mindjames

Category: life

Writing that directly ties in to my life as a whole.

  • A Filmmaking Pull

    Foreword:

    I started writing this 2-3 months back, got a few paragraphs in, and forgot to finish writing it.. until now! I tried to reconcile my thought processes at the time, though I still kind of know where I was going, just not how I was getting there. In conclusion, I Frankenteined this thing, and so despite it coming out a bit like a Picasso painting, I think what I was trying to say is in there, and how I wanted to say it shows up in small portions.

    Ever since I was about 13 or 14 years old, I have actively been partaking in all types of video production (along with other media production). I think if you’re a young kid with a creatively oriented mind, there is no better hobby or passion to have, really. I also think that if you’re a shy kid, then the worth of it is even greater. I know I was provided a lot of opportunities to really be closer to myself through making short movies when I was younger, as opposed to the gravity that we all feel to resemble the singularity mind that is formed through a blend of our culture and society, the media, our communities and the collective minds of people our age. I could go on and on, sounding like a local actor reading a customer testimonial for how some small business product changed my life, but that isn’t what I’m here to achieve. The point is, it has had a big impact on my life, and I’d consider myself someone who has been involved with forms of media production for about half of my life.

    Given this path of enthusiasm my life has taken, I ultimately have tossed around the idea of using this passion and hobby and trying to monetize it or make a career out of it in some form. I know when I graduated high school I pretty much wanted nothing to do with it. I wanted to keep it as a hobby, something that I do for fun with some of my friends and that’s pretty much it. When I set on my Entrepreneurship major, it once again came into the picture as a key factor. One of the things I realized was I don’t really want to work. I surely don’t want to work some normal kind of job. It always bothered me in high school how everyone was so submissive and accepting of the norm of working– and because they are of high school age, working the crappiest possible jobs out there. It was just something you did when you came of age.I guess that there is a good point just from a financial perspective, especially if (attempting to finish this half-finished sentence 2 months after I started writing this….) your draw in life pretty much requires it. I am fortunate enough to have gotten by without the necessity of such a thing. My point here, which is actually quite deviated from what I am ultimately going to write about, is that I am not into the status quo. It is too easy to get lost in the current if everyone is headed that way, anyway.

    More to the point, I have tossed and turned, flipped and flopped, bounced and backed on my opinion of film/video production, though it ultimately has a strong linear progression; fun/hobby, career and future, creativity and possibly art (don’t like to use the word). Here is the thing with it all, I’ve been involved with this for so long, I’ve probably been involve with the creation of over 200-300 works, many very small and short, of course, but it has been a long time. Despite this, nothing I have helped produce has fully represented the creative being that is shelled up in this cage of flesh and bones. There are hints and signs of it there, but it is always very diluted.

    I’ve spent the past 2 years rather inactive with all of my creative pursuits; music, writing, video production, and so on. I’ve spent stacks of time these past 2 years inhaling, without any exhalation. I intake as much information as I can. Much of it is useless and rarely does any of it appear to coherently connect to anything else I’ve ‘researched’ (as I call it). For instance, I’ll spend several hours a day sometimes just reading and analyzing arguments held over various websites– interesting thing to note, most of the time the people arguing aren’t disagreeing by the time the argument is halfway through, despite the fervor of the dispute continually rising. There is no structure to this great engulfing of data, I just drift around the cyberverse and observe for a while, until I find myself prodding and poking around with a stick, until next thing I know I’ve got the microscope out, not taking off the lab coat, goggles and gloves until I can break down the professional Starcraft (a computer game released in the late 1990’s) scene in South Korea, or the entire life cycle of the Juice Boosted free internet scam from the early 2000’s, all the intricacies included. When you can’t sleep, anything can be engrossing. Three to eight in the morning flies by, too.

