I struggle quite often with cognitive dissonance. I sit here with two absolutely conflicting wants running rampant in my head.

People confuse want with need and desire with existence all the time. Similarly, they incorrectly associate conflicting ideas as cognitive dissonance. “I want to be a good person. I am a bad person” is not the same as “I am a good person. I am a bad person”. Likewise, “I am an alcoholic. I don’t want to be an alcoholic” is not really cognitive dissonance. Dissonance would be “I am an alcoholic. I am not an alcoholic.”

So when I say I am experiencing a bit of a mind fuck, trust me when I tell you I’m not simply confusing what I want with what I know is good for me. I want this, yet at the same time I don’t want this.

The most frustrating aspect of it all, though, isn’t that I can’t decide between the two avenues. It’s that while I’m sitting around being unable to decide, my capacity to choose is slowly slipping away.

And where is the free will in that?

last week was pretty suck, but i think this week is going to beat it out… without a doubt the worst two consecutive weeks i’ve ever experienced.

but guess what?

I CAN’T TELL YOU ABOUT IT BECAUSE APPARENTLY EVERY WORD I UTTER IS MISCONSTRUED BY THE MAN.

sometimes, when i get really anxious or depressed, i go back and start rereading stuff i wrote way back in the day.

i found this while skimming through stuff and it gave me chills so i am copy/pasting it.

One thing I’ve learned about life these past twenty or so years is that it never slows down when you fall behind and it only accidentally gives you a chance to catch your breath. One of my favorite quotes is by Robert Frost.

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.”

It does go on. And it will go on with or without you.

It is easy to get in to things so deep that you wouldn’t be able to breathe out the top of your head. I’ve been there more than once for various reasons. The only advice I can give to those people who are there now is to not quit.

The sin is not falling down, but staying down.

I don’t know who said that, but it is another of my favorite quotes.

As soon as you stop moving, as soon as you quit, everything that has been teetering precariously on the edge will come tumbling down and bury you. So as much as it hurts at the moment, you can’t quit, because things will just get worse.

I’m not promising to you that doing this will fix everything, or right the wrongs, or cure all the injustices. You have to find the answers on your own. I am sure that there are many people willing to help you, but all of them together won’t give you a single answer or fix a single problem.

What I’ve just told you isn’t an answer. It is a means to and end. Take this to heart, and just maybe you’ll keep your shit together long enough to find the answers and hear the words you so desperately need.

/rant

where it sucks, and then you finally accept the sucking after awhile, and then life says “haha! punk’d! just kidding about all that” and by then you’re so bitter about everything that you just want to tell life to go fuck off.

apparently no, i’m not do for some good karma.

kristen has decided to come early this year. as if i weren’t already on edge enough with the first coming up she decides to show up two weeks early and call me from jail. joyest of joys. who gets to pay her bail? me. how does she pay me back?

“we can have as much sex as you want until i leave”

well gosh. that’d be nice except i’m pretty sure that i don’t really want to fuck my best friend’s sister. that isn’t to say that she’s not one of the most attractive girls i’ve ever seen. it isn’t even to say that i’m not attracted to her. it’s just that i don’t want to. don’t get me wrong; i’m all for sex. sex sex sex sex sex. i actually think i’m going through withdrawal from lack of sex (i’m actually quite sure of it)… but no. not sex with kristen.

now the glorious game of “hide the kristen” begins, where we see how long it takes for someone in my house to figure out that there’s a second person sleeping in my room.

i don’t believe in karma, but if i did then today had to have been me shedding every little last bit of bad karma i’ve had and then some.

does that mean i’m due for something good? because it’s been awhile.

jeanette warner rocks my face off

ever had someone sneak up on you and punch you behind the ear?

it catches you totally by surprise and the pain in intense but short lived. after the initial shock and pain wear off, you’re left wondering “what the fuck was that?”

dreaming about jenna is a lot like getting punched behind the ear while unawares. i’m never ready for when it happens and it always leaves me feeling a bit bewildered for a couple days afterwards while i try and figure out what exactly just happened.

jenna-dreams always occur at opportune times after some (in)significant event or decision. i’m not a spiritual person or even one that really believes in communing with the dead, but the timing and distinctiveness of jenna-dreams has always made me question that a bit. example? i don’t dream synesthetically. i do, however, jenna-dream synesthetically and i can’t find any sort of supporting literature to explain this; you either dream synesthetically or you don’t. additionally, jenna dreams are lucid, but in a way that leaves me not in control. i could go into it more, but that isn’t the point of this post so i’ll leave it for some other day; the point of all this is that they are, on some level (and maybe it’s my subconscious just acting out - hell, i am going into psychology) significant dreams.

right now, i’m trying to figure out how my most recent jenna-dream is significant. what does it mean? what am i supposed to do? i know what i have, but how am i supposed to apply it?

it’s a lot like a battery; it’s got a positive end and a negative end, and i’m sitting here staring at a socket with no markings trying to figure out which way the battery goes in.

We spend our lives on the imaginary verge of enormous change.

And we do. Each and every day is wrought with circumstances that threaten to overwhelm us. They will kick your feet out from underneath you and sit on your chest, crushing the last vestiges of hope and happiness from your lungs and life. They are undeniable. They are certain. They are inevitable. They will alter us profoundly and in ways that we are unprepared to handle.

And yet, they never quite do…

We persevere. We rebound. We move forward. We are better able to appreciate the good things in our lives because we’ve had a brief taste of life without them.

There will be a life time of love and change. School will get better. There will be days without stress. There will be soccer. There will be weekends and there will be days off.

Live in today. It may not be great, but appreciate it just the same. And when today fades into yesterday, walk into tomorrow knowing that you are filled with the capacity to live a better day and appreciate it more fully because you’ve seen the other side of the coin.

To quote Jason Lee’s character from Vanilla Sky: “The sweet is never as sweet without the sour, and I know the sour.”

i somehow just re-found this site after not being able to figure out what the address was for the longest time.

hopeisemo.com

Crista Flanagan from MadTV plays an uber emo in this podcast. Hilarious.