Thinking out loud

I used to be that friend that everybody went to with their problems. That's how I used to make friends, I would seek out the broken souls (at least the female broken souls) and then get them to tell me their life stories. Then I would try to fix everything for them. One of my close friends growing up actually called me her "mentor" I was a 14-year-old with the mind of a wise old man.

I don't do that very much anymore. I haven't for a long time. It wasn't that I didn't like it. I loved it, I loved making people happy and making them feel better about themselves. I'm not completely sure why I gave it up, probably because it was just too damned exhausting. In a few frustrating situations I found out that sometimes people don't want to be happy, they like being miserable, and you can't fix somebody that doesn't want to be fixed.

I also learned that when it comes to advice most people don't want it. 99% of the time when people ask for advice they're asking for you to tell them what they want to hear. They've made up their minds, now they just want somebody else to say what they're thinking so that they will be more confident with the decision they're already decided upon. It's not exactly an optimistic way to look at it, but we all do it.

I've never been very good at telling people what they want to hear, that drove some people away, and I also gave up on fixing people. I can't fix anybody, even if they want me to. When I gave up trying to be the "caretaker to the world" (as my school counselor would call it) my mental health improved dramatically. I started taking care of (and looking out for) myself. To this day that's something that sounds selfish for me to do, but I understand that it has a lot to do with why I'm as resilient a person as I am.

I also stopped giving out so much advice. My close friends all know (or at least they should know) that I would do anything for them, but a lot of times advice isn't what they want or need, which is something I didn't know why I was younger (and sometimes I forget, ask around, I tend to give out my fair share of unsolicited advice, my bad). Sometimes somebody just wants to talk about what's bugging them, to think out loud. Sometimes they just want a hug, and sometimes they don't want to talk about their problems at all, sometimes they need to get their mind off of their problems, if even just for an hour or two.

That said, sometimes I find myself falling into bad habits. I'll see a friend heading down a path that everybody around them knows isn't good for them, and I'll pull my hair out wanting to get them to change their minds. Sometimes I just want to shake them senseless, or at least until they can realize how stupid they're acting. It drives me nuts when I see somebody I care about ignore the great opportunities they have in front of them in favor of some misguided pipe dream that is only going to lead to them getting hurt.

But now, unlike before, I know that I need to stop myself. I don't know as much as I think I do sometimes, and besides, it's not my place to tell them what they should and shouldn't do. In the end the best thing is to let them go off and learn the lesson for themselves, and sometimes people need to chase their pipe dreams.

So instead of rushing in and trying to rectify the situation I'll keep my mouth shut. That's what a good friend does. I think.

Revival

I wont go so far to say I've been bad at updating my blog, because to be honest I haven't done a damn thing with it. This is mostly due to my reluctance to write something just for the sake of writing. If I put something up here I want it to be worth reading, and it takes a lot of effort for me to come up with decent content, so I just put it all aside and focused on my schoolings.

Anyway, a blogging revival has been on my mind the last few weeks. Recently I put up a new blogger site featuring my second-grade-quality artwork so I could have an excuse to play around with my scanner, but that got old after a while. I'd really like to get my own URL (a la Mike Helms and his excellent absent.canadian blog), but I'm thinking this attitude toward blogging is like buying a gym membership with the idea that because you're shelling out your hard-earned cash you're more likely to guilt-trip yourself into working out more often, so until I can learn more about web hosting and how to tailor a site to my liking I'll be sticking around here for the time being. I have a few ideas about content, one of which I'm going to post today, and we'll see where that takes us.

On kittens

So I got a temporary job working at my pop's company while they're doing end-of-year inventory. It's mindless work when it's actual work. I usually stand around and wait for somebody to give me something to do, and when I'm working it usually involves moving dusty bins of obsolete parts that nobody knows the purpose of from one palate to another.

Apparently the parts are from a company they bought out three or four years back. And they can't just throw the parts away because they have to uphold the warranties that the former company put on their products for another seven years. Never mind the fact that nobody around here has any idea whatsoever how these parts are supposed to even work. So they move them from one corner to another where they can take up space and continue to be ignored.

Normally I would point and laugh at this system of mass inefficiency that is a microcosm of the current state of Corporate America as a whole, but in this case it I personally benefit to the tune of $10 an hour to move boxes around in this ridiculously huge shop (like a million square feet or something) where there are so many people that as long as I'm moving a box or throwing something away people will think I'm doing something productive and will mostly leave me alone. Plus I still get to openly mock the system. It's a win-win.

So anyway, on Friday I was hard at work moving around bins and boxes when I heard something rustling around in some boxes in front of me. I moved some stuff out of the way and found myself a kitten. It is a cute little thing with brown fur and black stripes. It couldn't be more than six months old at the most. Anyway, I tried to get it to come closer to me so I could pet it, but it avoided me like the plague. It wandered off somewhere and I didn't see it again for the rest of the day. It was pretty much the most exciting part of my day.

Anyhow, hopefully it'll turn up again sometime soon. Maybe I'll try and chum it over by me with food or something, that'd be fun.

Tomacco! And other observations.

So I've been out here for about a month, and there are a lot of things that are different. Mostly small things, most of them I like and none of them are necessarily bad, but still they are not what I'm used to and requre a little bit of adjustment.

For one, EVERYBODY FREAKIN' SMOKES! I'm not any stranger to being around smokers, and for the most part it doesn't bother me, I used to suck on the cancer sticks a little bit back in my rebellious teenage years, but the residents of North Carolina have taken it to a new level. Maybe it has something to do with tobacco being a major crop out here. I'm all for supporting our local farmers, but I'd rather buy a US Cotton shirt or drink soy milk or eat lots of sunflower seeds or not shop at Wal Mart, but I'm not exactly willing to sacrifice a few dozen years from my life and place a severe burden on the healthcare system for local pride. Call me an ass, but I wont do it.

I'm not against smokers, it's your body, do whatever you want to it. I have friends that smoke, it wont make me like you any less, but if you're a girl don't ask me to kiss you (another lesson from the rebellious teenage years) because I'm not too attracted to smelly-haired chicks that taste like ash trays. Sorry.

That said, there are a lot of little things out here that I really like, they include, but are not limited to: sweet tea, humidity, hush puppies, fried food, rain, decent weather, trees, liberal politics (compared to Utah), nice people, and southern accents.

On that note, it's 6 PM and I need to get ready for the day.