setasaway's Blog

I’m pretty sure that nobody reads this thing anymore, so that leaves me free to write whatever I want in here, and nobody should care right? Good.

Karen is so frustratingly stubborn. And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it; to change someone’s personality is to change an integral part of who they are, and I don’t know if I’m ready to do that. Even so, it is just so annoying. She doesn’t seem to give a single fuck about anything. Whenever I have an arguement with her, it’s never HER that tries to make things better. I feel like if I told her I wanted to break up with her, her only response would be “…ok”. And that’s it. I feel like she just doesn’t regard me as a part of her life, or at least an important part of her life. You might be wondering why I say this. Well, quite frankly, her emotions always seem to be…borderline at the most. As in you cannot possibly tell what she is thinking, or what she is feeling. Because she just seems to have this blank mask when you approach her about anything like that.

Waiting

It seems that half my days now seem to be composed of a lot of waiting for Karen. As in, she says she is doing one thing, and then it ends up taking like, three times as long one would expect her to take for her to come back from it. And it is really frustrating. I don’t know why she doesn’t decide to tell me that she is going to come back ‘a little later’ than expected either. She just… seems to make me wait. With no other information as to when she’s coming back. Last night she says she’s gone to dinner. At at 11. What time did she come back? I don’t know, because I went to sleep at 2. Three hours after she said she was going to go eat. Three hours. In that amount of time she could have showered, eaten dinner, played with her sisters, read a book, done laundry or any other amount of things, and yet she can’t take literally two minutes to come upstairs and tell me that she’s doing something else. What’s the logical conclusion? That she probably just went to sleep or something, or her internet connection wasn’t working… I don’t even know what took her so long.
The problem I have with this is the lack of courtesy she seems to display everytime she does this. She is a very good person, yet this seems to be the ridiculously big flaw that is always there. She always ends up leaving me waiting, almost all the time. It’s beyond the point of ‘sorry, had some things to do’, and now reached the point of “you’ve done this so many times, how can you still not realize that there are people waiting for you that don’t know when to expect you anymore”. And I don’t understand WHY she does it. Does she not understand what it feels like to wait for someone for hours on end without knowing when to expect them, because it’s been so late? Does she do it because she thinks they don’t care? She KNOWS that her mother does it a lot, and how annoying it is when she is late to pick her up. So why does she decide to do this to other people. A simple “ill be back a bit later, doing x, or y or both”. Does not take long, and I’m sure that three HOURS is enough time to find a small window to do that. It feels like it’s past where she can change this though. She’s been doing it for so long already… I have no clue what to do. Maybe later on in life she’ll realize that this habit of leaving people hanging is not a desirable trait. Which reminds me; she did this to a person she was going to have an INTERVIEW with. She even showed me the email; the person expressed concern and worry over the fact that she did not come, and left no information as to why she didn’t. If this disgusting habit keeps up, she may find herself struggling to manage her time properly, simply because she doesn’t acknowledge that other people do not have all the time in the world to wait for her. This is beyond anger now. This is disappointment.

Karen.

