But I'm not the same as before

I write this to you in my final few hours before I turn 21. To most this is a huge coming of age thing. To me its not nearly as much of a big deal. I don't drink all that much, I really have no desire to, so turning 21 just means that I'm getting older. I'm not going to do anything much, maybe go get dinner with a few friends and go hang out at the bar for a few hours. nothing major. However I have noticed that My life is changing, fast.

When this semester started, I thought it would be really awkward because of everything that had happened and changed over the summer, and it was. The first few weeks and even months were just weird, I avoided most of it by staying in my room and just not really dealing with any of the underlying problems. Then we went to the NWA Conference in Birmingham a few weeks ago and everything changed again.

I rekindled my friendship with one friend and made a few new ones. I also managed to strengthen a grow a couple, but I also lost a friend. I did some stupid things one night that ended in a text to my ex (who was still friends with me). The next morning she texted me and we got into somewhat of an argument (or as much of an argument as you can while texting during a weather conference). It ended with her telling me to "F*** off" and not to talk to her anymore. I was really upset. I tried to apologize and she would just not answer the phone or anything. It made life horrible.

The next few weeks Id try calling her each Sunday or Saturday and it would usually ring until I got her voicemail and Id leave a message. Last weekend it only rang twice and then went to voicemail, she had deliberately ignored me, I was crushed. I couldn't, and still don't, understand why she was so upset at me, I mean yeah, I screwed up, but I was trying to apologize and make things right. She didn't want any of it.

Last night, about 1am, my phone started ringing, I was a little surprised to see it was her. I answered and she went on and on about how she was sorry for ignoring me and tried to explain why she was mad and yada yada, I wasn't really listening to be honest, I was still surprised she had called, perhaps this meant a second chance? When she finished I took the time to say what I had been wanting to say for weeks and then it got awkward, it was just quiet, neither of us talking, then she broke the silence "I'm dating a guy" she said. I told her good for you. I didn't mean it in a mean way, and I honestly am glad for her that she found someone, but I was understandable bitter at the same time.

I had finally gotten over this girl. I had been with her for over two years, and until the last few months everything had been great. I had imagined that I would eventually spend my whole life with her. Then we just grew apart I guess, things got strained until a few stupid decisions of mine later I was single again. I had tried to date a couple people, none of those worked out so well for me (though thankfully none have blown up in my face quite as bad as this one did). However I was upset though, and justifiably so if you ask me, that she just came out and was rubbing this in my face, it still bothers me to some degree.

So we hang up after that, her mad at me and I mad at her, and I did what I do when I need to get away, I walked. I waled down to this new place I was shown by the river and train tracks. Its just calm and peaceful down there, so close to school and town and campus yet hidden enough that you feel like no one will ever find you. I leave my thoughts there to float away on the river, hoping maybe things will make more sense. Its even better when its really foggy. I sat there in the freezing cold, watching the couple of snow flakes float by (there were only 10 or 15 that I could see so it wasn't really snowing per se) until things started to make sense. I had to be the bigger person, I always have had to be. I called her back, apologized and asked her if we could just be friends, literally just friends, she said sure then made up some excuse to get off the phone. I thought things were okay but this morning I was still bitter.

Maybe its because she found someone before me, maybe its because she found someone at all. Its not easy see someone replace you in someone else's life. But I think that its more because things have changed. Not just for me but for her as well, for my new friends and my old friends and even my better friends, things are not what they used to be. Life has not gotten easier or harder, better or worse, its just different now. I'm not sure how I like it, though I suppose I don't really have a choice in the matter. I think the reason this is so hard for me though is because things have not changed for me in years, and while I know that there is so much more ahead, I can barely believe that I'm here. I know that I can do this, I have a great education and great connections in my field, terrific

Accomplished

So I have spent the past week worrying about a paper I am writing for my Applied Climatology class here at school. Im looking at spatial continuity problems associated with pittsburgh coop site. To most this would sound boring but I find it intensely interesting. The first draft of my Literature Review was due today however, and I have been stressed to no end about it. I spent hours reading articles and writing and then rewriting paragraphs, moving things around and then reading more constantly worrying that it wouldn't be good enough. I finished it tonight.

I feel so accomplished that I was able to finish it, I know that it will come back covered in red ink (figuratively of course as everything was done digitally, even the submission) but I am excited to get it back and make it better. however more than that I am excited to start working with my data. This is the first project I've done with actual data, doing actual work that I can find no evidence of someone doing before. Though it's a small project, it really doesn't effect much in the grand scheme of things it sets me up to continue research in Seminar and further afterwards. In addition to this I would love to present this as a poster at AMS or even NWA.

