Narcissism

Have you ever walked past a reflective surface like a mirror, a window or a car and looked at yourself?

If your answer was something like, "No. I have never done that."

YOU LIE!

Everyone looks at themselves when they pass by their reflections, but for whatever reason, everyone is embarrassed about it. When you walk by the surface (unless you're in a bathroom or something of the like) then you always try to sneak a peak without really looking at yourself. You kinda look out of your peripherals while continuing to walk at normal speed.

Even though everyone does it, we don't want anyone else to know when we do it. Why is that? If we're all so vain, why do we care?

Maybe it's that we don't want others to know how much we care about our appearance. Or maybe for some people, looking in the mirror is more a matter of simple interest than of vanity.

But why? I still don't understand. Why doesn't anyone ever fully stop walking and check themselves out in the mirror? Would it really be that big of a deal?

I definitely wouldn't do that myself (and I really don't know why) but I also would certainly not judge somebody who did. In fact,  I think I would silently commend them for breaking a social norm so blatantly.

I'm going to postulate a theory: I think the reason we don't want people to know we are looking at our reflection as we pass a window or mirror is simply to preserve our own modesty. We assume that if others see us stopping to look in the mirror, they will think less of us or judge us.

So what it really comes down to is self-consciousness. No one wants to be judged by others, obviously. But it's still curious. Even though you don't know the person, you still don't want them to think less of you, even though it is very likely that they will never see you again nor you them. In fact, I think especially because you don't know the person, you don't want them to judge you.

Think about this:

If you were with your friends, would you still be so sneaky about looking at your reflection? Would you even care to do so in the first place? I think not.

Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee...

I don't know about you guys, but I drink a shit ton of coffee. In fact, as I'm writing this I'm on my 3rd cup of the day. Average for me. How did it come to this though? When did I become a crazy coffee drinker?

My first cup of coffee:

I remember this so well. I was 11 years old and I wanted coffee because I thought it was cool. I don't know why I thought it was cool, but there ya go. So I asked my mom for a cup (for some reason I expected her to say no...) and she made me one. She warned me, "You might not like it."

She was right.

I hated it.

But I drank it anyway. One painful sip at a time. Seriously, every time the coffee touched my tongue, I made this ridiculous face that I'm sure looked like I'd bitten full force, no fear into the world's sourest lemon.

I didn't have coffee again until my Junior year of High School. I had so much work and I asked my dad what I could do to finish it (I knew I had to stay up late) and he suggested I try coffee again. Well I did. I went to Dunkin Donuts and I picked up a big cardboard box with a tap that was filled with coffee.

I finished it.

I may have overdone it that night, but I discovered that coffee is actually delicious. Even though it's not the best thing for our bodies. And I know that coffee isn't for everyone, but I think it's nothing short of a miracle. I think it also might have some addictive properties.

Also, decaf sucks. I don't know why anyone drinks it. It doesn't taste as good as real coffee and it doesn't keep you up.

Warmness and Music

Since it's been warm out, little music circles have been popping up all over campus. I love it. I truly believe that music brings happiness to everyone. (Seriously, have you really ever heard someone say that they DON'T like music at all? No, that's ridiculous). Even if you don't join in the jam, you have to admit that a smile creeps across your face when you walk by one of these groups.

Anyway, I have had the distinct pleasure of playing with several of these groups across campus. Most recently, I have enjoyed playing with 5 or 6 guys who meet every day at around 5 at the little alcove on campus side college right near the bus stop across the street from Dunkin' Donuts. They play a lot of folk music and were nice enough to let me join in the jam.

The best thing about these groups of musicians is that they are all (or have been so far) such nice people. All of them are so interested in what you want to play and it doesn't matter if you skip a chord or botch a note, cause we're all just having some fun in the sun.

In my last few words, I would like to encourage you to stop and listen to one of these groups. I understand that you might be going to class or whatever, but even stopping for just a second is great for the people playing. Seriously, there is nothing that makes me happier (next to actually playing) than when someone I don't know takes the time to get into what I'm playing.

Lastly, I'd like to say: JOIN IN! Even if you think you can't play or sing, you can and we'd love to have you. Even if you just dance around while the music is going.

Everyone Has One, and it's Fucking Ridiculous

Everyone has an iPhone.

