AGNOSTIC CONFESSIONAL

Salads seem safe, but I can’t even eat crutons or many dressings. THAT’S BS, MAN.

Contrary to the whiny connotations of the subject, there’s a different purpose for this bit of text. I test my compatibility with all the girls I meet. Compatibility is very low. But even if I feel I should get to know a girl better, they’re generally already in a relationship. This is a huge conflict of interest to me. 

Would you wage war to “win” a partner -away- from their current partner? Would you secretly influence someone to leave their current partner for better prospects, i.e. you?

I keep considering it, and my answer seems to be the same every time. 

If someone you like isn’t strong enough to figure out what they want and need from life, what are good choices to make, etc., then why would you want this person to choose you in the first place? Can you really trust someone who doesn’t have the guts to leave whoever they’re with?

I don’t know how much I can trust someone who doesn’t have it in their mind to move on and seek better things. I’ve known many girls who wait for guys to come to them, even while in a relationship, and then change boyfriends rather quickly. Heck, happened in my last relationship, so I get it. But girls? Everyone is watching you. No one is gonna respect you unless you can show them you respect yourself. If you don’t respect yourself, then the only men you will attract are ones who also don’t respect you. 

I didn’t have a need to write this, but I decided to. I don’t write enough opinion pieces, which often leaves me feeling like I lack substance. I know I have substance, but if I’m too afraid and unwilling to propagate my views, then no one sees that substance. Basically, deal w/ it.

I often dislike mentioning pet peeves at all. They scream of first world problems, and those are hardly problems.

But my issue is with greetings. Greetings are very varied for the most part, and we often have specific greetings for individuals as well as general greetings toqards people we don’t know well and do not have the time or.patience to become more acquainted with.

My particular issue with greetings like, “How are you?”, “How have you been?”, and the like. The crowd that uses these the most are people upwards in age, generally 40-plus, so it definitely seems generational. Perhaps it’s considered a nurturing greeting, like one they often used with their children growing up.

On a daily basis in my line of work, I am confronted with 2 or more individuals who greet me by name, then ask me how I’ve been or what have I been up to. I am often at a loss for worlds. What, exactly, could this person want to know? I don’t spend anything more than occassional professional time with these people, yet they are asking about my life.

I realize that people have programmed themselves to greet like this. It now comes naturally to them all the time. They most likely don’t expect more than a one-word answer from anyone other than closer friends and family. But still, they’re asking a personal question, one that asks about you, yes you. So what can you do? Nowadays, I don’t know who I should tell just “Good, you?”, or who I should actually tell a little about my life. It’s really awful to me when someone I have never met or seen before asks “how have you been?”. This is almost cruel to my senses and emotions. “Been” implies a past, and there’s nothing about your past that they really know, so why would this person say something so familiar? This comes off as elitist, or perhaps just separatist from the people around me. But this happens in business all day as a general clout building device. But when you use so many roboticesque words to evoke one or two meaningless words in 

Or perhaps this is just a good way to tell who you can trust?

Among the young in this generation, we still haven’t picked up this habit. We’re fine with “sup” or “hey, what’s up?”. Sup is universal for quick greeting, passing by…  in fact, very specifically, it’s a universal acknowledgement that you don’t mind the time you are spending on someone. Whether it’s for something quick, just passing by, or staying a while, in terms of human companionship, a greeting short and sweet LIKE but NOT NECESSARILY “sup /person’s name/” defines the simplistic beauty a proper greeting can have.

Ok ok, enough of that. The bottom line is I don’t see the point of anyone ever asking me “how have you been?” unless they really want to care about my past. The greeting isn’t unique or special or abstract or anything good. It’s bland, overused, and incorrect.

This was a spontaneous essay of rage. 

I’m salty.

So lately, I’ve been concerned about my digestion. Ever since I’ve been a bit, I’ve had bad intestinal cramps and a whole lot of poop problems. I don’t want to have to elaborate on poop problems, but the main issue I have is that I go to sleep just fine, I wake up in the morning, and within 30-60 minutes, I have to go #2. In the next two hours, I have to go again. These aren’t the smoothest #2s, either. It’s not fun to wake up in the morning and know there’s pain, suffering, and worst of all POOP waiting for you. 

