The things we owe
So, vacation is almost over, and I am almost as nervous going back into college for the spring as I was when I entered in the fall.
I've done a lot more thinking lately, as that usually triggers actually writing something. Trying to avoid the whole emotional ranting thing, I tried to plan it out this time so that maybe, just maybe, someone would get what I was saying. It seems, more and more, that the more I grow, the more I learn to ignore things that are wrong. When I was a child, it used to mean the world to me when my parents wouldn't buy me some neat robot toy I saw in the store. Slowly, I became accustomed to accepting that I couldn't always have what I wanted, at least, not so much on-a-whim purchases, which became more understandable. Retrospect makes it possible to re-assess the situation as, well, the money just wasn't there, and if it were at all possible, the robot toy would have been mine. That's all well and good. But now, maybe 17 years later, I stop to wonder about what I'm recently facing.
There's been a clear lack, lately, of whining about relationship stuff. Go back a few years and you'll see what I mean. It's emo, and lame, and honestly boring to go through. It came to a point where I had to reassess my priorities. That's just bullshit terminology for ignoring my emotions, which really came down to ignoring a single, pressing desire.
Whenever I stop for a moment these days, I can feel something missing. It's a lack of motivation, a certain dragging, if you will, of my ambitions. I couldn't explain it for a while, except for through loosely compiled emotional ramblings. Out of nowhere, it came to me today. At what point do we owe it to ourselves to stop ignoring, and start acknowledging our seemingly unfulfillable wants? It's as though I took the feeling of loneliness, and erased its name. I still feel it, its effects, I just don't talk about it as much. It's been wandering around inside my head searching for a name, and, I've lately been at a loss.
It's hard to explain to my inner child why I couldn't have that robot, as I'm sure my parents tried to explain to me at the time. The want doesn't go away, even if you explain that you can't have something, the desire is still there. You just manage to call it something else. You come up with excuses not to pay attention to it. You take loneliness, and you turn it into nothing at all. It's magic, but the joke's on you. You fool everyone, even your rational brain, but you still feel like shit if you stop for a moment and think about it.
I even lost the ambition to pursue it. It's tiring, when it's all you can think about. It's such a distraction. I can't say that I've got much more accomplished since I started ignoring it, though. Instead of complaining, now I sit silently, or desperately search for something to do. I organize, I program, I pretend to worry about school or money, but it's all just noise. I'm trying to hush a nameless voice yelling at me from inside. I tell it to be quiet, but it won't listen. I can put it in a dark corner, but it gets worse. I can try to fix it, and only cause more problems. But at least I'm being honest with myself.
Someone told me today that they wished they had my kind of self control. It was really like talking to a 2004 version of myself. I realized when they said that, exactly how easy I've made it for myself to be ok with being miserable. But it's a fool's game. I know that I'm not blind anymore, but what any of it means, I don't know. I've never liked the balancing act. It seems I've realized the err of focusing solely on emotion, and I've realized the err of ignoring it, and now am trapped in the original see-saw of the human equation. Guess the problem is, I really don't like being in the middle of the two options. I never really have. I've discovered I can't even truly be on a purely emotional or purely rational side either, but that's just my current issue. Honestly I'll be up to my neck in college BS so soon that I'll have no time to worry about it.
Financial aid is, again, going to fall loosely 2k short of covering the semester, and, again, I have no clue how I'm going to fix it. I've been surviving off of nothing short of miracles so far, and have no idea how things are going to manage to pan out in the end. It's really not fair, I mean, I hate to complain, but it's bullshit. Want me to whine? I'll try not to, but seriously. I have no parents to rely on for loans, bad credit because of a bad decision to move to Burlington, because I didn't have parents, otherwise I would have gone to college then instead of screw my credit up... it just pisses me off. It's like I fell through a crack, and 'they' don't give a shit. They've nothing to gain from me, I don't have enough money, I'm not high enough profile to manage to talk to anyone who can do anything, hell, I don't even know who to talk to about this shit. I needed a guidance counselor. I needed a College for Dummies book. Now I'm just out on a limb, flying blind, hoping for the best. I can't afford to pay for what I can't get in loans, that's why I'm getting loans. I wish I had those kinds of resources, hell, I wish I had parents to cover my ass, but no. It's my place in life to take the second rate shit, and make twice as much out of it as most people do with all their luxury. That's another whole can of worms.
