[226] What Are You On About

I guess it’s just a symptom of staying up all night.

TV helps me think. It gives me a template. The show Greek has let my mind wander about relationships and cheating. Gantz prompts me to think about futility, redundancy, and cynicism. Of course I can just kinda space out and watch some other shows, but in general I catch myself just thinking.

I take for granted how I think and behave; my sense of practicality, sarcasm, and logic specifically. I’m told that I should respect other people’s opinions. I find this hard to accept. Opinions ought to be reserved for food and entertainment preferences. If you think something that is incorrect, and voice your opinion, to me, your opinion doesn’t matter. I understand that you “feel” something or believe yourself to be correct, but that only matters to you.

I suppose I bring this up because I need to explore how and why I behave in the context of so many opinions. Why I fight. How I’ve come to my relative conclusions on how and when to deal with people. If we are to accept that everyone is a hypocrite, then we can be sure that no one is completely reliable. Fair enough? I think people extend this understanding too far and suppose as far as believing nobody is reliable for practically anything. I think this is an extension of what they believe about themselves.

I have an extremely hard time finding myself unreliable. If only my demeanor and thought process remain fairly constant, I never “get lost in it all.” I don’t really feel diminished or surprised by anything for more than a few moments. I sometimes wonder if I should be more worried. I doubt that I should, but I do wonder.

I think about the point of operating under “the world at large” context. Why open a business in a world on the verge of destroying itself? Why engage with people you’re planning on forgetting? Why act as if you need more than a bit of food and shelter to be fairly happy? I suppose my short answer is that it’s exciting and it’s to spite pessimism and ignorance. I get off on being an example. I’m not sure why outside of this blissful potential future I envision. Oh naivety, you take us so far.

I hope it’s not the case, but I suspect it is, that no matter what you do, how you think, or what you show people to be true, they will trump you with their opinions. I think selfishness reigns supreme. If and when you don’t distinguish the kind of selfish you are, you default to the stupid destructive one. We aren’t fundamentally conservative, respectful, or thoughtful because the majority of our existence it wasn’t required of us. Perhaps another argument against free will?

Regardless, as long as I can identify things I want I’ll continue dictating and working towards them. I want good ideas to be enabled. I want to continue believing and proving that some ideas are better than others. I want to enable freedom, my own and for others who can appreciate it. I want to live seeing what I’m capable of more than die “knowing” what I could’ve done. Although it’s weird, I kind of feel like I’m working towards losing my will to live. Like, once I’ve done enough of what I want I’ll just sort of be like, “Well yeah, kinda done now, guess I’ll go ahead and die.” I’m intrigued to see if this moment ever comes. I think I feel worse anticipating the thought than I ever would if it genuinely arose.

I think I’m special while understanding I’m not. I hope for more people to accept this view. You’re not that smart. You’re not that hot. You’re not that talented or innovative or selfless. Yet, because you hopefully matter to yourself, and almost certainly matter to someone else, you can confidently proclaim you are special. You are what you observe about yourself and what others observe about you. Existing is special. I think this isn’t enough to inspire most. Until you kill yourself, you at the very least perpetuate the idea that existing is special, if only your existence. Is that all you’re going to do?

If everyone is a particle, and particles are more stable together, I’d like people to be more together. Most importantly, I’d like it to be in the realm of ideas. The rate and connectivity of your neurons firing determine the strength and potential for action. We have far too many examples of what happens when you cultivate fear and anger. I think we are literally suffering for truth and genuine well-being. I’ve think we’ve been like this for our existence. Perhaps the advent of the scientific method is the first development of this need. Perhaps the ones that don’t respect or care to understand science just haven’t suffered the consequences of their existence yet. If only those consequences didn’t involve a shared planet.

I don’t want to feel like I have to trick people into liking or respecting me. I don’t want to plant qualifiers into conversations. I don’t want to force a certain look. I want the kind of respect that comes from recognizing another thoughtful human being. I want to be liked because someone else likes themselves when they are around me. I want to help enable the best of you knowing I can only do it by being the best of me. I don’t think the best of me is based on my opinion.

[225] Courage Of Your Convictions

I can’t even sit and read.

For as much as I tend to rant or blog, it amazes me how little people can truly appreciate how I think or feel. I’d like to believe that when I say something a hundred ways a thousand times, it’s me refining my argument or building up the proper method of how I’m going to deal with something. My refinements never seem to be met with anything other than the same old tired ideas.

“You’re soooooooooooooooo close!”

