I need to use this . Really.

Remember that "deny reality" thing?  Getting there.

I had a lot to write but I need the proper inspiration.

If I get into the habit of writing here I'll improve myself. I know it.

3/20

A month away from the best day.  Hehe, I jest.

I don't have much to say today.  I got things on my mind, but they wont' make it to the blog this time.  Anyone got any tips for improving your attention span?  To put it lightly, I need to learn to study... :/

Spring break coming up soon.  I have mixed feelings mainly because I was supposed to visit my friend but it turned out too expensive.  WELL I GUESS MY BACKUP PLAN of smoking weed and watching anime every day will have to do~

Man I'm weird.  Sometimes I hate myself for it, but right now, I'm just glad.  Because fucking Escaflowne, man.  Gonna start that soon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xG8xEgxUrN8

I don't really have much to say today so here's a song from my youth.  Perhaps one day I'll go into my once-prominent love of anime.  Today, it's just a thing I look back on fondly.  It's rare I'll watch a new one.  Just ones I loved when I was little... or ones my friends manage to get me to watch >.>.

I'm feeling good right now. Wasn't earlier. But am now. That's all that matters.  Peace out, nobody.

Ok what

I need to stop being so self conscious.  I play Quidditch at school on a club team and everyone is really REALLY cool but they're all so much closer than I am to any of them and they're friends outside and I almost feel like I'm intruding on their group.  Especially because me + physical = no.

It's either I'm too open or I'm not open enough.  The latter embarrasses me in hindsight and the former leaves my social life lacking.

Dreams and Reality

Well using this happened.  Not.  I've been dreaming a lot about middle school recently.  The people, the place, and how it affects my daily life today.  Surprisingly a lot.

I promised myself I'd not fall into the same pit I did back then where I idealized something that clearly couldn't have been that good (my friends that I had lost over time.)  And now I seem to be doing that for middle school.  The sensations, the feelings, everything about it seems almost as close as my real life experiences right now.  I could be walking down stairs on campus, and the rubber smell would remind me of the stairs at Bridges.  It's fucking weird, man.  Almost as if, assuming I wanted to,  I could deny reality.  Good thing I'm not crazy enough to want to do that... entirely.  I'm just a little worried that I might get to that point eventually.

I have to stop idolizing the past but when everything is in motion that's tough.  I can only hope I never miss high school, at this point.

actually going to start using this again

I need to keep a journal to collect my thoughts.  My very sad, strange thoughts.  Or maybe the blissful ones.  I'm just makin' it public to keep my narcissism in check.  Also, who knows?  All this practice in writing.  Maybe I'll change.  Maybe it will be my passion again.

personal reflection for acting one

Kevin Brennan
Professor Scrimger
Acting 1
12/11/12

Personal Reflection

                   I’m a dreamer.  There’s not much more I can say other than that.  It’s kind of my thing – sometimes I’m not even sure I’m on the same plane of reality as most people.  So, that said, making a “realistic” super-objective is a little bit tough for me.  I could go for the obvious choice, finish college, but honestly that seems a little generic; in other words, definitely not me.
                   Therefore, I chose something that is one of the reasons I dream: other people.  I’m not always great at interacting with them.  No way to get around this fact right now unless I make a serious change.  That’s why I tend to retreat into the impossible, the what-ifs, the moments I succeeded – anything that’s not the reality of the present.  Those are a huge part of the given circumstances of my life.  For some reason, people baffle me – and the deep connections I so desperately seek seem incredibly hard to find.  So, for my super-objective, I’ve decided that I want to improve in the way I interact with people.   
                   Before I get into my goals and obstacles, I want to give a little more background on my life and some of the reasons why this might be a struggle for me.  I’m an only child – strike one.  That probably made it harder for me to connect to people right off the bat.  Maybe this is a weaker point than I’m giving it credit for, but growing up with someone else my age in the house probably would have been a positive.  My mom had the mini-van ready and everything – it just never happened.  I have a large family back in Pennsylvania, and we moved to California before I could even remember.  I’m the only only child of my generation.  I can’t really explain why that’s relevant but it felt right to mention. 

Moving on, though.  I was diagnosed a “problem child” by teacher when I was younger because sometimes I just didn’t listen – strike two.  Keep in mind, I’m speaking only have my own hindsight; talk like that mostly happened behind the scenes when I wasn’t around.  A lot of things about those kinds of situations I only learned long after they were over with.  However, the good thing is that I did get help from many teachers.  Sometimes, all it meant was leaving early on Fridays; later years, it meant a little extra attention.  The point is that growing up, I knew I was a little different.  I was ostracized later in elementary school for failing to develop at the same level as my peers socially.  I think that stunted my growth further.  Because of those kinds of circumstances, I’ve always been a cripplingly self-conscious person.  Any time I do something that singles me out in some way, I get quiet and you don’t hear from me for quite awhile.  That’s why I tended to do the improv games with my eyes closed, I didn’t want to see the faces of everyone in the class while I was on the spot.  Even though I knew they had nothing against me, it just came naturally.  Why get nervous by seeing how people react when I don’t have to?

            Somewhere along the line, I stopped believing in myself – strike three!  Good thing this is the game of life and not baseball.  It might not seem like it at first, but I’m my own worst enemy and have been for a long time.  I should champion myself instead of being a harsh critic, but so far things haven’t worked out that way.  How does that keep me from connecting to people?  Because I’m so harsh on myself, I am so self-conscious that most of my actions – even around people I trust – are calculated.

