I'm excited to announce that I have nothing new or exciting to report.

Over the weekend my mom informed me that her parents gave her a gift in money form, to purchase a new car which is pretty awesome. However she wont stop telling me about how awesome it is. It's as if she wants me to be proud of something she didn't even work hard to get. Yeah, I'm happy for her because she got laid off and didn't really have the money to spend on a new car but at the same time the way she goes on about it is fairly irksome.

I called her today and mentioned how I'll have to take out a car loan soon for myself but that I'll need a consigner and she told me that neither she (my mom couldn't anyway) nor my father could cosign. Their credit is bad enough and they can't afford to risk not being able to cosign for my sister's school loans. Okay, valid excuse but basically my mom just kept coming up with excuses as to why I don't need a new car which was ever more frustrating seeing as she hasn't been in the thing for five years or so. The transmission is shot and is only getting worse, every day at this point it seems. Although today it was a good day.

It's not like I need a car right this very second but I'm pretty worried that it wont last to the end of the year. More importantly, I know that it's going to be a bitch to try and drive it in any form of precipitation, especially snow and ice. It's very difficult to handle even in rain. And while busing is an option sometimes, I can't rely on that every day mostly on work days. If I don't have a car for work it'll limit my hours at work if I have to rely on the bus schedule.

So the option, the only option I can think of right now is to trade in my car and pay for the rest with my loan that was reserved for school. Which would be pretty cool because then I wouldn't be taking out an additional loan and I wouldn't have to worry about car payments. But then I wont have that money to pay for rent which would in theory be okay as long as I can maintain 30 hours or so a week at work without taking any time off for a long time. It would mean managing my budget to the penny and most likely living paycheck to paycheck. It's a tough choice.

Other than all the car drama, classes are good and busy.

visited 22 states (44%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Best time to visit Śródmieście

I think I may favor a certain half of the country... :/

The wind is completely unnecessary. grumble

Procrastination this is procrastination, procrastination an easy game to play, first you party all night long, then you wake-up really wrong, party long, wake-up wrong, oooh!

Such is the history of my schooling at least in college. I don't remember putting things off this much in high school I was excited about school then. I enjoyed getting work done. Then I hit college and got into many bad habits that have greatly and often negatively impacted my school work. And even now, when I'm excited about school and want to do my work I still find myself dipping into those horrible habits that are going to bite me in the ass. True, my grades have not been that affected by my habit but my stress level and my mood have been. This leads to a certain anxiety to deal with that bleeds into other areas of my life, especially work and family.

If I just stayed on top of things maybe I'd find that free time, those perfect moments that are so few and fleeting. Instead I spend more time searching for those, trying to gain happiness from things that don't last, from things that aren't real. No I'm not talking just about sex although I'd be lying saying that I haven't had a few digressions. But it's more than that: getting involved with a TV show or a book or trying to indulge myself in food, going out, cleaning, doing other creative things that aren't school work. And while I garner a certain amount of satisfaction, I still know how much real work I haven't accomplished, killing any high that I may have attained.

This habit and the anxieties that come with it impact other areas of my life as well. For example, paying my bills on time. I've certainly destroyed my credit record. I know it's not good. But I space things out. I put them off. I don't take care of things the way I should. Like my car, although seeing as I'm more dependent on my car to make money and have some kind of life outside of my apartment and Boulder I tend to keep up with that a little better, I still let things go on that as well.

I need to break these habits and get into new ones, healthy ones. I want to be successful and I don't want to suffer the consequences that are bestowed upon me when I choose to just put things off and let them go until I can't any longer. I need to stop bringing upon myself the anxieties that I do so that I don't just give up on something or so I don't have this sort of impending doom looming over me. I want to rock it! I want to manage my time better and my finances! These aren't New Year's resolutions, these are life goals and knowing that will remind me and keep me humble to the fact that what I want to do requires me to be proactive, not reactive. It requires that I step up to the plate and put my mind to work as well as my body. I have to keep in mind the end goal, to be happy, to be comfortable, to be successful.

Getting on track. Loosing grip. That's been the cycle recently. The part that has me excited is getting on track because it takes a lot of work for me to do such a thing! It's easy to loose control and let things such as bills, car work, general "real life" stuff, go spiraling from your grasp. I am quickly learning that trying to get these things to be manageable all at once just sets me up for failure, that I have to go about it one or two things at a time.

