I often find myself thinking "Ah, to be so young again." when I see people playing Counter-Strike: Source with me. Many of the players are between ten and fifteen years old. I wonder how they would react to a forcast of how their next five to ten years will play out. It would go a little something like this:
So, you're twelve, huh? Well, I know it may not seem like it, but the next eight years of your life are going to fly by. Time may not appear to be flying for you at the moment in the sixth grade, but it soon will. It only gets faster. Your life only speeds up, even if you find you are doing less than you used to. You will soon graduate from middle school, and you will be glad you have. At this point in your life, everyone older appears to be against you. Many are. Most are not.
Once you become a freshman in high school, you'll have an awkward year. You will love the freedom that a high school offers compared to what you knew before. You will make new friends, even if you don't try. Your freshman year will go by quite fast. When summer comes, you'll think back on your previous year and you'll think about how you enjoyed it. The next two years you will feel like you are really part of the ownership of the school. You won't feel like a targeted freshman anymore. It's your territory now. These are to be your last two fully enjoyable years, but you won't see that yet.
Your senior year will be different somehow. You're barely older than you were before, but there is no longer any group of people there that have been around longer (except for staff). It's truely your school now. The first semester of this year will fly faster than you even imagined possible over the summer. When you come back after Christmas, you will start to feel the end coming closer, but it won't be until the last month of the semester that you truely feel the urgency of a major change in your life. By now you will have experienced death almost surely. It probably won't be anyone you knew very well, but it will probably be somebody you at least met. You'll begin to realize that you aren't immortal. This isn't to say you couldn't comprehend that it was possible to die before, but you just never really imagined it was possible.
You'll be sad at graduation, but the summer will go pretty smoothly. The only catch is when your friends start to leave before you. You won't be hanging out with them anymore. You will miss them dearly for months. You'll eventually get over this, but it will take many years. You probably won't ever fully get over the shift. You are no longer around everyone you came to know and love to talk to every day for eight hours. You will struggle to fill the void left by this seperation. Nothing will seem to do it: food, alcohol, new friends, sex, concerts, gaming...nothing really takes the place of the strong bond you had and that feeling in your heart.
Right now you don't even think about it. All of this will numb you. You won't feel the holidays or seasons anymore. You can't "feel" Christmas as a special time. Sure, you can decorate a tree or dress up, but that does little to establish that warm feeling you used to have as a kid. Everything just somehow feels less interesting.
Enjoy it while you've got it. I keep waiting for the respawn, but I know it will never happen. Here is the curse. Once you're old enough to realize that what I've said is even remotely true, it will have already all have happened. You won't believe me now. You can't. I don't expect you to. The futility of knowledge and experience...it's ironic in a way.
But, there's no time for this now. You've got a flag to capture...a zombie to kill...a mission to complete. Go for it.
Life is a sad reality. Things never quite work out as you've planned, do they?
Monday, October 15, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Things Were Going Just Fine Until...
I don't really know what causes it, but from time to time I get into a mood of nostalgic semi-depression. It can be set off by nearly anything that reminds me of the way things used to be. It can be a picture, a name, a birthday...just about anything. As a whole, it is an insanely complex concept. I doubt I will ever understand it as I do a program. I can only see the results (the feelings)--not the code.
Anyway, today's nostalgia was triggered by looking at Justin's Danielle pictures collection on Facebook. I'd never taken the time to look at it before. Perhaps I was just afraid of remembering The Event in more than a superficial, naming way as I normally do. That's exactly what happened. I began to mentally spiral through the whole thing again. The whole, terrible Costa Rica thing. I remember the people that we lost. I remember the memories that made them special. That is what makes me depressed. It's something I try to avoid when possible. Maybe that's the only reason it still haunts me so.
That June day of last year, I lost a best friend. I'm guessing that is what makes the memories so lasting, so dark...so sad. It disturbs me that I don't have the same problem with other people I've lost. My grandma and grandpa on my mother's side passed away in 2000. Haley Hilderbrand was killed in 2005 by a tiger. I had just spent the entire year with her on the yearbook staff. My point is that these were people I knew personally. They are not people who make me feel this way, however. Out of the four lost in Costa Rica, it is Carlson that really gets to me. Perhaps it is because he was one of the few people who really "got" me. He understood what I was about. I am not simply a gun-loving computer geek. Those things are hobbies--those are not my personality.
Maybe it is because I always feel so isolated. The isolation didn't really begin until I graduated from LCHS. Suddenly, I was thrust from a way of life where I was constantly in contact with hundreds of people, many of whom I had known since early in gradeschool, to an environment where you actually have to make an effort to even see a dozen people you know in the space of a week. College at a university never really worked out for me. If it wasn't for my roommate being an awesome guy, I'd probably have gone nutty from feeling so alone. This is really a subject for another time. The point is that perhaps the feeling of being depressed because of the loss of Carlson is related to being more isolated. He was always one of those people worth talking to because they would actually respond to you over IM or phone--a true friend instead of just somebody I'd known. I've had many "friends" but few have kept me in their circles after graduation. It's not that I'm no longer welcome. It's just that without the convenience of being around each other every day anyway (school), we don't communicate. Hence, the friendship isn't special. It's not a connection that either of us couldn't live without.
