The Worst Part

It just came to me, the worst part of the break-up... I couldn't put my finger on it 'til just now.

Knowing she's completely fine without you and has seemingly forgotten your existence, remaining the same before, during, and after she met you - you leaving no footprint in her life, your entire time together meaning nothing in the end. And you, being left a pitiful wreck after she's come and gone, self-hating and weak, thinking you were much stronger in the face of adversity.

And they call it being dumped. I now realize how accurate of a verb that is.

[/emo]

Sorry. Late nights do no good for me anymore.jy5wutitrshhjtr

I know where my comfort lies, I just can't grasp it right now.

Soundtrack To My Life: 2008

January: Dälek - Speak Volumes
I remember specifically driving home for Christmas break and listening to a mixtape DKDustinK of AfterThePostRock sent me in a mixtape trade. We had to take 101 home because 30 was closed. I, at that moment, realized that all hip-hop was not bad. It carried on through December 07 into January 08 and marked me getting interested in underground hip-hop for the first time.

February: Readymade - Nov30
I started getting into an awkward involvement with a girl in February. Readymade set the right melancholy tone for that, because I was a bit devastated. I learned a lot about girls and awkward situations in my school year of 07-08, and this would mark the most awkward of all. Walking around the back-streets of Cannon Beach listening to Readymade helped turn me into the emotional zombie that I became for a while.

March: M83 - Teen Angst
I remember getting a very hyped-up vibe from M83 for a long time before ever hearing them. This was the first track I heard from them and I was simply blown away which led me to a short but intense obsession with the band. The title also reflects my continued "teen angst" from my fails with women.

April: Atmosphere - Like The Rest of Us
I chose this track because it paints a very vivid picture of a night when I rode my little $5 kids bike around Cannon Beach and listened to this whole album. It was kinda monumental to me - this is not my favorite track on that album but represents that night very distinctively to me. April was a time of healing.

May: Windy & Carl - Sketch For Flea
Right after graduating Ecola, I went straight to my dad's house in San Diego. I suddenly had multiple meaningless crushes going on, but it was a cool time despite that. I started getting into drone, and this was the track that started it all. It also represents a time of escape and relaxation, as well as self-confrontation. The atmospheric architecture of Windy & Carl put me in a good mood late at night.

June: Bersarin Quartett - Mehr als alles andere
In June I drove to camp to be a counselor for the summer. Everyone hit it off really well, really fast, giving our great summer an ever greater start. Within a week I already had a super intense crush on Elyse and one of my greatest downfalls started setting in - Envy. Despite the warm June weather, the struggle I was going through made me feel cold - the same atmosphere this song portrays to me.

July: Fang Island - We Were Lions
I used this song once at an end-of-the-week slideshow, and overall, it is the perfect song for my July. Just lots of fun with my kids at camp, enjoying myself thoroughly and growing and maturing exponentially. To wrap it up at the end of July, Elyse and I confess our "like" for one another on a starry night. High-fives all around.

August: Snow Patrol - Set The Fire To The Third Bar
The beginning of August was difficult, I was at a family reunion in Iowa and Elyse was hundreds of miles away. I wrote her a letter with the lyrics to this song in it. Even when I got back, we had to be distant because we weren't really allowed to be "in relationships" around the kids. Camp ended and we both stayed in Stanwood and we finally "made it official."

September: Airiel - Sugar Crystals
September was a joyful time with Elyse, she stayed at my house and we did absolutely everything together. This song paints the mood of this month perfectly, just loving every minute of it. I went back to Cannon Beach half way through and had a blast with my intern family. Leaving her was hard, but I was in good company. My first kiss was also had this month. Sugar Crystals.

October: Halou - I'll Carry You
Lots of "missing each other" and love love love going around. Just lots of intense longing and feeling very loved this month. I substituted my beloved Halloween to drive home and visit my beloved Elyse. This song represents the mood of this month perfectly.