    One of the last stops I encountered on this journey of immersion was the viewing of my first Stanley Kubrick film. Kind of weird that I had gone so long with never seeing any of his works, especially considering the film ties and what not. Making things brief, the intake on this end still hasn’t ended, and more importantly, it has really shaped– reformed my ambitions. Beforehand, I knew that I couldn’t go too much longer ballooning up like this. I needed to get back to a state of output. Things were lining up for this to start happening, and I had plans, and several ideas in their fetal stages. I guess I just wanted to make some stuff, more than anything though. The difference now, is that I really want to get my vision out there. So often you’ll hear that phrase tossed around, like the director’s vision, or artistic vision and so on. In many other art forms, the creator’s vision is very clear due to the sole proprietorship of many creative outlets. In video production, film, TV and similar formats, it is really hard to produce something that is really what is stirring within yourself. I recently watched some Quentin Tarantino interviews, and he really made a good point about the difference between director’s and director’s who also write the movie’s they direct. Not to get into too much of the point he was making, it really is about the only real way that, in my opinion, someone can produce a film or short and have it be really, truly, closely connected to one’s vision for the project.

    So that is what had dawned on me. I really want to get my creative vision out there– if for noting else, then to just truly witness what that is outside of my own thoughts and feelings. I am pretty sure anyone who is familiar with the production work I’ve been involved in and the swb crew has this clear cut idea over the kind of stuff ‘we’ do… but nobody really knows what stirs in my head. It is very, very different. As I alluded to earlier, I want to honestly create, I wouldn’t say I want to make art, but just make a truthful effort to pool together all of the creative energy I may or may not actually have and make an honest effort. I’d call it a pull towards actual filmmaking. I’ve always loved doing the silly stuff we do, and I also really love the improv elements we often rely on, but it isn’t what I truly want to be doing right now. Not that I want to abandon that, and there is always time for that, it likely will never cease, but I am going to be driven by a much higher calling, in the creative sense.

    When you look at most ‘filmmakers’ or video producers and production companies, how many of them are just hired guns? I guess it is just the offspring of industry and art, but the idea of being someone who is just a hired gun, just hired for my technical abilities (and technical abilities even bleeds into the creative front, that is why we can be approached by someone for an actual job, like say a commercial and easily meet the creative needs, technically, because the writing and ideas behind everything are so standardized). Maybe I’ll lighten up on this a bit in time, but I’d rather be doing custodial work at a fast food joint than just a hired gun, as I call it. So what else do I call it? I want to get into filmmaking. I have no other way to put it. I’m not saying I want to do this as a career or anything like that, don’t confuse me there, I just want to be actively pursuing it, even if it is just on the side.

    I always appreciate guys like Harmony Korine, who just do nothing aside from pursuing what they are inspired to do. I don’t know if I watched Gummo or Trash Humpers if I’d like them, or really be able to relate to them well, but the guy is making stuff that is unique to him– we always see his creative vision. Furthermore, and this really would get me back to Kubrick, there is the potential to transcend beyond just that. Of course with Kubrick, he had this absolutely unique ability to weave together these mind blowingly complex and beautiful machinations and often obscure so many layers of his creative vision under surface narratives that had a pretty high level of accessibility, in terms of audience. This goes way beyond an intense 2 year period of absorption, this is 23 years of creative vision that hasn’t been truly witnessed. That is something I just need to see with my own eyes. No other medium comes as close to allowing someone to fully unveil what is inside a person.

    All these years of making things that would probably be referred to as funny, or attempted humor, and in all honesty, I’m not much of a humorist. I’ve got a few months of notes slowly piling up, and I hope that when those notes are in their complete form it turns out better than this, which I finished over the course of a few months, jaja. From April 20th, to June 21st, 5 am and my brain is out of juice. Good night

  • Remote control

    I’ve got a robot version of myself. I don’t want to get into technicalities, but essentially, it is an exact copy of me; a remotely controlled clone. It is easier to call him a robot, so I do. The appearance, the mannerisms, speech patterns, everything down to the last hair follicle are a carbon copy of ‘me’. Without myself, he is a soulless, lifeless shell.