I dont think I have ever been this excited about a 30 page paper, back in high school five pages seemed impossible, but now i can do five pages in just an hour or two. I enjoy writing, I like the challenge of putting thoughts down in a way that everyone can understand, the process of simplifying complex thoughts and processes into a way that someone with basic understanding can work with. I cant wait to dig into my data and start looking to see if my hypothesis is valid, or if i need to re work it into something else.

Ive finally found my niche in meteorology, I can work with engineering, weather and computers all at the same time. Im excited again about school, I can finish this semester and I can enjoy some of it. Life may have handed my lemons this past summer and fall but I have found out how to turn it into lemonade.

Favorite Sayings

So while I was growing up, my parents, like most, had a plethora of sayings to get me to be a good child, only two really ever stuck with me: Piss Poor Planning Promotes Piss Poor Performance, and my mom's favorite: Your lack of Planning does not my emergency make. Out of this I have come to be pretty self relient. If there is a big project I know I will need help with I tend to plan ahead of time to get that help. I leave time for things to go wrong and never ever let myself believe that my project is the most important thing in another persons life.

Unfortunately this does not hold true for everyone. Some people still think that I should drop whatever I am doing and focus on their problems. While I know this will continue to happen for the rest of my life, it is very frustrating. I was under the impression that we were in college here, and that perhaps you knew that presenting something of this magnitude in front of possible future employers was a very big deal. Waiting until the day before you leave to finish it is not a great idea, waiting until the afternoon before you leave to get it finalized is an even worse idea, expecting someone else to finalize it for you the afternoon before you leave is possibly the worst idea I have heard in a long time. So when I give you attitude about doing your stuff for you last minute, you have no room whatsoever to give me any attitude back, ever, because looking back I should have said no.

Sigh of Relief

So it's been a while since I have written a post, I've been a tad bit busy. between school work that is starting to pile up and activities with the club beginning to roll I have had time to gain many topics for a post but no time to write one. That said this is a sigh of relief for a while.

All of the crap that's been getting me down seems to have just melted away, I'm not sure what caused it to happen but I do know it happened sometime when I went home last. Perhaps it was because I was able to have a really great evening hanging out with Em, or maybe its because I made a friend in one of the freshmen. It could be all of the above, all I know is that I finally feel like I can stop worrying about all of that stuff from the summer and move on with life.

This relief comes as a doubled edged sword however, as now I realize how much work that I have ahead of me in just the next few weeks,  lit review for one class, a test next week in another, and two papers to write by the end of the month. Oh, and did I mention I will be leaving for a week in the middle of all this to attend a professional conference in Birmingham? This should be a fun month...

In all reality though its nothing I cannot do, I have had workloads like this in the past and come through them stronger than ever before. This is what college teaches us besides the actual facts, time management and stress management as well as giving us the knowledge that we can do things we think are impossible (such as doing a billion assignments in two weeks....)

On a closing note I have found two great new time wasters (no you know why my workload is so high for the next few weeks). the first is a game called Sugar, Sugar on addictinggames.com. the idea is you need to fill cups with 100 grains of sugar, sounds easy but it gets hard very fast. The second game is called Glitch. It is a MMO where you are a little person called a Glitch (or Glitchling or Glitchlet or whathaveyou). You learn skills and collect money and experience. you can mine rocks and turn them into other things. There is cooking and farming and exploring and its all very very easy to do. It is rather mindless and is a great way to unwind after one of "those" days. There is currently about a one week wait to get an invite after you've signed up, but I have 3 invitations to send to friends if any of you are interested.

Caring

So as it turns out, I dont care. Let me clarify that, its not that I dont care so much as nothing seems to matter to me anymore. Its not that im reckless, or that there aren't people and things that matter to me, I just have a very "ehh" outlook right now. I dont like it.

Perhaps it will help if I give some examples. I missed doing a lab the other day, I dont see it as a big deal. I missed doing an online assignment yesterday, oh well. I sit in my room and spend all my time online/watching TV because no one wants to hang out with me, I guess it sorta sucks.

See its not that Im reckless or dont care about stuff, its just that nothing seems to have meaning like it used to. Its a problem, I should be upset that I missed an assignment. It should bother me a lot that people dont say hi to me or dont want to do stuff. I should be pissed off when people are jerks to me. But Im not. I wish things were different, and I sure as hell wish I knew why I feel this way, however I dont see that happening anytime soon.

