuing talking after a certain point, which I find normal anyway because I also do the same thing.

I found last night that none of this has really changed for me since the time I stopped coming out to the dances over a year ago; the only difference is that I'm not letting this stop me from wanting to continue learning new moves and techniques just for the sake of enjoying learning those things. Maybe if I got out of the mentality of worrying about socializing with people and just tried to enjoy the experience of dancing for what it is, I'd actually feel more comfortable socializing on the dance floor for once... ironically.

I don't blame folks who disappear after a couple of weeks or even a few months or so, because it honestly takes a real commitment and love of dance to keep coming out consistently, week after week. If you're just there to try and meet people or casually dance a little, you can only go so far.

Well, there's always next week.

And now for something slightly different.

I take a lot of relationships for granted, and have taken a lot of relationships for granted.

I mean this both in the oblivious, not fully aware sense (until such people suddenly disappear from my vantage point of life) and also in the kind of aware but placed in the back of my mind sense. I want to particularly emphasize the "until such people suddenly disappear" part because it gets to happen fairly often when you've met enough people. For another social media analogy, it's something that can be characterized by the hundreds of Facebook friends I have and the large enough subset of those who've either defriended me or who I don't really talk to in the first place anyway. In that respect, I've come to expect this as inevitable; who can really expect to keep up with that many people in their life anyway?

Even then, I can't help but feel a small pang of regret whenever I notice these things.

Back in college, I served in hospitality team for my Christian fellowship my senior year, and it made me ever more conscious, or should I say paranoid, of who was present/not present on any given week of the people I knew, even while I myself never quite entirely felt like I fit in to begin with (but that's another story). And although my role was largely focused around the experience of new, incoming folks who were much more likely not to stick around for too long in the first place (and whether or not hospitality team actually worked is a completely other subject of debate beyond the scope of this post), I would still notice when folks who'd been around for a while disappeared as well.

And I guess to a certain extent my role in this group resulted in a conflict of interest, particularly if I hadn't really interacted with these people much outside of the normal context of this group. Would it still be appropriate, or rather, would it be right to try and keep in contact with these people when I hadn't really done it much before? Would they see me as trying to proselytize them or just bothering them when they didn't want to be bothered? Why did I want to contact them in the first place, if we hadn't really established that sort of connection? Or to put it more bluntly, why did I never really talk to these people that much in the past to begin with?

Sometimes you don't realize the value of the presence of another person until they're gone.

One other thing I appreciated about my fellowship, or in particular my small group, was that it provided a regular context for which I could see people who I might not regularly be able to see or talk to otherwise (regardless of how much I actually talked to these people normally outside of that context, because as Ryan L puts it I'm like a sponge who soaks in the presence of other people... but don't take that analogy too far because that image is a little too much for my taste). But at the same time, I realized after a while that I took for granted that responsibility the group took on. For what about when the group ended, as it inevitably did with the end of college? How many of these people would I still actually keep in contact with, like I do with some of my closer friends in college? How many of these people would still feel comfortable having a conversation with me years later?

At this point, I've been both in a central position of a social circle, and also somewhat on the fringes of another one, multiple times each. I know what it's like to be feel included and left out, to feel both connected and disconnected, to feel like I've contributed something or other times feel like I'm taking up space. I acknowledge that the best kinds of relationships are the ones that last long beyond the context they originally started in, but at the same time I can still see value in the ones that only persisted for the duration of that context. I still find it difficult to accept the latter case sometimes when it happens, though.

These thoughts come to me now as I start to see some of my existing social circles undergoing a recognizable state of flux, as past ones have done: people coming and going as their own personal life circumstances change. I might not ever see some of these folks again, or at least not for a long while. I've wished I could've been closer to some of them even though I find my own ability to do so a bit lacking, since it becomes much more difficult to establish close relationships with people  in your life as you grow older. These kinds of relationships take effort and work to start and then maintain; they aren't generally the kinds of things that you can simply leave alone until the person on the other line arbitrarily decides one day to hit you up again out of the blue (as much as I would love to be on the other end of that line...). Well, technically it does happen sometimes, but usually only with the people with whom you've established a precedent for allowing that interaction to occur in the first place, like good old friends.