    He sits in my room, toiling away on various inane tasks and school assignments. He goes to my classes for me and collects dust, and if he were of 20th century design, gather rust. With flawless impressionism, he masquerades from here to wither-to. He holds conversations with people. He can even pass for a young businessman in the making. Some say he has pretty good presentation skills. He makes small talk with the friends of my friends or other various persons he may happen to be introduced to. After he makes their acquaintance, he says, “hey,” to them when he sees them and emulates similar facial responsiveness and brightness as anyone else.

    In his ability to flawlessly be me, for me, he is a perfect being.

    I am far away. It isn’t even so much that I always want to be, but I am. I couldn’t tell you where I am exactly, but  space is deep and wide. It is a void so vast that far away becomes just another detail at a certain point. I’m at that point. I am far away.

    I like my robot. I can control him from where I am. I am myself via proxy.

    My robot is not perfect. Even operating under a robust remote control system, he can only emulate. If he were an ocean, he’d cover an entire planet in his soothing embrace, yet if you were to dive beneath you wouldn’t get very far. He is Solaris.

    My robot doesn’t care for the average lives of average people. He does not need to be liked, thank goodness, for a robot with such a need would require too many batteries. He doesn’t care about many things. I can only program him to handle so many things at a time. Yet, that is all I need of him.

    Where I am at, the matters of the life of my robot hold very little concern. When you’re in space you are consumed by the Alien. Earth does not accept the Alien concerns and the Alien tasks. Earth is the Alien’s prison and society is the warden.

    I am grateful for my robot. He serves my prison sentence for me. He is an incubator. He is like a pair of well-tinted sunglasses to a sleeping student, yet at the same time he is also the voice recorder in his pocket. Even better, he is the illusion of omnipresence. I am here and I am there, or so you think.

    He is here so I don’t have to be.

    When I find my way back home, you will never know I have been gone. Likewise, when I send my robot self to his vacation to the great beyond, you will never know he left you. One day, I’m sure I will miss the robot version of myself. Will you miss him?

  • On being in a rut

    Being caught somewhere on the negative end of a downward slope sucks. I’ve been riding this wave for a while, and I still have my days (like today) where I’m not sure if it is still headed down, if it has bottomed out, or if I am finally starting the long ascent back to sea level. I just know that right now, I am still in a rut. I mean, I’ve had a lot of my life upended in the past couple of months. When I refer to this concept of ‘my life’, I merely refer to the very thing that we become complacent in. The ways I am able and most often spend my time, the people I see and spend that time with, my daily and larger pursuits, the things I am able to turn to when I have absolutely nothing to do, and so on. Just imagine it as some shelves, on it you have your items, pictures of people and other things that ultimately go a long way in defining who you are at any given point in time. Today, I’ve taken a few things off of my shelves, and moved the position of a major one or two and even with the small number of changes, it is hard to go more than a few days without really feeling the effects.

    So what usually comes of such upheavals? In my case, it has really put me in a rut. I am optimistic that I am going to change the entire situation, and once again I’ll be the iconic figure of the man atop the hill, ready to staple his banner into the ground and declare that he is king of the world, but until then I know I can share many nights, empty spaces of time and vacant schedule feeling like I do tonight. I look back to where I was almost 2 months ago, I had just made a few cracks into the pile of rubble I was under and I could see some light. Eventually that turned into something that felt like I had finally liberated myself from what must have been a caved-in life. I had so much energy. I had enough ambition to power a shuttle to Neptune and back. I had my thumb on the reboot button; it was going to be a brand new story arc placed in the middle of the overarching one I had been caught in. I told myself that I’d go stir up some trouble, build some new bridges, and conquer lands neighboring and afar, then when I get done, I’ll circle it all back to where I started, and everything would be better than ever.

    I still believe in that dream.

    The problem is, I am looking at things almost 2 months following, and in many ways I recognize that I’m just a man standing in a hole in the ground. I’ve got my arms outstretched, you can often see the glow on my soot and rubble tattered face as I light up at the sight of any new opportunity.

    “Take me! I’m coming along!,” I shout as I see any potential adventure or adventurer cross my path, but I am unable to latch on.

    I’m still standing in this hole.

