I thought it was the most unfair thing in the world when my Mom passed away. It wasn't fair how someone who helped so many people and had such a pure, giving heart had to endure all the things that happened to her. It wasn't fair to my Grandma to see her only child suffer so much. I felt angry and confused with everything, trying to reconcile the realities with life with the hope that good things happened to good people, and that in the end, the acts that you do on this Earth mattered and the positive changed you instilled came back to you many times over in the end.

I thought it wasn't fair that so much was tested of my Mom and my Grandma, if only to prove that they could handle it. They were both the strongest people I had ever met, with so much will and determination that I thought they would never be stopped - even when I knew my Mom was close to passing and my Grandma was getting older and beset with the heaviest of hearts with the constant burdens and misfortunes my Mother was to bear in her life.

I wish I could take solace in the fact that my Grandma is with my Mom now, hopefully watching me with pride as I try to live my life with the values and determination they fostered in me. I wish I could take solace in the fact that she felt no pain, that she knew I was asking of her and thinking of her when she was at her weakest. I wish I could take solace in the fact that she knew how much she meant to me.

I wish I had something, anything to take solace upon right now. The two most amazing people I have ever met, and the two people who have meant the most to me in my life are now both gone. I love and miss you, Mom, and I love and will miss you, Grandma. I owe you both so much.

but no one reads this anymore so it doesn't matter.

just ask me what it is.

it's the same as everything else. i know where i want to be, i have diverging options to get there. which way is the quickest? which road is the best one to travel?

such a recurring thought; if i had known then what i know now, it would have made such a difference. in case you're curious, and for some reason still reading this, i don't think there's anything in my life i regret more.

you deserved a better end to your life than that. you served me wonderfully in your own kickass supermachiney kind of way. others may not have been as fond of you as i was, but i thought you rocked and that you were one hell of a car. here's to you, kasmod - you straight up rocked and i think it's going to be awhile before i can really replace you.

when erin and i went through our cycles of trying to end the relationship, she made me help her through what was going on, to explain my mostly because feelings, and why i thought it would be best to end the relationship. it was extremely uncomfortable for me to have those conversations. i cared for her deeply and could see no way of having the conversation without hurting her. that said, i can understand why she needed to have it. she needed closure to the relationship so that she could move on without having too many links to the past, too many questions about herself and what happened that would prevent her from moving forward. it was difficult for me to discuss. i'm sure it was even more difficult to hear.

i realized over the course of those conversations with erin that finding closure has never been something that i sought out from relationships of mine that had ended, although retrospectively i wish that i had. it's ironic that i've learned so much more about relationships from my own failures that i did from my parents; seriously, God help me if i ever turn into either my mom or my dad in that respect. either way, in most cases i simply withdrew from all communication and the world itself - fighting the battle inside my own head, reaching no conclusive answers but trusting time to take away all of the negative feelings and confusion. time has proven me to be a fool in that assumption. i'm no more clear about the end of some of my relationships than i was when they originally happened, and while it's true i can say that the wounds of those arrows are all mostly healed, i can also say that some of those scars will never go away. whether that is due to never finding closure or peace with that person is simply just something i will never fully know.

it amazes me that so many people maintain long-lasting friendships with their exes. to be honest, i always assumed that the platonic "let's be friends" was essentially a copout to spare the feelings of the jilted lover, to try to convince them that you're not totally divorced of the situation. i don't know if the two ideas of correlated, between finding closure in the relationship proper and starting anew simply as a friends, whether immediately or somewhere down the road. i give so much of myself in relationships, it consumes so much of me, my world and my passion that it is hard for me to imagine suddenly switching gears. that is probably also why when the relationship abruptly stops, i don't know where to turn other than inside myself, where obviously there are more questions than answers.

i miss it though, the passion and the fury. i used to think that i was willing to sacrifice the pursuit of that giddy, foolish happiness in order to never, ever feel again as poorly as i did when things were over. i don't feel that way anymore. i don't need to hide behind my shield anymore. that's not to say that i'm on the warpath for finding someone, anyone to start a relationship with; my days of peaceful co-dependency are far behind me. i'm just saying that whenever i tell you that i'm too busy to be in a (non-long distance) relationship, don't believe me. i'm less busy than i was when i was in grad school at cmu, and i made that work.

