"Listen to me," I said to her, frantically.  "We only know--... I only know I exist because other people aknowledge my existence!"

I took a deep breath.

"...Doesn't that bother you?"

She stood silently.  She was staring straight through me.

Do the words that slide through your mind match up with the thoughts and feelings that evoked them?

A girl walked up to me and simply asked if I was her soulmate, without reason or pretext.

Such an abrupt question.  Such a... vulnerable question.  Any rational person would think it was merely part of a prank, a horrible attempt at picking me up, or that the girl was completely insane.  Rationality is no fun.  Maybe she just wanted to know.

"I'm not sure, I suppose it's entirely possible, but how can we test it?"

No giggles from potential friends in on the prank from around us.  No sideways, condescending look.  Stalemate.  It was a real question.  It was apparent she wasn't sure, or maybe that she didn't expect that kind of answer.  Maybe she didn't expect an answer at all.  She just stood there, and looked slightly sadder.

"I know.  Don't tell me where you came from, what kind of person you are.  Don't tell me your favorite foods, your favorite color, what your superpower would be if you could have one.  Don't tell me what you look for in a guy, don't tell me what you want to do after you get out of school.  Don't even tell me your name.

...If you're my soulmate, I'll see you later."

I turned around and I walked until my regrets were forgotten.

Everything is notional. Everything.

I get up every morning, and think about things like money, school, work, tools, toys, friends, society, and how to do the things that I do.

All of it matters because someone else says it matters.

The money we use is defined as something called "fiat" money. Where the actual inherent value of the paper (or the number in a computer) has no real value (like gold, or something that which has inherent value). It's "valuable" because everyone says that it is. I mean, fuck, even the value of gold is notional. If everyone woke up tomorrow and decided they didn't like gold anymore, it wouldn't be valuable. So maybe the only things inherently valuable are tools with which to survive. Food. Water.

The color of the sky is notional. No, perhaps not the wavelength of the light hitting our eyes, that's science. That's a number that won't change except by scientific means. But if everyone woke up tomorrow and started claiming the sky was "green", wouldn't that just make today's "blue" tomorrow's "green"?

Why the fuck do we care. It's obvious that this is the truth. Time is of the essence because we say it is. Prestige is important because other people want it. Red cars are "cooler" than green cars because people like red on cars more. So what?

This is the very basis of control. There's immense power in these things. If everything is notional, then if the right cards are played, everything is controllable. To the degree of The Milgram Experiment, to be sure. But what does it mean for the big picture?

It means ascending the ladder to the top is difficult, because "the top" is notional.

Everything we say, do, or feel is only important because someone else cares, doesn't care, or is at least paying attention. It's kind of a sad thing, really.

..and as if the world wasn't confusing enough, the stranger whispered just over the rustle of the underbrush,
"Much like you must sometimes look out to see within, much like you must sometimes fall down to rise up, it is a universal truth that sometimes, just sometimes, you must become lost to be found."





Nothing is more powerful than words. They lift, move, destory, create. A single word, nothing more than punctuation after history, can evoke the entire spectrum of human emotion. Those who wave weaponry do so at the discretion of words. Yet, despite all of this power, the scope of words can never, ever match the thoughts, ideas, and feelings that which effected the words in the first place.

There is a discernable end to any given rainbow, and you can chase that motherfucker until the end of time, but you'll never get to it.

What no one takes into account is the fact that it works like an asymptote. You can get infinitely closer, but you will never, ever, hold the things you've taken to chasing.

...in other news, I think the true essence of the term "space-time" is related to the fact that it seems as if Space (distance) between A and B ultimately results in Time between the two meeting, and not just travel time. If that makes any sort of even transient sense...

Everything is changing. And I just keep finding reasons to stop the ride and keep things the way they are. I'm stuck in motion, and I don't know what's best for me. Status Quo is the only thing keeping me on my routine, but I'm afraid of whether its determination or fear that keeps me sitting on my hands.

I feel regression. I hope it passes soon.

I find that I'm humored by the small things, and troubled by the big.

I suppose the opposite would be unhealthy.

I scroll down my list of screennames, and I start to fall into just one more spiral of existentialism.

I have some form of relationship with each person on that list, some considerably more or less than others. Some more caring, some more spiteful. Some more apathetic, some more passionate.

It's as if a line is drawn between me and each one of these people (just as there is between me and anyone else within my life). Each line is drawn just a little bit differently.

I wonder about some of them. I don't talk to a lot of them anymore, but I keep them there.

Nostalgia? Maybe some sort of love for these people I don't yet have the age and wisdom to understand? Some of these people I've grown up with. I've felt close with at one time or another. Maybe it's a futile attempt at holding onto Yesterday whilst reaching for Tomorrow, all the while balancing on the stepping stone that is Today.

What strikes me, each and every time I see a few of these screennames, is how different things could be.

What if I had said those things to you, instead of that other person?
What if I had done things just a little different, took you up, turned you down, showed interest or a lack thereof...

What if you picked up each of those individual, slightly-different lines and swapped them all.

Where would I be? Would I still be where I am now? Would I still be sitting alone in my dining room on my laptop, with Dance Gavin Dance screaming in my ears and Comedy Central on in the background?

...or would I be anywhere else in the world? Listening to something different, watching something else, and being somebody other than me.