Though there is one person that I still very much care about, I try to call her sometimes and she doesn't pick up the phone, I text her and she wont text back. When we do talk I feel like everything truly will be okay and that all of this is for the best. However, once she hangs up I want to do nothing but cry out of hopelessness. It frustrates me but I deal with it because Im more concerned that she is happy than I am. That was the problem that got me into this mess I suppose, I finally couldn't keep it up and became selfish, too much too fast.

I realized when I went home a few weeks ago that it wasn't the same. I think thats when this all started, or at least when I started to notice it. I try to talk to people about it but I feel like the whole world is moving forward around me and I am destined to be stuck here in this same place for the rest of forever. I feel hopeless that things will work out and I dont want any of this to have changed. Everything was great the way it was before and I am pretty sure that its never going to be as great as it was.

It all goes back to the theme of my life the past few months, I am alone, and I am scared of being alone forever.

Science and Politics

This year I am taking a class called applied climatology. It is mainly about how we can use climatology in a practical manner. As such, we spend quite a bit of time talking about climate change, in fact all of our lectures are about Anthropogenic Global Warming or AGW. AGW is what we scientists call human induced climate change.

Now I have a fairly different opinion of climate change than most people. I am of the thought that we do indeed effect the climate, and it is for sure changing, however whether or not we need or even should change the way we act just to try and reverse climate change is a huge grey area in my mind. Most people in general have an opinion one way or another, I am of the school of thought that we still do not know enough to make a true decision.

This raises one of my favorite part of science, policy. As a scientist, I am required to find only the facts, it is not up to me to create policy, only to share the facts. It is up to us to leave policy and discussions up to the law makers. unfortunately politicians dont understand science too well and often take what we say out of context.

An example of that is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s reports. They are comprised of 100's of pages of very scientific writing that even the most dedicated of climatologists can find dry and boring. They however also contain a piece developed specifically for policy makers and the press. This piece is so important that it is gone over line by line and sometimes word by word to ensure that all of the parties involved agree with what it is saying. However, like any piece of writing, if one line is taken out of context it is very easy to make it sound like something is very different that it truly is. This is the part of climate change science that is my favorite.

Another argument against climate science is that if we cant predict the weather out to 5 days, how can we predict it out to 100 years. The problem with this view is that we dont use meteorological models to predict climate, we use their cousins, climate models, which are use much different inputs than our meteorological models. This is because they were created specifically to predict climate, and we believe that they do pretty okay (admittedly they have problems, we know that and are working to make them more accurate, it will take time and money to make it happen however).

Sifting through all of the bad science and trying to find the nuggets of truth hidden in there, listening to politicians make fools of themselves defending something that is physically impossible and can be proven as such. This is the part of climate that I can get into. 

On a related note, I am a (student) meteorologist, I predict weather. I am literally trying to tell you what will happen in the future. If you want to complain that I am not accurate enough or that I can not tell the weather a month out, I will just stop. You will be stuck not knowing what the hell will happen tomorrow and whether or not you need a jacket. So lay off the criticism and just be happy that we live in a society where you can be pretty sure of what the future holds for the next two or three days (at least as far as the weather goes).

Forgiveness

Tonight I am working at the desk for my dorm. It is a job that involves sitting in front of a tiny window from midnight until 8am. It sucks. However it does usually allow me the time to do homework.

I got to thinking tonight, before I got down here I talked to Em. That often gets me thinking. She told me I was being stupid writing off a friend as easily as I did. She made the point that perhaps she was just as confused about things as I was. I had considered that but was far too hurt to care about her. After a week though I can see everything much more clearly now.

She commented on something I posted on Facebook tonight, and then texted me a little later. Long story short we made up and things are fine. It got me thinking about the concept of forgiveness again.

Forgiveness is a topic that has been near to me for the past couple months. I firmly believe I understand what true remorse feels like, and what it is like to forgive someone fully. I dont know that I am there yet in this case but I can put everything behind me. Forgiveness though is much more than words.

Often I hear people say "I'm sorry" and then do everything over again. It really saddens me to see how easily society can apologize and not even think about what they did wrong. Sorry is so much more than just words however. To be truly sorry you need to show it. It is not easy to do. I have often insincerely said sorry, but until this summer I never knew what it was like to feel truly remorseful for something that I had done.

