Category: General Life

Sometimes in my life I take myself to a lower level of functioning than is normal for me. I do this without realizing it. I take myself from being extreamly productive to being quite slow, lazy and just not as vibrant as my personalities have the ability to be. I am realizing this through some events that occured last night, events which reintroduced me to just being sporatic and doing what feels right instead of what is determined by my very predictable pattern.
There is one major flaw in the ultimate plan of GITI – everything is planned. If events in my life are planned months in advance and there is no detail left unwritten, then I am going to become bored with my life. Each evening when I get home I look at GITI, even if I know there is nothing there that needs my immediate attention. This habbit was formed from my habbit of doing the same during the first few weeks of the semester when there were always things in GITI that needed to be attended to. Now the course work is a little less strenuous and the assignments a lot more predictable. The predictability is probably what kills my motivation. I like to have courses where instructors are dynamic and their teaching style is always adapting and doing something new. Lecture, Scantron, Lecture, Scantron may work for some people who just want to get through their courses, get their hours and go on with their lives, but as I hositily pointed out to my “peer advisor”, that just isn’t for me. I am at this university to learn material that I want to learn, in addtion to the required dulldrum material of course. I don’t care if I get out of here in 2 years, 4 years, or 5 years. I just want to do what I know is best for me, which is to persue the education that I want. I know what it is that makes me happy when in an educational environment, I need to seek that out, not become bored with it and excel as I am expected to do.
After last night I am feeling a little better about things as far as my life in general, hopefully this will hold to be the same result after a few days go by. I really want to return to feeling the same way I did in the first few weeks of the semester.

How do I always get stuck with the nuts? I admit that psychologically I am not the most normal person on earth, but the people who seem to have levitated towards me in the past few weeks are more messed up than I ever thought someone could be. The best example of this is one that just occured a few minutes ago. One of my friends from high school had an issue with her boyfriend earlier in the week and as a result decided to stay in his dorm room until he would talk to her about what was bothering her. To vent frustrations she threw a tennis ball at the wall repeatedly for a period of a few hours, this annoyed the boyfriend’s roommates. The situation escalated and ended up with the police and the Residence Advisor both being called and her being given a choice of volentary mental insitutionalization or going home until a psychological evaluation could be conducted.
In my abnormal psychology class there are several people who have one or more of the studied disorders who decide to take a liking to me. Why is this the case? I know my personality is non-threatning to people who may consider themselves to be “different”, but I just dont see why everyone around me tends to be nuts. Can I just have a few sane people once in a while please?

As I have gotten older I have began to fulfil more and more of my goals in life. Somehow each of these “accomplishments” leaves me empty in the end. I remember in 7th grade I aspired to be Microsoft cerified, and now I am and it doesn’t really mean that much to me as an accomplishment. I feel somewhat satisified with myself because I had a goal and decided to persue it. Things in my life that are out of my reach seem like such great accomplishments until they are in my reach and then they are meaningless and hold less value than they once did.
I used to want to be a beta tester for a long time, until I became one and the group membership wasn’t as special as I thought and no significant adjustment to my level of happieness occured. Now I am gradually falling off the whole beta thing and sticking with things that work. Since Microsoft has changed their beta practices and communication methods it hasn’t been the same and I no longer value my “beta rights”.
One of my past goals was to become a college student, because in my view college students were so independant and successful with things. I am now finding that as a college student I haven’t changed from my original situation. Instant changes would likely have more of an impact on me, but nothing in life is instant, everything is gradual. I expect that I will gradually mature while in college. I also expect that my independance will gradually come and will be finalized by me moving out of my parents’ house permenantly.
I can’t do anything about this problem with me achieving goals and feeling indifferent, but I must keep setting goals and accomplishing them so that I don’t become depressed and have no goals and no functional life. Any goal is better than no goal.
Interesting quote of the day (from an email list): “Men who are sensitive, caring, and good looking are never available – Because they already have boyfriends”
Aren’t sterotypes fun?

