If that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. Cope with it.

Edit: I also added an older, drunker post... it's after this one, I put the real date I wrote it, since I left it in its near original state.

Well, I haven't written in quite some time... so I apologize. It's amazing how fast a month passes. I did write one entry, but while really drunk, and I still haven't brought myself to editing it for the web. Not that I'd care if drunken writing was put on the web, just it got a little more personal than I was expecting. If I'm any good I'll force myself to edit it after this.

I just wanted to say thank you to all the people who've read my last blog and the feed back and discussions I've gotten out of it. In general the responses were positive. The most unexpected / hilarious one I had was (paraphrased) “who the fuck do you think you are writing essays for blogs.” With that being said, I'd just like to say that any and all feedback is welcome, don't be afraid to talk shit, I'm pretty good at taking criticism, and I generally find it funny.

Now that we got that out of the way, we can move right along. In this entry I really just want to talk about my self perception and how I work to maintain it. I think this will be really interesting to look back on a few years from now, and plus, I'd love to hear if/how people see me differently.

Back in September I remember having a conversation with my brother that spawned a question I hadn't really figured out the answer to until recently. I was pretty much telling him that at this point in my life I have accomplished everything that I truly felt was important and that I was in a position to make sure that I could most likely sustain it. That is, I had finally achieved what I always wanted when I was a growing up: complete independence from relying on others, financial stability, a handful of very good friends, and for the icing on the cake, a stable relationship (note: Erin and I have since broken up). I really didn't have any more clear cut goals in life left. There was a void in my life, in that, in some ways, I felt like I had beaten the game. I won life, good job, but at the same time, I felt, this really can't be it. What else do I really want to accomplish?

George didn't know the answer, but I didn't either. I mean, I didn't just want to fill my life with activities, like becoming an adrenaline junky, just to keep myself from being bored. I never wanted to become a engrossed in my job or my work, or be in fervent pursuit of the all mighty dollar either. I've watched plenty of people do that shit, and it's not what I want. I crave working towards worthwhile goals. I want to live each day knowing I'm doing more with my life than just trying to maintain and/or improve my quality of life. I have my material needs satisfied—I don't need or want all the shit this consumer regime tells me I do. As such, for me, making money merely solidifies that stability; I've maxed out the comfort that money-alone can provide.

I've also seen the opposite end of the spectrum, where I think many more people are, living life without any real direction or goals, just sort of riding the waves of others, rarely making any big changes or tough decisions with their life unless their backs are up against a wall. As much as I love just riding my impulses and going with the flow, I don't feel it necessarily will bring me to where I want to go (happiness), but rather, where the current is taking me. Living life without direction is inefficient and slow, living life as a workaholic seems to just be a big rush and grind to keep yourself occupied while in pursuit of a false dream / ideal. So what the fuck should I do?

What I came up with seems painfully obvious in hindsight, and it's something I did anyway, but nothing well defined. So what did I come up with? Since I have satisfied to a reasonable amount my physical needs, I must work on the only thing I can be sure I will have for the rest of my life: myself. That is, my goal in life is now to make myself into the person I want to be and remove the aspects of myself are inhibiting such progress. This idea may sound just like what I've preaching before, but I don't think I ever spelled it out in plain English: My goal in life is to improve.

When I say I want to improve myself, I mainly mean it in the sense that I want to eliminate bad habits, understand how more things work, have greater exposure and more well-rounded abilities. I love feeling useful and helpful. The more knowledge I possess and more capable I am of sharing and expressing that knowledge, the better. It's not that I don't think I'm good at doing these things now—I really do think I'm good at all these things, but I want to be great. I feel that happiness is not a destination, the final stopping on the train of life, but happiness is the trip itself and the satisfaction that the places it takes you are the result of. If I don't keep trying to learn more and improve I eventually drift towards just feeling stagnant and unfulfilled.