    As a younger man I had a lot more reckless abandonment residing within myself. There was once a time where I had a friend make a list of ten random girls that I would have to ‘pursue’ in order of intensity based on the number. It was silly, it was probably juvenile and if there were actually any hint of seriousness to it, probably could have been considered a little cruel (whether that would have been to me or any of the girls is up to hypothetical history). But it ultimately it was meaningless, just a little fun, I suppose. Today, I don’t know if there is any hint of a person who would do that on any grounds, and that really sucks. Sometimes I wonder if it has to do with age, and with having a few years on my belt I feel the ultimate truth of my mortality, even my social mortality.

    Socializing has always been an issue of turf. I have a lot of friends who are comfortable on any social ground. I’m not. I don’t want to play by your rules. I need to take you into my world, I need to let you experience my head– it doesn’t work like most people’s. Nobody has a mind that does, and I am not going to confine myself to the idea that we can establish a set of standards and norms that say that we should have quasi-cultural-universal expectations to constrain us. I used to have a habit of leaving without saying bye; specifically in larger social events. It wasn’t meant as a slight to anyone, or an indicator of rudeness, indifference, or disgust. It was just what I did. And you can’t argue that it is a more memorable departure. If you drop off the face of the earth, people wonder about your fall. What happened to you, where did you go, are you ok, what is wrong with you– the things a mind can wonder are limitless. Anyway, I unfortunately gave up that habit after I had my mom chew me out for it once. Of course, I didn’t resolve to quit because I thought she was right, I don’t, but out of the limitless respect I have for her. Though, I wish I had never given that up. I wish I had never given any of my social ground up.

    That is just the thing right now. I don’t have my own ground to stand on. I can’t usher you to my yard and say, “Hey, let’s stop inside my nice little cottage and take a look at how I’ve decorated the place.” This is too important to me though. I’m not good at being me if I am a foreigner. As it is now, I just wander from yard to yard, always on somebody else’s grounds. I guess in that regard I’m just a nomad searching for a land forgotten; no wonder why I’m uncomfortable.

    It is even harder when this social concept of territory always exponentially expanded with the territory of my own adversaries. As it is now, I still don’t feel very comfortable on my friend’s grounds. I’ve been away for a long time, I get back in town and most everything has changed. New faces, new places and a lack of time for an old one to fit back into the picture. As it stands now, I understand, with a lot more clarity, why people who drop off the map for a while and go through a lot of changes always seem so hesitant and distant coming back to the former pieces in their lives. It is hard not to feel alienated. In some ways, you’ve changed a lot, but everything that you left behind feels so constant. Who wants to feel restricted? Who wants to risk being judged, even? The way I see it, it is like you have someone who eats Mexican food all the time. It is their favorite, just all things Mexican food. One day, you introduce say, Italian or Chinese food. Now they have multiple apetites to fill, multiple flavors to explore, something different that sometimes holds their interest. What does that mean when they come home for dinner and would rather eat Spaghetti than Tacos? They don’t have anything against Chips and Salsa, they love them dearly, but maybe even just once a month, they really just feel an insatiable need for some Lasagna.

    Where do you go to get fed?

    Unfortunately, the Yellow Pages doesn’t have any application in a social semblance. So you get in a rut. The distance you feel between the old is just as great as the distance between the potential; what could be new. I’m impressed how much of an impact this has. You might feel an inspirational tug, but you try to get creative and you feel emptied out instead. You try to be productive and work hard, but you’re exhausted after one breath. You try to reconnect, but you feel bored, or like you’re just another obstacle in the schedule. You try to plug-in to something new, but you can’t find an outlet that looks like it can power you. You try and try, but you’ve already defeated yourself before you get out of bed. It isn’t that your world has collapsed on you, just your willpower to keep that from happening has. Recharge.

    As an individual, I recognize this process. I acknowledge these feelings. I… feel them, for lack of a better word. I don’t let that end the story, or a chapter, or a page, or even a sentence, if I can help it. A slump is a slump, if you keep on swinging, you’ll eventually swing your way out of it. Of course you have to work like crazy to improve that swing in the meantime, but that is the basic principle of it.