Presently, I've grown accustomed to holding most people sort of at arm's length for lack of consistent and persistent contact compared to what I had in college combined with growing accustomed to living alone, which has made it rather more difficult to develop the close kinds of relationships I've enjoyed in the past. So when people in my current circles for example tell me about how they don't feel as connected or comfortable with the way a group is, it sort of takes me by surprise because I'm already used to that sort of detachment and maybe don't mind it as much.

Sure, in the past I've wondered why I still bothered coming out to some events myself, but that never really stopped me from coming out in the long run- I think that's partly a function of how my personality is, if anything. I could still find something worthwhile out of the moment even if I didn't really fit in the same way that others did. But after hearing from other people who don't experience these things the same way, it makes me wonder how much I've overlooked the concerns of these individuals for the sake of some group, let alone those who I haven't really talked to that much. How much did I take the mere presence of these people for granted, rather than see if I could try to engage their own social and personal needs just as I was getting mine own fulfilled already? You should already be able to tell from this blog how preoccupied I often am with my own thoughts; seems like hardly enough attention is given to the concerns of others as it is.

Engaging people on their own terms means a willingness to put oneself out there as available, to sometimes be willing to lend an ear, to listen to another, even when that person isn't necessarily expecting to be heard in the first place. I've often stumbled before ever getting to that point, out of fear out of offending another person or coming across as being too pushy or just not knowing where to start or if I should even bother trying why am I thinking about this I should just go home and mind my own business like everyone else does. But really, this just ends up with conversations years later of some people asking me, "how come you never talk to me?"

Because I'm complacent with a status quo where I only respond to people who reach out to me first (but if you do reach out first, I'd love to respond!... in a somewhat delayed fashion). Because I'm afraid of risking the possibility of being rejected by you the moment I try to reach out. Because I often overthink these things and focus mostly on how I feel and not about how you're feeling or doing. Because I worry more about how what attempts I might make to communicate with you will affect your perception of me (do I come across as too persistent or annoying to you?) than I do about how they might help maintain our relationship. I take you as a friend for granted.

And I'm sorry for all of that, honestly.

...But I also feel that saying sorry is not enough, and have even been told as much before in the past, because I have a shallow tendency to say sorry all the time even for things I shouldn't be sorry for or am not actually sorry for. And for what it's worth, writing these words on this blog won't really matter all that much, when they probably won't even reach the people they ought to be meant for (I'm presuming if you're still reading this blog, you're probably likely to still be in contact with me in some form or another even if only once in a while) and won't make up for what's happened in the past, what I did or didn't notice. And as my last post put it, maybe there just wasn't much there to develop to begin with, and I'm just making much ado about what could've happened scenario in my head, rather than accepting the past in all of its imperfection for what it was.

My real hope in writing this thought process out is to make myself more conscious of these issues whenever they inevitably do happen around me, and to step out of my comfort zone of pleasant detachment from the lives of other people for once. And that these words wouldn't simply be laid to rest here, but would serve as the root for some actual action at hand to be taken.

Now if only I had more time to do something other than maybe read something quick and sleep. I originally felt like writing something about goodreads (see link in sidebar) but then this came up. Another time. Good night!

Insomniac Musings, The Inaugural Edition

I'm starting a new label here for the stuff that prevents me from falling asleep whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, which seems to be happening a lot lately. There may or may not be some overlap with the already overinflated Thoughts label, as whenever I wake a second time after, these thoughts already feel like a dimension away, except that the source is still there somewhere in me.

(warning: this post entails excessive use of the word "friends" and may tread over previously blogged territory. I have memory issues nowadays, what can I say.)

Once upon a time when I was younger and presumably a lot more naive (I would like to imagine I'm less naive now, but I never really know), I had this crazy idea that I wanted to be friends with every person I knew. Maybe not so extreme in the sense of the "all-roommates-are-best-friends" aura that I seem to recall inhaling from my first roommate, but at least good enough friends to be able to talk and hang out with them semi-regularly, or even on a whim. This applied to anyone coming from any walk of life, regardless of race, gender, origin, background, etc.etc. Very idealistic sounding, right?