November: Bloc Party - Signs
Ended my Halloween weekend with our relationship totally derailed and going nowhere good. Pulling my hair out in anxiety and frustration and cluelessness until it finally kicked the bucket a week before Thanksgiving. This song becoming my break-up song due to it being one we both enjoyed and also it being very sad. I realize it's about somebody dying, but I just took it figuratively instead of literally.

December: Aidan Baker - Survival
This month marks the most severe apathy about my life I've ever experienced. Some people would probably call it depression, I don't really know though. The mood and title of this song paint my life, getting lost in the droning riffs of Aidan Baker and I'm merely surviving right now. The end of December leaves me with a small aftertaste of hope in my mouth and optimism for the future.


Download Link will be available if anyone shows any interest. I don't really feel like putting a link up if it won't get used... although I might just for kicks.

Purposelessness

I was reading back into my old posts doing research for my "Soundtrack of my life: 2008" (Coming Soon!) and I realized from a post back in September that I was feeling purposeless and thought it would change when I started Ecola and had stuff to do. Nope, feeling as purposeless as ever... well, maybe not, useless is a better word. I'm becoming more optimistic about the future daily, but it's interesting that my feeling of being useless has remained this long and I thought it was just a recent thing. I wonder what other trends seem recent but have been there for a while...

What 'Emotional High' Means To Me (Reprise)

I discussed this with my dad a little bit today - some clarity and expansion was had.

Let's use an illustration, let's also say this illustration may or may not have had significance to me recently. A girl and a guy in a young relationship find they can tolerate each other to the point of saying "I Love You" for their first times (awww). I find that as a man saying that, I am less likely to talk about 'how I'm feeling' at any given moment so that when I tell a girl I love her, I have thought it through and decided that a) Up to this point in time, I've had not much problem with this girl and b) At this point in time, I really dig this girl and c) I could see myself spending some good time with this girl in the future. This is putting it casually, of course, I'm feeling a lot more passionate about all this. So in saying "I love you," I'm genuinely accepting this girl into my life - my whole life. This is affected in part by my how I'm feeling at the moment emotions, but since talking about how I'm feeling at the moment isn't a normal thing for me, when I'm asked about how I'm feeling, I'm talking about my large chapter, stage, movement in life. I could have been feeling pretty down the past few hours, but if a friend asks how I'm doing and I'm at an exciting time in life where things are going pretty well, I'm going to be talking about that, rather than my stress the past few hours at work.

Disclaimer: I'm not a girl and don't know how they work. If I were look at it from the female perspective though, and based on what little personal experience I have in this, I would say that this is flipped. If a girl says the same thing to her dude, she's saying "I love you right now" moreso than she's saying "everything you've done up to this point and what you're probably going to do in the future makes me love you." Girls are more likely to be talking to others about how they're feeling at the moment than guys, so when you ask them what they feel about something, they're most likely going to respond with how they're doing at that moment rather than the overall tone in their stage of life like a guy would. Now, opposite from a man, if a girl has been feeling kinda crappy the past few hours, but she's going through a pretty exciting time in her life otherwise, if asked about it she's going to tell you that she's not feeling so well because that's what's been going on earlier that evening.

And this is why we need to be careful with such things. We need to know where each is coming from because girls, if a guy tells you he loves you it's a super serious thing that he's thought through and is refering to a big picture. And guys, if you assume that girls think through this the same way you do, you might be taken aback later when you find that they were talking about that moment when they said it. Now please, don't take this as 'girls are untrustworthy and don't say what they mean' because I'm not saying that at all. I'm just trying to understand the differences in ways we communicate our affection (and I suppose this can be applied to many other areas of male/female communication as well). I'm also not saying that this is absolutely true - guys will sometimes react based on their hourly emotions, and girls will sometimes make decisions based on their stage of life, but I think more commonly, it goes the other way.

Like a Dove or, What 'Emotional High' Means to Me.

I said, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove!
I would fly away and be at rest-
I would flee far away
and stay in the desert;
I would hurry to my place of shelter,
far from the tempest and storm."

-David, Psalm 55:6-8 (NIV)

Totally, but I don't know what my place of shelter is. My Ecola family probably. I will be with them soon.

