Why Is New Better?

I find it odd that people, especially those young enough to still have a first ambition are always grasping for more. And why not? When the opportunity is always there to advance yourself, why not take it every day? I see it a different way, though. For one, there are going to be times that you have to wait before your actions bear fruit, so what do you do in the meantime? Some people would be stuck with nothing but impatience and stress. Second, if you are always grasping for better, what is the point in advancing? “Your eye is always on the horizon.” That is an “inspirational” quote. But if your eye is always on the horizon, then you can’t stare in wonder at the new discovery that you’re standing on. Some would call it resting on one’s laurels, but there is no point in working toward something better if you won’t take the time to enjoy what you’ve gotten. You just remain in a state of unfulfilled restlessness. I find, even at the young age of 19, that sometimes it is good to just take the time to enjoy what you’ve reached and be happy with where you are. Yes, you need to keep moving at on that young age to build for when you get older, but I find that those who have lived longer than us put so much emphasis in it that many young people lose themselves in the effort to live up to this advice. Yes, we need to keep moving, but there are times that we need to enjoy what we’ve accomplished so far. Hell, you get out of high school, quite a proud achievement, and even on graduation day there is pressure to get ready for college. There is no need to burn oneself out working on the distant future. I will not deny that it is important, but a little pride is healthy, and never resting will only send you to an early grave. Take me for instance. I had to leave college because I wasn’t emotionally ready, I am living in a two bedroom apartment with four other people (three of which are disagreeable a vast majority of the time), and I have a part-time, grunt job. You’d think that I would be unhappy, but it’s quite the opposite. I’m overjoyed. I am good at my job, and it gives me the certainty that I need right now and a physical workout that I enjoy. I am with family, agreeable or not. I have the stability that I need grow. I have the financial confidence that, when I’m ready to go back to college, I can. I’m proud of where I am, even if it’s not in a penthouse with every amenity. Who actually wants that anyway?

Something Earned, Something New, Something Expensive, and Something Blue

Good news! I just got a new tablet after the mishap of my exploding laptop. This is not only easier to transport, but it’s a bit more accessible, so I should be able to post more often about the random thoughts I have as I have them. Fun! Also, for those of you who told me that my posts were a bit too long, there’s another bit of good news. While I’m getting used to typing on this damnable touch screen, my posts will probably be quite a bit shorter. For those of you who liked my long, ranting posts, I’m sorry. They’ll be back. I’m just happy to be back! Hope you enjoy the Random Access Theater!

Daily Prompt Reply: Google and Rescue Operation

This is a tricky subject, to be honest. I’m one of those people that clears my search history regularly and freaks out if someone needs to use my laptop before I have. Thankfully, I haven’t been looking at anything below societal standards of “okay” lately. Honestly, I would say that there is a bit of debate as to what I last looked up. I’ll give both examples and let you decide. Either way, I’m giving to answers to this prompt. Hopefully it makes up for my rather long absence recently.

Last night, I had to Google search the MMO RIFT. I was having technical issues, and for some reason I wasn’t sure that their website would simply be rift.com. There are so many games and websites now that aren’t what you would think, and you end up getting sent somewhere that you wouldn’t expect. Sometimes that place is quite counterproductive. I had been coin locked in this game, meaning that I could not buy, sell, destroy items, or in any other way exchange coin. The notification said that I would receive an email with the code to release it. I am still rather new to this game, and seeing as it is much more free to play than other games, seeing as you don’t have to buy access to new areas, so I thought that the fact that I made a second character was what had caused it. Well, I went to my email, and there was nothing. I checked again, nothing. I had it resent, nothing. I waited until the next day, nothing. So, naturally, I followed the next instruction on the notice and tried to contact customer support. That was the most recent Google search. My only issue is that, and I say this with the utmost respect for this game, they didn’t have a way to get live support!!! It was all submitting a ticket!!! I don’t know if you have ever submitted a ticket, but from my experience it usually takes them a few months to get back to you. I’d like to play your game again soon, RIFT developers. Well, I had checked my inbox and my spam folders. I resort to scouring my gmail account to try and find it. I finally find this tab in small print smushed in with a lot of social panels. “All Mail.” I clicked it just as a lark and there it was, plain as day. As well as a few emails that I had been looking for in the past and a few hundred other emails that I didn’t even know that I had gotten. Really Google, please make this crap easier to use. Why do I have two inboxes that are technically designated as the same thing but are somehow different? If you can explain the difference, please do so in the comments of this post.