At the end of the day (or rather morning in this case) I am still stuck in the same situation. I am alone, I still doubt myself all the time, and I still dont trust hardly anyone. I am still a scientist at my core, and therefore I still overanalyze absolutely everything in my life (including all of this). I mean I do now see where everything went wrong and why I am where I am. I see why I am having such trouble letting go and moving on, but none of that helps. Knowing is only half the battle as it turns out and therefore I need to forgive. Until I can forgive her, and myself, I will not be able to move on.

In other news, the club is moving along just fine and classes are piling up. I have homework that needs done and no time to do it. We had our EAS picnic yesterday, and I got to see my mentor again which was great. I am happy here still, though its no easier than it was before. In fact, since everyone graduated it just seems plain boring here anymore.

Privacy

I was reading a post on Engadget yesterday about Iris scanners being developed for use in airports. I thought it sounded like a great idea. However I scrolled down to read the comments (which I usually do not do) and found that 9 out of 10 people were complaining about how it would be an invasion of their privacy. I found issue with this and it got me thinking.

Privacy is not guaranteed to us anywhere. Honestly I do not see why there is such a fear of someone knowing who we are. The problem I found with the posts though was more fundmental. They were complaining because the Government would know who we are. Now I was brought up in a house were we respected the government. I do not fear them and I do not think that they are out to screw me over.

So I posted on the comments about this, saying that I personally have nothing to hide from anyone, and I doubt that most people do. I live my life inside the law for the most part (okay, I do speed sometimes by a little, but so does everyone). The response I got was amazing.

Mostly there were a couple short responses that were funny talking about facebook and such, but there was one that attacked my comment. I felt he would make a worthy opponent so I did what I so enjoy doing and I answered his answer.

He pointed out that If I have nothing to hide that I should give him my account and routing numbers for my bank account, he would keep them safe, He told me that that government is not there to protect us but rather to stifle bad behavior, and that the TSA has a decidedly reactive mindset. I told me that he gives out nothing willingly and actively guards all of his information.

This doesn't seem to be a one off mindset in america. The scary part here is that there are fundmental flaws in this thinking. He told me that the government was not accountable for its own actions and that we were basically powerless against it. This mindset is what makes us powerless. Until we begin to hold the government accountable for its own actions, until we remember that we are the source of their power in the first place, we will continue to be at their whim.

The other part of his argument that really bothered me was when he said that the government does not protect us, they control us. He said that they are there to regulate behavior and provide a consequence for incorrect behavior. He then said that his greatest fear was that I vote.

Now correct me if I am wrong, but by providing consequences for incorrect actions and behaviors, you are protecting those with correct behaviors. By stopping the man from shooting someone you are protecting them. The government is there to provide order for society, part of providing that order is to protect them from each other.

I know this post is very different from my past griping about life and relationships, but this really bothered me. There are grown adults out there who truly think that the government is not accountable for its actions and that we should fear it. That is how America came into being in the first place, fear of an oppressive government. If it truly has become such a horrible system why do we not all rise up against it and start over?? Oh, because thats too much work right? Must not be that bad yet then.

Weekend from Hell

So this weekend was... interesting. I went home to find that I really dont like home as much as when Emily was there. I sat around and really didnt do much of anything. I had to come back up to school on Sunday though, because I needed to work the overnight. Thats about when life handed me my lemons.

I got back to campus and parked my minivan, took my bag upstairs and came back down to grab a box out of my van and who do I see walking down the hill, Yep, thats right. She was walking down with her new boyfriend. It was starting to rain now, and as I had been back for less than  minutes I was very much focused on getting things unpacked. She said hey and I sorta half waved and grunted in acknowledgment and went about what I was doing. It started raining more and I went for a walk around campus with a friend after that. Its a great way to relieve stress and just talk about whatever. So I got back to my room soaked at about 11. I showered and got stuff together to go downstairs to settle in for the long night ahead.

I got downstairs to start my oh so fun 8 hour shift. I did some work on my resume and talked to some friends online and only managed to pass 2 hours. Thats about when it all really went downhill. See she happens to work overnights in one of the other buildings, and I knew she wanted to talk to me. We started a chat on Skype about 230 (seems to be a theme that the crappy conversations happen around 2am for me).

She accused me of being hostile. Because I did not want to meet the guy that was able to be everything to her that I couldn't I am hostile. Every time I answered a question it was the wrong answer. It always came back to me being hostile. She informed me that our conversation was over and that she couldn't be friends with someone who is so disrespectful and hostile. I guess I was sorta relieved.