Of course, over the course of a decade, this wound up becoming in practice:

- wanting to befriend whoever my existing friends were friends with ("the friend of a friend is a friend"), regardless of how well I could actually get along with them. There was also an overall preference towards people who were well liked by my other friends in general.

- trying to get involved with a few groups of people who I never really fit in that well with or didn't really know how to talk to, but still enjoyed their presence for whatever the reason.

- feeling left out or discouraged whenever I wasn't invited to something involving people I felt even marginally close to. this would prove rather more distressing later when friends who I'd inadvertently helped introduce to each other wound up hanging out more often than I did with either. this is part of the reason why I despise cliques even though they inevitably happen (and I've been part of them myself).

- feeling left out or uncomfortable whenever I was in the presence of friends talking about a subject that I wasn't privy to knowing about. especially girltalk (note: I know guys who are good at girltalk. I am not one of them.)

- becoming jealous overall of the closeness I saw in relationships between people who I'm not as close to.
(I make exceptions for dating couples because those are already a given, although I do enjoy third-wheeling when they allow me to. :P)

Essentially, that initial idealistic thought or impulse gave way to a lot of anxiety and distress, but almost entirely self-generated and self-centered. Moments where I had trouble talking to people or discovered other social events or knowledge that I wasn't privy to turned turned into blows against my own pride, for making me realize how much I wasn't the easily relatable, well-liked guy I wanted to be, or else sleights against myself, for there must be something wrong with me if this person won't tell me what's really going on. The one time that someone who I personally felt close to confided in me that they couldn't really... confide in me (ironically) for personal reasons, I had an emotional breakdown shortly afterwards and spent the rest of the night walking home in tears and then crying in bed. All for reasons I can't really put into words... but you can probably gather from what I've written so far. And I couldn't simply appreciate what good relationships I did have already, because evidently those weren't enough to satisfy me.

Every once in a while I end up recalling my past failed interactions up until now, the people I ultimately wasn't able to befriend or become as close to in the manner I'd liked, the words left unspoken (or should I phrase it more accurately as the "things people wouldn't tell me"), and the ways in which I wound up becoming more of an annoyance to those whom I incessantly tried to be around even though we weren't that close to begin with. From that first time someone told me to "go away" for implicitly obvious reasons in middle school (ironically, wound up being decent friends with that person for a while), to the times I invited myself to other folks' personal conversations or activities whenever I saw them in college, to the limbo state I find myself in with some social circles even now- these memories tend to creep up when I least expect them, especially in the middle of a sleepless night.

And with the kind of identity complex that I have, it's never been about what these other people did to me (...did they even do anything? did they even really notice?) so much as it's been about what I did wrong or what was wrong with me in general, like it's because I'm too quiet or too introverted for us to establish that kind of open communication. I may make it sound humble when I put it that way, but I mean it in a completely opposite, self-centered way. I even tried to make light of it in my head by noting that I've never really held grudges against anyone involved or even hated or disliked someone for what happened in the past, but that notion in itself meant only to salvage my own pride more than anything. And it makes me wonder if I ever really potentially cared about these people to begin with, or if I only cared about maintaining friendships with them as a way of making myself look better as a person, like "look at how many awesome and unique friends I have thereby making me also awesome and unique!" (I think the social media phenomenon that corresponds to that today would be what, Klout?).

After years of mulling over this, I can write about this now in a somewhat detached fashion and pinpoint where it all came from. To be honest, it doesn't feel like I feel anything right now other than a vague sense of regret, but something more on the level of forgetting my wallet at home and not on the hyper-induced midway to panic attack level I generally experience in the middle of the night, let alone the actual panic attacks I've had. But at the same time, this level of detachment combined with the passage of time has helped at least in making me recognize how problematic my "ideal" view of myself has been over the years, when in reality I shouldn't expect to be able to befriend anyone and everyone even if my own friends are capable of doing so with the same folks. I'm only human and should only expect to be able to achieve so much.