Ever notice that in your life you can’t quite see everything at all levels all the time?
I recently started working on my life analysis/diagnostic outline as I mentioned in a previous entry. As I have gotten deeper into it I decided to look back on my previous analysis, there are drastic differences in what the goals look like. This time the goals are a lot more future centered instead of here-now centered like the old analysis. In the current analysis I focus on things like graduating from UNCC with my degree, this is at least 2 years away and as many as 4 years away. The older analysis is more “me” centered, it goes into things like my personality and the level of stress I was handling at the time. The difference between the two documents is huge, but when i look back, so are the situations. There is a notation on the older document that states that I was handling what I considered to be “chaos” at the time, which would tend to make me more here-now focused. I am not sure why the current document is being constructed, I guess I feel that my priorities might be a little unclear and in need of analysis.
Another thing that is occuring with me in the new analysis is that I am not as involved with my academic career anymore, this is because of the change in academic format. There is a lot less day-to-day stuff to handle. I am now just responsible for learning the material and being able to repeat it for a test. I felt much more involved in high school, and even during my Summer College education sabbatical where I did electronic courses requring me to learn information by myself. My original passion for learning I had in the Spring with Interpersonal Communication and Intro to Ethics has not fully returned yet. Some components of the environment have not yet been met. I need an environment where it is more than just lecture. I like dicussion based courses where I truely feel involved and like I have a reason for being in the room. As much as I have a problem with being in social environments, I love being in a classroom where I can know all of the students and be able to have intelligent discussions with them. High school had a feeling of administrative pressure, and the ever-present peer-judgement. I still love learning, but I am having adaptation issues in my present life and I need to figure out what is truely right for me.
I will continue working on the analysis document for the next few days and try to see what I do need to change in my life. I am pretty certain that it doesn’t involve me getting a job or leaving UNCC. The major aspects of my life at the moment are pretty much set in stone and I am happy with them. The minor things need some work yet, and thats probably why I can’t get the analysis down to that level yet. I need to drill further in my conciousness to find where my problems are and where my goals are hiding.

This week I have snapped at more people than I think I have in my entire life. Usually I can attribute my harsh outburts like the ones this week to some unusual mental occurance. This time I cant, because the cause is way too visible to me. I have become jelous of most people I know. I feel like I am being self-supressed. There are some people who I consider to be superior to me (instructors, Chris, etc) who I don’t have a problem with being more accomplished than me, but people who I consider to be “peer” or below who do more with their lives than I have done make me insanely jelous. At the current time people who have some type of technological superiority (real or implied) and people with jobs are the main components that set me off. The primary person with a job that pisses me off is my father. He has a job and eagerly throws that in my face as often as he can. Other people do it more subtly and don’t get a verbal assult from me as quickly, this would be people like Jake (in CA) and Tim (at UNCC). They don’t realize what they are doing to me emotionally until it is too late. There are yet others who can talk about their work all day long and not bother me, this would be people like Ryan (my lab partner) who don’t gloat and are more laid back than I am. I guess for this problem the best solution is just for me to actually get a job. I have plenty of spare time in which I could work, I just choose not to, because I feel that I can do better on other things in my life without working. This is definately an internal issue that will require some life change to resolve though. I am getting too bored and getting too jelous of people who have jobs and are better at anything than me.
On the more positive side, there is now a plan of action in place for me to complete my MCSE by Marth 4, 2005. Microsoft Exam 70-217 will be scheduled for Thursday, December 9, 2004 at around 2PM. Exam 70-219 (my much feared design exam) will be on some day in January or February, or in the event of me getting behind in my scheduling I will take it on my March 3rd or 4th (my birthday). I don’t know when I will upgrade myself to MCSA and MCSE on Windows 2003, but it shouldn’t be too long after I complete my Windows 2000 certifications. I will likely upgrade MCSA by summer 2005 and not worry too much about MCSE. I have decided to work on my MCSE because I need to focus on something other than purely normal academic stuff. Chris continues to remind me that I am blinded by my education and dreams of doctoral graduation, he is very correct. I let myself get too involved in anything I do. My excentric personality is always what leads me to a dead end. My life isn’t as simple as I try to make it sometimes. I need to spread my mind wider and explore more of my life, not just opperate in tunnel vision all the time.
Paradise is only a state of mind, Chaos is the state of reality.

I just arrived on campus a few minutes ago, prepared to go to Deductive Logic, and sort of excited about it. Upon arriving at McEniry 122 I discovered a note stating that class was cancelled due to Mrs. Dr. Presler being ill. I now find myself with an hour of free time before Physics. My first instinct here was to begin finding things to fill this time, such as take care of registering for my credit by examination a few hours ahead of schedule, but then what would I do in that block of time? It is my natural tenancy to want to schedule things and fill blocks of time simply because they exist. I am finding that at the moment, doing nothing (grabbing a soda, being in Barnard and wasting time) seems to fit this time nicely. There are other things I could be doing now, such as going to the gym, running around the track, reading additional material for my classes, or any number of things for the excersizing of my body or mind. At this point though, I think it is best for me to just chill and enjoy one of the carefree moments I have while on this campus.
The rest of my day is still scheduled to be mostly normal I believe. Dr. Naeini is on campus today, I don’t know about Betsy but I would assume that she is here also. Between Physics and English I will take care of my registration for credit by examination with the College of Bussiness Administration. I originally planned to get the registration done on Monday, but that sort of fell through.
I have been very lax about blogging recently, but I don’t particularly care, this doesn’t have to be a once a day thing, I just like doing it occasionally, such as right now when I am inspired to write something.

