sitting around listening to ‘our lady peace’ on what will probably be the coldest day of the year. it reminds me of being 14ish and thinking i had the world figured out. maybe i did.. maybe the more thought you put into it the more confusing things get as you go. but more than likely i was probably just a rebellious kid thinking i didn’t want anyone to tell me what to do or that what i ‘knew’ was wrong. i’m pretty excited about the weekend, seeing a couple of people that make me feel like whatever i want to be is perfectly okay. next month i will have been living in houston for 2 years. i keep thinking about the things i’ve done since i’ve been here and, really, at a slower pace i could’ve filled 4 years time with all of the craziness. sometimes i wish i could slow down.. wish i could find a kind of hopeless peace in what is now and what is decent. but i’m pretty sure since the day i was born i was looking for the next big thing. i’m planning a lot of trips this year, planning a lot of things happening that i can’t even really plan. i don’t really think there’s anything better than all the surprises in between though. and that’s what i’m really looking forward to. i feel like this will be a good year. 23 means i’m starting to get older but not just quite. maybe i can just start getting better at keeping track of everyone i love now; that’ll be the thing i work on this year. i will say that, lately i miss being able to have purple highlights and a nose piercing because you’re 18 and doing wtf you want do. what’s great about right now though.. what’s great about being a twenty-something is meeting all of these really confused and often times wonderful people at their weirdest stage in life and wondering what they’re going to do next and if you’ll see them later on when you both get there.

The biggest problem I’ll ever have is me being naive. The second biggest is me wearing my heart on my sleeve to the nth degree. Sometimes I wish I could turn my head and walk away from everyone that hurts me. But it’s not me.. It’s you.

last blog of the year. i couldn’t try to sum up 2009 if i tried to.. you had to be there. started off in chicago, came back home and everything was different; already. boy moved, i was sad, i got happy again, did my thing, did my thing some more, blew out approximately 6 tires in various different ways at inconvenient times, had lots of drinks, met lots of people, fell in and out of love about a million times, had my appendix out, wrote very little towards the end, got a dog, started hating my dog, got a new apt, started hating the woodlands, did terrible in school this last semester, and so much more. it wasn’t my favorite year but i certainly learned a lot of valuable lessons and there’s always that, at least. i grew up a lot. started thinking more with my head and less with my sleeve. i danced a lot. and i finally realized that it’s perfectly fine to be whatever i am all the time. it was the simplest thing. i was talking to someone and just like that.. “you can’t please everyone” … it’s not like i haven’t been told that a million times by a billion different people but it stuck that one time. i met more people who are more like me this year.. and that was great because i started feeling kind of lonely before them. i did a lot.. school, chicago twice, austin on a couple of occassions, san antonio more than a handful of times, galveston every week of the summer.. and this year i only want to do more. so i’m planning big and i’m not giving up and i’m not stopping for anyone. there will be more writing. more chronicles of travel/experience/me being complicated every day. i want more space this year though, to do the me things that i sometimes stop doing because i get so caught up in other people. more shows. more music. more love. more, more, more. i’m never satisfied, don’t hate me for that because everyone starts to at some point in our relationship and if you do too that just makes you boring. I get bored, that’s just the way it is. less mistakes this year, hopefully. 23 this year.. time is flying by. tonight i will be dancing and wishing it was acceptable to wear a gold dress with gold high tops and still be in public.. and not die alone. oh! 2009 also had lots of me making really over dramatic, sometimes melancholic, mildy irrational statements.. but that’s every year.

