How to be Kedar

I had a dream last night that I was in my old house, the house I grew up in. A remember feeling euphoric walking on the old carpets and feeling the old walls. This was a house truly lived in, that was built many years ago. And I felt so much love – I thought, “God, I haven’t been here in almost ten years.”

When I woke up the feeling was still lingering. I remember my life as a younger child. I not reserved, I was free! I used to play outside out on my driveway, out in the lawn, in my beautiful backyard, run around the cemetery, go to pick apples, find secret spots with shade, go to the parks, ride my bike. I had very many friends. I was never happier in my life. And I loved my house more than anything. I loved the way I felt cold in the winter, and I would touch the ice paintings on the window and know that I won’t have to go to school. I loved the feeling of lying on the grass, of being with friends and playing video games, of having dreams and thinking it’s okay to play pretend. I loved the silence of my basement. I loved the feeling of ghosts and spirits in the night. I remember my first memories of hugging my mom’s legs when I was very little. I remember jumping on the beds. I remember my mom recording me counting numbers and saying my ABC’s when I was four. I remember elementary school. My house has a lot of memories. It was a truly lived in house. It was a home. My home. My one true love, my soul mate.

My parents moved me to the subarbs when I was eleven. They sold that house, and I’ve never seen it again. I remember that as my parents drove my away from the Midwest Iowa to South Texas, some of my friends were running behind the car yelling, “Bye Kedar!!!” And then my street, the street I knew and loved so dearly because I would walk along it many times everyday and speak with all the neighbors and the neighbor’s kids, vanished away.

When I do remember my old home and all those fond memories, I fall into this feeling of nostalgia. I think nostalgia is a form of romance. It is the same feeling that I get when I am kissing a girl for the first time. It is the warm feeling that I get when somebody I care about loves me. It is the feeling that I get when I am moved to tears. And so sometimes I will stay up in the night and gaze at the patient moon as I know I did as a child. I used to imagine that I would invent a time machine one day and visit myself at a younger age. If I could, I would go back to the time when I played with the water house. I would go back to the time that I first got Mega Man X and Pokemon. I would go back to the time that I fell asleep with the radio on, imagining with my naive mind the beautiful things I have to see in my lifetime, and how I would someday be the greatest man alive and help everyone be happy… I think the thing I loved most about Iowa is that I was so loved, and I loved every person, every place. I loved the bonfires. I loved the birthdays. I love my first taste of frosting, my first rice crispy treat. I loved drawing monsters on the patio and not having a care in the world.

I am truly lucky to have had such a beautiful childhood. There is no other thing in my life can compare. If I can ever buy back that house, I would. But now it has all changed. I remember the old public library. When I went to visit my friends, erected in its place is a state of the art library. I have so many memories of that old library. My dad used to read his business and financial magazines, and I would go to the kids section and read about absolutely everything – witchcraft, cryptography, computer programming. I remember the seemingly thousands of shelves of books, and I wanted to read every single one! In between the stacks of books, there were spaces where I could sit quietly.

I remember one time I told my dad that I didn’t love him. I had memories of him making my mom cry and once beating me. he went to God’s room (that’s what we called the room with religious idols) and cried face down on the bed. so I told him it’s okay and I didn’t mean that. then when my mom came home, my dad said, wiping the tears, “See? Kedar loves me!” Ever since then, I don’t think I’ve ever told my dad that I love him.

If I could have a child, I would have one who is just like me. I think that’s what my dad wanted too. he prayed and prayed for a boy. he was so happy. I don’t think I’ll ever be so happy then how I felt in the brisk winds thinking that I could run free and be forever young!!!

I have a fear of death. When I hear about other people dying, it doesn’t really affect me. But the dread of realizing that everyone must die, even myself, is completely terrifying. I don’t want to die. ever.

Perhaps my fear is irrational. I am a healthy 20 year old. I have probably many more years to become comfortable with my own death. But I don’t think death is something that I can become comfortable with.