Now, I’ve tried to get lots of fiber. In fact, between raisin bran and broccoli, I was getting a lot of fiber. But it didn’t really seem to help my issues. I’ve begun to look at other aspects of my life consolidate them and make things easier, but my morning routine is something I haven’t been able to change. Well, starting tomorrow, we’ll see what happens.

In my family on my mother’s side, there’s an hereditary condition called celiac disease that goes around. When I was visiting my family in Alabama last month, my mother brought up again that since it ran in the family, I might also have it. Of course, when someone tells you there’s something wrong with you, you don’t really want to listen, at least not right at that moment. But the idea stuck, and I began looking up symptoms. A list of common symptoms can be found at the link below: 

http://www.celiac.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6&Itemid=12

Now, I don’t like doctors telling me what I do and don’t have unless they do analysis. I do need to make an appointment to get checked out by a doctor, plus another appointment for a biopsy so my tissue can be examined for signs of this condition. I figure that since I have so little time between full time work, live streaming Tribes:Ascend competition matches with the TribesCast crew (www.tribescast.com), and taking care of my cat and my house, I don’t have much time or money to spend on doctors at the moment. So, being the scientific dude I’ve always been, I’m conducting an experiment. 

Currently, I am eating no bread, drinking no wheat beer, and buying completely gluten-free products at my local farmers markets. Yesterday I threw out all the contents of my fridge that contain gluten. Today, I went and shelled out for Cinnamon and Raisin Rice Bread, Angel Hair Rice Noodles, a big old bag of potatoes and heavy whipping cream to make mashed potatoes, and cereal composed of corn and rice. I would have gotten some specialty beer brewed from sorghum and rice, BUT ALAS, they were sold out. Cider and the sorghum / rice beer is all I’ve got in that department now. 

What I’m hoping to see if less pain in my intestine, a better night’s sleep, less mood swings, and more energy. It’ll be an interesting experiment, as almost everything I eat out during my work’s lunch break has some sort of wheat in it. Hell, I can’t even eat crunchy tacos from Taco Bell, because the meat filling has wheat mixed in. Yeah, I checked. So fun times ahead for me. I plan to eat a better breakfast, hopefully bring my own lunch most of the time, and cook a rice or potato-based meal in the evenings. This will be tough between all my other responsibilities, but IT’S ALL FOR THE GREATER GOOD, right digestive tract?

The problem with learning that I might have a purely obsessive OCD is now I’ve started obsessing about how this affects or has affected each part of my life. For my entire life. Brain, shut up and let me think normal thoughts for a bit :C

(I wrote this back in May. I had a good friend proof it back then, and I spruced it up even more!)

One of the good things about living alone is the ability to talk to yourself and explore topics aloud before anyone has a chance to absorb what you have to say. In a way, this can make one extremely intelligent in general conversation without ever having a proper partner. Of course, it doesn’t prepare you for the kinds of people you meet, so it’s only a study tool. “Conversation” comes from the word “converse”. “Converse” is from the Latin for “construct”. (Yeah. I looked it up. If you were smart, you would look up anything you don’t know. It’s great. Passing up the opportunity is an opportunity wasted.)

From the history of “converse”, it is implied that some sort of construction is required for conversation. You have to have something to build your conversation off of. You have to have a foundation of knowledge on which you can continue the subject. Everything in the universe has an underlying foundation, from the tiniest particles (Higgs Boson? Is that you?) to the largest building. I often refer to this foundation as -framework-. Understanding something’s framework means you’re able understand the underlying structure of something, which then allows you to continue building upon that structure. That is an abstract concept that I imagine many people will have trouble wrapping their heads around, at least for younger audiences. As a systems engineer, I notice all the time that everything has a framework that we follow, from conversation, to diet, to exercise, and then getting down to the nitty gritty like systems built in hardware, software, video games, sports, social structures, workflow, and everything else. There’s an obvious chain of dependencies that point to the necessary framework for something to function stably. 