This is a much trickier task to tackle than the problems I used to work towards in the past, which were mainly external related, are now internal. This is a task I cannot really accomplish through the direct guidance or over sight in others. To change myself, I have to define what I want to be, I have to create the yardstick for measurements, I have to decide what habits need to be culled and which need to be fostered. I have to force myself to wage an internal and non-essential war against my own impulses and instincts. There is nothing straight-forward, clear-cut, or easy about this. It requires being brutally honest with myself, frustrating myself, breaking habits of convenience, and figuring out how best to change myself. There are many techniques and tools I've developed to help me on this journal, and it's safe to say that this blog is one of the tools. Ultimately though, tools and techniques are only as good as their user, so the burden can never be shifted anywhere else, it lies entirely on my shoulders.

One of the cool parts about this war is all the shit that I continue to find out about myself. With the desire to improve comes the requirement to know where I stand now, so I examine my own habits as objectively as possible. Combined with the intimate knowledge of my own memories and insight, I can even generate theories onto why I act, how I act, to the point where I find myself pretty predictable. Isn't that a silly concept? Being able to predict yourself? I feel the general notion I feel is that you would never need to 'predict' how you'd act, because you have this magical thing called 'free will,' and when confronted with a situation a person can decide their actions against their beliefs and moral values. But if anything my personal observations have told me, it's not the case. Not even remotely. Most behaviors are quite predictable. There is always a root reason and causation for your actions, just usually we aren't aware of them. You have to really step back and eliminate that root issue if you ever want to solve the problem. Otherwise, you're just treating an immediate symptom. Just like makeup can hide flaws, hiding your bad habits and tendencies or merely finding environments in which they are acceptable doesn't really treat the issue, it masks them. It delays the inevitable, doesn't make you a better person, but makes you look better on paper. That is not good enough for me. At the end of the day I want to make myself happy, and as a harmonious byproduct make the world appreciate me for that. I don't' want to make the world appreciate me for something and then derive my happiness from that, but I see a lot of people work that way.

At the moment, my major personal improvement projects revolve mainly revolve around what I would call mental discipline. Through the wonderful powers of meta-cognition, I realize quite easily when I'm bored or distracted, but I don't always have the willpower to force myself to be productive. It's odd to say this, but I really don't control my thoughts that much. They are very fluid for the most part and my active mind more or less has to corral them to go in the right direction. For something as focused, specific, and needs to have a wholesome feeling as this writing or a blog entry, that requires a great deal of active thought management, and sometimes I'm just too lazy or unfocused to do it. It's seems paradoxical to be able to think that you don't want to be thinking about something and then think about it anyway, but it happens all the time.

One of the other things I've been working on is trying to make myself more open, transparent, and social. There are very few things I hide about myself or wouldn't be willing to tell someone. I don't have secrets and I'm not going to try to pretend that I haven't ever fucked up or been foolish in the past. Yet, I don't share this with many people, not even myself really. It seems so pointless for me to have all these ideas and thoughts and then not share them with others. There are plenty of people who would appreciate hearing them, as well as plenty of people who would not be too fond to hear them. But, my bodily instincts keep me very hermit-like. I'm not socially awkward, but for whatever reason my impulses to keep myself at home instead of going out tend to prevail. It requires a lot of energy for me to want to go out, but then when I do, I almost never regret it. It's like my imagination is my worst enemy. But even still, I usually do get very worn out from going out and need to spend alone time. Achieving a healthy balance is what I'm striving for.

Well, I hope what you can take away from this blog is that I believe we all can be better ourselves. I didn't want to merely rant that I have issues that I need to fix, but I wanted to lay out the argument for why I want to improve, how I hope to go about it, and share what I've learned so far. I'm open to questions, and I encourage you to ask and give feed back. I'd encourage you to use the 'Add Comments' link below, but feel free to comment on facebook or just drop me an IM or whatever.

