think

I've been thinking recently, as I regularly do, about my own thought process. I've come to the conclusion that nobody really thinks the way I do. I've spent a lot of my life just thinking about things. I spend a lot of time by myself, and when I do, I have a very analytical mind. I find that I'm always very observant along with being analytical, and often I think about how or why things happen, why other people think the way they do. I'm constantly thinking about something.
My best friend once told me, in a joking manner, "You're mind is a scary place!" He was joking, but he was right. My mind is a scary place. Everyone's mind is a scary place. The human mind is so complex. It is a cavern filled with tunnels and grottoes and chasms and little lakes. It is a place of boundless exploration. One can go so far deep into one's mind that it becomes a different place entirely than what it started out as.
The mind can play tricks on itself so that one ends up scaring oneself or doing things that they did not mean to do. The mind can transform a person into a different person entirely. The mind can take an outside look and analyze itself. The mind, like the world, is a giant place that is full of turmoil and confusion and misdirection. But also like the world, there is happiness in it and pleasure and bliss. Sometimes that bliss is located in ignorance and sometimes true happiness is only in knowing the truth and not constantly guessing.
A lot of time when I'm thinking, I won't be able to put my thoughts into words very clearly, because when I think, a lot of the time I think concepts and not necessarily step-by-step words or sentences.

My point is that, for a long portion of my life, I've been figuring myself out, and I still haven't done that, I don't think I ever will, but a huge goal of mine throughout my life was to find a person, a mate, if you will, who thinks similarly to myself. But you really don't know what a person thinks unless you ask him or her.

Like

So it's a Saturday night. I have two drunken people in my room. I wish I could say this is a regular occurrence, but it really isn't. Right now, I have kind of a rare occurrence happening. My two friends from high school (I have more than two, but for the sake of the story) have come to visit me this weekend. My friend Adam Bozarth (currently on the phone with his girlfriend for over two hours) is visiting from three hours away. He goes to school in Macomb, Illinois, at a school called Western Illinois University. He goes to school there among a lot of native Illinoisans, including many from Quincy. He is the lead singer/guitarist in our band, Analog, and while he was here in Beloit, we played a set at the C-haus, which is the only bar legally owned and operated by a private college in the United States. He's been here for two days now, it was fun.
My other friend that is visiting me is Andrew Mays, to whom I gave a shout-out in my initial blog post, because he introduced me to the blog world. Mays, whom I only address as 'Mays' and whom I only describe as 'my friend with red hair' is currently passed out on my bed, as both he and 'Boz' have induced a night of heavy drinking during their visit.
What I have to say about the whole situation is that it is highly unique that I get visitors from my high school (it happens maybe once a year at the most) and even more unique that they get drunk. I invited them on the 'special' occasion that I would be throwing a party and would give them both the opportunity to get really drunk. I guess I invited the situation by my words, but did not believe that such a surreal exercise would ever take place.
I had a lot of responsibility on my shoulders for this party to come through and it worked out that my responsibility did not turn out to be a bad thing. I was able to enjoy the fruits of my labor and bestow upon others the same fruit (some of the fruit had alcohol in it). The point of my story tonight is that you have to 'like' what you are doing in order for it to be worthwhile.
For the past few days, I've liked nothing but spending time with my familiar ladyfriend, who has since become my girlfriend (a huge step for each of us), but I thought to myself a few times that I don't even really like hanging out with my friends any more, because I really like hanging out with my girlfriend. But that's not true, and it took some really old friends of mine to make me realize that. Even though I haven't been with her for the past 24 hours, I've really had a good time despite being without her company.
Back in grade school, I remember having crushes on girls and 'liking' them. It was all about the 'like'. If you 'liked' a girl, that was it. 'Liking' a girl was the end-all, be-all of a girl/boy relationship back then. And most of the time, the girl that I 'liked' did not 'like' me back, so it didn't really matter. But I really like being in love. In fact, I 'like' it a lot more. And sometimes being in love means that you have to be apart and that you have to be able to like what the other person is doing without you. When you get to my age (listen to me!) like becomes an important part of the love. Love is a really strong word, possibly the strongest, and it takes A LOT of like to get love to be real and work.

Laziness Defined

Laziness is something that is a part of all of us. It takes us over when we first wake up in the morning and lulls us back to sleep by dragging our hand over to the alarm clock, sometimes unconsciously, depressing the snooze button that allows laziness that was once limited to our minds to completely encompass our entire bodies. Laziness continues to stalk us throughout the day, in the handicapped buttons we press to open doors, in the piles of things sitting next to your workstation mentally labeled "next week".
In America, laziness is taking over. It is becoming a product that you can buy. It comes wrapped in plastic and has electronic flashing lights and sounds that sound uncannily like actual songs on the radio. Laziness is an accessory for your iPod. Laziness strikes at the peak of your creative energy. The bottom peak.
When you are at your lowest, perhaps you are burned out from exercising or you've had a long day and people have been yelling at you, you think of things that you would like to do, that you need to do, but you won't do them. Why? Because you inevitably find things that you will want to do more than the things you need to do. And you will put off those important things for a few minutes. Minutes that turn into hours. Hours that turn into days. Days that turn into years. Everyone always says when years have passed that they marvel at how quickly those years had passed them by. Before you know it, you're in your late 30s and you're married to someone you don't like and you go to work everyday for a guy that once had more ambition than you, and you end up hating yourself among others. So why would you be one of the people who just sit there and watch the years pass them by? You must take action now, or you will not live up to your full potential.

