Fetus Me

When I look back at this blog and see the years slowly adding up on how long I've kept it, I feel a small sense of pride. I think I value quantity or quality in this case. I haven't kept up with this blog, even when I initially made and had all the inspiration.

Can we talk a minute about the irony of this being titled "Just a Daily thought" and the fact you can count on one hand how many posts have actually been written on a day to day basis?

The creation of this blog when I was in the midst of a rough time in high school felt like the greatest escape I could have been given. Even years later when I was living a better life, adding to this blog always made me feel so good. Like when you have that one cool friend and anything you do with them makes you feel cool by association.

I'm grateful to my younger self for the creation of this, and I'm grateful to the friends that have followed it throughout the years.

I think the simplest way to put this is that I finally feel ready to let go of this blog, and to perhaps start a new one. Particularly, one filled with less teenage angst, sadness, and confusion. I try my hardest to not feel embarrassed of posts made by my younger self, but sometimes it's so hard to remember I was actually that teenager.

My chest feels physically warm as I near the end of my farewell post.

I think the last thing I want to something supremely cheesy, like I love you all and you've changed my life for the better.

Until next time my invisible audience.

Sincerely,
Better than you Found me

PHR ft. Shower Thoughts

          I was thinking in the shower earlier about not being successful enough to cut ties with anyone. You can't burn bridges and leave yourself stranded on an island unless you have created a sustainable life for yourself on that island. Then I thought about some of the bridges I've already burned and wished someone had taught me this earlier. Then I sort of realized, someone did- I was just too stuck in my head to really hear them.

        It brought me back to emailing a past teacher of mine just a few weeks earlier. I hadn't entirely agreed with this teacher nor with their tactics in the classroom, but after getting out of the fishbowl high school (and my hometown for that matter) I realized my teacher wasn't my nemisis and they weren't completely wrong about a lot. And actually, I realized that the biggest problem with their message, was most the delivery.

         So at first it felt like I had just gone back on every thought and moral I practiced and preached in high school, but then it didn't feel like a big deal at all. One email wasn't admitting defeat, or giving the white flag- it was just exactly what it was, an email. I was keeping the channel of communication open, and that felt like a very adult thing to do.

        Next thought whilst shampooing my hair: Socialism. My sophomore year of high school in my history class I learned a profound lesson that I know I won't ever be able to forget. Socialism/ Marxism is basically the form of government where the idea is that there is no social/economic/political pryamid, right? You collect 3 pieces of wood, he collects 7, and she collects 20 - you all get 10 pieces of wood to burn. Fair/unfair- isn't what I mean to discuss. Ironically it was the delivery of the lesson that is what i was thinking about. It was a simple game- rock, paper, scissors: to the death. In a classroom of 36 kids some had 5 tickets, some had 2 and some had none. You pair up, play one round of rock paper scissors and winner takes all, loser is out. Grand prize: extra credit. Let's take note that this is one of the 3rd most difficult AP class on campus. First round comes and I pair with my good friend we'll call Zach. Rock, paper, scissors I lose. But with a pleaded look and strong history of friendship between us Zach doesn't take my tickets, instead he let's me pretend i never actually lost. Can you say a true friend?

       Rock paper scissors a few times later and I have ended up with all the tickets. Each worth 5 extra credit points. No math needed- that's my A for the rest of the semester. I've never been close to tears of joy before that point in my life. (honestly, how sad is that?) Ecstatic, I can't think of anything other than my future grade for the class, even when reality hits and I feel that i'm in a sea of envious and angry eyes my happiness is not shaken. It's not until I see Zach shaking his head at my with smile that was filled with the secret of my success that I remember I cheated my way to victory. (Don't worry cheaters never prosper) I began to count the tickets. I was prepared to give each of my classmates a ticket and keep whatever was left. Suddenly the sea of eyes were a lot more forgiving. However before I could share my wealth my teacher informed me that I in fact had no wealth to share. The tickets had no value- they were only part of an exercise. Sigh. In hindsight the knowledge was worth more than the extra credit. You can't be hasty when you win. Could you imagine if i decided to keep it all to myself and then it was revealed my gluttonous act was worthless? I'm not sure I would have friends.

       Next thought: more classroom games. This time AP economics. It was your classic classroom jeopardy game with my group vs just one other group in the tie breaking question. I think prize was either candy or extra credit (i cared a lot less this time- senioritis). When the last multiple choice question was put on the board none of the people in my group knew the answer. My best guess was B. Zach who was in my group wrote it on our board. Then i witnessed him ask his friend we"ll call Caroline who was in the opposing group what the answer was. She replied "D" so he quickly changed our answer to D. I was skeptical but i didn't say anything because I wasn't entirely sure myself of the real answer. When time came to hold up our boards, our read D and their's read B. The correct answer was... B. Zach looked so betrayed. Caroline laughed, and I did too but I think we laughed at different things. Man, cheaters really do never prosper. So again, technically I lost, but did I really lose? You can't always be so trusting, especially in high stakes situations like this.