Close to fucking what! I’m close to spending $70,000 fucking dollars for a degree in something I have no intention or desire to study further. Stop fucking telling me how close I am! Here, sit in a room with a paddle ball. Do it four just an hour a day. I don’t care how good you get at it. Just paddle, and don’t stop for four years. The thoughts you have after the first 10 minutes of this activity are the same ones I’ve had throughout these four fucking years. I can’t think of a bigger display of hating myself and woe than proving over and over again that I can learn arbitrary shit, apply it to arbitrary questions, and fucking hate everything about myself and the time I’ve spent doing it. What do you do to an animal that’s suffering? You kill it. I don’t even have to die to feel overwhelmingly better about what I’m doing with my time and money.

Maybe that analogy wasn’t good enough. Climb a mile high pile of shit. Every time you plunge your hand in, just think about how close you are. Ignore the smell and never mind your clothes. It doesn’t matter how many times you fall or slip, just keep pushing, digging, and fighting for the top. Once you get there, TADA! OMG YOU MADE IT. Covered in shit, cheering at the top of the mountain, please continue to explain to me how much better I’ll be looking like you.

“People won’t respect you if you don’t get a degree.”

I don’t want to work for or anywhere near a person who bases their level of respect on your grades or the titles of your classes. Tell me, theoretical future employer, you may have talked to some of my friends or can read my facebook notes. Can you respect what I’ve learned in the psychological field? Do you think my “skills” will transfer to balancing the books of the Sears or Kohl’s you want me to manage? Have I finally made myself worthy by proving that I could condition myself to hate every minute of my life and still perform a task? That’s what you’re looking for right? You want to make sure I’m so well rounded, rounded the point of an amorphous shell of who I once was so that you can dictate how I should fit into a company.

This goes further. Both my uncles have degrees. Both are unemployed. This notion that degree equals job is simply bullshit, especially today. A degree equals a job on shaky ground. A job that may or may not last till the next month. A job that is dictated by someone who may or may not have the best idea of how to run it or how to relate to you. I don’t want “a job.” I want my job. Something I’ll be actually good at for reasons dependent on me.  Anyone can crunch your numbers or follow a company directive; only you can maintain your relationships and foster growth or productivity from them.  I’ve heard enough of the horror stories of waking up dead. Dead to the world, realizing what you’ve become and where you’ve put yourself. How do I justify pushing myself closer and closer to such a reality?

It’s never been about ability, and that’s the problem. No one puts on like they care about what I’m capable of. They don’t act like my specific knowledge is necessary or relevant. If the one person that has to care is me, then so be it. When someone talks about how important the degree is, to me, it’s like saying “you know, the 3 and half years and 3.3 gpa, that’s all shit and doesn’t matter, the degree, now THAT will stick out.” The irony of course being that, to me, it doesn’t matter, but the context they’re pushing for, the one that needs those things, is the one they haphazardly dismiss.

It’s all about your philosophy. Do you think it’s about fitting into a society you don’t agree with because “that’s life” or do you maintain the struggle to fight against things you can show to be inadequate, destructive, and soul crushing? Are you about progressing down a line or growing as a person? I’d rather abstain from something than be a hindrance. More importantly, I’d rather be the proper tool.

IF, IF and when I graduate, it will mean nothing. If someone starts a sentence with “because you graduated you’re so and so qualified” I’m going to go with “you’re an idiot.” If someone tries to explain to me how necessary it is for me to open and that college broadened my horizon and perspective, I’m going to go back to the chorus and proclaim you’re a fucking idiot. I’m not a person because I know random facts. I’m not qualified because I answer questions we already know the answers to. I should only garner respect and admiration for choosing to do things and choosing to do them well. Anything less, or worse, the complete fucking opposite (you know like I’m doing in school), should make you sad or pissed off at what’s being wasted. But again, I’m the only one that needs to care about me.

Do I wander around campus looking for a party with Kesha blaring and a fridge full of PBR? No, I create a party house. I play topless pong, experiment with sheesha flavors, build a relationship with a badass DJ and accommodate guests. Do I think noisy chains or crazy hair says anything about how well I can do in school or run a coffee shop? Fuck no, and for those who do, the idea of looking a certain way and doing even better than a “normal” person could, frankly, gets me off. The management skills I fought for working at a theater I’ll translate into how I  run a coffee shop or any fucking else thing I want to run. I’ll bank on the relationships I foster because I MADE THEM.

[224] Talk To Your Teachers

I had a fairly interesting conversation with my P466 teacher not 20 minutes ago. I’ve learned that teachers are pissed off at how the university corrals students who aren’t qualified or caring into their courses.