            With those thoughts in mind I move on to thinking about my goals.  One way I want to learn to improve my communication skills is to not judge people.  I probably miss out on a lot of potential friendships by doing so.  I have issues taking the good and the bad with people; even with close friends, I can find it difficult to overlook certain character traits. Being able to do this would be a step in the right direction, but not the end-all solution.  Luckily, an activity that we did this year specifically ties in with this: objective observation.  Even if it means sitting back for a while, watching people without making judgments can only help me.  Noticing what and how they do things instead of why might help me.  That way, I won’t just imagine something wrong with a person or exaggerate their flaws so I don’t have to try and get better acquainted with them.

            Another goal I have is to get back that confidence I think I’ve lost along the way.   I’m so self-conscious I have issues with interaction simply because I get worried I’ll screw up and the other person will lose interest in me.  It can even keep me from trying at all.  Don’t even ask me to talk to a girl at a party, I don’t care if she’s looking at me or twirling her hair or whatever – I’m gonna be the yes-man and totally blow it.  I know it from the start.  No game.  At this point, when I reflect I have realized that more often than not that’s just in my head.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean I think that way when it matters yet.  Or, more accurately, don’t think.  A good way to stop worrying about things like that would be to just go with the flow.  Once again, one of our class activities comes in handy here: guided meditation.  I have a feeling that if I were to look into more relaxation techniques, that might help me significantly.  If I’m more relaxed on my own due to meditation, then maybe I’ll be more comfortable around people as well too.  Another way to regain my confidence would be to go out of my way to boost myself every day; for example, give myself compliments when looking in the mirror or something.  Even something generic like that might help.

            Lastly, and more specifically, I want to find a group here at USD that I think I truly belong to.  Even in the theater department, I feel like I just float in and out of people’s lives here.  Sometimes, I get really upset knowing that I would never see any of these people if I didn’t force myself on them.  Again, getting stuck in my head.  I’ve looked, but I guess not hard enough so far – because I don’t feel like I belong anywhere for sure yet.  This goal is a little close to my super-objective, but it could only be a step in the right direction to fulfill this first.  If I can make good friends in college, then there could only be good things I could take away from it in terms of learning how to interact with people. There are multiple steps I could take to achieve this.  I could try a lot harder to develop deep connections with the people I already consider myself close to, or I could just look elsewhere.  I know I’m supposed to say what actions I plan to do, but honestly I’m not sure which one would work better for me yet.  Trying both can only improve my chances, though, so I put them there.

            The obstacles I might face will come mostly from within.  I’m a little worried that I won’t find the effort worth undertaking.  Sometimes, even without having to worry about self-improvement, I just get burnt-out.  That’s part of why I’m stuck where I am now: I do get tired of trying.  It’s not that I stop entirely, it just seems useless after awhile.  There’s that lack of confidence coming up again, I guess.  If I adhere to my goals and tactics, it should only be a setback – an obstacle I can surmount.  That said, this is still the big one and it’s going to be tough to beat. 

            However, ironically, other people could end up an obstacle in my search to learn how to better interact with them.  There’s a chance I could pick the wrong group to latch on to and not take anything away from it.  What if I make what I think are good connections and then they just completely disappear after college?  I’ll feel like I won’t have learned anything from them if they don’t last.  Or even just running into a jerk at the wrong time might shut me down for awhile. 

Even worse, what if I start relying on crutches?  I do want a few close connections, true, but that shouldn’t discourage me from being social with strangers.   Relying on those one or two connections alone could cause me to stop branching out like I want.   I don’t plan on being utilitarian about friendships, but I have to be able to move on if necessary.  I’ve annoyed people in the past by clinging to them and I’d like to avoid that in the future.

As my goal is related to people, pretty much anyone can end up helping me whether they know it or not.  I have great friends back home and I consider it a privilege to be part of their lives.  They’re often boosting me up when I feel like I can’t do it myself – and, like any good people, even when I don’t need it.  If I told them this was one of my goals, I’m sure they would go out with me and try and meet new people.  That said, strangers could help me as well.  If I run into the right, super friendly person, there’s a new connection that I could pursue.  However, the above said, I really feel like this is a personal goal that requires a lot more from me than other people.  So it’s basically in my hands.

What’s strange about making a superobjective like this is that some of my smaller goals kind of contradict the entire premise.  I already said I tend to over think things; isn’t a plan doing the same, only on a broader scale?  Upon reflecting, I see that’s not the case.  You said numerous times that a goal without a plan is just a dream.  Well, that’s where I am unless I put this into action: stuck dreaming.  Whether it’s of the future, or the past, I’m in my head.  And I’m damn tired of it.

On a larger scale, I think this is a goal I share with a lot of people my age.  There will never be another me, but my problems are pretty universal.  I’m almost certain everyone reaches this point at least once.  Who knows?  Maybe, on the way to achieving my super-objective, maybe I’ll be the stranger another person out there needs.  I’d love to be.

I’m sure this is more than you wanted, but I got pretty wrapped up in writing it.  This was not a silly attempt to boost my grade on a late assignment.  It’s me, speaking from the heart.  Maybe one more moment of self-consciousness by trying to assuage my worry that you’ll see it as simply that couldn’t hurt.