       As much as I was an angst filled student in high school ready to scream about the stupidity of the education system to anyone who would listen, I did learn a few lessons for the road here and there. I'm starting to really understand them now and I'm grateful for at least that much.

I'm not complaining, I'm just saying- think about it.

So a very positive event in my life happened today after I got back from the gym. I got an email saying i was a recipient of a one thousand dollar scholarship I applied for a while ago. That's a really positive thing and I'm not trying to downplay it at all, becuase I know how beneficial this will be toward paying my tuition and it's a nice confidence booster as well in a sense. I just have this frustration on why I think I won. The scholarship application was fairly simple, I gave them my general information, and then I wrote an essay on the prompt given to me which was basically just a "tell us why you deserve this and why you are student we can believe will do well and be successful". Probably one of the hardest essays to write becuase you don't want to come off so into yourself (especially if you don't really have deep reasons for being in school), but you also don't want to downplay all the great things about you and throughout it you have to make sure you are tailoring the whole thing to the reader. Anyway, with the mind set I was in and the low i was feeling at the time I can honestly say I wrote a terrible essay in the sense of well written literature, and essentially listed the great person i used to be, the depressed person I am today, almost dropping out of school on the first day because of the trauma of the loss of a close friend the week prior, and the frank thought that I just have to keep moving and I shouldn't drop out of college. It was the truth, but it was a sob story plus last years resume. With that mediocre essay, I won.

This time last year I wrote a personal best essay for my college applications about how I planned, executed, and learned A LOT from a volunteer trip to Belize where I worked at an orphanage for a week with the kids, day and night. I've never been so proud of anything in my life. I also applied for several scholarships with that essay. Not only did I not win any scholarships, I also did not get into the schools I wanted too.

The whole thing frustrates me because the sob story won. We should celebrate the positive accomplishments in life. I don't want money given to me out of pity. I didn't do anything to deserve it. A tragic thing happened to me and I wrote a two page essay on it. When you compare it to the months i spent planning and fundraising for my volunteer trip, it's seems like there isn't any set moral guidelines to giving out these scholarships. I hate the idea of being rewarded for the life I'm living right now, because I don't put any effort into it. Being a logical and straight forward thinker, I want reward for accomplishment, not for just participating. Isn't that everyone's problem with millenials anyway? We get a trophy for suiting up and showing up and that some how makes us entitled.

I guess most of all I don't like the idea that striving for success could ever lead me to failure. I don't ever want to live in the mindset that doing something big to affect people will never be rewarded, and i definetly dont mean this monetarily. I just feel like these scholarships promote the negative, and reward the negative. I'm just so tired of the negative.

Good Friends

It's a lonely world, but it would help to have a good friend to brave it with. 

Unfortunately I have underestimated the importance having a great friend in my life, someone to truly be the rock in my storm-especially now of all times in my life when I am submersed in strangers. 

Unfortunately I have a strong set of expectations as to what a great friend should enbody. 

Unfortunately, I am unused to being alone. 

Unfortunately, I am lonely. 

And unfortunately, the only conclusion I've come up with concerning my current life dilemma is that I will be alone for a while, and I will have to make this customary to my new life. 

And somehow, I'll have to find light in this dark cave. 

PHR (Post High School Realizations)