The biggest struggle currently is keeping school under control. I managed to get caught up and then let things go again and am now getting caught up on work once more. It's been easier getting out of bed lately and just get going which has been nice considering just a few weeks ago and a great deal of the previous years were difficult. It was a chore. And some days it still is, but I'm recognizing that this isn't something I want to fall back to on a regular basis.

My next big clean up I want to get under my belt will be my financial mess. While money wise, I'm doing well enough, paying bills on time is a whole other story. It seems such a daunting task to go through and one, organize all of my piles of bills, paychecks, paper work, loan crap, and other odds and ends, and two, face the music, figure out how bad my credit is and try and fix it as well as I can. I would also like to work on this part as quickly as possible knowing that I may find myself needing a good loan in the near future.

On top of all this are just little tasks and projects that I like to keep myself busy with, little things to make me happy really, cleaning, organizing, drawing, writing. I would also like to get in a good novel or two over break if I have time.

I got to keep the negative away. Life is too good for that shit.

My sophomore year of high school I made a choice that would lead, in some small way to the unhappiness with college that I've felt for the last four or so years. I had taken Intro to Graphic Design and loved every minute of it. I made plans to continue on to the intermediate and then advanced classes but then I realized that signing up for Intermediate meant I couldn't continue with German. I had grown a strong liking to my classmates and my teacher and wanted to go on with them. I also wanted to get my foreign language requirement out of the way so I didn't have to take any in college. So I ended up forgoing Intermediate graphic design, thinking maybe I could take it later on but other classes that I had to take were at the same time so I never did take it.

Only now have I come to realize what a mistake that was. Now I feel that I'm four years behind and have a great deal to make up for it all. But at the same time, I only have two English courses left and I'm done with that degree. Three more TAM courses and I'm done with college. So what's next? Now that I've really put my finger on what I want to be doing, where do I go from here? Do I continue on and try and find a good school to further my studies in graphic/web design? Do I try and get an internship or job involving such fields. Do I work retail for the rest of my life, deciding that my English degree is perfectly useless?

But maybe that's thinking too far ahead. I still have a little ways to go here. If I ever hope to get into some design school, they will request a portfolio no doubt. So that should be what I work on now. During all my free time (most of it) will be doing just that. On top of that, I have to research schools for graphic design programs. I've already been told that Seattle, Chicago, and Minneapolis all have good schools (Minneapolis supposedly has the best of them all). I feel those are two lofty goals that'll keep me busy.

Our country is in a crisis in so many ways and it makes this all a lot harder for so many people but I cannot, we cannot let it get us all down. I plan to keep going, to work hard, and to get what I want. I want to be successful and I want to do what I love and I cannot let anything get in the way. I wish I was more awake so this was better writing but whatever. Anyway, I will update soon on my progress. Adios!

Upon having very little good sleep last night, if any at all, in part due to the insurmountable amount of dreams that seemed to occur in a good seven hours, I decided to just get up and get going. Despite that motivation that has got me going I thought I would take a minute to just right for a second.

The last time I had dreams like the ones I had this past evening, I woke up feeling doubtful of myself and of life. It would be a lie for me to say that these dreams didn't get to me in the same way. But like dwelling on the past, hanging on to dreams like this is pointless. Their only purpose, and that's saying that they do indeed have a purpose, is for reflection. While these dreams show myself falling into a hole of irresponsibility and negligence, I know that they no longer reflect who I am now. It's more that they show how I have been in my past, back when I didn't really have goals, back when I didn't really know why I got up in the morning.

Now I do have goals. Now I am getting things done. And it's all super exciting and at the same time daunting. I have allowed myself into some bad habits, financially, personally, as well as little things like ignoring problems instead of fixing them, say with my car for instance or with waking up and actually making it to class instead of getting up, realizing I could be late, and just not go and assume that things would still be okay. Well hopefully those days are over. I have made steady progress aside from the cold that I have been suffering through this weekend and seem to still have woken up with. Regardless, it's time for me to get things done.

Speaking of which I must run to the store while my laundry dries. I will post more later.

As I wander the internet tonight I feel an urge to write. About what? I don't know. I feel the sudden urgency to find something to do or something to watch or read but at the same time realize it's almost three in the morning and going to bed should be my primary goal. Updating on here seemed like a good idea but I'm not ready to post what I want to say and believe there is a lot I want to say, write, do.

