Friday, July 11, 2008

Changes

It's a requirement of every journal-type blog of a teenager to have at least one post titled, changes. I've known this for a very long time. I've known this for years, in fact, and I've considered starting several blog posts with that very same beginning line. I've laughed when I've seen my friends title posts, changes. It's so typical, so expected. It's got teenage stereotype written all over it. I title my post changes tonight not necessarily because my life has been changing, but rather as a monument to this blog itself, to my teenage existence. I title it changes because I'm unsure of the future, and I feel that the title accurately captures the irony and previous foresight that has been lost.

I say the previous foresight that has been lost. What does that mean? Do you ever feel like you used to understand, but that now you don't? No, that's not accurate, that's not what I feel. Hmm. The blog, that's what this is about. For now. It applies to everything else, mostly, but we'll get there eventually. We'll start small, and expand, and maybe it'll make sense.

I used to post a lot. My posting has gone through a few pretty easily definable stages. I can classify those stages based upon my reasons for posting. I wrote all this down on a yellow piece of paper one night. I love my yellow papers. They were a substitute for posting for a while. The paper is upstairs, and I'm downstairs. I was about to write a sentence explaining how I wasn't going to go get that paper, but that I was going to just tell you what I remembered. That's how I feel tonight. But that's not the kind of person that I want to be. No. I want to be the guy that goes upstairs to get the paper. Because the paper will help me understand. And the paper will help you understand better too. The paper is a significant thing. Because I felt something that night, something significant enough for me to write it down on that yellow piece of paper. I wrote it because I knew it was important, and I knew it'd be important in the future. And what kind of guy would I be if I left that piece of paper upstairs instead of using it? Why would I leave it up there? I'm lazy, and perhaps melancholy, but I can at least respect the person I want to be and the person that I have been enough to go get it. I'll fight this lazy present, and I'll go get that paper. Oh yes, I'll be back in a minute.

A few notes, before I jump into the yellow paper. You'll notice that I'm talking very separately tonight. The difference between the me of previous times, the present me, the future me, all of that. I don't think I'm dissociative, but I do use the separate model of me to recognize the changes in emotion that accompany the transition of time. I think I first detailed this in a post my sophomore year about treadmills. Oh how things have changed since then.

Now, halfway through the sentence, "I think I first detailed this post...." I stopped writing for about an hour. I was talking to a very good friend of mine, someone that's very important to me. Because of that, things have changed a bit. My emotional mindset is not the same, and the things that I wanted to explore aren't necessarily as important as they once were. However, there are still things that need to be said. And so I'm going to say them. It's 3:18 in the morning. My sleep schedule has always been a bit messed up, but summer is taking it to the extreme. I.... want to write. So I'm going to.

I never used to use elipses. I didn't like them much. I made a theorem with Nickmo once. It said that as the number of elipses in a messenger conversation went up, the level of happiness went down. It just meant that people used elipses when they were sad more often than when they were happy. I use elipses to represent moments when I don't exactly know. I like to recognize those moments, almost cherish them. I love the idea of not having words to say, or not knowing exactly what I want to say. I sort of celebrate moments where I simply don't know. There's a word for it that I'm looking for. Unsure. No, that's not it, but it's close. It's not a bad feeling. It usually happens when I'm trying to explain something to someone. Something that's important to me, and something that I mostly understand inside, but that I can't communicate well. It doesn't frustrate me at all. It's like it's a little challenge. I've recently come to really appreciate the elipses because it lets me not know, and it's okay not to know. It's okay to not understand and to not be able to always communicate exactly what you mean. It's okay to be impractical and imperfect sometimes.

One of my favorite things of writing at night is not seeing exactly what i type on screen. I can see it, but my contacts are out, and I'm leaning farther away from my screen in my chair, so I can't see characters all that well. I can still generally feel when I've typed a word wrong, but I know that I've got an "I" up in this paragraph that's not capitalized, and I'm not going back to fix it. I could barely see it, and I suspected that something was wrong, but I sorta let it slide. That's how it goes at night. Mechanics stop mattering so much. It's more about communicating what I feel, and not so much about worrying what everybody is thinking of it.