Who would have thought that I’d be writing in this freaking blog a week after school begins. Clearly, something is up with my blood pressure, otherwise I would not be wasting my time with this. But I am. Maybe it’ll help blow off some steam.
To say the least, yesterday was a complete disaster. Maybe start with the night before that actually. So I’m supposed to be talking to Karen, however she seems to have this habit of liking to leave whenever the opportunity comes up, and not telling me. Seriously? Maybe it doesn’t sound as bad as I’m making it out to be… example (or at least the most recent one I can remember that was an obvious tell). She goes off to do some shit, and then I say something along the lines of “fine, im going to go downstairs to help my dad for a bit” or something like that. She seems to get UPSET with this for some reason, and then upon returning says “im going to go downstairs and play with my sisters on the wii”. Ok maybe this doesn’t sound as bad as I’m making it out to be, but everyone needs an instigator. Skip ahead a few hours and shes been one for…wait for it… a few hours. Im sitting there, having been waiting (as seems to be the case many a time in this relationship) for a few hours and she comes on, talks for like ten minutes and then just disappears. Again. No words, nothing. And then all of a sudden im supposed to assume that she went to shower or something, and that I should KNOW that shes going to be coming back at x time. She gets all mad at me for leaving, despite her having done it multiple times to me; do you know how it feels now? I hope you do, because its incredibly annoying and inconsiderate; if you’re asking, yes, I went to bed at like 1:55 after waiting for 55 minutes for her to come back from wherever she went (had a suspicion that she went to shower, but why would you take 55 minutes to shower…)
Obviously this led to her leaving an irate message to me when I wake up the next morning telling me exactly how I feel everytime she does this; except from her perspective. Funny isn’t it? What you do to me, you don’t seem to like done to you. But you don’t seem to realize this. Or maybe you just don’t care; regardless of whichever one this is, I find it unacceptable that you can’t seem to comprehend that you can’t just have everyone run by YOUR schedule all the time. I have things to do to, and if you would kindly inform me of when to expect you back, then I could plan accordingly. But you never do this. You always decide to never tell me anything, to leave me floundering in the dark while you go about what you want to do. And it is incredibly frustrating. What you felt that night? That’s only a taste of what you give me.
Yesterday as well; she is supposed to come back at around 7 from her volunteering, yet guess what. She kindly decides to leave out, AGAIN that she is doing something afterwards. Thanks a bunch. Im glad to know that you care about me enough to make me wait another 7 hours for you to do something, while I sit here doing absolutely nothing and waiting for you to come back. And what do you when you come back? “Let’s sleep”. That’s right. Sleep. Because I waited 7 hours for you to tell me what I wanted to do hours ago. Apparently I didn’t stay up for 7 hours for you to talk to me. Once again you make me do what you want to do, and instead you never, even ONCE seem to care for what I want. This relationship seems all about what you want, you, you, you. If this can’t resolve itself, then sorry, I cannot do this anymore. You drive me to the point of insanity, with your constant disregard of me. Whenever I try and tell you this, you always turn a deaf ear. It really does seem like you don’t care.