I have heard that death is like how it was before you were born. When I read the annals of history, I don’t really feel those people. It is all statistics to me. But then I realize that every single one of those people has died. Dead. Gone. I don’t know what to feel for those people. How did they handle their own death? Were they terrified? Did any of them go in peace?

Everyone that I know will also die. What scares me about death is non-existence. Before I was born there were so many things going on. Since I didn’t exist, I guess it isn’t right to say that I was missing anything. And being born isn’t scary. It’s letting go of everything that is the scary part.

I have become so attached to this world. I have become attached to my identity and the pleasures I often enjoy. I don’t want to fall into non-existence. What will happen to me? Will that simply be the end of me? Religious faith tends to give some hope for the afterlife. But really, if there was no ‘beforelife’, how can there be an ‘afterlife’?

My only hope is that whatever essence I hold is preserved and I become another creature of consciousness. But the chances of that happening are next to slim. So I can see the billions of years passing, the shifting of the stars and galaxies all the way up to the big crunch when all matter returns to how it was before the big bang.

They say that it is a natural law that everything which is created must be destroyed. And so it is with me.

When I completely realize this fear that I hold for death, suddenly everything in life becomes urgent. I must do this before I die. All the petty problems that the world faces becomes small.

I guess it is reassuring that I won’t have to be around after I am dead. But just the thought of losing everything is too much. Perhaps it is the case that I am immature; I am not used to losing things. I’m a sore loser. Suddenly everyone that I love and hate becomes a human being who is also terrified of death. Those who are not scared cling to religious doctrines. But I do not want to adopt a belief just to help me alleviate my fears of dying. That’s not being true to myself.

I have this mental image of being in pain, losing consciousness, becoming dizzy, watching everything go black, becoming limp, and only thinking, “Oh God I’m going to die please don’t let me die.” And then I fade off into eternity, never to wake up again.

There are still those brave people who are unafraid of death. How do they do it? How do they do it.

I just watched Persepolis. I have some mixed feelings about this movie.

First of all, it made me feel very petty for focusing so hard on my problems (when I really don’t have any), when the world all around me is full of chaos. Wars, death, ‘the blood of martyrs’, families being torn apart, being sent to jail, tortured, women being sheltered and raped, buildings being bombed and collapsing, men and women being fined for any public displays of affection, students being brainwashed with political/religious messages, having few material goods (no supermarkets), and most of all being conflicted between different social pressures…

Little Marji went through a lot. She got married at age 21 and divorced! She saw the death of loved ones at a young age! She was homeless in France, and found few friends… consulting the black market for western paraphenalia like Iron Maiden music that was banned…

I was enthralled by the movie. I didn’t digest all of it; I will probably have to watch it again.

Anyway, this movie made me feel like I am just a shmuck with a philosophy… kind of like the student anarchists and hippies… someone who doesn’t really understand it because he’s in transition, because he’s away from the action of the real world. I am so opinionated and sometimes vocal about my beliefs, but I really don’t have something coherent. I get in the loop that if I just keep thinking about it my thoughts will naturally flow through and I’ll have something to hold on to. But it doesn’t work…

It’s good, though. It makes me rearrange my priorities a little. I can’t just go on living like a shmuck. When I actually listen to what I’m saying, there is so much hidden wisdom that is unwrapped. It’s like I’m not listening to myself; I’m too busy trying to categorize and teach and impress other people and feel worthy etc that I really lose myself. All this nonsense has to stop.

Something that I learned is that life doesn’t have easy answers. You definitely can’t hang on being picture perfect. It’s something that I have a nervous tick about. It’s a habit that I need to break off. With so many different perspectives, so many conflicts and clashing of powers and ideologies among people at coexisting levels in perpetual transition – it’s very overwhelming. There are no simple answers. There may be no satisfactory answers either, if you have a really high expectation for what ‘truth’ is.