The other thing that I have recently Google searched but may or may not count in this case was for the picture above. I looked it up while typing up this post. Why? I feel that a little bit of visual enriches my post and helps those that are visual learners to really connect with how I was feeling. At the same time, it keeps people from misunderstanding the tone of my post for the most part. Someone might read a post and think that I am angry or passionate and get a offended, but if they see a picture that would show that I was actually meaning in a lighthearted or goofy way, that helps me convey my message. If you feel like this one was my most recent Google search, alright then. It’s just not quite as interesting as the one above.

 

Daily Prompt: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/daily-prompt-searching/

Picture: http://empowerdnetwork.blog.com/2012/02/29/do-you-enjoy-pulling-your-hair-out/

So Great To Be Furry

It’s not much of a secret among my friends that I’m a furry. Once people learn that I am, a lot of weird things that I do sort of fall into place. The way that I fix my hair. The way that I clean my teeth with my tongue after I eat. The way that I’ll scratch an itch on my face with my knuckles and the back of my hand. All of it falls into place, and people feel like they know me better. I’m not trying to emulate animals, though. I’ve done all of this since I was little, and long before I knew what furries were. It’s just something that came natural.

I was starting to embrace that lifestyle in full at college. I was able to live the way that I wanted, and people were very accepting. There were even a few that enjoyed that side, and I don’t see why they wouldn’t. I started to make some very good friends that I wish that I could still be in contact with. However, when I moved back in with my parents, I had to really control that side. My parents think that furries want to have sex with real animals, and they had already had enough bad news at the time. It’s not bad news in all reality, but my parents would have seen it as such, and they couldn’t take it. Frankly, they still don’t know, and I don’t mind that too much. True, I wish that I could tell them, but that won’t be any time soon. I have almost had to repress that side of myself since I’ve been here. It became very hard for me to show it when I wanted to, and I even forgot how to show that side of myself.

I’ve felt so relieved lately as I’ve finally been able to show that side again. While I am still living with my parents at the moment, I have been able to dismiss their suspicions, and I’m been able to show it around friends and family again. I’m still getting back in the swing of it, but it’s so freeing.

Daily Prompt Reply: Release Me

I understand that there will be a lot of bloggers will give this exact same answer, but it’s what my answer is. The post that I was most nervous about posting was that first one. I have had several blogs before, though not on this site, and all of them flopped. I would get one, maybe two followers, and then the whole thing would just go quiet no matter what I tried. I was really hoping that I would be able to entice people, and I was trying to choose every word so carefully to try and be likable and yet seem like a dependable source. I sat there looking at the screen for about 15 minutes thinking about how I felt about the post. I didn’t change anything, but I felt like it made me sound like a narcissist and an arrogant ass. After just staring at the screen like a moron for who knows how long, I hit the publish post button and just feared that it would flop. However, as I got my first few followers, it made me feel a bit better about the whole thing. Maybe this one wouldn’t fail. I don’t have too many followers yet, but I could, and that’s what keeps me posting. True, I haven’t been posting as much lately. There’s been a lot going on in my life, and I will be posting more here on in. 

Weekly Writing Challenge Response: Living History

 

I’ve been thinking about this for quite some time without the words really to say what I’m feeling. However, this weeks writing challenge has given me a bit of a boost in this matter, you could say. I guess getting a prompt would help an English major. Well, regardless, here are my thoughts on the subject.

