[183] Work somehow keeps me happy

It has served as a respite and a sanctuary from the things that bother me in my life.

I am glad to work with so many great people.

Work really has kept me alive.

[182] Looking ahead

As this calendar year draws to a close, I am already looking ahead to next year, 2011.

I’ve learned a lot about myself this year. I had always said that life was one’s greatest teacher; this adage proved to be extremely truthful and hurtful recently.

Life really is never easy. Sure, it would be nice if it could be predictable and everything you wished to happen did.  But it’s naive to think it could ever be simple.

Life is all about learning. Life tends not to hold anything back. You get the full force and impact of its “lessons” without any option to mute, censor, or fast-forward like you’re watching a DVD or a show saved on your DVR.

Thus, I have come up with a resolution for next year that will also serve as a personal motto and mission.

[181] Something can be said about good music

It really doesn’t matter what genre it falls under or who made it, sang it, or arranged it.

 

It’s all about the individual joy.

 

It’s the mood it gives you.  It’s how it makes you feel when you connect a song, a verse, a piece of the instrumental track to an event in your life, whether it be important or mundane.

 

You can pretty much do whatever you want with whatever song you listen to.

 

Not everyone will see eye to eye (or hear ear to ear?) with you but music is ultimately what you make of it.

 

Put that song on repeat, enjoy every track of that album, and happily spend those two hours and 12 minutes listening to a playlist from top to bottom…and have no remorse doing it all over again.

 

Just do you.

 

Album cover to RE:COLLECTIONS, a two-disc compilation whose second disc has been my music of choice for the week. It's been soothing for my arduous morning commute and for hellish periods of work where I needed something to maintain my sanity.

[180] Perdition Crisis?

I apologize for these entries becoming more and more infrequent.  I haven’t had the time and energy to blog and there haven’t been new things worth writing about.

Work has been taking a toll on me.  The daily grind leaves me feeling like I need 15 hrs of sleep.

Of course there are always those moments I want to beat myself up for wasting my childhood achieving the wrong goals.  There are times I wish I could chastise myself for being my own obstacle.

After another brutal loss with my company’s softball team, I sat alone on the subway ride home and reflected.  Despite a handful of good things happening in the game, we still lost by a tremendous margin and I had some really bad at-bats.

Don’t you ever wish there were times you could achieve so much more?  How you want to be the object of praise but you can’t because you just aren’t good enough to live up to what your colleagues, acquaintances, friends expect?

I wish I had better stuff to share but I don’t.

[179] Heed Stephanie’s Words

Brian(20:48:08): i kid…im not [sic] saint myself

Stephanie (20:48:11): lol

Stephanie (20:48:25): no one is

Stephanie (20:48:30): people need to man up

Stephanie (20:48:45): psh i barely cry

That’s right.  MAN UP!

[178] Yes, You Can Be Functionally Anti-Social

For all the people trying to force me to make friends with people I don’t want to be friends with, just stop.

[177] Yes, I haven’t written in a while

So…I might just have a guest contributor here and there…so don’t be surprised if you see a post by a different author.

Anyone interested can ask me…and I guess we can figure it out from there.

[176] If you need instructions on how to live, check out the enclosed instruction book!

Rules: they govern how to play games and they govern our lives.  Funny how we are encouraged to be ourselves but if doing so results in rules being broken, we are then reprimanded.

How are we to live?

We often encounter people we dislike in our lives—and we are expected to grin and bear it.

We do something nice and the favor isn’t returned—and that is something we are supposed to accept.

I think you can see where I am going with this.

You cannot believe how many times I’ve just wanted to really reprimand friends of mine for doing things or saying things that really bothered me but I could not because the “rules” of society say you can’t do that.

It just seems society punishes those who do not want to adhere to social norms—as if those who think outside of the box are to be thrown inside a cage.

But I guess you can still live your life…but only in the ways everyone else wants you to.

[175] Welcome to Fecesbook!

This was a rant I had typed on Facebook in response to a third-party application that allows the user—once he or she downloads it—to find out who visits his/her page each day.  Wow, what happened to privacy?

Naturally, I was unhappy about all this and even more unhappy to find out this nonsense is popular among those in high school or college but who have the mental capacity of kids in a day-care center.

Time to tell you why I’m mad.

[174] Attachment

No, there is nothing here for you to download.

While I was terminating friendships with some people, I wondered when we decide to end friendships.

Naturally, some friendships deteriorate over time.  It makes sense, though—you defer maintenance on something, that something will fall apart, resulting in potentially disastrous consequences.  That decision to put off checking your brakes is the difference between you and your friends waking up the next day and you and your friends going face first into some car with “KAGAMIKU” on the license plate.

Or, if you are too squeamish to think of something so morbid, think of it as some glue drying up over time.  We all know what glue does, so I hope I don’t  have to use an example.  But over time, the adhesion becomes weaker and weaker until separation happens.

But what compels a person to re-apply that glue so that the bond is restored?  Likewise, what compels a person not to do anything and to let the friendship deteriorate even further?

I guess you can take the time to think about your friends.  Do they have any value to you?  Are you happy associating with them?

Do they embody people of good character, or are they just characters?

You don’t win an award for having over 9000 friends (those awards you might win on Facebook cannot be exchanged for money in real life).