Or at least it seems that way.

When I was on the bus the other day, I was texting on my own iPhone and looked up briefly to check if it was close to my stop yet. I noticed just by shear happenstance that a lot of other passengers were also texting. At first, I kinda laughed, as if to say, "Oh god, we're all so absorbed in our technology that we're texting." But then I noticed that not only were 10 of the 15 people on the bus (including myself) texting, but literally every one of those 10 people (including myself) was using an iPhone.

What kind of insanity is this??

Now, in no way am I complaining. Seriously. I love my iPhone, it's the best thing ever. It's simultaneously the most useful and unnecessary device ever created. But I took a minute and thought about something. And it made me feel like an old person because it was a thought of technological astonishment:

How is it that we've come to a point in time where it is normal for people to have the world at the touch of a finger on a glass screen in the palm of their hand?

It's really crazy when you think about it. If you'd told people in the 1800's that there was going to be something called a cell phone which would allow you to contact other people who also owned a cell phone. Even if they lived on the other side of the world. And it would take seconds. Well, they probably would have thought you were a witch or something.

In the 1950's, someone probably would have told you to go write a science fiction novel. At that time, computers took up literally entire rooms and sometimes even buildings. Then when cell phones did become common, who would have thought (besides Steve Jobs) that you would be able to own something with a touch screen?

Who the fuck is smart enough to think of and then actually invent this shit?? It's incredible! Have you ever looked at a touch screen anything and just thought about how awesome it is? How much thought went into creating it? You have the information of the world in your hand and you can see it clearly, listen to music, check the weather, make notes for yourself, cycle through different and complex windows by dragging your finger across a piece of glass and it allows you to contact people world wide in a matter of seconds.

It's crazy how often people (myself included) take these pieces of technology for granted. I'm sure you've heard this before, or maybe you've even said it yourself.

"God, this message is taking so long to send."

or

"Dammit, I don't have any service here."

Let's take it back to when people had to write letters by hand with a quill and ink and send them by boat. The person to whom they were writing the letter might be freakin' dead when it finally gets to them after a month, maybe longer. And they have no way of knowing that the boat didn't sink or the courier didn't die before delivering the message. And if the person did get the letter and wrote and sent a response, it would be easily another month at least before the initiator of the correspondence would receive the response. At which time the initiator might also be dead, or not get the letter for whatever reason etc.

I guess what I'm trying to say here (and it might sound kinda preachy, but I'm gonna attempt to follow my own advice here as well), is that we should really try to appreciate all the things we have, I don't mean just the technology. Think about the stuff you have, the people you have, the things you're good at, the things you believe in, everything. I'm not saying you should be ridiculous about it, but taking a moment to think about how much all of those things mean to you and how important or amazing they are I think is a valuable thing. To be able to recognize what you have instead of dwelling on what you don't, cause I guarantee that there will always be someone who has less than you do.

Youth is FOR the young

Yesterday I was talking to an elderly man in line at CVS, when he turned to me and said:

"So what are ya up to this weekend, partyin'?"

At first I was a little taken aback because his question was so out of the blue. But then without very much thought I responded:

"Well maybe, I don't know. I'll probably study, I'm not sure what else yet."

To which the man scoffed and said:

"Sheesh, youth is wasted on the young." And he turned back forward in his spot in line. That was it. He ended the conversation. Now, it wasn't the first time I've heard that saying, in fact I've gotten a fair dosage of it in my life. Mostly from my high school choir teacher who's a Vietnam War Vet. But that's another blog post...

The point is, I'd never really considered it before, but this old guy really got in my head. It wasn't the words he used, it was the way he used them. He had such disdain for the fact that going out and partying was even the slightest possibility for my weekend plans.

I have to admit that my immediate thought was actually a little bit of shame because this old man was judging me. But then I realized that I do not even a little bit agree with the sentiment:

"Youth is wasted on the young."

Nope.

"Youth is for the young."

Youth is for screwing up and learning so that you can grow up to be old and wise. Young bodies are for playing sports and falling down. Running around for hours. Doing stupid stuff and being okay afterwards. Then when you're old, you know what's up because you've been around the block. You've gotten your fill of all the stupid stuff because you were young.