It's been a gradual process for me, learning to accept the current state of the relationships I have, to become thankful for the people who are still present in my life, and to make the most out of what is there to the best of my capacity. Folks will come and go throughout my life, inevitably; better to seize the opportunities that are present with them with an expectant heart, rather than continue to lament over what isn't there or perhaps never really was to begin with. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own mind that I forget.

"The only way to make a friend is to be one."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson? (although I first heard this as a child from a Wee Sing video or something -_-)

And to be one means much more than serving your own heart, in this case.

addendum to the last post

Tonight was the most fun I've had from swing dancing in a loong time, literally. A reminder to not become subservient to my moods, especially when they discourage me from enjoying the good things in life.

Also to eat less spicy food before dancing because ow my intestines.

anti

In the midst of an anti-people mood.... which is not to say that I hate people right now, but rather, I don't feel particularly inclined to talk to or see anyone right now and would rather just sit at home and read books all day.

Which is why I'm going swing dancing tonight for the first time in a year and heading to SF this weekend to see people. Sigh.*  (*not an 'I don't want to' sigh, just more a sigh at my ongoing mood. I like people.)

It's like when you start to recognize patterns or extra voices in your thoughts contrary to... other present patterns or voices. One that speaks of the things that depress you, and another that speaks of how pumped and excited you are to do things, like you're reclaiming your life for the first time again.

It's also like the book I'm reading now, Ulysses. It's got an undertone of painful seriousness wrapped within a crazy nonsensical sense of humor that pokes fun at death and the oddities of the English language. And it's also incredibly difficult to make sense of at times... because stream of consciousness.

Waking up to the knowledge that nothing in your life is perfect, and the notion that it unlikely will be as idealistically great as you want it to be. So make of it what good you are able to while you still can.

Weekend Blues

"The mind of an introvert is like a hurricane that never ends."

- my last roommate, Sang. (or something along those lines as my memory's hazy.)

This blog is full of thoughts. When I'm not actively or passively thinking about some particular topic, I wind up thinking about how empty my mind feels, like it's been dulled or distracted or aimlessly meandering somewhere. And I end up feeling like I'm not really here right now, like I'm actually in some other world mentally, or some other plane detached from reality because I'm not capable of paying attention to anything around me.

Of course, it took a rather humiliating first snowboarding experience for me to actively notice this trend of thinking that's been cropping up every so often. Well, it's not like I hadn't noticed it before- I've probably mentioned it a bunch of times on this blog or something- but to connect it with the feelings of wounded pride, my tendency to overthink things in every situation, and another offhand conversation just earlier about the disconnect between what goes on in a person's mind and the words that come out of their mouth, it all kind of came together to the surface as I lay there in the snow, unable to get up because it hurt too much to. Snowboarding can be fun, but not so much and rather much more exhaustingly so when the only way you know how to stop sliding is by crashing and falling onto your arms and knees and then occasionally somehow flipping over and landing roughly on your ass [because no one really opted to take lessons and you have no physical intuition for these things].

At the end of a run I'd find myself spacing out at the bottom, not really able to do much else. I was running through my head all sorts of random explanations and scenarios, what kind of things I would say the moment I saw people again cause they'd all finished first. That part in the brackets above is my "official" explanation so to speak, the one that I finally came down to as a logical response to people asking how my experience was, because it's actually true for the most part and makes sense and if anyone actually asks me I'll probably say that. But it wasn't the only reasoning that came to mind.

The first one: "I'm not evolutionarily fit for this most physical activities." Mainly because of how slow I am in general to pick up on sports of any kind, and because having exercise-induced asthma limits the extent to which I can try. I am easily discouraged when I can't breathe.

Second: "I'm averse to physically risky activities and don't really enjoy this." Which then led to the inevitable question, "Why am I even doing this if I don't enjoy this?" To fit in because it sounds logical to try snowboarding at Tahoe in the winter if you've never done it before and most of your other friends are doing it? To be honest, in the days leading up to this I wasn't really looking forward to it or dreading it even - I just felt more apathetic overall.

