Lost and Found

I can’t believe that I forgot about this place. It wasn’t until about half an hour ago when I tried (unsuccessfully) to sign up for a wordpress account (only to find out my username was taken…hmm, I wonder why) that I remembered what I’d started here.

I don’t have much to say (for now) other than that. I’ve been thinking about getting back into the blogging thing again, so much so that I’d planned on checking out a few different options before settling on any one place. But as I’ve found my way back here, I’ve decided this will do for now.

We’ll see how long this lasts..

If you are at all into Radiohead

You should definitely go here:

Skeet Spirit: A Crunk Tribute To Radiohead

It’s every bit as cool as it sounds.

on perfection…

I was called a perfectionist today, for about the second time in my life.

It surprised me. The again, I would probably be genuinely surprised if I knew every person’s perception of who I am.

I had a quote in my AIM profile by Ben Folds for quite a while, if anyone remembers. It was:

“don’t try to see yourself
the way that others do
it’s no use”

It’s funny. I guess I’ve always been a bit obsessed with peoples’ perceptions of who I am and how I fit in to the world. I’ll consider it a hurdle to be…hurdled…in the present/future.

Back to re-organizing my music collection… (yes, I see the humor in this)

how to kill a sunday afternoon

Saturday I rearranged the living room.

Today, I built a computer out of spare parts, sans case (since I don’t have two):

It worked:

(click pics for bigger versions)

I had to borrow the power switch from my main computer, which is why the two computers are so close in the first picture. Making a custom power switch for the caseless PC could be a fun future project. Maybe next weekend. =)

I wasn’t thinking about it when I first started building the new PC, but since I lost my iPod, we need a new way to listen to music at our “gatherings”, and this might be a fun way to do it. Once I get a cheap video card for the new compy (I had to borrow from my main PC to get this one up and running), I think I might try to stuff all of the hardware in a cabinet in the entertainment center in the living room. All I would need to do then is put my computer speakers on top of the entertainment center and run them through the back of the EC into the sound card in the case-less PC. I imagine it might be confusing to people at first, but that’s kind of the point.

I should be able to Remote Desktop/VNC (Windows or Linux, that is the question, though Ubuntu is currently installed) from the computer in my room to the PC in the EC and run the party music that way.

Our iPod setup was ghetto-rigged last year, but I think this definitely takes the cake. It should be a fun project.

the comforting thing

Through all of my dating woes, there remains one thought that has become my source of comfort. This thought:

I don’t have to date anyone I don’t want to, and I don’t have to spend my life with anyone I don’t want to.

When it comes to dating, I end up worrying too about whether or not I’ll find a companion with most of the qualities I find attractive. This ends up being discouraging, because honestly, most girls don’t fit the bill. That doesn’t mean there aren’t tons of great girls out there who would be great for the many guys out there. It’s just that I’ve discovered that I’m mostly bored with the lot of the females out there, and there are a precious few to whom I look for companionship. Most people call me “picky” because of this, but I don’t see anything wrong with not settling for less than what I expect out of life.

That’s not to say that I look for perfection. Far from it. I recently learned how to love unconditionally, despite imperfection. What a great and hard lesson to learn. Anyway.

I’m not sure I’ve quite gotten across what I wanted to say here, but just be content in knowing that it provides me a great source of comfort these days. It’s easy to let oneself latch on to one person because you think they are the end all, be all of what you could ever want in a relationship. When it doesn’t work out, it’s discomforting to think that your one chance at relationship perfection is lost. That’s where this comforting thought comes into play for me. The next time I’m in a relationship, it’s going to because I feel for that person the way that I have previously felt for only a select few people in my life.

I don’t have to settle for a girl who’s around for the sole purpose of just being my girlfriend.

Because I don’t have to.

And I won’t.

new semester, new arrangement

Rearranged the living room, I did.

Excuse the horrible camera phone pictures. Stupid RAZR.

Oh yeah, and click for bigger versions.

friday night

“Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
– Benjamin Franklin

Indeed, Ben. Indeed.

The Pop Tart Box…

..states that you should leave the pastries in the microwave for 3 seconds, not 3 minutes.

