Why am I the exception? Of all the people I should be the one who believes in this theory of science, of logic, and of meaning, but for some reason I don’t. I believe in the Creation of the Universe. 

Reckoner by Radiohead off of In Rainbows keeps streaming through my iPod headphones and through my mind. But I can’t get my mind off of this. 

Why do I keep questioning this? Why do I keep going? Something else is making me tick. It doesn’t quite feel like science. Science alone can’t do this to me. We have to have a soul. A soul is what kicks into us, it’s what gives me such a passionate nature. 

I keep streaming my hands through my long hair. I think it’s time for a hair cut. A hair cut would be nice.

But I can’t quite do that right now I can think all I want, I can meditate. I can reason inside my head.

I guess it’s time to do some more thinking. I mean, it’s only 2 AM.

(Disclaimer: This has no subliminal relation to the 3 AM ads from Hillary. I have registered as Libertarian for the November election.)

On one hand, it was unavoidable. Moving to another country that is. I had no option. Well, I did: leave my family behind. Am I really that sick? Would I really do that?

No. Never. I’ve learned the lesson of my life: family comes first, no matter what. I hated my parents for the decision they made. But I don’t know what I would have done or where I would have been right now. I just don’t know whether it was good or not.

It was one of the hardest times of my life. I was under so much pressure to succeed and get out of the pit I was in. A month before I left I was so focused on where I was going to be in six weeks, six months, and a year. And at the end, it didn’t even matter.

I should be runnning for ASB President right now. I was so mad last year when I lost Junior President; all I could think of was “What’s Next?”. I was going to play football and rock. I was going to be amazing and show everyone that despite what they thought I could. But it couldn’t go on.

I can’t see through most of it yet. I don’t know why this or that happened, all I know is that it hurt. It hurt bad. It was what I and some others called life.

I constantly keep doubting myself. Am I faithless? Am I faithful? Or am I going insane? Is there some grand plan in this? Is there something in the glory of having a normal life? Is there something grand in having normal parents or normal friends? Is there something in every day waking up to another nightmare or problem? Because no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work.

How? Just how? I’m the good kid, remember? I’m the kid that “doesn’t deserve it”. I’m the kid that every parent wishes for. But it just didn’t work out that way; I couldn’t control where I am. But something had to - there’s something there - I can just feel it. The last six months has kept screaming “reason” out to me. There was a pattern in this - there was so much going wrong in a short space of time - how could there NOT be something behind all of this?

Last night was the hardest. I tried to fall asleep and all these nightmares and all these dreams - which were now lost - kept racing through my head. Sleep was supposed to be a solace, but it didn’t stop there. It just kept getting worse and worse. More pain and more regret.

I woke up and just kind of shut everything out. But it keeps coming back. I keep thinking about the future but I’m focused on the past. It should be the complete opposite. I’m focused on all the wrong in my life, but what about the right?

Did I make an impact? Sure, I did. Did a few people not like me? Sure. Was it worth it all? From what I understand, I’ll know that answer soon. But it should be simply this: Yes. Whatever these decisions do, and wherever they lead me, I know it will be to something great. I constantly find myself saying “There is a God, and he’s done this to me.” There can’t just be something out of nothing in all of this. Some of it’s so messed up to the point I don’t know how it’s possible. I couldn’t convince myself that it had happened unless I have lived through it.

I’ll admit it, I was depressed. I’m a patriots fan. It was fun harassing those colts fans while it lasted. But after the game, I purposely avoided IRC and AIM for a good couple of hours, because you know, “Who can’t beat Tom Brady and the mighty mighty Patriots?”.

Eli Manning and his Giants can, apparently.

I don’t know how the NFL runs, but I do know one thing: It’s one thing to win when everyone says you can’t. I’ll use High School Football as an example. The local newspaper and the blogs all whine and whine about how Big #1 has the best offensive line or the best Linebackers. Then Friday Night comes and they’re just not playing the way you thought they would and you end up winning.

It feels great, to be honest.

It also feels great to pound the other team into the ground. Even if you’re not that good of a player, it’s a great feeling. I had the opportunity of being on a team that went undefeated, and after everything’s done, well, it doesn’t really matter. And the next year teams really don’t like you. Really. Don’t. Like. You.

