Brian’s World

Black Ink

Its rare that I’m handling a multiple threads of negative things at the same time in my life.  Historically, when things are going not well for me, they tend to be going not well one at a time.  Right now I feel (and I know that feeling isn’t the most accurate method of measurement here) that things are going not well on several fronts.  I’m struggling to identify if I’m failing to compartmentalize as effectively as I need to be, if I’m suffering from a lack of motivation, or something else.

I’ve found that I’m frustrating people who I dislike to upset with some of my planned and repetitive behavior.  Unfortunately I do the same thing just about every day.  You can set your calendar by what I wear for clothes, the list of places I dine at and things I eat could be counted on one hand, and my options of “fun things to do” has remained fairly stagnant over the past few years.  It’s not that I don’t like changing things up, but its very rare that changes are going to make things better for me.  Far more likely, I find myself opting for changes that benefit others because I know they feel pulled down as a result of me… or the changes I’d like to see are simply unacceptable for the standards others.

Most people who have been involved with me when planning some sort of complicated travel plan would believe I’m against traveling.  That is not true; I am no hermit, and I feel quite skilled at navigating complex maps, airports, and directions.  However the whole pre-departure bit can be a challenge for me.  I think I’m using the word challenge a lot, because its more opaque than words like disaster, uncomfortable, terrified, etc.  In my current state, I live with my family, who are all great family members.  As someone who is 21, I have remained with the same privilege level as I did when I was 17 or 18.  This would be acceptable if the state previously established exceeded the limit or would appropriate satisfy the requirements others have of me now that I am 21.  Alas that is not the case.  I am prompted on a daily basis to head to bed before midnight and encouraged to escort my friends out between 11 and 11:30pm.  Sometimes, even waking up early (like 5:45 AM) will invoke a negative response.  Personally, I wouldn’t mind going to bed at, say 11:30pm, if all my work was done and most of the time, I feel I exercise moderately good judgement when deciding when friends should leave.  However, my current environment doesn’t allow me to appropriately practice such decision making skills without feeling dejected and unaccepted.

I progress.  In the past, I have taken a very very very small number of trips that involved a >2 hour drive to a location where we stayed for longer than 6 hours.  I can’t think of any one of those trips that made me feel like I wasn’t a terrible person when I asked-permission/informed parties of my intent to attend or previous act of attendance.  I get very put off to things that produce repeated negative results.  I can certainly understand that a first or maybe second event would produce some spite, but the continual production of it only hampers my will to try again.

Frequently I get upset, looking around at the environment of others and find myself thinking “how did they get there?” but realistically knowing that being able to follow a similar approach would likely not yield the intended results.

Pulling at me is this concept that I am may be a lesser person, or maybe that’s what my conditioning has made me.  Someone who shouldn’t experience, who shouldn’t think, who shouldn’t disappoint… at least for now.  I don’t see others struggle between two, struggling to find the solution that fits both holes no matter how complicated it may be.  On a positive day I would tell myself to keep going, recognizing that progress can only be made by spinning the wheel, even if it doesn’t move where you want it to.  Today is not a positive day. I find myself disappointed in myself on multiple fronts, and presently unable or unwilling to move.  Unfortunately that lack of momentum will hurt me just as much as moving, but I’ve never been able to provide enough.

I’ve come to accept that its my fault, and I’m ok being written off as a failure if you’d like.  If I were someone else, I’d have trouble writing it off as anything else.

Corn Fields

I recently charged up the stairs with a fork feeling adventuresome.  As I predicted, there was no adventure atop the stairs for me and my fork to experience.  I lay it in the sink, to be recycled for another escapade.

Tonight I had the pleasure of viewing The Secret Life of the American Teenager, which really doesn’t describe the show very well at all.  In the show, everyone is having intercourse and everyone knows it.  In addition, just about everyone in the show who has intercourse gets pregnant.  I am not sure what is  the “secret” in this show, since all of the characters know whats going on, but maybe this “secret” will be developed later… unlike 24, where there are over 9000 secrets within the first hour.