I hope there's not too much snow that I can't get home from the airport.

If an enemy was insulting me,
I could endure it;
if a foe were raising himself against me,
I could hide from him.
But it is you, [someone] like myself,
my companion, my close friend,
with whom I once enjoyed sweet fellowship
as we walked with the throng at the house of God.

-David, Psalm 55:12-14 (NIV) [Paraphrased by me]

Girls - please know that you affect men much more deeply than you (or even they, at the time) can know. Make sure that if you say something, that it isn't just your emotions talking, but that you really mean it. You may think you mean it at the time, but don't say "I love you" until you've struggled through a hard part of your relationship where you didn't feel the love. If you can still say and mean it after that, go ahead.

A little tip: Guys generally say what they mean and don't get caught up in temporary emotion as much - this is true for me anyway (I might not know what I'm talking about, actually...). My emotions are long-lasting and all-encompassing and don't affect the things I say and do and mean because if I'm feeling a certain way, I'm generally going to be feeling that way for a very long time. As in, it's not an emotion to me, it's a large chapter of my life. I would say I'm very affected by emotion, but I probably wouldn't define emotion the same way as I would in a female. I don't know if I'm making sense.

If a guy (I mean a good-intentioned guy who does have your best interest in mind; use discretion) says he loves you and means it, he isn't going to change his mind when he stops feeling the love and justify it as "I was on an emotional high," because he wasn't. While guys do have emotional ups and downs, they mostly have long underlying emotional movements that last for large chunks of time and define stages of life (Again, call bs on this if it's wrong, because it could just be me). A man's actions are not based on his temporary hour-to-hour emotions so much as his overall 'stage of life' emotions.

All I'm saying is, girls, be very careful not to say or do things very heartfelt when you're on one of your emotional highs - guys don't experience these in the same way you do, and will just assume that you're going to be like them and say things because you mean them deeply - not just emotionally. Deeply examine your heart when the guy in question isn't around you and make sure you feel that way, and not just when you're close to eachother, cuddling, saying cute disgusting things, what have you.

Nyquil

I give it an 8/10. It takes a while to start working.

Requirements for future wife: She must enjoy Underworld
Things I did for 7 hours today: Played Wii Ski
Artists with overrated releases in 2008: TV on the Radio, Portishead
Things that are 'alright' and start with C: Carmex, Cryosleep
My favorite way to tell people about things: This way

I started making short mad libs and posting them as Facebook notes. You should participate cause they're cool.

Good Things Are Ahead or, Why Don't You Drink?

I know it. Things are looking up for ol' Mick Swanson. Maybe.

If you drink too much water, do you puke or just drown?

I was thinking tonight, if the question were posed to me: Why don't you drink? I would answer in a way like this:
Well, I'd like to say it's because I want to obey the law, but that would be a lie because I break the speed limit every time I drive and I really like trespassing on abandoned things. I'd also like to say it's because I just have no desire to, which would also be a lie because I've been dying to try Pumpkin Ale and apparently there's no such thing as "Virgin Pumpkin Ale," (We've looked.) I'd also like to say it's because I like to enjoy things as they are, but while that wouldn't totally be a lie, it's probably not the main reason I don't drink. I guess it's just one of those things that I've stood firm on regardless of what people around me are doing... and I also think drunk people are just about the stupidest, least funny, and least likely people I would want to spend my time with. This goes for other substance abuse as well.

Dash and Blast

Why can't I just look at the world without all these memories attached to every little thing? Such blessings of memory and emotion can be such curses at times.

Spoiler: This is hypothetical. Sorry for being ambiguous.

Things I wonder:
-What would it be like to be a vampire?
-What would it be like to be insane?
-What would it be like to be able to walk on clouds?
-What would it be like to have a dinosaur?
-What would it be like to be in space?

There's noisy coyotes outside.

Hello 11:20

Flew on a plane today - am in San Diego. There was one point where we were above the clouds and all I could see was miles and miles of cloud plains and cloud mountains far off. I was listening to Kaki King. It was amazing.

Then for my second flight I was listening to Neurosis. Very different, but also awesome.