This whole thing has torn my life apart over the past year. She has been the root source of more problems than solutions. Many of them were not her fault at all, but she was the source. Now that this drama is over, I feel like I can finally move forward. But its awkward too. We have classes together, are both in the same club, and overall are required to spend time together throughout the week. It makes for a few awkward moments here and there, though overall no more than anyone else I suppose.

This whole experience has opened my eyes again to something that I have always felt, Friends are more valuable than anyone else in your entire life for the simple reason of they dont have to be there. Friends make a choice to spend time with you and listen to your problems. They generally like you for who you are (if they are real friends). But this has reminded me of two things, people change, and people are often not who you think they are. Both were true here.

She was never who I wanted her to be, thats not her fault. She has also changed a lot over the past year, again, not all her fault. But together the changes have been for the worse from my point of view. I have a newfound appreciation of my friends, I treat them well, and in return I ask for little, simply someone to spend time with a occasionally listen when I have questions or problems in my life. But when my friends can no longer do that, there is no reason to hang on to them, I wont push them away, but if they want to leave they are more than free to go.

I hold no malice towards her, I wish her the best of luck in her life from here on out. However I am no longer going to go out of my way to do anything for her. She is a big girl, perhaps even an adult, and she has friends that are not hostile to show her where the print lab is, or to tell her which computers work. I am moving on in my life, I am leaving all of this drama behind me. I finally feel free to have other friends, to find new best friends, and to work on possibly letting go of Em.

Realizations

Adding to my list of realizations I have had the past two weeks is another pretty big one. It no secret that I used to have a best friend, and that I liked her. It is also no secret that it would never have worked out.

I talked to her Ex (who also happens to be a friend of mine) the other night, and we got on the topic of her. We talked about how I now understand much better why they broke up and why there is much tension between them still. He broke her heart, and she hates him for it. I don’t think she will ever admit that fact to anyone, let alone herself, but it's true nonetheless. Now doing what I do best I applied this tid bit to my life and relationships with other people.

I hated her. Less than a week ago I wanted to never see her again. I thought she was selfish and a total bitch. I even told her that. I was mad at her and I had a long list of reasons why. But none of those reasons was a good one, at least not good enough to warrant the level of pissed I was. I was skipping over the two real reasons. The first of which I have already written a post on, I was mad at myself for being dumb. The second reason however is more complicated. I thought I knew who she was and I really liked her. Turns out that I liked who I thought she was, I wanted to be with the person I made her out to be, not who she really is. So once I saw the truth, who she really is, it broke my heart. I hated her for the same reason she still hates him, though it wasn’t her fault. 

The difference here is that I am able to admit my shortcomings and learn from them. I pride myself on the fact that sometimes I am not perfect and make mistakes, and I strive to become a better person because of that. I don’t want to be doomed to repeating the same mistakes over and over again, so I try to change enough as a person to not make those mistakes again. 

We are now friends, though not as close as we once were. This whole debacle is now very much behind us, with one exception, Ryan. I don’t want to meet him, she thinks I should. Meeting him will only cause me to a) regret my past, b) feel sorrow for the mistakes that pushed her to him, and c) be jealous enough of him to make more mistakes that I will regret. I wont put myself in the situation, so for now, and the foreseeable future, I will not meet Ryan, I refuse.

Best School Ever

I was sitting here reading my textbook for my Applied Climatology class tonight and was getting bored, so I decided to get on Facebook. I posted a very nerdy post about how I was wasting time and my mom started to comment on it. Next thing I knew my Physical Meteorology professor was in there giving me a hard time as well. I got all sorts of flak for not studying on the second day of school and how I could be doing much more productive things than facebooking.

This whole experience reminded me of why I chose Cal U in the first place. I truly have a family here. The Professors are all very close with their students and have not problem with giving us a hard time both in class and out of class. The friends that I have made here are some of the closest friends that I have ever had, and perhaps because of that I have higher expectations of them.

I still have some fundamental problems with many of my friends, my roommate from last year for example does not always live they way he preaches. My best friend and I are not nearly as close as we once were, perhaps for the best. I am an asshole to pretty much everyone at some point or another, and I miss many of the graduates of our program, even though I only knew some of them for a year. With that said we are all still great friends that have no problem putting aside our differences and helping each other out. That is what makes our program the best program not only in all of Cal U but in the whole country.

I have a family here, with parents, and brothers and sisters and the crazy uncles and cousins. I belong here at Cal right now, and I truly hope that there is never a day that I lose touch with anyone that I have met here.

