Sing Me to Heaven

I don't know why but my mind wandered to "the good old days" tonight. My life is at a weird place right now and a little bit ago I started hearing the lyrics of a song the Bellicoso performed my Junior year. Sing Me to Heaven was one of my favorites and it's resounding in my head right now and it gives words to how I've been feeling lately. Hearing how we performed it in my head is giving me chills. This song is beautiful. I wish I had a video of the choir I sang it with but this is the next best thing. 

Picking Up the Pieces

I remember one day at home while I was emptying the dishwasher I lifted up a glass cup, misjudged how tall it was, and smashed it against the top of the dishwasher. Glass shards scattered every which way. I thought I was going to get in trouble but my dad came in and with a nonchalant "Oh well," instructed me to start picking up the pieces. So I did. The big pieces got picked up by hand and thrown in an Eggo box we had sitting on the counter. I got the broom to sweep the entirety of the kitchen floor just in case shards bounced to the other side of the room. Whipped out the dust-pan and swept it into the garbage. The vacuum cleaner was pulled out too, just to be safe. The entirety of the process lasted about five minutes. It was easy. 

If only life were a five-minute mess to clean up. In life, when you misjudge the height of the cup you're picking up you have to go through a process to clean up your mess. Let's just be general here and agree that those messes you make take a little longer than five minutes to clean up. Harsh words are exchanged. Tears are shed. Delusions of fixing the problem like the heroes in movies do infiltrate your mind. Walls are broken. Feelings are hurt. "Why is this happening" becomes the only non-offensive, non-vulgar phrase you keep hearing in your head. Adrenaline flows through your veins like the very blood that makes your vessels its home. You feel invincible and vulnerable at the same time. 

If only it were possible to seize the hands of time and wrench them back with all your might, all your being, and undo what happened.

But that's impossible and you have to live with the decisions that were made, yours or others'. And now fear, doubt, suspicion, and loathing have taken shelter in your subconscious. They creep into your thoughts like smoke through the cracks of your apartment door. No matter what you do, the fire that is out in the hall is going to get in. You can try to fight it, try to open up the window and let things filter out but you realize more smoke is coming in than is going out. 

The smoke is coming through. The glass cup is broken. Do you cry over broken glass or get a broom and clean it up? 

Being sensible is harder than it sounds. 

LFM Journey Through Life. PST Lifescore and Achievement. Need Everything.

It's common knowledge around the people I spend time around that I have spent a lot of time playing WoW. Three years, to be exact. During those three years, my amount of play has gone from super slow leveler to PvP-extravagant to progression raider five nights a week. In the time I've spent as a progression raider I have had to dedicate a lot of time to learning and re-learning the encounters from three different points of view. Playing a Paladin gives you the opportunity to see three of the four aspects of the game; tanking, melee DPS, and healing. Every aspect provides different challenges and a variety of things to get done. Learning a boss fight is time consuming and sometimes, a slow and incredibly annoying process. The fact that you have to learn it with nine to 24 different people does not make it any less frustrating. You may be doing everything correctly but others are dying in fire, not moving enough, moving too much, etc. Wiping for ten minutes to even two hours wears on your patience. Yet all 25 people press on until the brick wall you've been smashing your face on for the last three weeks finally hits that magic zero-percent and screams of nerd-joy echo in Ventrilo.

Why am I talking about WoW? Playing it has taught me some things about life. "What a loser, he spends too much time playing a video game and he thinks it helps his social skills? He's going to end up fat and living in his parents' basement." Well, to keep it short and sweet, and to prevent this from getting to be a rant about something irrelevant, you're wrong. Plain and simple. In the three years I have played I have made many friends through the game. A few of my real-life friends even play the game still. Some have stopped claiming that it's a regret for their lives.

Anyway, back to the subject matter. Life is a huge raid. It's full of bosses and transition phases that you have to get through in order to make yourself a better person. But it's impossible to take down a boss on your own. You have to go in with a group of friends. You have to have a support system and people behind you no matter what happens. You need people to turn you around so you don't hit your face on the brick wall and even pull you out of that fire. For most of my life, I have been lucky enough to have a great composition. Through high school I had my small group of friends. I'm talking about five or six guys that were always there to hang out with. We sang, we played, we had our good times. I even lucked out and met the girl that I still believe I will be my pocket healer for the rest of my life. (I'm a nerd. I accept it.)