So desirable, but it’s opening a chest to smell old air and dust. Something else I noticed subtly is Marji’s conflicts with love. She fell apart after a few romances. I suppose all teenagers do that. But she really wanted love. I can relate to that. There is a time when I really want to be in love… but when I saw her, I felt that she was just being silly. She’s better than that. But when I am in that position, I don’t think that way. I am blinded by my own passion.

The answer isn’t to just segregate men from women. Love is something that is better to be surprised by, serendipitously. I don’t require love to be happy in my life. I don’t want a cookie cutter existence. I want to live my way. And when I hide behind the crowds of people clammering in the popular direction, I am just lost.

Life is complex. I for one have this ideal that I may perfect my thoughts, take inspiring action and spread these thoughts to everyone. But there is no perfect philosophy. Also, it’s probably better to allow other people to find their own path, and for me to stick to my own. There is no use in seeking the approval of other people all the time. It is something so ingrained in my behavior that I will probably need to make a conscious effort to control it.

But there is always the calm in the midst of the storm, the eye of the hurricane. And I guess it’s those gentle moments when you can be in joy that make life worth living.

And that is a little of what I have learned by watching Persepolis. There’s the feeling that I have felt something unsaid. It’s a good feeling to linger on about.

everybody is just afraid. fear is what causes people to distrust others. fear is what causes people to become religious. fear is what scares the person who is detached, for he avoids the world. fear is what starts wars, what makes people scream and cry. even when we are facing our fears, we are afraid though we have mastered her. there is still the fear that she will break loose again.

fear is what drives a man who is terrified of death to suicide. fear is the source of irrational thinking. fear is a parasite of the emotions, taking control of the free will of humankind and spreading.

with fear one can never be happy. with fear we are always the slave. with fear we are blinded.

everyone is always afraid, all the time, whether he is aware of it or not. the trick is that people are so skilled at avoiding fear that it doesn’t seem to be there until it’s already too late. then there are the people who, being afraid, face those fears. I don’t know exactly what inspires them. but even they are afraid, for fear is the twin of care, so if you care about something you fear for it’s loss. that is of course unless you have trained yourself to let go of the things you care about, knowing that they must fall apart eventually… then there is no need for fear

I realize that I have been more openly bipolar than ever before. I’ve never erupted in anger before, and been so incontrollable. I have had an aversion to coming home, knowing that after spending my week in New Jersey I would come back to the same situation I have always been in. That is probably why I was more quiet, less enthusiastic and less creative than usual, being mindful of how I would feel now. Well, like Mr. Daniel Gilbert predicted, I am less depressed than I thought I would be. Walking in from the drive, I felt like just sitting with my head in my hands, but I got up and did very little cleaning. I was mean to my father out of habit, but I feel great repugnance in making amends.

It is contradictory that my deepest desire is the happiness of my parents, but I am so frustrated because I feel like my parents are not happy (though I don’t know for sure); at least, the condition of the house appears so. I want to help my parents and be a loving son, but when I cross that bridge I feel repelled. My parents have made it clear that they will love me no matter what I do, but I still feel so much pressure to satisfy them because I am so thankful for them. The correct word might be indebted, because indebtedness has been shown to create all these negative feelings as opposed to gratefulness.

So there is an internal wall within me, and the stirring between these feeling can become so great that it is a catalyst for my emotional turmoil. It is not right to fix my parents, but I feel like fixing them will be the way to make them happy. I don’t know why I feel displeasure with success; it must have to do with my social anxiety and self-confidence. I have been pavlonian conditioning, where if I fail I will be laughed at. I can blame that for my reluctance to work hard and go to college… I can also blame my fear of working hard and not getting anywhere, or that my working hard will end in a monumental embarrasment.

So I am always fighting a battle within myself, and I am assured most people do. But I am sure that at least I have good intentions.

Oh, and it appears that my emotional ranting is taking over this blog. I hope that this is the exception to the case, because I want to post more real material here. At the same time, I can’t look away from myself because that would just be like avoiding me… so I will attempt to do both. There is no harm in that, right?

