sort of a day off
I'm back on lj! who woulda thought?
last night meredith and i were yakking about the old days and i got curious about all the shit we used to sling on lj back in MIDDLE school. so i read a bunch of entries, which turned out to be pretty funny, and remembered some things i had forgotten. i don't remember being so damn happy in middle school, but that was when counter strike was 1.5 and that was new and coooool and girls were strange and crazy and flirting with them amounted to being as clever and funny as possible. i guess when youre in middle school your life sprawls infinitely onward and it doesnt seem possible to waste time. in college its totally different.
the other day i watched Ferris Beuller's Day Off, which is one of the best movies to come out of the 80s, and i started feeling like i waste a lot of time. one of the few nuggets of old people wisdom my dad has given me so far is "at the end of your life, when you're ready to go into the ground, you don't get wasted time back." so the last few days ive been trying to do random shit, here and there, just for the hell of it.
in the spirit of the late great Mr. Vonnegut, [who once said "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"]*
heres a kind of list of things that made me happy recently:
-walking down the up escalator in RLM
-eating pancakes during happy hour at JCL
-stumping Rory and Sara (briefly) TA, with one of my CS homework problems
-riding my bike with no hands while singing the melody to 'Ode to Joy' and making triumphant hand gestures
-the yellow curry at thai noodle house
-the little old thai ladies at thai noodle house
-gene and wenjing's story about the asian girl with the huge nipples
-reading cute things meredith and i used to say to each other in middle school
-reading terrifying things brie and heather used to say about me in middle school
-reading some poetry i wrote that wasnt altogether terrible
-kavi's tattoos (im not big on tattoos but her tygers are really freaking cool)
-sammie baime
-all those one or two minute phone calls nancy makes to me
-snow leopards (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbR3cUnCdJk look at how agile it is!)
-shoal creek park, which is this majestic green place under the trees by south lamar where people play disc golf and their dogs lick your hands like youve known them for their whole lives.
-pretty much all the dogs ive ever met
-the way gene and wenjing get sarcastically complainy when theyre together
-this awesome rock formation in shoal creek park that was used by smugglers and indians back in the day (ask me to take you there, its sweet!)
-peeing off of high places
-the ridiculous endeavor of rolling a joint out of anything but rolling paper (like an old envelope for instance)
-the way the ground turns green because of the light passing through the leaves
-that completely random girl i saw on the street who smiled beautifully when we made eye contact.
-the way she ran after her friend's car when she showed up
-seeing calvin lin driving his little old red acura back home
-conquering that imperious hill up 24th street
-grabbing the godiva drink out of the distro girl's hand is i rode by on my bike
-sly jokes about porn in philosophy discussion
-dreams i have (i cant remember them, but theyre all wonderful)
-this bathrobe im wearing (it's like a huge towel)
-the way linux made my laptop run smoother than it used to whereas with windows it wouldnt even start up
-smedley's melody!
i guess the list marches on...
it's good you know, inside this pre-planned life where college classes dictate what im supposed to think about, and theres this mild need to start saving money for retirement and all that career planning garbage, i can just say and do the things i feel like doing right there on the spot. im uninhibited from that. but sometimes i still wonder if there bigger things in my life that im missing out on because i cant break out of this template middle class white american existence. maybe if i traveled for a year id find god out in the desert. maybe i could move in with someone i deeply care about. maybe i could do something to save the world from itself. but youve got to be brave to do something like that. to get the things you want, sometimes you have to take some major risks. but im less and less scared of what might happen if i stray from the beaten path. maybe the real risk is the risk of dying unhappy and regretful, and i could be running that risk right now. if i went out on a limb and it broke, well, at least i tried, right?
* http://www.avclub.com/content/node/60935/1
last night meredith and i were yakking about the old days and i got curious about all the shit we used to sling on lj back in MIDDLE school. so i read a bunch of entries, which turned out to be pretty funny, and remembered some things i had forgotten. i don't remember being so damn happy in middle school, but that was when counter strike was 1.5 and that was new and coooool and girls were strange and crazy and flirting with them amounted to being as clever and funny as possible. i guess when youre in middle school your life sprawls infinitely onward and it doesnt seem possible to waste time. in college its totally different.
the other day i watched Ferris Beuller's Day Off, which is one of the best movies to come out of the 80s, and i started feeling like i waste a lot of time. one of the few nuggets of old people wisdom my dad has given me so far is "at the end of your life, when you're ready to go into the ground, you don't get wasted time back." so the last few days ive been trying to do random shit, here and there, just for the hell of it.
in the spirit of the late great Mr. Vonnegut, [who once said "I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.'"]*
heres a kind of list of things that made me happy recently:
-walking down the up escalator in RLM
-eating pancakes during happy hour at JCL
-stumping Rory and Sara (briefly) TA, with one of my CS homework problems
-riding my bike with no hands while singing the melody to 'Ode to Joy' and making triumphant hand gestures
-the yellow curry at thai noodle house
-the little old thai ladies at thai noodle house
-gene and wenjing's story about the asian girl with the huge nipples
-reading cute things meredith and i used to say to each other in middle school
-reading terrifying things brie and heather used to say about me in middle school
-reading some poetry i wrote that wasnt altogether terrible
-kavi's tattoos (im not big on tattoos but her tygers are really freaking cool)
-sammie baime
-all those one or two minute phone calls nancy makes to me
-snow leopards (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbR3cUnCdJk look at how agile it is!)
-shoal creek park, which is this majestic green place under the trees by south lamar where people play disc golf and their dogs lick your hands like youve known them for their whole lives.
-pretty much all the dogs ive ever met
-the way gene and wenjing get sarcastically complainy when theyre together
-this awesome rock formation in shoal creek park that was used by smugglers and indians back in the day (ask me to take you there, its sweet!)
-peeing off of high places
-the ridiculous endeavor of rolling a joint out of anything but rolling paper (like an old envelope for instance)
-the way the ground turns green because of the light passing through the leaves
-that completely random girl i saw on the street who smiled beautifully when we made eye contact.
-the way she ran after her friend's car when she showed up
-seeing calvin lin driving his little old red acura back home
-conquering that imperious hill up 24th street
-grabbing the godiva drink out of the distro girl's hand is i rode by on my bike
-sly jokes about porn in philosophy discussion
-dreams i have (i cant remember them, but theyre all wonderful)
-this bathrobe im wearing (it's like a huge towel)
-the way linux made my laptop run smoother than it used to whereas with windows it wouldnt even start up
-smedley's melody!
i guess the list marches on...
it's good you know, inside this pre-planned life where college classes dictate what im supposed to think about, and theres this mild need to start saving money for retirement and all that career planning garbage, i can just say and do the things i feel like doing right there on the spot. im uninhibited from that. but sometimes i still wonder if there bigger things in my life that im missing out on because i cant break out of this template middle class white american existence. maybe if i traveled for a year id find god out in the desert. maybe i could move in with someone i deeply care about. maybe i could do something to save the world from itself. but youve got to be brave to do something like that. to get the things you want, sometimes you have to take some major risks. but im less and less scared of what might happen if i stray from the beaten path. maybe the real risk is the risk of dying unhappy and regretful, and i could be running that risk right now. if i went out on a limb and it broke, well, at least i tried, right?
* http://www.avclub.com/content/node/60935/1