Sophomore State of Mind

Well I am back to the land of Southern Canada and it feels very odd. On the one hand all my people are back in one place and it feels good to be near some of my closest friends again. On the other hand I feel like I left some important pieces of myself back in Cali and the loss of those pieces is driving me up the wall.

            I consider myself to be a fairly independent person, I survived a year with minimal contact my parents and most of the people I had grown to depend on in high school. While others broke free and went wild with their new college freedom I walked around campus in the dead of night, basking in the glory of just being able to say that I made it this far. Somehow though this year feels different. Now that summer is over it is time to get back to work and shake off the desire to lie around all day and do nothing, and I know this but I am having a hard time adjusting. There are so many things that I want to do, write, endorse, and be a part of but this past week I have just not felt worthy.

            I love my school and I stand by that, and I feel like this is the year that will make or break me. Now is the time to rely and hard work and habit and hope that at the end of the day that is enough to get me to where I need to go. I am a man of faith, whether or not you believe in my faith matters little to me, because it makes up a big part of who I am. We all are who we all are and that is a lesson that mankind has yet to learn. I have dealt with the terrible, stupid, and negative but they are no worse than me nor I better than them. The only difference between people is how much they are willing to change and adapt to survive. I have not had to adapt for a while and now maybe I need to evolve.

            The second year and I can already feel things starting to come into place. I am not a typical student, nor are any of my classmates. I do not party, drink, smoke, etc. and these same sorts of things I used to think isolate me from my peers actually bring me closer to them. This year I am going to be honest with myself. I will feel pain where it needs to be felt, close doors that need to be shut, and love where love needs to be given. Yes I admit I have a very corny way of thinking but we all walk our paths so if you do not like it get out of my way.

            My blogs are scattered because my mind is scattered, but this year I want things to become uncluttered, to finally get my head out of the clouds and into the stars. Time for a new state of mind.   

Office Life and Family Ties.

                                

So my summer is pretty much ending this week and as I tried to look back and reflect on the past couple of months I realized that in a short span of time I have changed quite a bit in terms of my ambitions and mental states. I am by no means a different person; I just had a lot of time to think about life and all the madness that goes along with it.

This summer I worked 9-5 5 days a week at a law firm in Oakland, and for the most part it was incredibly humbling. I had a huge amount of respect for people who work hard in anything, but working in an office all week was something else entirely. I have no idea how my mom has been doing it since I was born. I constantly felt cramped in and smothered, and while time did not pass by slowly or anything tortuous like that I still knew that this is not where I wanted my life to go. I am not better than people who work desk job and if fact they might be doing the smarter thing by choosing a path that almost guarantees a stable financial income, but I refuse to put myself into that environment knowing I will not be happy. All this is not to say that I did not learn anything or gain new friends and respect for law practices, it is just that everyone is meant for something and not other things, and I am not cut out for that kind of office environment. I always felt like I was making a mistake or like I was being judging, and that is just not a good vibe.I love to dance, set my own hours of activity, spend hours reading and learning about nerdy things that are only important to me, and help people with their personal issues. All of this together equals a confused young adult with an uncertain future, but I will gladly choose my confusing niche of happiness over eternal melancholy.

Yesterday I was fortunate enough to go visit my grandpa’s house for my cousin’s college graduation party. I am not usually excited to go visit family because: We live super far from them, I am always approached by aunts and uncles that have known me since I was born yet I have no recollection of who they are, and they all see each other more than I see them so I feel a tad bit left out when I visit. This was not the case when I went yesterday however…it was completely different. Lately I have come to respect my family as a whole a lot more and I was excited to be able to see my grandpa (who is one of those old men who worked for everything he has today). At the party I was overwhelmed by people as usual and slightly regretting my decision to come, but in the course of about an hour I reconnected with cousins closer to my age that I have no spoken too in a long time and danced with my crazy family. It then dawned on my that my younger cousin is going to be a senior…and I remember when we used to play with power ranger toys as kids. Life is going by so fast and me having stupid thoughts about not fitting in with my family is only making things worse. Distance or no distance yesterday was one of the best days of my summer, because my family is still as tight knit as ever. I  have moved quite a bit in my lifetime, from houses to schools and so on. Throughout all of this my grandpas house has never changed. Same rooms I used to spend the night in, same neighborhood, same smell, etc. In all my troubles and insecurities about my relationship with my family I have always had the Ol’ family manor to go to. So as my mom and I will have to leave Pinole soon, I hope that my grandpas house remains the constant, because whether we like it or not we all need some sort of family ties.