    I need my own ground to stand on.

    I need that equilibrium, and a home behind me to look back at so I can recognize that I, as a sole person, have influence in some magnitude on this planet. Eventually someone is going to recognize me again, or spot me hidden beneath the cluttered motion of a crowd– and that will just be the start. All I need is that foot in the door, or rather, that one foot on my own turf, and I know the hard part is done. I only hope that I have enough time between now and that moment. I need to circle it all back to the things and people in my former stage of life that were most important to me.

    For now, I will feel the effects of being in a rut. I will feel the people who have forgotten about me. I will feel the unfamiliarity between myself and my body, who once had so permanently etched into its memories the secrets on how to perform a number of feats. I will feel the betrayal the so-called-artist (for lack of a better term) felt when I abandoned him for all that time. I will feel holographic on my good days, and I will feel like God considered erasing me from all existence on my bad days. In the end though, I won’t forget people, or myself, or who has placed my existence. As much as I would love to look back and give the cold shoulder to anything that makes me feel so very buried right now, when I reach my monumental moment on that hill, and I raise this flag over my head and with a quaking declaration have my moment of reestablishment, I will do so knowing that I will do all that I can to prevent the long process set into motion that ultimately sends us plummeting into a rut such as the one I am in.

    Being in a slump, or a rut, or a funk, or whatever it is to you makes yourself easy prey to all sorts of negativity. Even right now I want to at least be cynical. I owe Conan one on this. I was younger once, and I felt in a similar kind of place. Being cold got me where I wanted– what I wanted, but what good was all that cynicism? Being warm-hearted about everything will get me to the same ground. It took a lot to not accept the state I’m feeling right now just to write this, but I did. Maybe starting right now I’ll get back to climbing out of this hole I’m standing in.

  • Title: blank

    Well, I told myself I was going to keep doing this every few days, and it looks like its that time. Unfortunately, the past several days have been pretty quiet for me lately. It is like one of those moments with a literary quality to it, where you know someone has just about reached a point where their demise is inevitable, and everyone involved is silent; trying to keep distracted. Scenarios play out over and over in the mind, as they try to hold on to the slim hope that things will end up ok.

    Tranquility has an unspoken viciousness to it. There’s always hope though. Maybe next time I’ll have more to say.

  • Unfortunately..

    Man, this is kind of a bummer. Unfortunately, I had figured that I would get some downtime tonight, after the past two days I was able to stay pretty busy. So I figured I’d stamp some more words down. I had wanted to talk about some stuff I had thought a lot about this past semester, which relates to various things arts and entertainment; most likely TV, film or music related. Instead, I find that I can’t really focus on a thought long enough to reach the end of its trail.

    So while it really pisses me off that I have to, it looks like I need to address these other things once and get it out of the way. I don’t like writing so introspectively all the time, especially when it is more down. I don’t even like carrying the portrayal as someone being down or anything. I’m not going to lie, I’ve had a lot of times in my personal life the last year to year and a half that adequately called for feeling down as a response. At the same time, I don’t think I ever lost my ability to be ‘up’ during most of my worst moments. I mean, who wants to be around someone who is down all the time? Granted, I think that, hopefully, we all have a high level of compassion that is going to draw us to people during those times, but it usually isn’t fun.

    I think my dad summed it up best one night durign a conversation we had over the Internet. I can’t remember the details on this, but he was about go to sleep and was just checking in on me and I made some remark that made him crack up and he said something along the lines, “at least you never lost your sense of humor through everything.” First off, to be honest, I’m thrilled that I talk to my dad via the Internet probably over every othr mode of communication (unless I’m home), because there is nothing weird about it. My parents on facebook and what not crack me up, and it is easy to mess with their heads on there. Second, I think that only reaffirms what I was saying a second ago, and if I am going to be writing, I don’t want my writing to reflect that. Overall, I still love to laugh and have a good time probably above all other things, even if I’m feeling below plankton on the food chain, I’d like to think that at least for moments I can shake things off and enjoy things.. well, worth enjoying.

