Refocusing

So I've spent months trying to figure out how to use this blog effectively to aid me in my life.  Things with grad school haven't been well in a long time.  Hell, things in my life haven't been well since before grad school...  I'm not sure how much I should ever share publicly since I know anything I share on the internet will be forever in the cosmos.  However, I believe in this forum as a place where I can share at least some of my thoughts, so I can maintain my sanity.  As a result, that means I need to be honest with myself and everything I've held in since I graduated undergrad to some extent.  As things stand right now, I'll be the first person to admit that I've been depressed since I left undergrad, and actually I was depressed even before then.  I... thought the only thing missing in my life was love.  In the pursuit of love in these last five years or so, I've completely lost myself and the discipline I was once proud of.  I'm not sure anyone who surrounds me right now can understand the person I once was... The Nathan who actually got up on time in the morning, had breakfast, did homework, and showed up to class on time, but I know there are plenty of friends from the UCD years who do remember those first few years, and then how I let myself go after getting thoroughly confused over the first person I loved.  I've spent the rest of my undergrad until now pretty much asking myself, "What's the point of doing what I was doing?  Being responsible?  Who was I doing that for?", and at the end deciding it wasn't for me.

So what did I do?  I haven't gotten anymore true to myself.  I've over indulged in those things I like to do in my free time as well as just laid around feeling sorry for myself.  In many ways, I've been procrastinating on taking care of myself.  I think I've been just asking myself over and over, "What's the point?"  Even when things were better, I just felt like I was under an enormous burden to be better to be perfect.  I just felt like the situation was unfair:  Why couldn't I make mistakes? And if I did, no matter how minor, why do I feel like I totally get reamed out over it?  Well, I can say now that I have some answers that I believe, even if the majority of isn't all that novel.  The reality wasn't that I couldn't make mistakes, but mistakes are easy to make, and at the end of the day a good life isn't one that is easy.  As far as feeling like any mistake made was anathema to the senses of anyone, and ultimately my fault solely, my thoughts behind this are two-fold.  One, out of everyone that has criticism for me, I'm always the hardest person on myself.  As a result, I've created a massive snowball effect.  In being hard on myself when I was being willfully irresponsible, I've create a horrible feedback loop that has only worked to worsen my depression.  Also, I've felt for a long time that I didn't need criticism from anyone because of how hard I was on myself.  I could go more in-depth regarding that interaction, but overall I realize that someone giving me their opinions shouldn't be the affront to my person that I've believed it was for the majority of my life.  Two, if you are willing to accept responsibility in any situation, unfortunately most people won't argue.  It's like spending cash, most times unless they are a close friend, no one will argue if you offer to pay.  While I definitely don't think one should avoid accepting responsibility, I realize that outside of close friends, I need to be a little less willing to please, but accepting more responsibility than I can swallow.

Right now this has turned into a humongous post... all that text... to get to the main goal which is to state my desire to refocus this blog with my goals and share my progress towards those goals to become the person I know I can be and want to be.  For some reason with everything else mentioned before, I wanted to also believe that someone would come along and accept responsibility to hold me together, but that is completely foolish.  I can't ask someone to rescue me when I was never looking to be rescued anyway.  If they had rescued me, I would have completely resented them.  What I want is someone who can see me for the independent man that I am, and can also be independent in such a way that we are inter-dependent...  We both have our own friends and lives, but our interests and love still ultimately overlap... we can love the differences that the other brings to the table.  Even with that said, I'm not sure that I actually believe in the idea of love anymore..., but I'm looking to restore my faith because it has driven me for so long.

Gay men and faith... it's another topic for another post; I've reminded myself to write about how I feel.  I'm ultimately not looking to judge anyone, but I will hold the ability to disagree venomously with anyone.  I'm not looking to condemn anyone, but I'm tired of feeling alone in the way I think and want to share it.  At the bare minimum, I hope that maybe I can reach out to others who feel the same way.  Saying this includes me, since I don't think I've looked at myself nearly hard enough.  You want to date instead of hooking up?  Then date...

More to come in the next week, it's time for a new beginning...