I feel as if it's almost unfair that I'll never know.

Fate is our dispositional choices.

I find this page magnetic at seemingly random intervals. I nearly forget it exists, then, usually in the dead of night, I recall opening the mental floodgates on a glorified web-based Notepad.

So here I am. Once more, I have an Entry open with absolutely nothing specific to say, yet the fingers type. Words never seem to really mean what I need them to mean when I find myself here, but all anyone can do is try.

I don't really know why these things happen. I can't go about specifically mentioning what 'these things' may or may not be, but it's safe to say that it's a topic we've all dealt with or will have to deal with.

It's like a lightswitch. I know it's me, but is it my fault? Just one day it is as if I wake up, and I realize my jigsaw puzzle is together, just not what I expected.

Maybe the problem is that either my expectations of things are wrong. Maybe I don't really know what it is I want. Would it be considered "shallow" of me to want some things in my life to be "shallower"? Some times life is too serious, I realized that I don't want things to be that way, and I naturally try to take a step or two backwards.

The problem is that life doesn't care much for attempted rewinding.

It's just that... life is a series of jobs with all-too-many work-related injuries. Don't get me wrong, I love my line of work... but some things shouldn't be a job. Some things, like eating ice cream, playing a video game, being with friends, etc, shouldn't require me to... feel leashed.

It's cliched, I realize that, but possibly for good reason.

It's really not that those things aren't everything that I'd want in that area. Honestly. It's just... you know, I really like snowboarding. The first time I went snowboarding I felt this exhiliration I had never felt before. Despite my love for it, sometimes you need to stop at the lodge and take a break, or go home for the night. And it's not that you don't want to snowboard anymore, it's just that you're tired of having to wait in line to get up the ski lift. You're tired of having to exert yourself physically to enjoy the experience. You just want to do something simpler for a while, to perhaps recuperate. Or just do something new, to keep things fresh.

I can't be the only one who feels this way. And it's difficult when more than one person is involved in things, but it's not always a matter of choice.

I would love to have a quality medium steak daily. But sometimes... just sometimes... I'd want a hot pocket, or french fries. I know what's good, what's more refined and worthy, and maybe some people could live exclusively with that... but at this point in my life... I'd feel like my dining options were too narrow, even if they were great.

Maybe that's not the best analogy.

...Maybe I'm just being selfish.

Times change, and people change too.

But I've come to realize that time has no impact on people. Only other people create the change.

We are not creatures of time. Our schedules hold true not to some fabricated number system denoting the angle of the sun's rays. Our schedules are ourselves and each other. You and I share nothing aside from the fact that time is irrelevant.

A person is only late when another person decides so.

Some things come, and some things go.
They say memories are what makes it all worth it.
If nothing else, you have your memories.

We all have memories. They all span different things, providing a traceable path throughout our lives.

But the difference between a road-map like memory and an actual map or trail is that you can backtrack on a trail. You can find your way back to an earlier travelled street if you have a map.

Though I suppose anything is possible. And while, once time passes (or should I say, "people" passes?), the streets will change... I suppose hypothetically, if you had a "map", that is... a practical way of achieving a situation similar to a memory... you'd come as close as possible to reliving that experience, that... section of your life.

But I can't see how it'd ever be the same ever, ever again.

There's lots of things that I realize now I did not truly revel in. Things that I should have grasped and held to and really, truly, experienced. There are some things, as I suppose there are in anyone's life, that I just didn't take into account as wisely as I should have.

There are several. I figure the goal is to keep that number as low as possible. I'll have to keep that in mind.

Ultimately, I've come to realize... my friends have shifted so much through the years. I've only now begun to hang out with people I've gone to school with for many years, forgoing those who I have spent time with in the past for various reasons.

In fact, there is only one person that I actually hung out with earlier that I continue to hang out with today. And in some ways I'd consider it almost a different person. Lots of changed on both my end and that person's.

I think I spend most of my time worrying about the things that really don't matter.
I think that's why I spend so much time worrying about it. Because maybe I trust myself to take care of the things that do. That much comes naturally. I've only fucked that up once. Maybe twice.

It's really stupid, how everything works. One day you're doing this and feeling this way about a certain variable in your life, the next day it's completely different. And for what? What's the fucking point?

Why are things ever awkward? The short answer is complexities. We're so focused on what other people are saying and thinking... and we just can't tell that for sure. Ever.

Time has nothing to do with it. It's always people.

I just want to get out. Not necessarily of this physical area. Not necessarily of a feeling. But out of this stagnation. I'm confined to this path, as long as I want to consider the things that "don't matter".

And I've come to realize that talking to people... really... talking. Listening and understanding people... that's what matters. At least to me.

There's lots of sorry, unfortunate things in the works right now. Almost conspiratorial, and I imagine on some level it truly is. That's not my main reason for the escape plan, though it concreted my feelings on the subject once I came to realize how deeply-rooted it was.

This is nothing more than an offloading of my mind. Random ramblings, but they all mean something.

From many fronts, I mean this...

It's a shame that some people, despite pure honesty and genuine, if not naive, reasoning, can be so ruthlessly plagued by some things over which that person has no control or doing.

I'm not one to hurt. But I think I need to learn to be one to abandon those who lay entwined in their own twisted half-truths. None of you are fucking worth it. None.