Human Relations

Lately, people have been doing a good job of crushing my excitement and enthusiasm.  It kind of sucks because these past few months have been going so well for me.  I've been in an overall better mood (sometimes even a good one!) and have actually had motivation.  It allowed me to do some sou-searching, if you will, and figure myself out a bit better.  I'm at a point where I'm more confident about who I am than I probably have ever been.  And then, people have to go and start ruining it for me.  I understand that they mean well; it just gets me down.

It got me thinking about some other things, too.  You often hear people thanking friends and family for being so supportive.  I feel like I'm missing that.  It's not that my parents aren't supportive - they are - it's just the way in which they are is somewhat lacking.  They helped me financially through undergrad and are happy regardless of what career path I choose.  However, I've never really had a close relationship with them.  I can't go talk to them if I have a problem.  They would only occasionally show up to my orchestra concerts in high school (my mom more so than my dad).  It's things like that.  They have no problem telling me how good I am at things or how proud they are, yet it just feels kind of empty.

Nearly all human relationships I've had are similar to this.  It's just disheartening at times to have people tell you things and then never do anything to prove that there's any meaning behind it.  I've never really had that friend who could tell when I'm having a bad day and ask about it.  The closest one is probably my dog.  It generally seems like I care more about others than they care about me.

Someone wrote it very nicely once; it's not that I'm lonely but that I feel insignificant.  I have plenty of people around me, but I don't feel that important to any of them.  There's always someone more important than me.  I understand that family will generally come before friends.  I understand that someone's spouse is more important.  But, I've never even been first on someone's friend list, at least not in a very long time.  I've never had that best friend who I could share everything with and depend on to be there for me.  There have been a couple people who came close, but it was never all the way.

I'm very comfortable with myself and what I do.  I don't need other people to validate me, but at the same time I would really like actual feedback.  All I ever hear is "this is great" or "you are smart" or other compliments/criticisms that aren't in the least constructive.  It's great to hear people give you praise, but it's not very helpful by itself.  If anything, it can be more damaging because it builds up an ego which may or may not actually be deserved.  It's not even just the things that I do/make.  I'll be the first to admit that my social skills are lacking.  But how can I improve without feedback?  When you receive an answer of "no, sorry" all of the time, how do you know what it actually means?  Are you sorry about saying no?  Then why don't you ever say yes or come to me on occasion instead of my always having to ask you.  Or, maybe you don't want to hang out with me.  In that case, just say so and I'll stop asking and wasting both of our time.

Sometimes, I just wish I were significant to someone and could have that person be significant to me in return.  Someone to whom would I could ask honest questions and trust that I'd get honest answers in return.  Someone who could provide a deeper level of support rather than just the superficial stuff.  I don't really care about having a "real" relationship right now.  I'd much rather just have a best friend.

Responsibility, Patience, and Managing

(begin rant)

Lately, it seems like nearly everything and everyone is trying my patience. Whether it's cleaning up messes caused by incompetence and/or laziness or trying to fix things that aren't working as expected, it makes life harder and more stressful than if things were just to run smoothly as they should. Of course, there will be times when you hit an unexpected bump in a smooth road. The problem comes when the bumps are created by others. I can't blame the copy machine for not working properly, but I can blame one of my TAs for being lazy and not doing their job properly leading to a mess that I have to clean up.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't like micro-managing people. I'm fine with giving instructions on what I expect them to do and as long as they get the job done without causing any problems for me, I could care less about how they accomplished it. And therein lies the problem.

Maybe my expectations are too high. However I am dealing solely with adults here, and I don't feel like asking someone to follow instructions and be responsible is asking too much, especially if those instructions aren't particularly detailed. If it is your job to be a lab TA and help the lab students, you should not be leaving the students alone in the lab for half of the time period. That is what an irresponsible adult who is too lazy to do their job does. I feel like I shouldn't have to explain to an adult (who has been a student and taken labs) that being in the lab room is part of the job of a lab TA. And the students aren't much better. They are all adults as well and should be capable of being responsible for the lab policies that are handed out to them. It is not my job to tell you what day your lab is. I gave you a website with that information. Go there and figure it out yourself. This is not high school. I am not your mother. Learn how to take on some responsibility and independence and learn how to do things by yourself.

And the problem does not end with a job or school. Half of my housemates are incapable of taking some initiative and cleaning the house when it is needed. And when I ask them to, they are incompetent at cleaning. If everyone else sees the large brown dirt patch on the bottom of the shower, then it's probably not clean and don't be surprised when I ask you to clean it again.

It all boils down to taking some responsibility and initiative and doing things right the first time. Sure it might take longer, but it will save me and you the extra time and headaches needed to correct a problem that could easily have been avoided in the first place if you had just taken the time to do your job properly. I am a pretty patient person, but I must say that the one thing that tests my patience more than anything else is the incompetence of other people.

