Where Decades Collide

Dear Siddhartha Gautama,

Suffering is not universal.

Thanks,

Maryssa

Slight disclaimer: the syntax and word choice in this particular post may not be as strong as is generally may or may not be. Sorry. I’m just kind of in a spewing mood right now.

Forever, I’m convinced, does not exist. Forever is the mere idea that something can have no end, obviously. But, honestly, what doesn’t end? There are very few, if any, things, ideas, whatever, that can truly last forever. I will die. You will die. I mean, c’mon people, we’re all gonna die. The world’s gonna ‘splode. My brain might ‘splode if I see some strobe lights. And does forever, or more basically, does time exist if there is nobody around to count it? I mean, how does one measure forever if there is no time? Is there some abstract unit of foreverness? I sit. And I wonder. And I contemplate life. Time itself is an extraordinarily abstract concept that humans have become completely and utterly attached to in a way that is almost sickening. What is time? A series of units based on the Earth’s rotation on its axis. 1 day is split into 24 hours. But, (get ready for the brain ‘splodin) what is an hour? Please don’t say 60 minutes because a minute is, by definition, 1/60 of an hour…so that’s a circular theory. So if I go to Mars, where obviously a day is longer than 24 hours, do I still split said day into 24 hours? Or do I use Earth time? Yeah, yeah, I use Earth time. But why? Eh, I donno, the whole concept is completely ridiculous to me…it goes along with my ‘who died and made humans king? rant.’ If you get religious right now…I will jump through your monitor and SMH. Yeah, I said it smh. smh. smh. Anyway, now I’m just ranting. But humans have a giant, maybe not entirely deserved, superiority complex. But ah, another discussion, another post. And as always, feel free to disagree. Just be sure you can also agree to disagree.

Yeah, I know, shame on me. I haven’t written you all in quite some time. My bad, my bad. I’ll work on it. I promise. So anyway, on to bad days…have you ever noticed how the worst bad days are the ones that start out wonderfully and just end up in a giant crumble like the last chips at the bottom of the bag? It’s almost as though your day were the bag of chips…it’s all good, all the chips are whole and tasty. Then, as you get towards the bottom of the bag, the chips look broken-er and broken-er with the last tiny morsels being as small as the salt crystals that coat those almost-gone flakes of potatoey goodness. And maybe you kinda just sit there and stare, sad-faced at the broken remains of your metaphorical day, or maybe you coat the tip of your index finger in saliva and wipe up whats left of the salty, crunchy snack, leaving the bag clean and empty, not good, but also not particularly bad. Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to be a finger-licker. I’d like to be okay with just being okay for awhile. I mean, I’d really rather not be the type to stare in awe and self-pity at the shards of my day lying broken and useless at the bottom of some chip bag. Would you? Who knew a chip bag was so deep? Good luck not thinking of this the next time you chow down on some chips. Because days are like potato chips; I sincerely hope you can’t have just one.

I noticed today how much I and many of the people around me look at things from a distinctly negative perspective, it’s actually a little upsetting. There’s enough negativity in the world without everyone spewing it. So, here’s a list of everything I love. In no particular order and including no people unless they are listed as a group or are celebrities. ♥ Family Friends Channing Tatum Dogs Carving pumpkins Cats Blue eyes Black & white photographs Horses All other animals Pony rides The umbrellas in drinks Summer Hay rides Fall Midnight Cliche love stories Hugs Anything furry Makeup Lollipops Dark brown eyes Guitars Comedians Music Cupcakes Sweatshirts Knock-knock jokes Really awkward teachers Jeans Mexico Knee socks Michael Cera Short hair Beaches Ryan Gossling Freckles Photography Football games Pie iPods Ryan Reynolds Mashed potatoes Nicholas Sparks Fridays Bananas Books Pasta Pick-up trucks

Have you ever just had this overwhelming feeling that you’re doing something wrong? Like your life is not the way it’s supposed to be? I’m totally having that moment right now. I don’t know what’s wrong, I don’t know how to fix it…I just know that something, somewhere is very wrong. It’s that sort of impending doom feeling. I hate it. I just want it to go away. I don’t want to live my life conscious of this certain malformation, this tumor on the metaphorical face of my life. Can somebody just make it stop, please?