PHR #1

One of the biggest differences between high school and college is the amount of time you are actually in class and "school". In high school you take a math class five times a week for fifty minutes and the equivalent to that in college is 2 times a week for seventy-five minutes. Let's also factor in that in college you will only take this class for a semester (give or take your college) while in high school it took you an entire academic year. If I graphed that for you, you'd clearly see the difference. Okay, so why is this important? Of course high school and college are going to have different systems, the brain is more developed when youre in college, blah blah blah, etc etc etc. The single most constant and non debatable truth we have in the world is time and if I understand the American culture like I think I do, money is time and time is money; and i'm not just talking about dolla bills. Life is all about spending time doing things that you think are valuable, right? So it seems to me like in high school I really didn't get any bang for my buck. And if you want to think about this in terms of how well a high school student could do under the 'rigorous' class load of a college student lets think about time allocation in high school vs college. The way i see it, the time you spend actually learning material is about the same. Think about all the half days in high school when "there wasnt enough time to do anything productive" so you sat there talking to friends or went over homework. Think about the days you had a subsitute teacher, and allllll of the work you did then. Think about how much time you actually spent learning material rather than listening to someone try to debate the proofs of Calculus with their teacher. In college, you come in, you sit down, you listen, you take notes, you leave. (more or less). If I put color to the graphs of how long youre in class in high school vs college the college column would be a rich dark blue, and the high school column would be a faint baby blue- so you can see how ones a littel murky dare I even say shady! Anyway. Again. WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT? Here's the big idea. We are the millenia generation. We are the generation of baby geniuses, teenage entreprenaures, social activists, and open minded wizards. We are a generation thats all about being out of the box, different, unique, etc and embracing it, and living it up, and making a living from it becuase we own it so much. So by sticking with these out dated ways of education we are only shooting ourselves in the foot, becuase if you spent half the time doing things you had to do effienctly you would have way more time to do other things you don't have to do and thats when our generation gets that little sparkle in our eye. We have so many more resources (technology wise, the earth really is dying shoutout to past generations for that,but we still respect you) that there isn't a sensible math equation to proove why we continue to educate our young the old way we were taught? In a society that is constantly looking for ways to do everything more efficiently so that we have more 'time' to 'do' things with, it's seems like we are over looking one of the biggest vacuums for time for adolecensts.

The Capitial-T Truth about the Tattoos

It occurred to me the other day, actually the day after I got my tattoos, that not everyone would understand why I got the tattoos in the first place nor would they understand what they meant. For some reason this hit hard, and probably because it was something I should have thought of before I got the tattoos. But i didn't. I was in such a one track mind. I wanted the ink. I wanted the permanence on my body. I wanted the art.

 The first tattoo I got was a simple wave on my wrist. I knew getting it on my wrist would mean that many more people saw it, it's the easier of the tattoos to explain, because in passing conversation the wave represents my love for the ocean, my love for water. But in a deeper and more authentic conversation, the wave itself is a symbol for the ocean which in turn is a symbol for the metaphor of comparing people on earth to the drops of water that make up the ocean. Philisophically there seems to be an infinite number of drops of the ocean with one of the biggest factors differentiating them is each one's salty-ness (haha). And really, the same goes for people in the world. At times it feels like you make little difference in the world becuase there are just so many other drops of water, but every single drop of water creates a ripple effect in the ocean. Every drop of water is part of the eb and flow of the ocean. All drops, no matter how salty, really do matter. And if the only reason they matter is just to be apart of the ocean, than that should be enough because the ocean is a pretty majestic thing to be apart of. Overall, its just a reminder that being part of this really majestic thing called life is always worth it when I start to get too exsestential with myself. Putting it on my wrist wasn't just because I could take cool pictures with it.






 The second tattoo I got was a quote from the commmencmence speech written by the late David Foster Wallace, it reads "This is water". Even in the time I could take to describe exactly what it means to me, it still wouldn't compare to the person I was explaining it to actually reading the speech and then talking to me about it. So honestly, I'm not even going to begin to say what this tattoo is all about.
"This is water" - David Foster Wallace
Mostly what I can say about this tattoo is that I got this for myself. For now, this tattoo means what the speech means to me. The timing at which I got the tattoo is coiencidental with the passing of a dear friend of mine. This brings me back to the beginning of this post. What I didn't know, but now do, is that a lot of people think I got this tattoo to commemorate my friend. This, for some reason, dumb founded me. I guess it was just one of those things that was so obvious to me that I didn't even think about the different interpretations it could have. I think its sweet others would think I got this in memory of my friend, but I also think others don't know the pain the passing of my friend has caused me.

In any case, and any interpretation others may have, it won't bother me and I think it will provide for interesting conversation in the least.
To quote another friend who quoted this to me from a stranger "People get tattoos for one of two reasons: 1. To make a statement to others. 2. To make a statement to themselves."

Blue, Blue, Blue, and You.

I once wrote a poem in my english class on the color blue. I said: Blue smelled like the ocean, it was a breathe of fresh air. It sounded like music, a piano solo, calm and steady. And blue made me feel overall positive- contrary to popular songs. The touch of blue was soft and silky, but sometimes a little chilly. And blue looked like the big empty sky in the middle of a warm summer day It tasted like ice cream, sweet and refreshing Then a year passed, and winter turned to spring and I added to the poem: But now when I think of the color blue all I can think about is how blue smells like your conditioner at the nape of your neck And it sounds like your sleepy voice in the morning And blue feels like you eyes looking into the depths of my soul Now blue isn't an empty, its the limitless possibilities when I'm with you And the taste of blue, too good to be true, your soft "I love you,too" kiss. But a long ways from an 'unphotgraphable beach' and there is only one thing I can add to the poem: Blue, makes me miss you.