Constructing confidence.

As I sit here, I wonder if I should even begin to write.

As I sit, I contemplate art, specifically, the interpretation of art.  I think about my day.  I ponder.

And I wonder why I ponder.  Layer after layer, thought builds upon thought, deconstructing previous thought to allow for its creation.  Each moment builds upon itself, lends itself into this new moment, leaving a fingerprint of meaning as it passes.  At this moment, I ponder:  if there is any sort of absolute, all-encompassing constructed "reality," what would it look like?  What would it feel like?  Taste like?  Would it even look, taste, or feel?  I couldn't imagine.  I don't know.

Today, Dennia, the new, and absolutely amazing server Big Boy recently hired, told me she thought I was self-confident. 

I didn't know what to say.

For the first time in a long time, I actually thought I might just be.

Today is ma birfday!

Today, I turned twenty years old.

20.

I've been out of high school for two years.  And those years have felt like lifetimes.  My priorities have shifted, and I'm an entirely different person.  On top of that, I feel as though I'm finally breaking through some of my depression.  It's a rather strange feeling, seeing as I've been depressed pretty much all of my life.

It's a strange feeling, but I almost think I'm becoming an adult.  I've been living in my own apartment for 2 months as of today, and I only owe my parents a little more money than I'd like to admit to.

But today comes with an even stranger realization.  When I was between 14 or 16 years old, I had a startling and life-changing realization:  Every single person on earth looks like and acts a lot like a monkey.

Today, I realized something profound and interesting:  I, too, look a lot like a monkey.

God Sight?

I think I just saw some backwash floating down into the bottom of the glass of water I was drinking.  That's pretty fuckin' gross.

I'm still going to drink that water.

Anyway, today was actually a really good day at work.  Maybe it's the god sight level of caffeine and pot high I'm at when I'm writing this, but today seemed like a really good step in the right direction.

A couple days ago, I realized that whenever I start thinking, I stop performing as well as I would if I just act instinctively.  So, by attempting to continue to act instinctively even when I want to act cognitively, I think my performance has improved.  Or maybe I'm just not as worried about it, and that's warping my perception.  Who knows?

I've also realized lately that I have this tendency to simply freeze and dissociate any time any sort of challenge or disagreement arises, not because I'm afraid of someone hurting me but because I'm afraid of hurting someone else.  This brings up some very strange feelings.  I don't actually have words for them.

Both of these tendencies, I've noticed at work, and so both of them I'm been striving to improve at work, and today, both of those tendencies yet again proved themselves true.  By acting instinctively, presently, and compassionately, I stabilized a volatile and hostile situation while remaining authentic and honest, and may have saved my boss' job.  At least that's my hope.  I'm not supposed to talk about that, though, and I may have even already said too much.

The end of the situation has yet to come, though, but I've done as much I can to ease the tension, and I feel as though that tension is resolved, as the tension about my schooling has recently become resolved as well.

One year ago, about this time, I had a complete nervous breakdown.  I stopped going to school for two months, and failed three of my four classes.  The fourth class was an ethics class, and in ethics class, failing a striving student for having a nervous collapse

During that month, I did nothing but have panic attacks, work, and sleep.  I smoked a lot of pot, too, but mostly that, along with the companionship of my pothead friends, was supposed to help with the panic attacks.   This was the third -- and final -- time I considered suicide.  I decided against it.  Same reason as the first time.

Because of me failing a semester and being dropped a few classes do to absences, I've been very afraid to go back, but after consistently going to school for a few semesters, as well as fucking some shit up in an online class -- while working full time (though that is now changing because I can't keep up on homework anymore, haha) -- I'm feeling fairly confident in my abilities to continue kicking ass and taking names in school.  I've also decided that I'm not going to worry so much about my memory anymore.  That might sound strange, and it kind of is, but I needed to say it.  Hopefully that'll help me remember it.

I finished that water, by the way.

>Lee

Zen, without love. Without life.

It was a slow Sunday night tonight, as I slaved away my precious life waiting tables on many a few who wholly didn't appreciate my time and effort -- or simply aren't developed enough to see that effort myself and others put into making and serving their food -- and I was depressed.

I still am depressed, and I've been depressed about as long as I remember.  I can't even remember a time when I remembered a time when I wasn't depressed, and if that's any sign of anything, I think that means I've probably been depressed for a while now.  As a person with depression -- one who has some perspective on the matter -- the situation pretty much sucks.

The depression feel like an endless cycle from which there is no escape.  By the nature of depression itself, I've bought into this lie that I am a worthless piece of shit who will never succeed or accomplish anything with my life, and in a restaurant full of ungrateful, disrespectful, and just generally unpleasant customers (with a few major exceptions), almost every person I talk to is feeding my the same message.

