Currently Listening Final Straw By Snow Patrol see related

Why? I honestly don't understand what it is that makes finding someone interested in me so incredibly difficult. People can tell me over and over again "you're so hot" or "you're the coolest guy ever" or they can ask me "why don't you have a boyfriend?" all that stuff meant to be complimentary or friendly or whatever. But at some point, you could have every person in the world tell you that but it means absolutely nothing until you actually have someone who truly likes you for who you are. When someone finally approaches me that doesn't have any obligation to just be nice and tells me that I'm really attractive, then I'll be happy. It sounds petty (and slightly emo) but when I can't answer these question I'm continually posed, what good does it do?

I don't claim to have the highest self-esteem in the world but I respect myself and am glad I am who I am but sometimes you are faced with some of the most crushing slaps in the face and no one can really console you when you know their only purpose is to make you feel better. I need hard evidence. I can't rely on simply testimony to really know what people think of me or why I have the problems that I do. But when you  make friends with a lot of very attractive people who are told over and over again by even just strangers that they're hot or that they're so much fun to be around and of course I'm happy for them because, who wouldn't want to be complimented like that? But the more I hear about it from my friends, and the fact that I still don't get people that approach me like that, It makes any external quality about me seem even more ordinary than I'd ever want.

Perhaps I'd be the biggest douchebag in the world if I was actually really attractive or if I was actually really fun and funny. Some people like that really are and I really like the character that I do have. But for once in my life I want those people to act toward me like I do toward them. I want to be hot. I want to be funny and interesting. But that feeling of helplessness you feel after realizing what's going on around you is probably the worst part. If wishes were fishes there'd be no room in the sea, so no matter how much I wish I were more attractive and more interesting I'm not and I never will be because I already am what you see and who you know.

I really don't ever say this to people because I feel when forced to respond to someone in a situation like myself, the urge to even further assauge fears with stretching honesty makes me even less confident in myself. When people try to talk to me then they only seem less honest and more concerned with my self esteem, which is good I suppose. But I don't think I'll ever hear anything truly honest out of anyone as long as they know that I'm insecure and everyone does. I just don't have that confidence and when I'm around people that do, I become even less and less confident as I become marginalized and peripheral in human interaction of seeking out the most fit mate (i.e. hottest and most outgoing.) So in the end I just end up feeling sad and more insecure at the end of these occasions and feel less and less like putting myself in them ever again. Except when I do start believing people when they tell me someone has to jump me the next time I go out and but when I do go out I am relegated more to the group that is expected to jump other people and I don't jump other people.

What's even more killer is that if I get to know someone I have a really big crush on and they quickly go through the list of my more attractive friends and then suddenly, one day, after having seemingly had no interest in me, they want to start hanging out all of a sudden. Of course in my head I'm thinking, why? why now? Am I not good enough to be anyone's first choice? Must I always feel like WashU in the college rankings? Sort of up there but breezed over so frequently that I develop such a case of insecurity it permeates everything I do? Why can't I be Duke or Yale? In fact, I feel more and more like WashU these days. A good solid choice that whoever ends up there is happy they did but lacking any definition in so many areas that I'm no one's first choice.

People then ask me, "well give me an example of when this has happened" and I do have them but I don't want to make friends self-conscious of when I'm around them and secretly very envious of them. But it's just a general feeling I get. For once I really don't want to just become every guy's friend. I want to be an interesting prospect right off the bat. I want to be some that catches people's eyes. I want to have lots of confidence and a perfect body and a gorgeous face. I feel like Clementine sometimes, lining up images of who I want to be and then looking back at myself and yelling "you can't be ugly! be pretty! you have to be pretty!" except I really don't have a Joel staring me back in the face to tell me I'm the most beautiful person in the world and know they mean it.

I am told so often that getting in a relationship happens when you least expect it. I'm sure this is true. But I won't be secure about that fact until I feel like I can have some sort of choice in who it is and not feel like I have to take whoever throws me a line. I just want to be Brad Pitt for a day and see how things are different. For now though, I just accept that I'm not who I wish I was and I really can't be that so I should learn to be happy even if it means finishing somewhere in the middle. Because I am somewhere in the middle. I'm average.

Currently Listening Illinois By Sufjan Stevens see related

I’ve always been someone with very intense interests over the course of my life. I never really liked all the normal things that everyone else liked growing up. I didn’t care about sports, watching or playing. I didn’t care about video games or music. I didn’t have the little kid obsessions most people had, rather, I was obsessed with skylines. Then I was obsessed with roller coasters. Then it became airplanes and airlines. I used to read the World Almanac for hours a day because statistics were just so interesting to me. While all the rest of the world, especially in the guy’s realm, was concentrating on playing hockey and talking about sports or playing video games or those stupid nerdy card games, I was busy disconnecting myself from popular culture. Those things that I began to concentrate on I felt so accomplished at and was so proud of myself for, but no one ever was able to appreciate them except for my mom and sister.

