Power Outage.

"Nothing External To You Has Any Power Over You" -Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is why I love Emerson. Like many of my favorite writers, he has the ability to catch exactly what I'm thinking, shove it into one small sentence, and I am thinking about it for the next three days. This particular quote I found in an attempt to find a "meaningful thought of the day". I think I have found it.

I love the idea that there is nothing outside of myself that has any power over me. The only things that have power over me are my body's needs (which are obvious: food, water, shelter, activity) and my mind. Herein lies the problem. Our minds like to screw with us and make us think that we  either want or need something that is blatantly bad for us. Excessive drinking, attachments to people that are harmful to us, "addictive food", cigarettes. We blame the object for how we treat it. We blame the addictiveness of cigarettes for our poor chain-smoking habit. It's the alcohol that is killing me. The food is so delicious that I can't help myself. We treat our bodies like crap and then don't expect there to be consequences? There are always consequences.

The same goes for our emotions and feelings. We think that other people make us sad or it is a break up that causes depression. It is only us. Now, this is coming from a person who has severe hereditary depression. I know that illnesses like severe depression cannot be beaten my mental willpower any better than the flu can be willed away. The mind needs taking care of just as much as the body and if you leave it out to dry for too long without getting help, you are doing the exact same thing do your mind as refusing to go to the doctor when you are sick.

Thinking about all this and what exactly does have an effect on me... my list was limited a great deal. I have extra pounds because I DON'T EAT RIGHT, not because the food is too delicious. I am depressed because I DON'T TAKE MY DRUGS. The dishes are dirty because I AM A SLOVENLY PIG!! These are all things that I have the power to control. While I might not be able to change the stars, I can certainly change how I see them.

Pulling a Home-Wrecker

So, I just finished my Junior year in college. How exciting right?
Except I have never been more nervous about the following 12 months in my life. It's like climbing Mount Everest. You are just a few feet away from the top and while most people would be sprinting for the summit, you pause and think... then what? You have to climb back down and then what do you find? Sure, you can tell the locals, "hey! I just climbed that mountain!" and they just say "oh, I climb that all the time. Big whoop."

Well, crap. Now what do I do. Climbing this mountain isn't going to do anything for me unless I can do something awesome with it like write a book or have a movie made about me.



I guess my biggest concern is that no one is going to be interested in what I have to offer the world. Of course this is a concern for all college grads and those looking at that abyss known as "life". But how do we cope knowing that we have no idea what to do next?
Well, there is the standard college fall back plan... get really drunk and play video games while trying to avoid all your work. Or you can find whatever it is that you are passionate about and plunge head-first into it!
I never was good at video games... or being drunk. I always got confused with both.
What are my plans, then, you ask? Well, I know what would happen ideally. I would graduate college, have a book finished by that time and submitted to publishers so that literally the day I get my diploma I also get a signed contract with a publishing company for a book that they are sure is going to sell millions of copies.

lets be real here. that's not going to happen.

So what is my back-up plan? Children. And I don't mean pulling a home-wrecker: find some decently attractive rich guy and use whatever small seduction powers I have to get knocked up and then demand child-support. I mean I want to work with kids. I don't care if I live in a crappy apartment or in my parents house as long as I get to work with them and run around and play all day! That is my dream that comes after my other dream! And if I don't ever sell a single copy of my novel or meet a rich guy who will feed me even without the kid, I think I will be alright knowing I never stopped chasing my dreams.

And that, is what will get me through the next year.

Tattoos and Papers

Two subjects that I would like to discuss today: Tattoos and Final Papers.

We can start with Final papers:
Let me start out by saying that writing this blog is even a way for me to procrastinate finishing my paper. It is like... ten o'clock right now... it is due in 14 hours and I don't even have my paper finished yet. What am I DOING blogging? I probably should be banned from the Internet... but God knows that isn't going to happen. I'm by a computer and as long as I am here, I will always be doing something other that what I'm supposed to be doing.

But in reality, my paper is awesome and I am really excited to write it. My favorite topic: Harry Potter. My school subject: Mythology. Combine the two to make ONE EPIC PAPER. I am drawing parallels between the story of Perseus and and Harry Potter.

What the eff do the two have in common? Turns out a lot.

If you don't know the story of Perseus, I wouldn't recommend seeing "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief" or "Clash of the Titans". They are pretty good stories on their own but they do NOT have good representations of the myth for what I need. I need the real myth. The story about the actual defeat of Medusa and all that awesome stuff. What I am really trying to convince my audience of is how Harry Potter is relevant to our time just like mythological stories were relevant to the Greeks during ancient times. They tell us how to live, help us discover more about ourselves and what it means to live on this planet and be human. Believe it or not, some people don't know this about HP, but it actually has value. My professor has never read the series so I could tell him that it is about this crazy school boy who has an erotic attraction to horses...