It's like I'm constantly being assaulted from the inside and out -- the inside saying that I can't succeed and will never be happy with anything I try, and the outside saying that I haven't succeeded and that I'm an idiot for even attempting to try.

And the hardest part of this experience for me is that I know my interpretation of the night is so skewed from the "truth" that I can hardly stand it.  My mind tells me that no customer was happy and that I fucked up every order for every table I had tonight, but the reality is that I did everything I could to the greatest of my ability at the time that it happened and that no one complained or stiffed me or even made a snide comment about my serving ability the entire night.

And yet I'm still depressed.

And yet I'm still depressed.

And yet, I still write myself off like I'm nothing and pretend like the problem isn't there.  I still act like nothing's happened, the world is perfect, and I've nothing to lose.  But the world is full of grandeur, mystery, and woe;  and if I continue to shrug it off like a sniffle and continue in listless numbness to my meaningless death as I have, I'm gonna end up with a bullet in my brain and a sad note on a coffee table, detailing my meaningless death.

Today, I vow to Wake Up, and change.

~leerumler

A dream of peace.

So I stopped worrying so much today.

I think I've figured out some direction in my life, actually, and that's... a pretty good feeling.  I'm not sure if I'm going to succeed.  In fact, I'm... almost positive that I will fail, but I think I've finally figured something out.

Today, I asked myself a question.  I asked:  What would life be like if... instead of having to work --hard -- every day, to make money just to survive and to put myself through school, I could do anything I want.  What if everyone on earth could do just exactly what they wanted, and all basic needs (clothing, shelter, food, and medical care) were all provided by people who wanted to provide them (not out of some greed-based consumerism, but out of a compassionate, care-based concern for others)?  More largely, how would the human race evolve and continue growing after this change?  How would I continue growing and adapting after this change?  What would I do?

Our current knowledge would persist, but the structures that currently drive the entire labor force of the world would dissolve.  I'd throw into this mix that religions and/or individual regimes could not gain military power or involuntary power over people who have not chosen to abide by the rules they impose (also, no "lifelong membership" clauses in those agreements), debates over my definition of a person being put aside right now.

I don't think we'd have cars anymore.  At least not as many as we have now.  We would probably still have public transportation -- buses and plains.  You've gotta have those in our modern-day society.  But cars, not so much.  I'd bet we'd still have computers, but not as many.  Everything would change.  Well, that is to say, everything that's touched by money -- which is to say, again, Everything.

Personally, I would do... nothing.  That is not to say absolutely nothing, but I would probably do nothing.  I would be a bum -- maybe a bard in another life -- but in this life, just a traveler looking for nothing but the company of others, a decent meal or two a day, and contentment in the everyday wonders of simple living.  I'd want to learn about the world -- experience culture and music -- cherish the brief moments I have here on this planet, and then leave it.

I would help people, too.  Doing what I could for whomever needed some help on whatever the most, I imagine I'd make plenty of friends, and I'd always keep in touch with my family -- even when I was far, far away.

Today, I've decided that while I can't live that life now, I want to work toward shaping our world into that world.

And after that thought, I found me.

It's days like these I love

Today I woke up at ten a.m.  I got out of bed, took a shower, brushed my teeth, shaved, put on deodorant, cologne, and a four day old Big Boy uniform, and then I went to work.

I wasn't in a rush.  I stopped and got gas.  (That put me a little behind.)  I answered a phone call.  I was one and a half minutes late, and I had a great day.

I stayed present.  I did my work and others' with a gentle smile and a light heart, and in the middle of it all, I saw and spoke to every God and Goddess around me.

Today, I didn't hide.

And I think I realized I'm not going to hide any longer.

No Title

Today I was confronted by a man.

So, I kinda fucked up a few days ago.  I hit someone's car -- as I was backing out -- and I didn't tell the owner about it.  I didn't even look at the car that I hit to see how bad the damages were.  It was 3 a.m., I was headed to Fleetwood for some food and coffee to fuel homework, and instead of confronting fear, assessing damages, contacting the owner, and apologizing to them:  I fled from it.  I pretended it didn't happen.

Turns out, I see the next day, that this was no minor accident.  My front headlight scraped so many layers of paint off that it peeled down and dented the aluminum.  The scrape ran a foot and a half long.  When I see this, I head inside.  I tell myself, "I'll leave my name and number on a note card and put it under their wiper blade."  I tell myself this for days.

Until today, I was confronted by a man.

This man was very emotionally triggered.  I could feel the pain of the incident ringing through every word he spoke, carrying with it a lifetime of anger and sadness.

I felt for this man, and with this man.  And I deeply and sincerely regret not confronting him sooner.

Next time, it will not be this way.

For when I spoke to this man, I was immovable, fearless, and infinitely compassionate.

For when I spoke to this man, he spoke to the Buddha.