I found myself not caring if the plane crashed or not, I really want to go home. I wish there weren't work left here to do so we could all go home. As noted by my "vitals" column over there, I'm in the midst of some severe apathy... about everything. I could care less about one thing or another, having fun doesn't sound fun anymore, I don't care about sleeping because I have to wake up again, I'm always down but don't want to be comforted. This has been slowly progressing for a while, I see myself as worthless despite what kinds of evidences I see, read or hear otherwise. I just don't know. It will go away. Time passes, God heals.

Unpopular Life Goals

I have them. I don't really aspire to be anything. I don't want to go to college, I don't want a high-paying job. I would be content with making a little bit of money and living in a small apartment for a while. Seriously. I also want to do some couch surfing, celebrate ferret day every year, and find a wife eventually.

This comic is amazing and on-topic. If you don't read Dinosaur Comics already, get on it!

Blood!

I gave blood for the second time in my life on Tuesday. It's a good experience, if you haven't done it, you should. The lady sitting by the snack table after I'd finished giving my blood said something (I don't remember what) that led me to the conclusion that giving blood is an easy way to be a good steward of your body. The whole thing takes like 15-25 minutes and you're helping to save people's lives (Or so they tell you...). There's really no reason not to unless you're physically unable, as most of us can just regenerate more very quickly and be back to complete normality within 48 hours. Plus, blood and the shedding of it is totally metal. The bus that came to the conference center was called The Bloodmobile. Brutal.

Brace Yourself

Here's a quote for the old quote book:

"Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me."

-God (Job 38:8 (NIV))

And another of equal value:

"Do you give the horse his strength
or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?
Do you make him leap like a locust,
striking terror with his proud snorting?
...
At the blast of the trumpet he snorts, 'Aha!'"

-God (Job 39:19,20,25a (NIV))

I hope that turned you into a better person, I know it did for me.

Caring... Why? or, Why Girls Are Better Than I Thought

It's very hard for me to care about people... I mean, I know I'm commanded to, and I want to, but I don't know how to make myself care.

Take, for example, let's say someone you don't really know is coming to visit. This guy knows your friends and so they're talking, but then let's say they have to go do something and so you're left to entertain this guy. He seems cool, you've talked a little bit with him about a new movie or video game. But when it comes down to asking him how he's doing or what's going on in his life, I could really care less. Has he just got a job promotion? Does he get to visit distant relatives in the near future? Has he just had a spiritual breakthrough? These are all things that are very important to a person and since we're striving to love as Christ loves, shouldn't it be important to us as well? The answer is obviously yes, but I don't know how to.

Something else I recently discussed was enjoying someone's presence when they're around, but not really minding or missing them at all when they're not there. I've found that I struggle with this a lot more than I'd admit, even with people really close to me. It's weird to think that people actually miss me when I'm not around because it's such a weird concept to me. If I'm not even so good as to care enough to miss someone, what would they see in me that would make them miss me? I don't feel like I'm that encouraging to people or that I go out of my way to show them they're important to me... or that I'm even especially useful or helpful to people.

Little things have been showing me that I do care a little bit - I'm getting better. Now that I think of it, there's been a lot of little things. To go into detail, the conversation was mostly about me struggling with not being able to see girls as good enough friends to want them around when they're not there. This has been proven false three times in the past 24 hours to me.
First, I woke up this morning and realized that I miss my friend Rachel from camp this summer - a lot more than I thought I did, so much so that I would even venture to say that being able to spend a few days with her would be one of the best things that could happen right now. She's like a big sister to me, and I feel closer to her than to my older step-sisters.
Second, my fellow interns Richell and Diana. I often shrug them off because they can be a little more girly or dramatic than I can handle at times. But they also have a very fun and caring side and I honestly do enjoy their company most of the time, it's just I was thinking that I didn't really mind not being in their company either. Wrong. Tonight a bunch of interns went out to dinner and it just didn't feel the same without them and I found myself wishing they were there. Strange.
Third, I find I'm missing my mom a lot as well. I just watched the movie AI tonight, and it's all about the robot child seeking love and acceptance from his mom and it made me appreciate my mom and miss her a lot.