The only thing that people get out of supposed “perfection” in sports, and even in life, is a limited time-span of fame. Maybe a few months or years.

But then it gets written down and after a while, forgotten. Whether it’s the ‘72 dolphins or a high school football team, the end result is a trophy, something to tell your grandkids, or in my case, some website.

And this is what I realized last night: perfection doesn’t matter. We as humans can’t be perfect. There’s always something that could have been done better, but that’s just not where life takes us. We can’t attain perfection. Our minds are wired in a way that it isn’t possible - and none of us really know what it is. There’s nothing that can describe it.

Some would say that perfection is when we’ve reached our maximum potential in life - but who or what draws the line on what we can attain? There’s always something more.

Here’s to you, Eli Manning.

Special thanks to those who providedFake Steve with the images, and Steve Ballmer for being such an idiot.

Probably not.

I’ve been working on getting this thing up and running over the past few weeks to make up for what could be called the hardest six months of my life (if the few sporadic very-emoish posts didn’t tip you off).

To my 11 faithful readers via Feedburner: I salute you. Thanks for being there for me when uh, no one else was.

With the uncertainty of the future of RandomShapes, I’m not so sure what’s going to happen with my blog. I’d love to make a few extra bucks off of this a month. But I tend to get bored with this blog and my various other projects. And the other day, as I got extremely bored, I started to read what some of the people that linked to me were saying, and people apparently liked it more than I thought. So I got to thinking and looked at my archives.

I came up with this conclusion: I haven’t really wrote a really intelligent post in a while. Unless you want to call the cryptic gibberish poetry as something.

My life was hard. It was hard to hang in there. But I think the crazy and unbelievable drama they call my life has finally come to a standstill, I hope. But uh, well…

How do I explain this.

Oh, here’s an easy way. Ever heard that saying “You never know where your life is going to take you”?

My life happened to drag me across the Pacific ocean. Shocking, I know. I’m currently living in Bondi Beach, NSW, Australia with my family. It’s been really interesting. More on that later, but Australia is just so different than America. It’s a completely different world.

I start high school sometime next week. I can’t quite describe what it’s going to be like. I left my senior year, football, and everything behind all for the sake of trying something new.

I even fell off of an ATV and got a concussion as well as broke my left middle metacarpal, but I tend to think of that as more on the border of “dangerous” than new.

Anyway, enjoy the new theme. And more content will come soon, I promise.

I’m alive, I’m here, I’m breathing, and I’m alright.

Well, it seems that way. I’m not dead, My heart is still beating, and I’m conscious. Although “alright” might be a completely different story.

I’m alive, I’m here, I’m breathing, and I’m alright.

Maybe not. I’m not alright. I’d give anything to be somewhere else; to have one day of everything that was “normal” in my life. But that wasn’t what was given to me, and despite the tears, despite the pain, and despite the hardships, I can make it. I wouldn’t be put into this if I couldn’t make it out.

I’m alive, I’m here, I’m breathing, and I’m alright.

I’m torn. You’ve taken everything I thought I had, everything I wanted, everything I desired, everything i had a passion for and crushed it in front of me. You continue to do it. I feel like there’s some disease that’s taken control of my body and infected me. It’s slowly consuming my soul and devouring every part of my spirit. Day by day it gets worse, and then when it can’t get any worse, it does.

I’m alive, I’m here, I’m breathing, and I’m alright.

I’m sitting here drowning. Every word  someone says, be it a friend, a mentor, or whatever seems to push me deeper down into the water. It doesn’t hurt anymore. It really doesn’t hurt at all. I’m being pushed to my limits. When I sleep, all there is is screaming. When I wake up, all there is is screaming. I feel like there has to be an escape. There has to be somewhere to go, there has to be more to life than this.

I’m alive, I’m here, I’m breathing, and I’m alright.

I can see you where there’s nothing to be seen. I can feel you where there’s nothing to be felt. I can stand in front of you when no one’s there. I can feel your hand on me when nothing else matters. I am unworthy.

I’m still alive, I’m still here, I’m still breathing, and I’m still alright.

