Never Enough Time

I've been thinking about time lately. How there isn't enough when you want and more then enough when you don't need it. I've been thinking about changing the past. If I knew then what I know now I would not have done what I did then. But if I had taken the other road would I be able to appreciate having done so?

I suppose everyone entertains these thoughts once in a while. I don't know what other people would change, but I know what I would: my attitude, my eating, my friends, my cowardly actions. The last have always been my greatest regret. I can live with being fat (plenty of people do), and my attitude did secure for me a comfortable if not desired social niche; my friends we few so I don't want to change them so much as get them. But many of my action's rather inaction's were motivated by fear. Fear of humiliation and rejection.

It's strange, but my fears were (and to some extent are) more personal then other people's. I didn't fear being rejected by a group. It had happened so often early in life that I don't mind now, the same for humiliation. Put me in front of a few people, it's as if I feel there is a finite amount of awareness in the room and they are each getting a greater share. Whatever I do will be remembered more because there are fewer of them. It doesn't make sense, does it?

I think about the time a head too. What I would like to happen. Sometimes I want importance more then anything, a place in history. Lately though I think of the more immediate future, the next five usually. I now what I want to have more than anything in that time, and it's not a degree. It's love. The love you freely give another and the love that is returned. That's what I see in my head, what I hope to have in time.

The Master, Lord of Time

I just love this charector from Doctor Who. Watch it, you'll love it too.
You will obey!

How Am I Perceived?

I often wonder what it would be like to have a conversation with myself because I have no idea what I'm like to other people. Some people like me, others seem to take an instant dislike to me. Take my family for instance...

While I think my sisters' and mother like me, I have come to think that my father doesn't. Not to say that he doesn't love me, but I don't think he likes me. If we weren't related I think he wouldn't want to spend anytime with me. I can't quite figure out why that is. I do think though that there is an imbalance in are relationship. As for my extended family, I don't think anyone more than five years older than me likes me. I think that perhaps I come off as snide, or arrogant, but no one tells me so I can't be sure.

Now the people I meet are a different story, lately I've been having better luck than I used with them. When I was in high school about half the people in my class and above (grade) didn't seem to like me. Three cases stand out in particular. The first was admittedly my own fault. Writing a poem about someone you like, then turning it in for a class assignment and finally telling other people about it is not the best way to get someone to like you especially when they don't seem to care to much for you to begin with. The 2nd case I never quite understood. Her was a girl who I respected, admired, and found attractive but for some reason seemed to loath me. When we talked it was almost always in group settings and on the few occasions we were alone it was always school related, except one where she told me she thought I was uncommitted and shouldn't even be apart of our organization, so I don't see what on earth I could to earn such a low opinion from her. I asked her more than once and never got an answer. She just wouldn't answer the question outright. Why she didn't like me still vexes me to this day. The 3rd person I had problems with was a guy my age who I just found to be rather prissy and I think my dislike of him my have been why he never took a liking to me. It is my fault thought that I treated him as I did and I have every intention of apologizing for my misconduct.

Lately however I have been having better fortunes with first meetings. I think that I learned to control myself in front of people more. I make better acquaintances in class now then I did in high school, but we almost never speak to each other once the semester ends. Socially I have been doing better with women; I think I'm getting better at flirting, I had a nice thing going with one girl 'till I found out she had a boyfriend and I even managed to go out on a couple of dates with another, but it didn't work out as I would have liked. I could never have gotten a date in high school (with anyone I liked), which raises the question what has changed? Is it the people I am around? Is it me who has become different or have I just learned to be what people want?

Sacred Text

As a college student one of the hardest things I had to learn was to write in my own books. Having grown up with an English teacher for a parent I was taught from an early age that you don't write in books. Ever since then anything in print has always been sacrosanct to me. It's why I erase anything I find in any of the used books I buy. It's why I wanted to blow up at my mother when she cut herself out of a picture of mine several years ago. Like Mel Brooks, who could write then erase anything as long as it was in pencil but hated to mark anything that was typed, I have found it very hard to write on my own printed essays (Why does the plural of essay still have a Y in it?).

Just looking at a computer screen you can see what I mean; you feel your eyes get tried and after a while no matter how good what your reading is you find that you have to stop. But if you find yourself in a really good book you can read it cover to cover no matter how strained your eyes might become. The same with a picture, if it's printed you might run your finger tips over it as though you can feel the contours of its subject. If you do the same on a computer screen you notice that it just isn't the same; it's as thought there is a layer between you and the picture.

Things on a screen are temporary and changeable, the things you hold in your hands are not. So to write on a book for me is a profound act. Whatever marking I make must have the greatest reason for being there. I doubt I could ever use a study Bible.