Now, I understand that not many people read this much. Ding, that's another one of those things that every single teenage blog has to have. I've written it numerous times, in numerous posts. I'm writing it again, so sue me. But I am cognizant of that fact.

My blog has always been a parallel to my life. I love that. It lets me understand me better. It teaches me lessons about me that I didn't know needed to be taught. It's a thing of beauty. I love that I have my blog.

I've been wondering lately if I will keep the blog up. I remember that I commited to write in it at least until I left on a mission. I feel off the bandwagon. I think i had two posts last month. I haven't had a month that low since the very beginning, if I recall. But, what would I do if the need to blog vanished? What if the benefit of blogging went away? What if I would be better off not doing it, and the community would be better off without me writing? What would happen then? Would it be prudent for me to keep up my commitment? What if the facts changed, so it would be wise to not keep my commitment? Would I break it, should I break it?

Now, that's not the question that's on my mind. But, it's an interesting idea. Just because I made a commitment to myself, on this blog, that I would keep blogging, does that mean that I shouldn't take into considering changing factors?

I love my blog. It's been a big part of my life. It's been such a great tool for me. It has helped me get to where I am right now. But I don't know what its future will be. Unless I do something, there's a good chance that it will lie dormant until I got to college. This summer, well, there's less time in the evenings to blog. I used to hunt for things to write about. Now I don't think about it. I'm writing tonight because Jaron and Nate mentioned that not many people had been writing. That means me.

I'm very stream of consciousness tonight, as I've always been. I seem to be moreso than usual though. It's, well, the way things are.

I guess my question is, "who do I want to be?" It's a question I'm always asking myself. It's something that I'm always moving towards, an answer, whether I'm thinking about it or not. Every choice moves me in a direction. Is this the person I want to be? Is this the person I should be?

There are a million good choices out there. I think that blogging is a good choice. But is it the best choice? Tap dancing could have probably been a "good choice" for me back in the day. Maybe I would have been good, maybe it would have taught me something. But I didn't do it, and I'm okay with that. I guess what I'm trying to say is, just because it's good, doesn't mean that it's something that I have to do. Doesn't mean that I can't do other good things.

This doesn't mean that I'm retiring. I dont' want to do that right now. I don't want to do that for a while, in fact. It's just, something I'm thinking about. I guess I'm thinking about the reality of change. The reality of moving on, letting things go, and accepting what's new. I've been having a bit of trouble with that lately. I haven't had any problem letting go of being graduated from highschool. I've just had trouble with how that has changed my social status. When I'm with my big group of friends, things are different. That's for a couple reasons, obviously. Relationships, graduation, the fact that we're no longer compelled to be together all the time, etc. etc. But it's change, and I don't know how I feel about it.

There's a good John Mayer song. It says, "Say what you need to say" about a million times. I don't know how I feel about the song, it's a little repetitive for me, but I love the message behind it. I don't like the way those commas worked out last sentence. But I'm not going to go back and change it, because I don't really believe in going back to change what i've written here tonight.

But, anyways, say what you need to say. I believe it. Maybe I haven't been doing enough of that lately.

You know, there are a lot of people that I just really care about. I wrote one of my really good friends a pretty extensive note this week, and that felt really good. I really enjoyed that. It's just, weird, I suppose, to care about so many people. I think that culturally, at least in my life, I've been sorta shown and told that we generally are supposed to care about only one or two people. That our interests narrow, as time goes on. But that's weird to me. I don't know where I'm going with this, but I just want to say that I care about a lot of people. And, well, I don't know what to do about that. That's all.

You know, it's 3:34 Am. I wonder if anybody ever wakes up in the middle of the night and is like, "I wonder what Thatcher is doing right now..." and then they wake up the next morning to find out that I'm sitting here, in my chair, thinking about stuff. I don't assume that it's ever happened, and I'm not bold enough to guess that it ever would. I just thought it was interesting. What is everybody else doing, right now? It's 3:34 AM. I bet most of my friends are in bed, and I think that's way cool. I hope they're doing well.