I hate when things don’t go the way I want them to. I hate when I invest a great amount of time and effort into something, but it still isn’t good enough. I hate when I put all of my heart and passion into something and nothing comes out of it. It seems like a large amount of people hate me. I don’t know why. But oh well. It just wasn’t good enough.

People say “Business is business”. I say this: Fuck it.

Business is what you make it out to be. Success can’t be measured by how much money you make. Real friends stick to something, even when it all goes bad in the end. Real friends aren’t assholes. Who cares if someone has to pay for it.

One of my coaches said something really great: “if there’s two things you need to know, it’s simply this: love God and love your friends”. Adam Sandler also said this in the venerable Click: “Family comes first”.

Did I lose a few friends in this whole nameless ordeal? Probably. It was really fun guys. You know who you are. Some of you know that I really don’t like you now. Some of you know that I lost a role model and a really good friend.

I don’t know where I’m off to now. I’m kind of lost. My reputation is apparently horrible. But that’s the great thing about it: I love a challenge. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The statistics say that I probably will go on to fail again, but the great thing about it is that small chance that I won’t. And that’s a chance I’m willing to take.

A good friend of mine said this: Business is business, but there is a human being on the other end.

You know, even though what you’ve done to me has changed my life, I still love you. No matter what you do, no matter where you take me or what you challenge me with, I’ll give it a good fight. I won’t ever stop, I promise you that. We wouldn’t want the other guy to win now, would we?

I’ve ran past the problems. I’ve ran past the fact that I will never be able to play another sport in my life. I’ve ran past the constant headaches, the constant pain in my neck, the constant depression, the constant feeling of being sick, and the constant feeling of numbess in my my body. I’ve given everything I had just so I could please you. I know very well that I probably won’t lead a normal life, but, well, frankly, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

You helped me deal with my family. It’s been a struggle. I’ll admit that. You’ve tried to show me how to forgive when there was nothing to forgive for, you’ve showed me how to accept when there was nothing to accept for, you’ve shown me what <em>true</em> love is. It’s really a constant struggle.

I’ve been living so long with these pictures of you, and I almost believe that these pictures are all I can feel.

You give me a reason to live when I have no other. You give me the passion give everything in my heart for you. You do it all. And frankly, sometimes I think I’m not worthy. You’ve given me everything. To think that things would turn out the way they did is really unimaginable. You keep saying “you’ll see”. I think I’m starting to see some of it and I feel so unworthy.

My purpose and desire are to please you, no one else. Everything else that gets in the way is utterly meaningless. Because without you, I wouldn’t have been here, and I probably wouldn’t have made it. People have told me “It’s all about you, it’s YOUR inner strength, YOU’RE strong”. I beg to differ. It’s not about me. If it was about me, then why should I care? I’m not here to please myself, because that’s really not what I believe life’s about. There’s got to be something more, because life is just too empty to not be that way.

It’s times like these when I really need you, when nothing feels like it’s going in the right direction. I feel like I can’t keep going on. Life is hard right now. It doesn’t feel like it’s going in any direction, for that matter. But it’s your direction, Lord. Because, you know, your direction is probably much better than mine would have ever been.

I’m tired, worn down, and stressed. Give me strength, make me alert, and take my stress away, I’m begging you. If it isn’t your will, then don’t, but please, strengthen and guide me.

I feel like everything that’s happening to me is wrong. It hurts. It hurts more than anything. But, you knew everything was going to crash and break in my life. You know what you’re doing, and I don’t deny that. It’s just that sometimes it seems that all I have left is pictures of you and what you’re doing.

As I was sitting at my desk reflecting on what was going to make my three day weekend minimized down to a mere three hours (thank you, Junior year), I looked up at my calendar and noticed that it was still in August. It wasn’t that hard to overlook; my whole body shuttered every time I made eye contact with the bright red 1970 Gran Torino, one of the ugliest cars to ever come off of the Ford assembly line.

I thought to myself “oh, hey, my calendar’s in August”. My head started to fill with memories. The honors classes, the concussion, the drama, the stress, and the failure. Looking back at it all, it just feels like it was such a long time ago.

I don’t know exactly how I feel towards last year. I have an adamant hatred of it on one hand, and on the other hand, I just feel like there was something in me that wouldn’t have been the same person if it hadn’t.