I've heard some people use various expressions for their own motivation. One particular that I find interesting is, "Why do today what you can put off 'til tomorrow?" I suppose one would say this to oneself when in the middle of something that they don't really want to do, and thus send him- or herself into the situation that I described earlier. Years ago, I adopted a mental note that I say to myself whenever I'm thinking about discouraging myself from something that goes, "What's a better time than now?" This little personal rhetorical question is one that helps me get through my day and helps me to not put off things until its too late. Instead, I've found that my procrastination turns out some of my best work. Like another saying goes, "Necessity is the mother of invention." Sayings aside, I will leave my last words of advice for all you slackers out there, "Just do it!"

Passive Aggressivity (in a high-pitched cracking voice)

I learned a long time ago what it was like to be passive and what it was like to be aggressive. I think the D.A.R.E. program taught me it. I recall Detective DeLuca describing a passive person as Charlie Brown, from the popular Peanuts comic strip, and an aggressive person as the obviously more aggressive Lucy Van Pelt.
Now it may seem funny, and of course it never happened within the comic strip, but one could always see Lucy and Charlie Brown together as a couple somehow, right? Despite the fact that Charlie Brown always had his eyes on "the little red-haired girl" and that Peppermint Patty had a crush on Charlie, Lucy always did seem a bit interested in Charlie Brown. And interestingly enough, Charlie Brown never really showed interest in her, at least not to anyone. He always kind of put up with her antics and harassing never complaining, never griping, never asking her to change.
I feel that Charlie Brown was often too timid and shy, or passive, if you will, to actually voice his complaints about the women around whom he was surrounded by. He never strayed from having enough courage to be an individual, to be unique, and to stand up for what he believed in. This was always a trait that anyone could admire in Charlie Brown, but for some reason he did not stand up for himself around women. He just put up with them and took whatever attention he received from them, be it positive or negative.
Lucy was obviously the biggest female influence on him outside of his sister, who only looked up to him. But his best friend Linus' sister, Lucy, was more like his equal. Even though she continually referred to him as "blockhead" and pulled tricks on him such as consistently pulling the football away from him right before he kicked it, Charlie Brown never complained. Sure he got flustered and angry at times, just like anybody would, but he never got so fed up that he defriended Lucy.
You get the feeling that maybe they had something more than just a mere friendship. Perhaps sparks flew whenever they interacted that made them just that more compatible for each other. Even though in the series, we never see the children grow up, I have a feeling that if the two were looked upon later in their lives, they would make a very happy couple.

These characteristics between Lucy and Charlie are paralleled in today's relationships. When you really think about it, relationships today are very similar to what was held between Charlie and Lucy. I theorize that in order for a relationship to really work, the two persons that are attracted to one another must also be opposing in certain respects to have success.
In the most general sense, two shy people could never work together. In the first place, if both people are too shy, then there is no real likelihood that they would ever actually meet in the first place. People that are both shy and passive will never be able to get anything accomplished. If neither person is able to make a decision, then where does that bring the two of them. Could you imagine the two of them sitting at home doing their taxes? They wouldn't know what to do, and they would either sit there and closet themselves from the rest of the world, eventually leading to the IRS investigating their premises, or they would inevitably have to bring in a third party to deal with the loose ends that they themselves could not. Both scenarios leave the couple in a place that is not really success, on the one hand, or a couple, on the other. Two shy people will never work for each other, unless one takes the reigns and starts some creative decision making.

If both members of the couple are aggressive, one merely sees the other side of the spectrum. In this case, both people want to get their way, and if too overly aggressive, they will not relent and give in to merely their "lover". Suppose these too people were together, they would be making decisions independently of each other and wind up screwing the other person over. They would sit down to do their taxes and argue about whether to send them in to a tax man (or woman) or to do it via internet. They would fight about nothing and they would end up hating each other because of it. Aggressive people do not make good couples.

So I address my point of the Lucy/Charlie Brown example. In a manner of speaking, because one person dominates the other person, they are a viable couple. Now this isn't to say that one of them is bearing a whip down on the other, but the point to be made is that there has to be compromise in a working relationship in order for it to be successful. The dominant person could change hands. It wouldn't have to be the same person for every decision. Perhaps Charlie Brown is particularly gifted at doing taxes, so that's where he dominates, and Lucy still has the football field.
The point is to have communication in the things that affect the two persons as a couple. Sometimes struggle may arise, but compromise will see to it that both parties sustain happiness. It's hard to consider people as equals, and put them together. If everybody was equal, it would be like trying to put together a picture using tiles. They would all slide around and be independent of each other. Truly functional people are more like puzzle pieces. All the pieces have the attributes to put together a great picture. Sometimes you have to limit the number of functional people to 1000 or 500, but the thing is that each puzzle piece has its place in the puzzle. Each puzzle piece has just the right gaps or just the right part to fill the gaps of the piece or person next to it. And those people can be really happy and really successful when they find that place to connect to each other.