Third: "I just naturally fail at this, like many things at life." I was reminded of my friend who likes to call me out when I fail at things (last time it was parallel parking, when I usually don't have that many problems parallel parking except for this time when this friend was in the car, because like all of my other failures in life, it had to happen only then) and who I may or may not have an unacknowledged grudge against in this respect. 

Fourth: "I didn't sleep enough, and my body feels sluggish right now and isn't really responding to what I want it to do." Which is kinda true; after each of the first two runs it took me awhile to just muster the energy to unlatch my boots from the board and get up. I couldn't even unhook it properly the first time and had to ask a couple of passerbys for help until one of them finally figured out that I was pressing the wrong object to unhook it. And then after the third run it took me a while to figure out how to take my helmet off after having already done it several times earlier. 

[I also didn't notice the first time around that there was a bar you had to lower over you to prevent yourself falling off of the skilift. Or rather, I was wondering why there wasn't a bar because I was sitting alone and didn't see it behind my head and mused 3/4ths of the way up that it would be really easy to just fall off right there and break my legs or something. I resisted the temptation to do so.]

Fifth: "There are too many damn people here." Which was also true; the line grew excessively long over the course of the day and from the very first part of the course onward I spent most of my time crashing because I was trying to avoid running into people, even as I got crashed into several times, once in the arm and another time in the leg from behind by a skier who fell while getting off of the skilift. And then another time as I was trying to walk back up the course a little bit to avoid sliding through the course boundary.

Sixth: "What have I been doing with my life?" When I think of my other friends who do this more often and enjoy it, and those who talk of buying snowboards and going again, when the thought of that doesn't really evoke much desire or interest in my mind.

Seventh: "I can't recall any of the how-to-deal-with-anxiety exercises we did." So much for small group. Or rather, I predicted this would probably happen because it's a lot harder to recall such things when you're really feeling anxious.

It feels sillier looking back on it all now. But in the heat of the moment when you're exhausted from crashing too much and also experiencing what feels like a rather shitty not-your-day- not to mention...

- failing at attaching my ticket to my jacket several times with the un-reusable latch thingies

- thinking I'd lost my goggles while I was wearing them

- having the skin on my knuckles get chafed off by the wrist guards I was wearing
- having dust and snow blow around my sunglasses into my eyes in the parking lot 

- witnessing a neighboring car door smack my car while I was inside it

- experiencing that evening what felt like the effects of a worsening alcohol allergy from a single Fireball shot: palpitating heart/head, difficulty breathing, shivering without feeling cold, and then a headache. Not that this hasn't happened before, but it happened a lot faster this time. I may just have to give up alcohol altogether (not like I'd be missing it much).

- "why are you always like this, Ryan?" 

  "I feel too hot; I just need some cold air right now."

...it just makes the doom and gloom depression feel all too real. I can say with a straight face in the midst of it that I'm just being overly dramatic and making a big deal out of everything and yet still continue to fall prey to my emotions and stress and pessimism, all over a simple snowboarding venture that would otherwise barely faze the likes of most other folks. It makes me wonder why I feel so out of place and disconnected from the experiences of everyone else, like I'm not really here (and then end up aimlessly thinking about that), and why I couldn't simply just fit in and enjoy this trip like everyone else. And of course why I think so damn much, when I don't really want to, because it makes me start to do weird and erratic things that make other people worry when I'm really just trying to clear my head.

It'd be easy to just focus on my raw emotions immediately as they happened, to end up calling this day one of the worst experiences I've had in a while because of how unenjoyable it may have felt a lot of the time and how much of it I spent worrying over how I might respond to people when they saw me. Would I be able to cover all of this up with a straight face, to play it off with the excuses I came up with, to convince them that their worries were really unfounded all along? (I was surprised at how much I was able to play it off, anyway... kinda.) 