First Days

Today was the first day of classes here at Cal U, and I happened to notice a few things. I never realized how easy it is to pick freshmen out of a crowd. They either look very lost or like super douchebags (more so than normal douche college kids). I hope I didnt fit into either of those categories, but I am pretty sure I still look lost most days.

I also noticed how even though everything has changed between people over summer, we are all so insecure that we tend to ignore all the problems and act like good friends. I try not to be fake, but sometimes its both easier and better for everyone of I pretend like we are still friends.

I also noticed that classes dont seem so hard or stressful yet. I have this feeling like I might be able to do all of this classwork and not even break a sweat. I know in reality however that I will very soon be one of the most stressed people in the world.

Lastly I was reminded of how impatient I am. I want everything now. Not to say I dont think about the future, I just dont apply details to the future. I seem to forget that today is only 24 hours of my life, tomorrow will come and things can happen then too. No need to live life all in one day.

The First Days of School

I'm back at school. There really are only freshmen here right now and it is pretty boring. I've basiclly ended up laying in bed just vegging the past day or so. Its given me plenty of time to think (and as we all know that never ends well for me).

Today, after cleaning up the weather lab I started pondering the idea of belonging. Where do I fit in? Right now I don't fit in Sterling, Em was my last real tie there other than my family and now not only is she no longer there, she is no longer a tie to anywhere for me. And I don't feel like I belong here at Cal right now, none of my friends are here, and in all reality I'm not sure I have friends here after the past summer. I have done a great job at inadvertently burning bridges in my social life. That leaves no where for me to belong.

I have thought quite a bit about relationships too, and not just boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. I have given a fair amount of thought to the word itself, what does it actually mean? A relationship is any mutual contact and interaction between two people. I have a relationship with my parents, my brother, and all my friends. However we as a society tend to give the word a differnt meaning. To most of us a relationship is the same as infatuation/love. But when does friendship turn into love? How do we know when its "safe" to take that leap of faith and put ourselves out there?

I don't take rejection well, not because I care what other think of me (I am who I am and no one will tell me otherwise), but because I have always been rejected by other people. I've never been the popular kid. I ate lunch alone in highschool, and ended up spending the majority of my evenings at home. I wasn't smart in highschool and really only have friends in my major here in college. Emily was all I ever had.

Everyone here at Cal told me at one point or another that we should break up. And now that its happened I feel very out of place here. I know that I should create more relationships, but I just don't know how. I generally don't like people and the ones I do like usually don't like me. I see people walking around with groups of friends laughing and talking and I look at myself, back to eating lunch alone.

Its All Been a Lie

As I lay here getting ready for bed I finally understand the whole summer, no the entire last 6 or so months. I understand now why I have done what I did and where everything went wrong. I make it a rule in my life not to lie to anyone, it always just makes things worse. Turns out I have been lying all along, to myself.

Long distence relationships are difficult under the best circumstances, and nearly impossible under the worst. Em and I made ours last almost two years, sort of. I guess you could say the last 6 to 9 months of it were rocky and we had very much fallen apart before that. Id like to say that we had the best circumstaces, but we didn't. There was a lot of doubt there on my part that I never saw until now.

The problems really started when I got to know Ericka better. She was exactly everything that I thought I wanted in someone,no more or less. That's not to say I didn't love Em, because Em was my whole world when I met Ericka. However I found myself attracted to Ericka nontheless. It made me constintly question my relationship with Em. And then Em felt it too, there was someting wrong, I don't know if she knew what but I think she had a pretty good guess.

At this point I was back at school, and Em started to grow apart from me, she questioned what we had, and even broke up with me for about a week. But we worked everything out and stuck it out. I knew that I could never be with Ericka, she had a boyfriend and I had Em. I still wanted to be with her though. I told myself she was just a friend, nothing more. Then her relationship crumbled.

This isn't the place to go into details, but I ended up spending a lot of time supporting her, and it pulled me further from Em, though I didn't see it. I started complaining about the little things more and I generally felt more distant. This is when it all changed.

I felt lonely. I had Em, sort of, and I had Ericka to a degree. But I didn't have either compleatly, and so I was in this awkward limbo of loneliness. Then I decided at some point to go for it, make the leap and choose just one. Em broke up with me a few days later.

I thought maybe things would work out with Ericka, they wouldn't. We have gone all summer awkwardly trying to decide what we are to eachother. In the end we always end up fighting over it, and now I see why.

