ruminations

"Life is so short / Fall in love, dear maiden / While your lips are still red / And before you are cold, / For there will be no tomorrow." - Kanji Watanabe, "Ikiru" (1952)

"Man is born crying. When he has cried enough, he dies." - Kyoami, "Ran" (1985)

I watched the movie Ikiru yesterday. If you're looking for a feel good movie, this is not one of them. I think the most memorable quote from this movie, the one that captures the entire movies message is:

"You've never had a day off, have you?" "No." "Why? Are you indispensable?" "No. I don't want them to find out they can do without me."

We try to flower our worlds with things sayings like, "I make a difference" or "People care about me." In the end though, does anyone really care? The world keeps on going without us. It's a sad thing to think about.

Lately i've been wondering about everything. Was I meant to actually progress this far in college? My fiscal background as well as my educational background are of a lower middle class. Twice, I have made an almost unconccious decision to go back to those roots. The first time I decided to fail out of college in that, I could not meet or make myself meet my parents demands of me. The second was when I gave up college, or plans to go back, to begin working at a warehouse when I found myself engaged, looking at houses to buy. I was ready to live my life as my parents had, in a small town in Ohio, oblivious to everything.

But then I wasn't engaged anymore, and suddenly I had the internet. I suppose that one of the key factors in both of those things was my constantly trying to push my parents to open their minds (though mine was closed as well) and the fact that despite all my happiness in the form of the girl I was to marry (a childhood friend), I could not make myself feel at peace. I was always restless. I always felt that there was more to everything and that I was missing some large facet of life simply because of where I was; and my lack of doing anything but the slow suicide of settling down.

Then I met Les Simpson and a website named "The Gaming Outpost." I look back now and find myself amazed at how much my life changed because of pen and paper gaming, but the fact is undeniable. However, it wasn't so much the fact that it was pen and paper gaming, but the people there and the fact that they came from somewhere I wasn't, outside the small town in the middle of nowhere.

I remember posting on that website the first few times, not really understanding what it was I was posting. In terms of education, I had never paid attention at all. My cognitive skills were lacking and my 'book smarts' were even worse. I believe now that everything was there but out of focus. One day, talking to Les on AOL instant messenger, I remember being shocked and appalled by a few things he had to say. I don't remember exactly what it was but I do remember thinking afterward how profound the things he talked about seemed. I believe that at that moment, things shifted into focus and I began searching for a way to get out of the lifestyle my upbringing almost predetermined for me. I needed to escape the world I had lived in all my life.

I made so many mistakes going from there to where I am now. I pissed off, back-stabbed, misspoke, and so many other things a person isn't supposed to do that i'm suprised I wasn't shot or killed. My only saving factor is that I realize my mistakes and although I can't go back to fix them and the guilt for those errors will always be present in my life. However, looking back I believe that those months, years between meeting Les on the internet and then in person, were my growing up; only in fast-forward.

Now I sit here, managing this building in Austin, Texas, poor as hell, and in college, and I can't imagine a world where none of that stuff happened. But, there is some nagging thing, some facet of that old life hanging around, my ability to remember. I've met so many people in Austin I couldn't even try to remember their names. The thing that stood out to me about them was their ability to know things. They knew facts, figures, statements. I don't know things this way and I can't figure out why. I know some things here and there but what I know, and how I know it, is usually through some sort of ether of the obtuse that I couldn't recall it.

I suppose the best way to describe it is that I know concepts and feelings where most people know facts and knowledge. For the life of me I have been trying to figure out why this is and if it is a good thing or not. Lately, i've been wondering if it had to do with my schooling. I was born in a district filled with lower middle class folk. My grade school was somewhat well maintained, but nothing spectacular. My teachers didn't really teach but pushed these small booklets of information on me of which there were the answers in the back. My high school was maintained alright, but was built during the depression and the teachers there only taught the things needed for us to pass the new placement and assessment tests. I wasn't taught grammar. I was taught how to write a research paper but was passed as my teachers needed to pad their grades for the county assessments as quickly as possible. My parents forced me into a vocational school in that they believed that I should become an engineer as engineers knew that math stuff and generally had the most comma's in their salary. I was never asked what I wanted, but I did my best to meet my parents expectations until I found myself realizing how silly that was in my first semester at college.

Almost all of my education has been through a fog of uncertainty and misdirection. I remember going to a few well-off schools to lose to them in soccer and wondering what it was that they knew. They must all be smart, they're rich.

I came to Austin and reclaimed my life. I went to classes at the local community college and found myself in awe of my new found ability to actually think things through. I was more than happy to be a receptacle of learning from the professors there who actually wanted to teach. When it became time, I applied to the University of Texas with 5 semesters of 4.0 work......and was rejected based on the fact that 8 years ago I had flunked out of a college in Ohio. I then applied to Texas State University, the cheaper college down the street.

Though this college is cheaper (and the lesser according to all of central Texas), the sociology department is filled with some of the most helpful and knowledgeable people i've had the fortune to meet. My classes are small, mostly, and although there is a stigma of this school being a 'party school' I've actually found myself learning quite a bit.

I was forced to take a year off due to a snafu in my advising from the Anthropology department but this semester I actually am able to finish my classes. Sadly, i've been doing only average work. But as the semester goes on i've been finding myself studying more and more, focusing more on trying to do better. I was sort of defeated thanks to my advisors so picking myself off the ground has proven to be more of a bother than I had hoped it would be.

I still wonder if what i'm doing is right. Am I learning the correct way? Is there a correct way? My grammar is still awful and i'm going into a field that absolutely needs top notch mechanical skills. The suspicion that my success in this field depends solely on my upbringing as a lower middle class student still rings in the back of my mind.



Yesterday I made a decision to borrow 10million gil and purchase these:



It's going to take me forever to pay that off but I can honestly say that i'm pretty happy with the decision. I'm at that point in this game where I don't really have any idea what to spend my gil on. I could level a craft, but it's so boring that I just can't bring myself to actually follow it through. I suppose someday, as I have in the past, i'll actually finish leveling all of my crafts to 60 but as it stands, i'm completely broke for a while!

I got to test out the melee whm again!


Thanks Muute!

Well, I think i've procrastinated long enough.

Lates.