Posts tagged with "self-evaluation"

The NEMLC

When I went home for Christmas three years ago, I was a very con­fused per­son. I had no idea what I was look­ing for, what I was doing. When I came back, I felt as if I had gone through some sort of mid-life cri­sis. I still did­n’t know what I want­ed, but for some rea­son I was­n’t con­fused any­more. Did I end up resolv­ing any­thing? To this day I don’t know.

What I do know, how­ev­er, is that I haven’t stopped chang­ing. Even if I did come to some con­clu­sion back then, it would have no rel­e­vance today. So many things are chang­ing, not the world around me, but me myself.

I see this as a good thing. It lets me know that I’m still learn­ing, that I’m still liv­ing to the high­est degree. I have dif­fi­cul­ty “defin­ing” myself, dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing my own (long term) actions some­times. As I’ve known since high school, it usu­al­ly takes me at least half a year to under­stand the choic­es I make.

Sometimes it feels like a con­stant mid-life cri­sis when I keep ques­tion­ing the deci­sions I make and the rela­tion­ships I have with oth­ers. I ques­tion things not with doubt, but with curios­i­ty.

And this has filled my life with uncer­tain­ty.

*25*

I told Aaron a few months ago that I held his morals and atti­tudes towards rela­tion­ships as a per­son­al goal. Knowing him for a while and being through a few odd rela­tion­ships issues with him has made me real­ize that he has a very healthy mind­set. I’m not say­ing that there are bad or wrong ways of view­ing rela­tion­ships, I sim­ply found that his ideas fit with my over­all life goals very well. Even though I haven’t always stuck to these lofty stan­dards in my own rela­tion­ship expe­ri­ence, I still try to main­tain this set of ideals.

I know a few peo­ple whose main goal in life is to get mar­ried. I ques­tioned them about why they have this goal, and they would tell me that they sim­ply don’t know. I’ve been through all types of rela­tion­ship mind­sets before, all fair­ly dif­fer­ent, all from dif­fer­ent man­i­fes­ta­tions of my per­son­al­i­ty. There were phas­es such as “I want to be in a rela­tion­ship”, “I don’t think I’ll ever be in a rela­tion­ship”, “I’m unsat­is­fied with this rela­tion­ship”, “I’ve giv­en up on rela­tion­ships”, “I’ll be in this rela­tion­ship for the rest of my life” (haha­ha), “I don’t want to be in a rela­tion­ship”, and it goes on and on.

Right now I’m not even sure what I want. I think a rela­tion­ship would be great but unnec­es­sary. I’ve stopped being depen­dent on some­one to com­plete me, stopped look­ing at life as a dead­line, and have recon­sid­ered almost every­thing about what I want.

Being able to do so has made me think much more clear­ly and act with more con­vic­tion.

Party At The Girls' House

I hate hate hate hate hate being hung over. It nev­er ends up being worth it the day after. I should get that idea ingrained on the inside of my eye­lids to remind me. I don’t do hang­overs well, and it usu­al­ly takes me an entire day to recov­er.

The Halloween par­ty at Em’s, Sheri’s, and Christine’s was still great though. I can’t believe how many peo­ple showed up in full cos­tume. Jessie went as Frank the bun­ny from Donnie Darko in full fuck­ing get­up, faux fur suit and all. Tom and Mel went as a priest and preg­nant nun respec­tive­ly, both cos­tumes home­made. Aaron, Wheaties, and I actu­al­ly found some last minute match­ing Super Trooper uni­forms (sans epaulettes), com­plete with hand guns, rifles, badges, ties, cuffs, and Trooper shades.

It feels good to be attract­ed again. It lets me know that I’m not so numb or intol­er­ant any­more. Is it just me that’s changed, or sim­ply the cir­cum­stances? I don’t know.

Balderdash Englightenment

I’ve late­ly been get­ting into dis­cus­sions where I gen­er­al­ly show a strong sense of con­fi­dence in my con­vic­tions. The role of dis­tance in a rela­tion­ship relat­ed to the lev­el of com­mit­ment, as a sub­ject per­haps, or instruc­tions in becom­ing a more socia­ble per­son, as anoth­er. I’ve been answer­ing ques­tions of life, love, and hap­pi­ness almost as if I know the answers. Yet I can’t fig­ure out where these opin­ions are com­ing from, or even where I’m get­ting the strength of my beliefs.

Have I gained so much strength so as to affect my think­ing? Have I become blind­ed by over­con­fi­dence? Or do I con­sid­er my expe­ri­ences to be suf­fi­cient enough to give advice when peo­ple ask me? This may pos­si­bly be the case even though I gen­er­al­ly don’t like to give advice, since I only speak when I feel that I have a suf­fi­cient under­stand­ing of the sub­ject.

The truth is that I don’t know where my assured­ness is com­ing from. In the last few weeks I’ve felt an odd sense of wis­dom, and my cer­ti­tude seems to be com­ing from this feel­ing. Perhaps an over­flow of emo­tions has caused me to feel this way, and every­thing I’m feel­ing now is tem­po­rary. The most impor­tant thing I try to keep in mind is the fact that I may be wrong in almost any­thing I believe. I need to keep an open mind. Yet late­ly I feel as if I do know much more about the way things work, the way life goes, the way the world turns.

I think of what I do know now, and try to remind myself that there is still a great deal I don’t know. I sim­ply have a strong trust in my judge­ments, deci­sions, and con­vic­tions made with the lim­it­ed amount of infor­ma­tion one always has in fore­sight. I’ve late­ly become more cer­tain about my life, and the direc­tion I want it want to take. I cer­tain­ly know what I want, but I try to remain flex­i­ble.

In the last two months I’ve learned more than I have in year before that, and the sud­den surge of con­fi­dence I’ve gained in my opin­ions seems to be relat­ed to this. I real­ize that I’ve learned a great deal through the course of my life.

But I have much more to learn as well.

Gradient

Ever since I got my iPod, I’ve been a playlist lis­ten­er, as opposed to an album lis­ten­er like Nick. I had 10 main playlists, and each one would be for a dif­fer­ent genre or mood, although I lis­tened to my mood ones much more often, such as my bit­ter­sweet mix or angry mix. Now I’m find my mod­er­ate num­ber of playlists to be insuf­fi­cient. Often, when I step out into the intem­per­ate sky which has been so dom­i­nant late­ly, I won’t be able to find an appro­pri­ate playlist. Nothing match­es my moods now.

I think that my moods and emo­tions have become more sub­tle and diverse in the last year. It’s been hard­er to put my fin­ger on how I’m feel­ing, because noth­ing is as base as a sim­ple “sad” or “angry” any­more. I find that the flavours of my feel­ings have become more intri­cate and con­nect­ed, not only because of simul­ta­ne­ous highs and lows, but also because of a greater appli­ca­tion of dual-sid­ed­ness.

Sometimes it feels as if my emo­tions have evened out, that there is less range to the ups and downs. I’ve learned a great deal from the inter­est­ing set of sit­u­a­tions I’ve been placed in over the last two years. This, com­bined with my zeal­ous­ness for self-improve­ment, has allowed me to become a lit­tle stronger and a lit­tle wis­er. Perhaps, in time, every­thing will even out. I’m just not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Because I’d prob­a­bly cease to learn.