As I got older though, it really began to dawn on me. I really wasn’t uniquely good at anything anyone cared about. I was not a sports prodigy. Heck, I didn’t play any sports at all during middle and high school except for cross country my senior year and to say that was a joke would be a gross understatement. I was very smart but I was never the type that naturally pulled off amazing grades. Those who did just always do so well always got praise for being so smart and so talented, even people below me in academics. Maybe it was my circle of friends, but I was never able to have the satisfaction of anyone saying to me, “wow, I really wish I could do that as well as you can.”

The thing that is so hard though is that I am extraordinary. I have done so many things in my life and know so much about so many things and feel so proud of myself for being so. But when no one ever recognizes you for any of that, it is very, very crushing. All I ever wanted in life was the approval and admiration of the people I was around because I gave them so much of mine. But I’m not a very good dancer and I can’t sing well, I don’t have a great body and I’m not particularly attractive, and for that reason I never had any really popular qualities.

I did canoe 600 miles across the arctic tundra for seven weeks in one of the most eye opening experiences of my life. It was so incredibly challenging emotionally as well as physically and all I wanted to do was to come back and to have everyone want to gather around me and hear of my grand expedition. I barely got a nod of recognition from anyone except my parents about what I had done. Was that it? Did I go through all of that only to have the personal satisfaction of doing it? Does anyone really care how hard it was for me? Does anyone care how hard this is for me?

I helped my Math League team win 2^nd place at state over every other private prep school and public school in the state with all of their Asians and math prodigies. But no one really paid much notice to that except for my math teacher. The hockey team had won a huge game and that was all people could talk about for the next week. Once again, my triumph went unnoticed. My chance to shine and show people how good at something I was slipped away.

College doesn’t help matters at all. I was going to a phenomenal school that doesn’t have a phenomenal name, where as a lot of my peers and equals in my class were going to Harvard, Princeton, Northwestern, Dartmouth, MIT, places with big names. Then, who’d ever heard of WashU? And they say the people that matter know the name but really, I really just wanted people to be in awe of what I could do. My scholarship? In the school newsletter, when it was being discussed what scholarships we had gotten, there was huge praise for our valedictorians for both getting National Merit Scholarships and on top of that got scholarships for a FULL RIDE TO THE U OF M. It went on and on about how proud we were to have such noted students coming from our school. Oh yeah “Sam Moen received the Danforth Scholarship to the University of Washington.” Fantastic.

I try so hard to make other people feel important. That any minor thing they might have done, regardless how interested I am, is important. It helps me understand people and it always makes anyone feel so good about themselves when someone takes an interest in something they’re proud of. I continue to do that because I think, maybe that’s another thing I’m good at that someday, someone will tell me they’re glad I made them feel good about that one thing. But I really just want other people to take a genuine interest in those little things that I’ve done that I’m proud of. I’ve worked so hard to stand out from everyone else and the fact that so many people seem to care little about anything but pop culture and sports is so damaging on the truly talented people of society whose grand achievements are buried every day when a quarterback scores a touch down. I just truly wish I was really good at something people actually cared about.

Currently Playing The Hour of Bewilderbeast By Badly Drawn Boy see related

Home.

Going home for me is a tragic experience. I think I've said this many many times to many many people but for me, going home isn't all about being with a close-knit family and hanging out with your closest friends from high school. It is about putting myself on mental life support for three months to deal with my family and social scene back home.

Now, before anyone from home reads this and objects to my objecting of the social nuances of Duluth, hear me out. I can't spend another summer going to hick parties that are primarily there for my straight girlfriends to flirt and drink with their less than welcoming guy friends who I have an uneasy truce with. That 'I won't touch you if you don't touch me' agreement that many guys have. It works but boy is it a little stifling at times.

This said I love all of my girlfriends from home. They care for me, include me, entertain me, and most of all listen to me though when it comes to having fun, they become as self serving as humans tend to be and go to the same old parties at the same old places. It got old for me maybe five minutes in but they never seem to get tired of it. Lucky. Regardless, I can't do that for another summer. I need something else to do.