Let's just say that currently life is going splendidly. I have made several efforts to reorganize and re-prioritize my life in order to obtain my goals because now I have a goal or a few goals really. It took me nearly four years of college to narrow it down to what I would like to continue with in education and with a career. My last real semester is nearing and it's scary because I'm unsure as to what exactly the next step is. Get a second job? Go on to more schooling? Take a great trip somewhere? Really I am scared shitless because like it or not my next step isn't going into the real world. Ever since I was cut off from my parent's I have been living the real experience, dealing with the things life throws at you that no amount of schooling will ever prepare you for. I'd explain but I feel most people know what I mean.

I was pondering lifetimes. It's so hard to imagine the amazing things that I've been witness to in just twenty-two years. Hailey's comet passed by the week of my birth. A space shuttle exploded. The World Wide Web showed up. Oklahoma saw a bombing. Columbine saw a shooting. A young girl in Boulder was brutally murdered and more brutally plastered over America for reasons I'm still weary of. I was there for the bombing at the Olympic park in 1996. Global warming grips the world. Gay marriage is fought for across the nation. The president gets head. People connect on line like people have never done before. Twin Towers fall. A Hurricane devastates a city. Famine and war destroy a continent. An economy is in turmoil. Cell-Phones are everywhere. A millennium comes and goes. People die. Diseases progress. Life goes on. The first African-American man is elected to the highest power of perhaps the mightiest country while at the same time, that same country still treats minorities as second class citizens, threatening their rights to be free human beings based on religious, moral beliefs that have always existed in our politics. It shows how while great strides have been made, many more will be needed. I lay in my bed watching the news, listening to music, and typing in a blog, all on one machine, all running on one battery, thinking about what the future holds and reflecting on what the world has seen while I have been around.

There has been so much on my mind. This week has left me speechless. All I can think about right now is the past but I have more to say. I'll be back soon.

I'm writing at 2 in the morning because I really don't know what else to do at this point. I tried sleeping, managed to get a good four hours, but now I'm wide awake and thinking. I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. Actually it seems I'm always thinking but it seems to go nowhere, kinda where this post will end up going I believe.

Basically I'm just frustrated with myself. I know what's new? But really, I don't know what's wrong with me. I keep looping. It's like I'm some glitch on iTunes that plays only one album and then plays it over and over again. We'll call it error: 360. This 360 keeps running through my head, plays out in my actions, and presents itself in my conversations with my friends. I complain about the same stuff over and over again. I get myself into bad situations, all similar in nature, again and again, and it seems that I lack the will power to get myself out of this mess and really make a major change in my life. I feel a lot of it has to do with the fact that I'm a very insecure person at times. I have trouble making any real decisions because I always want someone's approval first, or a few people's approval before I'm assured it is the right decision. I get really frustrated when I ask for someone's help or their opinion concerning my choices and they have no insight to offer me so I just bitch and moan or never end up making a decision which turns out to be bad for me.

With that said, here is a list, for lack of a better name, of the things that have been bothering me or have be frustrating me or things that I feel are hang-ups in my life. Every time I visit my parents, I'm on edge because I'm afraid of slipping and acting too gay or saying something gay because I'm afraid of the looks and the silence my parents will give me. I'm afraid of my mother crying over it. I don't want to see that. But honestly, it's been four years since I came out to them and this is getting ridiculous. In coming out I was supposed to stop hiding but all I'm really doing is making it easier for them to just ignore the fact that they have a fag for a son. But I'm not always an in-your-face type of guy. I feel bad for flaunting anything to anyone for the fear of making them uncomfortable. Which in turn makes me uncomfortable because I hate the feeling of having hurt someone or making someone uncomfortable or of disappointing someone. I think this just means I'm not proud of who I am all of the time. That I do care too much of what everyone else thinks.

