The older I get the more I feel like I've found my niche in the world, and that I am a legitimate personality not because of what I do, wear, say, or even how people react to me. I simply am. It blows me away how much time even I have spent thinking about how others perceive me and attempting to be commendable in their eyes. Leaving high school is like emerging from the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland and realizing that nothing in life is how you thought it was. It's funny because in high school you really begin to notice things, especially other people and their feelings and motives. You observe them in interesting ways that are often superficial and skewed until you've had enough time with your new observatory skills to really get an idea of something more akin to the reality of things. I swear until I was in my teens I saw my life almost like a script. That isn't to say I was weak-willed; I was counted among my closest acquaintances as stubborn and "hard-headed." But because my parents were so willing to help me become involved in whatever I seemed most interested in, the suggestions from them were often taken. This habit of just following whatever suggestion I didn't have any strong objection to became an interesting one as I got older and increasingly came into contact with more friends, parents, and other people. It's still only recently that I've begun to have stronger preferences about things. It's funny to be confident enough to express opinions without worrying about who will judge me because of it. It's interesting to find that these strong feelings about things are what set leaders apart from followers, what help you to relate and make friends, what help you to date. It seems paradoxical because you would think that a person who remains neutral and doesn't insult any one group would be the most likely to get along in groups, but actually humans as a general seem to prefer a straightforward if highly opinionated person. As I've grown older (An absurdity for me to be saying at a mere twenty years of age) I feel comfortable being myself. I can give a recommendation on movies, books, life choices, humans, cars, and countless other living or inanimate items without disparaging my own suggestion for the sake of the group. I feel a sense of freedom in this, oddly. I don't feel bad to tell people I like the Breakfast Club, Dirty Dancing, Grease, Hot Rod, Stuck in Love, Wayne's World, or tons of other cheesy movies. I think Logan Lerman is cute, I think Nicholas Sparks and Stephen King are talented authors, I think dogs are cooler than cats, salty is better than sweet. I think once you start admitting to the world who you are then everything becomes easier.
In other news, as of noon today it began dumping snow outside. SNOW. I am elated beyond the level of where I should be committed to an insane asylum. I cannot wait to get my feet strapped down to a board and start on my first great falls this year. Also I took a group ice skating lesson and learned that I am not nearly the klutz that I have always believed myself to be. I'm learning to skate backwards!! (Believe me, the muscles you work when doing that are muscles you weren't even aware existed before...). Snow sports, yeah. Maybe once I've appeased my family by getting enough use from my boarding equipment to justify the room they take up I'll collect some skiing things as well. Skiing equipment is common here. You can pick it up pretty cheaply from any thrift store. I'm not sure if that's common or it's just Alaska, because the people here are quite the outdoor fanatics. It isn't uncommon to find snowmobiles, four wheelers, skiing, snowboarding, ice skating, or just about any other fun outdoor thing you can think of using posted to the online yard sale sites. We'll just see how much I can get away with before my landlords put their feet down. ;)
I also rediscovered NaNoWriMo this week. For those of you without the writing event know-how that's an abbreviation for National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo started out as a challenge to all writers of words regardless of age to write an entire novel in one month. In the adult league that means it has to be 50,000 words and must be submitted by 11:59 PM on the final day of the month. Originally NaNoWriMo was held once a year in November, but after the contestants began to develop into a firm community they developed a forum and began issuing monthly writing challenges of differing rules, and multiples "wrimos" per year. That's why for the month of February I am thinking of challenging myself to write a 50,000 word novel. BAM. I, too, like to live dangerously, sir. Just to emphasize my utter lack of sanity or maybe my insane command of awesomeness I have chosen to participate for my first time on the shortest month of the year... Possibly. I think I'll take the rest of the month to ponder this idea. To be, or not to be.
It sort of annoys me when I see something that has so much potential to be a deep, somewhat obscure yet no less brilliant reference only to realize that the person who used it didn't mean it the way I thought at all and were not quite the geniuses I assumed. When driving down the road today I noticed the truck in front of us had a license plate reading "Brutus". "Wow," I remarked. I wondered what that meant. Was he referring to himself as a traitor? Was he calling us a traitor? Or was he simply trying to reference one of the greatest figures and lines associated with classic literature and betrayal. Out loud I said, "Look, his license plate says Brutus." expecting everyone else in the car to reach the same conclusions as I had regarding "Brutus" being a reference to Julius Caesar and his magnificently conflicted best friend. But the response I got was a bit more simple than that: "Maybe that's his name." His NAME??? And waste such an amazing opportunity to speak such volumes about human nature, classic literature, friendship, love, wisdom, and betrayal in one single word?! What a complete waste! The idea that "Brutus" would be on a license plate had honestly never occurred to me, but when I saw it and then imagined it not being used the way I would have hoped it would be... I was surprisingly annoyed by it. Maybe I'm an old man at heart, like Nick from the New Girl. ;)
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