While keeping in mind that conversation comes from construction, let’s look at the kinds of conversation out there: small talk, flirting, pillow talk, gossip, etc. These conversations are purpose-driven, with perhaps the exception of small talk. Smalltalk is basically talking about subjects that do not allow anything truly deep and interesting to enter a conversation. But then again, small talk has its own purpose: to keep people at bay so the important topics you dwell on don’t leak out.

Within all different conversation types, the talk generally deals with three primary things. I certainly don’t want to wear this quote out (as I’ve used it a lot since I learned about it), but it has given me a lot to think about:

“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Some may understand this quote right away, as Eleanor was elegant and precise in her word usage. I never studied literature while growing up, and my reading habits over the past many years have been spotty at best. Any books I did read were something I could pick up and read five to fifteen minutes at a time, such as on a break at work, or while enjoying my time sitting on the toilet. Regardless of my inexperience, the words in this quote move me more than anything before it. Being typical ole me, I must spend time breaking it into small pieces for better understanding.

Discussion is the common theme. Discussion is informal debate, perhaps better described as a mutual exploration through language. The use of “minds” instead of “people” shows Eleanor’s great mind, as she isn’t blaming the person, but merely pointing out mental capability of an individual at the time they engage in discussion. Greatness is stored in ideas. Normal minds cannot or simply will not think and thrive in the layer of abstraction that is required for ideas, instead only concentrating on the specifics of an event. Simple minds have a narrow focus that seems to concentrate on what’s in front of them. In today’s society, that focus is generally people and gossip. I realize there is plenty of crossovers between these types of minds, but let’s keep this simple. So what makes ideas so great, huh? Let’s look at the definition first:

[idea]

1. any conception existing in the mind as a result of mental understanding, awareness, or activity.

2. a thought, conception, or notion: That is an excellent idea.

3. an impression: He gave me a general idea of how he plans to run the department.

4. an opinion, view, or belief: His ideas on raising children are certainly strange.

5. a plan of action; an intention: the idea of becoming an engineer.

6. a groundless supposition; fantasy.

An astounding amount of ideas about what an idea is, right? I even edited out the last ones in order to stay on topic. Let’s face it: An idea cannot be properly understood only by how it is defined in a dictionary. In fact, I’d say a dictionary’s purpose is to try to solidify an idea into some unique word. You really don’t get a sense of what the possibilities of an idea are just from its definition. An idea is presented as a general abstraction of something contained in the mind, and that’s not very helpful. The definition is the idea that men attached to an idea. How recursive, how asinine, but oh so necessary. 

Ideas come in two forms: Ones that only exist as fantasy, and ones that can be made a reality. I’d refer to an idea in the realm of fantasy to be a “sandboxed” idea, and other ideas are realistic in that they can fit into the framework of our daily lives. Sandboxed ideas have the ability to break out of their cocoon to become reality, but once an idea is reality and has true form, perhaps we can call it “culture”. A friend of mine tells me this word is slippery, and I agree. But the definition of “culture” here is more of its framework definition. As presented by dictionary.com, the loose definition of culture is, “development or improvement of the mind by education or training”.

When talking in computer-related terms, a sandbox is an area walled off and separated from other areas. Basically, whatever is inside the sandbox is trapped inside your confines, unable to escape (and maybe infect your computer with a virus!). The real world example is a literal sandbox, where the idea is THIS IS A PLACE FOR SAND. Using the sand outside of the box defeats the point and cheapens the meaning of the sandbox itself. While the sand is in the box, you can play with it, move it around and form it into anything that you can manage without it mixing with common dirt or other substances. Similarly, a sandboxed idea is something that can be explored within safe confines of the mind.

The ability to use all the tools of the mind to form sandboxed concepts is supposedly unique to humans, but let’s just say that humans put these concepts into practice much better than other animals. These concepts cannot be transferred out of your mind on a 1-to-1 basis, though. My analogy is like real sandbox, that whatever you create inside stays inside. You built a sand castle in your mind? That’s pretty nice, I guess. But that sand castle is a fantasy that cannot be removed from the box without destruction during transfer process. What can you do with sandboxed ideas if you can’t export them out of their confines, then? I’d like to think that we have other tools that translate the greatness of these internal creations, like words, images, sounds.