September’s featured car was a Mustang GT. I thought to myself “Oh, hey, Car and Driver finally did something right”. And then the last six months just started to fill in my head.  I remember March had featured a Stage 1 Roush Mustang, and then everything started to flip through my head. The Charger in May, The ‘72 Boss in April. Then the events of the last six months flashed back in my head.

I realized that if it hadn’t been for everything that happened last Fall, I wouldn’t have been able to make it through the last six months. The last six months have probably been the hardest times of my life: School ending on a bad note,  losing my relationship with a few family members, then the health issues, then people getting _mad_ at me for being so cold towards said family members, then failing at life, then me getting mad at certain people for being cold towards other family members, then drama, then heartbreak, then anger, then confusion.

Which is where I’m at right now. I don’t know who to believe, or what to think. Everyone is telling me to not believe what everyone else tells me. But people like to make things that aren’t a big deal into something grand, and then people like to treat others like jerks, then other people like to think that everyone’s business is their business, then people seem to contradict what they believe, then people like to be cold towards other people, then…well, the list goes on.

A year ago I would have said this is the defining moment where I’m supposed to figure out how I live my life. But it isn’t. There isn’t a book that says “do this, and this will happen”. My life isn’t like a linear function. I can’t drop my life into a calculator and have the answer come out. There’s more to it than that. It just bugs me that some people try to live their life that way, because according to them, they don’t need a God. They somehow understand themselves and know what’s best for them . They can control their emotions and their thoughts, because “they’ve grown up”. It doesn’t work that way. Calculators are an I/O (Input-Output) device. They don’t have  a plan, they don’t give you life, and they can’t solve your life problems. In the same way You don’t know what the best decision is for yourself.  And it really isn’t about “you”. Sure, Things happen, but, considering the specifics of what’s happened to me personally, things don’t happen at random.

And then there’s the person who thinks that having it all together and having it made seems to be happy. I’m sick of people saying that they are happy and that they enjoy their lives, then five minutes later cursing what’s been given to them. Nothing can make you truly happy, not money, not having a girlfriend or boyfriend, not a thing UNLESS you know what to do (or, in some cases, not do) with it. There’s a greater plan, and a greater planner behind all of this.

Which is where everything ties in: despite all the mixed emotions I have, I want to keep pressing on. People ask me how I cope with everything. And the answer: I don’t. I really don’t. I let the man upstairs deal with it, and let him do what he wants. He’s given me more and less than others, but I don’t like to compare. Every person is going to have their fare share of problems, and some people are going to have bigger ones than others. But we’re all created equal, every single one of us. And it’s not a matter of what we’re given. It’s what we do with it.

And that’s _exactly_ what I plan on doing. My life isn’t about my talents and abilities, it’s about what I do with them. I’m _not_ a passive person. I want to glorify the person who’s given me so much to do something with. No matter what it takes, I’m going to right a few wrongs that have happened, and I’m going to achieve the goal. I might have mixed emotions about everything, but It’ll works itself out somehow. Always has, and always will.

September, by the way, is a Dodge Viper. Way to mix things up, Car and Driver.

I’ll never give up. You think the fact that I’ve got an arachnoid cyst in my brain’s going to stop me? Do you think that letting my father leave me with my brother (and then coming back) will break me? Do you think that the fact that I went from being an honors student to being on the brink of academic probation will end it all? Do you really think that?

You’re wrong, terribly wrong. You’ll never stop me. All of this will make me work harder. There’s obviously some plan in all of this; coincidence doesn’t throw all of these events into one year, and doesn’t throw all it’s got at me over a two-week period.

You think the fact that I’m not a “normal” teenager gets me upset. You think the fact that I don’t do drugs or alcohol and never will makes me mad because I’m not “cool” like my friends. You think my imperfections will stop me. Well, you’re horribly, horribly wrong.

I don’t care that I’m not somebody else. Sure, I’ve begged, I’ve pleaded, and I’ve cried. But that doesn’t matter anymore. My failures will not devour my heart any longer.

So here’s my response to you: bring it. Give me all you’ve got. Try your hardest. You won’t stop me. Nothing ever has, and nothing ever will. I won’t let you.