I soon learned that high school was just the first wing of this raid I like to call Life. Now I'm smashing my face on the brick-wall that is living away from everything I knew and became familiar with during my second year at Washington State University. This wouldn't be so bad but now I consider myself alone. I don't have my family here. I don't have those five to six guys that I grew so close to. And lastly, I don't have my girlfriend around. I even had to take a break from WoW so the people I have been spending five nights a week with are gone. Sure, I can jump back in and be a part of that gaming community whenever I want, but that's beside the point. Plus, I have classes to focus on and I don't want to use WoW as an out if I end up under-performing.
"Common sense" answers to my alone problems are as follows---
1. Get in the circles of people that went to high school with.
My answer here--not possible. In the month that I have been here I have not even received a courtesy invite to anything that they do. Does it annoy me? Yes. Can I do anything about it without looking like the bad guy? No. Victimizing ones' self is annoying and if I were to bring this up, then all I'll get are pity invites. Those are worse than no invite at all.
2. Make new friends.
Yeah, that's easy to do. Not. Granted, I have re-networked myself with my roommate from last year but it's still not the same brotherhood that I had back home. In WoW, changing guilds is easier to do; get in, pump 15k DPS on Deathbringer and be done. That's all fine and dandy, but those are acquaintances, not real friends. I don't just want to know a bunch of faces and names to which the only thing we have in common are we went to the same party that one Saturday night. The relationships I want seem to be impossible because things like that take time, you can't just jump into it. Making real friendships is a process and it requires you to jump off the deep end. I haven't had to do that since fifth grade. The thought of exposing myself like that is daunting.

My point is, life is impossible to get through on your own. I am in that transition phase where I have to find out who is really backing me up. In the four weeks I have been out in Pullman again I have come to the realization that I have nobody here to catch me when I fall. I only have acquaintances that I can only be generic with. It sucks being alone. And by "alone" I mean really alone. No girlfriend to back me up, no family to chill with, no close guys to spend time with. I guess now is when I find out who I really am. What am I really made of and how much tenacity do I have? Answer to these questions---I don't know. All I can do is take things in stride. No matter how hard it gets, I have to keep it in perspective and know that I will be a better person for it.

How Do You Deal?

The last few days have been horrible, at best. It seems everything I know is collapsing around me like ruins during an earthquake. Everything is changing at the most in-opportune time. I just got a new apartment and I'm living over five hours away from my family. It looks like the one constant in my life has made the decision to leave me for reasons undisclosed. I didn't make any real connections with people during my last two semesters here at WSU and it looks like now I'll be paying for it. I'm on the verge of being completely alone in what is mostly a foreign area for me.

The obvious answer to the question is to make new friends. My problem with that, however, is that everyone here is a child. A fun time consists of getting blackout drunk or high as a kite. The majority appeal is that we're here to party and if you aren't partying, you aren't fun at all. Sure, going to parties is fun. Drinking a little is entertaining. But I don't enjoy it as much as some people do. I don't like not being in full control of myself around people I don't know. Common "wisdom" to my problem is "Drink more, you won't care about the people around you." I've never been the party type. No matter how much I want to believe it, I'm not comfortable with just decent friends and acquaintances. I'd much rather have a few really close friends than countless face appearances. It seems I'm the only one sailing that ship though, and I don't know how to handle it.

I don't know how to be alone. I don't know how to make new friends anymore. I haven't had to do that since fifth grade when I moved to Olympia. And now it seems like I have to do it again. Why? How is this fair at all? Why is the one person I've cared for and sacrificed so much for having doubts about me? All these questions swim through my head. I'm looking for answers more desperate than Marlin for Nemo. Yet, the more I look, prod, poke, and ask, the more elusive the answers become. The most recent advice I was given for my problems was to steel myself and be the constant during all the change. Seems I have to work for what I thought was always going to be there.

I envy those who are waited hand and foot sometimes. The people who have everything in their lives handed to them on a silver platter. Many times, I catch myself thinking about how it must be nice for them. Failing to understand why my life has always been rigorous work even though I have always been a good person. I know karma isn't how the world really works but I wonder why the world works as it does. I am constantly under siege by enemies I cannot eliminate. Constantly punching and kicking a steel door that separates myself from the apparent happy lives of others.

If the worst happens, I won't know how to deal with it. Bog myself down with schoolwork and hopefully a job so that I don't have time to dwell on my losses? I don't think that's a healthy lifestyle. Life is supposed to be balanced between work and play. To focus on just work for me would be to go against how I have been living. Apparently the only constant in life is change. I say forget that. When you find something that is good, you stick with it and work towards making that good even better. Throwing away that good in search of some other good is a waste. I am expected to be the constant, the brick house withstanding howling gusts from the wolf's lungs. However with enough weathering, wear, and tear, even the sturdiest rocks break down into sand.

