This is why I don’t like society
When it comes down to it, I have one basic complaint about society. We spend the rest of our lives that we aren't so easily manipulated by it dealing with what it has made us into. So instead of living (granted, it doesn't make that very easy anyways), we are stuck wondering why everything doesn't work out for us or how to make the best of some situation we're in or anything you, as a human being, occupy your thoughts with when it concerns yourself.
And it makes life into such a waste of existence because half the time, we're too focused on the bullshit of our environment that we can't focus on ourselves or actually taking advantage of our existence that has been so shortened by society. And if we can just be free from the environmental standards and expectations on an individual basis, we can truly live rather than simply exist.
That's what I really want.
Best Policy
When you realize you don't know everything about yourself, I've found the best policy is simply fuck it. Live on impulses. If you feel like doing something, grab a hold of that feeling and ride it. You'll come to embody the mess that you (along with the rest of the human race) are and in being different, you'll be understood on a level that most people won't get until further down the road.
So fuck it. Live. Don't get caught up in the mediocrity of the social world and do your own thing. In the end it'll work out and along the way you'll be happy. That is the best policy.
Reflections
I've realized that I need to take a little time out of my daily routine to reflect. I need to think something for myself again. The thing is that I get so caught up in my surroundings that it becomes hard for me to be myself unless I'm in an extremely comfortable and done-this-before environment. But I'm purposely putting myself in the opposite situations right now-- because I want to learn more. I want to leave my comfort zone and be vulnerable to gather as much new information as possible.
So I need to look at what's really going on in my head. It would be most effective to do this in the moment that I'm in that new situation, but that's not only hard, but impractical. If I spent those moments in my head, I'd miss what was going on around me-- consequently not gathering much from the situation at all. But if I can look back on it or even have the me mindset going on before I get to a certain moment that requires it (such as interacting with people-- the main time I need it), I can learn as much as possible from the situation without overlooking it.
There's a problem: I usually reflect in my last waking moments of the day-- the time between when I remember I have to get up for work in the morning and when I decide I'm actually ready to close my eyes and shut down my brain (I usually don't decide I want to do the latter right away if I'm not yet satisfied with my day). So I lay there thinking-- on bad days, about things I can't control (other people, where I live, etc.) and on relatively better days I think about things I've been wondering (having to do with myself) and I work through them and I have my revelations. The problem is that these self-realizations don't help when they occur at the end of the day (although for the first time it made me wake up in a good mood today). I need to be able to have them during my day so I can, in a sense, wake up from the sort-of drifting state I can fall into by simply being in an environment that affects me.
So I'm setting aside time every day to do this. Whether this is on my smoke-break at work or when I drive to a place out of my hometown to sit for a while, I think I'll finally be able to stay sane and afloat in an environment that seems to constantly try to drown me.
My House Smells Like Happy Memories
I came home this weekend for Easter, after being away for a little over a month. I walked in the door, and the smell of my house reminded me of last summer and my many nights in my room, unemployed and by myself in my room, between just graduating high school and about to come into the adventure that is college. In other words, it was a good time for me. Not the best as far as having someone else or anything like that; but just a good time for me. I'd say I was truly happy.
And it's interesting that of all the possible things, feelings, or events that I could have remembered based on the smell of this house, it was of last summer. It actually made me feel happy. I had many nights where I'd go to the next town over (where I spent the summer of '07, because of a girl), to get a Redbox movie and come back to watch it myself. Apparently those were the happiest memories of that time that happened in this house.
A few different things, I've noticed, repeatedly trigger good memories. Exhaling a Camel Wide through my nostrils reminds me of when I was at a beach house for a week last summer with my family. It's also interesting that they're always memories that happen during the summer. Maybe you're just not supposed to be happy during the rest of the year-- only the few months out of the year when you are supposed to enjoy life. But they say it's generally much easier to recall good memories than bad ones. It's interesting what that can show us about ourselves.
Why I Decided to Go Find Myself
Now I haven't even been through two semesters of college yet. But I can tell you why this one has been the worst out of the two.
It started with winter break. Two days in, I started hanging out with a girl who until then I only knew as an acquaintance, basically. I liked her, we became close, it made my month off of school a good one. I got back to school and that relationship just kinda stayed in the background, but we talked a few times a week at least. I started talking a philosophy class on wisdom, reality, and the human condition (I believe that's what the class is called). Then I started thinking about who I was. And both the lady friend and external stimulus from that class factored into my going down this path.
For one thing, I wanted it to work with this girl. But I had noticed near the end that it wasn't really going where I wanted it to go because of how I was acting. I started playing it safe near the end and that made it boring for the both of us--something I know shouldn't have happened. So I grew the desire to know not only the reason I acted that way, but also how I could make the things I wanted happen. Then during my class (the only I've yet to miss once) I saw that other people had been working on these sort of things. They opened me up to some new ideas different from my own.
But then I started obsessing over this whole idea--not because I needed it so bad, but because new questions were coming in faster than I was receiving answers. I simply ran out of solutions to the problems I was having. I knew what I wanted; I knew a lot of the things that I wanted to improve with myself. But I couldn't find the cause to all of them so easily anymore (this was after about a week of finding answers). After resetting myself by taking a deep breath and basically forgetting my problems multiple times (after the surplus of problems had overcome me), I decided to not worry so much. I wrote about this before. But I've realized that this is the way I should be living. I only have so much that I can do by myself.
It's been working. Even though it might be coincidental that just last Friday I met and talked with someone about all these things (which helped) and many more good things have started to happen for me, I think that it's been easier for me to acknowledge and take advantage of those situations when I come across them, now that I'm "taking it easy." For one thing, I've been in a better mood and that's made me much more sociable so that I'm more encouraged to open up earlier when I meet someone new (like I've been aiming to do).
So right now, hell, things are working out. And even though I would like to know now, I have my whole life to figure myself out. And, ironically, it seems much easier to do that when I'm not looking so hard.
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