Just as an aside, here are some of the things going on or recently going on in my life:

• end of Feb, Erin and I broke up after ~2.25 years
• I learned how to make my own pizza dough, om nom nom
• Yesterday and the day before I saw two concerts, Bloc Party nd private concert, respectively
• I'm getting visitors! Hooray. My cousin in the beginning of April, and my Dad and Brother for my dad's birthday May 22nd. We're going to see the Mets vs Red Sox
• Ratatat Concert 4/20
• Read the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, then World War Z. Both awesome. I'm now working on One Dimensional Man... so dense... next book is definitely going to be more leisurely

drunken ramblings

I must say, I'm very content with my life. Right now I'm feeling rather whimsical and very much like a yuppy, reveling in my modest decadence, enjoying some cranberry-apple wine, multi-grain trader jooe's entertainment crackers, and sharp chedder cheese... while writing a blog entry. Hahaha... the world economy is going to shit and here I am being blissful, oh what a lovely contrast. I could see how this might come off as bragging, but if you were so easily offended, I doubt you'd be reading my blog in the first place. But back to the regularly scheduled broadcast....



It's hard to say exactly what I want to talk about in this entry. I have in front of me nearly two pages of notes—ideas more accurately, but a natural grouping cannot be easily put on them. But in essence, I would like to talk about my philosophy towards friends, how I form relationships and friendships, and how I perceive the world – fuck this I'm drunk this is going to be a raw ass blog entry and you'll love it.

I'm fucking weird with friends. I dont' know anyone really who has or maintains friendships quite like me. I don't know if it's because I'm just that fucking good or if it's because everyone else just doesn't give a shit and is really selective, but this is how it is:

I have a lot of different types of friends. That is to say, I get a long with a lot of different groups of people, can interact seemlessly with them, and float between them. This has pretty much been true my entire life, I've usually had rather mutually exclusive groups of friends. In case you don't know what mutually exclusive means, that means they dont' really intermix or fit with each other that well. I don't know why, but I never take it upon myself to try to integrate or mix my friends. If I have a group of friends, I tend to just hang out with them and go with their flow, rather than ever try to pull two groups or peoples together to make them buddies. There are some exceptions, but they're mainly far and few between!

So you must be thinking (or probably not, but thanks for not thinking that so it gives me a talking point!), wtf dude, I'm your friend, how come I never heard about your other friends? You have friends? I thought you were just a fucking loser! Hahaha, I know you don't think that, but let me tell you all about my various types of friends and then you can try to guess which group you fit in....

I have hard friends, soft friends, family friends, non-friends, situational friends and the such. I feel all my friends kinda fall into the same silos and are pushed towards groupings. My hard friends are the friends that really meet a large criteria base, I'm fucking picky about my friends, so here's what it takes to be hardcore friend:
I need to find value in maintaining the friendship
it needs to be fucking reciprical
you need to be receptive to very “out there” ideas
you need to be a non-aggressive, open minded person. You can be critical but not overly judgemental. There is a fine line that quickly turns to disgust for me.
You either need to have admirable traits or share my values. But you can't be my fucking mimic.

It's weird, I'm really lazy with maintaining friendships. At the same time, I'm relaly good at making friends, but not fusing with others. I don't think I know anyone that really hates me, and that's probably why I have a good amount of friends. But at the same time, I really passively make new friends. Or not, I dont' know.

At some level I feel like your friends are your spokemens. That is to say, you are very much judged by the company you keep, but for me, much of the company I keep does not overlap perfectly and their value set cannot therefore be clearly defined. Thus, I am a fucking awesome omnivore universal friend. Let me too my own horn some more, I am awesome! YEAAAAAAH!

Why the fuck do people make drunk blog so incoherent? Clearly mien is not. Hahaha fuck you, I'm not being serious.

I like when people I hate like me. It gives me some satisfaction that I can adapt to a very hostile environment in which I want nothing more than to make the person's life utterly miserable but realize it's not beneficial so I instead make the most of the situation and charm the asshole into liking me. Fuck you person who likes me, I fucking hate you. You don't know who you are.

At the same time, I fucking HATE maintaining relationships. If it wasn't for the fact that I need friends to fucking make sure I'm not insane, prevent me from being utterly depressed, and to escape the reverberations of hearing my own voice in my own head, to provide contrast and perspective into my own life, I would never fucking have friends. It takes so much energy to maintain friendships! For fucks sake, it's so easy to take care of yourself. That's all I've ever wanted to do, just be self-reliant, why the hell does it seem like nobod yfucking else can. People either fawn over some fucking lover to try to make their life complete or reduce their life to social event after social event. Fuck you losers, I'm going to hang out by myself and continue to improve against my own standard while you continue to seek others to compare towards you. Your shit does stink. You're not as good as you think you are. Fuck you.

