What Happened to August in Chicago?

This weather blows. Besides that...

I have lots to write about. And I've taken some good notes. Lots of ideas flowing. Just don't quite have enough time to dedicate to a fully flushed out post. I promised I would be better in August than I was in July. And I lied. But to be honest, I've been filling my nights with people and experiences, combined with looking for a new apartment, so free time is currently at a premium. Maybe next month it will slow down, maybe it won't. But as for now, I'll do my best to get at least one legitimate thought strand down a week. My goal is two. We'll see how it plays out. Thanks for all that have been reading this discombobulated mess. Don't plan on stopping soon, cuz I know I won't be.

Stay Connected

In a time when it has never been easier to keep in touch and stay connected to people in your life, are you? Consider this a challenge.

I have spent almost 5 hours logged into facebook tonight. I spent another hour in and out of gmail. I have chatted, emailed, wrote on walls, and commented on pictures. I have browsed the lists of other online facebookers, seeing who I could entice for an evening conversation. Besides doing laundry, going to look at an apartment, and eating a quick dinner, it's been a pretty boring night. But while I sat here, seemingly intertwined in the lives of hundreds of people I once knew, I began to realize how isolated social networking has made me. Has made us.

In sometimes desperately trying to maintain relationships with anyone that was, at one time, important in our lives, we have desensitized ourselves to the true meaning of connection.

We've substituted coffee shop conversations for chatting online. We've substituted phone callfs for texting. We've substituted drop-bys for emails. And in doing so, we have lost the essence of what it once meant to grow a bond between two people. I'm the first to admit, for much of high school, college, and probably up until right now, I always considered online communication my friend. I was able to be deliberate, thought out, structured, manicured, even strategic. But what I gained in electronic skills, I wasted in personal skills.

And with the means increasing, the portablenes of devices escalating, and the capability to 'always be connected,' I have lost something which should be valued like diamonds. I don't care how many pictures you see of me, how many friends I can link to, or how many times you've read my profile, it is almost impossible to keep up with an other's life unless you're in it. Not just as a name and a 200kb image. Which is why it was so important to me to make dinner plans with someone that I haven't seen in a long time. My news feed couldn't possibly be enough.

So that's where I challenge you. Don't be complacent with the expanding technology involved with online networking. Take a chance one day and go for a walk. Go buzz someone's apartment and hope their home. Give someone a call and meet at a coffee shop. There's a saying 'let your fingers do the walking.' Well stop letting your fingers do the talking too. Take what you think you have, and make it personal. It will make you a better person, and it will keep you close to people that may have otherwise faded into the technological abyss, this digital masquerade.

You Ever Laughed When You're Crying?

It's funny. Sometimes when you're 'down,' you want to stay down, simply reinforce the reasons for being down, and not deal with any sentimental, forced flowery from a friend's attempt to pick you back up.

That will be the focus of this.

When you receive something, or hear something, or read something, or find something out that spins you into a new realm of pissed off, depressed, or simply hurt, you fall into a moment of complete purity that is often impossible to recreate. For me, the feeling is like a heavy heart. Sounds 80s cliche, but it's honest. For whatever reason, when I hear that gut wrenching news of something I wasn't expecting, my heart feels too heavy to hold, like there's a weight tied onto its midsection, and it can't do one more dip. So instead of pumping back up, it just slowly sags to a rest.

But that immediate future is a pure, raw state of your body. And one of the few, along with sneezing, crying, bleeding, and getting the chills. But we all know how I feel about the chills (purist form of human behavior achievable).

Sidenote: Writing the word future reminded me of a George Carlin line: There is no present, only the recent past and the immediate future. So true.

Anyway, the curious part of a heart-sagging episode is the response. Like i opened with, sometimes you want to stay hurt. Maybe for the attention, maybe for the rage, maybe because you're bored, but there's some part of each person that doesn't want words of encouragement when bad news hits. Sometimes you feel like the Narrator and want to destroy something beautiful. Nothing settles your stomach or slows your thoughts. In fact, the buttered up lingo people sling around only makes things worse. They become part of the problem.

But what's funny, is that funny works. Wallowing, self-reinforcement, forced heartache, it's all fleeting. It's all avoidance behavior. It's a cop out. A disguise. At the end of the day, will this 'news' make or break you? Unless it's a diagnosis of cancer, I think you'll live. And as hard as it is, your friends are there to pick you up. And make you laugh when you don't want to. You ever laughed with tears coming out of your eyes? It's a weird feeling, but one that I'm sure you've experienced. Because you're in a state of reaction. No planning. Nothing safe. You're exposed. And it feels, great.