It has been a few days since I last posted. It is likely that this blog will end up not serving the purpose of documenting the best times I had in college, because so far whenever something fun or exciting happens I end up not being at the keyboard and don’t feel like writing much about the event when I get back. Friday after my classes I went to see my best friend, Chris. We went to do a few things he needed to get done, then we went to the mall and did some other stuff. Not an extreamly exciting time for the typical college student, but I enjoyed it. Saturday was spent on sleep recovery and cleaning up my living area a little. Today (Sunday) was spent with Chris again, but this time at my house. We set up a linux server and reorganized my closet. Sometimes with the way Chris and I interact I feel like I have known him my entire life. Best friends like him are hard to find.
The point of this post which I was eventually going to get to was: when the blog gets quiet, there is no reason for alarm amoungst the loyal citizens of the Internet. Between entries I live, if I live through an entry period, then I am doing better than is usually expected.
Curtis’s Daily Checklist:
– Eat
– Sleep
– Breath
– Blog
– Homework
It seems that simply living isn’t on my list of priority items for each day. Perhaps I need to schedule a time to reevaluate my priorities. Where would that fall on my daily task list though?
Who decided that 24 hours in a day were enough, and that humans require sleep?
Sleep is inefficient and a waste of time. We musnt sleep, FIGHT THE UNCONCIOUS MENACE!

On this blog there are some things that I avoid mentioning about my life because it is something that somehow doesn’t pass my mind as something that should be public knowledge, but yet with other blogs I read, such things are open and discussable. Maybe I am afraid that someone might read my blog who doesn’t know the information about me (such as family members, etc) and then my interactions with that person might be changed drasticly. My name doens’t exactly blend in to a pool of names, it is very distinct and recognizable.
Perhaps it is time for me to open myself up a little on this blog and just let my purest thoughts pass to it. Of course my more private events would remain private. I can’t live my life fearing what other people think of me. Ive done that for way too long. There are people in my world who try to push me back into my life of being overly self concious, such as Kyle Mulligan. His criticism scares me, his opposition to me enrages me. I can’t let people like him have that type of control in my life.
My bigest problem with me feeling like I am constantly being judged is the fact that I know there is always someone doing it and that they always have a negative opinion. The person is myself. I am usually the quickest to find flaws in myself and want to eliminate them. Last night was a very unusual situation for me. I was sitting here like I do every night, talking to people online and doing other stuff. I was working on some Physics homework. I allowed myself to get over-stressed on the homework and on other thoughts in my mind, at that point I cracked and found every flaw in myself and identified it. From that point forward I began having this disorganized thought pattern. It is very atypical for me to have many thoughts out of sequence or not logically arranged. I began to panic when that happened, most people who are attentive to my online statuses knew it. I have to learn to be less concerned with perfectionism and more open to being a flawed human. In my years before UNCC I was able to handle most things that were thrown at me and theings I couldn’t were flawed in some way. My ideal self (super ego) has been transformed from its high school version of wanting only to be accepted and high achieving, now to its college version which is more perfectionistic than ever. I MUST have an A in all classes, I MUST be present when it is physically possible (exclusion for overrides by my need to be paranoid). In my first 27 hours of college credit I have perfect scores, a 4.0 GPA. I was dealt a swift blow when my 28th – 30th hours were completed with only a B. This displesased my super ego greatly, putting more stress on my ego to excel at everything it does. My question to myself is where is my Id in all of this? Superego is definately accounted for, and the ego obeys superego, where is the Id to throw illogical desires into my life and make me not so perfect and squeeky-clean all the time? Last night I found myself planning a spring trip for hiking in the mountains as a fun and relaxing way for me to enjoy myself with a friend. All of my previous “perfect” role models in high school, Matt Lamb and Guy Broome, primarily, have started social drinking now that they are at college. My primary presenting-self would find great embarrasment in ever doing anything like that. But why? Why I am I not now normal? Can I ever be normal or am I doomed to live this life of needing to be perfect based on my pre-disposed images of perfection.
For “Perfect Curtis” to be achieved the following must exist: