Cynical Optimism: An Approach To 2014

Crafting the first blog post of a new year is always a daunting task. I mean you have to start things off right, right? But heck, it's already the end of February. I missed my five year anniversary post, though that's made a bit less of an issue by the fact that I also missed my four year anniversary post last year for the first time in the blog's history. But just the fact that I've kept up with this (however infrequently in a given year) for the last five years is kind of impressive to me.

Just think about that for a second. I started this blog over five years ago. Back then, my primary inspiration was a girl who was way out of my league, and the main purpose of the blog was to channel my frustration over being smitten with her. It's weird, because at the time, I never would have acknowledged that one simple fact, though I'd find ways to kind of dance around it and incorporate indirect references in my writing, because I had to get it out somehow. Plus, a bunch of my friends actually read this regularly back then, and while I'm fairly certain they knew what I was getting at (and they definitely knew who I was interested in, as discreet as I tried to be it wasn't really a secret to anyone), I couldn't be so bold as to come right out and say it. That would be... pathetic, I suppose. Better to hide behind a thin veil of misplaced irritation at all of female-kind, right?

But I guess distance gives perspective, because now I have no misgivings about addressing my frame of mind from that point in time. Though in retrospect my efforts were futile, I thought maybe all I needed was confidence and to try really really hard. And in some small measure, that was true. I did end up managing to score a date with this girl, which, as a friend recently pointed out, is a badge of honor I alone amongst our friends was able to claim. It was a sympathy date, doomed to failure from the start, but hey, I worked hard to talk her into it, and that's something I'm still proud of.

It's amazing how so many things can change over five years, and likewise how so many things can stay the same. I was hung up on that girl for a long time; way too long, and that fact had a profoundly negative impact on things moving forward. But it was the same way with the previous girl that I was involved with. When things ended with her, I had a lot of trouble moving on. I get attached to things, and it's incredibly hard for me to let them go. That's just the way I am, it's the way I always have been, and it's how I always will be.

A while back, as I was driving to work, I heard a song on the radio that reminded me of that first girl. It was pretty popular right around the time she and I broke things off, and it sort of spoke to me of our situation (it's funny and wonderful how music has the ability to mean so many things to so many people). For the longest time, whenever I heard it, it would take me back to the implosion (well, I guess "explosion" is a better term, because it was pretty spectacular and dramatic) of our relationship, and dredge up a bunch of feelings of helplessness and regret. But this time, seven years later, I didn't feel any of that. It was just a song playing on the radio, devoid of any particular inspiration or meaning. And that was amazing to me.

In that moment, I had a bigger problem that I was dealing with, and it struck me that what I felt was a kind of cynical optimism; optimism because the old issues no longer troubled me, but in a cynical sense because I knew that they had been displaced by new issues. The lesson I took from that moment was that any problem you may currently face and the stress it entails won't last forever. But it will be replaced by something more troubling. In sense, that's okay, because you'll get over that hump, whatever it may be, it's just that there will never be a shortage of humps to get over.

So maybe five years from now, I'll be able to speak freely of the things that frustrate and sadden me now, without having to hide them under references to video games or TV shows. Maybe I'll be able to listen to Vices & Virtues again, because that's something I'd really like to do. Maybe it won't even be that long. Heck, I think just admitting that there are things that bother me is a step in the right direction. I never would have dreamed of doing that five years ago, at least not without attaching it to some snide remark. Granted, this is far less likely to be read than anything I posted back then, so I have that measure of comfort, but still. It's the internet. Anyone looking for it can find it. And I'm okay with that.

I'd love to end this on some kind of profound or inspirational note, but to be perfectly frank, this is not at all what I intended to get into when I started writing this post. Actually, I'm not really sure what I intended to write; I just knew I wouldn't be able to sleep yet and wanted some place for my brain to wander. I suppose that kind of organic development is what keeps it honest though. At least I now have one post logged in 2014. Here's to the next five years.

Tales Of Bill The Bard

When I first undertook writing this blog... well, for one thing, I had no real idea I'd still be at it five years later. For another thing, it was mostly just a way to vent my frustrations with girls. And to be honest, though my posts have become increasingly veiled and cryptic... it's still pretty much that. I mean really, what better way to simultaneously vent and compose your thoughts into something cohesive than a blog that no one really reads? On a psychological level it's brilliant, because you know that it's possible that someone could A) unearth the blog and read an entry and B) pick apart all the references and allusions to figure out what you're actually saying, so the notion that you could be heard is somewhat exhilarating, but at the same time you know it's incredibly unlikely that anyone will check without prompting, and thus no one will criticize you for feeling the way you do. It's so delightfully secure for something as exposed as a webpage.

