I find myself wondering what will happen when I finally kick the bucket. What will be my final biography? Or even my obituary? Will I do something grand enough to earn my own prestigious Wikipedia page? I doubt it. But if I did, I hope that my brief biography is so absurd that many will questions its validation.
Ideally, it would start like this:
Johnny Walker, author of the best-selling books, "Pardon Me, But is that Your Penis in my Soup?" and "I Swear I Didn't Mean to be so Charming: My Sexual Harassment Lawsuit" and of course "I Just Shit My Pants: My Grand Journey to Below Rock Bottom," finally died today at the frail, empty age of 114 after jumping in front of several bullets for the Pope's secret illegitimate son.
The mid-section would just document my odyssey of failure and other mediocre achievements. I imagine my other "achievements" would just be failures in disguise but would seem like achievements because they were the first failures of their kind. There would probably be a section about how I spent millions of dollars that I borrowed from various banks to launch coffee beans into space with a trajectory for the Sun's orbit. This would ensure that I get the most extreme coffee roast possible. But it would fail one of two ways. Either I would just launch it directly into the sun on accident or the beans would come back too burned and full of deadly radiation to make coffee from. My next round of failures would probably be a bad batch of TV pilots that just remake Sanford and Son 6 different times with an all white midget supporting cast. Or possibly be a failed criminal kingpin of the no longer lucrative business of robbing trains for cattle.
I would hope the next section would deal with my bizarre personal life. Perhaps being known as a person who collects fine mustards but uses them to paint his house odd hues of yellow and uses the jars to collect hummingbird urine believing it has healing properties. Or maybe I'll have a neat subsection about my crippling addiction to plastic surgery; having everything enhanced well beyond societies standards for tolerably attractive.
I can't think of anything else absurd to say. Maybe I'll continue it later. Or maybe I'll leaving you wanting more on my fictional biography.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Monday, July 28, 2014
I Wish I Was an Inventor
Everyone wants to be an inventor of Edison-like proportions, churning out one successful idea after another nearly seamlessly. It would be a sweet self-employed job if you were any good at it. The problem with this is that almost no one is really an inventor. Most people are just hacks.
Yep. Hacks.
There I said it.
Everyone seems to invent the same thing at least 8 times, claim it as their own, go to the patent office, find out someone else has already successfully executed and marketed the idea, go back home and tell people in the company of their friends and family they invented it first or tell people they invented it and act completely unaware it's already out on the market, then go on to fail to invent anything else and return to life as usual.
Everyone knows someone like this. An uncle, a friend, a crazy co-worker. Someone out there you know is a self-proclaimed inventor who "invented" something we already enjoy but takes every opportunity to lament a story of woe about how they were going to or wished they would have because they would now be drowning in money and bitches. (Yes, I'm aware of the clunky, run-on sentence but I don't care so suck it.)
I'm not making fun of these people. I get it. I really do. It all makes sense. If I was a successful, marketable inventor I would be as smug and pretentious as possible. Who wouldn't want to be that person? The person who invented that thing that everyone uses? I would use my accomplishments as first sentence ice breakers when joining conversations I wasn't invited to.
I could see it now. A group of people would be standing around mumbling amongst themselves about the new guy at the office or something similarly uninteresting. I would briskly and casually enter their conversation circle. Everyone would turn to look at me and wonder "Who the hell is he? Do we know this guy?" A brief silence would befall this group of strangers, now about to become my newest group of fake suck-up friends for the next hour or so. My hands would be in my pockets as I slowly rock back and forth on my heels a couple of times. My moment is now to break the ice and let everyone know who I am. Not by name though. That would be too formal for an inventor of my caliber. The first line out of my smug mouth would be:
"So I'm relatively certain I'm the guy who invented the perpetual motion machine......"