Let’s return to the idea of framework. An idea by itself is powerless. It only exists in your head. To bring that idea to fruition in reality, a framework must be established to build upon. The more solid your understanding of the basics are, the more ability you have to translate complex ideas into reality. For example: Drawing. In fact, let’s single this out to just drawing human figures. You have to understand the basic structure that makes up a human before you can draw one: At least a simplified bone structure, basic parts / limbs, how limbs can (and cannot) bend, and more. You have to bring all that together into something coherent. These things provide a basis on which to build all humans from. Since all humans contain the same basic parts, you can understand how framework encompasses an entire subject of study.

Just like computers, we humans have particular methods of input and output. You have to let information inside your head (through touch, taste, smell, hearing, and seeing) before you can process it. You will process the input you receive into ideas, and you’re free to bottle those ideas up and never let them out. Ah, but things would be very boring if we bottled everything up, right? That’s why it’s important as a creative individual to let yourself go, let yourself grow. To be creative, you must get inside that head of yours and create things that you can translate in reality. 

Let’s use drawing as an example again. Imagine there’s a model, a real person, naked, posing in multiple positions long enough for you to get many good looks. This cannot become an idea as the framework is in front of you. You can look at this person from any angle, which lets you draw from any perspective or angle. Suddenly, the model is gone, and all that is left is your memory, your idea that the model was there. Now you can only play with the idea that remains of this model in your head. You got a good look, so something remains in here. When the source is gone, all you need is time and effort. You have to take this idea in your head and bring it into real life nearly from scratch, from just the sand in your mind, stacking grain by grain to imitate the curves, the creases, the flow of everything.

I’ve seen a lot of art in many different forms (and not nearly enough still), so I can appreciate the subtleties of the presentation and criticize things that clash to me. These clashes are things that cannot be considered style, but instead are considered flaws. People, including myself, often give up because they see the flaws in their work, and they don’t know how to fix them. I see so many people, including myself, get frustrated and give up instead of trying something different. The idea translation is simply incomplete. You haven’t discovered and understood the entire framework behind what you are doing. But as long as the idea doesn’t leave you, you can still express it. So don’t give up. When you fail, it’s true that it’s an impasse. However, instead of trying to create a masterpiece, shouldn’t you first be creating framework instead? Working on understanding your flaws and fixing the structural integrity of your idea will lay your foundation, your framework. And hey, they’re your ideas. Don’t make light of things that are yours and yours alone.

In closing, framework is an enabler. It is the engine that gives you power, but if you don’t know how to build that engine, you’ll never be able to harness its power. If you can somehow convert an idea into a proper mental framework, you have a chance of building something even more amazing. So take your feeble ideas and give them shape! I stand by my belief that anyone can create framework with enough time and effort. Don’t prove me wrong. 

My name is “B”. Through 2.7 years, I was together with a girl who I will call “M”, who is now my ex-girlfriend. I am keeping this anonymous to protect both of us. When we got together, I was in my early 20s, and she was 15. We, in our infinite wisdom, thought that we could beat the odds. We were convinced that it was possible to make an underage relationship work all the way to old age. In hindsight, that is an extremely hard task to successfully achieve. I thought that for the sake of cataloging my experiences and my revelations, I would write a fairly anonymous post about my underage relationship, how things progressed, and where things went wrong. Why? So others don’t make the same mistakes I made. 

There are numerous divides in an underage relationship. Firstly, the party that is older than 18 tends to be more independent, less needy, more enabled to do things. This is due to having a car or being able to take public transportation without a chaperone, money to go out and do things due to having a job, and key world experiences that aren’t accessible to a minor. The underage party, in contrast, will be tied down by definite obligations like school, chores, the inability to leave home, the inability to stay out past a curfew, and other people thinking for them. It basically comes down to the inability to contribute much beyond feelings to the relationship. A normal stable relationship between two people focuses on both parties doing their emotional and physical parts to keep things fresh, interesting, and sustained. Since the relationship I had did not have these sorts of necessary contributions from M, I can tell you that it is almost impossible for someone underage to contribute while still technically living under the wing of their parent (or parents). 

