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ShadowyVikto
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Name: Victor
Birthday: 12/29/1987
Gender: Male
Interests: tossing blades of grass in the nooks and crannies of your hair
Expertise: frolicking through your room at night when you sleep to give you good dreams of hope and despair ^^
Occupation: Student
Message: message meEmail: email me
AIM:  viktorthemur
Member Since:
6/28/2003
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| I just deleted a folder on my laptop entitled "HooliganzInc".
I haven't felt this empty since the fall (or fail) of 2007. More on that later...
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| My feelings about UCSD have changed a bit since last week. I wouldn't say the change was so much a dramatic shift as it was a rapid one. In the last conversation I had with some friends a week ago about being here, I pretty much found this place a social desert. Yes, people here are in a rush to get to their next thing, but where are they not? That's just the world at its finest. It's what I'd been telling myself for a long time, but only recently have I really come closer to accepting it.
So, I decided to tag along. As soon as I paid my membership dues to a certain club, I was pretty much on the same track as everyone else. Running around meeting strangers, getting to know people, and connecting with fellow transfers at such a rapid pace that I almost forgot I was going to Vegas the very next day. By the time Vegas did come, I was all warmed up for the trip, and I had a blast all weekend.
Then I came back to San Diego. I held back on my thoughts about how I'd feel coming back here so that I could take in the full experience untainted by biases. Surprisingly enough, it felt like a sanctuary. The first thing I said when I walked through the door of my apartment, not really to anyone in particular, was, "Home sweet home," and it really did feel like home.
And then there's the loneliness. It's not as bad as before. It's not so much that I needed to get out and join things--I already learned that from my days at PCC. It was more the need to be doing SOMETHING. And that something came in the form of learning how to maintain a solid academic and social life here. With my schedule, chances are slim that I'll be finding a job this quarter, and I've put a hold on attempting to graduate early just to escape the UC-wide fee increases for next year. Aside from the fees though, I really did want to just graduate at the same time as everyone I grew up with. Looking back on it, I realize that a lot of the most important decisions in my life were made out of the desire to stay in my comfort zones. Wanting to be with my friends was my main driving force for going to UCLA so many times over the years. Wanting to be away from my mom was my strongest motivation for choosing UCSD. It wasn't so much an ego issue as it was an issue of being with my closest friends. As we get older and start heading out in our own directions though, I'm getting more and more adjusted to the idea that we'll just have each other at a distance while we live our own lives. It's as Ruby said once approximately 5 and a half years ago, "Now's the time to grow and share together". I'm still working on applying that to my own life.
I've found a cubby for myself here. There are plenty of quiet places on the western part of the top floor in the Geissel Library where people like myself go to follow up on readings and lectures and to catch the view of the Pacific out the windows. Rule of thumb that I'll remember the next time I study all the way up there: face the east when it starts to approach sunset, lest ye burn your eyes out trying to dodge the reflected sunlight. It's actually kind of cozy just sitting up there. I think I'm going to try to make a routine out of studying-ocean meditating-studying. It seems like a healthy habit to keep up daily. There's a whole host of things I want to get done before I graduate from here, and I think that over time, I'll actually really get to like it here. I might just avoid catching "the LA Bug", as my South Africa professor puts it. I can already feel myself really mellowing out to match the atmosphere here. Maybe when the presence of school gets heavier and the presence of clubs lightens up, I might just follow the little flow of energy that goes around here and match up to it.
In the meantime, Victor out.
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| I'm about to head out soon so I'll save some for later. I've been back in San Diego since Saturday night/ Sunday morning, and I've noticed that it's a lot more livable this time around. The last time I was here two weeks ago, it was just me and my grad student housemate who had a full-time research job. That basically broke it down so that I was the only one in the apartment, but seeing as how summer school had just ended and everyone was back home, I'd never felt lonelier.
This time though, I'd come back from a roller coaster of a San Francisco road trip, and all my roommates were already here when I moved in again. Maybe it was traveling and getting away from LA for a week in San Fran, or maybe it's the fact that my roommates and housemates are all here, and they're all pretty cool. Whatever it is, this place feels a lot more relaxing now. Unlike two weeks ago where I went home after three days because I had nothing left to do here.
And then there's campus. The place is teeming with freshmen in every corner: in the dining halls, in the smaller food vendors, and most of all in the six colleges. All the events on campus for Welcome Week have so far been geared toward freshmen, despite promises from the Transfer and Commuters Community that those said events, like Freeze Tag or Ultimate Frisbee, would be transfer-student only type events. "Yeah, SD likes to screw with their students," said my roommate Ryan. I agree completely--this campus and the people who work for it love to mess with us transfers. It's not bad though.
