Wow. I stumbled on this trying to find a nice picture to send to my girlfriend. I clicked on this picture becuase I thought it was a cute one:
I attempt to keep everyone, not just the people who I love up to date on my life. My friends back home, many of which I do love very much, many friends who I don't feel as deep a connection with I still try to chat up every now and then. I think communication is important. Talking to people and keeping in touch is, in my opinion one of the least appreciated, but most important things in a friendship or relationship.
If I haven't talked to you in a while and come out of the blue with a hey what's up. I feel like most people initial reaction is: What? Why is this person from my best suddenly talking to me? I mean, they might be happy too. But, I think if it was someone you might not have talked to in a long time they're more inclined to consider the former. If I can diverge on a tangent for a moment... I hate being able to tell if someone's seen my chat on facebook or gchat or any form of talking over sms. Why? Because if someone see's something, but doesn't respond to it. Then what? My mind starts running, are they ignoring me? Did I do something wrong? Did I misinterpret something. How did I fuck up this time? All my thoughts are always very self centered when it comes to seeing that little 'seen at 8:02' or whatever. It's not until I give it some thought like this where I think: Maybe they were closing chat at a time or leaving and since it popped up it just counted as seeing it. Maybe they clicked it but then had to run off to do something. Maybe some other thing that has nothing to do with me popped up. But, nope. That's not my reaction. It's instant am I being ignored?
Is that such a bad knee jerk reaction? I guess I've been feeling a little bit sensitive recently. I've had plenty of success professionally and academically recently. Winning HackVT's best Student Team with a group of friends, being contacted by a local media site for a story, being contacted by graduate students to help with projects. It's been rather... unexpected but nice. At the same time though, I just feel like crap. Maybe I'm not getting enough sleep, sometimes people will say something to me and I'll feel like this:
When there's probably little to no reason for me to feel like that. I think it's just a combination of not being able to sleep, stress at being so hopelessly busy, and also trying to give the right advice to my friends on things. A good number of my friends struggle with personal issues and they tell me and talk to me about it. For some reason they just want my advice who knows why, but apparently sometimes I shell out some good ones. I think it's more of just being able to rant and talk about whatever and knowing that I'm not judging them.
I find it odd, now that I think about it. I have an odd form of judgement. If I see a stranger who is doing something a bit funny. My initial thought is typically: what the hell is wrong with this person? And then my curiousity peeks in. And I begin contemplating what scenarios could have happened. For example, I see a person walking down the street crying. My initial reaction is, crap I want to avoid this person. Not nice, and not a very sympathetic emotion but thats what it is. Tears make me feel awkward. After that, typically once a person has gone past. My mind races and comes up with reasons why. They just failed a class. Someone just died. They broke up with someone. They found out the person they liked started dating someone else. So many possible reasons to start crying and not care about where you are. And then the initial judgement of your weird goes away, and it's replaced by. I wish I could help somehow. Sometimes you just want to hug an upset person, but you know it's not ''appropriate'' and you yourself might be branded weird or worse so you don't do it.
Sometimes I think I'm a judgemental person. And I think that's true to some extent. I have certain types of people who I have no patience for. If you're a type of person I can't stand or really don't like. I judge. Harshly. If you're my friend, I typically don't judge in a mean way, but I've found out that I tend to be rather direct if the situation calls for it. One of my friends has recently started hooking up with people to attempt to fuck the pain away... I told her she was being a slut. She's fine with that. She's one of my best friends, so when we talk, that level of honestly is why she talks to me about so many of her problems. I try to be an honest person I really do. I attempt to express what I'm feeling most of the time. And when situations arise that might be uncomfortable, or that someone doesn't want to bring up, I want to talk about it. Not because I want to be an ass and make the other person unhappy, but because talking about things is important. Whether it's: one night stands, racism, sexism, education, or whatever. I want to talk about it even if I don't know much about it.
As silly as it sounds I do love learning, not being educated in a boring classroom, but actually learning useful things. Or listening to interesting viewpoints. To me, a strong passionate, goal oriented person whose driven to do something is someone I want to talk to. I want to hear their opinions, their goals, everything. Even if I don't agree I want to understand.
For example, I want to understand how the presidential candidates can lie through their teeth and still get votes. Shouldn't lying be one of the things you don't want? Why can't we have fact checkers in audiences of the debates who can give instant feed back. I bet the amount of lying would drop quickly, and the debates might run a little bit more smoothly.
Getting off topic it seems.
Anyway, my point is that despite all these 'awesome' awards and progress I'm making in my academic life as I come nearer to graduating, I still feel like crap sometimes. I don't eat right, a lot of the time I eat half a sandwich and just feel like it takes so much effort to chew, its a mechanical process and I get bored of it. If I'm actually hungry, I become full after a few bites. I don't know whats wrong with me. Breads and meats tend to fill me up really fast. And I've been eating a salad for lunch every other day because it's the only thing that feels like it tastes good to me. Everything else is kinda bland. I feel like I'm nearly constantly thirsty. I must not be drinking enough. I'm scared of getting carpel tunnel or arthritis because I need my hands to work for all the things I want to accomplish in life. But sometimes my wrist aches a little and it worries me. I don't know. Maybe I'm just stressed out subconsciously and am losing my appetite because of it and just aren't taking care of myself recently. Last semester I had a constant reminder to eat 3 meals a day from my girlfriend, but I don't know if I could ask her to bother me about that everyday when I know she's dealing with difficulties in her life as well.
I don't want to be a burden to anyone I care about. When I talk to the friends I mention before, the ones who I talk to about their issues. I tend to not bring up my own problems. I dont know what it is with me, but complaining just isn't something I do well. The moment I open my mouth to complain, or start writing something, I start thinking about the opposing viewpoints and start thinking about what my responses say about me. I suppose I'm kind of introverted recently. I guess I have been doing a lot of thinking recently, more than just on school work. But on life in general. It's this gigantic shadow in the back of my mind of: what do you do after you graduate? Seriously. Do I move back home and get a job there? Do I move to the state that I'm being educated in and try to work my network and connections? Do I uproot my life entirely and move across the nation in pursuit of the best possible jobs for me? There are so many things, and I don't know what I can, what I should, or what I can't do. The "Real Life" is rearing it's head awfully fast and I dont know exactly what to do and I don't think I've ever had to really dwell on this type of thing before. So what do I do? I just wish I had someone to tell me sometimes. But instead, I can pretend. I can look at opportunities and think about whether I might do them or not. I can say I'm looking into all these things. I can pretend I'm not scared to death of graduating. But in all honestly, who isn't?
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