What the fuck? And I mean, what the fuck is wrong with the people in my class? At my college? What's wrong with my generation? I really don't fit here at all. They're leaches, every one of them. They'll leach onto whatever system will support them, and stay there until it's dead. The people who found drugs stick to that, the people who found their parent's money stick to that. None of them have a concept of what's actually out there waiting for them when they don't have mommy to run to, when they have no place to go, when their concern is going to be paying the bills and being able to eat because they flunked out of school. They won't be able to afford their crutches, they won't be able to turn anywhere, and they'll finally realize... oh no wait, they won't realize shit. They'll always have some kind of support structure. That's what's wrong with my generation. Sympathy. They think the world's unfair because a professor's going a little too fast, because they have to stop smoking their brains out for a minute and actually do some fucking work without a break for a while. Of course it's not their fault, it's everyone else'. Blame it on the professor, blame it on anyone but yourself, so long as you don't have to discomfort yourself by stopping what's destroying your grades, your life, even. God forbid things get a bit stressful, oh fuck, we couldn't have that, here, let me get you a hypo-allergenic sealed pillow and some vitamin water and a few asprin so you don't have to worry so much. Jesus. Get the fuck over it... there are people with actual hardship who never complain, who don't have to rely on anyone or anything. I hate to give up modesty here... but, for all my shortcomings, I'm one of the hardship people. I understand what life can amount to when you don't have anyone to rely on, when you don't do shit to pick yourself up and put yourself on track. I pity my "peers" for this. They have nothing to go on, and before they know it, they're going to end up with a hefty debt and a waste of four years of their lives, and nothing to do but, eh, get some shitty job and drink themselves to death. But they won't take me with them, or anyone else who I can help, if I can help it.
The good news! Christmas panned out well for me this year. I ended up with my Nikon D40 (my God, it's beautiful^^), my very own cellular phone, a nice nice printer, and a few other gadgets to compliment. The camera thing really gets me going though, as I truly wasn't expecting to get it. Once I've got more pictures in the archive I'll be sure to post something. Also, anyone who wants my phone number feel free to ask, providing of course some way of contacting you.
I've done a lot more thinking lately, as that usually triggers actually writing something. Trying to avoid the whole emotional ranting thing, I tried to plan it out this time so that maybe, just maybe, someone would get what I was saying. It seems, more and more, that the more I grow, the more I learn to ignore things that are wrong. When I was a child, it used to mean the world to me when my parents wouldn't buy me some neat robot toy I saw in the store. Slowly, I became accustomed to accepting that I couldn't always have what I wanted, at least, not so much on-a-whim purchases, which became more understandable. Retrospect makes it possible to re-assess the situation as, well, the money just wasn't there, and if it were at all possible, the robot toy would have been mine. That's all well and good. But now, maybe 17 years later, I stop to wonder about what I'm recently facing.
There's been a clear lack, lately, of whining about relationship stuff. Go back a few years and you'll see what I mean. It's emo, and lame, and honestly boring to go through. It came to a point where I had to reassess my priorities. That's just bullshit terminology for ignoring my emotions, which really came down to ignoring a single, pressing desire.
Whenever I stop for a moment these days, I can feel something missing. It's a lack of motivation, a certain dragging, if you will, of my ambitions. I couldn't explain it for a while, except for through loosely compiled emotional ramblings. Out of nowhere, it came to me today. At what point do we owe it to ourselves to stop ignoring, and start acknowledging our seemingly unfulfillable wants? It's as though I took the feeling of loneliness, and erased its name. I still feel it, its effects, I just don't talk about it as much. It's been wandering around inside my head searching for a name, and, I've lately been at a loss.
It's hard to explain to my inner child why I couldn't have that robot, as I'm sure my parents tried to explain to me at the time. The want doesn't go away, even if you explain that you can't have something, the desire is still there. You just manage to call it something else. You come up with excuses not to pay attention to it. You take loneliness, and you turn it into nothing at all. It's magic, but the joke's on you. You fool everyone, even your rational brain, but you still feel like shit if you stop for a moment and think about it.
