My living room

Here's a picture of the incredible rasterbation that my roommate spent 3 days working on. I have the coolest living room in this apartment complex by far.

Like a Ro-woah-woah-llercoaster

The last couple weeks have definitely been filled with ups and downs, as my friends and I start new parts of our lives. A few of us are doing it together, but mostly we are going our separate ways. When I was a freshman, I knew that eventually I would have to say goodbye to all the friends I had made in my time at Harding. I guess I pictured a big post-graduation party where we spent one last night laughing and telling stories and etc etc. Fitting with the theme that this blog seems to have developed, expectation versus actuality, there wasn't any party. Some people I saw for the last time for who knows how long during finals. I got to spend two weeks with a few more of them over intercession, but no matter when I saw them last, it was uneventful. The closest I came to having an actual goodbye with someone♦ was Chris saying "Hey I guess this is last time I'll see you for a while." My response was something along the lines of "Yeah, I guess it is." We walked to our cars and that was it. After 4 years of classes and studying and killing time with this person, we simply slipped out of each other's lives. I honestly have a hard time getting my head around that.

If those were the downs, the ups would be moving into this decrepit Searcy apartment with a couple of guys for the summer. I didn't really know how it would go, having never lived with either of them before. You know that feeling you get in the first few minutes of a movie, where you just know that you're going to love it? Or when you try to sing along with a song you've never heard before? I think I've found the "life changes" version of that music/movie feeling. Living with them has been incredibly easy and more fun than I've had in a very long time. After 8 semesters in the dorms, I've finally got an apartment, and with 2 great guys to boot. I don't have much to complain about lately.

I always get a lot done when I have homework due. The thought of actually doing the work I'm paying good money to do makes even cleaning look like a fun activity. I'm sitting in my favorite coffee shop trying to talk myself into studying for a test. I'm writing this post because I'm doing a terrible job of it.

It's weird to see how people change when you haven't seen them in a while. Will they be fatter? In better shape? Depressed? Engaged? Married? Maybe I'm just instinctively opposed to change, but I'm never happy to see these differences between memory and reality. If things are bad for them, I feel bad. If things are good, I'm jealous. I'm not sure what this says about me. Why can't I just be happy for people?

It has come to my attention recently that I'm not a particularly nice person. My roommate said something to me, and my first thought was "I know he's joking, but that's kind of a mean thing to say." My second thought was "Oh, wait, he was quoting me." That was a little disconcerting. I seriously have to make an effort to avoid saying mean or sarcastic things or they just come spilling out. This character trait (flaw?) has caused me a lot of trouble in romantic relationships, since I am attracted to girls who, as Karyn would say, "feel their feelings very deeply." That type of girl will never respond well to sarcasm. It's obviously something I need to work on.

Current Events

Statistics is a class that seemed really interesting on the surface, but once you start to dig into it, you find out that it's actually incredibly boring. The concept of exploring random events or population characteristics is intriguing, but the reality is basically an endless parade of tables, charts, and formulas. Having to watch this parade for four hours every day for two weeks got old after the first class period. I'm just glad that I don't have to live in the wonderful world of statistics for an entire semester.

Bringing a laptop to class is probably going to have a negative impact on my grade, but I consider it a fair trade for keeping my sanity. Beating Zuma (something I've been working on for about 5 month's worth of boring classes) has become an almost fanatical endeavor. Every time I see those balls slurp into the hole in the middle of the board I want to throw my laptop across the room. When you play a game this much, you start to notice all the little problems with it. I can't say for sure, but I think the game might be cheating.

Over the weekend, I went to a house party with 2 guys I barely know to hang out with a bunch of people I didn't know at all. I'm not going to tell the whole story, because it's not very flattering. This is my blog and I'll tell you what I want to tell you, so quit complaining. I don't know how much you know about me, fearless reader, but I'm not exactly what you (or anyone) would call a "partier." I don't "party" or attend "parties." At best, I'm inexperienced, but I had a good time. Nothing bad happened, but it was certainly out of character for me. This and other events have gotten me thinking about how your childhood perceptions of your future self rarely match up with the reality. I mean, I guess this is true for everyone and not just me. I hope it is. If my 12-year-old self could meet my current 22-year-old self, (ignoring any time-travel paradoxes that would certainly arise) what would he think? I can't imagine that he would be pleased, but I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing. Obviously, we all change as we grow up and that means a change in our morals and values. Is my 12-year-old set of values more "right" than my 22-year-old set due to some sort of childhood purity? Or could it be the other way around, thanks to a measure of adulthood insight? I have no idea what the answer to that is.