So far I haven't been able to reconnect with any of my old friends here. I'm pretty lonely here, and as one guy told me yesterday when I asked him about the campus environment, "It usually gets pretty lonely during the school year" because everyone's just in a hurry to get their work done for school and extracurricular activities. I just asked him about the campus atmosphere, and that's the first thing that comes out of him. Great. Now at least I know it'll be like middle school all over again. As in I need to go out and fight the urge to sleep in.
And if that's the case, it's time for me to head out 
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| I've been wondering recently when it is that I'd explode and reveal every secret that I've been keeping with me, allegedly "to the grave", like we young people like to exaggerate so much. Like a timebomb, we're all bound to go off eventually, and when that happens, the usual result is panic. Total and uncontrolled panic.
Or, like the CIA, we can release 100% of our known information of one event at a time that we've kept in mind, and smoothly, but slowly, publish, eventually, everything that's been making it harder to breathe. | | |
| I'll outright say it. I haven't changed much in the past couple years, except that now I'm a little more patient with certain types of personalities than I used to be. Looking back at my lil' mental notes from hell these last couple... months, maybe years, I notice that the only thing that's really different now is that I don't talk about growing pains as much (more on that later). But that's expected; we're mostly adults now.
Eh... mostly.
But what bugs me now is that I haven't been able to sleep right these past couple weeks because I quit my job. Some who knew about that anti-Prop 8 job would say I quit too late, but I honestly think I quit too early. Sure, it screwed up my sleep schedule, but damn it, I only worked with them for like 6 weeks before I quit, signed a lease in San Diego after reading the wrong documents, and lost out $800-soon-turning-into-$2200 straight from my bank account.
Reversed sleeping schedule aside, I haven't slept these past two days because I've been thinking about the people in my life, and how I treat them. I've been following the story of a certain friend's inevitable breakup as of late, and during its climactic end (in my book, at least), she made a statement that didn't hit me until about... three hours ago. It's about karma. And it's a bitch, if you treat life that way.
As far as I know, I used to make scary-accurate observations about people back in high school; maybe even middle school if I can remember that far back. What this did to me was:
1) boosted my confidence, then
2) fed my ego, which
3) made me feel like I was right about so many things later on in life, despite
4) making #($*U(#$&#$ loads of blundering mistakes that even my kid nephews and nieces notice, which made me realize
5) it's not that I see the world in a different way, but instead that
6) I've become the arrogant bastards I'd always wanted to punch in the mouth.
The solution is simple. Do what I did in high school: homework. My deep-seated arrogance, I've realized a long time ago but have just come to terms with, led me to venture into the worst of situations. The specific situation that comes to mind now is one I still feel the guilt for. In advance, I apologize to you if you're reading this. Or, if you're not because you've cut all connections to me, I'll relay this message.
I became friends with a certain person a couple years ago at PCC who, nearly a year ago, came back from the ER for cutting herself too severely. I used to say to myself, "I can't help but feel like I made her do it," but now I see past the bullshit victim game. "I made her do it," I say now. Me and my arrogant positivity couldn't get past two facts: 1) she needed help but didn't want it enough to listen, and 2) I'm not a qualified professional. What I did tell myself then was simply two mantras, "she needs help," and "I can do this." But as it turned out, no, I am not a qualified professional, and no, I couldn't do it. As of now, I've no idea if she's still the person I remember, seared into my memory because of my own faults. In a few months, it'll be damn near a year since we last communicated in any way. Honestly, I'm worried for this person. I know now what she's capable of, but I feel helpless to do anything because I was the one who pushed her into it in the first place.
That's played out brutally this past year. I found myself unable to form new friendships at PCC. I felt myself drifting from my old friends elsewhere. I managed to keep some close friends, but only online, with the occasional get-together. But I'm even noticing a slip in those connections, not because we each have our own lives, but because I'm having a falling out with the people I value. I haven't been sleeping because I've been thinking not about this person directly, but because I've been thinking about another friend I met at PCC who I'm worried about, but at the same time staying away from. This is what my attitude has brought on me. All those years of being a self-righteous kid ended up transforming me into a self-righteous bastard nurtured and then usurped by his own hubris. Karma is a nasty one, she is.
But now that I've gotten this off my chest, I know what I need to do. "Just shut up". Harsh words from a good friend. That's how I know they're worth something. | | |
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