I am lonely. I made a mistake and it has taken almost a year for me to realize it. I have been lonely ever since I first doubted my relationship with Em. I fight with Ericka because I know she is the only thing between me and complate loneliness. I am mad not at her, but at myself for breaking the only rule I have ever compleatly followed in my life, no lying, ever.

So it is as I lie here, alone in the dark, writing a post the no one will read that I have finally been able to admit that I was wrong. I am alone and I do not like it. I am alone and it is all my fault. I am alone and I am sorry to both of you for pulling you into all of this.

The Explosions of Life

No this post is not about life being created or destroyed; it is about moments of time. John Green said it best in his book Looking for Alaska, we do not recall our lives as hours or chapters, we recall it based upon the before and after's of important events. For me it happens to be arguments in the short term and relationships for the long term.

I am now living in the after of my last great relationship, it was a two year long moment of happiness. But all moments must come to and end, and I caused this one to blow up in my face. I made some decisions that came back and caused the greatest thing to ever happen to me to come crashing down around me. That was about three months ago. The dust, I believe, has finally settled from that. However it has caused much more turmoil in my short-term life than I could have imagined.

The past summer I have had some pretty intense disagreements with my Best friend, many of which turned out to be misunderstandings, but some, such as the one that has been occurring over the past week were sincere and pointed to a much deeper problem in our friendship. However, as with most things in life, I cannot simply go to my friend and tell them what is wrong, they haven’t given me that option. They have instead chosen to stop talking to me for now. So I will embrace that and instead focus on other aspects of my life until the dust from this explosion too settles, as I think it is beginning to do now.

I worked today, and as a lifeguard I get a lot of time to think and ponder. Today I was able to clear away much of the smoke and dust clouding my vision of our friendship. This morning I was ready to throw the whole thing out the window, say screw you and move on with life. However that would do nothing for either of us. Instead I have decided to wait. To try out this new patience thing I have been working on and see what happens after you have had a chance to sort your life out some more.

In the process of our spat, i have said things, some of them publicly and many more of them privately into my own thoughts, that I am not proud of and that have, or would have, hurt you. For that I am deeply sorry. I have told you that, and I’d like to show you.

With all of that said, I anticipate that we will continue to fight, and I will always make things worse while I try to make things better. That is a lesson that I don’t think I will ever fully learn. However at the end of the day id like to be able to tell myself two things: that I have done everything to the best of my ability, and that someone somewhere out there cares about me. Tonight I can tell myself at least one of those things.

Friend Zone

This weekend I spent a night with my bestfriend. I drove out to her house on Saturday evening and we rode bikes with some of her friends and then watched a movie until we fell asleep. I spent today going to church with her family and just spending time with some of her family. Seems pretty boring, no? And on the surface it was boring, but it also managed to be both the best weekend all summer and an emotional rollercoaster.

To understand this you need to understand her, her dad's wrapped around her evil stepmoms finger and won't stand up for her, and she was reletively recently dumped by her worthless boyfriend. Enter me.

Now I have been friend zoned pretty badly with her in the past year. And even over the summer that has changed very little. But the past week or two a dialog has opened between us unlike we have had before. Its been much more open. Friday night she told me that she didn't have any feelings, good or bad, for anyone except me. We both took this as she must have feelings for me. Well after this weekend I think that might be an incorrect assumption, though I'm not sure yet.

She told me this afternoon that she isn't sure she feels anything for anyone. This crushed me. But she never told me whether I'm anyone or someone. So I hold onto hope (after all what else is there??). But before she can be with me or anyone else, she needs to work things out with her dad and stepmom and I can't help her, which kills me. Until she can mend that gaping hole in her life, I will always be a foot note in her book of living.

This is a good place to mention that I hate friend zone. It sucks for everyone. Not only can I not have you, but I need to watch all these other douchebag guys get to be with you. And I am there with you through it all. And what you don't know is when I'm done being there for you and go to bed at night, I cry. I cry for everything I will never know. I cry because you deserve so much better and yet can't see that its right in front of you. I cry because I can't be with anyone else, because I love you. Friend zone sucks.

Friends of friends/Exceptions

I have been thinking lately about two things. The first is a social question, do need to be friends, or even like, the friends of those we love? I mean ideally we would, but is it nessicerry? I don't think so. In fact I think its good to have some seperate friends, it gives you a chance to get away from them (lest we fall victim to the classic "too much of a good thing is a bad thing"). But I do think we need to be able to accept their friends, even if we don't like them. We should be able to see that these people are impotant in their lives and so they should have a certain level of respect in ours.