The Secret Life (as I believe its commonly reduced to) seemingly portrays a growing trend among teenagers that certain behaviors are common in a high school setting, which I’m not sure is accurate.  One might cite the chiken-and-the-egg argument here, but I could see shows like The Secret Life serving to only increase the behavior amongst teens.  While the show doesn’t represent everything as the super coolest thing ever, I found that negative consequences were commonly downplayed in the show, likely because sad, depressing, and frustrating plots are not popular amonst the target audience.  I’m lead to believe this show, in addition to others on air (I can cite half of MTV’s lineup), serves not as an inspiration, exposure, or a motivator like people tend to associate violent video games with kids shooting people, but more as a catalyst; increasing the rate at which something that was statistically likely to happen anyways does occur.  I dislike this.  While I’ve graduated high school three years ago, I think some of my work still holds true.  The behavior of “impressionables” (aka some teenagers) is heavily effected by those older than them, and those more popular for them.  Fundamentally, I’ve used this to explain why things like curse words are becoming popular at younger and younger ages, and I suspect we’ll unfortunately see the chest fabric density continue to decrease over time.  As a television show, “The Secret Life” suffiently qualifies as popular, despite the lack of Hannah Montanna or Jamie Spears or the Jonas Brothern.  Strangely enough, I found little references to the age or grade of chacters in tonights episode.  New viewers, or people like myself who just have no clue, are left to pick a number for their age,  complimented with the shows plot that builds a high level of presented maturity for most characters, one could easily have replaced reference to school with college and visa-versa.

I think someone out there is thinking they are doing everyone a favor by showing people the potential pitfalls of actions using this show,  but I remember as a teenager I was only motivated more to do better when I had seen that others failed to turn lemons into lemonade.  Luckily, most of my shows which return in the fall have a minimal number of children under 7 and rarely is someone pregnant.  If someone is pregnant on House, NCIS, or Jack Baurer’s distant but young relatives come into play I am going to be tres unhappy.

I hoped to speak about issues more relavent to myself in this post, so let me see if I can get back on track.

Sometimes I find myself conflicted.  Conflicted between what I want to do, what I should do, what I should do for others, and what I should try and get others to want to do.  Together I think those 4 options cover all of my bases very accurately.  Regularly things are requested of me or others effecting me which I’m not very comfortable with, yet I bother not to speak try and do differently.  For example, my mom believes that doing the laundry in the evening/night is a foolish concept… and so it doing laundry on a Sunday, despite the good alignment that presents with my clothes rotation and the decreased load on the electrical grid and the potential cost savings (I doubt SHEL has time of day meters).  I have simply avoided trying to change anyones ways on this, not because I don’t care about it (today Monday I wore Tuesday’s backup shirt…. and that is tres frustrating) but because I’m not very interested in the process by which change can occur.

When I’m on my own, I pretty much control my own process by which change occurs.  Most of the time I like to change things slowly, but when I want to I can change quickly… the important part is that things are up to me.  In some instances where I feel like I should be able to effect some sort of process as a leader/experienced person/alike, I’m finding myself more and more stifled.  Those changes I do see occuring aren’t bad, but they aren’t always what I had in mind, and it would be nice for that to be taken into account once.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts:

1. The average of negative infinity and a high number less than infinity is still negative infinity.
2. I dislike being placed on peoples “creeps” list, and I will pretend to not notice and not take it personally even though it clearly is

Good night moon.

Smalltalk

This post will be brief.  I am presently 20 minutes late to bed, so I will be 20 minutes + writing time late to bed when I finish this post.  The beginning of June hasn’t been terribly eventful on most, if not all fronts.  I’ve been busy working on my project for RPI’s Center for Open Source Software, Bonsai Video.  You can track my progress updates at my blog for that project, http://vms.brispace.net.

One thing I have been thinking about is the future, and what it has in store.  Partially for me, for others, and for the world.  I remember sitting down at a Scoutmaster’s Conference with Mr. Roberts and he asked me what my aspiration was with scouting.  I always replied something along the lines of: After passing this and my Board of Review, I’ll probably be looking to the next rank… be it First Class, Star, Life, etc.  He would always prompt me in response with a question like “well, are you thinking about trying for Eagle [scout rank]” and I would always respond that my goal is going to be the next rank that I can get, and we’ll see where that gets me.  I won’t say that I’m poor at planning and thinking about the future, I’m usually just have too much stuff going on in the present to think far ahead.  I also dislike planning too far ahead, because then one early change in plans can mess your entire route up.

For example, I should be graduating RPI next May (2010) if all goes according to plan.  (The Web Tech Group has a notoriously low on-time graduation rate.. but I hope to beat that.)  I know I need to start figuring out what I’ll be doing after I graduate, but its not easy for me.  As I see it, I have 2 paths that I could look down, start a career sort or deal or further my education with something like a masters.  I’ve never been a super-huge fan of the whole education deal, because at some point I’d like to start actually using things that I’ve been taught learned… and I would prefer to do so before I’m too old; but I understand that seeking a masters degree may actually put me in a field and course of study with things that I do care about, and topics that are exciting to me.  Then again, if I can get a good job which can turn into a career.. or even not a career kinda thing, but something a little bulkier than an internship,  my educational experiences are less important.  It would be really neat (yet completely unlikely) if I had like a job offer and a grad school offer thing to choose from some point over the next year.  I don’t know if this “down” economy will or will not effect what I’m doing.  I like to think not, as more people are using computers than ever.

Sometimes I text message myself.