Didn't quite know where this was ending, but now I've found it. Laughing while crying, in my book, has now surpassed the chills as the single most pure emotion your body can produce. But it takes the weathered shoulder of someone that cares about you to get there. Never forget them, those that lift you up. They are the ones that earn a heavy heart if weighted news ever travels about them.

This disjointed mess of a post slightly resembles my state last night. I'll be cleaner in the future, i promise.

Fake Tears

I'm a sap. Most of you know this. So how was I able to 'keep my cheeks dry' when I had to say goodbye to a friend who's moving away? I have a theory.

For me, tears are not hard to come by. Movies and TV shows have their way with my tear ducts. For some reason, watching paid actors pretend to be devastated evokes such a strong feeling from me. Shows like Scrubs will get me going. Series finales have always affected me. I even got teary-eyed listening to Mike and Mike in the morning on my way to work. That's a sports talk radio show. They were raising money for the Jimmy V Foundation, a foundation for cancer research, and reading emails and texts that listeners were sending in. The unprecedented appreciation for every dollar donated, and the stories of family members that have passed, and the ones that survived, I don't know, it just plucked at my heart string.

Hell, even hearing Sugarland cover REM is giving me the chills. Knowing how much passion is behind the every word of the 'the one i love' makes me shiver with emotion.

But when I was faced with an emotional and depressing real life situation, someone standing in front of me, someone I've grown very close to over the last 12 months, someone moving on and moving out, I barely felt an ounce of sadness. Why? Because I was genuinely happy. Happy for my friend exploring a new opportunity. Happy for the last year that we've had a chance to get to know each other. Happy for the bond that was formed. And happy that the situation was being played out by real people, so there was no heart shattering music, no camera tricks, zooms, cuts, there were no trained facial expressions, no reaction shots, no second takes, direction motivation, no false forced feelings. Just the raw, pure, and genuine appreciation for the happiness I had experienced with her, and the hope and promise that the future brings.

So I guess it takes fiction to get me choked up. And I'm pretty okay with that. Let's me appreciate the best of my own life for what its worth. Not a bad place to be.

Oh You Don't Even Know What Pain Is

We've all been hurt. Physically, emotionally, financially..... Pain comes in many forms and in an array of severity levels. As has been common with my recent entries, I don't feel a need to go into much further explanation and flowery prose about how and why we feel pain. Honestly, the human body amazes me in its reaction to something damaging. It's really quite an impressive little contraption, our bodies. But we all know about bruising, swelling, aching, and any other means that our bodies and minds use to warn of us injury and protect us from anything more. And why am I prefacing this post with another rant of things we already know? There's something regarding pain that I want to discuss. Obviously.

I really have no idea what anyone else feels. Absolutely none. And there is no way that anyone else can ever know what I feel or how much pain I am in.

Now I know that some things are relative, and that there should be some sort of hierarchy of pains that can classify how someone should be feeling. I would hope that if a friend of mine has the same injury, to the same extent, that I have had, that we are feeling somewhat of the same thing. I would hope. But I have no idea. Maybe my dislocated finger hurts me far more than someone else. Maybe my headache is pounding and severe, but I deal with the pain better than others. Maybe my body is reeeally good and making things not hurt as much.

So with that in mind, you can't even put yourself in someone's shoes in order to try to understand what they're going through. My friend just fractured his collar bone, and struggles mightily to even put on a shirt. Maybe he shouldn't have taken his shirt off in the first place, but the roof was sunny and the beer was flowing, so I can't really blame him. But it was quite a little show, the 5 of us watching him inch a shirt up his arm to a point where he could swing it over his head with his one functional arm. The point being, if i had been practicing bicycle kicks before a soccer game and fractured my collar bone in the exact same spot to the exact same extent, I would probably act differently.

So where does that leave us?

I guess it means that with pain, you pretty much always need to give someone the benefit of the doubt. I'm a bit of a naturalist, meaning I try not to take medicine when I'm hurting. The closest thing I do to medicate is eating a banana when I'm hungover. I like to make my body heal itself while I get to feel the pain, because I trust my body. Pain is felt for a reason: you're not supposed to use whatever is hurting. So why would you dilute that feeling, risking further injury... But that means that I deal with those ripping headaches and queasy stomach pains and stinging arm soreness on my own. Maybe the things I feel just aren't that severe, and people that take medicine feel things way worse than I ever have.

Without ever knowing what someone else is capable of feeling, it makes no sense to judge them for how they act when under the distress of discomfort.