Last published Jan 30, 2008

It's been nearly 5 months since I've posted here. My absence is mostly due to the fact that I've been so busy with school that it was completely draining me of all my creative energies, of which I have very little to begin with.

I think I'm back now because I need someone to know what's going on, and I don't feel like I have anyone I could just call up and rant to. My friends know bits and pieces of this, but no one person has the whole story.

I was doing really well. Honestly, I was. I didn't think about Karyn all that much, and when I did it was in the context of resurrecting some sort of friendship from the smoldering wreckage of our relationship. To illustrate how far I've fallen, while I was writing that last sentence, I looked to see if she was online. Earlier, I checked her blog, which I hadn't done in months.

So why the change? What happened that put her back in my mind? I want to tell this story fully and truthfully, so here it is. She sent me a text message a couple weeks ago saying that she wanted to see me before she left town, presumably forever. This, obviously, set my mind in motion. That's what I do. I think about things until I have my mind made up about what every subtlety and detail means, then all I have to do is wait to be proven horribly wrong. Anyway, I tried to set up a couple meetings, but she apparently wanted to do it on her terms. I finally saw her when she came to my senior showcase. We talked for a few minutes, and agreed to hang out later that night. We went to Sonic after my showcase was over and talked for an hour or so. She cried a lot. She talked a lot about not realizing what breaking up with me meant until she was actually leaving. She wondered if she had made the right decision. I told her all I could think to tell her, which was effectively "You need to leave and figure out what you want."

She called me the next day, crying. At this point, I don't know what to think. Last I heard, she was perfectly happy with Owen and wanted to marry him and have lots of babies. She still insisted that she was very happy with him and please don't get the wrong idea. How could I not be getting the wrong idea? She was calling her ex-boyfriend, crying, talking about the decisions she made and how they upset her. What exactly am I supposed to be thinking at this point?

That was pretty much the end of our communication. I tried to return a shirt of hers that I had found, and she told me to put it in her box in her office, which I thought was a pretty lame move. "I don't want to see you, but I want what you have for me." I would love to think that she didn't want to see me because she was afraid she would start crying again, but I think it was mostly that she didn't want me to continue thinking that she might want to get the band back together. That was the last time we talked, and I think it's probably going to be for a while. She'll be spending most of her time with Owen now, and I can't imagine she'll have much use for me.

What I cannot for the life of me figure out is why I'm still this affected by her. I was in love with her, yeah, but we broke up like 6 months ago. It wasn't like she was a perfect girlfriend, either. The problem is this: when things were good, they were fantastic. We were crazy about each other. We understood each other, even if we didn't agree. There were weeks and months in that relationship that I would live in forever. If Doc Brown showed up in the Delorean, I would set those dials for March 2007 and get up to 88 mph as fast as possible. But why-oh-why are those good times able to control me like this? When she calls me crying, why doesn't my mind jump to the scene where she's telling me she doesn't love me in the middle of her living room? Why don't I immediately think of her weeping at the thought of never talking to Owen again. Why is it that the first thing I think about is driving around Oahu with the windows down?

So far, the only thing that's been able to break the spell is if I have some sliver of hope of dating someone new. I've been out with a few different girls this semester, all with disastrous results.

I think that this whole mess with Karyn has had a much more pronounced impact on me because of this unrivaled dry-spell I'm currently experiencing. I have to believe that she wouldn't have gotten to me if just one of those fetal relationships had gone somewhere (anywhere). Surely, that's the reason. I can't possibly be that weak when it comes to her, can I?

Even after everything we've put each other through, these are the things I think about. It's what I'll continue to think about until the next girl shows the slightest bit of interest in me. I'll write another "karyn" post when I crawl out of the ruins of my "next-girl" hopes.