t’s technically 1:54am but when’s i’m done it won’t have mattered. I’m up, it’s Saturday and I bet everyone is out doing what you do when you’re in your twenties. I watched a movie, altered my state of mind a little bit, had a few drinks and started thinking. I second guessed my going to Chicago.. Starting getting nervous about going alone, starting wondering why I’m going, started rolling aroud the idea of postponing the trip. But when I did this, when I decided to go alone, I also decided if I changed my mind I’d really be disappointing myself. I came to my senses after I argued with me for about an hour.. Maybe I stay, maybe I go? And it should be okay to change your mind, it really should.. And it is.. But only if the change is for yourself and not someone else. It’s getting to that place where you stop changing for someone else that you really grow up. I can’t fit a mold.. All I can be is myself because I’m not good at being anything else anymore. I feel like I went missing for a second there; like I rented a car and decided to drive off and start over and be something else entirely. And it was fun, it was hard, it was crazy, it was sad, and other times it was better.. But I don’t want to run anymore.I think that at some point in my life I’ll look back and regret having tried to settle down and figure it all out forever and try to fix everything that’s wrong all at once. I think it’ll feel like nothing made sense STILL. It’ll feel like i don’t know who I am.. And that’s when people have mid life crisises. It shouldn’t be so much work. It should be okay to not make everyone happy if you can still make a lot of people happy.. And if you’re also one of those people. Now, I could just be completely overly (and slightly mellow) dramatic.. Could be overly analytical and extremely complicated.. But I think I have a point.

it’s dreary outside. i can see a little sliver of window from my desk and all i really have a view of is the tops of buildings but i’m always looking out anyway. i’m eerily at peace today. things have been kind of a confusing wreck for weeks but i bought a ticket to chicago last night and i have no plan what-so-ever about what happens when i get there.. i don’t want to have a plan. it’s only going to be a couple of days and i’m going alone but i haven’t looked forward to something so much in a really long time. it feels good be doing something alone, to be totally in control of what i do when i get there. i’ve needed space from the state of things and my everyday life for a while now. it’s an odd place when being yourself isn’t convenient anymore. asking for space.. that’s a big deal, isn’t it? ridden with guilt and feeling like you’re being unreasonable by pushing everyone out. things shouldn’t be like that, i need to make more of an effort to understand when shoes are on other feet because in the past i’ve not understood the whole concept of just needing time to yourself. this is it though, this is the end of this year.. this year that’s been a roller coaster ride since the beginning is almost over. i don’t know what to expect anymore from time or me or you. that’s exciting and scary all in the same breath. soon i’m not going to be 22 anymore, i’ll be 23 and the next thing i know i’ll be 43 and i just want to feel like i made the best of all of my time. i want big things.. passion and excitement, stability and comfort, fun and games, experience and wisdom.this is when i start feeling like i’m extremely complicated and completely different from everyone else. i don’t really have a problem with that for the most part but it’s a weird place to stand sometimes. wish me luck on my adventure. more later.

it’s the end of the semester and instead of being relieved that i got through another one i’m pretty pissed at myself for failing a class for no other reason than absolutely not even trying. didn’t do a single thing all semester for an online class. this plays into the whole thing my friend keeps telling me: “insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results”. apparently i’m insane. last year i took an online class, last year i nearly failed it.. fact is, i don’t have the kind of dedication some of you do to show up to an invisible class where no interaction occurs. i’ve never failed anything in my life so right about now i am crippled with frustration.

let’s talk about something else that’s on my mind. add to the insanity? think i will.. relationships. everyone knows this is my favorite thing to talk about; love/hate, hate/love thing. i change all the time; every day i learn something new or have a new conversation or meet a new face that makes me wonder what else i’ll figure out tomorrow. i think ahead and plan, i look back and learn.. it’s a process that sometimes i hate when i fall in love with ‘today’ people. i know that things change because i do it everyday so i realized early on that nothing lasts forever. i know that everything is everything for as long as it’s anything until it’s nothing. it’s no one’s problem but my own, i don’t have any frustrations with anyone, i think i’m past that point. what this whole thing is is doubt that i am capable of a serious, healthy, and lasting relationship. very ‘lover you should’ve come over’, i know. but it’s the truth, i might just be too young and too anxious and curious to make anything last longer than a year or so. i get bored. not necessarily with the relationship but with life in general and i find ways to shake things up and i end up somewhere else. i’m not ready to grow up and not do that yet. i like music, i like to drink, i like to over indulge in pretty much everything, i like to talk to people and i like to change myself and everything around me from time to time.. you don’t realize how hard that makes normalcy unless you’re someone who gets bored easily too and people who can keep up with me are few and far between. it could be a little bit my fault too (or a lot a bit). nobody likes to get hurt and i definitely don’t have the time or energy to spend months pining over what could have been, or should have been, or what i thought it was. nobody at my age has themselves figured out.. who can have done it by now? i think i’ll know i’m where i want to be when i can talk to someone all day without realizing time has passed at all. but nobody wants to talk anymore and maybe i just have too much to say.

