(no subject)
Here's something that hasn't happened in a while.
I'm back to swimming through a crowd of people on a semi-regular basis. Wait, that's different from last spring? Yes. Yes it is.
Most people probably hate the bus.
I hate it especially.
I hate, even more, having to spend 2 or 3 hours a day standing on a bus/Skytrain, or waiting for one.
Why do I always feel like I don't "belong" there? I feel like I stick out somehow, even amongst a crowd of students.
I feel like I stick out because I'm several years older than most people at school. Funny how I've often been told that I look 18-20. As if, something is wrong with that.
I keep thinking that, as a 25-year-old, people would expect me to have my shit together. I may have a job and be on my way to a degree in 2 or 3 years, but I also feel like I have the social skills of a 14-year-old. Can someone be "socially mature"? I don't mean that I make dick and fart jokes to everyone. But I seem to lack some sort of confidence. Would I be more confident towards people if I had my shit together? Should I worry about what people think of a 25-year old in classes with people who have no clear memory of the 1980's?
I'm too judgemental, I think.
I'm a people-watcher. If you stop and think, there are some very... distinct looking people out there. How much can you tell about a person from how they look and how their basic actions go?
Well, I mostly look at females. I hope I can be forgiven for that.
It's funny, how I look at someone and slowly piece together the details of their life. Based on stupid things, I know. But I can't help it.
Hair colour and style, clothes, makeup, piercings, walk, talk...
Why do I do this? Probably because I have nothing better to think about.
What I honestly worry about is that people will look at me and attach the same significance to mundane details of my appearance as I place on those of others. Granted, I try my best to be as open-minded as possible when I actually interact with people. And it's always a pleasant surprise when one of those faces in the crowd becomes a real living person to me, and I can get to know them and not feel like a superficial prick.
My dad told me today that he and my mom were thinking of holding off on their retirement plans for the next couple of years while my younger sister and I got out on our feet. I immediately told him that I really wish he wouldn't do that. I had hoped that I'd be able to make it on my own this year, but I can't pay tuition and rent and living expenses on two days of work per week. At least not without loans. Even though that's what I really wish I could do.
I guess it would be stupid not to take advantage of financial support that's offered to me, but I see so many people who manage to accomplish so much without that kind of support at all. Let's just say that I have a lot more respect for those people than I do for myself.
Ironically, accepting money from my parents and letting them move out of this city would be the most considerate thing for me to do. I still can't help but feel like I should be doing more to support myself, though.
Living in student residence feels like a good idea. I wouldn't have to deal with that horrible transit thing, and there'd at least be some degree of social interaction available for me, even for the more mature-student-oriented housing deals.
I guess I just feel like I'm too old to step into the freshman drinking-partying-fucking lifestyle that I missed out on, but I'm still too immature and impulsive to identify with the people my own age.
This idea reminds me of the Dungeons & Dragons writeups on half-elves who live with humans or elves. Just sayin'.
I was thinking of looking for some sort of political activism group on campus. Although I'm hardly the type to go out and chain myself to an oil tanker, I feel strongly about the problems in the developing world that are direct results of Western greed or apathy, and I'd like to do more.
Noam Chomsky says that when he's in the States, people ask him what they should do to promote peace and understanding. When he's in the developing, poverty-striken world, people tell him what they're already doing. It's much more dangerous for these oppressed people to protest and demonstrate, but they do far more of it. I feel like I should at least make the extra effort. Even if it's just showing up to a protest and being another body to contribute to the crowd.
"So, yeah. China decided to free Tibet because they saw that skinny, weird-lookin' dude in the back who's just standing there. I mean, if HE cares, it must be the right thing to do."
The very second day of my first year of univeristy abd living on my own, I saw the most amazing, nicest girl I had ever met, meet and hook up with another guy who becamse her boyfriend. Reality hit me like a sack of doorknobs in the crotch. That was the first day of the rest of my life, and things never went back to the way they were before. I wonder if I'll keep learning from mistakes until I become someone who knows exactly what to do and will never have the chance to do any of it.
And I wonder if a day like that will ever come again. And if things could ever change for the better.
Happiness isn't being in ecstacy for every waking moment. Happiness is going to bed each night, and looking back at the day as a job well done. You won't know that you've had the happiest day of your life until long after it's over, but you'll know true happiness when you know that day will come again.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to scratch myself in two places at once.