2010 in retrospect

So I actually like doing these posts - I certainly enjoyed doing it last year, despite saying that I hated reminiscing about things immediately after they happen.  The only problem with doing that is often you're too emotionally involved with what you're discussing that you say things that you don't mean later.  However, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because it allows you to observe how you've changed and grown as a person. 

Unless of course there is absolutely nothing to discuss.  Oh hai, 2010.

(btw this movie pretty much sums up how fucking retarded 2010 was)

In 2009 I predicted that 2010 would "be my year."  That was not true by any extent.  2010 is a year I've described and hopefully will continue to describe as the single most static year of my life.  As I said on Facebook, this is as close as you can get to describing a year as if it were an episode of Seinfeld.  No hugging, no learning.  2009 (and 2008, before I purged all pre-tour posts) were marked by profound personal growth that led me in a giant circle of faux-self-discovery to where I am today, which is essentially the same thing that I was before high school.  Basically, I ended this year the same way it began, which was the same way that I was before those damn hormones decided to kick in:  a hypercritical lonely nerd.  The only difference is that now I've gained a little bit of self-awareness.  Maybe it's not even that.  Maybe high school is about exposing you to all the different types of people and teaching how to deal with them, whereas college exists as nothing more than a really expensive platform to show you what you want to do for a living. 

Aside from a lack of growth, 2010 was also static in that nothing happened to me this entire year.  Nothing.  I started off the year lamenting the fact that I didn't have any very close relationships with people outside of my own family.   I guess I improved on that a bit after graduating, maybe.  I don't know.  Romance?  I'm also aware of how unwise it is to post this information here, but I've definitely failed about three times over (quite literally) with entering a romantic relationship.  Hoo boy.  All three fucking cases involved getting turned down by incredible women not because of disinterest in dating me but because I was too late to ask these women out before they went off with other, universally more attractive guys than me.  In every fucking case.  I told myself not to be bitter about these things, and I'm not actually bitter toward anybody in particular.  It's bitterness directed toward impossibly horrible timing and probability (three times - I couldn't make this up) as well the fact that being turned down for no reason other than "not in the cards for you, buddy" allows zero room for any sort of personal growth, because I'm not doing anything inherently wrong.  Which is my main problem with 2010. 

Music?  I didn't play any this year.  Well, I did.  But I was apathetic about all of it, even whilst playing it.  Safe to say that passion was deftly killed by boredom.  I also lost my mind a few times.  The evidence is in the unpublished drafts in this god damn blog.  Maybe that was also because of boredom.  Who knows?  The brain's gotta keep itself occupied.  Fortunately yesterday I got to play marimba for the first time since May.  For five minutes, mind you, but still enough to be successful.  It felt great.

Politics?  Normally this wouldn't be anything worth noting, but I've just lost all faith in the American political system due to corruption in the process of electing our representatives (campaigns can now be funded by multinational corporations without any sort of cap on the amount campaigns can be given, and campaigns don't have to disclose the identity of their donors), which is also probably part of the reason for the huge swing in favor of extreme conservative candidates with the election.  If we knew who these corporations were, I guarantee that they'd back the campaigns that promise less government restriction on commercial/environmental/whatever activities.  Need evidence of how much corruption was already in place before the election?  Rep. Joe Barton of Texas makes a public apology to BP after Obama urged them (well, demanded) to set up a fund for families whose income was damaged by the big oil spill this summer.  Are you fucking kidding me?  If you're a puppet for environmental-assfucking energy companies, at least make sure you keep that little tidbit a secret, you retarded asshole.  And that's just the tip of the iceberg.  There's also the BP oil spill, carbon emissions reduction failing, the newly GOP-controlled house setting up a massive probe to investigate the "fraud that is global warming", denying 9/11 first responders healthcare coverage, extending tax cuts for the richest people in the country despite an enormous deficit, denying extending unemployment until the aforementioned tax cuts were extended, shooting down a gender-centric pay equity bill (basically just for shits and giggles, no good reason), and most of all just being a bunch of assholes who are completely out of touch with the people they're governing.