Of course no one would ever actually post anything they REALLY didn't want read on a blog. That's the beauty of it. If any of this was so sensitive that I couldn't handle someone knowing it, I'd put it in a notebook or something, somewhere I knew no one could see it. And for that reason, none of this is truly private information. This is where I bury the stuff that I know the people who really care about me could find if they were inclined to go looking. And suddenly, we have a title for the post. I was wondering what the heck I was gonna call this.

So now that the meta portion of the post is out of the way, I have a few things to discuss, none of them particularly grave or serious. The first thing on my mind, as it usually is on Mondays around this time, is How I Met Your Mother. That show has got its groove back in a big way. The last three (possibly four, I don't remember) episodes have been fantastic, and it's starting to seem like they front-loaded the filler episodes into the beginning of the season. That doesn't seem like a great way to maintain ratings, but I guess that doesn't really matter too much considering this is the final season. The moral of the story here is if you gave up on the show at the beginning of this season (or in any prior seasons) you're really doing yourself a disservice, because it has gotten so good lately. Hopefully they can keep the momentum up until the end of the series; they've only got about half a season left to go.

Second, Harry Potter. The books were amazing. Well, let me clarify; books four through seven were amazing. The first one was solid, the second one was honestly pretty boring, and the third one was simply pretty good. But once Goblet of Fire came around, it really took off, and the last book (when they're not walking to a volcano, so to speak) is probably among my all time favorites. The ending was perfect, right up there with Breaking Bad and The Office. I've heard the movie is also really good, and I'm quite looking forward to it, especially considering how generally bad the first three movies were. The first was stupid and kiddie, the second was reasonably interesting, and the third was long and boring. The fourth was NONSTOP ACTION GOGOGO and was quite entertaining, even if some of the scenes (particularly in the graveyard at the end) weren't reconstructed terribly well. By and large though, they cut out the chaff and kept the pace brisk, and I applaud them for that, even if Voldemort didn't come across as quite as sinister as I had imagined.

Third, it finally genuinely feels like Christmas around here. I remember feeling the same way around this time last year (roughly a week before Christmas), that the Christmas season had finally officially kicked off. We've got the tree up, the lights on it, lights strung up in the hallway, candles burning, and the living room is more tidy than it has been in ages, probably since the Super Bowl party last year. I have a new computer on which to play League in glorious 1080p 22" widescreen, I'm connected to the network via ethernet so I don't ever have bad ping and I can even stream while I play (which I've been doing quite prolifically), and I just started playing Bioshock Infinite yesterday, because everyone knows Bioshock games are meant to be played around Christmas time, either just before or just after. I've gotten almost all of my Christmas shopping done already, and since I've been so efficient with it, it hasn't been nearly as stressful as it was either of the last two years. I suppose that can also partially be attributed to the fact that I actually have a car this year and can go when I need to.

In any case, I'm feeling pretty jolly right now. I just finished the most recent episode of HIMYM along with some cheddar cheese ramen, cherry Pepsi, and a holiday pie from McDonald's, I won both games of League tonight (the 3v3 custom matches on Summoner's Rift are usually terribly one-sided but fun if you're on the winning team), AND, following last week's miraculous fantasy football playoff victory against Jenkins, I somehow managed to beat Danny Latin this week, which means that I'll be making a return appearance in the Super Bowl this year, this time against Crutchfield. Life is right in the solid-to-good range, so I'm just gonna cross my fingers for next week's fantasy game, relax and enjoy the holidays, and then... see how things play out once the new year begins.

Now that I think about it, I probably could also have called this post "Heisenblog," keeping with the theme of the first paragraph because it's hiding in plain sight. That would have been good too, I guess.

More Than 20 Minutes

March 4th, 2011. It was a Friday night. I'd spent the better part of the prior week planning, building, testing, and fine-tuning a standard deck. Mirrodin Besieged Game Day was the following day, and I really wanted that full-art Black Sun's Zenith; even moreso, I wanted the Pristine Talisman with the Mirrodin Pure expansion symbol on it. I spent the entire night poring over and playtesting my deck, trying to find any last flaws to correct before the tournament. During a break in testing, I stepped into the kitchen of The Orphanage, and I briefly mentioned the tournament to a girl who lived there. "You're going to win," she said. "Well, we'll see about that," I replied. "Hopefully."