I am here in Edison, New Jersey (specifically middlesex) with my darling cousins Kunal and Vishal.

As I have been here for… how long has it been? Roughly 4 days, I have crossed upon some wisdom within myself. Not fortune cookie wisdom like I usually deliver, but real, deliberative, honest self-introspection. And I will share all this glorious stuff, well in short, so it’ll at least make me appear to be more human.

Well, first of all, I saw that Kunal and Vishal are more successful as a result of having strict parents and disciplinary rules. For instance, they must do chores, go to sleep early, and eat with the family and do family activities (none of this stuff I am normally acquainted with). At my regular home life, I am able to eat when I want. I usually sleep in until late afternoon and wake up to just do whatever I want on the computer. My parents watch television almost all day, and I will watch shows with them from time to time. My mother will prepare food, but I usually insist on eating only ‘good’ food (my mother spoils me) and we never eat together because I am annoyed with my dad’s chewing with his mouth open, which looking back now I think is a shameful reason to not eat dinner together as a family. I will often think into my philosophy, and question my own motives, but this is always like a dead end. These last few days in New Jersey, I have little time to actually sit down and dwell on the bad things, because we are always in motion, always moving on to the next activity. The Bailoor household is very active, and the various sports trophies in the basement prove my point (swimming, soccer, baseball, and maybe tennis). I have been feeling depressed, but not so much at the moment, that these kids are so well brought up. My Dad plays chess all day. This summer, I have rarely even gotten out of my room. I sulk. My mother goes to work, and she is usually my only source of joy. I have squandered away what little time I had with her, these few weeks she has gotten off, by remaining true to my old routine. But when I’m in a rut, my mind is just so congested that I guess I can’t see clearly what is right in front of my nose.

But staying here for some days has helped to clear my head. Because I am driven to do activities, I have limits which I may stay within. Boundlessness is, perhaps, a source of my discontent, because I feel so helpless and dependent because there is nobody to show me the way. I feel like I never had parents, because my parents never told me what to do. But I cannot blame them because they are good, they did not want me to be forced into a life that I didn’t want to follow (though I am, to some extent, doing that at the moment with my college). So this is chiefly a problem within myself. The argument to support this point is that I am now 20, and I have no need for disciplinary parents anymore. I am at the point where I must fend for myself and learn how to be independent the hard way. It is difficult because I have to train myself to stay within the bounds, which is why all good atheletes have a coach and all intelligent people have an instructor and all wise men come from a lineage of wise men.

Also, I see that in some ways these kids are the antithesis of my upbringing. They are so constrained that they lack the basic freedom to do things that I often take for granted. For instance, they have absolutely no choice but to do what their father tells them. This is probably for the best because it builds character. But my parents being loving in a different way allow me to choose if I want to do something they ask. It isn’t only that they will bend under my opposition, it is also that I am often so stubborn that it is difficult to coax me. But then I cannot blame myself either because it is natural to be stubborn in doing things that I do not want to do. So it is really nobody’s fault because my parents are trying and I am what I am.