FUCK FUCASDFUYASDFJKASDF

I love the word fuck.

Fuck.


FUCCCCCCCCCCCCCCK


ahahahahahaha


Yeah, I should stop drinking, but I can't. It's taken over.

Really, though, while I'm being honest, let me all let you in on a secret: I'm always judging you. I'm always evaluating you. There are so many thoughts I never say to your face that I feel. If you feel, no, not feel, but KNOW this isn't the case, then you are probably the few people in this world that I fucking consider to be a real true friend. You are the people I love. You are the greatest. Is it because you share some values that I share and therefore it's some circular way of loving myself? Id ont' fucking know. I don't care. All I know is that w/o people like you, I might go insane. But you know what, asshole, friendships require constant sacrifice. You need to bite your tongue or quite frankily you're going to offended the asshole you are so benevolent to call a friend, and ruin everything. It's funny, because this same sacsrifice is always what makes people hate each other. They become so afraid and bite their tonguse so much that they never fucking tell people how much they hate what they're doing until it escalates irreperably. They shoulda saw it comeing, but people are dumb and don't.

[Edit: Removed Personal Paragraph]

Hi. Welcome back to Brian brain dump 101. Fuckkkkkkkkkkk, who is going to read this besides me? I'm too embarressed to re-read this probbaly. But I probably should. I mus tbe more mentally discipline like stevie. Good old stevie. You're a fucking good friend. Hahaha nobody else who's a good friend is going to get an explicit hello, so you'll just have to guess. Well, I'll tell you if you relaly want to know, but chances are it'll be WAY too awkward after reading this shit.

Going back to how I make friendships, I think it's safe to say for the most part I avoid negatives. That it to say, I try my hardest to never hurt someone else's feelings. In fact, I take my time to scout out what new groups of friends are, establish what I believe their beliefs systems are, and then begin in the most politically neutral way to confront them. I think I do this so formally and non-chalanelty tha tmost people don't realize, but once I get the lay of the land, I definitely start become more and more raw with you. With that being said, I like to avoid negatives and confrontation like the plague. I try to focus purely on positives and always try to redirect conversations and confrontations towards resolutions, even at the sacrifice of myself. To me, I've never been one to NOT sacrifice short term pleasures (or lack of displeasures) for long term gains. I live in the future, I live for the future, and the only way to have a brighter future is to get over the problems of today and not postpone them. I feel mots people dont' realize this.

I find it really interesting to study how other people interact with each other. In a sense, I love to be an observer. I've always been one. I'm kinda introverted in the first plcae, so I am impressionable, and have tried to contort myself to other people, but I never really could figure out how adults/ other people could interact and get along with other people, until Ir ealized something: they most often don't. People avoid confrontation and uncomfortabale situations really really hard, even when they may not necessarily know why they think it's uncofomrotable. I think people judge a lot of shit in retrospect.\

But like, I know how I make friends. I am adaptable. I am flexible. But how the fuck do other people do it! They don't! They just avoid other people and cling to like minded individuals. Am I really so different? No. But I think I do thrive in intermediate zones a lot better than other people, and I definitely don't let myself become insulated from those I dislike. As I said before, I like when people I hate like me.

GOD THIS IS SO FUCKING INCOHERENT AND NON-SEQUITOR. FUCK I NEED TO DO MAJOR EDITIONG. MAYBE I'LL LET ONE PERSON READ IT OVER BEFORE.

You want a conclusion? You want a summary? Fuck that, I'm too drunk to write one, all you'll get is this gem: Facts hold not merit or value unless they can be applied to knowledge. Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk


I LOVE SAYING WHAT I REALLY FEEL. I NEVER USED TO DO THIS SO UNADULTERATED, BUT SPEWING MY RAW EMOTIONS AND FEELINGS FEELS SO FUCKING GOOD. AND THE BEST PART IS, I FEEL LIKE PEOPLE LOVE TO HEAR IT, BECAUSE WHAT I FEEL/SAY IS WHAT THEY CONNECT WITH.