March 5th, 2011. Mirrodin Besieged Game Day. Top 8 got the promo Black Sun's Zenith, and the top 2 of each faction-aligned deck got their faction's promo (I made sure my deck had at least 10 Mirran-symbol cards to qualify for the Pristine Talisman), regardless of total standings. I placed 6th out of 35-some-odd people, and second out of the Mirran faction decks. I got both promos. I came back to The Orphanage that night and brought news to the girl I had spoken to the night before that I did indeed win. Her reply? "I knew you would."

I've always been a big proponent of and firm believer in destiny. There are those who deny the existence of destiny, who say that it flies in the face of free will... and I'm beginning to think maybe they're right. Maybe life isn't about what you're meant to do. Maybe it's about what you set out to do, how hard you work to get there, and whether or not you persevere to see it through to the end.

There are those who say that believers in destiny just use it as an excuse for their mistakes or poor choices, because ultimately destiny means we're not responsible for our own actions. I've never really thought about it that way, to be honest. In fact, I feel like I've taken responsibility for most of my mistakes, and really almost entirely looked at destiny as an explanation for my successes, however major or minor. I dunno, maybe I just have a really low self-image that makes me tend to think that if I do well at something, it wasn't because I exemplified any particular skill, it's just because it was "meant to be," because destiny had decided it would be so. For instance, I did well at that Magic tournament because I got paired up against the right people; I got my first girlfriend because we just happened to be in close proximity to each other for a long time; I got my current job because I was in the right place at the right time and got lucky with my auditions; I made it to Gold in Season 3 of League of Legends because I got matched up with people who carried me to victory in placement. But now that I think about it...

Maybe I did well at that Magic tournament because I practiced. I put a lot of time and thought and effort into a deck that would effectively combat the meta, and I spent the better part of a week working on it, longer than I've ever spent working on something Magic-related before. Maybe I got my first girlfriend because after she initially shot me down, I didn't give up. I was determined and persistent enough to show her why dating me would be a good idea. Maybe I got my job because of how much time I spent working on perfecting my audition tape, and how much I focused on being as good as I could possibly be in my auditions. Maybe I got to Gold in League because I play every night and (despite what it seems like sometimes) tried my best to get better, and performed well enough in my placement matches to, at the very least, not throw games away.

And if that's all true... then maybe it's not all about destiny. Maybe it's about preparation and hard work and persistence in the face of failure. Maybe it IS true that you can do whatever you put your mind to... and maybe I just didn't realize that that was, all along, a key component to my successes.

And if that's true... well then...

"Barney... story's not over."

The Only Hope For Me Is A Bigger Fish

Nobody blogs anymore, and that's probably a good thing. I'm not even sure I actually want people reading this. I mean if they do, that's fine, it's not like I'm trying to hide it, and if I was, putting it on the internet wouldn't be the most spectacular idea. It's not necessarily something I want to broadcast, but it is something I want to get out, and if people are game enough to come looking for it, then so be it. Those are probably the people who would react most reasonably anyway.

I've actually been meaning to get onto this topic for some time now, because I've felt like this for a while, but I never had the inspiration to start until I watched the most recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, where Barney meets the Mother. A brief aside regarding this season: it has, up to this point, been pretty bad. Nearly unbearable, even. But last night's episode, which I just finished watching after scrubbing out in League for the umpteenth time, was perfect. Perfect. I can forgive all the crap and filler and unfunny nonsense they've put us through for the first third of the season just because of this episode, and it has restored my faith that the finale is going to be something really special. But I digress.

"There are plenty of fish in the sea." What a delightfully hackneyed phrase when it comes to post-breakup optimism. So much so I WROTE A POEM ABOUT IT! No no, I shan't channel my inner Kenan-Thompson-as-Maya-Angelou here. I actually just came up with (or rather, borrowed) a different phrase with mostly the same meaning. In Star Wars: Episode I, Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, and Jar Jar are navigating their bongo through the deep seas of Naboo, and whilst being chased by a large fish, Jar Jar starts freaking out. Another even larger fish emerges, eats the first fish, and prompts Qui-Gon to reassuringly remind Jar Jar that "there's always a bigger fish." I feel like the same thing applies to relationships, or more specifically, to girls.

