Life is....what?

I've been thinking a lot lately about things. Evaluating a lot in my life. I'm in a pretty alright spot. Good job, good family, good girlfriend, good schooling...the list goes on. But just like many others, I facebook stalk. Who needs reality television when you can watch someone's daily journal of posts and photos unfold every few hours in front of your eyes?

As I grow up from being a legitimate kid to being a full-blown adult, things change. Your perspectives grow harsher and more narrow than before when you had a spectrum of concepts and less cares to worry about as a child. I'm of the age to think about what I'm really going to do with my life. How successful do I really want to be with my career. When do I want to get married, start a family, travel to which destination on my rare vacations from work? So on and so forth.

This isn't judging. This is me questioning and looking for answers.

But with growing up, comes the age to do things without your parents consent, which would have been severely objected to by them when you were a mere two to three years younger. Young adults around my age having a kid outside of being married, not having a job, and then arguing with their significant other online in public areas for the rest of us to watch makes me really consider how I want my life to be, and wonder where theirs went 'wrong'. I put wrong in quotations like that because who knows if it's wrong or not. It could be wrong to me, but not to someone else, and I'm not here to judge. But I wonder how peoples lives will play out. Will the young adults child someday rise from the societal so-called mistake his/her parent make, and make something of themselves like Oprah did from her poverty, or Eminem from his trailer park life in Detroit? Or will they lose hope and fall into the titled 'rut' of "well, this is as good as its going to get" and not contribute to anything else in the world? How will the parents feel if their child succeeds them in life? Will they be proud that they made it better than they could provide, or would they be jealous that they couldn't do as good as their child, and attempt to piggyback their success?

It makes me wonder what I can do to make my life easier and less of a potential struggle than what others I see go through. How I can live as simple, fun and stress-less life. I don't know what my tomorrow is going to bring, but I pray that I can figure out how to handle anything that comes my way, and do it respectfully and right in the way of treating everyone else around me with class and hope that it does some good.

I just hope that in the end, I can look back at things and know that no matter what, I did the best that I could for any situation I was in, and that it led to being a good positive in my life for the future to come. 

Happy

You know, I never have really cared who reads this thing or not. I write on my "hideout" because I figure someone else is going through something similar to my life at times, whether it's happy or sad, and if I can somehow help them by letting them know that they're not alone in anything, and other people have problems too, then maybe I did the world some good, no matter how small.

Life hits hard sometimes. Lately it's punched me pretty good, and I've had blows that really hurt. From dealing with death, to lower than acceptable grades in college, to getting turned down from a college you were setting plans on and around to completely change nearly everything with what was "scheduled" for the next two to three years. With my personality, this doesn't sit well.

Why? It's because I'm of the type that likes to know what's going on. Not even being in control of what's going on. Just knowing what will happen makes me content. So getting the rug ripped out from under me with being denied entry to the Fall 2013 quarter at CSUB changed my entire plans. It first freaked me out, because I thought cumulative GPA was the reason, or that they were just too full to accept a middle-class, gonna-have-to-get-student-loans white kid from a farm town.

But without going into A LOT of details, I spent the weekend with my other half and good college friends at a Christian retreat at Hume Lake. No cell service to distract us, and a full three days to focus on life and our relationship with God. Coming back off the mountains that weekend, because of the speaker, I realized that I can't always know what's going to happen. I'm going to have to just trust the fact that there is a plan for my life, and things will work out despite not being what I originally thought I wanted them to be. Because what I want may not always be the best route to take.

And now today, I spent time going to the college and asking questions to people, wanting to know why I was denied, and what I need to do to fix it and get in next time. Because of the trivial nature of the California School System, they want me to finish all 60 units of gen-ed before transferring. I'm only about 10 away from finishing that, and am going to get them done in the summer time. But rules are rules, and this rule sets my plans back a quarter or two.

But the blessing here is that I can breathe a bit. Sure, I was ticked when I couldn't keep going gung-ho all the time and powering through all of this to get it done. You see, I'm taking 18 units right now, working 40+ hours a week, often times more. Factor in the times I spend going on trips to Los Angeles or Disney, or the coast, or spending time with family or my other half, and I'm burning my candle at both ends, and it's close to being burned out. This seems to be a sign of saying "Dude, you really gotta shift into low gear for a bit and not overheat the engine you're revving so hard right now". So I'll take a bit of time off before diving into my major. I'll slow down and just live a little less chaotic, and maybe get more than 4-5 hours of sleep a night.

And as a final note, the past 4 or 5 days are the happiest I have felt in a long time. For once in a great while I'm actually content. I have everything I could ever want with life, and I noticed I'm laughing more, smiling brighter, and being nicer to people as well (that's definitely been a problem I've worked hard on. Just ask my parents). So from here, I just need to try to keep my contentment and happiness going, and realizing that life's plan is really for me to just sit back and enjoy the ride. Because I can't force things to happen and expect it to always turn out so beautiful. That's not how life should be lived. It's a ride and I'm here to enjoy it. 

No Such Thing

"So the good boys and girls take the so called right track

Faded white hats

Grabbing credits

Maybe transfers

They read all the books but they can't find the answers

And all of our parents

They're getting older

I wonder if they've wished for anything better

While in their memories

Tiny tragedies"

This part of the song from John Mayer's No Such Thing really stands out right now. What's the best way to go in life? No one has that answer. Even if you think you do, you don't. Everything is customary to each person in this world. Just like no two snowflakes are alike, nor two fingerprints, no two humans are exactly alike with their life decisions and route they take to live. 

So why does society tell us what is best? Does having an iPhone, going to see _____ movie, or even going to _____ school make you who you are? Make what your life should be? I'm not here to preach how to live your life. I don't even know how to really live my life outside of the basics of what works for me: having a solid faith and relationship with God, love my family and girlfriend, and be as kind and good to everyone around me. But outside of that, what makes life "livable"? 

I'm fighting to figure out my transfer issues with college right now, and it's a real drag to deal with because of the system that's so problematic. I could go into how messed up it is that people who aren't even a citizen like the other 310+ million of us are, are getting into college easier than I am, or how because my parents make "just enough" "on paper" that I can't apply for FAFSA. Thanks alot, middle class white society for that one. 

But really, ever since the dawn of time, the ones that pursue knowledge have turned it into a club to pay to know what they've learned. Not that it's a bad thing. We wouldn't have a lot of things we have today if it wasn't for the people who want to know whats past the stars, or under the sea, or how to make something brighter than a candle and create a spark of electricity. But what's wrong is how selective this club is now. You need a ____ GPA to walk the halls of brainiac university. Better yet, you even need to be of a certain social class to even be looked at right from people. Perfect example: Matt Damon's character Will Hunting from Good Will Hunting. He was a JANITOR for the whizzes that created theorems and hypothesis. Yet he solved a problem that no one else could. Sure he's a rare case, but who is really one to deny anyone of access to knowledge if they really want to pursue it? 

I understand it stems from hard work, and that a lot of people could fail the system for being there so long if they don't understand their areas of work. But why can't we restructure the system on a pay-to-know basis? There's a recent trend in the schools that allow you to retake a class up to three times before you can't take it anymore in the California junior college system. And it's not even from that. What purpose does everyone need to know on the basis of basic classes past high school? Gen-ed college is barely more than what I learned in high school. Why can't it be open-sourced for people that actually WANT to know the information, and pursue it for however long, be accessible easier than the hoops needed to jump through to get to your passions?

I'm going to cool off and think more about my thoughts on this, but this is what's been on my mind this morning.