Lesson learned.

happy things…

..are good, so here we go:

1. The ballpark hot dog I’m eating now. Mmm..
2. Having good music to listen to at all times.
3. Having a job where it’s not a huge deal if I need to take a day off to recover from sickness.
4. Pop Tarts. I just bought some at Wal-Mart. Thank God for Frosted Strawberry.
5. Dasani. Who knew bottled water could taste so good?
6. Being relied on for comfort by a friend in need.
7. Things that are organized really  well. They make me too giddy, sometimes.
8. Tracking my finances in Quicken. This sort of falls into the above category.
9. Filling my prescription online through Walgreens.com
10. Finally receiving my first issue of GQ (Now that GQ’s Cargo got cancelled, I get GQ instead. I’m cool with that.
11. Haircuts. May I soon have enough money to actually get one.
12. A clean shave.
13. Roadtrips with good friends, old and new.
14. My car. Every time I get in, I fall in love. Even 7 months and 6 days later.
15. Bars. =)
16. digg.com

I’ve gotta run because of number 6 and number 15. Night all..

-jayzer

the real beginning

If you happened to be up relatively late last night, you would have seen my actual first post, which has since been marked as a private entry. Stuff like that tends to happen when I’m up late night drinking a beer on an empty stomach. Anyway, to sum up the pertinent information in that post, I’ve basically decided to start writing here because I feel like I need a new start blogwise, and lifewise, really. I’ve become a bit of a bummer lately, and I feel like my life needs to change a bit. For better or for worse, what happens from now on will be documented here, rather than through the traditional myspace/xanga means.

I guess the eventual goal is to get off of the wordpress.com servers and on to some kind of jayzer-oriented domain. That happens one day when I actually have extra cash to spend. We’ll see..

Anyway, tonight’s topic? Why I’m afraid to let anyone become too much a part of my life anymore.

I once told Jennifer (the girl I call my ex-girlfriend, even 6 years later, just because it makes me feel better about myself for actually having some sort of an ex) near the end of our pseudo-relationship that it would benefit me to have my heart broken. Up to that point in my life I had never been broken up with (and I guess I technically still haven’t), and I figured, on some level, that it would be to my benefit to know what it feels like to have my heart seriously broken.

After having my heart broken, I officially retract that statement. For someone like me, who constantly seeks validation (more on that some other night), it was something I was not as prepared for as I somehow thought I was. I’m not going to go into the details here, because I really think that most of the people who care enough to know, already do know, and I’m hesitant to get too much more personal than I’ve already started to do here.

Moving on. Here’s why I’m afraid to get too close to anyone anymore:

When, throughout your day, you experience things (even things that have not much more relevance other than that it reminds you of a certain person) and immediately mark them in your head for your retrieval later, so as to relate them to this certain person to whom you were reminded when you experienced the thing in the first place (what a convoluted sentence, eh?), there’s obviously some sort of amazing connection involved. I think everyone can agree there. Though I’ve never been in a serious relationship, I almost feel like I might know part of what it feels like to be in one, if only through this seemingly meaningless sequence of events that occurred daily. This is what happened to me over basically the last two years of my life, give or take a month (take a month, actually). It was great while it lasted, but now that it seems that this connection cannot be anymore, I find myself reaching for my cell phone, only to close it soon after and wonder what I was thinking in the first place.

This seemingly insignificant part of my life, is, I’m discovering, bigger than I could have ever imagined. And that’s what makes it hard to let go.

I’m afraid to have someone else in my life who I will allow to affect my mood in such a way that this person has. That is, even with simplest message of disinterest. I don’t know that (being as emotional as I can be sometimes) I can allow this happen again. I know that I have to, because hey, it’s life…but I’m not all too keen on setting myself up for failure yet again. There’s hope. Bertman always said, “set yourself up for success”, and yes, it obviously applies in drum corps. Very much so. But like many things learned in drum corps, it has a much wider application. Somehow, some time in the future, I hope I can, indeed, set myself up for success. But until then, I’m afraid. Too afraid.

That’s all for tonight. To be more clear, I want the people who read this to know that I’m writing through this medium not with any hidden agenda. I’m writing mostly because it’s just something that I like to do, and it helps me clear my head and deal with things in better ways.

And this place is pretty, too…

At least I think so.

-jayzer