    As of right now though, I can’t deny my introspective nature, nor the fact that I often feel down lately. But what else could be expected? This is probably the point where I end up writing things that get me into some sort of trouble, but that’s ok, not that I’m intending to get into any trouble, but who wants to live without any risks anyway?– we all know TV is better without the FCC.

    My girlfriend of about two years, the very lovely Kara Seale, and I decided to take a break recently, colliding perfectly with winter break starting. I think when I put it that way it probably sounds more mutual than it is, because it is probably 99% me on that and the 1% which consists of her being supportive and loving as opposed to my irrationality, stupidity, insensitivity and selfishness. Nothing associated with this decision is easy, I am starting to become more affirmed as each day hits that it really was necessary though– not that I wanted it to be or ever would have.

    In summation, it has really sucked. I’m not used to being this lonely. I’m not used to having this much free time. I’m not used to doing whatever and not having to being guaranteed to have to consider the impact my decision making has on another person. So what do we have? This odd mix of extreme liberation and sadness. It probably couldn’t have happened at a worse time though!

    Let’s just pick up with some truths that have developed for me over the past 1 1/2 years. For one– and I really realize and accept this now more than ever– I have undergone a complete social minimalization. As with most relationships, I think some shrinking is expected in that regard, but I’m saying minimalization here because it has come that far. Let me preface real quick and say that this effect was never intentional on anyone’s part, I know that the course of life ultimately dictated it. It kind of reminds me of the spine. I saw this thing on TV a few months ago about tall people. There was this English guy who was 7 feet and some change. His whole life he was self-conscious about how tall he was and hunched over a lot to compensate for it in terms of how he saw himself. After spending a lifetime hunched over, he pretty much screwed his whole back over and shrunk some. It also turns out that even without the messed up spine, he wasn’t 7’5 like he thought, but only 6’11 if you round up– how you are so far off on your measurements is beyond me (and one of the funniest moments I’ve ever seen on TV HAHAHA..). Spines are just like that, if it is twisted, contorted and scrunched up for so long, it is so difficult to reverse it, the only chance is really to take drastic measures.

    I guess that is where I ended up. As of right now, I am pretty much beginning to conclude that the structure of the relationship was strained because of lot of weight put on it for so long that it is really a lot to expect to be able to fix things from the inside. I’m not saying that can’t or couldn’t be done, I’m sure it could, but at the same time, to do it that way– surely over a long period of time puts a strain on both people. It could definitely do a lot more damage than just the structure.

    Anyway, those are only some thoughts I’m beginning to really muddle through so far, but that’s not even what I’m wanting to get at right now. I was mentioning the collusion with this break– or whatever in the world it could be labeled– with the semester ending. For me, taking out school also took out one of the largest social aspects I had going for me, and it makes me sad. Granted, school and especially classes isn’t really a big social outing for me, nor would I expect it to be, but it was a forced social entry along with just carrying a lot of atmospheric social elements.

    Let me expand on that real quick.

    Right now, its 10:30 at night and I’m sitting on a futon with a laptop and a dog that needs a bath in complete solitude and silence. There is nobody around at all– not proportionately speaking. Most people have already gone home. Then you have people who are around.. they are all busy. For instance, my roommate is hanging out with his frat buddies right now, and I’m sure that most people I have had any sort of interaction with the last few weeks have something going on. Though there is a small voluntary aspect to where I am tonight, it really highlights that while I have been undergoing a social minimization for a long time, most people have been establishing and/or building on top of previous friendships that entire time. So I am now injected into a situation where to get any social interaction requires a direct effort and also the resources in terms of connections. I’m definitely very thin on the resources. This makes the effort even harder. It doesn’t make much difference how well I know the person or people, to extend myself and express any sort of sociality causes me to feel somewhat insecure about it. I guess I’m just not used to it anymore.

