I Don't Like It One Bit!

So I've come to the conclusion that my writing has severely deteriorated over the last month or so. I'm not aware of the causes of this, but I simply don't enjoy my writing as much as I did before. It lacks the same character, the same enthusiasm, the same humor that it had back in the Golden Age of my blogging career. (When you do things for brief periods of time, you can talk about brief periods as ages and eras. More on that later.) Anyway, I've chosen to write a little about how much I dislike my writing right now.

I'm not funny. I do give it a little effort, but it just doesn't come to me as easily as it did before. This idea of not being able to be funny is depressing, which makes my writing even worse. It's a downward spiral, like if I were a pigeon and some delinquent kid threw a rock at me and broke my wing mid-flight and I started falling out of the sky. At this point I'm about to hit the ground. Or maybe I'm already on the ground, and the delinquent kid saw what happened and is trying to take care of me, but I'm freaked out because I'm a pigeon and pigeons are afraid of humans because of evolutionary traits to ensure survival, so I'm hopping away because pigeons don't really walk, and I'm trying to nurse my wing back to health but I don't have medical care because I'm a bird. Anyway it's a bad situation.

Metaphors are fun, but I don't really think that they're quite the same as what I started writing. If you go back to my other posts, towards the beginning, like "A Conversation," those posts were actually good, in my humble, totally non-biased opinion. I enjoyed writing them, and I mostly enjoy reading them. For the most part, I enjoy the ideas behind them. What I no longer enjoy is the ideas behind my newer posts. I think it's because I've been writing them in situations where I'm not just writing. I'm usually listening to a lecture, or trying to pass time, or waiting for something to happen. I'm not thinking about writing. It's a problem.

This post may turn out the same way. I'm not really doing anything else, but I'm also not fully devoted to writing this right now because it's pretty late at night and I kind of want to go to sleep. However, I started writing this and I feel like I should finish it because if I stop and leave it for tomorrow I think I'm going to lose my train of thought that I kind of have going right now and it will turn out even worse than if I finish it now.

I'm typing very poorly right now. You can't tell because I'm going back and fixing all my errors as I'm going, but I'm writing pretty slowly because I'm deleting every other word to fix it. It's like if I were trying to get somewhere, but each time I could only get halfway there, then I'd never actually get there, but for most intents and purposes I'll finish because it doesn't matter if I'm still half of a half of a half of a half of a half of a half of a half of a half of a half of the way away from being done because I'll be close enough that it doesn't matter anymore. That's like one five-hundred-twelfths away from being done. Totally did that math in my head. I'm smart like that. Kind of. Not really...

So I've lost something in the past month. I'm not really sure what it is. Maybe it's the dedication. Maybe it's the inspiration. Maybe it's the ability. Maybe it's topics. Maybe it isn't actually anything and I just don't like what I'm writing for some strange reason but I'm still writing just like I did before. Who knows? I don't think that I do, but it's very possible that I do, since I've come to accept that I don't know what reality is and I don't know who I am either, in some bizarre philosophical sense. 

Philosophy does that to you. It's kind of cool, but kind of annoying. Like before, I just accepted that I am myself; that I have a body and a life and I live and the world exists and all the people around me are real and the food I eat and the feelings I experience and the things I do are real, and that they have consequences and mass and stuff like that. All the normal things that we associate with life. Now, I have no idea what's real. I'm not sure if I exist, I'm not sure if I have a body if I do exist. I'm not sure that what I perceive is real, I'm not sure if what I'm actually doing what I think I'm doing.

I mean, for practicality's sake, I accept that I'm here, that I'm typing this, that I need to go to sleep, and eat and drink, go to school, talk to people, get out of the way of projectiles moving towards me in a fashion that could do my body physical harm, etc. It would be stupid for anyone to live his or her life going about his or her business as if he or she didn't actually exist and as if he or she had abilities like Neo in The Matrix. He or she would die. Rapidly.

I'm going to go to bed. I'm not sure if it's because I'm tired or because my writing is actually improving, but this post may be slightly better than my last few. I hope you liked it too. Actually, it really doesn't matter because I haven't totally accepted that you exist. So go share your opinion elsewhere, imaginary reader.

Retrospect

So the school year is pretty much over. I'm really happy that it's almost summer. I'm also kind of bummed, but I think that I'm more happy than bummed. It's nice that there's no more school to worry about, but all of my new friends are going home and I still don't have a job. Anyway, I'm gonna be a little retrospective now.

