Fool's Start

I really don't know what it is about home. Home, where my heart should be, has instead become a black hole which I cannot seem to escape. Time and again, my will fails me, my discipline falters, and I again taste the sickly nectar of words unfulfilled. Every God damn time I tell myself I'm going to do something, I don't pull through with it, which is odd; normally, in Stockton, I can abide by even the simplest rules I set for myself there. Examples being: stick on a diet, work out, study, etc. Here, at home, I can't even do the first two for more than 2 or 3 days in a row before I cave in to some junk food, or make some excuse to not work out.

So.....I suppose I'm writing this post tonight as a testament to putting an end to my lack of discipline. I don't think it matters if one person sees these words, or one hundred, or no one at all...I just need to see these words and know that they exist not just in my head, but somewhere where I can constantly be reminded of their existence. With that said, here's a few things I'm going to do between now and the end of when I think summer is over:

1. Swim in the morning, run/lift in the evening.
2. Stick to a consistent diet.
3. Go over lecture powerpoints for Eco/Evo 2-3 times a day.
4. Watch a shit ton of movies on my laptop and from the library.

So, whoever is reading this...if I fail to live up to these, and if you see me in Stockton come Fall 2009 as a mess, please, kindly, call me a flabby failure (and more, but I'll leave that up to you). Thank you.

Hairy Beginnings

Shaving my head, face, and chest...I feel like a new man. Lighter, cleaner, yet whole; I haven't had my chest feel this soft or smooth since I was a kid. A bizarre start, but now, feeling and looking like somebody who can change how he wants to look, who feels like a tree that can clip its own leaves and shoots....I feel like something is going to start now. I very much look forward to it.

Temptation

I'd like to think I'm a man of my word; well, at least in regards to keeping my end of a bargain, or standing by my oaths. But today, I came perilously close to breaking a vow I made in haste, and in pain, several months ago.

Today I almost drank again. I haven't touched a drink in nearly 4 months. Now, I don't really like to think of myself as a teetotaler; if you drink, hey, I really don't give a damn. I used to do it; now, I just don't. Today, I was at a wedding reception in Folsom; and, being filled with mostly Indians I didn't know or care to know (but there were some good looking chicas, jailbait though they may be), I hardly expected to run into familiar faces. But faces I did run into this night; one of which was a self-proclaimed beer-pong champion I hadn't spoken to since the end of high school, and the other being one of my best friends, Manpreet. Him and the beer-pong king (Navdeep) went off to the bar to get some drinks, and I went along with them. I didn't particularly care if my parents saw me at the bar, getting drinks (which they did). No, what troubled me was that at the drop of a word, I told Manpreet I'd take a drink with him.

To some, that might be a light thing, something to hardly lament at all about; hell, if you had told me four months ago that I was dedicating time from my life to whine about almost taking a shot, I'd have called the future Jag a massive, massive "poodle". But, after my rather unfortunate, but necessary (as most painful experiences are) time at the San Joaquin County Jail, I've come to retract my position on alcohol. So in the end, no, I didn't take that shot with ole Preet; but, I came close to losing my self-control, and simply, my power to say "no". I'm wondering if I can keep it up.

In the event that I do take up drinking again (although, it would be with a far, FAR more wearier hand), I have the perfect toast to UOP Judicial Affairs: "They make take away my housing...but they'll never take, MY FREEDOM!".

We'll see how long I can last. If I can.

Bittersweet endings

I write this post after a year of sorrow, of joy, of victory, of defeat, and of pain. I'm back at home now, mulling over my thoughts as I write this blog post. Another year, another step closer to finishing college; another year of friendships made and friendships broken. I suppose of this entry's theme is friendship.

I was wrong, of course. I wrote last time that nothing ever ends; yet, I was proven wrong when a friendship was ended this week. An argument over the smallest of differences escalated into a very heated and nasty debate on Facebook; and when the ashes had settled, I found myself with two less friends. I still don't know what to make of that fact; at first, I was rather shocked that this event could actually break a friendship. Now...well, now, I've accepted it for it is. I find that I am not irrevocably changed, or broken; instead, I've simply just acknowledged it. It seems like a bittersweet way to end the school year, but I guess this lesson about the loss of friendship could only be learned through life's most effective teacher: pain.

Flowers

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."

Thomas Moore

Running

Today has been a day long in the making. Today marks the beginning of the end, the birth of a new month, and, soon, the close of another year in college. And it also marked the beginning of a lesson that I am now, in its entirety, beginning to understand.

Nothing ever ends.

My story begins with a typical Friday of the last few months; sleep deprived, I went to take my last Genetics test. Of course, it was obscenely hard; last year, I would have been in near tears at the feeling I had walking out of this test. This time, I simply shrugged. Amazing what a year's worth of experiences can do to a person; or rather, what Pacific can. O. Chem lab was mercifully quick; I checked out of lab in about an hour and a half. And then I took a nap.

My lesson, on the never-ending qualities of the universe, began when I went to take a run today. Outside. I had not done this for months, and so, I thought that taking a run in the rain would be refreshing, and something different. I was not disappointed in the slightest; the run was indeed invigorating, as well as enlightening. Not being confined to the walls of the gym, or the artificial slickness of the treadmill, I felt free, feeling real, polluted air run through my lungs instead of the recycled air in the gym. Seeing the cars drive by endlessly, a stream in a constant river, I also fell, feeling myself swallowed whole by memories as a younger man running along those same paths, stepping in and out of shadows both figurative and literal.

This entire year has felt like a marathon. Running constantly, never stopping, never yielding, never surrendering...I've come to realize that pinning all my hopes on summer as some sort of respite is a very foolish thing to do. We are all runners, constantly trudging along this path we call life, either dragging our heels along the ground or sprinting with the one-minded drive of a beast; we are always running, for there is no real end in sight. Any end we see is only temporary, a visage; something akin to the mirage of an oasis produced by a desert to a thirsty man. We will always have goals, always have something to strive for, to strive towards. And so, I finish the night off with a lesson learned.

I am beginning to understand that there is no end.