Because I spent half this morning thinking about the tee-shirt you sleep in.

The title is a reference to a song by Birdy, every single word of which is resonating with me right now, which is a situation I'm not too pleased with. Can you please just go away, feelings? This is not working out for me. I need a break. Go away, go party in Hawaii or something. Lust after some hot lifeguard. Just stop feeling so much, god, stop being so aware of him every moment of every day, stop thinking about what he might be doing, stop looking at his facebook profile, the same pictures over and over again, stop thinking about that god-awful smirk of his, stop it, stop it, stop it.
And if you can't stop, at least get some decent writing out of it, what the hell is this crap? Just quote some nice song by someone else, and that's it, you're done expressing yourself? Come up with something original, jeez. Write a bit of angsty poetry. A future classic about the hardships of love, or whatever in the hell this is. Obsession, I think, would be a better description than love. [Would also make a better story.] Love is so different. Right? So much purer. So much less moony, or at least I hope so- unless the mooning is reciprocated, in which case, all is okay. Love has to be reciprocated, right? You can't just fall in love with the twirl of someone's hair, the poise of his hands and feet (did you even know feet could be poised?), the intensity and laughter of his gaze. Can you? Can you be in love with someone who isn't even here, in whose life you don't even feature, except maybe some extra who moved across the screen that one time in that one scene? Can you be in love with someone who exists more in your mind than in your life?
Oh shut up, you aren't in love with him. A week of vacation, when your mind isn't desperately trying to get away from thinking about work and other things actually relevant to your life, and you'll be over him like a frog over a puddle.
At least I hope you will. Don't fall into that puddle, frog. Don't let the pretty shimmering entice you into it. That light is deceptive. That puddle is not good for you. Jump over it, and hop away as fast as you can. Or better yet- jump over it, and forget it ever existed in the first place.
Is this writing good enough to make up for all of the feelings? I certainly hope so, because it's all I got right now.

I shall stop talking to myself now.
Goodnight folks. (Ha, like I'm sleeping.)

Love or whatever,
~Sam

PS: This is our 300th post! Yay! 

Where are we going?

We go step through painful step, hoping to one day make a stairway to heaven. Not knowing where it leads, not knowing whose heaven it is we're so painstakingly heading toward.
Just climbing, climbing, climbing.

But is a fall, a break to enjoy the view, to get your bearings, so bad?

I used to want to change the world. I wanted to be remembered, I wanted to torture students by going down in history with my difficult name, I wanted to be more than one face in seven billion. I still want to make a difference, but with regard to the rest of it, I'm beginning to wonder...why?

Success is so valued in society today-and since forever, I suppose-that it seems crazy to write about failure not being all that bad. For all our talk about someone only failing when they give up, failure as a stepping stone, failure as a part of life, the message that it's okay to fail never seems to really filter in. That failure is natural, necessary-that there must always be a loser-is all fine in theory, as long as that loser is not you. Which is okay, which makes sense. We survive because we strive to succeed, to do better, eat more, sleep softer. But isn't there a point where enjoying what you have should be more than enough, where you can...not be stigmaitzed by failure?

Can there be joy in being average? I see it like this: there are different levels of the atmosphere, where you push against pressure and gravity and all that is against you-but after that there is space. Free and floaty and content and happy. Now whether you go fifty light years away or five hundred, you are still going to be in space. But we don't seem to see that: we don't enjoy the feeling of space, hard-won in the battle against the atmosphere. It's like at every level you're just striving to be more, in whatever level of the atmosphere you are, whether it's a peon trying to be a general manager or a GM trying to be a CEO. And at each level, you get used to it and you start having problems. From not being able to eat out as much as you want to, or to be able to vacation in Italy, to the WiFi malfunctioning.We just keep moving. Keep fighting to go further and further in, even if nothing changes anymore. Even if, after a while, the energy spent in moving further far outweighs any pleasure received from it.

I know that as a human race, we've come this far, however far that is, because of this urge for more and more, even if you're happy here and now, you must want more. And that's cool, it keeps us alive. But when so many of us have moved past struggling to survive to eating cake everyday, perhaps it's time we stood still for a while, stopped hankering for more, enjoyed our immense privilege and helped the others catch up with us.


~Sam
PS: I do realize that these feelings are not universal, although I have made it sound that way in my writing.

Choices

This is slightly more personal than my other stuff, and up here solely for the sake of posterity, and perhaps as a caution against the twin evils of indecisiveness and impulsiveness that so love to plague me.

So I've spoken about how I live in a state of constant indecisiveness, and that is more true than you can imagine. Constraint of time is the only thing that makes me hurry up and make a choice, which, like everything else I do, I make at the last possible minute.This is true of pretty much every choice I've made till date, whether I'm deciding what to order at a restaurant..or what career to pursue.

This story is about the latter.

So, rewind a bit in my life. It's time to pick a college/university/whatever you refer to them as. I'll stick to college. I'm eligible for two equally brilliant ones, and it's time to make a choice, that much detested thing. One of these colleges is what I specifically prepared for, and far beyond what I'd ever hoped to reach. The other offers me the course which I love. Why was I preparing for a course different from what I love? Well I prepared for both, but my focus was on one. There was a choice involved there, too, another one-foolishly-taken at the last moment, but let's just say that reason led to this one. The whole brain v. heart conundrum again. This one had better prospects, and I liked it well enough; that one was the eternal love and passion of my life. If I was to pick the first, I had to start preparing, and soon, and so I began, without quite realizing that this was one in a line of choices that would determine the course of my life. Without thinking about what I was losing. I had been slightly hesitant, and thought I'd leave myself open to both my options, what I liked and what I loved, and pick depending on where I got in-thought that I would decide later when, if I got in.

That first step in the sea swept me away though. The fact that I had a goal in mind,  something to work at; the fact that I invested so much in preparing, all sort of cemented this option in my mind, automatically relegated the second option, what I loved, to second place. A back up, a second choice. I'd dreamed about making it to a certain place: never did I dream of getting accepted to a better place. When that happened, everyone, everyone was overjoyed. Except me: I was still in shock I think. I don't remember much, but I distinctly remember that I wasn't..happy. Just numb. I had found out earlier that I might eligible for the place I loved-I wouldn't know until later that I might have been accepted there had I passed the interview (which I didn't attend, having already made my decision by then), and I wouldn't regret it until even later than that, when life and consequences had caught up with me.



This story is still incomplete. And I think it always will be, because I will never know where that other path would have led. I don't even fully know where this path is going. Maybe they'll merge somewhere, though. Maybe I'll be sure somewhere.


~Sam

Isolated Togetherness

Of the claustrophobic part of life, of living together day in and day out in one space with all your friends and not-friends, stuck together, separated from the rest of the universe, caged in your little bubble.

We stand together,

In isolated togetherness.

See each other,

Day in, day out,

In isolated togetherness.

No one around for miles and miles,

But you and I and them,
Them and their pretend smiles,

In isolated togetherness.

We live together, eat together; breathe together, sleep together.

We can’t get away, can’t get away,

From this enforced togetherness. 

~Sam