This guy

Yesterday… was not exactly the greatest day I ever had. But that is obviously why I’m going to be writing it in here. This garbage dump of bad memories. This trash heap of shame.
It started off well enough I suppose, as well as a 9 and a half hour long work day can start. Which of course then quickly spiralled downhill. First off was finding out just how to get to work that day. Waking up at ten, I was thinking that I would get a ride, because obviously I would be working extremely late that day. But no, apparently my mother decides that her stupid gym was more important than me wasting so much of my time biking home at ten o clock at night. Naturally I couldn’t take the bus, because public transportation sucks. It is slow, expensive, especially when you have to go somewhere regularly and most of all inefficient. The only proper choice which I had no option but to accept would be to ride my bike there once again.
This decision ended up taking me an hour and a half to make, and of course I ended up getting there just on time. Indoor pool, close to the one I was working at last week no big deal. Whatever. Well while I was sitting there, I first realized that I hadn’t brought another book(just brought one which was half done); not that big of a problem cause I had brought my computer. While sitting there reading, another guard came over to see me, and we ended up talking for a while about school and things which was alright. However, it made me realize that the job I have is apparently a lot better than the one I would have had I ended up working for the city. He had said that they tried to scam him on the amount of money that he was getting paid, which quite frankly sounds ludicrous. After he had left, I kept reading and finished my book around 330. I called my parents and told my dad to bring the book I had on my bookshelf when he came to drop off dinner for me, and then started to try using my computer. Big surprise. There was no internet connection for some reason, despite me having one there only two weeks prior. This was vastly irritating, not only due to the fact that I didn’t really have anything to do., but that I wanted to talk to Karen when she actually got home.
Left with nothing to do by brood, I sat there thinking about a load of things, such as what I would do with my free day tomorrow, as well as other things. For some odd reason, I was wondering what the ribfest would be like, and despite this sounding completely false, if some guy was hitting on Karen. I didn’t think about that too much though, because I did not think that it would be a pressing concern; ‘how likely would that be to happen anyway? ‘ I told myself.
After dad had dropped off my lunch, I went back to work and started reading the new book which was pretty good, although quite different from what I’m used to reading, Not worse, just different. One of the more outstanding themes of the book that I have picked up through yesterday and today is the idea of cruelty, or “meanness”. Without going too in-depth to the plot, it is easy to ascertain what the writer is trying to convey to the reader with the theme. There are two characters, similar to each other who seem to glorify cruelty, yet do not openly praise it. In a sense, it is embedded into their sense of personality, a stain on their person that cannot be removed. An integral part of their being, it is central to their actions and mannerisms; the destruction of a person’s beloved possession or pet brought sadistic glee to them. I wholeheartedly agree that there are people like that in this world, and that many of them allow their passion for hurt to take control of how they act towards others. I think I am one of them. Maybe I don’t go around killing other peoples’ pets, but I am not so much of a saint to say that I do not sometimes enjoy hurting someone close to me, even though I know that it is an extremely bad thing today. Because I let my mean streak dictate my actions. For example, when my dad took my driving the day before my driving exam, we were just going around in the parking lot and I was getting increasingly frustrated with him and his criticisms. He had kept saying to do “what I was comfortable with” and to just work on that. However, this did not seem to be the case, as he was constantly telling me to do things a different way than what I would like to do. I eventually ended up yelling at him near the end, screaming at him because I was so displeased with his critiques. Despite him taking time out of his day, while he was sick to help me. How depraved do I have to be if I have to yell at my own father, who took his own personal time to help ME succeed in something? Maybe back then I would defend myself by saying that “well he was just complaining too much and I reached my breaking point”. Which is true. But does that warrant my outburst at him? Swearing at him? And the worst part is that I felt so good after I yelled at him. I felt as if I had validated myself, like I had done something right. But I didn’t. I did something wrong.
This of course happened again yesterday, but I will get back on that later. After I had been sitting there for a while and finally finished my shift, I left the pool. Getting home was not that big of a deal to be frank, despite it being much darker than I thought it would be. I took a number of sidestreets, occasionally riding on the road because the asphalt is much smoother to ride on than the concrete slabs for the sidewalk. Getting home my cousin and aunt were over, and they were both playing with my sister. I come online and Karen is asking me to appear offline to everyone but her, so I do so, not exactly knowing why she wants me to do that. She eventually responds but does not tell me what she was going t o say, because she had to go eat dinner. So after she leaves I go on facebook and end up seeing Valerie’s status update talking about some guy trying to ‘hit on’ Karen.
Now here is where that attitude starts to come back. To be honest, I have no clue what I would have done or how I would have acted had I not been tired and irritable and sweaty and sore from work. But again, I seemed to only want to know what was happening with regards to this little comment, and it seemed that I wanted to hurt myself with the information. I immediately messaged Valerie, asking her what her status thing was about, while inwardly seething at myself. I started blaming myself that it was my fault or something that this was happening (no I don’t know why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time). When she finally started telling me, I felt like I had no doubt in my mind that this kid was trying to start –something- . Was I right? Who is to say. All I knew that there was something not right, and immediately started to smoulder. I asked her tons of questions, down to his mannerisms and what he looked like. I guess an adequate feeling to describe what I had at that moment was fear. Also seen in the book in almost the exact way that I was expressing it at that moment. Fear of the unknown, fear of losing that of which I was accustomed to. Did I know anything about this guy? No. Did I think that he had a fair chance to take Karen away from me? No, which was why I picked Valerie’s brain for every single detail she was able to recall about him. This odd mixture of fear and anger sat inside me until Karen came back, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to act on it. Just like the characters in the book again, I was not afraid of acting upon my intent, yet I was afraid of being caught. The rest of the night with her fared no better; Karen told me all that she knew, which was basically the same stuff Valerie told me more or less, and yet I was still not satisfied. For some reason I wanted more. I don’t know what I wanted, or even expected to hear, but for some reason I felt that she didn’t give it to me. Maybe I wanted to hear how amazing this person was, so that I would not have to feel bad that I was losing out to some loser. I really don’t know. But what I do know was that I was in this terrible mood for the rest of the night, and I was angry and this guy and myself interchangeably. I wasn’t mad at Karen or Valerie; they told me what they knew and that was it. Karen even TOLD me that she was doing everything she could to deter this person, but for some reason I still didn’t think that I was good enough. And maybe I felt just a little bit smug that everything was going so wrong so quickly. And I don’t know why.