(/end rant)

Priorities and Importance

There's always talk of "getting your priorities straight" or giving to much importance to some minor happening. The problem with this is when people assume that everyone should more or less have the same priorities. Maybe I care too much about (or give too much importance to), say, my fantasy hockey team to the point where someone might think it's silly for me to get upset about losing. I mean, it's not the end of the world and there are other things far more important out there, right? Yes, that's right but at the same time, I don't have the same things to worry about as other people. Someone might say "Well my kids, significant other, family, etc are the most important things and are so important that something like a silly game should hardly matter. Maybe I'll get upset, but I know (inset person/people) will cheer me up and remind me how insignificant it is." This is all fine and dandy if you have those people in your life. But what happens when you don't? What if you don't have a significant other or kids or are not close to your family? Even if those things would be your top priorities, if they are not in your life, then they won't occur on your current priority list. So when you lose your silly game, you care more about it and give more importance to it because you don't currently have much that is more important.

Part of "growing up" is adding to your life, and what you add is often quite important, such as a career or kids. Another part is learning how to prioritize things and figure out what is most important. You'll often hear people say how having kids had a major change on their outlook in life or made them more responsible. This is, at least in part, just figuring out how to organize their priorities as well as having a major change in their life. The small things lose importance because they now have bigger things to care about and make important.

The point is that even if someone seems immature or silly for giving too much importance or too high of a priority to something, doesn't necessarily mean that they need to "grow up" or get their priorities straight. It might just be that the most important things in your life happen to be missing from theirs.

New Direction

I don't really like the original format that I set up since there isn't necessarily any specific reason or cause for my thoughts. So for now, I think that I will just leave it free-form.

Day 1: Family

What happened: I didn't do much today, but I did end up watching the movie, Evan Almighty. I had seen Bruce Almighty and had wanted to watch the sequel. I finally got my chance when I saw that it was playing on TV. The plot is very much about coming together with those you are close to and appreciating the family that you have. About halfway through the movie, my step-dad got home from work. He almost immediately started harping on me as usual being snarky about my day spent at home, even though he should know full well by now that I wanted to head back to WNY two days ago (darn you weather!).

What I learned: This has been a recurring theme for me quite often lately. I want little more than to have a family that's close. I want to know more about them. I want to feel like they enjoy having me around and want to spend time with me and get to know me. I want us to be close and be able to go out and have fun. I've wanted this for years. And my step-dad once again reminded why this doesn't happen. He reminded me of why I can't get out of this funk. The movie at the end has god spell out "A-R-K" while saying "a random act of kindness." Maybe that would be a better place than any for starting to build an "ark" with which to bring my family together.

A Life's Journey

There comes a time, when you realize that life does not always give you what you want, or even what you expect. It's easy to brush off misfortune once or twice or to learn from problematic situations that you come across every now and again. However, sometimes life decides to throw the whole book at you, not just a few pages. It's easy for this to bring someone down, to lead them to question herself and the world. This can lead to a downward spiral and before you even know what hit you, all you can see when you look around is darkness. That's a lot of cliches but what are they for otherwise?

I've tried again and again to make progress, to motivate myself, to drag myself out of the darkness and back into the world. I've made progress, and a lot of it, but it sometimes seems that for every two steps forward that I take one step back. Whenever I make progress and get closer to clearing some of my biggest hurdles, the world has to knock me right back down and remind me why that hurdle was set there in the first place.

A wise man will tell you to live every day to the fullest and to learn from every situation that you encounter. I am learning. The problem is that I am learning that I was right to close myself from others and be very careful with my trust. What I am learning are the same things that I learned before which lead to some very dark times. I don't know if I could handle that again. I am quite stubborn and can be very mentally strong at times, but even getting halfway out of that place took me on a path that all but went straight through Hell. And I don't know if I could mentally endure that again.


So, I've come here. It's the start of a new year. I've tried to do daily and weekly posting before about thoughts that I've had (and I have plenty of them covering a wide range of topics). But this time is different. This time I'm not here to share my thoughts with others, although I'd be very happy if someone benefited from this journal. This time it's about helping myself. This time I need to stick with it. I've grown tired of my life. Something needs to change. I had run out of ideas until this one hit me. You need to learn something every day. Every day there is going to be something that goes wrong or something that brings me down, makes me sad, or makes me realize that things need to change in my life. And that is what this journal is. It's the tale of a journey that is taken one day at a time. A journey to improve my life and to hopefully bring to it the happiness that others have that I want so badly as well. Today is the day that it starts. Right here, right now. I am going to improve my life with one small step at a time.