Wait, no... that was Daniel Radcliffe's other big production. Kind of a big difference there.

But I really want to make a good argument for Harry and show the world just how awesome he can be, how much he can do for adolescents and the world in general. If I write this paper well, I feel like he might read the series. Maybe I will have converted one person with this paper and if I can do that... I will feel like a success.

Most of the time, I am not this excited to write a final paper. I usually do not have so much to say on the topic I am writing about so half of what I write ends up being fluff. In this case, the opposite is true. I have too much to say and I'm finding it rather hard to stay on topic. But this still doesn't keep me from procrastinating! Youtube and blogging are two of my favorite methods of procrastination. The new method that I must add to the pile... Getting tattoos.

This happens to be the second thing that I wanted to talk about! I just got my first tattoo! How exciting, right? Well, I've been telling everyone that I know as a substitute for telling the two people that I really wanted to share the news with: my parents. They are equally as nerdy as me and I was certain that I would get one of two reactions: anger or excitement.

I got neither.

I was met with silent indifference when I informed both my parents that I had just gotten my first tattoo. This is equally as epic as getting a drivers licence or tasting your first legal alcoholic beverage and how did they respond? Meh.

AKSETNAWRFHNTHWAENNSLKJ <<< this is the written embodiment of a tempter tantrum.

Why are you not either excited for me or super outraged!? You should pick one of the two and be that! I could handle those reactions but I can't handle total indifference! I have just permanently marked my body! PERMANENT!

After their total lack of caring, I started to realize that I didn't need their approval, interest, or care about what I did. I did this for me, got exactly what I wanted, and I am happy with it. The idea of permanence kind of freaks me out, though. What if I wake up and tomorrow I don't like it? What if it gets totally infected and my torso falls off?? Wait... that can't happen. I'd be dead. New Concern. What if it gets infected and I die!?
I'm pretty sure none of these things will happen. I feel like the words I had permanently inked onto my body will stay with me forever (pun intended). "Not all those who wander are lost". I wander, but that doesn't mean I am lost. It has meaning for me, I have gone through this phase of wandering and I know who I am because of it. I know what I want to do and how I want to live.

All in all, this was a successful means of procrastination. Thank you, final paper. You have changed me for the better... even if you don't get written because of it.

The Upside of Drugs

Drugs: bad, harmful, dangerous, unhealthy, addictive, chemicals, and unnatural

"I'm in a dark place right now... very dark."
Well, when you don't take care of yourself and you launch into a flurry of destructive behavior... of course you are going to be in a dark place. And it doesn't help when all you have in your dark place is "sex... all the time. LOTS of sex." Thank you, Stephanie, for summing that up so well. What I have learned over the years is that people deal with their problems in lots of different ways... there are some people that do the obvious stupid thing and there are others who actually want to get better and help themselves.

I never wanted to end up suffering like my mother did with her different medications. Some made her worse, some made her a little better, and others gave her the stress tolerance of Tinkerbell. Angry fairy. Which is why I was so hesitant to start taking meds myself. I'd end up acting like a crazy psycho and they wouldn't make a bit of difference. Things got to a point where I'd have to either make a decision to help myself or be like the other people who wallow in their "dark place".  I chose to ask for help.

Everything is shiny... I'm so happy about life... is this real life?
Other than me having the attention span of squirrel, it seems to be too good to be true. So I will wait for the bad but until then, I'm busy basking.

I dont want to be a mean-nothing

I started the week off anonymous, not by choice but because I was conditioned to be so. We all were taught to be nobody. We think that we are going to make a name for ourselves when we are little: plan to be great and do great things. But the first thing that we learn when we are young is to not aim too high, know your limits and be wary of them.That is stupid. I don't want to believe I have limits. I want to start dreaming big before anyone tells me not to. A world without dreams is a world without truth. Is there someone that you sit next to in class and don't know there name? Who is your Mail Carrier? The person who fixes your car or gives you your coffee in the morning? Who is the bus driver you see everyday on your way to work or school? We don't know these people because we think they are anonymous just like us. I learned something recently from one of my heroes- the Doctor. What is amazing isn't our achievements or our grand accomplishments, but what is amazing is that there isn't a single person in the history of the world who wasn't important.
The world is full of wonderful and important people. I didn't want to be anonymous, I never thought I did. But I want to live in a world where people are taught to think they are unimportant and just one speck in a sea of specks. The world shouldn't be ruled by people who tell us we mean nothing, but the mean-nothings should be the ones ruling the world.