Anyway, it is true that I read something he wrote. It was all about finding yourself. It was about trying to separate who “you” are from those around you. To really get to know yourself by yourself with no one else around to influence what you see. Okay, so if I’m not going to link to him, I’ll quote him:
Right now for the biggest problem for me is understanding who I am. I know I am well liked by most everyone that knows me, but right now I feel like I don't know me. What do I have that is my own? What can I claim? When people think of me, what do they see? Am I just a bunch of pieces of what my friends are, or am I something completely different? Sometimes I think that I just need to get away from what I have and start over fresh. Maybe its a vicious cycle, since that is what I did when I came to EOU. I have made so many awesome friends here, but I feel like I am just pieces of them, and not what "I" am.
No offense to my little brother, but maybe there’s no need to find out what we, as individuals, “are.” Does it make sense to define yourself in a vacuum, without any outside influences? And I’m already getting bored by this. I thought it would make a good post, but now…. not so much. Anyway, here’s the heart of it. I think that it is exactly through not in spite of our relationships that we find out who we “are.” If not, then we are destined to spend our lives vigilantly defending ourselves against the encroachment of others, making sure that they don’t leak into our preciously constructed vacuum chamber of self. I prefer to think of life as a palette of paints. Every time a new one is added, the colors get mixed a little and the result is somehow both different in appearance and the same in character. And to assume that we can find out for all time who we are is, I think, ridiculous. I am constantly changing as I meet new people and experience new things. Only God knows “who we are.” For us it’s just a lifetime long learning experience. Well, this all made a lot more sense to me before I tried to write it down. Oh well.
Okay. That little thing put me up to 487 words in this post. I need to hit 1272 words in order to accomplish my goal of 10,000 words for the week, but it is really getting hard. I just don’t have that much to write about! 10,000 words is a lot, especially considering that I was at about 60,000 in total before this week. That’s an increase of 16% in one week. Hey, that kind of sounds like one of those spam emails that I get from time to time: Increase your length by 16% in one week with this miracle working drug! Usually the subject line is something like “Re: V1aggara!! Online Orders” and is sent from someone with a weird name like Leathery G. Bulldozer. Anyway, back to the 10,000 words. I’m not sure why I’m trying to do it, just for the heck of it I guess. I’m sort of like Ted Ferguson or something, doing a stupid meaningless stunt. “I’m going to write 10,000 words on my blog…..IN ONE WEEK!” I just hope that, when I finish, someone will bring me a Bud Light. Actually, let me rephrase that. I do NOT want anyone to bring me a Bud Light. That stuff tastes like watered down cat pee. You could bring me some A&W Root Beer instead. How about it? I’m at work, you could stop on by and give it to me? Anyone? Anyone?
So um…..what next. I need about 600 more words…..
This morning on the way to the Metro station I was thinking about the word “blog” and how it pretty much sounds like a euphemism for “vomit.” I think I’m going to start using it in that sense, as in the following story.
Last night, I must have had some bad sushi or something. We were just sitting there watching TV when all of a sudden I started to feel my stomach flip over. I looked at my wife and said “I think I’m going to blog!”
I took off for the bathroom, and I almost made it. I had my hand up over my mouth as I was running, trying to hold it closed so I didn’t blog all over the carpet. Actually, I did make it to the bathroom, just not the toilet. I opened the door and I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. First, it started to squelch out between my fingers, but then I just let go and blogged all over the tile. I tried to get to the toilet, but instead I slipped on the blog and fell. That’s right, I fell right into the toilet and made a huge crack down the side of the bowl. So now, I was laying half conscious on the floor, bleeding profusely from the head and toilet water was spraying everywhere. I wasn’t really sure where I was so I just laid there in a growing puddle of blog, blood, and water. And all the while I’m still, just, blogging all over the place. I couldn’t make it stop.
As I slowly regained full consciousness, I grabbed the roll of toilet paper (my blogging had pretty much stopped at this point, mostly showing up as empty posts) and held it to my forehead to try to stop the bleeding. The only trouble was that the toilet was broken, so there was nowhere to put the bloody toilet paper. So now I’m laying there in puddle of blood, blog, water and bloody toilet paper. “This is how I’m going to die,” I thought. “Right here. I’m going to die right here in my own blog. This sucks.”
After about a half an hour, I managed to pull myself into the shower and rinse off. I basically just sat there in my clothes and let the lukewarm water run all over me. Eventually, I realized that, no matter what, all that blogging had done irreparable harm to my clothes, so I took them off and left them in a soggy, smelly pile in the shower. Somewhere along the way I think I crapped myself a little, too. Ugh, blog and crap do not go together well.
Finally, I grabbed some fresh clothes from the dryer and walked back to the living room where my wife was still sitting peacefully on the couch, watching TV.
“What the heck! Why didn’t you help me? Why did you just sit here watching TV!” I shouted at her.
“What do you mean?” she asked. “I left you a comment! Didn’t you see it? You should try hitting ‘refresh’ sometimes.”
And now, this right here is this week’s word number !!!!!
4 comments:
Ahhh, Schuyler. You never let us down.
I was wondering, as I read that last part, "Where is Maggie during all of this?" Well, obviously nowhere, because this is fictional. But you know what I mean. Nice touch with the refresh button.
To your initial point: I love your thoughts on this. Awesome. You really can't define yourself independently of anyone. I've moved several times to places where I knew NO ONE, and it's one weird experience. The same questions come to mind. Who am I? What do people think of me when they meet me? Do they have the faintest clue of who I really am in that first meeting? And what does that mean for the future of that relationship, whatever form it takes?
And then, after about a month, I make some new friends and get a little more comfortable and forget about most of the self-obsessed stuff.
Psst. Zach. I didn't click on it because you didn't want others reading it but your blog is listed in your profile. You can change your settings so it doesn't appear. ;)
Oh and about the original topic, I'm for a bit of personal space to contemplate and have room for individuality. I think there's a reason why you feel the way you do and you have to find out what that reason is. In some way you must not feel like you're being true to yourself to feel that way and that you may be 'being' a certain way more for others than for you.
Ok - I'm done channeling Dr. Phil now.
Ok now you know I didn't click on it though! I wouldn't have posted that! :)
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