But if anyone is to blame for my problems, it must be myself. On that note, I have been thinking about my relationship with my father. We do not talk much because I insult him and shun him. This is a result of too many arguments when I was younger, and probably when I was even more young my father was away and i have vague memories of him making my mother cry. My mother being naturally the one that I loved as a child, it hurt me so much to see my mother sad due to his anger. I recall one night when we were in India I believe, and I was sleeping in the same bed, and my Dad was wishing my Mom that he didn’t marry her, that there were so many other nice women he could have married. I remember my grandfather walking in at one point and walking away again. I don’t know if that was a dream because I was so young, but it is so strongly built in my memory and never in communicative words that it also just murked within me. And so I have gotten into the habit of just always bashing my Dad. And my parents told me I should listen to myself, to how mean I am, but I must have been too blind to see my own state of mind. I was engulfed in many feelings at the time, ranging from my naive passions for romantic love, my teeth-grinding frustration with the cloudiness of the future, and my obsessions with philosophy at the expense of seeing the obvious. This was all a distraction from the moment, and even now I indulge in these temptuous and hard to detect distractions which so sway me from thinking and acting clearly. This is something I deeply regret especially with respect to my horrible mistreatment of my own father. These last days, I have felt my heart sink because my Dad is talking like he is becoming senile. I feel like, and I have always felt like, he is out of sync with other people. I want him to have friends and to feel loved by people, not to be lonely as I have been and I feel that he has been in his long life. At the same time there is a repellent wall, like plaque from neglecting to brush teeth on a habitually daily basis, that prevents me from just telling my Dad I am sorry and that I love him like a son must love his father no matter who he is. I have so resolved to become closer with small actions, but to no avail so far. And this matter only makes me feel so depressed. I want my parents to be happy. I do not want to be the cause as I may have been in this past for so much heart ache and strife. I want to atone for my sick past and make this family relationship healthy. This is the purpose behind my resolve to clean the house, to enter into philosophy, and to do all the other roundabout things that are less fearful means to that end.

Though there are many issues to cover (I realize it has been about 40 minutes since I first started typing this, I really didn’t expect it to be this long and I must go to sleep soon), one thing I will want to talk at least briefly about is death. I have had the terror of feeling the imminence of death. This realization that I am going to die, when I really feel it as I have these past few days, really scares me. I don’t want to die. What will happen when I die? It is so uncomfortable. I have lately thought that it would be better to not have children, because these children will also have to face the terror of death. In fact, it bewilders me that people do not also have an open obsession with death. I feel like religion is the heart of this problem and it just shows how we need stability in life, a distraction in life, to prevent us from always looking in that direction of the terror of our own undeserved sufferings. My obsession with my heart has caught my attention. I will intuitively check my pulse, as Vishal spoke up to me. This distress is a result of my anxiety disorder i am sure, because I did read on a forum of someone who has or had this same problem as a result of stomach problems. Anyway, I am so afraid that my heart will just stop beating and that I will lose consciousness and everything will go black. Sometimes when I am really feeling it, I will beat my chest, pinch myself, and sometime chatter my teeth to prove to myself that I am not dying. It is silly, but my brain really believes that in these situations I am in grave danger even if my rational mind is saying that is to the contrary.

I have so much more to say. I want to talk about my surges of creativity that abound when I am here, and some thoughts on why that occur. I want to talk about Wall-E which I watched today and really loved. I believe it is the best pixar movie yet. That is a bold statement. I probably also have other issues to resolve… but for now… good night

Seeing that I am rather frequent with anxiety attacks, it is common that I will question death with great intensity. Just now, I was dazing off in my bed, not feeling the slightest tired, but my thoughts led me to feel a sudden terror at the truth of death.

I began to think about death assuringly as how it was before I was born. I see that sometimes when I am studying or talking about history, I feel dead because I wasn’t born yet.

Right now, I don’t believe in religion. I believe it is a solid ground to stand on to take the leap of faith into death, but it may be tragically wrong.

So I saw death as the unknown, the ambiguity of not knowing what comes next, and of letting go of myself, my reason, my personality, my everything. I felt as though I was being unfairly robbed of these things.

That’s when I came back to reality and realized that I am still 20, and I probably have many years to figure out what to do about death. But it still terrified me, and I am still a little jumpy, so I took some anti-anxiety medication to calm me down.

Serenity is more difficult than it sounds. In death, I shall either go peacefully, in fighting, or with extreme despair. If I were to die right now, I would probably choose the 3rd and 2nd options, wanting to still make sense of why I am dying.

I don’t believe that I have a morbid obsession; that’s what I believe goths (no offense) do.

So what inspired me to write a little post about my problems with death? It was just the thought of death. I had said in my earlier thoughts that when we fear something, it shows that we really care about it (The Last King of Scotland). Now the most difficult practice is to accept ambiguity.

