I went to an ECS study session yesterday. We talked about the first chapter of Ethics as a Religion by David Saville Muzzey. I didn't have the book and hadn't read the chapter prior to attending, but luckily it was only like five pages long with very large margins, so it was easy enough to catch up. They gave me a free copy of the book! The discussion leader said "Since you're a student, you get the special discount rate of free" haha. Overall, I feel that the group has been very kind to me in my time with them.

Anyway, one of the points in that chapter was that in Ethical Culture, there is a basic belief that humans have inherent worth and potential to be good. We start off in a position of goodness, I guess. The author disagreed with the concept of Original Sin and the idea that we inherit sin from the first humans and are predisposed to act in evil ways as a result. It was a minor point in the book, but it made me think about my own history with religion. I grew up Christian, and I wonder if that had any subtle influences on my perception of my self-worth. It might not necessarily for everyone, but in my case, it could have contributed to me having low self-esteem as a teenager/young adult. Just this sense of intrinsic lack and the need to make up for it through actions of goodness.

I think I have retained some values from my Christian upbringing, although I have found different reasons to adhere to them. Not sure it would be accurate to call them specifically Christian values though, as they seem like things shared by most major belief systems. General things like being kind to others etc. I think that breaking away from Christianity and creating my own system of ethics was an integral part of my development as a person. My values are meaningful to me because of how I've struggled for them. I wonder if my children, assuming I have children, will appreciate ethics as much if they don't have that break and resulting self-discovery. Then again, a lot of people don't end up doing what I did, and they just stay insufferable militant atheists, or don't care about having a structured ethical system at all. I'm not sure why I ended up doing what I did, or what sets me apart from those people.

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In other news, after talking with my friend Matt, I'm thinking I might need to take a break from trying to date. It's not working out and I just feel frustrated and demoralized. Could be helpful to just stop trying for awhile so I don't push myself into depression.

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"Midnight, The Stars And You" by Al Bowlly.

Midnight, with the stars and you
Midnight, and a rendezvous
Your eyes held a message tender
Saying, "I surrender all my love to you"

Midnight brought us sweet romance
I know all my whole life through
I'll be remembering you
Whatever else I do
Midnight with the stars and you

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This seems like a song for a rainy day. A song to play while watching water droplets on a window coalesce and slide downward. Something to listen to while leaning your head on someone else's shoulder-- someone only half listening to the music.

A song for a moment alone, in the presence of another.

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I showed him the profile of someone I'm talking to on a dating app and he was not impressed:

but there's this feel, i'm trying to put my finger on it

the feel is from seeing the nuance and thoughtfulness in you that's so rare and beautiful, there's so much there to explore in your thoughts, it feels like you've spent your life making decisions with purpose and intent and it's woven a rich tapestry and it would be wasted on fuckers like that googler

Also, I found this reggae remix of "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye tonight, and it makes his eye contact in the video uncomfortably intense.

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After my book club on Sunday, I decided to walk around the area a little and found a tree that looked like it'd be easy to climb. Gave it a shot and climbed up a bit, although I didn't go very high because I have no experience climbing trees and was afraid to fall. Also my phone fell out of my pocket and onto the ground, so I had to go down and get it.

When I was walking back towards my car, this new guy who had attended the book club saw me and started talking to me. He was extremely annoying and kept talking excitedly about things that were obvious to me. It was clear that he thought what he was saying was very insightful and deep. I don't know if he thought I would benefit from what he was saying or if he just wanted to talk about it because he thought it was fascinating and wonderful.

I really just wanted to leave, but I did my best to hear him out for a few minutes and not get visibly irritated with him.

In reflecting on this afterwards, I decided that it was a good situation to practice patience in. People have told me on multiple occasions that I'm very patient, but that doesn't resonate with me, because in most cases I'm just not bothered by things to begin with. I feel like it would count more if I were actually in situations with things that had the potential to anger or upset me. This was one of those situations!

Lately I've been feeling kind of uncharitable and... I dunno... mean? Like I'm not trying very hard to see things from other people's perspective. It's somewhat troubling. Need to work on getting back to a place of empathy instead of being closed off and pursuing my own perspective without pause.

I guess it's kind of good that it's hard, though. It feels like a challenge. Personal growth feels more meaningful when it's a struggle. I have done a lot of things that felt relatively easy, especially in the beginning. It's like leveling up in a video game... the levels come quick and easy at first. Kill a few monsters and you're already level 2, then 3, 4, 5, 10, 20. But get to the higher levels and you're just grinding. The time and effort it takes to get from level 80 to 81 is considerable. Thinking about things in those terms helps me feel less frustrated with what feels like a slowdown in my progress.

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For some reason I just want to sleep a bunch during the day. I don't feel awake until it's night. That seems problematic, given that my next semester starts next week and I have a class in the city that starts at 9:30am. Gonna have to get up at like 5:30am again to make it.

Kyle came to visit me over the weekend. We went to Maker Faire and stayed at a cool hotel. Maker Faire was... not that amazing. It didn't have as many independent projects and things, and overall felt a lot more corporate and less interesting. Was kind of disappointing. I used to really like it. We had a decent time though, and got to see a prototype mech lumber around.


