MY LIFE - OCTOBER

Social Experiment #283 - Sunday, November 10, 2002

The redesign of the site pleases me to this point. It's just different enough, yet close enough to the original that it feels refreshing to me. I do favor the font that I chose as my primary font, Futura Bk BT, but the secondary should be just as good if you don't have that font on your computer.

In case you didn't notice, I've added something into this section as well. Next to the date above here is "Social Experiment #283." What's the significance of this? It's simple. The things I say and do are often considered by me to be social experiments. The things I say, the actions I take, that's how I look at them. It's only natural for me to extend this to my site since each entry that I write is a social experiment in itself. Your reactions, the things you write to me in response, those things can all be included in the social experiment aspect.

"What's that number," you ask then. Simple. That's the number of entries that I've written, including this week's Come Again. 281 official entries that I've written, you've read, and generally just blew off as another waste of time. 281 nights that I've sat here, consumed with writer's block, trying to write something of remote interest.

That's a lot of entries. I know this. I also know that I continue to see that number of entries grow. This site has always been slowly evolving over the years. The entries are the backbone of the site though. No matter what I end up doing with this, I believe it's the entries that brings people back for more. You certainly can't read a review for a tv show or music album day in and day out. It gets old really quick. Entries, they don't.

The evolution of this site will always be in motion. It's determined by how much I write, the pages that I decide to build, the effort I put into each of those pages, and how much you come back to read the next series of entries and articles.

The redesign was something I've been itching to do for a while now. The green font for the type, while okay, didn't seem to really suit the site and what it was about. The font types themselves didn't seem to fit anymore and maybe I just needed to do something different for a while, but the arial font felt plain and unimaginative to me. I didn't look at the site and marvel and how it looked. I still don't marvel at it now, but it seems to fit more.

Now then, enough gabbing about the changes in this site.

One thing I've found from constant conversation with the girls I've been meeting through Bolt and HotorNot is I can no longer pretend that I'm some ugly bastard that no one wants to date.

I know. I'm going to catch flak for that one as well, but that's the train of thought that I've maintained for years. I've gotten more compliments, more girls saying they'd date me in the last month than in my entire life. Now mind you, all of these girls (aside from a couple) live far from me so there's never a thought of dating crossing my mind. The two that I've talked to that do live near me, it's a different story.

The thing I've been learning though is there are a lot of decent girls out there. Not just pretty girls, but pretty girls with incredible personalities and attitudes on things. Girls that I would love to date if they lived by me. Girls I'll never date.

Then there's the complete opposite of the spectrum. Girls who have very negative attitudes, who feel that they are worthless, the world is worthless, and nothing good will come out of this life.

I've also been thinking about the answers that have been appearing in my tagbook on Bolt. Many people seem to hate other kinds of people just because it seems like the natural thing to do. Punks hate preps, preps hate punks, and there's someone else who hates them both. It's both fascinating and absurd all in one motion. I remember high school and while there were definite cliques, it seems to have gotten worse.

It's an aspect of society that I don't like. One question specifically asked what someone thought was the definition of a prep. One girl wrote an answer that said that it was someone who wore designer clothes and was stuck up on themselves....a snob who was too good to be around anyone but other preps. This answer worried me because this is not always the case. It's not. I know people who are preps that are pretty cool. I know people who consider themselves to be punk and they're pretty cool. Yet there's this hang-up and it all seems to center on how they live.

It's the stuff that induces headaches and I really don't like to try and figure out too often, much less try and explain it to someone who obviously doesn't agree with me and refuses to see my point.

That's not the norm though. I've been given heaps of praise, nice compliments, and an overwhelming number of notes since joining Bolt. The basic consensus appears to be that because I'm thoughtful, nice, and not judgemental, this makes me cool to all kinds of people, although 95% of them are girls.

Even more so because I have a photo album active on the site.

It's a weird existence, to be placed in such high regard by so many people. It doesn't feel right, like there's the chance that I'll develop an ego and lose the modesty that I believe makes me a good person.

It's psychological mumbo jumbo like I just wrote that makes me wonder the benefits of staying up late, waiting for a girl to come online so we can talk. In all honesty, I really, really like this girl though, so a little more time won't hurt. I don't have class tomorrow and don't work until 4, so it's not like I have to be up befor 2pm.

Now then, onto other aspects of my life.

I've found that yelling out "I like the word booger" in public gets you some very interesting responses. Some people looked at me with a "what the fuck was that" look, others laughed, others tried to pretend that they didn't hear anything, in the same motion move their children out of ear-shot, still others actually came up to me and said that was pretty funny, why did I say that?

After raising an eyebrow, I gave the simplest of answers; "because I wanted to see what would happen."

I've been doing things like that lately though. I once drove an entire day with my one arm out the window, hand in a fist except for one special finger. In other words, I spent an entire day flipping people off. I learned one very important thing from this: make sure you're not accidentally flipping off someone three times your size. It makes for a very interesting, however messy, scenario.

I seemed to have managed to tap back into the weirdness aspect that made me so interesting to talk in the first place back when I was first coming online. It's made me more prone to say something funny while talking to someone I've never talked to before, yet I still have the same sense of dignity as well.

Now I'm sure everyone's shaking their heads going what the fuck does that mean? Honestly, I haven't a clue. It just sounded good.

Okay, the thing has been I've been able to be equally funny and serious in my conversations, something I couldn't achieve before. It was either one thing or another, no transition between humor and seriousness. Some people never saw both sides of me, they just saw one or the other.

I say this because my entries may start to be more like this in the future, mixing up light humor with serious overtones. I may talk about how I made someone at work spit pop out after overhearing a joke, then you'll be reading about how I want my life to turn out.