everyone i talk to about it seems enamored with my single, bachelor life, and i'll admit that i'm enjoying myself and that it's nice to be have some gravity in my life, to be able to work things on my own accord and have something in my life that is a relief from the self-imposed pressure cooker that is my professional life. something more, something more. i think we all want something more, don't we? wanting it, finding it; these are things i can manage. putting down my shield and letting it into my world, that is something i'm not as sure of..mostly because i was never strong enough to let all of the pain hit me at once, to bottom out and find myself on the other side. wounds heal, but only if you take care of them before you're left permanently scarred.

i feel like i'm not doing enough with my life. i don't feel like i was meant to draw, to align, to move, to scale, to design. it's what i do and i love doing it, but it's not enough. i feel like there's something great inside me. i don't know if it's music, if it's a book, a screenplay. i have a million ideas and zero time to do them all. i feel like i'm wasting time just idling by, getting through the day by doing what i think i have to do as opposed to what i'm supposed to do, my calling.

i have to find it, whatever it is. it's driving me crazy. i feel like i could live a thousand different times and have a thousand different professions. i don't want to be a designer. nor do i want to be an author, a filmmaker, a photographer. i just want to create. i just want a find a way to explore every idea that i have until i find what i'm looking for and that idea, the masterwork in which all of my creative aspirations finally come into reality, finds me.

i want to paint the sky so beautifully that you just can't look away, and you know that the spectrum of the world that you see will never compare to the colors of the heavens.

this is the wrong town in which to be insecure. things move so fast, people move so fast. you have to moving along with them or you'll be swallowed up. i was thinking today that in all of the other jobs i had, all the times i was written about in eDesign or wherever, all the times that i got emails about lockjaw, i was that prodigy, that young kid who was brash, outspoken, and new on the block.

i should still feel like that, but i don't. i'm the youngest designer at work by far and i'm trusted with higher-impact things than many people. i'm proud of that. i just never feel like it's enough. i don't want to just get by. i want everyone in this town, this industry to know who i am. and that means working on more startups, writing more books, shaking more hands.

the strange thing is, i've felt like this ever since i went to cmu. probably even before. i was a relatively big fish in high school, but then i went to cmu and i was surrounded by geniuses. everywhere. i was just another underachieving slacker with tons of potential, just like everyone else in the school. i never felt like just being at cmu in the first place was enough. to my parents, it might have been, but to me, there wasn't anything notable about it.

i was lucky enough to discover talent and dedication in track that i didn't know that i had within me. finding that worked well for me, in the sense that it made me forget about my place at school, about not feeling like i'd accomplished anything. people knew who i was, i was kicking ass. it helped me find myself at cmu; i got involved in more things, i got into grad school, i felt like someone. i got to the point where it was enough.

all that said, i remember very strongly one thing my coach told me during one of the seasons. i was torn up almost to the point of tears during one meet, since i had false started in a very big meet and in the process ruined my chance at going to nationals for that season. he pulled me aside and told me, "if you're not enough with it, you'll never be enough without it." i know he was trying to put this event in a much smaller context against the great things i was doing in my life, but instead it just flooded me with that same drowning feeling all over again. i knew at the finish line, when school and track were going to be over, that just being myself wasn't going to be enough.

i guess i don't feel like i'm enough because i'm not. not right now. i don't know if it's just because i'm so ambitious that i have to succeed and to drive for everything, or if it's an issue with myself that i have to resolve if i'm ever going to find peace. i know it didn't happen with track, but i'm worried that i'll become content with my accomplishments and get lazy.

it seems like everyday people tell me i have such a great job, that i've been so successful in my life, that i'm going to do a lot of great things. it's nice to hear. i just wish i could feel about myself the same way that they feel about me.

when i'm tired and thinking cold
i hide in my music, forget the day
and dream of a girl i used to know

..i don't really write here anymore. go check the other site.

i keep telling myself tomorrow. tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. tomorrow becomes today whenever i wake up, and most likely nothing will change.

i want to. i really do. not even because i know it will make me feel better or even because i think it’s the smart thing to do, but more just so i’ll know. no day like today.