The other thing I have been thinking about is exceptions to our standards and habits. Specificlly my habit of being very ver impatient. I am the kind of person to ask forgivness rather than permission because I want it done now. And if I must wait for someone to decide on something I am likly to leave. But teir are some people that are exceptions to this. Particularly two in my life right now, and it baffles me how I, of all people, can have such a double standard in my own life and not think anything wrong with it. Perhaps it just means I should learn to be more patient.

The Most Exciting Week of Nothing

This week has seemed abnormally long to me; and granted, a week for me is half a week for you as I split mine by interning for three days and working for four. I just finished the interning part, and while I love what I'm doing and its one of the best experiences of my life sometimes I just cant stand it. This wasn't one of those weeks.

To understand my week you need to first understand what I do. I'm a meteorology student during the year, so you might assume I intern at a news station, or that I forecast for NOAA. You'd be wrong. I'm an engineer for NOAA. I am helping test thermometers and rain gauges and anemometers. I love it more than almost anything, its my dream job. The problem is I am also helping with the help desk for the field and even worse helping with IT support.

It is very difficult to get anything done when you spend all day looking for a server (it was in a completely different building). But I still enjoy it.  This week however seemed longer than the rest for one simple reason, I am waiting for it to be done.

See this weekend I am going with my mom and brother up to see my family near Pittsburgh.  But I see them all the time,  so I am taking the van and driving towards Erie to see my best friend in the world.  Shes awesome, though much like me she is sarcastic and an asshole sometimes, so you probably wouldn't like her.  Though unlike me she looks awesome in a dress ;)

I still have two and a half days to get through until I can see her, and that's killing me. A week has never felt so long and boring in my life. It feels as if, even though I like what I do, the week is just in the way and needs to move. I plan on taking my camera with me to see her, and maybe we will do a vlog together. But the thought of two more days of working is almost painful, though the pool is more fun then my Internship.

Besides the frustrations of working selling my soul to the government and all of its inefficiencies (there is a reason we are so far in debt...)  I don't really have any complaints for the week.  It hasn't been overwhelming great,  but not bad either so I guess I should count myself as lucky,  for now... =)

Life Moves On

As the summer has progressed I have gone through times of complete joy and times of utter disappointment, but the overwhelming thing that I have found this summer as opposed to the rest of my summer breaks is that no matter what happens life will continue on.

To relate this to something that we are all familier with I will use weather. No matter how accurate our forecasting abilities get, the tornado will still destroy the town. We can see a snow storm coming days and sometimes even weeks out, but it will still dump snow all over and school will still close. We will never be able to change that. Life is the same way.

Summer started with my best friend hating me, and when I say hate, I mean she wanted me dead. so to say I had low expectations would be an understatement. But within a few weeks everything between us got a lot more complicated.

My girlfriend had broken up with me just before summer started, and I of course spent a fair amount of my limited free time trying to figure out what to do now that my world had been turned upside down.

I spent some time trying to get my now Ex back, but after a few days I found that we were still great friends. I have always heard that you cant be friends with an Ex, but I think I have proven that wrong, we had both made mistakes, and by being able to own up to that we are able to still be friends.

I spent a great deal more time however deciding what to do about my best friend. Now that she no longer hated me it opened the door to all sorts of possibilities. After a few weeks of disappointment though I learned my first real life lesson of the summer, it wasn't actually up to me how the future of our friendship was going to procede. That one lesson took me over a month and a half to figure out for myself.

During that time though I kept myself busy with interning at the National Weather Service and working as a Lifeguard. By keeping busy I was able to stay sane most of the time. I talked to friends a lot during this time, and re kindled old friendships I had forgotten during school. And it was during this time that I learned that same lesson again, Most things in life are not up to me, I am simply along for the ride.

One night, as I was going to sleep I got a text from my best friend, it was around midnight, and this was usual so I answered it, and I got the shock of my summer. She had some news that should have changed everything. I spent the next few days decided what to do, what the right decision was, how to handle the situation, and then I realized that I didn't have a decision to make. There was no question asked and she was simply looking for support. This reaffirmed the lesson from before, It is very often not up to me to make a choice.

This brings us up to now, I am still working, I am still friends with my Ex, and there is still an awkward unknown with my best friend. But the only constant is that no matter what happens, school will still start in a month, I will still have homework to do, there will always be tests to take, and life will still go on.