I would post pictures from the hotel, but I forgot to take my camera with me there and KYLE HASN'T SENT ME THE PICTURES HE TOOK YET. >:C

On Sunday I took him to ECS and met up with Trevor there for the first time in like... two and a half years. We didn't have much time to actually talk though, because the speaker ran over time and people had tons of questions afterwards. Will have to try to hang out some other time, I guess.

I know I haven't written in awhile. It's not that I'm especially busy, although I have been up to stuff this past week and a half. I guess I'm just not feeling that motivated to write.

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On Monday night I hung out with my friend Matt again. We only hung out until 3am this time, haha. Watched part of the Animatrix and talked a bunch. It's interesting. It feels like it's becoming a close friendship even though we've only hung out three times. I guess, to be fair, we hang out quite a lot every time we hang out, but still. He said he felt like he had room for another close friend in his life. I think I do too, although I'm wary of committing to that label. I feel like a friendship needs to withstand the test of time before it deserves to be called close. Otherwise it's intimate, but its consistency is unproven.

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My iPod played this a few days ago and I've been thinking about it since then.

"Shalott" by Emilie Autumn.

She says "That' man's gonna be my death, 'cause he's all I ever wanted in my life

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When I saw my therapist on Monday, he made a suggestion that horrified me. He has latched onto this idea that I'm smarter than the average person, which I guess might line up with my experience in the world, but I feel averse to it. Anyway, he was posing hypotheticals, and said something along the lines of "suppose you were in the 99th percentile..." I didn't want to go along with that line of thought, even if it was an imaginary scenario. I mean, I'd be a genius if I were in the 99th percentile, and I'm definitely not a genius.

I dunno, the idea of being way smarter than other people kind of scares me. I don't think I'm actually that far from other people in intelligence, but the theoretical possibility is uncomfortable. It seems like it would just be another barrier to being able to connect. My impression has been that people who are way smarter than other people only partner well with others when the average level people are serving some kind of support function to the smarter person's ambitions. That's not a setup I'd fit into.

We also talked about me feeling like I have to train people to interact with me. It's not something that happens with friendships so much, but it's something I feel around romantic and therapy relationships. Anything with conflict resolution. Nobody knows how to be supportive to me and I have to teach them. I'm so tired of it. It's not that people don't make the effort, but... effort only gets you so far. I feel stuck in this choice between "appreciate people's effort even though the actions are unhelpful," "train people to do better but face them getting frustrated and giving up," and "stop trying entirely and just resign myself to not having mutually supportive relationships"... Why am I so difficult to provide emotional support to? I've worked a lot on not getting annoyed with people when they give me unsolicited (and usually obvious) advice. I tell myself that they care enough to try. It just doesn't make me feel any better. Ugh.

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Be it extremely emotional, controversial, messed up, or whatever, this entry has been password protected.

If you know it, enter it; or, ask me for it.

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"Unfaithful" by I Eat Plants for a Living.

I don't love you anymore.
-Since when?
Now, just now. I don't want to lie. I can't tell the truth.
Goodbye.

Gym, therapy, gym.

But tomorrow I'm going to donate blood and go for a walk with someone, so that's different.

And Thursday I'm going to meet up with someone who will take better pictures of me, hopefully.



I helped post an ECS event on different websites, so I feel like I was productive in that regard, at least.

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"Cul de Sac" by Tomahawk.

Eternity is all used up
And our hell has frozen over
But it ain't that cold
It's warm enough
Sunbathing on the shores of a nightmare
I wish you were here

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I hope I didn't break someone's heart last night. It's a sad situation, but I don't think there was a way for me to handle it better than I did.

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On Wednesday, I got to school early and didn't have much to do, so I went to the library and noticed a book titled The Woman Who Slept with Men to Take the War Out of Them. I ended up reading the first few dozen pages of it before class. It was structured as a play, but loosely; the plot was not always clear, and the characters were not entirely explained or described. The effect was that it was dreamlike, a stream-of-consciousness narrative that imparted feeling not through direct content but by circling around the edges of a theme, uncovering bits and pieces of it with each pass.

The back cover says the story is for "every woman who has believed for even a moment that she could change a man's mind by making love to him-- who has imagined that through the sex act she could save him." Although it's couched in sexual terms, I think there is a broader implication too-- that love can fix people. I wonder if I believe that. I don't think having sex with people will make them better in itself, but there is an allure to the idea that love is enough, that love is a transformative power. Even if you have no other power, you can have the power to love. That makes me wonder if it's a fantasy for the otherwise powerless.

Then again, that seems very cynical, and I don't think love as a power is something to be discounted. Even if it doesn't necessarily change the objective world, it can certainly change the subjective world. It can make all the difference to the one who loves. It is something to love. It is something to give of yourself. It is something to care. Not all the rewards have to come from being given love in return.

Sometimes I think I like the feeling of loving someone more than I like being loved back. Not that I would necessarily reject reciprocity, but I mean, if I had to choose between one or the other... Being the one who loves does feel like it has power to it, I guess. You choose to give your love, even if it doesn't feel like a choice at all times. Being loved... you don't have control over what the other person does. You're always in a position where you're at risk of losing the love. Whether or not you trust that the other person will be consistent, I think you can never fully know.

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