THIS IS REALLY LONG, CLOCKING IN AT ALMOST 10k WORDS. Make sure you have time to read it all the way through. It’d make me happy if you did. I even hope that M reads it, eventually. While I also hope she doesn’t get mad over the contents, this is my story from my perspective. She can spend the time to write her own story if she wants. She is a good writer, far above her peers, so that might be nice. Or she can bring any complaints to me directly :P But I’m posting this for my sake, and for everyone else who can benefit from my experience. I won’t hesitate.

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Over the past few years, I’ve created some decent drafts, the beginnings or already rough drafted versions of essays I decided to write. A lot of these I saved and never looked at again, tormented too much by my daily life to care about completion. Well, I don’t know how hard I’m really going to try on all those drafts, but I am sorting them. I am deleting the crappy ones. I am finishing up things that I at least got a rough draft out of. And then I’ll go through all my old posts, my old research, and decide if I should keep them here and work on them, or save them offline as bigger future projects. Some of my old religious research and explorations will need a lot of work to finish, and I may want to be thorough. We’ll see.

Why is this necessary? I’m working on clearing out all clutter in my life. Hooooboy there’s a lot of it. But it’s time I focused and did something. It’s time to stop moaning and crying when presented with something I don’t want to do, instead opting to do it quickly, efficiently, and moving on to other things. Without my past projects trailing me like toilet paper on your shoe, I’ll be better able to think about new projects and possibilities. My new attitude of JUST DO IT (nike, niggas) will also fuel these new-but-yet-unnamed projects.

I also have an extremely important project of mine that I finished and will publish soon. It’s the story of my semi-recent ex-girlfriend and I, written anonymously, to be published as a cautionary tale against underage relationships. It’s a giant step for me, and the details presented in the story are as fair and well-written as I could manage. I am thinking I might register a new domain name just for this, set up a web hosting account, and learn Wordpress at the same time. I’ll be deciding on these things in the next few days.

Meanwhile, I’m posting my Steins;Gate anime impression in a little bit, plus perhaps my “Framework” essay tomorrow if I make the time for it. And at the rate I’m going? I’ll be able to make time for it, in addition to working out, cooking and cleaning daily, and even a little gaming before bed ;d Check out the newest one I’ve been playing below: Tribes:Ascend!

This is raw and unrevised writing. You know, the best kind? Yeah, that.

Growing up as a Catholic boy (among other religious experiments by my mother), I was very conditioned to be someone who did not express his wants. In a lot of ways, religion caused me to consider others before myself in all decisions. This has caused me to morph into an empathetic monster, hypersensitive to people’s body language and expressions. I say monster because I’m by no means a genius. It is monstrous, the amount of variations between people. To examine these things in great detail is a fool’s task. Unfortunately, it’s the only way my mind works. So be it.

After my breakup 7 months ago, I had to figure out what I really wanted out of life. Did I want to fail at my Arizona experiment and move in with my Dad in Alabama? At age 26, I did not want to be like others, running to others for financial security. To date, my father has paid a lot of money to keep me going. I would hate to ask for anything else from him. Our family coffers, with my father as the sole contributor, are probably low due to the obligations to and expenditures by myself, my brother, and my horrible mother. I’d hate to do anything else to hurt my hard working dad’s finances, even if that puts more pressure on me. I decided to take care of my shit and really get my life stable again. I convinced myself that money is the root of all evil. It really is. But even I have to become a slave to money to keep going. So I’ll work, keep working, keep playing, and keep concentrating on what I want.

But what do I want out of life? Do I deserve to want anything, after all I had learned against wanting anything? Certainly, I was not prepared to be a successful member of society by my parents. I always felt like there wasn’t enough money for anything extra for me, so I almost never asked. When I did ask, I was often told no. Being denied so much discouraged me from asking for a lot of things at all. This also caused me not to want much. These experiences crippled my emotions, and they’re still healing to this day.