The circle of strangers would now collapse and gravitate towards my greatness, shaking my hand, asking me how I'm doing, offering me stogeys and priceless family heirlooms to bribe me into a less superficial friendship. I would accept all their gifts but not their acquaintanceships. I would casually remark about how I managed to invent my device and offhandedly mention how my product does nothing more than provide electricity and power for the entire world. No big deal. I'm no hero. Just a guy in a tweed jacket who somehow made a difference for all the little people out there. After I got tired of the phonies, I would look at my $4000 dollar watch that's not even set for the correct timezone and excuse myself citing important meetings. People would try to get my number as I strolled out, but I would condescendingly tell them that a guy as rich as me primarily communicates via telepathy with other rich people. I would also state that I use phones to exclusively dial late night 1-900 numbers to "fight off cases of the lonelies." With that, I would put on a fedora that I wasn't wearing before, tip my hat to them, remove the fedora, then step on to my private 4 story helicopter and fly away to my sky mansion.
Seriously. Who doesn't want to be that guy?
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Stunted
Emotionally stunted.
I've heard those words before and not just because I've said them.
I've never really been good at dealing with my feelings or emotions. When I do have them, I don't cope with them well. When I don't have them, I wonder if I am devoid of the human experience.
When I do feel something, good or bad, I feel too much. Become too invested. Feel too much of one extreme or the other. Really good. Really bad. Too much happiness. Too much pain. Too much fun. Too much depression.
Other times, I feel like I should feel something but don't. Not because it doesn't matter to me or isn't important. I just fail to have an emotional response towards some situations and people. There is no consistency or patter as to when I don't feel something. It just doesn't trigger a response. Am I just too distracted or absorbed with what's going on in my head? Or is my mind protecting me from myself? Protecting me from my own intense emotions? Keeping me on the straight and narrow of logic and reason?
I've always known this about myself. I've always been a little guarded and a little shy. I let few people into my life; my inner circle. I don't value hundreds of thousands of "friends" or acquaintances. I always feel the more people I know, the more of a liability they are to turn on me or use me. While the acquaintances I do know are good people, I can't help but have my guard up at all times. I have built walls around me tall and thick to keep them out. I've defended these walls for years. No one gets by unless I let them.
I'm not unfriendly. People at work know me, but they don't really know me. We are friendly and get along well. We have fun and we joke. But outside of the confines of the professional environment, we are awkward strangers. While many of my co-workers are friends outside of work, I have broken that barrier rarely and generally briefly. They know facts about me that most people can learn by looking at my Facebook, but they don't know me. I've generally kept it that way by my own accord, not theirs.
I can hold conversations with other people and strangers if needed. I work in the medical field so I'm required to have some social skills. But that's easy. There's no expectations of who I should be other than friendly and competent. Meeting new people outside of work is hard for me. I stay quiet and observe while I get a feel for who is who. Even if I see them multiple times and I'm not sure about them, I keep my guard up. I can hold a conversation and be friendly, but I assume they don't like me until I feel the contrary.
It's all a contradiction really. Everyone has already jumped to that conclusion by this point. How do you get people to like you if you don't open up or be more proactive? How do you expect people to be your friend when you can't let them be your friend? Long story short, I'm not sure. I don't have any answers for it. Just more questions. Do I even want people to like me? I can only feel when it strikes me to feel. I worry that when I don't feel that I may be wasting my feelings elsewhere on things that don't matter such as when some women label themselves as a self-proclaimed "high maintenance bitch." Or wasting my feelings on road rage or worrying about all the worst case future scenarios that aren't likely to happen.
Sometimes I feel too little towards the people who want to be the closest and worry too much about the things and people who matter the least. Sometimes I feel nothing in the face of absolute chaos and feel too much when in the spotlight of other people's thoughts. Sometimes my emotions overtake me like a tsunami and other times they are completely absent when I need them the most. Is it that I think too much and care too little? Do I spend more time thinking about feeling more than I do actually feeling?