There's been no shortage of relationshipping among the group. That has its ups and downs. But it's interesting to note that you don't stop caring about everybody else just because you've been relationshipped. You're not absolved from anything. There's no magic potion. I guess I didn't really assume that there would be, and I don't know what I'm saying with this. I dunno, I'm just thinking of my friends, how they're doing at 3:38 AM. Going through, caring about them all, not just the one or two. And I think that's the point. The relationship thing hasn't changed much about the way that I feel about all my friends. I'm still concerned about them. I know it wasn't much, or it wasn't a big deal, but I always felt a bit of ownership or responsibility for the girls in the group. Ownership could get me slapped, but what I meant to say was that I always felt that I had at least a little bit of a leadership role most places I went. In the social circle, it might have just been my ego, but I sorta saw myself as a bit of the leader. As such, I cared about and sorta felt like I had to take care of people. Not like, had to take care of them, but it was there. Well, that hasn't changed. I still feel that concern for the people, still want to know how they're doing, still hope they're doing well. Being relationshipped, it feels like everyone's perception has changed. Now it feels like people think I'm only caring about one person, but that's just not true. Huh, I dunno why I typed all that. But I guess I felt like it was a decent thing to do, so I did it.

You can tell that my writing style has changed a lot in the past couple of minutes. I began this post incredibly philosophically. I was ready to dive in and explore some feelings I haven't typed out or vocalized all summer. But, now I'm sorta sleepy, and I got pretty affectionate just thinking about my friends.

For the record, I think we dominated at high school. I just want to point that out.

It's like I'm writing to a big group of you. I'm even feeling that way enough to write "you". But, that's probably not true. I don't know who I'm writing to. I usually write to a specific person when I write. It's usually a girl. It varies, of course. I know exactly which girl I think I'm writing to tonight. I don't know if she'll ever read it, but I know who I'm writing to. Isn't that weird? I bet Nick doesn't think so. I love that I know Nick will read, eventually, maybe. He's always a good guy, chiming in.

Anyways, I'm starting to sound like drunk fellows off of cartoons. Not that I'm drunk, or feeling disabled at all, but I'm typing and writing a little weird. I could go on, but I don't know if I need to. I don't know if it'd be good for me or good for the community. I love that I can say community. I love that what I do has a bit of an impact. Maybe it's tiny, maybe it's small enough to be negligible, but I don't believe that it is.

I guess, I just don't understand some things. I don't understand why I feel the way I do about certain things. But I'm glad I do, that's for certain. Maybe I'll write more. Maybe I'll finish what I started thinking about. But, hey, for a post that started off a little angsty, it has ended up very happy. I love my friends. And I care about them, and I hope they're doing well. And I want to do a better job showing that, and doing what I can for them. Because they're good people, and they're important to me, and I care about them.

Well, 3:46, it's time for me to head back upstairs and get ready for bed. Peace and love friends. I feel humble enough tonight to say that I'd love a comment. I really would. But I'll understand if you don't.

Thanks for everything, all of you who are out there. I hope you know who you are. I'm sending you a smile. Ha.

3 comments:

Jaron Frost said...

Hey, Thatcher. :)

This was a really good post. I won't lie. I've always loved your blog, because it's a chance for me to hear you and only you say whatever the heck it is you want to say, and it's always so interesting to me. Reading someone's blog is like taking a little vacation into their head. It's nice to get away, see things from another point of view. And, honestly, I've really missed that since school got out. I miss you guys.

And I think I need to do better at reading blogs. It's one thing that, no matter where we go or what we get into, we can always come back to and post something for everybody else to read. It's nice to know what's going on with your old friends that you still care about, like you said. It's nice to know. :)

Thanks for writing.

Jaron Frost said...

Oh, PS: I don't know much about this newfound relationship thing you're into, but it sounds like it's going well, and congrats! After hearing your views about relationships for so long, it will be interesting to hear what you have to say about it in the near future :) I'll still be around.

Nick said...

Of course I read. This was a definitely interesting post. Hmm. Cool. Good luck with everything. Sweet action.