College?  Don't really know very many people there.  Got a few close contacts.  It's going well, grade-wise.  One time I was told how much we'd all changed since entering college.  So, so wrong.  The reality is that extrinsic change isn't necessarily determinant of intrinsic change.  Such is the case with college.  You're given a blank slate, but when you're an open book is there any opportunity to change yourself?  Not really.  Well, I tried to give myself a bit of an ego.  Whether or not I'm better off as a result of that attempted change is unclear.

I'm a fairly pessimistic person, you see.  But I'm sort of realizing - though I can't be sure, the idea only came to me two days ago - that my problem stems from a fundamental lack of understanding of the nature of mental illness.  Growing up I had problems with insomnia and anxiety (both of which I've overcome, insomnia especially), and I was put in therapy through the ages of twelve through thirteen.  My therapist concluded that I was fine and sent me off without a diagnosis.  I had serious issues.  Being told that insane amounts of mental agony on a daily basis is completely normal is not a good way to get a kid to grow up happy.  And since I did get over them alright within two or three years, I concluded that therapy and self-help books and all that are bullshit (which I still think they are) and that drugs aren't necessary.  Rejected the notion that I have faulty brain chemistry.  Attributed all my fits of anxiety and depression to whatever the circumstances were at the time.  I never wanted to think I was crazy.  Hell, I probably am crazy.  Mental illness is both a precursor and a prerequisite to craziness.  Am I mentally ill?  I damn sure don't ever want to think it, but with each day that my emotions zip around like a seismograph in Southern California - unpredictably and occasionally ferociously - there's a stronger and stronger case building for it.  The only problem is that I feel that if I can't diagnose it, nobody else can.  Which stems from having either a massive ego or from being ignorant.  Mental illnesses are, by nature, unpredictable and detrimental patterns of thought - but whatever it is that's eating me isn't really capable in my mind of being lumped with the generic clinical depression or bipolar disorder.  This fact also doesn't help my whole argument for clinical psychology being a load of shit.  I'm not really sure what to do about this.  I don't really have the shame to pick myself up and get "help" or whatever it is they call having people put words in your mouth to get you to feel better these days.  And frankly I don't want to have to be told that I'm fine again and that this is normal life for everybody.  This fucking sucks.  All change that matters is intrinsic and that doesn't happen when all extrinsic circumstances do are keep you from changing rather than facilitating it.  But if therapy and/or drugs are what it takes, whatever, I guess.  New year's resolution: Come to terms with this.

The main problem is that I don't even know what I want anymore.  Everything is out of my control right now - essentially, all I can do to make my life better is try to overwhelm myself to the point where my only concerns are outside of the realm of emotion and critical thinking.  Make myself into a god damn robot until the world catches up to me.  Or else keep thinking about until I figure out what I'm doing wrong and catch up with the rest of the world.

Whatever.  Oh, 2011, how I long for your sweet embrace.

The most beautiful moment of my life (thus far)

It was the day of my 8:00 a.m. Engineering final exam.  I was killing time in my dorm because I set my alarm to 6:30 out of fear of oversleeping.  I grabbed a pop tart and was about to take off at about 7:45 because I then decided I wanted to throw on a fleece and not freeze my ass off on the walk down the hill to the building where my exam took place.  I started listening to Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" not for any reason in particular other than that it's a good song and the title struck me as funny considering that it was 8 a.m.  I'm putting up the song just for the purpose of recreating the story as the song played out. 

Anyway, as I passed the east side of Bursley a bunch of deer came out of the woods right where I was standing, literally walking all around me, completely calm, presumably unspooked by college kids walking on their turf 24/7.  Right as they were walking in front of me the sun broke over the horizon right in time with the part of the song where it's all euphoric and epic sounding.  That was all that I really needed to assure me that I was going to utterly devastate my final exam (which I did), but to top it off, the exact second that I stepped into the building, the song reached the tempo change near the end (you know the part) and I literally skipped the rest of the way to my exam.

Never again will a moment as musical and magical and well-timed ever happen in my life.  Well, I hope it does, but that Thursday morning is going to be hard to beat. 

Everything Sorta Sucks

Might as well get the inane tripe out of the way - everything sort of does actually suck.  It's the end of the semester and not only am I under a large amount of stress (arguably since the first time since midway through my junior year of high school), I am not catching a break.  Not catching a break being a gross understatement.