Bored

I’ve been so bored recently, because Karen is having her computer repaired…and yes I know that I should be able to get tons of stuff that I always wanted to do done, such as finishing up a campaign or story, or getting in a few hours of reading in. And I have done that. Repeatedly. I can’t believe how mind-numbingly mundane life seems when I can’t talk to her…and what a large amount of time I actually spend doing so. I find it oddly weird, how all of a sudden, when one small seemingly insignificant option for how to spend my day is gone, all of a sudden it seems like I have nothing to do, or too much time on my hands. There is literally nothing I want to do these days. Right now, I’m sitting at the computer typing this as my parents converse with my mother’s work friend and his family. I am wearing two shirts cause its freezing in here, some jeans and Karen’s hair elastic on my wrist for some reason (kinda reminds me of that bum, but it doesn’t smell like her hair anymore D:). Rawr, I’m probably gonna tell you about this post anyway bum, so most likely you’ll come here to read this later? I hope you do. Also, I should take this time to tell you that you should write me a huge email when you read this, telling me about what you got to do over the weekend kay?

Anyways, it feels like years since I last talked to her online…and now that I’m not doing it I feel like there is absolutely nothing else to do, and nothing to really look forward to each day. It kind of feels like I’m just passing through them and putting up with them, although I really should be trying to make the most of them and enjoy them, because this is still my Christmas break after all. What is really disappointing is that this week just feels so gloomy…as if I can do nothing but mope around until she gets back her computer.

On the bright side, I’m reading Towers of Midnight, which should hopefully tide me over until she gets her computer back…I really want to read that giant (hopefully it’ll be nice and long) email that she sends when she finally does get it back. I hope we can get to go out a lot these next two weeks…we’ve been able to go out maybe like, TWICE in the past 4 months. It has been utterly disappointing.

Oddly enough, I haven’t touched this blog in a very long time, but i really don’t care. I haven’t had much to write about but I feel depressed enough to start again. Even just starting to touch on it feels like I’m doing something bad, even though it isn’t; it’s not my fault and it isn’t Karen’s fault either. I just find that even though I was supposed to stay after school with her on Thursday to just hang out, it is just so utterly disappointing that I cannot because of the stupid Me to We conference. Of course it is for the good of children everywhere. Of course this is just me being jealous once again because I can’t have something that I was looking forward to. Even though I can come to to terms with it does not make dealing with it any easier. What quickly felt like a good day has of course, once again turned into a shitty one. This never seems to fail me, as I can never have one consistently good day without having to deal with crap that gets thrown in. The braces? That shit is still on my teeth, with the added insult of elastics which could have come on a long time ago, meaning that I would not have to deal with the stupid shit now. I have having braces, I hate these stupid days where my schedule is always consistently getting messed up or throw off course because of some eventuality that I have not planned for.

Finished

Well, the time has finally come when I would get kicked out of Comm; the one place that I could actually get any work done other than business. As odd as it seems, I’m not too surprised about it. After all, I was ‘abusing’ the privilges that were given to me by Largo. Bringing friends downstairs to stay with me while I was doing work? Preposterous, the very idea that I would be able to work around people that I enjoy spending my time with seems utterly ridiculous doesn’t it. Regardless, I am almost done the year; and this has never happened before. I don’t feel anything special about being able to finish all my courses on time, and I’ve never spent a year where I haven’t gone to some kind of summer school. Powell of course does not realize this, and of course stereotypes me along with all the other people that are struggling to hand in the last two units to barely make it into summer school. I know the mindset she has of me already; I’ve known it for a long time. I already know that she dislikes me, however this doesn’t bother me. I don’t care whether she thinks I’ll be a failure or a success after I leave school, as the very fact that I’m leaving and she is staying behind is enough for me. What I do care about though, is how I can avoid that aggravating woman for the rest of the year. It is extremely difficult to deal with someone that manages to irk me every time I see her (quite possibly because she’s overweight), but I think it is just because she was always around to catch me in the few times that I WASN’T working.

