Note: For better or for worse, some personal attributes, viewpoints, and events mentioned in this post are now outdated.
I’ve done one of these “rants” before. I was not in the best of spirits, and neither am I now. I think this is partly due to seasonal depression, but there are other factors that I want to discuss with you. The Misintelligence blog is run by a high school junior (until August, when I’m a senior) who wants to get his voice heard in the world. In my posts I seek the facts, and sometimes I speculate over what will work. The speculation is already done for this post. I’m sorry you don’t get to speculate with me this time.
I want to be transparent and to begin I’ll admit there’s this girl I’ve liked for a while. She’s the whole deal, you know, and she seems to be pretty well grounded in her religion (we’re Christians, or at least I am. Not baptized yet, I’m going to get that done eventually, don’t worry). The problem is, as always, she’s “out of my league.” I don’t think she’s seeing anyone, so I feel like I’m safe from “I have a boyfriend.” What I don’t feel safe from is, “You seem like a nice guy,” or say, and for some reason it freaks me out more to think she might, “I don’t feel led into a relationship.”
Now to be clear, I’m not really trying to go out with her just yet. For now, I just want to be her friend. She’s got a lot of friends, and her best friend. I know what that’s like to have a friend like that, and I miss those times. The problem I have is that recently she made a casual mention of something, and I can’t tell you what it is because of the audience of this post. Her casual mention makes it more difficult for me to try to talk to her because I know it’ll be all for naught. But also I don’t want to regret not talking to her later. I’ve already gotten into that kind of regret and I don’t want to do that again. So it makes it more important that I talk to her, and maybe even get that hug I want so bad.
Recently, an incident occurred on a Discord server I’m in where I started attacking Fortnite. I’ll admit that was a bad idea. I was just trying to draw attention to the things people were doing, and make that a thing. Maybe so that people on my Discord server will notice what I’m listening to or playing, because otherwise no-one seems to care, even when I post it. A second, similar, much larger incident happened a day or two later, when I tried to defend all of Reddit from that server. They kept repeating “Keanu Chungus 100” and similar things and didn’t really have any argument. They had a point in implying Reddit was hung up on reposts and old memes. There’s no escape from the reposts and stale memes.
After a while I just got tired of it and blocked everyone. I was disappointed in some of the people who kept insulting me for being a Redditor. After a while, though, I decided to unblock everyone and leave. A couple people from the server reached out to me a few days later and told me that (as long as I wasn’t a cringe Redditor, which I try not to be) I was welcome back in the server. So I took my saved invite link and hopped back in, temporarily changing my profile to say “Cringe Redditor” in IPA and have the Reddit logo as my avatar. Before I logged off that night, I set myself back to my normal identity.
Ironically, the reason I left was the reason I had felt like I had become a part of that community. I had always wanted to find community somewhere, and I’ve found it. But at what cost? It’s a toxic community. “Toxic” means that, uh, they’re not the nicest bunch. But I feel at home there. I know everyone and can actually contribute (sometimes) to the conversation.
Honestly, I’d like to find a better community to be a part of than that one. I’ve tried joining another Discord server, but I just don’t “click” there as much as I do in the other one. There was this other one I was joined to, and I think I started to fit better there than elsewhere. It didn’t really have a community, though. Next I tried a server I used to be in all the time. It used to have a great community, and since then it has gone to waste. So I left that server. I’m still in the other ones.
But what really hurts is that there’s been this long established friend group at church that goes for lunch sometimes. Not only did one of them specifically say they had been doing it for a while, but I heard mentions of such lunches before at some point, too. I got the chance to hang out with them for once. I long for something like that. UPDATE: Since this post took weeks to write, some things transpired since I last wrote. I was invited to lunch with them. I thought Mom would be mad, and I couldn’t really keep her updated because my phone was at low battery. Plans change very quickly, beloved mother. Just to let you know.
Creating one just doesn’t seem to work for me, whether formal or not. (Informal doesn’t work because I have one (1) friend, who is (also?) introverted.) I made a Discord server “for my friends,” but there are three humans in it: my friend I mentioned, my brother who I joined on his tablet without his permission, and me. You can see the problem. I also made a Discord server for the church. There are two people in that server now. And a bunch of bots. More than likely I’ll end up deleting both of these servers because they’re empty, useless, and inactive.
Where I intend to go next is somewhat vague. I want to go into a software or web engineering field, but it’ll probably be web development or some other form of front-end work. I’m making progress on my story and my game, although neither will make much headway when it comes to selling them, and I’m a week or so behind with a deadline coming up. Even my album is failing. (Of course, who would want to buy that? I don’t even know if purchasing works correctly.)
