Yikes! SENIOR YEAR GOALS AND LAMENTATIONS

Hey there folks! Sorry I haven't posted in eons! I had a super boring summer and figured you'd probably appreciate it if I spared you the details of my every-day routines. (What I ate for breakfast and such.) I think the highlight of my summer was that for my birthday, I got the 2012 AP Stylebook. I was/am super happy about that. In late August, I had reconstructive jaw surgery. Oh boy, was that a trip. I had my jaws wired shut for 6 weeks. YIKES! Liquid diet. I think if I ever have to have soup again I might go nutters.

On a happier note, I am now thoroughly engrossed in my senior year of high school. What? When did that happen? It's scary to think about actually. It's already November of my senior year, so... seven months until graduation... YIKES! It's fun to see where everyone wants to go to school and finding out what they want to do with their lives. I'm learning new things about people I've known for ages.
That sounds super dramatic - "what they want to do with their lives" - almost like preparing for the end of an entire era. Which is, in all honesty, what we're doing, I suppose. Because once we start college, we've branched into a whole new world (que cheesy Disney song here) of social hierarchies and opportunities unlike anything we've been exposed to so far.

People keep telling me all the social drama stuff goes away in college. I hope so. Maybe people have matured by that age. But that's what I was told about high school too, and middle school before that. Maybe it just never goes away, and it's an innate element of human nature. If Herbert Spencer had it right, an the world does operate on a survival-of-the-fittest basis, then the "Queen Bee" mentality will exist forever. But I guess that's just the way life is sometimes.

I'd like to think that I'm past that part of my life now. The part where my temper gets in the way of what's really important to me. The part where I can't trust anyone because some little homunculus buried in my subconscious goes nutters. I like to think I've changed -- matured. That I'm not so scared of losing people that I can't form a functional bond with anyone. I hope I'm not as quick to anger, or quick to find fault with the people who are closest to me. I hope others can notice this as well, and that I'm not totally delusional, convincing myself that I've matured when I haven't.

Maybe, if I have matured,  I can use that maturity to avoid the perils of social antics and the dramatic spotlight of involvement in the issues of others. My hope for this last year of high school is that I can work toward reparation of past losses, even if those losses can not be entirely replaced. My ultimate goal is to exit high school with insight and understanding far beyond that with which I entered three years ago, and if I'm lucky, maybe I'll make some lifelong friends as well.

Tygh Valley 2012

AP Extremely Tired of School!!!

Is it summer yet? Ugh. We just got another AP Extreme project. This time, it's answering the question of what makes us human. I think I might go nuts. There are so many ways to answer that question and so very few of them are solid and inarguable. GROWLSNARLSNUFFLESNORT! At least I'm working with a partner this time. Honestly, I didn't expect to be working with anyone half helpful, but as it turns out, I must have gotten lucky this time. We're only a week in, though, so it might just be the "novelty" effect at work. Oh well, we'll see.

I'm sick! I think I have a cold, but normally I don't get THIS sick from a cold . . . Ughs! Oh well. Richard said he might come visit me this weekend, so maybe I'll be able to convince myself to get nice and healthy before too long. In any case, I appreciate the willingness to visit me in my isolated hermithood while I live in Sunriver. It looks like it's going to be a long, lonely summer though. Alas. . .

Lessons from a While Ago...

Here we are--or here I am, at least-- at the end of Junior year. And what a year it has been. I think I've learned more this year, both socially and academically than almost any other year I can remember. Maybe at some point, we stop learning new things and just relearn what we already know in a different way. If that's the case, I hope I have a long time before I reach that point, because I know theres a lot more learning for me to do. Someday, I hope I can remember all the lessons this time in my life taught me, and I can teach those lessons to others. But if there is anything I have learned this year about the nature of the human condition, it's that some lessons aren't meant to be taught. They're meant to be learned. That is to say, no matter how many times someone else tries to teach you something, or warn you about trusting someone, or keep you safe from yourself, it won't make sense until you've experienced that lesson for yourself. Whether by trusting someone who betrays your trust, or loving someone who breaks your heart, or making decisions that only serve to bring you down; some things, you have to find out on your own.

Notes on Honor and Loyalty

Antony claims that Brutus was an honorable man. Which is true, however, Antony fails to stipulate the difference between honor and loyalty. Where one fails, the other often does not, and therefore the defective value is allowed to be forgotten. But the difference, though subtle, is significant. I once knew a girl who thought that honor was the most important thing she had. Honor and loyalty. She never realized that sometimes the two must be separated until it nearly cost her the life of someone she loved very much. And then she discovered that honor, what is "right" or the "good" thing to do, may not be the best thing to do, and often it is the worst thing to do. Loyalty has no grey lines. Unlike honor, loyalty bears no question and no reservations toward gender or race or age. Loyalty is unconditional, and uncomplicated. Honor comes from loyalty, but loyalty is not born from honor.
Honor causes a person to tell a lie to someone they love in order to protect them. Loyalty causes a person to tell the truth, to face the heartbreak of the person they love, and be there to pick up the pieces after everything's fallen apart.
I suppose that's all I wanted really. Someone to be there for me and hold me when I couldn't handle the pain of living with a thousand truths that weren't my own, someone to tell me I am a good person who believed it and wanted to make me believe it. Someone who wasn't just going through the motions in order to keep me happy. Someone to help me superglue the bits of my heart back together after they'd been torn apart again.
A relationship is only ever one-sided. Perception is only ever one sided unless you can impose you're way of thinking into the minds of other people, which is in fact, posible, but only the lowest people try to convince people who are happy in a relationship to be unhappy in it. In any case, for the same reason that blue to me is a different color than blue to you or anyone else (because of the way you physically perceive the color), a relationship is only ever what it is to one person. Even if two people agree on what they feel for one another, they're agreeing on two different things.
This really wasn't the point of my attempt to write this down. I might try again later tonight. I apologize if reading this makes you feel like pulling my fingernails off with a pair of rusty tweezers.