I hope I haven’t undersold the idea that I do believe that most teachers are trying their best to teach you and actually care if you learn something. A phrase that stuck out from my teacher was “it’s bigger than you or me.” She had to cancel a class that she spent 15 hours preparing each class for. I have to spend four months in a class that I’m barely interested in and don’t have much a clue how to understand. I think her problem is worse. The real point is that they are both bad situations and I don’t think we should both have to resolve ourselves to the fucked up nature of it all when there is a bigger problem that can alleviate both of ours.

I’m an advocate of as close to one on one teaching as possible. You get to have an actual relationship with the person you’re working with and find out the best methods to teach them. If you are really passionate about a topic you can get specific answers or focus on specific questions. You get to structure the goals and pace of the course to your needs instead of just taking in information and spitting it out piece meal. A refreshing thing to hear from my teacher was that this is how her classes used to be conducted. She used to have kids who really wanted to take her course and could handle the technical jargon and wanted to go on to study the topic later in life.

At least one significant problem is at the university level. This semester is special. The class had to open itself up so that enough seniors could graduate on time. You either take the only class available to you, or you arrange to stay another semester or the summer etc. Does this not seem foolish on its face?

So you want kids to graduate. Maybe it isn’t explicitly about money because, as my teacher pointed out, a few kids here or there dropping out or taking an extra course or two doesn’t really matter in the end. (I still think there is something to be said about the money, but she may have some insight I don’t know.) How can you say you care about someone’s education when you’re willing to put them in a class designed to be over their head and outside of their interests? How can you not see how many kids are enrolling and appropriate classes or requirements in a smarter way?

College is supposed to be the place where you can get technical and learn the things that you simply can’t learn on your own.

This line stuck out as well in our conversation. The technical jargon of biology or a medical field, you almost certainly can’t learn alone. The cutting edge experiments and new labels of genes, diseases, etc…isn’t going to be in your Google searches. If this is a ridiculously smart teacher expressing this sentiment, why does college feel and act like it wants to pump you full of random facts and requirements and kick you out the door? Yes, you can be “open” to all sorts of things and pull some form of potentially helpful information anywhere you go and from every teacher you talk to. I think every time I get told to just “be open” or “deal with it” people are missing the point.

When you dedicate your time, effort, and money towards something, especially something that acts under the guise of truly caring about your time, effort, and money, it shouldn’t be a “deal with it” or “struggle to get something out of it” relationship. I don’t mean that you shouldn’t work hard. I don’t think that you won’t have to adjust. I simply think there should be a higher standard that this institution holds itself to. It should literally be in the business of empowering and enabling. I really do think that the good will and societal philosophy that “education is good” get subverted by business interests. I think no matter what you think you are or aren’t getting out of school, it is in some way correlated with someone who’s got more power and more money than you do and how they think the school should run.

This is beginning to sound conspiracy theorist-y. Of course it could be something else. We could just collectively be too non-caring or stupid to identify the actual problems. Enough people could just be happy with how things are run, have their own excuses or explanations and would never work to change things. Maybe I’m one of a handful of people who’s really this frustrated about the topic with not much a plan or strict evidence to back up my claims. I tend to think that it’s actually a combination of every story you could tell, to some extent, and hardly anyone is qualified enough to sort through it all and decide a course of action.

I am glad though to hear from my teacher that she specifically structures the course and grades easily so that it’s more about you trying to get something out of the course than being lost and worried about failing. She, like most teachers, will beg you to come to office hours. They don’t do it for the money. I just think their efforts are being subverted. You’re vulnerable when you care and aren’t thinking about how to fuck people.

I don’t want to pretend like I don’t see a problem or would rather ignore it for the sake of my other interests. I don’t want to resolve myself to adages about how “that’s life.” I don’t want to think people are more evil than they are. I’d really hate to think I’m carrying on about something that isn’t a problem for the sake of knocking down some personal demon I’m hell bent on making everyone’s problem as well. But it’s like, every time someone complains about a bad teacher, testifies to how little they remember or understand in a class, recount all the time they spent on some topic to barely pass, go into thousands of dollars’ worth of debt, are unable to find a job, and can, without much prompting, get teachers to complain just as long and hard about what’s happening to them, is it safe to say there’s something to try and fix beyond their subjective experience?

[227] Might As Well Talk To Myself

Might as well talk to myself

So now that I’ve gotten the most of the “little things” that it takes to run a business; tax exemption status, commissioned plans for the kiosk, a product list, and tentative menu, I can’t help but think even more so how this last little “push” of college is going to be a complete fucking pain in the ass. Two weeks after I came to this place I knew I didn’t want to be here. Maybe sooner than that, but I try to keep an open mind, haha.

