Time After Time

     Time travel. Something humans have dreamed about and tried to accomplish for centuries (I think). Everyone has a different idea of what they want to do if they could travel back in time. Meet pivotal people from our past. Change something from the past. Maybe prevent an assassination, or commit one. Be there for the writing of the Constitution. Change something in the Constitution. If I could change something, I would try to prevent the invention of firearms. The Japanese discovered gun powder (or was it the Chinese?). That would obviously lead to guns. If I could show them in a vision of what guns would do, maybe they would ditch the whole idea. Maybe it's inevitable. What would changing one thing mean? People have said it would have a ripple effect; even jus the smallest thing. If guns were never invented, that would be something huge. Would something worse than firearms be invented? Or would we just have bombs? Something we don't have now? It's hard to imagine something else. Imagine what the world would be like with no guns. Ever. What a thought. Imagine. Best song ever.

    Or go into the future. Why would a person want to go into the future? To just see what happens in the world? In his or her life? To see the effect of what happens today has on the future? To check out the cool toys? I guess I'm not anxious to see the future.

    If I could meet one person from the past, it would probably be Janis Joplin. I know, why meet Janis Joplin when I could meet Lincoln, or Washington, or da Vinci? She seems like someone who would be really awesome to meet. Someone real. Someone to connect with. Plus she's a kick-ass singer. Would I prevent her death? I don't know. I think she would be a legend no matter when she died. There's something about musicians and 27. What would she be like if she lived? Would she still be out there belting it out, or become a hermit and never come out of her apartment like Mae West? She'd turn 72 in 4 days. Her age inverted.

     Or would a person change something in their personal life? There are so many things I would change, that I just want to start from the age of about 5, and tell myself the right decision to make. Yes, even at 5. To do or not do something. I think I would be in a very different place, a better place. But I can't change the past, now can I? I can only move forward, change my future. If one dwells too much on what could have been, then you lose sight of what can be. This is what I think I no.

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once." -Albert Einstein

I Hear Voices

A long time ago, I wrote (by that I mean typed) down some ideas for my blog. I typed them up on a whim, whenever an idea entered my head to explore more later. It may be quite a bit later, but I thought I'd look them up again. This is one idea I wrote down. I don't know what sparked the idea, but thought I'd share it:

You can't let society's voices dominate your life; tell you what to do, how you should feel, how you should be, and especially in order to find happiness. Those who constantly seek happiness in other places outside themselves rarely happens, and usually becomes depressing and demeaning. You can't worry about what other people think about you. "When you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody." Especially yourself. You have to do what makes you happy, not what makes other people happy. I'm not saying to become a total hedonist, although is it really so bad? As long as you do nothing immoral? I think you need to put yourself and your needs, wants, happiness first before anyone else, including a significant other. 

Not that you should discount your lover's happiness, and try to make them happy. As long as you're happy doing it. You can't make them happy if you're not happy. If you're not happy being with them, then you need to let that person go, because it's only fair to yourself and to that person. It may break the other's heart, but you can't do it to them. Hopefully they'll find happiness with someone who is in love with them back. I am speaking partially on personal experience. But those men were not good to me, and I knew I couldn't live that way for the rest of my life. Or theirs, whichever came first. I wasted too much time on each of them. We only get one life, as far as I know, and not long at that. Life is too short to spend years in a loveless relationship, whether on one side or both. I rarely got to do anything I wanted, too busy doing what they wanted. So off with them. I enjoy being single. No one making any demands on my time, dragging me to things I don't want to do, but I try to make them happy. And spend so much time trying to make them happy even if it made me unhappy, and then resenting them for it. I really didn't mean to go off on this tangent. 

What I wanted to talk about was society, and its pressure, and the pressure we put on ourselves. Whether personal, or because it's expected. Are our wants truly our wants, or because it's been ingrained into us, and because it's what we've seen since the day we were born. We're supposed to go to college, find a lucrative job in the field you studied for, get a nice car, get married (preferably to someone from college - your college sweetheart), get a nice house, have children, and it's better if you're a good Christian. Each is an accomplishment of attaining adulthood. If you don't accomplish these things, then it's like you're not quite an adult. I had a lot of these things at one time in my life. A  good job, a nice car, a nice house, some money put away. A couple of fiancés. But then the recession happened and I lost it all. It was also the job I was in. That was after the fiancés. Here no there, I often wonder how much society motivates our goals. Do we purely want them without motivation from outside sources, or because it's, well, like what we're supposed to do? Nature vs. nurture. The everlasting question. This is what I think I no. 