Aside from those big three, a few more were brought to my mind. Amanda, for caring enough to read my blog and for providing a blog for me to read and learn from and even for stealing my "part 1 of ?" format, mimicry is flattery and all that. Also for being humble and forgiving for a strange misunderstanding we had last year. My cousin Michelle for just being rad and having a cool family - same with my other cousin Wendy and their mom, my aunt, LaVonne for just being weird and fun. The rest of the girls on intern and staff for being pleasant and great to work with.

Men are awesome, but women give birth to men so I must give credit where it is due. Women are truly better than I thought.

Rethinking, Reevaluating, Reviving, etc.

This is a lot of what has been going through my mind in the past three or four days. Some of these topics will probably end up showing up again later.

Firstly, I'm rethinking rethinking college (That means I'm thinking about not going). I just don't see any point right now. I was considering architecture but it would require so much time, money and work and I don't even know if I would enjoy it. Thinking about what is actually in my future, couch surfing is looking more and more likely. I would love to take a year off and just travel the world couch surfing the whole way and putting my faith into practice... Like a mission trip, and a learning experience. I don't know how practical that is right now, I would need some money. Regarding money, I'm once again thinking that I really wouldn't mind making chump change and living on that. For one, I could live on little, I'm doing it now. For two, I would rather learn to be financially responsible with a small portion of money than with a large portion. Couch surfing is also looking super-appealing even if I do start going to college and even later in life. I'd love to have my home open to travelers - a constant flow of new people to meet and serve.

Something that's really hard for me is having to sit in on so many classes. Don't get me wrong, the classes are amazing, and that's why it's so hard. It seems like every week I'm getting convicted about something new that I never get an opportunity to put into practice before another week goes by and some more things are added to my pile of ways I need to change. The change seems impossible to me right now, like, I feel like I could never attain the things I'm convicted of because I'm too weak. It's overwhelming at times. The way I try to look at it is that God has got me thinking heavily on these things for a reason - At least I'm thinking about them now. What we have our mind focused on is what we eventually become, to some degree, and if I'm focusing on positive changes, it's only a matter of time before God shows me exactly how to change or slowly make the change in me without me really knowing. Like I posted about a while ago, "Love God, and do what you want," I shouldn't be worried about God's will for my future, just live out how I know how to (intentionally) and expect change to come naturally.

Relating to that, I've come to understand how useless I am as a person... Mostly through my former romantic relationship. I read somewhere that our goal as men when relating to women (all relationships, friends, dating, etc) should be this: The woman we're in contact with should be better off having met us. This is really convicting, because often as men, we want to see "how far" we can get, or how we can make women be more attracted to us, not taking into account the damage we're doing to them and how much worse off they'll be having met us. I read this before going into the relationship and now looking back, realize I completely failed. I was trying to evaluate my impact on her and realize I probably contributed nothing of a positive and lasting importance in her life. I shared this and it was affirmed. This is a very humbling thing, probably the most humbling thing that has ever happened to me. This event got me thinking of ways I could possibly impact people in the future or ways I could have done things differently in the past. I came up with nothing. I realized that as a person, I have absolutely nothing to offer anyone. I think this is a place that we need to come to in order for God to start using us for bigger and better things. This is not a place you can come to by reading something like this. I'm fairly sure you have to come to the point where you experience something like this yourself - God has to bring you here. It's a weird place to be. I'm not saying that now I'm even close to a perfect vessel by any means, but right now I feel like that if God used me for something big I would recognize it as Him, not me - because I know nothing good could come from me. This seems like something that would get me down and feeling sorry for myself, but it hasn't, which is stranger than ever... Praise God.