It may not be the most creative thing to speak about, since they used the government shutdown as the example, but it’s one of the only things that has ever affected me, and the only one that I was aware of or cared about. I am in a long-term relationship with a beautiful girl at the moment. If you must know, we’ve been together for 10 months tomorrow. That may not be the relationship of a few years that you see some people in, but things haven’t even started to sour between us. Think what you will, it’s working. The only problem is how we met…. We met on the internet. Now, while we have used video chatting and other methods to keep in touch and see each other, we have never been able to meet in person. She lives several states away. It doesn’t help that both of us are of modest means at the moment, but she has been moving from place to place to get closer toward the ultimate goal of living together. She rarely lives in one place for more than a month before moving closer. Needless to say, she isn’t able to find a job in that time span, much less keep it long enough to get some money up. She is not far from being here, but she has been depending on food stamps and unemployment in the meantime. She was receiving them even before we got together, so she wasn’t just using them as travel funds. Don’t worry.

However, now that the government is shut down, progressively more government programs are getting cut off. We are both waiting for the time that unemployment or food stamps will stop. When the unemployment stops, she will be stuck where ever she happens to be at the time. If the food stamps stop, she will no longer be able to help those who take her in and be homeless. If both of them stop, it’s over. True, we weren’t using these government funds for the perhaps intended purpose, but we were using it for what I would think to be a creative and just as important use. Most “hardcore” conservatives would say that we are part of the problem, but I would just say that we are doing what we can to help her not need these programs. Especially in this economy, getting a job is not the easiest thing to do, and it is made even harder if you are on this job search alone. It’s good to have support, and it’s always nice to have love on your side. Queue collective gag reflex at gushiness. Regardless, if you are together and one manages to get a job, it helps support the other and lessens stress on the pair, rather than one getting a job and the other still having the same problems and stress.

We are both just praying that the measuring contest that is the American government will get its collective shit together so that the worst doesn’t happen. So that we aren’t separated permanently. So that we don’t lose contact. So that we don’t lose each other. 

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/writing-challenge-history/

Daily Prompt Reply: Video Games

 

I was never addicted to what got in the way of my goals, though others might tell you otherwise. Thankfully, that is not me in the picture, but I swear that I’ve done similar things in the past. As if the picture didn’t give it away enough, My seeming addiction was video games. While I wasn’t addicted, I did use them as a coping mechanism to the point that I closed out the entire world and hid inside of them.

You get back from a long day’s work at college, school, or work, and what do you do? Some people watch TV, but that always struck me as dull and repetitive. Other people hang out with their friends, but for the past few years, my friends were always across the state line and had to drive 45 minutes or so to see me. Others just get right down to business and do some extra work from what they just got back from, start doing chores, and go to sleep feeling like they haven’t done enough. I feel like we can all agree that we hate being lectured by this last group like they are better than us. I’ve always been a work to play sort, anyway. Or as my father calls it, “Work to live instead of live to work,” the latter being my mother’s choice. I would get home, get any work that I needed to get done, done, and go sit down with my games. In high school, this was after I had gotten back from marching band practice, and in college I would go play backyard sports with my friends, so I didn’t really have the issue of getting fat for lack of physical activity. It didn’t seem that bad to me. The only issue was that, slowly, I started to try to do less and less work to try to get to the games faster. I started to eschew this or that, and it didn’t seem that bad. Things always seemed to work themselves out. That is, until I stopped doing certain pieces of homework altogether. When I didn’t do homework, I would feel guilty the next day and not want to look my teacher in the face. In college, this presented an issue because I could skip without the immediate fear of my mother, who was a holy terror when it came to school. I started to skip classes to finish work, but then I would skip the class intending to finish the work and never pick it up. My life became consumed with them. I even stopped playing sports with my friends because they would ask why they hadn’t seen me in class. They were just worried, but the combination of my guilt and my paranoia made it next to impossible to look at them straight. I would just sit in my dorm room for days on end playing games only coming out to pay the pizza delivery guy.