Qué sera, sera

Again, it's been too long since I last wrote. I actually wrote a few drafts, but never finished them so I deleted them. I'm listening to the rain pour outside my window. I can't sleep, thinking about the essays I need to finish, other things I need to take care of. I think of friends, and friends that don't seem so much like friends anymore, or friends I used to have. What constitutes a friend? Someone you can rely on? I don't have very many of those. Someone you feel that you can call and talk to when you feel down, or up? I probably have even fewer of those. Someone to call spontaneously to go out for a drink? No. Everyone has their own thing going on, whatever that thing is. Usually a spouse and/or kids. Or they're not interested. Listen to me. What a mope! I daydream of when I will build my house. What the foyer will look like. The living room. The media room. The kitchen. The gym with mirrors on opposite walls to check my form while doing yoga or dancing. My master bedroom with a walk-in closet and 5 piece bathroom. My tranquility room that overlooks a garden and floor-to-ceiling windows. A library filled with my books and my Gramma's books. Some people have a detached garage. I want a detached bar so the smoke doesn't permeate the rest of the house. I think of having Sarah, and Steven, Fransheila, and Frances with me. What their rooms would look like. What our lives would be like living together, me raising them. Getting Sarah into the very best schools. Going to Steven's soccer practices. Taking care of the babies. Cooking them healthy, wholesome meals everyday, instead of the crap they live on now. Teaching them all things they won't learn in school, like how to balance a checkbook. Although that is kind of becoming passe. How to pay bills online. Sarah and I doing yoga together. Steven and I throwing a football to each other. Or vice versa. I'll have special areas for my cats; inside and out. Maybe have two or three, or four dogs. Gardens. Maybe even an alpaca or two and make yarn from their wool, and blankets and scarves and sweaters and socks from the yarn. Just sittin' in my rocking chair on the front porch knittin' me some socks. Turn into a country granny by the time I'm 40. And then there's my practice. Despite my dreams of living in the country (but not too far in the country), I still want to be an abortion psychologist. Even though I'm far from starting a practice, it gives me a sense of...peace...to help people, or to think of helping people in the future. To help women who really need it. Then, of course, I want to become more involved in abortion rights. I want to work with politicians to secure rights for all women in the country. Make it a damn amendment. I've thought of becoming a politician myself, but I want to be a psychologist more, and I don't know if I have the fortitude to be a politician. I hope to god the political environment is better ten years from now than it is today. What nut jobs. And pansies. It's a house (and senate) full of nut jobs and pansies. I think it's worse now than the fifties. I know how I want my future to turn out, but will it be anything like that? I guess it's up to me.

Where is the love?

I just started to bitch to my friend about the stupidity of people, but instead I decided to save her from that and rant and rave on my blog. People have the right to their own opinions and beliefs. However, those opinions can be so ignorant, short-sighted, and narrow-minded. I recently signed a FB petition to designate the Arctic Refuge as a national monument. Being a lover of nature, I think it is highly important to save as much of it as possible before it's all mowed down by big stinky machines to make way for more box houses and strip malls. My cousin ridiculed me for it because he thinks it would be a waste of resources and jobs. Is he really that selfish? Oh god, what would we do without granite countertops? I don't even know if there's granite there; I'm assuming there is, but I think you get the point. Even if we tapped into that, the tap will run dry someday - whether it's oil, or stone to make counters and floors for the rich, or timber. There's not an unlimited supply of that. Haven't people learned yet? Climate change? Oh wait, that's a scam, a bogus theory, a lie. What about the oil spill, huh? What about the 11 human lives that were lost, the countless human lives that were affected, the loss of sea life and nature? What we do to nature we also do to ourselves. Don't forget that the Louisiana wetlands lose about the area of a football field a day because of human interference. I see humans in general as disgusting, despicable creatures. There are some beautiful humans I know; beautiful physically, intelligently, and/or spiritually. Unfortunately, they don't make up for the rest of the damage humans caused. I told my cousin that every animal has as much right to be on this earth than any human. He'll probably read that and think, "Tree-huggin' hippy." That is fine by me. I'd rather be that than a short-sighted, selfish destructor of life that only sees what nature has to offer for my benefit. I don't understand how people do not care. It's that lack of caring that got us here.

Rainbows

It's been nearly three weeks since my last entry; an unprecedented length of time. A lot has been going on, and nothing has been going on. Just busy with the usual humdrum life. I also haven't felt much like writing. My blog turned into more of a diary than my original intention, not that it matters much. I think there are only two people who read this.

I thought of different topics, or theses, for an English paper on Mrs. Dalloway. I didn't realize the intricate detail that Woolf wove into this novel, which makes it not just a good read, but a work of genius. A book I want to read again, when I have the time. She involves many different kinds of relationships between a husband and wife, and a couple about to get married. I'm not sure if any of it reflects her own marriage, but it's a distinct possibility. One of her characters commits suicide because of PTSD from the war, which his wife had difficulty dealing with, and she commits suicide 16 years after the book is published because of mental problems and she didn't want to be a burden on her husband. We always think we know what's best.

I am happy to say that this is my first entry on my new computer. I decided to splurge and buy a macbook. So far I love it, but I've had it for less than a week. It was worth it.

I still haven't spoken to my friend. Another friend suggested that I ask her out to coffee so we can talk, but I honestly don't know what to say to her. She's waiting for me to "heal," which will take a long time to happen, if it does, but I don't want to lose her friendship. When I don't hear from or lose so many friends, I wonder if it has something to do with me. One relationship obviously had to do with me. The others....I think people get busy, but if they really care, can't they afford a 5 min. call, or send a quick email? But then we get so caught up in our daily lives that we forget or think we'll do it later. I was going to see my gramma and call my aunt today, but I failed to do both of those. I was working on homework. It's not as important as them though. But it won't affect my grade if I don't see or talk to them. There's tomorrow, right?

The other day on my walk I saw a beautiful rainbow. I kept it in sight as long as possible. The end didn't look too far from my house, and I was tempted to see find it, but knew I wouldn't. It was probably 3 miles away anyway. When there's a rainbow reaching across the sky, or a beautiful sunrise or sunset, I don't understand how people don't just stop and stare - why there aren't more wrecks because people are gazing at something pure and beautiful and not paying attention to what they're doing. I didn't stop because I didn't want to be seen as weird or creepy, just standing there looking at a sunrise or the rainbow. It's one of those things that make me feel present in life. Not just my life, but life in general. I feel the here and now. How often do we get to do that?

"Watch the sun as we go by, throwin' colors off the water sky, thinkin' about the rainbows in my baby's eyes." Country Joe and The Fish