In other words, there's always someone better to help you forget about your last relationship, however disastrous it may have been. I've used that phrase before in this blog. And that's a great way to look at things, isn't it? Don't dwell on what happened before, because someone else, someone new, someone exciting will come along to not only ease your troubles, but actually one-up what you had prior. And that's fantastic... until you realize that it's actually kind of depressing.

One of my favorite songs off my favorite album, My Chemical Romance's Danger Days, is "The Only Hope For Me Is You." It's a pretty friggin romantic song and sentiment. The sad thing is I don't know if it's realistic to feel that way about someone. If there's always a bigger fish, which seems to be true... then how could you ever possibly settle on one person? How could you justify saying "alright, this is it, I've found her," knowing that there is almost certainly someone out there who could top what she has to offer?

And if it's not true... then how do you KNOW when you've found the biggest proverbial fish? What if you passed up on the best possible thing because at the time you thought there might be something better out there? What if your doubts caused you to throw away something wonderful because it wasn't exactly perfect?

After failing so hard so many times at League of Legends earlier this week, I asked myself why I play the game so much. I'm not particularly good at it, and sometimes instead of being fun, it can be downright frustrating. But I keep coming back. Night after night, I continue to play, even when it doesn't always go the way I want it to. The conclusion I came to was that I keep playing because I have weird hours and there's no better way for me to pass the time. And then I saw Barney stumble across the Mother, and she knew exactly what he was going through, a situation he hadn't even fully realized himself.

"I think you were in love and you messed it up... and every moment of your life since then has been spent trying to stay busy enough to ignore that fact."

That's what she said to him and, that's when I realized I do play League to pass the time... because passing the time keeps me busy.



"This is your own masterpiece."
-Obi-Wan Kenobi
Star War The Third Gathers: The Backstroke of the West

The King Of Free Life Conquers Again

I know I said I wasn't gonna post again until I was finished with Harry Potter, and currently I'm a little less than halfway through Half-Blood Prince, but I put the series on pause to read Kevin Smith's book Tough Sh*t, since Danny Latin lent it to me when he came up a couple weeks ago, and I need to finish it before I head down to Lynchburg for Andrew's wedding in a couple weeks.

Think about that. Another man down in less than a month. Pretty soon, just three of us will be left, and of those three, only two are truly single. A sobering statistic.

Anyway, the reason I broke my self-imposed silence was because I finished my provisional ranked matches in League of Legends tonight, and was placed in... Gold V. Yes. Gold. Unbelievable, right? Some might call it the greatest misplacement in League history. I'd call it that, because I'm terrible at League. Somehow though, due to a combination of duo queuing with Danny Latin (who was able to carry the majority of my matches) and my MMR (which apparently is reasonably high, considering I consistently play with high Silver/low Gold Elo players), I got dumped into Gold following an 8-2 record in my placement matches.

And if I can get to Gold, well... I can do anything. And that, incidentally, is what one of the early chapters of Kevin Smith's book is all about: believing you can accomplish whatever it is you set out to do, and because of your belief/will/determination, actually succeeding at it. Considering I've pulled that strategy off successfully a few times myself now, I have good reason to believe he's right.

That said: I ain't heard no fat lady.

I'm Doing Science And I'm Still Alive

Oh, hi folks! I decided to stop by this corner of the internet again to see if anyone had posted anything, and much to my wondrous delight, there were a few new blog posts on my reading list, which is very encouraging indeed. For the most part, I figure nobody really checks in here very often, and for the most part, that's just as well, but if you are here and you did stop by to see if I had posted anything new... well first of all, thank you for reading, and second, I do have new material on the way. I always have quite a bit on my mind, it's usually just a matter of condensing and formatting it so as to be comprehensible to anyone reading. At the moment, however, I'm about a hundred pages shy of finishing Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and I cannot, in good conscience, spend a significant amount of time composing my largely irrelevant thoughts while the rest of this series remains unread. It does kind of suck that I already know that, sadly, Harry doesn't end up with Cho, and I think it's quite a shame... although I'd bet pretty much everyone disagrees with me.  But that's just how it goes.

Okay. Back to reading. See you in a bit.

Long Weekend Update

Nobody blogs anymore on this lonely little corner of the internet. I still check regularly to see if anyone has posted anything. They haven't. Though I myself haven't posted anything in recent history, blogging is always at the back of my mind, because there's typically something gnawing away at me that I want to say. And, since so few people ever venture out into this sector, I can post pretty freely in a comfortable style. So here we are.