But over the course of the day, I was pleasantly surprised by a friend reaching out trying to help me when I didn't realize I'd needed it, even if just for a brief moment. People who were willing to stand outside with me in the middle of the snowy dark night and just talk for a bit, who were nice enough to ask how I was doing (even though it might've felt a little redundant after a while... I hope I wasn't too worrisome), and a friend who was willing to stick it out with me on the course for a bit while I was trying to get up and failing... and then somewhat ineffectively coach me to go "LEFT! LEFT! LEFT!" when I had no idea what LEFT meant [with respect to my legs]. 

I don't regret the experience, or the chance to be able to share it in some way big or small with the other folks that went; I'm really thankful for it. But too often I am prone to focusing just on the bad moments or rather on the sheer weight that they seem to take on in my mind, as a way of centering my life on my own immediate emotional well-being, when there is so much more going on around me that I'm not even paying attention to. It's times like these where I wish my mind weren't so overactive, so that I could just relax and focus on the good for once. But that's just something I'm still learning to deal with even now.

It was difficult to consciously resist the temptation to just blow up at everyone and everything and make a scene or something like I might've done in the past- well in my case that tends to lead to me running away more than anything- but now, it all feels like a brief moment or footnote in time, and like the majority of thoughts it just goes by unnoticed mostly... which is fine, honestly. Just as this life is but a moment... or a dream.

"...to realize that all your life-- all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain-- it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream, a dream that you had inside a locked room, a dream about being a person."

- True Detective

This has been on my mind often lately - the sense that I place too much emphasis on the details of my own experience without acknowledging how much of it doesn't really matter that. As Cohle says on the show, we would like to think that our own lives are really that significant, that meaningful, largely in part because this life lived through our own eyes is the only thing we know. And a good deal of what I really felt this weekend amounted to me just selfishly wanting my own misery to be acknowledged by other people, as if that really mattered, and then worrying about how irrelevant my life felt when I couldn't communicate that and was afraid of alienating others. And this wasn't the first time either; it happens fairly often when I'm in social situations... only that it was more poignant this time around. Why do I get so hung up over these little things? 

I guess it's because... I'm human.

[And yes, I realize the length of this post is in itself a likely product of my overthinking mind, but that's just how I roll.]

of late (abstract thoughts and not).

More arbitrary and a bit longer than usual. Or maybe I'm being more blunt about what normally goes through my mind on a regular basis this time around; there is no method or order to the madness, or proper grammar usage because I just caught a sentence fragment in the first line of this post, and I don't care. Come to think, I'm not usually properly observing grammar in these posts anyway, so I don't know why I brought that up.

- Posters. After finally putting a few posters up that I've accumulated haphazardly over the years (Stars; two of Yo La Tengo; Homestuck; One Piece; and Nausicaa), I suddenly feel this compulsion to acquire more posters and put them up on ALL THE WALLS. I can't help but just stop and look at a poster sometimes, so I guess it's fitting to just surround the living area with them so I can just stare at them mindlessly whenever I feel like it... and I guess it's a way for me to express my favorite things upon my personal space, although I can't fathom a possible good poster for Planescape: Torment... other than the symbol of torment I guess.

(But I could easily create a shrine museum room dedicated to One Piece if I had the space and materials for it...)

- The auto-pilot won't stop. Or that is to say that I can't help but notice in the back of my mind how automatic more than half of my motions are these days. Routine becoming so second-nature that part of me wonders how it is I'm doing so much without actively being aware of what it is I'm doing. This is what it's like to live a life without reflection.

- I don't like the sound of my writing half the time that I read it. I'll probably dislike what's written here at least one out of the next 5 times I re-read this entry, probably more. Just like my somewhat excessively long goodreads reviews.

(I know that probably isn't actually the expected value if I dislike reading it half the time, but whatever. Ignore what I said if you haven't learned probability.)

- Had a discussion the other day about panic attacks, and after hearing a formal definition of what exactly a panic attack is, I realized that those few times I ran out of the apartment/club/etc. etc. in the past were essentially panic attacks. They say you shouldn't give in to the impulsive desire to escape wherever you are because it actually makes the attack worse, but uh woops, can't reverse that now.