With that in mind, I've had some thoughts run through my head recently. Specifically, I had a poem in my mind, a poem that was about the pains I dealt with growing up, relationship hardships, and yet knowing that I was still a good person, that good things were going to happen to me at some time in my life. This is significant because I don't do poetry. I don't read it, I don't write it, and I certainly am not good at thinking up poems.

And yet in my mind was a poem. It was almost a surreal moment. Either that, or that brownie I had packed one hell of a serious punch.

I'm thinking more about my future because I'm inching closer and closer towards it. Relationship-wise, I do want to be with someone, but I want it to be with a girl that's not just in it for some short period of time. I want to be with a girl who thinks it could be fore life and is willing to give that kind of effort. This isn't a definitive thing, in other words, I'm not going to turn a girl down based on that alone, but I want to be able to feel that there's something more there.

I'm 22 now. A lot of people my age are gettting married or already are married. I was close, but ended that relationship for reasons that have already been mentioned (go back to the first entries of this year). I know I will not be single all my life, but the question has to be raised do I meet a girl before I go away to school or try to wait until I'm away at school? If I start seeing a girl now, do I end it or try to keep it going?

I could sit and make jokes about it, but that would detract from what I'm trying to say here and that's I'm not sure of what I really want right now. I really like this girl I'm talking now and she really likes me too. Now granted, there's still a long way to go before anything is determined, but what happens if I fall in love with her and then have to go away to school? Is she going to be willing to try and keep it going even though there may be a distance issue? Or is she going to want to end it? This is further complicated by her having a child. My guess is she'd want to get into something stable that will last for her son's sake, but I can't assume that.

These issues weigh on my mind because I do like her and because I have the itch to get in a relationship so bad right now. It's actually pretty absurd right now.

The easiest thing I could do in this situation is not think about it and pretend this issue doesn't exist. I'm certainly not going to try and weird her out, especially since we're only talking right now. I know I'm overthinking as well. It's my strong point so stop telling me to quit.

---

I wrote some things in my Bolt journal that I feel I need to address here. Before I start, let me say I know 2 Lindsays. There's the Lindsay I know online (who recently reached out and apologized to me, for what I'm still not completely clear on yet), then there's the Lindsay from my biology lecture. The girl from my class is a very nice girl. She has a boyfriend, so don't even think that's the angle I'm going with here. It's not.

Not too long ago, we were walking from the school and she started crying. I already had known something was wrong because she was normally upbeat, cheerful, and very friendly, but this day she was quiet and very much hard to talk to. Then she started to cry and it became painfully obvious something serious was wrong.

Now me being the nice guy I am, I tried to comfort her and told her I was sorry. I felt bad that I couldn't do more and spent the next two days hoping she was okay, hoping that things worked out. Friday came around and she still seemed out of it, but not like before.

Usually when we leave the building, we talk about stuff and I keep her company on her way to her car. This day, she immediately flipped open her cell phone and began talking with someone. I didn't get a hi or bye, or anything for that matter. She looked at me once the whole time in class.

Needless to say, I was quite angry. I spent the next half-hour trying to remember why I bother to help people at all, wrote some very angry words in my offline journal, and proceeded to remove the events of the last hour from my head. I was mad, confused, and upset that I had been brushed aside like that. It felt like the equivalent to a slap in the face. The words I wrote in my bolt journal were equally harsh.

I eventually calmed down enough to realize that this will happen. Not everyone wants your help when there's a problem. The one thing I fail to realize is that if someone wants my help, they'll come to me. I spend all my time beating it into everyone's head that if there is a problem they can say something so much that I think they get sick of it.

I could be wrong though because in retrospect, I don't really push it that much unless I detect something being wrong.

Now, as for the other Lindsay, she did apologize to me the other day. She said she felt bad for not talking to me whenever she was online, but it wasn't that big of an issue to me. I didn't hate her and I didn't have any right to hate for that matter because I could have easily said something to her at some stage, but chose not to.

This is a mouthful, isn't it?

This is what happens when you don't write for over two weeks. All the thoughts, feelings, and events come out in one big heap of a mess of words.

That's not a problem, is it?

---

My whole life has been one big trial
I've spent much of it swimming in denial.
Trying to fix other people's problems
I often overlooked mine, never tried to solve them.

I sometimes feel like it's all too much
That I should turn around and not press my luck,
But then something makes realize different
I suddenly understand why I'm like this.

My childhood was indeed one big mess
Too often I was overwhelmed with large amounts of stress,
I was harrassed, bullied, treated badly in every way
And yet I can sit here with a smile each and every day.

I used to be shy and somewhat overlooked
Now I'm more outgoing; people are hooked,
No longer the quiet boy that no one knew
Instead I'm the loud man who somehow grew.

Life isn't perfect, things can go wrong
But we're boistered by the idea that life does go on,
Some people don't feel that way, they never feel up
It's these people who claim that life gives not a fuck.

I can only look at those people and shake my head
It's their own opinion, even if it's misled
One day maybe they'll see the truth
Life ain't all bad, it can very much soothe.

I want be successful in what I do
Grow to be old, gentle, and married too
I want be able to sit old and grey
While all my grandchildren run around and play.

On my side next to me would be my wife
Everything to me, she'd be my life,
No matter how bad things could possibly get
She'd always be there, surely and swift.

I want good things to happen to those around me
I want to be happy, I want to be free,
And if that's not the case then I just want to say
I take what life gives me, I'd have it no other way.

---

That's kind of incomplete and all over the place, but I'm not a poet. I think you get the idea though. Thanks to everyone around me for making me realize just how damn lucky I am.