July the fourth has come and gone again. I had to work this year, but I got Friday off in exchange, and since we weren't doing anything particularly exciting to celebrate Independence Day in the first place, I gladly took the three day weekend, and the mini holiday kicked off pretty well. We went 5-0 in League of Legends on Friday night before I left for the last Dragon's Maze draft, in which I was able to split 1st and 2nd place in the final match and get my promo and prize packs without having to play it out. Saturday saw a trip to the mall with Anthony whereupon I purchased a headset with which to play League, and play League with it I did. Oh and we also wandered over to Price Chopper with Jess and Danielle rather spontaneously, and Chris wore his horse head mask throughout. Of course, we can't forget about the post-League explosion that led to a mini wrestling match between Chris and myself over a misplay in lane. I was pretty mad, but not blinded with rage like I was after that EDH game back at Farm Street where Chris threw the ladle at me out of the spaghetti sauce pot. We were both more or less trying to ensure nothing got broken last night, and it broke up pretty quickly once Missy came out.

Which brings me to the current state of affairs. Sort of. The whole reason I sat down to write this blog was indirectly because of the dreams I had last night. My dreams are often hauntingly realistic, so when I have a particularly disconcerting one, especially one that goes uninterrupted for a long enough time for me to remember the sequence of events in detail when I wake up, it can very well throw off my groove for the entire following day. Today was one such day. I just couldn't shake the funk for most of the day, and the fact that it was rainy and dreary and we had nothing on the agenda but our typical lazy Sunday fare (i.e. League of Legends) didn't help matters. A brief interlude to McDonald's (Wolf Road, because Central was out of iced coffee) did significantly improve things, and my headache dissipated (sidenote: I think I have a caffeine addiction), but there was still that lingering sense of gloom shrouding things for most of the night.

There is a point to this. I'm getting there.

Having basically done nothing but eat and play League for most of the day, we wrapped up just after 1 AM, which is pretty early for us, so I decided that a blog might be cathartic. Except there was one small thing bothering me: I couldn't find my Relient K CD. The only reason I really thought about it was because they came out with a new album this past Tuesday, at least digitally; the physical CD won't be available until July 23rd, which I wish I'd known before hunting for it Friday with Missy and Saturday with Anthony at Crossgates and Colonie Center respectively. The saddest thing is the album I was missing, Forget and Not Slow Down, isn't even very good. I'd actually go so far as to say it's the weakest of all their albums, being quite a downer and having really only two, maybe three decent songs.

Anyway, I didn't know what the heck I had done with the CD, and I had searched for it briefly earlier today but it hadn't turned up. I continued my search, checking my Magic table downstairs, which is where I thought it might have been, but it wasn't there. I looked through the rest of my former downstairs dungeon room, but it wasn't there. I checked my laptop backpack, which was the other place I thought it might be; not there either. I basically tore apart my bedroom looking for it, searched the kitchen, even looked in Chris's corner of the living room to see if it might have wandered over there somehow. No luck. Finally, I gave up in frustration, hoping it would just turn up sooner or later if I stopped worrying about it. Besides, I had ripped the CD to my laptop, and like I said, I don't even like it that much, so no big loss. I headed back to my room to sit down and start my assuredly melancholy blog.

But NO. I could NOT. It drives me CRAZY when something is missing. I went downstairs one more time to make a more thorough search of my Magic table. I picked up a newspaper I had bought last Spring, and lo and behold, there it was. Suddenly, I was at peace. And the weirdest thing was that I wasn't just relieved to find the CD, I was relieved entirely, as though everything that had been bothering me all day didn't matter anymore.

It made me think: maybe the challenges and difficulties we face aren't just here to give us a hard time. Maybe we face them so that when they're over, we can feel that sense of relief or even triumph. My mood went from bad to good, not because something overtly good happened, but because there was closure on something irritating. I've always known that tough times have their expiration date, and that brighter days are around the corner as long as you can wait it out, but it's also hard to keep that perpetually in mind, especially when things seem like they're going so wrong. But when a trial reaches its conclusion, even when it's something as stupid as a missing CD, it's a pretty good feeling, and that's something to consider. This post has gone on quite longer than I originally anticipated, but there it is, the moral of the story. I may be forcing optimism here, but hey, I forced Naya every Dragon's Maze draft and it worked almost every time, so I'm gonna run with it.