Maybe I'll feel differently when I'm old, but for now, I think I'll be at least a little reckless. I'm young. I can handle it. 

(A)musing...

As I was walking to class the other day, rockin' out to my jams blasting at full volume through my headphones, in a sudden moment of clarity, I realized that I probably looked like a total moron headbanging, air drumming and mouthing the lyrics to music that only I could hear.

Yes, I was actually doing that in public while walking to class. What can I say, it was a great song.

Anyway, I took my headphones out and looked around to see who had observed my ridiculous jamming. But in doing so, I noticed that almost everyone else who was walking next to me, behind me or around me was also wearing headphones. Now, I've definitely noticed that a lot of people wear headphones before, but that day I considered something.

What if every person in the world, whenever they listened to music through headphones, had a digital display of what they were listening to hovering above their heads?

For example, that day, at that time, the words above my head would have read:

"Ozzy Osbourne, Hellraiser, Diary of a Madman" (Artist, Song, Album).

So then, instead of actually listening to my music, I spent the rest of my walk to class finding people who were wearing headphones and trying to figure out what their displays would say. It wasn't until I decided that this was going to be my blog entry for the week that I realized that I was stereotyping people.

I was stereotyping people based on music. What kind of wacky craziness is that? But then when I thought about it, it actually made a lot of sense. Music is a highly influential factor in the lives of many people. So logic should progress such that if a certain style of music is heavily influential in ones' life, that they would (intentionally or not) begin to embody certain qualities of that music or the musicians who play it.

To use myself as an example, I didn't start wearing a bandanna until I started listening to heavier music (rock, metal, glam etc.). I thought, and still think, it looks awesome, and why do I think that? Because guys like Steven Tyler, Nikki Sixx and Keith Richards were rocking the bandanna look.

But even though it's feasible to think that you can judge the kind of music someone is listening to by the way they look, I decided it's best not to. For me, there are few truer sayings than, "You can't judge a book by its cover." Literally and figuratively, I thought I was going to hate the Lord of the Rings, but today I regard it as one of the best pieces of literature ever written. Similarly, how do I (or anyone else for that matter) know that the tiny little girl wearing a PINK jacket and Uggs isn't listening to some seriously heavy shit? And who's to say that the kid with the leather jacket, tattoos and piercings isn't listening to a Beethoven Sonata, or Taylor Swift for that matter?

What I'm getting at here, is that music is one of those awesome things that transcends everything. Race, gender, ethnicity, creed, religion and so on. It's crazy.

Who would've thought that everyone could be brought together by sounds?

I feel like that last sentence was super hippie... but still it's missing something. I'm gonna try again.

Who would've thought that everyone could be brought together by sounds... man

Too many fillers

Since talking about fillers in class, I have been quite self conscious about my personal use of them. After class that day I kept a running tally of my "likes", "sortas" "kindas" and "whatevers". The grand total of tallies was well over 50, but my tallies got pretty sloppy towards the end, so I'm not sure of the exact number.

Suffice to say, I use a lot of fillers.

But the thing is, I didn't realize the extent to which fillers rule my sentences. Like everyone else, I thought I only used them sometimes. But once I started paying attention, I noticed little ones, sneaky ones, tricky little fillers that I would have missed if I wasn't paying attention. So I even counted the ones that I caught before even saying them.

Beyond just the pain of knowing that I am such a rampant abuser of fillers in sentences, I also started to feel very foolish every time I caught myself using a filler. And then when I started feeling like a moron, I started thinking about that and would lose my train of thought from what I was previously talking about.

"Yeah, and like... um, li- oh um... sorry, what was I saying?"

Yeah, it was that bad.

After looking at the tallies I reflected on my day. I came to the conclusion that I was not even sure why using fillers made me so uncomfortable. I knew that the reason I used fillers was because of society, so why was that same society now telling me to stop?

It was all very confusing. And frustrating.

Basically, I figured it was a better idea to just ignore my usage of fillers and try to subconsciously stop using them, because purposely thinking about them will drive me absolutely nuts.

So to close, I was wondering how many times on average do you think you use fillers each day? ESTIMATE, please do not count them for real unless you're genuinely interested. It's awful. I can't stop thinking about them now. But anyway, please add with any comment, the number of times a day you think you use fillers.