I have been trained, and it seems most people are socially conditioned or biologically predisposed, to make sense of ambiguity. When I am faced with something uncertain, I first have a feeling of dread and discomfort which leads me to rationalize what it is that is happening. Then I become familiar with what was once cloudy, and I feel safe and comfortable. I am able to move on, and not be preoccupied with that thing.

But death for me represents a complete ‘out there’ feeling, like the cold vacant emptiness of space. That’s probably why so many people compare death and space. And it is extremely unsettling, especially the knowledge that the very essence of my being will be robbed from me just as naturally as it was born, whatever that means. So what I must do is practice being comfortable with ambiguity. I must not turn away from the uncertain and the absurd, though it is naturally fearful to me, that is my practice.

I must also pay attention to how there is no Self; it is a delusion. My body is only an intricate network of calculated chemical reactions. Somehow, when the senses enter the brain, there is born a new sense of meta cognition which believes it is independent, free from the material. This ‘me’ part of the brain is able to pay attention to other parts of the brain, and takes possession. The eyes become ‘my eyes’. The body parts become ‘my body parts’. Similarly, of the things outside of ‘me’, there are thing that ‘belong to me’. The idea of ‘me’ is the biggest delusion ever propagated by the human race. It is more unfortunate that I cannot talk without talking in terms of ‘me’ and you’ because that is how language is so structured.

So we are evolutionarily blinded in context to what we really are – we are the dead stuff of nature. We are not somehow seperate from the nature that we see. It is unfortunate that people who live in fear and lack of freedom must believe in the soul and spirit in order to function. We are part and parcel of the nature that delivered us – though we may not understand nature, we are nevertheless connected with everything.

So life and death are really not a thing. It is the beginning and end of that biochemical machine, that self-replicating toy that nature devised. There is no ‘I’. There is no ‘identity’. All mathematics and physics is simply the brain’s interpretation of sensory information. To make sense of this, we employ the sciences and in order to employ the sciences we must distinguish things.

So why would the universe blip into existence in a manner that follows laws of physics which would billions of years later lead to the formation of life? It seems like everything else is dead – the flaming stars are the light houses. I once said that the universe is like a garden with no gardener, no one to admire the garden. Why would things be the way they are at all? It truly is absurd that we cannot know. But my human brain, conditioned as it is, goes haywire. It yearns to know this complete ambiguity – why I have been thrust into existence, why everything of these senses is as it is, why it all began and why it must end. It is massive confusion. And that’s all that can be said when trying to make sense of it. It is like asking what a sound smells like. It only confuses the senses.

Sometimes I stop and pray that time will stop, but as I sit I feel time slipping. Then I think, this moment I am currently having will be the past in some future. It is difficult to believe, but that future comes sooner than I expected, and that thought goes farther into my memories.

Perhaps the truth is that there is something higher than reason which is able to cognize the ‘whys’ of existence in a way that doesn’t contradict empiricism. We can’t know that, but we can hope.

It could be said, as I have often thought, that the act of giving birth is the act of committing murder – because once that child is born, he is going to die. I have thought about what would happen if I didn’t die, something I obviously can’t cognize being that I wouldn’t be here to make the judgment. It is so amazing to think that there was a history before my life, that so many billions of years passed before I took a form that is able to reason just how long it has been. I have also thought that after death, there is some chance that ‘me’ will somehow come back, but that’s assuming that there is a single particle or network of particles which defines me that is incorruptible and that will be in condition that will beget another life. That’s a long shot.

Okay. Even thinking about death for now. Peace.

This is touching deeply onto my concept of Truth.

Something that I don’t often take the time to do, ironically, though I like to believe that I allocate a great deal of time doing it, is to wisely invest myself in thought. I have heard it countless times, that thinking too much is bad. I always found that strange, because I would expect thinking too much would be a virtue! I didn’t think it was possible to think too much – it wasn’t part of my vocabulary.