Confession number one? I have absolutely no excuse for not posting for…what, a week? More? Well, clearly I have an excuse…but is it legitimate? Nopers. My illegitimate excuse: I’ve been totally uninspired. I would log into my account and just sort of stare blankly at the white expanse that I was supposed to fill with my brilliantly clever revelations. And I needed to top that post about perfection…Yeah, that’s hard to do. I’m not even sure where that deep, insightful, and slightly inspirational passage came from. My mind just spews these things. Trust me, I’m just as bewildered as you are. Confession number two? I hate math. Some of you probably already knew that, but I’ll tell you again: I hate math. Flat-out, passionate, unadulturated H-A-T-E. But there’s a reason for this, I don’t just hate blindly. Math teachers 99.99999% of the time fail to connect their subject to the most useful and my personal favorite subject. What subject is that, you ask? Life. And that, my friends, is why I cannot, for the life of me, understand math. It’s a random series of numbers and symbols which, when solved, equal more simplified numbers and symbols that mean a grand total of…wait for it…nothing. And you want me to retain this because…? Confession number three? I’m always stressed. This is probably the biggest shocker for those of you who actually know me. So I guess here comes confession number four: I’m really good at pretending. Not just about being stressed, but about all other emotions. Why? I hate emotion. It’s irrational, confusing, and extremely hard to deal with. So there you go, kids. More posts soon, I promise! Feel free to feed me inspiration. Tell me your topics. I would really appreciate it.

     I find the fact that after tomorrow I will have had twelve first days of school a little bit ironic. But apparently, one first day of school just isn’t enough. We need to have thirteen before we can even decide if we would like to continue having first days of school. I’m personally a little bit excited for school. I know it’s sick and I should not be excited, at all, but there are those couple people that I haven’t seen all summer and who I’m really excited about seeing!  Still, I also find myself just the tiniest bit enthused about all the new classes and fresh starts. Maybe I’m imagining things, but I can’t help thinking that this year is finally gonna be good.

     So since my last post was so un-Maryssa-ly shallow, I figured you could use your daily dose of heavy today.  And perfection seems like a good topic to accomplish that with. Let’s start by defining perfection…since it has many meanings to many different people.  Is perfection the absolute lack of flaws? Or is perfection the cumulative beauty that comes from having flaws? Since I’m obviously not the all-knowing being that dictates the answers to these questions (though, I would love to be—and often pretend I am—), I really couldn’t tell you.  But, as usual, I’ll give my opinion. Since my two cents are worth a dollar of everyone else’s thoughts. Ha, you know that was clever. Go on, just admit it. You wish you came up with that. I personally see absolute perfection as the boring, non-existent, flawless perfection. However, since this form of perfection doesn’t exist (Okay, stop pointing to whatever you’re eating) in human form (see, you need to be patient and wait for the entire sentence), I choose to place the term “perfection” on those humans whose flaws are well placed and create an interesting spectrum of personality. Take for example…myself. Since I know her best and can analyze her flaws clearly.  Little Myself is often loud, obnoxious, opinionated, and stubborn.  Imperfect.  You didn’t expect that, did you? So I guess Myself also comes across as a little self-righteous (I’d like to say “I’ll work on that,” but knowing myself as I do, I really won’t. I’m stubborn and, honestly, am completely in love with myself. —not self-centered, just self-confident, there’s a difference—). She’s not perfect, not to herself, not to plenty of the people who know her.  But as with everyone on this planet, Myself has those few select people who do think she’s perfect. Just those one or two people are good enough because perfection isn’t about being perfect to everyone, it’s about being perfect to someone.

     Recently, while driving across Pea Island, North Carolina, a friend pointed out to me the shiny navy blue Honda Odyssey passing us going 120mph (okay, so maybe it wasn’t going 120…but at least 70). She said “It’s always the minivans!” So now, I feel like every time I get cut off or almost hit or passed at ridiculous times, IT’S A FREAKING MINIVAN.  Take Tuesday, for example, I was minding my own, driving to Bridges (to housing stability) to volunteer  and this minivan with one of those used-and-abused sticker-families in its rear windshield cuts me off. I slam on my brakes and just laugh. Stupid minivans.  But my favorite are the ones with the “baby on board” doodad. You know what, Ms.Soccer Mom? You’re the only driver your baby needs to look out for.

     Do you know HTML? No? Ha, well, I do. It’s a pretty basic knowledge and it probably won’t earn me any money or any recognition in the world of web design, but you know what? It will earn me an ever-changing tumblr look…well, my freedom to edit the lovely codes others have already written for us tumblr junkies (I’m way too lazy at this point to completely hand-write codes from scratch). Sweet, right? Thank God because my wasp-like attention span was already starting to lose inspiration. And inspiration is exactly what you need to write things like this…unsolicited, unprompted spews which infect the world. Gotta love it. I fully intend to have this new look up and running by the time you see this post (it’s actually 11:57 pm right now, but you won’t see this until 10am-12pm tomorrow). So much for the fancy queue tool not making me look like an over-zealous noob. Well, anywho, I’m off to make mah tumblr pretty. Ta ta for now, kids. I’ll be sure you write y’all with something slightly more deep and cliche-ly me tomorrow.