In the field of finances I seem to be just plain stupid. I let bills go and I don't keep track of my spending and I tend to over spend. I'm not taking care of my credit and I was just horrified by the thought that at some point soon, I'm going to have to reapply for financial aid again which is only going to put me in more debt than I already am. I fear the debt because I'm really bad at paying things back. I'm afraid that eventually I'll screw myself over more later in life because of this. I just tend to get paid and spend it on food and sometimes entertainment but it's mostly just food and stuff I do actually need. Okay, now I'm just making excuses on spending. I am an irresponsible spender. I forget that things add up and that they add up fast. For instance, I've recently become addicted to the show Ugly Betty and I keep buying episodes on iTunes ($1.99 per episode plus tax). I watch one and then buy the next and so on and so forth and forget that at some point this adds up to $34.99 for the whole season. In the meantime I'll buy a couple of songs off of iTunes at random, songs that I want but don't need. I tend to spend way too much on movies as well. One I go see a lot of movies that are best left to wait until the DVD release, two I usually go on a fairly empty stomach so popcorn is a must as well as a diet coke to wash it down with. that's at least $20 spent on two hours of something that isn't that important. That's $20 that could have went to my car's oil change that it needed like 3 months ago. I let the important finances go in lieu of the things that tend to be more fun. And yes I've made some sacrifices but for the wrong reasons. I haven't been going out as much lately because I work too much to even have much of a social life. So you think the money would finally kind of just sit there and be more available but somehow I still find a way to spend it on something. I get so confused and frustrated by money I just hate dealing with it. I fear my phone sometimes, when an unknown number comes up, I just ignore it knowing that it's most likely a financial institution asking me to pay my bills or something like that.

My health, as you can imagine, isn't so super either. I tend to eat maybe 1-2 meals a day with a little snacking every-once-in-a-while. I don't exercise. I've had some recent worries about my health that have been taken care of but shouldn't have happened in the first place. I barely cook at home. I'd much rather hit some restaurant. It's not that I don't like cooking either, it's more like I'm lazy, or I'm barely at home, but really, how hard is it for me to make a sandwich and pack it before going off to class? Apparently, for me, very.

Getting up at 3:30 am to be at work by 4:30 am sucks especially when my shift are either that or 4pm-12:30am. It makes it very difficult to one, have any life outside of work and two, it makes it very difficult to have anything resembling a normal sleep schedule. And I'm working nearly full time. I love my job but the hours are starting to get to me but at the same time I need them since my parents have stopped paying for anything with the exception of my insurance. And it just boggles my mind that my grandparents have helped my cousin through school, paying for a very large chunk (almost all of it) of her tuition and have maybe spared $50 a semester for me to buy books which by the way isn't very much for school books. That's just frustrating. It's frustrating that my parent's cut me off mostly for the fact that my mom was facing a lay off at work. Guess what? She's still working. She's been working for over a year since they announced the lay-offs. So I'm kind of confused as to what happened there. So anyway, this means that I have to work my ass off while trying to fix my school grades that I let go really bad last semester. It's not easy and pretty much not where I pictured myself at this age.

Basically, I'm fed up with myself for constantly regretting my past decisions and those of my parents, things I can no longer control or had no control over in the first place. I wish that my parents had finished their college and/or had become rich and successful so that I could have an easy life. I know this is shallow. I wish that they were more accepting people but they aren't and I can't change that. I wish that I didn't feel guilty every time I ask for help with something major or for being gay when I'm around my parents or for not doing anything at all, yes, I make myself feel guilty for nothing, literally. I wish I had chosen to go to college for the right reasons, not to just get away from my parents. This is why I choose CU by the way, they require you to live in the dorms your first year, and I figured it's a big school so it has a lot of choices of majors and I'll get to explore as much as I want and figure it out later. I wish I had done more research, more deep thinking about what I wanted to do, at the same time I don't know how I could have really figured that out when my only experience of the world at that point were my parents, a few friends, high school in the town that I grew up in? I had a very sheltered childhood. And I was too afraid to push myself to go out and explore because I didn't want to be the rebel child, I didn't want to upset my parents. I always felt I had to follow their rules about going out. I have probably experienced more in life in the last four years at college than I have in the 18 years that came before it. I feel like that anyway.

I could keep writing, I'd like to. There is so much more that I'd like to say but most of it will probably seem pointless. Basically, I'm fed up with things I can't change, decisions I made ages ago that I can't fix. I've got so many problems and hang ups in my head that on the surface seem silly and easy to fix but at the same time, I've built up so many of them, I don't even know where to start the healing process. I don't know which step to take first because I'm also an impatient person and if I could I'd fix it all by the end of this post, but I'm trying to be realistic here. It's like my brain doesn't want me to stop thinking. I keep jumping from thought to thought and I barely have any real follow through so it all kinda just builds up and then I have a huge mess of thoughts that I don't even know where to begin dealing with.

Anyway, that's all.