crazy head. that’s mine. me? i’m a procrastinator.. nice to meet you. here i am, less than 3 days away from the semester’s end cramming the bulk of my work in and wondering why i want someone to wake me up when my life is over. let’s not even get into the fact that my life is a freaking cornucopia of mess right now; because it is. i’m jamming radiohead trying to get to a somewhat decent state of mind. i wish i had someone here to make me laugh and remind me that the world still exists after the hell that is this week.

i’m sure i’m not the only one who plays a song 1,000 times over in the course of an hour dissecting every little piece of perfectly placed poetry. there’s this song that drives me crazy right now and it’s not a big song, it’s actually incredibly small and quiet and a little sad. it reminds me of a scene i may or may not have already seen in a movie where everything’s really slow and there’s someone walking down a busy sidewalk and you don’t even really know who it is you’re supposed to be looking for in the picture because everyone is kind of the same and kind of busy but kind of sad.. and then you realize the song is about you and you’re walking on the sidewalk too. that’s this song. if i close my eyes i feel like i’d fall asleep and have the sweetest slowest dreams.

- in the last few days i’ve been through the gamut of emotions about where i want to go and what i should do and how i should do it. mostly i think about sitting on a train or bus in chicago looking at everybody seem so into their thoughts and anxious to get somewhere. i think about dancing to the blues in a bar where it’s only you and a lot of friends. i think about wearing four layers of clothing and still not being warm enough but feeling just fine because you’re where you want to be. i think about having a camera in my hand and listening to songs like the one i was talking about and taking pictures of all of the things i see that remind me of those songs. i feel like learning to play the piano and singing everything i’ve ever written. i think about being a kid and i think about how not much has changed about me. i think about where the wild things are and i think about everyone and everything i’ve ever loved and what they’d want for me. and sometimes i think no one would really understand everything if they were inside of my head but somehow i’ve learned to make sense of things as they are to me.

every year i lose another little piece of that closed off secion in my mind where all the good stuff comes from. i start saying the things i feel and talking to myself instead, working out the way adults do and then i can’t write. i have so many things i’d like to write about right now but i can’t focus, can’t pull the words together in the right way

it’s been a while since i last wrote, i thought about it quite a bit but the time and the thoughts were never right, i suppose. a lot’s changed in the last few months but that’s pretty much the norm with people- isn’t it? yesterday i was thinking that i don’t really like to talk about myself very much anymore unless it’s to say “yeah, i like that too” or the opposite.. i spend most of my time daydreaming and planning and just all around observing. i’m not upset about spending time alone like i might have been a few months ago, just me and my dog.. i have a dog now, btw. anyway, the whole point in saying any of that was because i was thinking that people talk about themselves too much between the ages of 18-21; and for guys i think that time line is extended from time-to-time. I don’t really mind, I like to listen and learn. anyone who knows me knows that i can be completely self centered and mildly dramatic but i’ve been looking around a lot lately and seeing other people match behavior i might have previously displayed is really…well, less than satisfactory at best. spending too much time being stressed or mad or anything other than just plain happy frustrates me these days. my life is good and i don’t know how long it will stay that way before more life stuff happens but i guess i’m okay with that.
-did you have a choice anyway? that’s what you’re thinking, right?

i’ve been hoping lately that i’m not just a ’sometimes’ person, that i’m not just good in doses for short amounts of time at minimal effort; but i don’t really know. everyone i know is married or has been with the same person for nearly a million years or maybe they have kids already.. i dunno, you get the picture… well i don’t really think i’m ready for any of that. as much as i talk about it and nag whoever i’m dating to talk about it with me, i’d probably freak out if it came up and shook my hand. that’s what makes me worry. but i don’t sit around and think about it all day like i probably would have a year ago. i miss having good friends to wonder about it with, i guess that short stops the trailing off. anyway, i feel like i might be on the cusp of what i came to houston for in the first place, you know? i keep meeting people all the time who teach me things about myself and most importantly about what i do and don’t want.