As for high school…I think I’m finally able to leave. I don’t feel anymore reason to stay back, and I can always go back to visit certain people whenever I want. These halls don’t hold anything more for me, and I am leaving many of the teachers with good memories (cept for one or two). At any rate, I can’t wait for summer, because there is just too many things to do, such as starting my first job as well as…well there are many things to do but that’s not what I wanted to write about in this. As much anger as I had going into this post before, I can’t feel it anymore. Maybe it’s just because Ms. Mak was just so nice and polite to me, it changed my viewpoint of my entire predicament.

Failure

I’ve become the student that I was back in Grade 12…the lazy kind that can’t get any work done. Just now, I went to go and write a test, and I fucking failed it misrably. I wasn’t even able to answer the last question at all, which was concidentally worth the most marks. I couldn’t even prove the fucking trigonometric identities because I did not even know what to do once I had finished changing them to their respective counterparts. Is there even any point to working hard for university anymore, as I’ve decided that I want to attend Ryerson here in Toronto. All I have to do is maintain an average that is over 70 in order to get accepted. It is not even possible to keep an average that will be over 80 for Waterloo in anycase, I’ve been doing terribly in school lately. My motivation to work hard and do well is gone. What once existed in order to fuel my drive to work hard and succeed in the begining of the year is gone. And it would be terrible to get that motivation back, even if I wanted to get all the rest of these stupid units done. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to finish the year this year, there are so many stupid projects that I have to do yet not want to touch because it involves talking to teachers whose courses I’ve not been working on for an extended amount of time; more than I should have allowed myself to do. I feel terrible; there is no way that I’m going to finish this year with a bang. More like a whimper. I hate school, and I hate units.

Picture Perfect

Today started out as any other day, but it quickly became out of the ordinary. The sky was filled with pewter grey clouds, glowing from behind by the sun, and streaked through with blue slivers. It was one of the most inspiring images I’ve had in a long time, and it made me feel slightly optimistic going into school. Oddly enough, things went downhill as soon as I stepped inside. Due to it being a faculty meeting schedule today, classes started an hour late. During this 1 hour period of nothing, I played Warcraft and had ended up having to cheat, making me feel pretty tired. During TA, Largo got us all together and was talking about how someone had taken her agenda, believing that it was a form of ‘sabotage’, and that if it wasn’t found she would lose faith in the entire TA group (she is fairly certain that the person that took the agenda is someone in TA). For some odd reason, this made me feel even worse, although I had nothing to do with the missing agenda. Unfortunately, I had a book talk during second period, and I was feeling terrible so I ended up not saying anything during the conversation with the other members of my group.

Although a bit late to put this in, I had the epiphany once yesterday, while writing an essay in class for English, and again during the book talk today. At first, while trying to write my essay within the allotted time limit, I was finding it very hard to buckle down, read the given article and create my persuasive essay. It took me about 10 minutes of the given one hour to finally start to write, and when I did I couldn’t stop. It felt so good to finally be working properly again after so long of taking a break. The pencil flew over the paper, scribbling barely legible words faster than I could think. I didn’t have to read it back to myself; I knew that what I wrote was good. It helped me to realize the value of good work, this appreciation of working towards something, that sense of accomplishment.

