a quick update

well, i need to be studying for my final tomorrow morning, but... this is more fun at the moment. sorry i've been absent for a while, but life kind of got in the way. school ends tomorrow (officially) for the semester with my one final at 9:00 AM.

with my first semester a breath away from being over, i can say: it was a good one. i'm not disappointed with my first semester. my good grades may have something to do with it, but i enjoyed it overall.

now a turn for the serious. having a friend leave your life is difficult. i am careful (and picky, quelle surprise...) about who i call friend and am very set in my ways about what friendship is. a friend of mine and i parted ways this autumn. i won't go into the details because, well, it's personal and i'm not the only one involved. as bad as it is to lose a friend, it is very good to gain that friend back. :)

i also came to a realization during my absence from blogging. i like knowing stuff. it makes me crazy when i do not... but once i find out what i want to know - happy as a clam. communication is a tricky thing. and even i'm getting tired of blogging about it, but it really is about perception. if i say the word "chair" an image comes to your mind and to mine. i guarantee that while your chair and my chair will, in essence, have all the necessary qualities to be called "chair"... they will most likely look very different. that's the point of perception... i've thought of an old captain's chair and you've thought of a rocking chair. you don't know that i've thought of a captain's chair unless i tell you and i don't know you've thought of a rocking chair unless you tell me. we all live on the same world, breath the same air... why don't we learn how to communicate/relate better than we do? we all have our reasons. mine is that i'm scared most of the time about it. but i have to get over that, just as we should all get over our reasons.

i go to confession at my church. not very often, but i do. one thing my priest told me before i made my first confession (as i was scared to do so) is that having sat for confessions for the last 30-odd years, there is one thing that he has found in common: it's all the same shit (yes, he used that word). he went on to say that if people just realized that what they do isn't that different from what others do, it'd be a lot easier to share.

i don't mean to completely liken relating to one another to confessing... but i think it is similar. i'm always scared to share, but i think that if i just realize that there's a lot more the same between me and whoever... it'd be easier.

life is too short to be scared all the time.




on my death bed, i think i'd like to look back and see that i was willing to share myself with others even if it was difficult and painful to do so... rather than look back and be "satisfied" that i protected myself all the time and went through life not making any deep connection with others.

what keeps you?

ssdd,
levi

got no feel, i got no rhythm... i just keep losing my beat

note: i know this is vague, but... not everybody needs to know exactly what past event i'm talking about to understand what i'm trying convey.


i know i've written on this before, but i rarely say that i have regrets. very, very few things i would go back and change about what's happened or what i've done. but most of those are with the idea that i would know then what i know now and that seems rather short-sighted. yes, hindsight is 20/20. and i often say that i am fine with past mistakes and happenings because without them i would not be where i am right now... and overall, i like where i am... mostly.

but there is something i would go back and change. whole-heartedly i say that i would.

sometimes something that has happened can have such a restricting and deafening effect. it colors everything similarly occurring or related based on it. i know rather well all of the psychological conversations on perception, faulty processing and blah blah blah. but, really, my perception is my reality - faulty or not. sometimes past happenings raise the bar of expectations or lower it. what's fun is when a little bit of both happen.

i can't shake this one (well, maybe i won't and that's possible). it's become a reference point for many things and that's disheartening.


it's as if i was waiting for traffic to end to make a left turn, made the left turn when i didn't see any traffic... but got hit by another car. and now, i'm scared to make left turns. and it's as if when i went to China, ate authentic Chinese food and didn't want to eat at Chinese restaurants when i got back to the States.

i'm sure that last part was more than confusing.



all this to say, given the chance... i would go back and do it differently. while i like where i am overall, i don't like being at this particular place within that. and i don't like that i don't like it.


ssdd,
levi

And I try and I try and I try

But everybody wants to put me down
They say I'm goin' crazy
They say I got a lot of water in my brain
I got no common sense
I got nobody left to believe