Thankfully, I don’t have this issue anymore. If I did, my father wouldn’t have me living in the same house as him. I’ve grown a lot, and frankly video games a way to hang out with my friends when they can’t drive to me and a form of competitive entertainment.

Daily Prompt Reply: Exhale

 

Today’s prompt hits me very close to home. I’m not going to be one of these bloggers that reminisce and such, so I’ll keep it as subjective as possible. Hey, maybe my experience may even help one of you out there. I can only hope…

I’ve always been a very intelligent person, and proud at that. As if you hadn’t already realized this by reading my other posts. Throughout my entire life in school all the way through high school, I had never even come close to failing a class, much less a grade. Even though I rarely made the honor roll, it was more from a lack of motivation. Whenever I tested, I tested higher than anyone else in the school, even those on the honor roll. During classes, I grasped an entire chapter from the textbook on the first day of a week-long lesson. My teachers actually got angry at me for NOT letting people cheat off of me. This may seem like me just bragging and talking about how great I am, but I’m not. I’m setting the stage for what comes next.

After I finished high school, I went to college, which is the natural course. However, I didn’t feel comfortable about it. This is a normal thing among college students. Most freshly-graduated, high school students see college as a daunting task lined with hurdles to leap over. Why wouldn’t they? All through high school, at least at the schools that I went to, we were told that college was a cut-throat place where if you didn’t flail in an attempt to swim, you would sink like a stone. While I didn’t believe all of that, I saw that I was always having to be pushed to get the small amount of homework that I did get done in the past. As I said, I wasn’t motivated. I could listen in school, never study, and still ace the test. I knew that no matter the work load, without my parents breathing down the back of my neck anymore, I was going to have issues. My father was willing to listen to these worries, but my mother wouldn’t hear it. I wanted to take a year to get my head straight, but I had $13,000 in scholarships. It’s not the most that I could have gotten, but it’s a pretty impressive amount. My mother was sure that if I didn’t take the opportunity right then, the scholarships would go away, and they might have. I couldn’t argue after that. All my life, I was told that my scholarships had to pay for college because my parents wouldn’t. Not that they couldn’t, but they wouldn’t. So I went.

When I got to college, things seemed alright. The classes were fast-paced enough to keep me involved, the people, though new and strange to me, were friendly and fun, and I was experiencing new things. I got lost in this newness partially. When the work started coming, I would do some, but it didn’t seem like a big deal. The first few assignments I didn’t even do because I couldn’t figure out the website that told us what our homework was. Essays were a nightly thing. Each class demanded a 3-page essay every time you went to class on most days. I don’t know if this is different than other college experiences, but that’s what I got. I am a very quick writer. I could write a 3-page paper that I was interested in in 15 minutes. The issue was that they had us write about these things multiple times, or they would have us write on trivial things. I lost interest, didn’t turn in a few, turned in others late. I thought my test scores would lift the slack like they always did. After a few tests, I looked at my grade. The color drained from my face when I saw the 43% on the screen. Apparently the work and the tests were weighted much differently at this college  than they were at my high school. I spoke with my teachers, and they explained that tests were quite inconsequential there. They were only there as a sort of formality or way to see what they needed to teach more of. I began not only trying to finish every project on my plate, but also everything that I had missed. Sadly, I was barely able to keep up with what I had, much less what I had let slip by. I would miss a class here so that I could finish this paper, and miss a class there so that I could finish that diorama. Eventually the teachers started looking at me sideways, as though I was the student that they didn’t want to see. I would miss a class and think, “I can’t face them after that.” A string of absences started to pull together that I could never recover from. Occasionally I would go to class to just do a test when I hadn’t been in for two weeks. I would ace the test, much to the professor’s astonishment. Then I would go back to my dorm room, and no one would see me for days. My mother lost her job. My dad fell on hard times. Now, even if I pulled things together in the second semester, I would lose enough financial aid that I couldn’t afford to stay. I became so guilty that I began to starve myself. I just wasn’t hungry. The pain of guilt that I felt overcame any hunger pain that I might have noticed. Finally, I had to tell my parents what I had been doing for the whole year, and that out of somewhere around 9 or 10 classes, I had passed two of them by the skin of my teeth. My father practically renounced me, and my mother clearly told me that she gave up on me as a person. I had nothing.