Random Thoughts at 1:00 AM

When a person has very little to do at night and possesses the inability to fall asleep at a decent time his mind wanders. My mind wanders. It pokes at the fabric of my being, the reasons to why I am where I am, who and why I am, and who I have become. Answers to these questions can seem simple at first, but then I inherently dig deeper, looking for a better, more detailed explanation. The answers to this series of questions are the result of being alone with no internet, tv, or even books to wrap my mind around.

To start off, why am I where I am physically and mentally? I am currently sitting in Providence Court apartment P204, chilling by my corner desk in the “master bedroom,” while swiveling left and right on my new twenty dollar chair from Wal-Mart. Pretty generic answer. What happens when I dig deeper into my thoughts? Why am I here? Well, to start off, I want to be here. College seemed like the next step in my life after I graduated high school. However, I did not make it easy for myself to be here. After the nightmare that was trying to find money to fund my first year, the second is about to start. Is it selfishness or a greater purpose that drives me to be back in Pullman despite how hard it has been? I suppose. On one hand, it is selfish. I am the bane of my parents’ wallets. The reason for the countless tears shed, the voices lost screaming, and frustration. The grounds for lack of sleep and longer hours spent at work. Did I make it any easier by finding a job during the summer to help fund my seemingly pointless spending? No, I have done nothing but take for the last year. On the other hand, I am working toward a degree. In today’s world, you have to have that piece of paper that says you have learned what you know during college. That piece of paper that takes four to five years of your life to attain serves as a basis for you to be judged on whether or not you qualify for that line of work. By being here and working towards my piece of paper with Old-English font and a few signatures, I am shaping my future and, by definition, being selfish. Do the ends justify the means in this situation? That depends on how I put my resources to work. I cannot just sit idly by and waste my time here like others can. I do not have the luxury of having life be served on a silver platter like others do. I am here for the betterment of my life, even if it seems like I’m destroying others in the process.

When you throw a rock into a body of water it sends ripples throughout the entirety of said body of water. Living a life and making connections with other people creates that ripple effect as well. But the connections you make with each person you meet serve as their own stone cast into the water which, in turn, creates more ripples. To understand who I am I have to consider who I have met and what ripples have come back my way. To find the answer to whom I am I must also take into account why I am. So who is Anthony and why is he the way he is? For the longest time I always characterized myself as a people person. But as I reflect on memories past, I see now that I am very much more introverted. I rarely ever strike up conversations with people I know little about or have no common base. I am terrible with small talk. When I am in a group of people that I am not close to, I am just the quiet, polite one. I will flash a smile your way and throw in my two cents occasionally, but in an unfamiliar setting you may never get a chance to really get to know me. I stick to the comfort that is familiarity. I believe that is the reason why I made very little new connections during my first year of college. My inherent fear of rejection and losing is another reason for a layer of brick I like to keep in my fortress. I encourage people to take chances, to leap in the face of danger, but seldom do I ever jump into something without over-analyzing too many times. I do not care if people disagree with how I carry myself though. It is not my problem if you think me calling something “gay” or “retarded” is offensive. When I talk like that it is usually because I am with people I am comfortable with and we understand that there is no deeper belittlement when using those words to describe something. I would not use that banter in front of a professional. If you think that is shallow or fake of me, consider this; language changes depending on your audience and everybody has different dialects depending on who and how you are talking to somebody.

Hmm…I really got off topic. Look for my thoughts on people being too sensitive in a later post. Now, back to the subject.

I am who I am because of whom I surrounded myself with during life. I established a close-knit group of friends during middle school and we still share the luxury of our dood-ship. The ability to fall back on them whenever I needed to kept me sane. There was never a moment too serious for us. No fight lasted longer than a few days and when it was resolved, it was forgotten. The bond I share with those guys is unbreakable and I cannot wait to see where life takes them. I only hope I get to share in some of those adventures later on.

I did a poor job in trying to stay on subject for this, but what are you going to do, I am not turning this in to a professor to be graded.

A New Start

In my efforts to become a more balanced person, I have decided to expand my writing abilities. Every professional anything; whether it be an athlete, teacher, musician, or author, will tell you that the secret to their success is immeasurable amounts of practice. Constant drilling of a task in order for it to become less mundane and more muscle memory is always a necessity to ascend the ranks of anything in life. I do not know where the spark of inspiration to write more came from. People have told me that I do it well and the subject matter of what I base my works on is very heavy stuff. As great as it is to be recognized a little for it, I have decided that only writing on how unfair everything is and whining is not fair for those who read my thoughts. For that reason, I want to see how varied and diverse my works can get.

