what do i believe? this is a daunting topic.

i believe i have the highest chance of success by doing things my own way. the best way for someone else to do something is not always the best way for me to do something. this does not mean flying in the face of tradition for the sake of being different. i have to figure out why things are done a certain way, not simply how they are done. when i know why, i can figure out the best way for me.

i will pound this belief into my head until it sticks

frivved up by Ben at 11:01 PM

all that nonsense and i still didn't answer my own question. so back to what i really hoped to figure out. why am i scared of people? this is where i brainstorm, hoping to hit on something. what makes me so nervous when i am around people. i have nothing to say to people. why? i don't feel like i connect to people. why? i don't try to connect to people. why? i am ashamed of who i am? what am i ashamed of. i am ashamed of my decision making. which decisions? the ones i should have made but ignored until they were decided for me, usually with bad results. why did i do this? why did i freak out and ignore these decisions? i was afraid of making the wrong decision.

there, i think that is what i was looking for. i am afraid of making the wrong decision. i am afraid of letting people see me when i screw up. i am afraid of trying to articulate to people, to rationalize, to explain because it leaves my convictions open to attack. i don't believe enough in my convictions to try and defend them. i don't know what is important to me. i have spent so much time trying to figure out what is important to other people that when i do, it doesn't register because i don't know what is important to me.

i am afraid of deciding what is important to me and what my opinions are because they might cause conflict.

i am afraid of conflict. i am afraid of the stupid little kid who used to argue things into the ground at recess for no apparent reason. the kid who would scream at the top of his lungs defending a rule he had misinterpreted in the first place. or the rule he had created in his mind that made so much sense that it had to be a rule, and thus became real. i'm afraid of being wrong.

i am indecisive because you can't be wrong if you don't make a decision in the first place.

i am afraid of expressing my opinions because i am afraid other people with think i am wrong and argue with me.

if i am never wrong, there is no conflict. if i am never wrong, there is no conversation.

so. what do i need to do about this. i need to be decisive. i need to express opinions i have and defend them, or be proved wrong. either way, i have to be happy with the fact that i have learned something from the process, and have further refined my opinion. that is what i need to do. i need to start figuring out what i believe. i need to get off this stupid excuse filled, psuedo-nihilist, pretentious obsession with being right. i don't need the 4.0. the 4.0 is an unrealistic impossibility. perfection is not obtainable. i will fail. i will be wrong. but i am not a failure. i am an intelligent, rational person. i won't always be right, but if i concentrate most of the time i will be. all of the time i have the potential to be. if i never commit to anything, i can never be right, no matter how much i try to justify how right the nothingness is.

phew. stage one complete. i need to focus on this. this is important. this is my life. i do not want to spend the rest of it alone. i need to solve this problem. that helped. i tried to be honest with myself. i will check back tomorrow and re-evaluate.

frivved up by Ben at 10:20 PM

somehow i need to find a peace with other people. i lump people into two categories: me and everyone else, or more importantly, people who see in my head, and people who don't. when i think of everyone else, all i get is this paranoid sense of disproval, paranoia on my end, not their end. i don't see people like me, i see people who want me to be like them. which is probably true, but it is stupid of me, because it leaves me sitting here wishing everyone was more like me, which they aren't and never will be. the fact that i don't like other people leads me to believe that it is my problem, since they are just being the way they are, just like i am.

so why am i so much more comfortable when i am alone? most people seem to have a strong need for human interaction. people need to be around other people. i figured for a long time that because people need people, i needed to be around other people too. so i drank, i drank a lot, because drinking made me feel like everyone understood, and made me feel close to people i didn't know, and allowed me to carry on conversations like a normal person. but really, was any of that true? everyone understood because all i could talk about was how drunk i was, and everyone felt close to me and understood because they were drunk. still, with time, even when i was drunk, i still didn't want to talk to people, because drunk people are even bigger idiots than normal people, so i drank more, and more, and more, until i was the drunkest, and therefore the biggest idiot of them all, which my drunk mind rationalized into success.

i don't like the person i turn into when i'm drunk. sure, i like him better than the other drunk morons, but i don't like him better than who i am without the alcohol. i just don't like drinking anymore. it seems pointless. it is harmful. it leads to pain the next morning and deterioration long term, and it no longer has the upside to justify the pain. pain isn't a problem, the internal embarassment of causing myself unjustified and completely avoidable pain for a night of drinking with people that i don't know, or don't care about, or simply don't want to be around is the true problem. especially since i didn't even want to be around people in the first place. it seems like this entire cycle could have been avoided in the first place if i just stayed home like i wanted too.

so i don't really drink anymore. when i do, i either drink in such moderation that it is more of a gesture to those around me, or i drink in such excess that it completely erases things from my memory. strangely enough, i have never minded forgetting things entirely. if anything, it amuses me. piecing together the bits of my night is like reading a story for the first time, with me as the main character. the dumb stuff usually slips through the cracks anyways, it seems like such a workable solution. but it is so bad for you. i don't drink like that except for certain occasions that i have historically enjoyed. but this year, halloween was stupid, mostly because it was just the same people i don't want to be around. there were probably people i wanted to be around there, but i was so annoyed at myself for being there that i didn't talk to anyone i didn't know, and resigned to drinking. and drinking. and drinking more. i would have been so much better off staying home.