That’s probably touching on a more innocent time in my life. But then I started to understand what pain is, and how thinking can be a catalyst for this feedback loop of despair. It is unfortate that this problem has grown to such a magnitude that I have been diagnosed and am currently being treated for bipolar disorder. But I am not so much clinging to that predicament as I am feeling the resolve to improve, and that is a very positive feedback loop.

I realize now that there is a difference between thinking and thoughtfulness. It is a very subtle difference; it is one that I don’t completely understand and one that will surely take me many years to intuitively justify. But it is possible, unfortunately, to spend much time in thought without actually thinking.

This sentence is so important that it is worth repeating, in bold.

It is possible to spend much time in thought without actually thinking.

So what does that mean?

It means realizing that there is an enormous depth to what I am currently thinking about, I am usually just skimming the surface over and over again. It is the patience and openness to take the time to understand something knowing that you don’t really understand it, and being true to what your brain is trying to tell you.

I am often divided with myself. It is chiefly because instead of listening to myself like a friend who needs consolation, I try to help myself without listening to what my problem is. I am too eager to solve the problem without spending enough time deliberating the problem, seeing the complexity and dimensions of it, most of the time being overwhelmed by those details. I am habitually hasty, trying to get started. But at the same time, I have an acute fear because I don’t know what I really want. This is how my feedback loop drives me to madness.

I think the greatest gift, a gift that I have not genuinely appreciated or been grateful for, is free time. It’s supremely ironic that I waste this rarest commodity by trying to figure out what to do with it, when I could just spend some time settling into the ambiguity that so terrifies me and allowing the truth manifest itself. It is really fear that prevents me from being true to myself; I build walls to keep me from getting over bad experiences in my past instead of just accepting them. I try to accept them without really ‘accepting them’. Then I become impatient. But the solution is obvious – to spend more time just really thinking.

Real thinking means seeing where you’re not being true to yourself and listening to yourself like a good friend.

Real thinking means taking the time to REALLY let thoughts accumulate and flow naturally instead of trying to force them. When we force our thoughts, try to speed up the process, we are possibly missing something.

Real thinking means being familiar with something before believing in it. So if there is some concept that someone is trying to peddle that doesn’t make sense, it is better to be humble and try to make sense of it then to pose as someone who is knowledgable. Unfortunately, I have pressured myself into creating an image of being ‘intellectual’, which is also ironic because it is something I deeply despise for being so shallow.

I think the best way to put it for now is to say that real thinking is not being hasty. It takes time to truly understand and realize something, at least for me, without blind memorization or critical thinking out of context. Close examination requires patience, which is so difficult when feeling the urgency of slipping time. It is these fears which I cannot repress without being unthoughtful, but that I must face and take the time to understand before I can truly move from square one.

I have way too many blogs. I’ve had this gnawing feeling about what content to add to these blogs, how to divide up the content, etc. It’s really a pain in the ass.

I’m not tending my resignation. Instead, I’ve decided that for now this will be my new personal blog. I’ll try not to write any emotional rants here; to keep myself civil. I can’t count on that, though.

It’s increasingly difficult to organize posts into tags. You have to go in and individually change tags or categories for each post, and it is very time consuming. I haven’t decided what scheme I would like to have on my blogs, probably due to the fact that I’m not even sure what the purpose behind those blogs is.

So rather than trying to appeal to other people (which is something I often do, and I sometimes succeed or fail), I’m going to just write here what I think needs to be remembered by me. So I can focus more on the content and less on the delivery of the message. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, anyway; I should spend more time reading and thinking out my ideas before going out and writing them when I’m not really sure what to say. It’s like trying to swim in the ocean (and I’m a terrible swimmer).

I’m going to take my time to cultivate my world views, and this blog will be a transformative one. Transformative for myself, because I will kind of outline my fitness progress, my progress with all my realistic goals for the future – and transformative for other people in the future, I hope, once I have really thought myself through and figured out what everything is all about with the wisdom of the years.

Thanks.