Things started to brighten up during lunch-time at Greenquest though, as I was doodling on the back of the announcements during the meeting. I ended up making a decently rendered truck. Ben started to draw on it too, and at the end of the meeting the back of the announcements sheet looked pretty cool, with Truck 51 pumping smoke and spewing gravel from it’s tires, as well as some other oddities splayed around the sheet. Periods 4 and 5 were the best though, as Karen and Jeff were downstairs with me for the remainder of the day. During the afternoon, I spent the rest of school joking around with Jeff, eating whatever food I could get my hands on and picking lint off of Karen’s back/tickling her. This was definitely the highlight of the entire day; I was finally happy again, after moping around for most of the morning. Sometimes, while I was picking her back, my hands would graze her skin; it was electrifying. As smooth as silk, as warm as the gentle heat from a fire, it helped me realize the simple pleasures of her company. She smelled pleasant too…I could slightly smell shampoo coming from her hair, which was better than any perfume that people normally wear. Tickling her was fun too, because she would always leap forward whenever I poked her, as if she got shocked by my finger. I’m just hoping this weekend will be nice enough to enjoy.

RTS

Life is like a game almost, a real-time strategy. I find myself having to put myself forward little by little, expanding only when its safe, and even then I have to build defences and take precautions in case these expansions get destroyed. Every little bit counts, and as time goes on, you should keep advancing through different, higher tiers or else you are dead. You need to constantly improve, upgrade, and above all manage your resources wisely. You need to plan ahead for conflicts, and fight these conflicts on your terms. If this is unavoidable, than you had better be good at micromanagement, or controlling individuals in such a way that it promotes the health of the greater army. The skill of micromanagement is mastered by very few; not even I am exceptionally good at it. However, I do have it to some extent, which I am very proud of. Being able to control many elements and functions of a RTS, and real life is almost essential in survival. There are many good players, people, and enemies out there, and you have to decide who to befriend, fight with, and against.

Building your base, your structures, your fundamentals is key. You want to make sure that you build the basics first, or else you will never advance. You want to make sure that these basic buildings are protected. Base building is a complicated task; there are some who will just throw their tier 1’s anywhere they choose, but building placement is crucial when defending your base from attack. Depending on where you build which buildings, the outcome can change significantly. Real life is almost no different, you have to make sure that your basics are secure, strong and you are confident in them lasting. Even if your higher tiers get crushed, at least you can still pump out the basics, surely and steadily.

Lastly is tactical, strategic planning. As a player, and a person in this world/game, you need to make sure that you have a plan, especially if you are part of a team. If your team is disorganized, it’s gg. I didn’t know this when I first started playing, and would build whatever I want, and was lucky enough that my allies were skilled enough to make up for the lacking areas, and that my units were strong enough. Later on however, it became key to communicate properly with my allies. To ensure a strong, solid collective army, each player sticks with a unit type: melee, ranged, caster, air, siege or a small mix of either. In this way, we were able to formulate a strong army which covered all the bases. This of course is still not enough, and I come to the most important part now. It is to communicate clearly, effectively, and above all, have a sense of leadership. More often than not, I find myself having to lead my allies into the fray, as they, individually, are not brave enough to call the shots, for fear of making a mistake.

Planning is a key element in real life, and even though we have no “unit types” in real life, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. It is important that we acknowledge all of them. Strengths are something that we will be able to show to people that yes, we are strong, secure and you can depend on us to get the job done. The weaknesses you should improve upon when possible, when it does not come with a cost. Either to practice the weaknesses on your own time, or to have others cover them when they are strong with it is your own choice. For myself, I find that I am quite insecure about my own self-image. I do not mean physically, but socially, and what other people see me as. To do this, I try to be a bit of everything that I have observed that people like. I tell jokes, I listen to others when they have problems, I try to help whenever possible. Being able to cover all the bases in real life, as well as RTS will make you great at what gamers call “FFA” or free-for-all. You can get thrown into a lion’s den and will hopefully have all the skills necessary to survive. These are the kind of people that become leaders, these are the ones that others look up to. They are able to take care of the weaknesses in the group, and to demonstrate leadership when it is required. Leaders are the ones that will rise up the ladder, while those who focus on only one thing will only go so far.