I even lost the ambition to pursue it. It's tiring, when it's all you can think about. It's such a distraction. I can't say that I've got much more accomplished since I started ignoring it, though. Instead of complaining, now I sit silently, or desperately search for something to do. I organize, I program, I pretend to worry about school or money, but it's all just noise. I'm trying to hush a nameless voice yelling at me from inside. I tell it to be quiet, but it won't listen. I can put it in a dark corner, but it gets worse. I can try to fix it, and only cause more problems. But at least I'm being honest with myself.
Someone told me today that they wished they had my kind of self control. It was really like talking to a 2004 version of myself. I realized when they said that, exactly how easy I've made it for myself to be ok with being miserable. But it's a fool's game. I know that I'm not blind anymore, but what any of it means, I don't know. I've never liked the balancing act. It seems I've realized the err of focusing solely on emotion, and I've realized the err of ignoring it, and now am trapped in the original see-saw of the human equation. Guess the problem is, I really don't like being in the middle of the two options. I never really have. I've discovered I can't even truly be on a purely emotional or purely rational side either, but that's just my current issue. Honestly I'll be up to my neck in college BS so soon that I'll have no time to worry about it.
Financial aid is, again, going to fall loosely 2k short of covering the semester, and, again, I have no clue how I'm going to fix it. I've been surviving off of nothing short of miracles so far, and have no idea how things are going to manage to pan out in the end. It's really not fair, I mean, I hate to complain, but it's bullshit. Want me to whine? I'll try not to, but seriously. I have no parents to rely on for loans, bad credit because of a bad decision to move to Burlington, because I didn't have parents, otherwise I would have gone to college then instead of screw my credit up... it just pisses me off. It's like I fell through a crack, and 'they' don't give a shit. They've nothing to gain from me, I don't have enough money, I'm not high enough profile to manage to talk to anyone who can do anything, hell, I don't even know who to talk to about this shit. I needed a guidance counselor. I needed a College for Dummies book. Now I'm just out on a limb, flying blind, hoping for the best. I can't afford to pay for what I can't get in loans, that's why I'm getting loans. I wish I had those kinds of resources, hell, I wish I had parents to cover my ass, but no. It's my place in life to take the second rate shit, and make twice as much out of it as most people do with all their luxury. That's another whole can of worms.
What the fuck? And I mean, what the fuck is wrong with the people in my class? At my college? What's wrong with my generation? I really don't fit here at all. They're leaches, every one of them. They'll leach onto whatever system will support them, and stay there until it's dead. The people who found drugs stick to that, the people who found their parent's money stick to that. None of them have a concept of what's actually out there waiting for them when they don't have mommy to run to, when they have no place to go, when their concern is going to be paying the bills and being able to eat because they flunked out of school. They won't be able to afford their crutches, they won't be able to turn anywhere, and they'll finally realize... oh no wait, they won't realize shit. They'll always have some kind of support structure. That's what's wrong with my generation. Sympathy. They think the world's unfair because a professor's going a little too fast, because they have to stop smoking their brains out for a minute and actually do some fucking work without a break for a while. Of course it's not their fault, it's everyone else'. Blame it on the professor, blame it on anyone but yourself, so long as you don't have to discomfort yourself by stopping what's destroying your grades, your life, even. God forbid things get a bit stressful, oh fuck, we couldn't have that, here, let me get you a hypo-allergenic sealed pillow and some vitamin water and a few asprin so you don't have to worry so much. Jesus. Get the fuck over it... there are people with actual hardship who never complain, who don't have to rely on anyone or anything. I hate to give up modesty here... but, for all my shortcomings, I'm one of the hardship people. I understand what life can amount to when you don't have anyone to rely on, when you don't do shit to pick yourself up and put yourself on track. I pity my "peers" for this. They have nothing to go on, and before they know it, they're going to end up with a hefty debt and a waste of four years of their lives, and nothing to do but, eh, get some shitty job and drink themselves to death. But they won't take me with them, or anyone else who I can help, if I can help it.
The good news! Christmas panned out well for me this year. I ended up with my Nikon D40 (my God, it's beautiful^^), my very own cellular phone, a nice nice printer, and a few other gadgets to compliment. The camera thing really gets me going though, as I truly wasn't expecting to get it. Once I've got more pictures in the archive I'll be sure to post something. Also, anyone who wants my phone number feel free to ask, providing of course some way of contacting you.