The most far removed from the shitstorm was the organic chemistry exam I am positive I didn't do well on at all.  That was four minutes ago, really, so maybe it isn't that far removed and the adverse effects just haven't shown themselves yet.  I've also been missing classes due to not being able to wake up due to very poor sleep patterns.  Not insomnia level (I've been there, trust me) but enough to keep me from being alert.  And on top of that I've also been having memory issues that may have arisen from this.  I misplace things much more than usual and forget to charge my phone and forget when I have to be places and basically everything important. 

Also here goes some nerdy bullshit: we recently did an engineering project for my programming class that involved reading in commands for creating a playlist and then writing these playlists into file.  The output of my program matched the output of the sample program we're given exactly, but I got a 28/85.  Why?  My program refuses to write playlists into file for any filename that ends with a character that isn't a letter.  Which makes no sense, because this error wasn't present when I submitted it.  Which means that either someone fucked with my code, or that they fucked up their grading program (which they did, since most kids in the damn class actually got a 28 out of 85 and somehow this is our fault, this error was completely unforeseeable based on the sample music libraries and playlist names we were told to use and also not at all addressed in the project specification...).  Basically, fuck this.  It's like if you submitted a ten-page paper and only had the third page graded because the rest were printed on off-white paper or something completely stupid like that.  "You were supposed to take into account that only every 10th page is white and we don't read off-white here - this is a university, bitch".

So anyway, this was one of two contributing factors toward me cancelling a visit to Ann Arbor to go to see an event played by the student organization discussed in "Fuck Math" (avoiding calling them by name so as not to appear on blog search for them, which is a bit neurotic).  I needed the time to try to salvage my grade and actually pass this damn class which I was previously doing fine in.  The other reason is that I was planning on going to the funeral of a friend of mine who committed suicide last Thursday.

Okay, here comes the genuinely depressing part. 

Might as well get this out of the way - I'm not going to his funeral due to this engineering fiasco, either.  It's the same day as the event.  I feel like a gigantic asshole, too - I never want to come across as the person who didn't care enough to trek back home to say goodbye to his friend.  I am angry that this had to happen, too.  Everything.  This is actually the first time that I've ever lost anybody that I was close to.  And even worse is the fact that it was a suicide.  It's worse because even though we all know better, I can't help but think that I could have prevented this.  Don't criticize me for thinking that - it is, I feel, a natural response when something like this happens - even though realistically I could not, since we don't even live in the same city anymore.  Guilt that you didn't make someone's life nice enough for them to want to keep living, I mean.  I don't want to get into the details my relationship with him here, but it needs to be said that he was one of my favorite people.  I knew him through pit and tennis and high school and he was always putting smiles on everybody's faces.  He is missed deeply.  I miss him deeply.

The one spot of hope in this entire event is that I know for sure that the one real friend I've even made on campus was a great choice.  My neighbor Danny Boy (actually a girl, but I use nicknames here) heard me crying - understandable considering that I pretty much lost it after hearing the news - and came over a little while later to see what was up. (Thank you for not doing this while I was sobbing hysterically, by the way, that would have been incredibly awkward.)  I told her about what happened and she spent the next hour comforting me like a surrogate mother or something, even though it's questionable whether I needed it at that point anymore.  (Well I did, it's just that I was done bawling and had moved onto a shock-like "what the hell do I do now" state.)  It was, by a mile, the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me on campus.  I was given an incredible display of compassion that I won't ever forget and I'm so grateful for it.  I just really hope that such a display ever needs to be given again.  Because that would suck even more.

Unfortunately, that's not all.  A major part of what's seriously sucking can't even be discussed on this blog because it involves a confessed reader.  Which sucks.  I guess maybe there'll come a day for this subject to be discussed at length, but that time is not now.

The more important part of those two months

Surprisingly not nearly as much comes to mind as remarkable or memorable.  But I'll tell you about classes.