So how do I deal with emotions then? Not very well. My top options are usually self isolation to think it all out and writing or often times a heavy combination of the two. In the last couple of years, exercise has been a good outlet but it doesn't seem to solve everything the way isolation and writing does. For a while, food was a resource for me to use. Fast food has been my achilles heel in a lot of ways. Eating away the pain, leading to massive weight gain and physically feeling like utter crap as a result. Thank goodness I'm not an alcoholic or drug addict or I would be a wreck. If fast food is my worst way of dealing with things, then I should consider myself lucky. Other methods I have used have generally dealt with going out fishing or hiking by myself but I find that's more of a subcategory of isolation.
More questions. More questions. Why do I bother writing this down if it doesn't change anything? Why write this all on here for the world to see? What does it matter? Questions. Questions. Questions. No easy answers.
All I know for sure is that currently being isolated and writing this down has made me feel better.
I've heard those words before and not just because I've said them.
I've never really been good at dealing with my feelings or emotions. When I do have them, I don't cope with them well. When I don't have them, I wonder if I am devoid of the human experience.
When I do feel something, good or bad, I feel too much. Become too invested. Feel too much of one extreme or the other. Really good. Really bad. Too much happiness. Too much pain. Too much fun. Too much depression.
Other times, I feel like I should feel something but don't. Not because it doesn't matter to me or isn't important. I just fail to have an emotional response towards some situations and people. There is no consistency or patter as to when I don't feel something. It just doesn't trigger a response. Am I just too distracted or absorbed with what's going on in my head? Or is my mind protecting me from myself? Protecting me from my own intense emotions? Keeping me on the straight and narrow of logic and reason?
I've always known this about myself. I've always been a little guarded and a little shy. I let few people into my life; my inner circle. I don't value hundreds of thousands of "friends" or acquaintances. I always feel the more people I know, the more of a liability they are to turn on me or use me. While the acquaintances I do know are good people, I can't help but have my guard up at all times. I have built walls around me tall and thick to keep them out. I've defended these walls for years. No one gets by unless I let them.
I'm not unfriendly. People at work know me, but they don't really know me. We are friendly and get along well. We have fun and we joke. But outside of the confines of the professional environment, we are awkward strangers. While many of my co-workers are friends outside of work, I have broken that barrier rarely and generally briefly. They know facts about me that most people can learn by looking at my Facebook, but they don't know me. I've generally kept it that way by my own accord, not theirs.
I can hold conversations with other people and strangers if needed. I work in the medical field so I'm required to have some social skills. But that's easy. There's no expectations of who I should be other than friendly and competent. Meeting new people outside of work is hard for me. I stay quiet and observe while I get a feel for who is who. Even if I see them multiple times and I'm not sure about them, I keep my guard up. I can hold a conversation and be friendly, but I assume they don't like me until I feel the contrary.
It's all a contradiction really. Everyone has already jumped to that conclusion by this point. How do you get people to like you if you don't open up or be more proactive? How do you expect people to be your friend when you can't let them be your friend? Long story short, I'm not sure. I don't have any answers for it. Just more questions. Do I even want people to like me? I can only feel when it strikes me to feel. I worry that when I don't feel that I may be wasting my feelings elsewhere on things that don't matter such as when some women label themselves as a self-proclaimed "high maintenance bitch." Or wasting my feelings on road rage or worrying about all the worst case future scenarios that aren't likely to happen.
Sometimes I feel too little towards the people who want to be the closest and worry too much about the things and people who matter the least. Sometimes I feel nothing in the face of absolute chaos and feel too much when in the spotlight of other people's thoughts. Sometimes my emotions overtake me like a tsunami and other times they are completely absent when I need them the most. Is it that I think too much and care too little? Do I spend more time thinking about feeling more than I do actually feeling?
So how do I deal with emotions then? Not very well. My top options are usually self isolation to think it all out and writing or often times a heavy combination of the two. In the last couple of years, exercise has been a good outlet but it doesn't seem to solve everything the way isolation and writing does. For a while, food was a resource for me to use. Fast food has been my achilles heel in a lot of ways. Eating away the pain, leading to massive weight gain and physically feeling like utter crap as a result. Thank goodness I'm not an alcoholic or drug addict or I would be a wreck. If fast food is my worst way of dealing with things, then I should consider myself lucky. Other methods I have used have generally dealt with going out fishing or hiking by myself but I find that's more of a subcategory of isolation.