why do people have this need for other people? did i never have it, or have i just given up on the idea. what is the need for? understanding? belonging? physical closeness? a way to kill time? justification of their existance? to solve their problems for them? what is it? i just don't understand what people get from other people that makes them think that they need to be around eachother. i am forced to be around people every time i work, people i like even, and sometimes it is too much for me. i finish my shift in silence, dreaming of getting home and having there be no one there needing me for whatever reason.

i don't like people, i don't trust people, i see other people as a vehicle for causing me problems. i guess i don't trust people to take care of themselves. people don't know what they want. if someone legitimately needs help, help that i can provide, i don't really mind doing it. but why do people always need all this help for such stupid things? i don't need help. i solve my own problems. i focus on what is necessary, then worry about what i want when i am actually in a position to get it so i don't cause myself problems in the first place. it seems like too many people turn their wants into needs, then focus their undivided, single-minded attetion onto getting it at the expense of the people around them. so i don't want to be one of the people around them. i don't want to help people be idiots anymore. i don't want to help people dig themselves into holes they can't get themselves out of just to be pulled in aftewards. i just want to be alone, because i can't give people the nothing they are rabidly hunting for.

i'm not being fair though. not all people are idiots. some people deserve my help. some people i probably do want to be around. but when i am happy alone, comfortable alone, dare i say it more successful alone, why would i want to expend the effort to find these people? why is it such a bad thing to be alone? how can people live without it? to me, peoples need for other people is just another entry in their long list of misplaced priorities. sure we want to be around other people, but it isn't necessary. you won't die if you are alone for a few hours. it might actually be helpful. start weaning yourself off the teat that a collective humanity might provide you and start helping yourself. i guess that is what i learned today. if i need something, no one else besides me can get it for me.

frivved up by Ben at 1:20 PM

The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists, exists; what is, is. Fron this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced.

Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality-- it's our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see.

-Richard Rahl


ok, so he might not be a real person, but upon reading this book for the 4th or 5th time, i realize he is who i try to emulate. Terry Goodkind has been my favorite author for a while now. at one point i wrote up a little bio on him for a fantasy book website i had. can you believe i had that website up for 7 years, and it has been down for almost 3 now? that means i started working on that website like 10 years ago. my internet persona feels old now. but anyways, i wonder if terry goodkind ever read my bio. i'm sure it is still floating around cyberspace somewhere. a bunch of people used it because at the time he didn't have anything out. we had such a small circle of people at the time, i always hoped he read it, being the naive 16 year old i was when i first posted it. now being the naive 23 year old i am, i still hope he read it and wasn't mad that i was posting personal information about him on this fancy intarweb thingy. i did it because you are my hero mr. goodkind!! i look up to you, so i wanted to make a tribute to you. if you are mad, you have my apologies.

sincerely, homer jay simpson

frivved up by Ben at 9:32 PM

they grew a brain in a dish out of rat neurons and turned it into a computer that learned to fly a flight simulator. Crazy, Huh.

i would like to meet this brain. i bet i could beat it at its own flight simulator game.



frivved up by Ben at 1:06 AM

what have i learned today?

community is very important. sometimes you need a place where you can go and just belong.

what do i need to learn but am afraid of for some reason?

how to let people know i appreciate them for the things they do for me, directly, indirectly or simply by being a positive part of a community.

what else do i need to learn?

how to not run to solitude when i have problems i feel i need to work out

what else will i need to learn because of this?

how to this with the solitude and silence i need. being alone is an important thing to me.

what does that make me want?

someone i don't mind being alone around, and who doesn't mind being alone around me. great, no problem.

frivved up by Ben at 1:53 PM

the awakening of elemental keisuke...

initial d makes me a better person by its presence in my mind, this i know. i'm going to be really sad when this season is over and i don't have anything else to download. i hope in 65 years or so i am sitting in a futuristic hospital watching takumi's descendants perfect their ultimate technique in a new episode i have never seen when i die. i'd go with a smile on my face, wonder in my eyes, ready to face any challenge before me, alive or dead.

some day your childrens children will see me racing through the clouds

some days driving makes me sad. what i would give for a full day of empty roads and zero consequences, just so i could stop pretending. i don't rush any more at work. my mind was all jacked up the last few months because of whatever reasons, and driving was an outlet. dangerous though, as i found out. what i realized, is that it has a calming effect on me. i forcing way too much of my tension into my driving instead of letting the driving itself override my emotions. there was conflict that mirrored the conflict in my mind concerning the problems i was having at work. and without driving as a break from the anxiety work was causing me, i was wearing myself down way too much. driving is like a puzzle, something i can wrap my mind around. a challenge with an achievable solution. a challenge that requires focus. which is why i am scared every time i get in my car, because i trust myself enough to drive, but i definitely don't trust anyone else. you have to be precognative to drive, and way too many people haven't even thought ahead to the next stoplight. you have to know what the other cars around you are going to do. but most people aren't even paying attention to themselves, let alone anyone else around them. i was forcing my actions to counteract other drivers actions or lack of action. it was unnecessary. i've been getting back to what made me love delivering in the first place in the past few days, flowing through the streets like water. there are always patterns waiting there for me to notice. patterns that will not only tell you how to drive, but the most efficient path to your destination. when you are strapped inside a ton of steel, there isn't much you can do but submit to that momentum

frivved up by Ben at 1:11 AM