- As much as I would like to think of myself as "open," there is a layer of thoughts that I apparently refuse to write here or even in my own personal physical journal- which I guess is partly why I don't feel anything whenever someone happens to grab my journal out of the blue. It's not like I really have anything to hide in there that I wouldn't be willing to talk about in person anyway. I'm aware of the existence of these other thoughts, but the idea of actually writing them down has never actually crossed my mind or even come close to doing so... although I am more aware of them whenever someone says something that causes them to cross my mind during conversation and I don't say anything, which seems to happen a lot these days.

- "You're good at being there for things."

I suppose it helps that I find it difficult to say no to people unless I already have a real reason to say no.

- Is it normal to be confused about being invited to one thing but not another involving the same group of people for the same related event? Even though I already had plans during the second one anyway, so it didn't matter...

- Sometimes I get the impression that there are other things I could be doing with my time. Take today, where I had no plans during the day and wound up not feeling like doing anything.

Well, other than take care of a few health issues that wouldn't really be appropriate for conversation with anyone other than a doctor...
and then put up the new Earthbound poster I acquired at the retro video gaming convention yesterday...
and then a map of the lands of Ice and Fire...
and then figure out how to get the late 1990's Carmen Sandiego games working on my Windows 8 laptop after randomly reminiscing about them while walking through the streets of downtown San Jose yesterday.

Protip: Windows XP virtual machine (the steps of which to get working would entail another blog post if I could still remember them). but anyway, THEY ACTUALLY WORK! and it occurred to me that these games are actually educational even for an adult; I didn't realize that Zaire had changed its name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and not the other way around, because in 1996 it was still called Zaire and the game didn't know any better, but wikipedia did.

But I suppose I cheated by resorting to wikipedia in the first place, whereas elementary school-age me had no such resource and somehow managed to capture 50 villains and the elusive Carmen Sandiego on a first try anyway. but not the second time around because I didn't realize that EVERY suspect in the final area was identical to Carmen.

The point being, give me another carefree day and I'll clean the house for once. Probably.

- Note to past self: next time you open a brand new game case with a poster inside, put the poster back inside the case so that your future self six years later won't waste several hours tearing up his house looking for the damn thing, even though the very first thought he had was that it probably was in socal even though the case is up here and somehow that doesn't make any logical sense with his memories. Sincerely, your future self.

- We started a new series on anxiety in small group this past week, which feels hard to apply at the moment because the last time I legitimately felt anxious was more than a year ago when I was going through that panic attack-situational social anxiety phase, whereas lately I've been feeling anything but stressed. Granted, I've also been purposely not actively pursuing actions that would potentially add anxiety to my life that would otherwise be seen as desirable in the future, like say more schooling or a change in jobs or a sudden realization that would lead to a mid-life crisis. Maybe I should change that so this series would be more relevant-

but really, I feel like a more relevant series for me would be on a topic that wouldn't be as applicable to as many people (like some straight up basic fundamentals of theology that aren't directly related to apologetics, but I guess that's what seminary is for...?), so I rest my case for now anyway. I just think we take for granted something that most people can't really afford to do the same for, and it would be good reason to explore why.

- The reason why my posting frequency has gone down so much lately is that I don't have much novel things to say or write about lately that haven't already been said here before, or else I'm in the middle of another distraction already. Bravely Default and Pokebank and the new Wolf Among Us just came out, and I still haven't finished New Vegas yet...

- What do you live for, what do you believe, what do you need, and what do you want.

- I feel like I've already hit the point of being content with the status quo, except that it's really more of a fear of change from the status quo.

What I'm really afraid of is living with certainty on things I have no business of being certain about.

- The longer you [implied: 100% introvert] live alone, the harder it is to fathom the likelihood of wanting to live with another person again. Well, bar for some exceptions, anyway.

- It re-reoccurred to me the other day that the majority of what I feel like saying (in my head and written) doesn't really have much worth, except that there is value in the things I have to say sometimes. Whether or not this is one of those times is another story.

Well, in the greater scope of things it's all meaningless to some person anyway.