More questions. More questions. Why do I bother writing this down if it doesn't change anything? Why write this all on here for the world to see? What does it matter? Questions. Questions. Questions. No easy answers.
All I know for sure is that currently being isolated and writing this down has made me feel better.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Lost People
It's funny running into old memories of people you used to know. It seems to happen to me every few years or so. Something triggers a nostalgic trip to the past featuring people I used to know. Which usually forces me to Facebook stalk them to figure out what has happened to them. It's strange to catch up so superficially. You can't tell that much through pictures. I found myself tempted to send them a message to say hello, make it less informal on my part. But in the end I held back and rationalized that some doors are best left closed. It was strange seeing some of their faces and contrasting against my memory. So much has changed since the last time I have seen them. In my mind, they still have the same youthful faces from when we last talked. But now, time is starting to take its toll. We aren't just some young 20-somethings getting into stupid trouble. Like it or not, we're all adults now with adult lives and adult responsibilities. Some had children of their own, some had big jobs and others stayed the same.
It would be impossible to adequately remember every single face we have ever known. Our brains simply don't work that way. Lesser acquaintances are forgotten in favor of remembering more relevant and recent ones. After all, the older lesser acquaintances serve no more of a function for your mind right? So these people are whisked away to the dusty corners of our mind until we happen to find something that reminds us of them again. As humans, we have a way of egotistically thinking that just because someone isn't actively existing in our lives that that person doesn't exist at all. From a certain perspective that's true. But in a far bigger way, it's hopelessly false. People keep living their lives whether you're there or not. When we run into these people again, we almost exclaim to ourselves "Holy shit, you exist still!?" as if they dematerialize into the universe the second we stop seeing them.
I ran into another person I've lost touch with a long time ago. A 21-year old version of me. I found some old photos of myself floating around on someone else's Facebook account. I was fucking fat. I'm sorry but there was no other way to put that. I forgot how heavy I got. At first I was embarrassed about it, but then I got mad. It was like that moment in Spaceballs when the president gets put through the teleporter and comes out the other side with his head on backwards, to which he exclaims:
It would be impossible to adequately remember every single face we have ever known. Our brains simply don't work that way. Lesser acquaintances are forgotten in favor of remembering more relevant and recent ones. After all, the older lesser acquaintances serve no more of a function for your mind right? So these people are whisked away to the dusty corners of our mind until we happen to find something that reminds us of them again. As humans, we have a way of egotistically thinking that just because someone isn't actively existing in our lives that that person doesn't exist at all. From a certain perspective that's true. But in a far bigger way, it's hopelessly false. People keep living their lives whether you're there or not. When we run into these people again, we almost exclaim to ourselves "Holy shit, you exist still!?" as if they dematerialize into the universe the second we stop seeing them.
I ran into another person I've lost touch with a long time ago. A 21-year old version of me. I found some old photos of myself floating around on someone else's Facebook account. I was fucking fat. I'm sorry but there was no other way to put that. I forgot how heavy I got. At first I was embarrassed about it, but then I got mad. It was like that moment in Spaceballs when the president gets put through the teleporter and comes out the other side with his head on backwards, to which he exclaims:
"Why didn't anyone tell me my ass was so big!?"
That's exactly how I felt looking at those pictures. Why didn't anyone tell me I had gotten so fucking fat?! It was bad. No one told me how I was busting out of my clothes from weight gain........the bad kind of weight gain. But I remember back then, I thought I didn't look too bad. What the hell was I doing deluding myself into that mind set? I was one weird guy. A lot has changed since then in a mostly good way.
I don't really have any meaningful or insightful conclusion for this post. So I'm just going to end it..............
Now.
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