Carlson wasn't like that. Kyle isn't like that. I'm running on 50% here, folks. I doubt that I'll ever manage to make this situation clear to the likes of an outsider no matter how much I write about it. It would take too longer to ever effectively communicate. There are others out there that have had the same situation. If you are one, you know what I'm talking about even though I have failed to communicate it properly. More detail is best saved for another time.
Anyway, today's nostalgia was triggered by looking at Justin's Danielle pictures collection on Facebook. I'd never taken the time to look at it before. Perhaps I was just afraid of remembering The Event in more than a superficial, naming way as I normally do. That's exactly what happened. I began to mentally spiral through the whole thing again. The whole, terrible Costa Rica thing. I remember the people that we lost. I remember the memories that made them special. That is what makes me depressed. It's something I try to avoid when possible. Maybe that's the only reason it still haunts me so.
That June day of last year, I lost a best friend. I'm guessing that is what makes the memories so lasting, so dark...so sad. It disturbs me that I don't have the same problem with other people I've lost. My grandma and grandpa on my mother's side passed away in 2000. Haley Hilderbrand was killed in 2005 by a tiger. I had just spent the entire year with her on the yearbook staff. My point is that these were people I knew personally. They are not people who make me feel this way, however. Out of the four lost in Costa Rica, it is Carlson that really gets to me. Perhaps it is because he was one of the few people who really "got" me. He understood what I was about. I am not simply a gun-loving computer geek. Those things are hobbies--those are not my personality.
Maybe it is because I always feel so isolated. The isolation didn't really begin until I graduated from LCHS. Suddenly, I was thrust from a way of life where I was constantly in contact with hundreds of people, many of whom I had known since early in gradeschool, to an environment where you actually have to make an effort to even see a dozen people you know in the space of a week. College at a university never really worked out for me. If it wasn't for my roommate being an awesome guy, I'd probably have gone nutty from feeling so alone. This is really a subject for another time. The point is that perhaps the feeling of being depressed because of the loss of Carlson is related to being more isolated. He was always one of those people worth talking to because they would actually respond to you over IM or phone--a true friend instead of just somebody I'd known. I've had many "friends" but few have kept me in their circles after graduation. It's not that I'm no longer welcome. It's just that without the convenience of being around each other every day anyway (school), we don't communicate. Hence, the friendship isn't special. It's not a connection that either of us couldn't live without.
Carlson wasn't like that. Kyle isn't like that. I'm running on 50% here, folks. I doubt that I'll ever manage to make this situation clear to the likes of an outsider no matter how much I write about it. It would take too longer to ever effectively communicate. There are others out there that have had the same situation. If you are one, you know what I'm talking about even though I have failed to communicate it properly. More detail is best saved for another time.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
I Hate Blogs
I hate blogs. I really, honestly do. That doesn't mean I don't feel like publishing one from time to time.
I think that the appeal of writing a blog is the ability to just throw one's thoughts out into the void, never having to address a specific audience, never having to engage in a multi-directional conversation...there's absolutely no responsibility to it. It's only half of a conversation. There are no ties to a publisher or commitment to a level of quality. Just whatever is on your mind can be shared in its raw, unprocessed form. If somebody else wanders upon your ramblings and feels like commenting, they're welcome to. If somebody agrees with you, that's great. If somebody thinks you're batty, well, that's even better. If everybody thought the same way, we'd have little to show in the way of scientific advancement.
So, why do I hate blogs? It's not just the stigma. It is very similar to how MySpace users are viewed (from the outside) to be loners, losers, or otherwise strange. Facebook and others are viewed similarly. When you grow up not ever hearing anyone's real feelings or thoughts, it's hard to get used to knowing everyone's unadulterated realities. It's not just strange for readers. It's actually a little bit scary as an author. Do you really want people to know what you are thinking all the time? Probably not. One's mind is the only place they are truly free these days. The government can tax your possessions, they can tax or outlaw your hobbies, etc. You aren't free in the physical world, but your mind...at least for now...is yours and yours alone. Don't let anyone pry that away from you. Think for yourself. Listen to others but draw your own conclusions. Don't let yourself be an automaton like most of the people around you. Perhaps this is a topic for another time.
I think that the appeal of writing a blog is the ability to just throw one's thoughts out into the void, never having to address a specific audience, never having to engage in a multi-directional conversation...there's absolutely no responsibility to it. It's only half of a conversation. There are no ties to a publisher or commitment to a level of quality. Just whatever is on your mind can be shared in its raw, unprocessed form. If somebody else wanders upon your ramblings and feels like commenting, they're welcome to. If somebody agrees with you, that's great. If somebody thinks you're batty, well, that's even better. If everybody thought the same way, we'd have little to show in the way of scientific advancement.
So, why do I hate blogs? It's not just the stigma. It is very similar to how MySpace users are viewed (from the outside) to be loners, losers, or otherwise strange. Facebook and others are viewed similarly. When you grow up not ever hearing anyone's real feelings or thoughts, it's hard to get used to knowing everyone's unadulterated realities. It's not just strange for readers. It's actually a little bit scary as an author. Do you really want people to know what you are thinking all the time? Probably not. One's mind is the only place they are truly free these days. The government can tax your possessions, they can tax or outlaw your hobbies, etc. You aren't free in the physical world, but your mind...at least for now...is yours and yours alone. Don't let anyone pry that away from you. Think for yourself. Listen to others but draw your own conclusions. Don't let yourself be an automaton like most of the people around you. Perhaps this is a topic for another time.
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