"The Real Me"

I recently observed an IM conversation my elder brother was having with one of his friends. They were discussing temperaments and which they were. I had never really taken much interest before then in what temperament I was, and I began to get curious. However, my road has since been becoming rather bumpy, and I've had the tendency to get pretty down about life. I realized that it would be unwise to bother looking into my personality and give it a tag, as I'd likely come out with an incorrect, not to mention undesirable, conclusion. That reminded me of what my brother's friend wrote: her secondary temperament was one thing, but she wished it was another. It only now strikes me that, outside of the temperamental study, I have been making the mistake of viewing myself in that manner: "I wish I was."

The bumps in my road have really been my own unwillingness to accept myself. I've always been a bit insecure about my reputation, but for the most part that was the post-relational doubts on behavior and how I came across. My parents have repeatedly assured me throughout life that my friends probably wonder the same things about themselves and not to worry about it. Then, over the past few months, I became aware of the fact that, in my eyes, I'd been letting my life play it's usual routines without bothering to think about a bigger picture and exercise control over where I wanted to go in the long run. From there I fell into a mess of anxiety and depression and began wishing things were different.

Mind you, nothing had really changed; I was just discontented with how things were, how they had become without my paying attention. My temperament, though I didn't think about it in such a specific way, was not ideal. I wanted to be a different person. Not that I disliked my good points, when I looked at them; but it seemed I'd let myself develop without some awareness or drive that I wanted. I think what triggered these pessimistic realizations was meeting someone who made me look at my future, the rest of my life as an adult, which I suddenly could see was approaching way too fast. I must admit, I'm scared of what the future holds, and I don't know where to go. All I know is I can't hide. And I've questioned my ability to go anywhere as who I am. My struggles and faults have hung in front of my face in a paralyzing fashion.

I think back to my philosophy teacher distinguishing between reputation and character: reputation is what people think of you, while character is who you are. And he commented that his reputation is likely much better than his character. I can hear him saying, "If people knew who I really am, they wouldn't stick around me." I'm sure he was referring, in all seriousness, to whatever private issues he has as a fallen human. But I let that thought go too far in relation to myself. Honestly, who would want to have anything to do with me? I doubt anyone who knows me thinks ill of me: I'm always complimented on my smarts and sense of humor; I have a definite gift for making people laugh. Even my recent hardships have not had much bearing on how I relate to other people. Yet my insecurity when I'm alone has increased. "If they only knew the real me..."

But is that actually a truthful assessment? A spy's secret activities are opposite to the appearance he upholds; one life is a complete fake, a cover-up for his true self. That's not how I am. The very fact that I am distressed is an indication that I know what's right and care about it being that way. To judge my private imperfections as my true character would be as foolish as to mistake a current downswing in my outlook on life for my true temperament. My friends probably know a great deal of the real me.

Unfortunately, I expect too much of myself, staking too much on the idea that I can change; then, when things don't improve, I get down on myself. My dad summed up this problem quite well one time when we were talking: he said, "You want to be a saint now." I do, and yet I haven't had enough faith in myself to get anywhere. The best relief I get tends to be not thinking about anything, escaping the world and myself by wasting the days playing video games, working on piano compositions when I know they're going nowhere, or else doing nothing at all. But life won't stay on hold for me like that. I'm growing up, even though I'd really like to do as Hobbes does when life seems too complicated: take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner.

I hope I haven't come off as stewing in self-pity or anything. I've needed to look at myself as I would if I were someone else. I have a rather compassionate and understanding attitude toward others, and provide encouragement where they'll accept it. For some reason, this doesn't hold true for myself, as I'm almost predisposed to blame myself and get depressed. In order to believe in the great possibilities the future holds, I have to run a logical analysis of my situation from an slightly third-person view. I believe things are getting better, but I need to remain optimistic and give my wholehearted trust to God that everything will work out. While it has bothered me that I've seemingly been short-sighted about life, I think it would be best for me right now to not try to look at a much bigger picture.

So I conclude these thoughts. I write them not for your sympathy, but in case you can get something out of them for your own sake in life. May your road's bumps be manageable with God's grace.

MS Word's Thesaurus Is Too Flexible.

Seriously, you know it's bad when you can't find a good synonym so you give the thing a word and wind up entertaining yourself seeing how off-track you can get from your original meaning. Here's tonight's example. It's not the best, but I find it amusing to see that I accidentally almost came full-circle with this one:

weather

erode

wear away

wear out

exhaust

drain

sap

liquid

fluid

solution

explanation

details

information

in turn

one by one

alone

unaided

independently

in competition

in contention

arguing

in conflict

fighting

war

combat

contest

race

event

affair

issue

problem

crisis

disaster

blow

gust

squall

storm

Note: I've stumbled upon a better chain, which I'll post once it reaches an end. Technically, this one could have gone on, but I got tired of navigating the different storms to find a way on. I've since looked at it and found that "gust" gives you a couple of options....

Why do I want to be a ROM hacker?

So I can do stuff like this! Can you believe these are the fruits of somebody's hackwork on Super Mario World?