My chem lab is ending in a super-long lab that is not going incredibly well, which sucks because, as of this writing, there is only one lab session remaining which supposedly ought to be dedicated to reorganizing our equipment to make sure that we haven't lost anything.  It's going to be a clusterfuck on Friday.  My chem lecture has also devolved into the "routine" of organic chemistry, which no longer deals with understanding thoroughly the structure behind organic molecules and their reactions, but with memorizing what sort of materials do what when you mix them together.  I am not excited about this.  Engineering is still programming, but thankfully we've moved beyond C++.  This was still quite easy for me, but still tedious.  I can't even remember if I mentioned this but I took a class where we learned the basics of C++ my sophomore year.  I hated it and thought I wouldn't remember any of it but that little bit set me leaps and bounds ahead of everybody else in my class.  Now we're in MATLAB (which is supposedly a common programming language for engineers, but I wouldn't know) and it's still remarkably easy.  I really hope I wind up with an A because any less is indicative of my laziness rather than any sort of difficulty in understanding the class.  Calculus... well, let's just say I'm glad I didn't take Calc I again, because I am pretty well caught up to what we're doing now, but it's damn difficult.  My A on the first exam was pretty definitively a fluke, as I did worse on the second exam despite the average being a bit higher.  It was still a B+ but the decrease in confidence in the material we were learning was much more remarkable.  Needless to say it is my most difficult class.  But I'll still end up with an A or a high B assuming I stay consistent with my final exam. 

The whole DJ business with "Fuck Math" has not progressed at all since I posted it.  I'm pretty sure it's not going to happen due to stricter noise enforcements due to complaints. (thank you, jackass-in-my-hall-who-loves-blink-182-too-much-to-stay-even-remotely-quiet-about-it)  That and they still haven't moved the furniture out of the room.  Oh well.  At least the whole path to becoming a DJ is a lot clearer and interesting.  On my wish list for Christmas is a mixer with two iPod components that you can essentially operate like a turntable, all for around $100.  It's pretty amateur, but that's exactly what I am, is it not?  Joining MEDMA is the best thing I've done on campus, as I've discovered so much great music and enjoy listening to it.  Not so much finding it though.  The talent required to make good EDM is a lot less obvious to many than it is for rock music or other genres, so as a result, there's a lot more shit to weed through.  Luckily MEDMA has an active forum supported mainly by its core members where new music is posted with healthy frequency, and most of it is actually good.

The best night on campus involved a visit from a man named Coon (which also rather hilariously involved an incident with a raccoon only a few feet away from biting range crawling out of a garbage can at the bus stop).  It was the day of the Michigan vs. Michigan State game.  Before entering we went "pre-gaming" which didn't actually involve any drinking, but rather beating the shit out of a green sedan with a sledgehammer to raise money for breast cancer awareness. (breast cancer = foreshadowing) We left after the third quarter when it was apparent that we were going to get our asses handed to us.  Later that night, after a game of foursquare in Northwood apartments, we returned to central campus to get in line for a midnight screening of "the Citizen Kane of bad movies," The Room.  Jesus.  Fucking.  Christ.  Disregard the fact that we were practically the first people in line and thus waited an unnecessary amount of time to get in.  Disregard the fact that our football team lost miserably.  This, ladies and gentlemen, made up for it by the truckload.  This is easily the most fun I've ever had at a movie screening in my life.  More fun than the now-infamous G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  GO SEE THIS MOVIE.  It will change your life.  And bring spoons.  Lots of em.  After this awesomeness we returned to the central bus stop where we ran into some of the funniest drunk people ever.

Tall guy: "Hey I totally know you from somewhere!"
Short guy: "Really?"
Tall guy: "Maybe."

Same tall guy:  "Have you ever taken a piss outside of the C.C. Little building?"
Me: "No."
Same tall guy: (awestruck) "Oh, it's beautiful..."

Me: "Dude, I only ever see you at the bus stop at 2 a.m."
Different short guy: "I think I'm about as drunk and high as I was last time, too."

Michigan State student:  (screaming, tears streaming down his face) "Yeah, that's right!  I can't read and I can't write!  I only go to a fucking... university!  I'm just an idiot!  FUCK ALL OF YOU.  FUCK ALL OF YOU."

Then there was a fight that broke out right in front of the last bus back to North, so we ended up half-assedly attempting to break it up and calling the cops instead of getting on.  I felt mildly heroic.  But then we walked the 20-30 minute trek back North instead, only making it back at 3:30 (keep in mind it took about an hour to even get close to getting on a bus).  It was a great day.