While we're on the topic if my former romantic relationship, I'd also like to share something I've also very recently discovered about myself (and maybe about you!). All through grade school I've always enjoyed having one-sided crushes - sure, they made me miserable and depressed, but there's a certain romance and mystery to be completely infatuated with someone who wouldn't ever consider you in that way. I've come to find I enjoy that romance and mystery (I like to think I'm a romantic), but I didn't really know that until now. This is a problem, because reveling in that is very self destructive and is in fact, living in sin. There's so much focus on yourself and the object of your infatuation that there's no room for God at all. I realized that after we broke up, my thoughts slowly started drifting in that direction again - a very bad thing, especially since I had already understood, accepted, and agreed with her reasons for breaking it off. It started happening in such a way that I didn't really notice, but before I knew it, I was doing it again - not wanting to give up my feelings for her because I enjoyed my misery. This taught me something very important that I should have picked up a long time ago - taking our thoughts (or attitude) captive is essential. I've been talking so much lately about how we need to live our lives intentionally - constantly be making decisions to glorify Christ. I now know that we also need to be completely intentional with our attitudes toward things. In my case, I need to change my attitude to: "Breaking up was the right thing to do and I can accept that, and if old feelings start coming up, I need to push them aside before they can grab a hold of me - I'm not in love anymore." For me, declaring something like this out loud makes it official (Make sure no one is listening. Awkward!). It's very easy to decide not to be in love anymore if you take this approach. Another step I took is completely removing any trace of her from my life - this meant taking her off my friends on Facebook, last.fm, Skype, and stop reading her blog, and since I don't live anywhere near her, I don't have to worry about that. Maybe some people can go right back to being "just friends," but I'm far too weak to handle something like that. When there's not tons of things all around you to remind you of the one you used to be so close with, it starts making it a lot easier to get over because there's less opportunity for your focus to get shifted back to those feelings. If you're in a situation where you have to see the person on a regular basis, I can imagine it to be a lot weirder and a lot harder. I pity the man that has to deal with this kind of a situation.

I think there's more. I don't remember and I'm super tired and should probably be getting to bed. I hope this was beneficial to someone.

2 Weeks

Hi 11:47.

Left 4 Dead

... is amazing. If you haven't heard of it, it's a first-person four-player-coop zombie-shooter.

Imagine this, there are four of us, me, Kurtis, Ralph, and one CPU player. We're on the last stage of the campaign where you have to defend a dark little beach shack waiting for a rescue boat to come. As soon as you call the radio for the boat, you hear the screams and grunts of hordes of zombies coming over the hills around you. Throwing a couple molotov cocktails to burn up a portion of them, you start opening fire on the ones that get through or come from a different direction. We're all up on a balcony firing down on them as they're coming up. Just then, the music changes and we hear the sound of a Tank coming. A Tank is a huge, buff zombie with gigantic muscles and the mannerisms of a large and angry gorilla. We start pouring bullets into him, light him on fire, and try to take him down. It usually takes over a minute of constant fire from all four of us to get rid of a Tank. The Tank takes Kurtis down as he's trying to distract it with a big swing of his massive arm. We all watch helplessly as it pummels Kurtis to a bloody pulp. It leaves three of us. We fight off the remaining hores of zombies, often having to save each other from Hunters, who pounce on you, Smokers, who drag you away with their long tongues and choke you to death, and Boomers, who vomit and exlode on you, making it hard to see and attracting more zombies to you. It's all mayhem but we're fairing pretty well until we hear the sound of another Tank coming. Dang it, there are always two. When we find it, I throw a molotov to catch it on fire, but it's already too late, it's right on top of Ralph pounding him to death, and as soon as he's down, the Tank gets straight on to the CPU player, who didn't stand a chance. I kill the Tank while he's distracted and hear the sound of the fog horns on the boat, so I run towards the dock while the boat inches closer - it's just me now. Then, I hear the hordes of zombies coming again and see them running towards me in the distance. I shoot a few of them to keep them off of me, and the boat is inching closer. I'm just about ready to get on, when I look over my shoulder and the horde of zombies is climbing onto the dock. I step one foot onto the boat, I'm home free! But then, I start getting pulled back. It's a smoker and he's got me around the neck. I get pulled into the horde and it's game over.

You can have fun and exciting experiences just like these for only $49.99!

http://www.l4d.com/