And to think that I can hardly edit levels, let alone make all sorts of custom sprites and programming modifications! Why? Because the "community" is a DISorganization that cannot tell me what I actually need to know! Alas, it frustrates me to no end. I suppose they say much of the hobby is self-taught because it HAS to be for any newcomers to learn anything. *Sigh* My hope lives on, though. I've got too many great ideas to waste by giving up. And this guy is one of the biggest pros I've ever seen, so it would be foolhardy to become discouraged by comparison. If every artist did that, we'd only have a handful of paintings, music, etc. in the world because few would make use of whatever talent they had.

I have a feeling that's a lesson I'm going to be hit with again and again throughout life.

If I Made a Rubik's Cube ...

I've had a share of what I consider to be great product ideas, but this one almost leaves me shaking my own head. I half think this is brilliant and half think it's psychotic, so I'm curious to know what others' opinions on this are -- especially if you're a big Rubik's Cube nut. So here we go.

I don't have any first-hand experience but I imagine that as those Cubes get bigger and bigger they just pack on more layers of the same puzzle. Granted, this makes things more challenging, but I'm looking at a different approach. Rather than solving some 30x30x30 monstrosity, I want to make a toy that both challenges one's knowledge of what has to be done as well as their ability to look ahead and formulate a procedure ahead of time.

This Cube would be computerized, with colored lights instead of stickers, so it could jumble the whole thing up automatically and determine the number of moves required to solve it. This number would be set as a limit, and it would keep track of the turns made, counting down until the allotted number was reached. If you didn't solve it at that point, game over!

Here's the best part: the name, which I initially came up with as a joke and which gave root to the whole idea in the first place. I'd call it the "Rubikon Cube" -- once you've started turning it, there's no turning back!

I don't know about you, but I'm glad I won't be getting one of those in my basket this year. Happy Easter!

New DS Zelda ...

... with a steam locomotive?!? How industrial must Hyrule become? And can Link have to do absolutely everything on his own, like back in the pre-Navi days, please? And if Zelda is in this one, how does Ganondorf come into play? Is this a brand-new story, or did the water level drop since Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass? Does Link start out running a train-powered postal service? Is that what's with the one shot with Zelda in the teaser? Did the old postman bite the dust after his accident in Twilight Princess? Perhaps this is in between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, and tells the story of how the world became a cartoon? Would that explain the big statue Link seems to be controlling in the teaser, which reminds me of those from Twilight Princess that you could move with the Dominion Rod? Does this finally link up Wind Waker with its predecessors by ending in a massive flood because Link melts the polar ice caps with all the carbons his cannon-sporting choo-choo produces? Did nobody ever tell him there's a reason the hero wears green? Oh boy, can we have a political satire of a Zelda game?? At the rate things are moving, the next generation of Zelda titles will have no swords, will they? Or will Nintendo pull the Final Fantasy stunt and throw anachronistic restraints to the wind? When will Link get a Buster Sword, huh?? He's got Power Bracelets, he could wield it, right? Won't Ganondorf eventually forget the Triforce of Power, then, and settle for H-bombs? And when things get that high-tech, will Link's sword be able to shoot beams again, for crying out loud?!? Will it have some built-in laser device? For that matter, at the stage of technology things are currently at, why hasn't Link bought a weed-wacker so he doesn't have to slice grass by hand? Aren't spherical bombs with rope wicks getting a little old-fashioned? How long will it be before magic doesn't exist any more, as there's been less and less of it in the past few games? Golly, is all this modernization the reason the difficulty level has dropped so low?? Does Link have his degrees to operate these things? Oh, but Hyrule doesn't have an education system, does it? That'll be next, right? And has any monarchy in history ever lasted this long? When's the revolution, man? How is the line of princesses continuing when there hasn't been a king since A Link to the Past and Minish Cap, and history tells of no queen whatsoever? Can I take a look at the genealogy of the Hylian royal family, please? Or would it just say, "Zelda, Zelda, Zelda, Zelda, Zelda, Zelda...."? Has this all been fake, and the princess is in another castle? When will the Triforce of Courage be renamed "the Triforce of Blind, Emotionless Adventure"? Does Link really have courage, or is he a retarded instruction-follower? Is that why a side character has to tell him everything nowadays? And why is anyone still trying to connect these games in a timeline? Isn't it obvious now that the goddesses are creating the world over and over again, inducing small differences and bringing about variations of the same events in a quest to get their story just right? Isn't there a Hylian legend that says, "The goddesses saw that what they had made was cool but not good enough, so they said 'Be interesting and multiply ... You shall have dominion over whatever monsters you can overpower ... We shall watch and most likely forsake you, going off to build a new existence when you get boring.'"? When will Nintendo turn the series over to me so I can do things right?

Falcon Punch: Kirby Remix!

During an period of brain-flushing the buried panic of school and the exhaustion of researching aluminum, I came across the following video.



Somebody sure put their time and editing skills to good use. This is meaningless, yet it had me laughing so hard!

Voice-acting, my foot.

See, this is what happens when you give a character gibberish voice-acting that's any more sophisticated than in Star Fox.