I saw a series of shows through knowing a ton of theater kids, since I hang out most often with my neighbor and my most-frequently-seen comrade from high school, both of whom are actors.  One of them was called The Diver, which was a show about a woman with multiple personalities (or something) that was generally more concerned with packing as much Japanese folklore and symbolism into itself in one hour than it was with being coherent.  But of course it was good.  I also attended an event known as 24 hour theater in which several one-act plays are written, rehearsed and performed in one day-long marathon.  It was beautiful.  Mostly because every one of them was hilarious, but for completely different reasons.

Other than that, nothing to report other than probable mental illness and general neurosis.  The longest paragraph I've ever written is stored as a draft describing pretty much everything I can possibly hate about myself.  I don't think I should delete it but I don't think I'm going to post it either.  Instead I'll tease you with its existence.  Haha.  Sucks to be you.  But then again it also apparently sucks to be me.  Anyway, after fall break things just sorta went downhill with regards to my mental health.  I can't be left alone like this.  The short of it all is that I have a semi-immature dependency on other people.  And I don't want to say it because it sounds horrible, but I pretty much depend on other people to determine my self-worth.  This is a huge problem, and I recognize it.  I'm doing everything that I can to fix it, but I'm not sure I want to.  I am just not a person who stays away from connecting to people, and a true connection almost always involves some sort of give-and-take relationship.  Otherwise, why bother talking to someone?

Two months

Hey, I'm back.  Kinda, anyway.  I didn't really leave.  In fact I wrote a lot of disturbing stuff that I never ended up posting whenever I felt like shit, which happened a lot more often than usual in the past two months or so.  Maybe I'll post it later (but it is awful disturbing).  For the sake of not having an entire month without posting on my track record, here's a quick overview of what has gone down when I've been at home (overall about nine days since moving to Ann Arbor), more or less in order. 

• Watched the majority of Season 4 of Lost in one sitting with my friend JK overnight.
• Went to see my sister/my high school marching band play their final competition for the 2010 season and WIN.  I was so proud, and jealous that it wasn't me.  However I'll still maintain that my performance at the same competition in 2009, despite only placing third, was the best I've ever played (and, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, the last show I played on a field).  Caught up with old friends. 
• Got yelled at for stealing season 2 of Gossip Girl, subsequently stole season 1 of Glee. (arguably more heterosexual)
• Visited K College, met up with sweet people, played duets on a piano in my friend's hall, made an epic photobooth album with a girl and then (much) later asked her out awkwardly.  Yeah... still single.  But it was still a good night. 
• Returned later for one day so that I could attend my own Eagle ceremony (Eagle Scout!  Now I almost seem cooler, I think.)  Also awkward, but there were tacos.
• Got a haircut, then a ride back to Ann Arbor from my friend who goes to Eastern Michigan in Ypsilanti.  Fun stuff.
• Returned home for Thanksgiving with cool people, had a very good car ride conversation about relationships and politics and geography and college and life in general. 
• Did absolutely nothing for the first few days.  Bored out of my mind.
• Thanksgiving: hyperactive seven-year-old cousin crawls all over head, I pass out from overeating, watch the Lions get their asses handed to them, then sleep all the way back to Portage from Niles.  Later that night go to see Deathly Hallows the second time with my family (First time occurred in AA, more on that later) It was awesome.  Narrowly dodged stepping in puke on the sidewalk both when entering and exiting the theater.  Almost get killed by my dad hitting a deer on the passenger's side when he was driving home.  It was terrifying. 
• Watched the Lost Season 5 finale with JKuo (we watched season five separately and then met up for this later).  Easily the most frustrating and confusing episode of television ever made.  We both shat our pants, even though I knew what was going to happen.  After, we ran to McD's and got the McRib.  Delicious.
• Hung out with people at Tiger's house (I'm having trouble remembering what nickname's I'm giving people.)  Then went to another friend's house and hung out with a bunch of cool nerdy people and I watched some kid play this game called "LSD" which is the rarest game released on the PS2.  It's pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.  It was terrifying.  I then went on Omegle for several hours and saw many, many dicks.  It was a blast.  We watched Wizards again!
• Made the traverse to a newer friend's house the next night after waking up around noon, had a severe allergic reaction to his cat and then went home and fell asleep around midnight.  I was up for about 12 hours total.  We built a blanket fort and watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (for about the 8th time in a row) and talked about our college adventures. 

I'll make an update about what's gone on when I was actually at college later.