Hello? Is there anybody out there?

[lykomancer]

...I feel so shallow.

I was trying to explain it today to my colleagues in my IS151 small group, and became so much more aware of it. Compared to the other people around me, I feel shallow.
I don't have a job; I don't have a mate or a potential mate; I don't have children; I don't have my family nearby; I don't have any friends down here; I don't do anything...besides survival-type living stuff such as shopping and cooking, schoolwork, and lying around reading. I have nothing to converse with people about; I have nothing--right now--really, at all.

I have no more effect on this world than a vagrant breeze does on the ocean... I don't even make a ripple. There is me, and that's all there is in my life. There is no one else. There is nothing else. Just me, and the things I do to amuse myself or provide for myself. If that's not shallow, then I don't know what is.

*sigh* I guess it's not that I'm shallow, just that my life is. Right now, it has all the depth and richness of a mudpuddle. I don't know what to do with myself. I feel motivated when I cannot do anything because of money or time or whatever, and when the constraints are removed I sit and stare at the fucking ceiling, feeling insincere, feeling like a hypocrite. I could be doing volunteer work, instead I'm lying around rereading books I've read a thousand times and fantasizing about dating people when I don't have the courage to even get off my couch.

Lazy, pathetic, cowardly, apathetic, boring, daydreaming, delusional...
Beating myself up? Yeah, I am, you got a fucking problem with it? 'Cause I don't.

How can I attempt to deal with other people when I have such a problem dealing with myself? How can I force myself to get up and get going when it doesn't seem to matter to anyone besides myself that I'm not? No one cares what I do or do not do here... How can I speak to a beautiful woman when I look down at myself and see poorly-dressed, out-of-shape, foul-mouthed, rough-tongued trailor trash? And how do I begin to "correct" my views of myself and of this piss-poor world when my loneliness only seems to enforce them?

...
Julia, one of the members of my small group, invited me over for Thanksgiving. Really, it makes me want to cry, so I'm not thinking too much about it; it's too kind. Still, it's nice to be thought of.
It's funny too, 'cause when Julia and I "met" on the class's online discussion forum, Blackboard, I didn't think there was any way in hell that we'd be able to get along, but...I guess I don't know everything. *laugh*

God, I hate my life. I think I've hated it since I graduated. I hope moving into a new space and getting new roommates will help fix that.


___
Oh, yeah, unrelated. Paul-sensei quote:
"The Catholics could find one good thing to say about the Protestants: they burned Micheal Servetus at the stake."
(Micheal Servetus was a Unitarian Protestant that was martyred in Calvinist Geneva in the 1500's. Look him up; it's interesting.)

Comments

[elanivalae.livejournal.com]

I'd rather be shallow as a mudpuddle than deep as a sewer. Such is the price of being an isolated tidal pool off the mainstream. -_-;

Sorry I don't have any real words of comfort. :(

[ozen.livejournal.com]

You're going to Juila's, right? You'd better. I'm getting used to being the only person I know without a place to go on Thanksgiving besides *campus*.

[ozen.livejournal.com]

Don't you dare bust my bubble.

[geminstrel.livejournal.com]

I wish I had read this sooner...I got tickets to go see one of my schoolmates' bands play at the Fine Line tonight. However, I don't really want to go alone. Oh, well...anyway, I wanted to inquire about your tattoo's? what and where if you don't mind. Oh, yeah...btw, you are too smart to fall into the category of trailor-trash. Trust me, I'm from Alabama and consider myself an expert on the matter. You have to have an IQ of 20 or below to even be considered "trailor-trash"

[lykomancer.livejournal.com]

Tattoos (They are both really small...): I've got a red, orange, and yellow koi on my right thigh and a mutilated kanji on my left breast that was supposed to mean "endurance" (like, spiritual endurance), but that one came out so badly I'm thinking about having something done over it. And I want to get another koi on my left leg. If I could afford it, I'd cover myself; I love tattoos.

Thanks, btw. :) And although I understand why I'd leave Alabama for Minnesota, what made you come up here to the land of snow? School?

[geminstrel.livejournal.com]

I am unfamiliar with Kanji...what do you have against Alabama? Besides the fact that there are alot of morons living there, and ok the religion thing is a bit much sometimes. It's really not that bad I promise...people are really the same wherever you go.

To answer your question though, yes...I came up here for music school. I want to be a proffessional musician/songwriter and this a really good way to get my foot in the door.

I have a tattoo that I want, just one, on my back but it's gonna cost about $500.00. I think tattoos can kick ass, but I don't fancy covering myself in 'em.

[lykomancer.livejournal.com]

I am also unfamiliar with most kanji-- the Chinese mode of writing, exported with modifications to Japan-- despite me trying to teach myself Japanese. I need to find and buy a good kanji dictionary. However, I like the idea of an entire concept (such as endurance) in a single kanji-image; they make for great tattoos, though it's starting to get so common it seems like everybody's got one.
I never imagined wanting to cover myself with tattoos-- ok, I thought about it, but never seriously-- until after I got my first one. They're addictive! And I probably never will literally cover myself, though I do plan on getting quite a few.