I tend to have a problem when things are too simple. I mean, this running a business shit has plenty of shit I’ve yet to understand or figure out, but literally every question I have is a phone call or google search away. No matter how anxious or fucking lost I may seem, I have the ability and resources to find someone to fill in the blanks. That fact that it is so step by step kind of blows my mind. The fact that it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do, and when I finally have the time a resources to do it, it’s exactly as I thought it would be is just….wow.

I sometimes worry about this inability to be surprised. It’s easy to say “there are resources available, therefore I tapped into them and answered my questions.” It’s another thing to say, “give me five minutes with any person and I’ll probably dictate most of their views and life.” It happened tonight. I sat alone at steak n shake, got some fries and was planning on chilling. The girls in the next booth invited me over. They weren’t anything special. One knocked up when she was 20, the other passively referring the plethora of boys she’s been with or places she was trying to stay at. Granted, I don’t care who you fuck or how many nor whether you have kids, but I care when your story is that of everyone who fucks around or gets knocked up.

When it comes to getting everything I want, I of course want life to be everything I expect it to be. I want to know that opening a coffee shop, the only coffee shop, in a mall with ridiculously high traffic, is going to net me a shit ton in a relatively short time by comparison to most businesses. I don’t want to be so confident when I deal with people. It makes me want to behave in just, not fun, ways.

You ever write your 250^th something blog and feel so self-indulgent? That somehow your semi-tipsy “rants” or depictions of your experience amount to more than words that may or may not translate into an ounce of something meaningful for someone else. Of course I do it to hopefully bring myself more clarification, but there is a clear gratification in hearing that someone was even marginally affected or prompted to think about something. I still need to maintain a sort of self-humbling vendetta. To always shoot myself down and know that nothing I say is that original, that cool, that meaningful, etc. I think I simply pursue a dialogue with myself that I so rarely get from most others. Even more specifically, the spontaneous and exciting dialogue.

I suppose, most importantly, is that it’s not that I expect people to be surprising. I don’t think surprises are anything more than the “right” people under the “right” circumstances. I’m more dismayed that people don’t set themselves up to be surprised. They don’t go out of their way to try and be a surprise. They don’t hold too many “dangerous” contrary views. They don’t act on spontaneous urges. They don’t trust they’d know what to do if they’re day and night wasn’t planned. If the girls that invited me over to their table felt more inclined towards conversation instead of texting the boys from their past, something surprising may have arisen. When people put aside their bubbles, their expectations, and clue into the potential of any moment, you get to explore what would have never existed outside of your awareness of that moment.

And it’s not enough to just be aware of it, you have to want it. It can’t be forced. You can’t persuade someone to be “in to it.” “It” being that moment, the willingness, and the focus on what you can do.

Switching gears.

What does it mean to be stressed? Biolife has been telling me my blood pressure has been high lately and that it’s normally due to stress. What do I have to be stressed about? I pretty much disregard school. I could literally fail my last few weeks and I’m still infinitely confident in my ability to get the coffee shop running that I could give less than a fuck. I don’t surround myself with people I dislike. I’m always good to make myself laugh. Yet, I don’t think I could deny that some shit gets to me. I want to know why.

Why the fuck should I care? I’m genuinely confused by this. You’re talking about a person who doesn’t give a fuck about his own mother. What the hell could be so significant to break into that husk of sociopathic asshole? Do I maintain a sense of “worriedness” to perpetuate some semblance of humanity? Do I simply know that if I give up that last little bit I’m truly lost? Is it just a weird gene expression thing? Some family history of anxiety or angst that supersedes whatever I’d like to condition myself against? Maybe it’s just impossible to claim you understand something unless you can grasp all the “feeling” bullshit that goes along with a given concept. So I do it out of necessity in order to remain a reasoned and thoughtful person.

The reason this is a problem is because I can’t understand the reason to give a shit. I understand selfish hedonism. I understand trying to maintain and celebrate things that make you happy or things you recognize as positive and helpful traits towards well-being. I even get empathy for the most petty and naïve of feelings. I still have yet to understand how to justify giving a shit, overall, given blatant stated nature of things.

How do you care when the problems and solutions can be dictated clearly by any objective standard, and yet nothing gets done? How can you care about someone when they don’t even know, or care to know, what it means to care about themselves? How can you worry when you know it accomplishes nothing? How can you stand to be an example for people who will only fear or hate you? The ones who recognize you have your problem; they like the example, they understand the example, but being like you, they don’t need the level of impact from the example that the person is trying to be. They give a head nod, you receive a head nod, and meanwhile the children meander about the yard uprooting your garden.

I don’t want to go crazy.