And before anyone can really take care of wants, they need to have their needs met. So, slowly and long coming, I’ve been taking an approach of putting my needs above others. This makes me a much more dynamic and outgoing person than in the past. It’s barely selfishness, but without losing sight of my long term success. So I was then able to figure out my needs, which are: an adequate injection of funds to pay my bills and debts, 5 1/2 hours of sleep minimum every night, privacy, nutritious and/or delicious food (many of cheap food types are hard for me to swallow), to feel attractive to myself and others, time to myself to ponder and sort thoughts, time to organize, time to dream out hypotheticals, to be trusted and close friends to respectable women, and people who listen and take me seriously. Hey, a girlfriend would be one of the people who listens and takes me seriously, but finding someone I’m compatible with (mentally and CIRCUMSTANCES like availability, moving away, any many more) is a chore without MONEY, my first need. I’m putting that above many other needs, which causes me to work more than 40 hours each week, easy. I imagine I won’t ask anyone out until I feel like I have a true surplus of money. We’ll see. A lack of a surplus also means I can’t spend on things like school or educational materials or musical instruments or computer equipment or art equipment. I can’t start new hobbies and travel to new places or try new things until I’m baller status.

So among my needs are things that require money to be fulfilled. This means I have a need for a specific amount of money to maintain my lifestyle’s needs. $1100 per month is the minimum number I have come up with. But that’s just stability, not freedom and surplus. My job pays well, so I make more than my minimum by a good amount. Any amount over my minimum is invested into paying off my debt, plus wants. 

My parents raised me to be frugal, to try and do things for myself, to try not to need money. Well, they kind of failed at this, but it gave me ideas. I never had much money to spend on me as a kid, so I have few needs when it comes to money. But I realized that to really define myself in any artistic field, I would need a lot of money to experiment with, and a lot of time to throw that money around in. Because of debts, my wants are still limited. But compared to before, when all I wanted was for my now ex-girlfriend to grow up, get a job, and move in, I have a lot more to look forward to. Losing myself in those three wants (when I couldn’t and shouldn’t have helped her become self-sufficient) invalidated myself, leaving me feeling pretty empty. Still, the stability in those wants was enough at the time.

What do I want? I want to own a car in good repair to take me places. I want a motorcycle to ride and work on. I want money and time to travel around the world. I want my own private land with a private residence plus treeeees and other growing things. I want a girlfriend/wife/partner in life that makes us a dynamic duo. I’m gonna wager that I’ll want sex pretty frequently. I want to purchase music equipment. I want to take a large set of music-related classes. I want to make music and create a following. I want to expand my writing into more creative areas. I want to be popular and idolized for at least some my abilities. I want to share some of my wants with my partner. I want to want more for myself and others. 

All my life, I’ve wanted to dabble in things and have a broad understanding of reality. As you can see from my wants list, I NEED money to fulfill my wants. Even when it comes to attracting a mate, it’s not attractive to be crippled financially. Hell, it’s probably more embarrassing to me than others, and I’ll happily keep it that way. But to be all that I want to be, and to share all that I want to with the people who are special to me, I have to enter society like a normal person. I have to climb the ladder and have a resume that shows my greatness. I have to start low, like I am right now, and win the approval of my peers and my boss through continued hard work. I’m talking about good managerial references, too.  I’ve had my problems in the past with maintaining mental stability with jobs, but I’m taking it slow, steady, and my patience is being rewarded.

This new approach to life is actually not what I really want, though. The ideal life for me is to always have my needs fulfilled and never be forced to dwell on wants at all. But to accepted by this society, you have to immerse yourself in it, and the only way out of society if to gather enough support inside to break free, financially and physically. I’m a long way away, but I’m confident I can do it. I’m really the same old person in the end. I just understand more about myself, filling in the gaps by fleshing out my story in this world. I love stories. In the end, I want my life to be a story people want to experience, no matter how much or how little money I have at the time :3