While I’d like to go to college, mainly for what surrounds it, such as football, community, and discounted Spotify Premium, I can’t find any actual reason to go through all the trouble involved with getting in. Applications alone usually cost $50 apiece, and you’re supposed to apply to three as a fail-safe system. I don’t have $150 to spend on applications. Then there’s tuition, living costs… I’m never going to have that much money. Money isn’t the only problem; it’s the paperwork. Even though there are fancy things like Common App now, there’s still a lot of paperwork and essays and such I’d need to do now and later. I just think it’s too much for me to go to college, no matter how much I’d like to.
With that being said, I need a job, and for now I’m probably going to stick with getting a grocery job until I graduate high school and can start looking into an average web developer position or something to that effect, preferably somewhere like Mozilla, because I support what they do, unlike Amazon and Google. Trying to get there without a degree will be a challenge, but I’ve already rested my case on that.
I touched base on this last time and earlier in this post, but when it comes to that girl I like… I can’t talk to her, I’ve tried. It has been suggested that maybe that is the problem, and I believe that’s right. The new Setback makes me think it’s not worth it to talk to her, yet at the same time (and this has been pointed out to me too) it makes it more important that I talk to her so I don’t regret not talking to her later. If I can close the book on a good note, that’s what I want to do. I don’t want to… I don’t want to lose her. She’s really great. I can’t say she’s funny because I haven’t talked to or heard from her enough to tell, but I know she has a sense of humor. She is good looking, which is always a plus. The biggest pro, however, is that she’s a studious Christian. She’s inquisitive and always wants to know more. Even when I do have questions to ask, I never ask them because I can’t work it up in me to do so. And no matter how much I need to just let it all out… it’s just not possible. I can’t cry for some reason, no matter how much I need to.
And if you add up all the technicalities involved, my current state is evident: with the Setback, and my future to look out for, and probably some attention deficiencies at home (last Christmas, we were given a baby brother, who requires monitoring 24/7. If you know, you know), and being behind on my game, and my long lost ability to talk to people, and I’m sure seasonal depression plays in here too…. Life is hard. It’s very hard, and it gets very difficult to make it through sometimes. Things like schoolwork and reading the Bible don’t seem worth it to me anymore sometimes. It’s variable. It’s distractable. But above all, it’s inevitable.
But of course, I have to find the bright side here. Christmas is coming up! …That’s not really a bright side. It hurts seeing all the people hanging out with their SO when I’m not there and likely never will be. (You know what I’m talking about, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past hundred years.) But hey, at least I have family. There’s quite a bit of family going on, what with my baby brother turning one on the 25th. My local church provides a much needed sense of community. I’m not forgotten.
I have to go back to the girl again. My obsession about her is what’s dragging me down so much, I suppose. She’s pretty, she’s nice, she’s smart, and (most notably) she’s a Christian (or so I suppose). I believe she would really be helpful in my walk with the Lord, but I suppose he has other plans and intends to leave me in the dark. Trust me, I’ve tried asking Him to help me, and sometimes, just a little bit, He answers me. But it always comes back. I always go straight back to her and my complete and utter hopelessness of ever telling her how I feel. I’ve tried to stop myself but it only delays the inevitable.
Accepting it as truth is difficult. It feels like lies. Everything’s not going to be OK. People are going to be oppressive. People are going to continue making bad decisions, no matter who is affected. I’m going to continue to make bad decisions. I know that, and I’ll try not to, but sometimes I’ll fail. Most of the time, failure is a way to learn. The world is not going to get much better. We’re reaching a peak and it’s like a small hill, rather than the Everest we were expecting. Advancements are stunted by people’s, more or less, sin. The masses fear communism but at some point it or something related will become the only way forward, what with everything becoming automated. (Let me be clear that communism does not mean dictatorship. You could have a democratic communist state.)
But if you look at it this way, the world is indeed going to get better: the Second Coming is not too far off. Whether we’re headed into an ice age or a global blaze, at some point Jesus will return. (I’m sorry if I lost you there, but if I did maybe this isn’t the blog for you.) And when he does, it’ll be glorious, and all the suffering I’m trying to vent out in this post will vanish.
It’s a wonder how these posts are always the longest things I write. The two I’ve written so far have taken me a long time each to write. I’d hope I don’t have to vent anymore but that’s unrealistic. In case you didn’t pick up on it earlier, I don’t like to lie to myself. I have to do it anyway. It’s part of coping with my problems. Other strategies include memes, Discord, and church. It’s great to finally be a part of something, but it bothers me that I feel somewhat detached from them.
As for this post, it’s time I wrapped it up and left you to finally get back to reading the news or something useful. For sticking through this all, thank you. You’re (probably all of you, but I can’t tell for sure, so I’ll assume you are) breathtaking and supportive, and I’d like to thank you all for understanding, or trying to understand, what I’ve been going through as of late. Of course, and you may have even picked up on this, I left some details out to spare myself and others and because Internet Safety. Nevertheless, I’m glad you’ve stopped by and… Thanks.
– I want a Peace-Out Pie, Buddy Blake