    Let’s backtrack real quick. When I first entered college, my first roommate was Josh ‘Big Cheese’ Homer. This is a man who I’m fortunate enough to regard as a brother, and one thing about Cheese is he is an extremely social guy. On campus he was always a legendary social figure, I mean, I don’t think that in the history of Belmont you could really choose anyone who exceeds him in this aspect. My following two roommates really aren’t slouches socially either. Biddle is highly involved and Horse gets the respect of everyone he meets pretty much (except me). Just in this regard, it would have been impossible to go through school so far without a strong link to a very active social life– or at least a broad one. For two years it was certainly like that.

    I would never regard myself as a social giant, but I think I usually peak around to a point where I have at least strong acquaintance status with more people than I can keep tabs on. Anytime I go back to my high school in some sort of function (ie to see how the basketball team is looking in any given year or graduation), I always spend a ton of my time getting a little bit of face time with most people I run into (of course it is hard to not know everyone when you go to a small school). I never had any sort of social minimalization in high school. Granted, my senior year I had some tendencies to try and disconnect myself from most everyone, but it didn’t have any drastic effects. Just from mid-point sophomore year to mid-point junior year I had a drastic difference. Even the difference from the present to the beginning of junior year is not unlike the difference between a millionaire to some high school punk working for minimum wage at McDonalds when it comes to friends– whether the inner circle or the loosest use of the term ‘friends’ (most loose?). I think that I am seeking a reboot of sorts in this regard, but it is harder than ever.

    If I had to try and make an objective assessment on myself, which is impossible, I’d say that at my social peak I can be a pretty entertaining and funny person. On a side note, it always usually depends on how well I know who I’m around, I think subconsciously I spend a lot of time gauging people and probing around to figure out what their personalities respond to, which is why it can take a long time for me to warm up to people I don’t know that well. I mean, I just think a lot of really good times I had over the years– in big crowds or in smaller and varied groups of people. I have faint memories of this person who once existed.

    It is hard for me to speak these days, even with people who have remained closer friends to me through all my losses. I know why this is better than I ever have. It doesn’t matter the context, whenever there is some sort of interaction between me and at least one other person I am always questioning myself.

    “What would I have said or done in the past in this case?”

    I never come up with anything satisfying.

    Instead, I just get locked up in my thought. I remain pretty quiet. I often throw out ‘white flag’ responses that act as a form of self-surrender. It is really frustrating. I know who I was, but I don’t know where he ran off to.  There is a large part of me missing and I’m longing for that, yet there is little I can do to put myself out there right now and try and rediscover my sorely missed self. So I get stuck wallowing, feeling bad for what I’ve done, missing what I’ve, for now, given up, and facebooking too much, ha.

    I have always had a weird rift of being my mom and dad’s son. It has worked out real well for me, especially once I started to understand how to take advantage of it. My dad is more prone to be quiet (he isn’t a quiet guy by any means though). He gets sucked into his passions, for him that is music mainly. He has to recharge or build up to go and be overly social. My mom feeds off of what sucks the life out of my dad. She loves to enjoy life with other people, and she loves being entertaining. This is over simplifying it, but these are two ideas that apply to me directly. I haven’t gotten in touch with my “inner mom” for a long time. I think a lot of it is not being limited either. Socially, I know I need variables of uncertainty or at least inconsistency to really have something to feed off of; something to drive me, yet at the same time I need to be able to rely on that tight circle I’ve always had. Working on that inner circle is a lot easier, which leaves me longing for the uncertainty a lot more. I’ve no way to connect with it though.

    I’ll probably start summing it up here, because honestly, nobody is really going to read it anyway, and the couple friends and one random person per century who do deserve the courtesy to not have to drag their eyes through miles of word hiking. I don’t want to give off the impression that I’m starting to be affirmed that this break is something that at least I needed for purely social aspects because it is so much more.

    What I need to affirm is that this social aspect is the one that is clearly taking the largest toll on me right now, making progress on many of the other aspects has been quick and fulfilling (though they still have a good ways to go too).

    This stuff is definitely hard, but I have always welcomed a challenge.

    I have realized, or rather remembered, that socially, I am about as welcoming as it comes. Even if it takes me a long time to get in sync with new people, I am always looking for that opportunity just to get to know somebody at least a little bit.

    Welcome, friends. My name is James, it is good to meet you.