What do I have against Alabama? Nothing really. I've never been below the Mason-Dixon Line in my life...but I've heard stories, and there is the stereotypical image of the dumb, redneck, racist white-trash hicks inhabiting the Deep South which some of my college friends from Mississippi and Lousiana affirmed as mostly true. It's not to say that I think all people from the south are like that-- obviously, my friends don't fit the bill-- but the south is known for being conservative, Republican, religious, intolerant, racist, and narrow-minded...things which I am not!

Are the music schools here well-known or really good or something like that? I'd never heard of Minnesota being a good place to study music, but then again, I don't know a lot about that. Is this going to be your first winter up here? It's being surprisingly mild. (At least to me. I went to college four hours north of the Cities, and the winters there struck early, stayed long, and were colder than hell. I'm surprised it hasn't snowed yet!)
What kind of music do you write/prefer?

[geminstrel.livejournal.com]

I suppose you're right about the number of bigoted, close-minded, ignorant trailer-folk down there. I haven't determined if there are more of them down there than up here or if it's just less of a taboo to speak your mind on the matters of race down there. Don't get me wrong...I think racists are simple minded buffoons and I guess I have gotten used to ignoring them. What I am saying is that up here, everyone seems to be a bit on edge about anything that remotely has to do with race. For instance, I was with my roommate and one of his work buddies and we were playing Halo 2. I capped him and said "You like that one nyagga!" all gangster style (well, as gangster as a white-bred retard like myself can sound). Then, he totally flipped out on me and was like, "Whoa buddy, is that some kind of southern thing!". It was just me being stupid and talking trash. He took it as me being racist...and I was like, huh?

On to my favorite subject, there are very few schools in this country that are geared toward music performance in the contemporary music industry. Musictech here in Saint Paul is one of those schools. I sort of stumbled across it on the internet a few years ago, but our instructors are some of the best and most experienced musicians in the country. Most of the faculty there has been and still is involved with today's music industry. We have so many different artists, famous and not-so-famous, come to our school to play and answer questions. It's like a dream come true when I think about what I'm doing here. As far as my music goes...how would I characterize it? Different songs seem to fit into different categories. I have a song that I wrote that kind of sounds like a band named Finch, then I have another song that sounds like a cross between Staind and Metallica. I have others that sound kind of Vertical Horizon...well just alternative rock or pop maybe. If they make you wanna sing and invoke emotion then that's what I want them to be. I hope to write a little bit of everything or at least have that ability.

This is indeed my first winter...it's gotten cold here the past few days, but when people say shit to me like wait 'til it gets -50..I'm like skkkrrt! My family just sent me early Xmas presents: a warm hat with a pull-down mask to make me look like Neen-ja, a pair of warm waterproof snow boots, a pair of gloves, and a ski-jacket (I don't know if that's the correct term). However, it is gonna be a shock for me considering it never hardly ever gets to 32 degrees in Alabama. How do you guys keep warm?

[lykomancer.livejournal.com]

Heh-heh. I doubt the -50...the coldest I've experienced north of here was -40. Ah, February, when it gets so cold you can feel the moisture on your eyes and your nose-hairs freezing! Trust me, when it's been that cold for a while, 30 degrees feels like a tropical heat wave! (When it would hit like 20 at my college in early March everyone would start smiling and wandering around without coats or gloves, commenting about the wonderful warm weather.) For warmth, I personally favor my beat-up leather shell jacket and a pair of Isotoner gloves, and that's it. I rarely wear a scarf or hat, and I haven't worn boots since I was little. BUT, I also grew up in northern Pennsylvania, and while it doesn't get as cold there as it does here, it's not like Alabama!

Yah, as for the racist thing, when you experienced is sometimes otherwise termed "Minnesota-nice"...there is no problem as long as we ignore it. No one talks about that kind of stuff, whether for good or bad, and so it just kind of festers under the surface like an untreated infection. It is kind of a taboo subject in most places in the north, especially, I think, here in the mid-west. *shrug* I don't think what you did was particularly racist, and no one I know would either, but... *shrug*

Now I know two people who write music! ^_^ I don't, and my one prof in college was even unimpressed with my poetry. Eh, well, what are ya gonna do, ya know? It's nice, however, to see someone happy about what they are currently doing and where they think their life is headed. I know way too many unhappy people right now.
I really like music, and most of my life I thought everyone did, but now I'm starting to see that some people aren't interested at all... That bewilders me. (How could you not like music?) And my tastes are pretty broad-ranging; I'd probably like your music, from the way you describe it. Maybe I could get to hear some sometime?

[geminstrel.livejournal.com]

Yes ma'am...we are hopefully going into the studio at school with one of my songs and I'll hook you up.