So I've learned a lot this year. Life lessons were selling at ten on the dollar. College is like that. It's a journey of self-discovery and stuff like that. Here are a few things I discovered this year.

The plot of the first season of the Pokémon television show is an epic journey. Ash Ketchum is the hero, and he faces obstacles and enemies and hardships and stuff on the way to becoming a Pokémon Master. Watch the show and you will be amazed by all the parallels that can be drawn between Pokémon and the Odyssey. Kind of. But Pokémon is a great video game and show.

Don't bike when groggy. You will eventually get in an accident. It is inevitable. The same goes for operating heavy machinery and driving and other activities that could possibly cause serious bodily harm. This is why early morning classes are a terrible idea.

The more time you spend with people, the less you like them. While not always true, I would say that it's usually correct. This is why we all hate annoying clingy people. People who latch-on to groups without contributing anything are particularly bothersome. I encountered this most often in high school when there were more stupid and annoying people, but they are inescapable because they are everywhere.

People do really stupid stuff when they are intoxicated, but most of the time it is pretty reflective of who they are. Girls who are normally slutty get sluttier and guys who are sleazy get sleazier. People who are annoying get more annoying, and people who are intelligent get stupid. What is most amusing and interesting is when quite, restrained people go crazy and do things that you would never expect. But drunk people are generally stupid, so don't drink.

Learn from your mistakes. If you didn't study in high school and think you can't study in college, try it out. But if you fail a midterm, start studying. If you don't fail your midterms and can manage to stay with the curve without studying too much, props to you. I wouldn't study either in that situation.

Email lists are both awesome and terrible. If anyone is getting together a list for a study group or making a study guide, get on that list. While you have to put up with all the nonsense that people post that isn't a study guide, and bothering you to contribute to the study guide, nobody is going to take you off that list. Then you get a free study guide. The bad part is that you have to filter through way too many emails to find the study guide, or anything else useful.

Get out of the dorm. Unless you're really antisocial and can't make friends, you should try to find people who aren't forced to be your "friend." While people in the dorm are conveniently located, there are way more people outside your dorm for you to meet than there are inside the dorm. When drawing from a larger pool, you're more likely to find people you'll like, especially if you look in groups/organizations/clubs that you're interested in, because that means they have similar interests.

Showering barefoot is really nice. Things you have at home and don't have at college are all pretty nice. Like a full-size refrigerator. And sleeping naked. And your own room. And pets. And space. And not having to share a bathroom with lots of other people.

Nudity is underrated. It is really nice to walk around in the nude, especially when it's really hot and you don't have air-conditioning. You also get a great tan.

I don't know what reality is anymore. Crazy thought, but college will do that to you. We learn a lot through our readings and our classes and our professors, but sometimes you just have to go and live a little, and you'll uncover things you never even thought about before. 

Think.

The Day Lasts as Long as You're Awake

It was my friend's birthday last weekend and we decided that a birthday starts at midnight of your birthday, then lasts as long as you're awake after the night of your birthday. For example, your twenty-first birthday starts at midnight (12:00 am), so you hit the bars right then. You fall asleep a few hours later (let's say 4:12 am) and wake up that afternoon (3:27 pm) still drunk (with a blood alcohol concentration of about 0.2%). You continue to drink, since it is almost happy hour and you can legally drink, and after several bottles of various energy drinks mixed with alcohol, you finally pass out at 8:43 am the day after your birthday. Although an unlikely situation, your birthday would theoretically have lasted until the following morning.

I love sleeping. There are a certain number of hours every day when there are not very many interesting things to do. These hours typically range from about 12 am to about 9 am, depending on where you are. Because there are so few amusing things to do between these hours, they are ideal times to sleep, when having amusing things to do is of no concern.

I don't know why we need to sleep. I may be wrong, but I don't think that biology has even explained why we need to sleep. I mean, it gives us something to do when there isn't anything else to do, but it also is a huge waste of time. I've probably slept away more than a third of my life. That's almost seven years. I have spent seven years sleeping. If I had been doing something productive with my time, like reading or practicing music or learning how to scuba dive or something, I could probably be a really accomplished person. Stupid biology.

I actually don't have too much to say about sleep. I thought I did, but I don't. I need to start writing posts without a topic in mind as much. More next time.