I do not know what direction this blog is going. Topics can, and probably will, be very scatter-brained and random and be about my adventures through life, a work of fiction, ramblings, or even about video games. To be honest, I don’t really know how it will go. However, I do know that I will put effort into every piece of writing I start. Rarely will you find an unfinished piece posted. Unless I feel it is powerful enough, you will not read it--unless the subject matter calls for an incomplete product, of course. Musings over life and how to become a better person are usually accepted as ongoing works. The beauty of putting things in writing is that you can look back later in life and measure how far you have progressed.

I will try and have a new post once a week. However, I can make no promises as I have just moved to Pullman and the first semester of my second year of college is about to take off. Between balancing school-work, a job, maintaining a relationship, and a social life, I could be hard-pressed for time. With that, I welcome you…again.

Building Empires

Let's pretend that you're an architect. You're an architect with a ton of money and power. You know what, let's just say that you're a king. A beloved king to all who have adorned you with the title. And you've been building your kingdom for the last number of years. You've treated this kingdom with love, respect and mercy.

But the people you rule over tend to act out. Countless acts of slander and betrayal, secrets and lies, have left a mark over your beloved people of your kingdom. But you're so merciful that you pardon them everytime. Every assassination attempt, every swindled tax payment, every burglary and theft, you have pardoned. Do these deeds anger you? Of course they do, but you are a merciful leader. You over everything. Do you have feelings of anger and retribution towards your people? Do you want to punish every single terrible action of theirs? Do you want to destroy every wrong-doer that rears his head? Yes. Yes you do. You want to make every single person suffer for every single thing that has angered you. Burn all bridges. Show no mercy. Sever all ties to anybody that did you wrong.

At first, it seems like a great idea. Without those to anger you, your reign will be at peace. You could even start over. Start a new, better kingdom complete with that New-Kingdom smell. Yes, that's the solution. What's not to like about it? Everyone would be good again. Revere you, treat the kingdom correctly, pick up their mess and never wrong you. You prepare the fires. You ready yourself for the torrents of wrath. The power to restart is all yours, in the tip of your fingers. With one word, your servants will purge the kingdom in flame and smoke. Your lips begin to form the words necessary to begin, but you lock up.

You begin to think that the suffering you're in now is better than anything that could come from starting over. Hell, even if you do start over, who's to say that people won't revolt? What guarantee is there that leads you to believe it'll solve your problems? There is none. With that realization you call off the destruction. Bridges stay intact. The assassins, bandits and thieves remain unharmed. You walk back to your throne, defeated. A period of good comes over your kingdom. Then in one swift action, everything comes crashing down on you again. A tidal wave of remorse and hatred overcomes your being and yet you do nothing. There is nothing you can do. You thought you allowed your empire to live and thrive but the empire you so much adore is the one in control. It has you by the neck. It strangles you and you know there is a way out. But you don't seek it. Your control is a myth and you are overwhelmed with unknowing.

Your empire continues its cycle between bliss and misery. You believe you can better it, but the fear of the unknown has you in its grips, cackling maliciously.

Hi 2010, Our First Impression Sucks

It's currently 2:44 in the morning and I'm still awake. Everyone else in my house went to sleep at ten because they have a reason to wake up early in the morning. I, however, have nothing important to wake up for or go to sleep for, for the next week. As I reflect on my weekend, I realize I just missed out on what could have been a life-changer and a kick-start to the new year.

For the first time in three-ish years, I didn't go to a church camp. Why didn't I go? Because I didn't want to. I didn't want to be surrounded by a bunch of stuff that apparently makes me uncomfortable now...WHAT?!?!...Where in the last 6 or so months did being around God make me feel uncomfortable? Did it happen as a result of the isolation in Pullman? Or was it the amount of struggle that led up to leaving in August for WSU? I just got done reading Pastor Andrew's current updates for camp. I almost want to cry because of what I know I've just skipped out on. And for what? I've done absolutely nothing important the last four days. I'm almost at the point of repulsion when I reflect on it.

But what am I going to do about this? Forget about it next weekend when I'm back in Pullman, dealing with new classes and classwork? Probably. Crappy thing to say, yes, but it's the sad truth with how I'm living my life now. How do I handle myself now that it's only three of us going back rather than four? Just more isolationism I suppose. Do these revelations bother me? Yes.

I probably missed one of the most important events at this point of my life. An opportunity for me to run back to God was passed up to remain in hiding. Pathetic.

What do I do now? Shut it out...seek someone to talk to for some insta-comfort?...Forget about it...This sucks and I know what has to happen and yet I'm hesitant to act on it. And now that it's out there I'll be getting bombarded with questions. I just want to feel connected and take baby steps again. Here's to you, 2010.