It was at the bottom of this seemingly bottomless pit that I took a breath. What could I do? I couldn’t salvage my classes. I couldn’t go back and changes what I did. I couldn’t talk or reason my way out of it. I couldn’t even manipulate people into it. What was I supposed to do? For once in my entire life, I couldn’t look to the past, and I couldn’t tactically weasel my way out of it. I was forced to look to the future. What could I do? I could move in with my father since my mother wouldn’t speak to me, much less see me or live with me  again. I could get a job to save up for community college, an idea that I loathed during high school. After I completed my required classes, I would have enough savings and aid to transfer to a good university. For once, I felt like I was in control of my own future, and my own decisions. I was calm, and I could see the light at the top of this pit, the echelon that I held myself to before college. I’m still working to get there, but I can see the light.

Chasm

 

I hate these kinds of days. I’m going to describe it, and if you think I’m batty, fine. I’m saying how I feel, and if you don’t feel the same way in this situation, then you can just see an interesting thought and that be it. Of course, if you can relate, I hope this helps.

Have you ever had those days where you run out of things to do? I don’t mean that there aren’t any chores or that you’ve finished a big project, and you’re sort of lost. I mean, you are doing the same thing that you’ve been doing for that past few months, whether it be the same game that you’ve played to death, or if you are at work doing a repetitive task, or whatever your situation might be. The day wasn’t even that bad. Nothing happened that would provoke this. You just suddenly realize, “Well, crap. I thought I enjoyed this, but I really don’t want to be doing this.” The thing is that you have that thought, but then you sort of feel like you are floating over a bottomless chasm. You feel like if you stop even for a second, you’ll fall, but you really want to do something else. Even other things that would be good to do just seem really unattractive, and everything in the world that you could do just feels like it would be seriously lame. You look down in this chasm, and you realize that you’ve been there before. Just sitting there and being completely vegetative, depressed and down on yourself. You really don’t want to go there, but it feels like the other side is slipping away more and more the longer you keep doing this thing that you suddenly really don’t want to do. It’s like you’re in activity limbo where everything else is garbage, but you really don’t want to do the entertaining thing, either. I’m in that kind of mood today, and I despise it. I wish I could get up and do something that I’ve been hoping to do for a long time, whether it be to go out and get the stuff to start learning how to smith, or to really experiment with my cooking, but you need money for all these things. Money is one of the only resources that I don’t seem to have much of at the moment. I have company, too much maybe, friends, support, safety, time, but I seem to only not have money. Funny how you can have all those other things, but without money, they don’t do you much money. Even hanging out with friends requires gas money, considering most of my friends are across the state line. So I’m stuck here, playing games, talking to people about things that I’ve spoken about more than I’d care to admit, and sitting with my thumb proverbially up my ass. Gods, I really do loathe these days.

I know that you are used to much more embellished language from me, but I am a person of many sides. Sometimes you just get the dude side like today. It was a challenge to not make myself sound like a ditz. Well, I do hope that you can relate to this. Currently, I feel kind of alone in this feeling. Feel free to comment if you have thoughts on the matter that aren’t just, “Get outside! Go for a run! Play some sports! Be productive!” We all know these people, and we all glare at these posts for a moment before glancing over to something else. You say this as though we hadn’t thought of it ourselves. You are not helping.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Good Morning!

This is something that I would definitely do. I’m a major morning person, and it’s so entertaining to annoy people with my overwhelming, morning energy. XD