Generally this would be an opportunity for me to chime in with other things I can do but, frankly, there aren't many. I could . . . . . sleep? Or . . . . . work out? Hmm . . . . . read? To be honest, I do those things anyway so I don't need to make extra allowances for them. What I need is college again. I need the house and I need Beirut in the basement and I need Nathan for conversations until 6am and I need Anna to love me and so on. What I don't need is my family, a curfew, homophobia, absent friends, and estrangement from my friends and that, folks, is exactly what I'm going home to.

As much as I can say I appreciate my dad and stepmom, I don't enjoy the way they treat me. They think I'm irresponsible and petty and this was even before the whole party incident. I must be frequently criticized for my purchasing of expensive clothing (my dad was getting after me for buying $60 jeans. If he only knew.) They get after me for staying out past 12:30 and as any socially active young adult knows, nothing even starts until 12.  They don't trust me to drive three hours to the twin cities to hang out with friends and shop and they recommended I bike down to Little Angie's to work everyday. I love them, I really do, but they are clueless to a degree of which I don't know how to handle.

Then there's the whole homophobia issue. I was accepted back in high school and that is good. However, it was like I said above by and large a tenative notion that I would keep my distance from most of the guys of which are the types I consider my closest friends at school now. This sucks. Even among my girl friends, many simply didn't understand or care to listen where I was coming from and I was hoping going to school would change people (it usually does) but in the brief conversations I've had with many of them, save for one person who I look very forward to seeing this summer, no one seems to really have changed at all.

Also, I'm a very affectionate person. I have always been taught by friends at home this is wrong and that keeping distance is far more respectful or whatever. Then I go to school and am now allowed to cuddle with, hug, and just basically touch anyone I want within certain social bounds and that feels good. I'm scared I'm going to go through human contact withdrawl while I'm home. But we'll see. And Katie won't be there. I'll miss you sweetheart.

Finally, the whole thing in dorms where you can simply walk down the hall and find someone to entertain you, that is gone. I am on my own and I don't think I can deal with distance and having to put in huge amounts of effort to see people. This will be so difficult. Wish me luck.

Currently Watching Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (Widescreen Edition) see related

Worst feeling ever. Expecting you did so well on something and you just didn't at all.

So Calc final. It was today at 10:30 AM. I was up all night diligently studying from about 11 PM - 9:30 AM. That is a long time but in that time that I was studying I, for the first time this year and probably even in a longer time than I can remember, felt very very prepared for my test. I chilled before hand and felt totally relaxed, something that doesn't happen often considering I usually develop minor twitches and have that gross 'butterflies' feeling. No. I was totally ready and even if the test was hard I could say I did my best.

Luckily, the test really wasn't that hard at all. It was very, very straightforward meaning if you recognized the problem, knew which integral or whatever to use, you really shouldn't have much of an issue at all. My little notecard with my equations had every fucking important one in the book and from this at every problem, by and large, I knew what to do and felt confident that even if I got stopped up a little bit, I was doing well.

Unfortunately, Idiot here whizzed through problems 1-11 and got to 12 and totally lost track of time. It was a lot of sticky algebra and I just had to get it all untangled before I would move on. Good move, Sam. Of course I spent no more than 40 minutes on that single problem. This is not good. Three and a half minutes are not enough time to evaluate each one of these problems as I had just forty minutes left to evaluate the other twelve problems which were all significantly more difficult than the first eleven. I whizzed through but it was then that I got all jittery and nervous. If only we had 30 more minutes.

Well I didn't finished with certainty nearly as many as I had hoped but still felt I had enough clues from my later steps of each problem that I could fairly accurately guess the answer. This had worked to a surprising amount of success on previous tests. Unfortunately, my luck ran out and I simply bombed the last part. I didn't know it at that point but I still wasn't too sure about how well I did. Still I left the room feeling confident that I had finally conquered studying and bad grades and that this was my turning point, though I was still upset over my dill-dallying at problem 12. Goddamned Sqrt(cos(t/8)^8/3 - sin(t/8)^8/3). Is it really that hard to simplify?

Anyway, I left somewhat discouraged but after talking to people I began to realize: heck, even if I didn't get a perfect on this exam I still for once was totally prepared for an exam and that was something. I also began to feel, for the first time ever, that I was not a low-B or C student, that maybe with my newly acquired studying skills and so on, that maybe I could talk to people about my grades and not have to fudge over my own scores. In fact, after laying out in the sun, I felt pretty darn good about myself. For once in a very long time I was talkative and energetic and happy, even though I didn't sleep the previous night. I thought the weekend would be care-free and pleasant until Sunday when I would skip back to the library and make a repeat performance of my calc studying. At this point I was still confident that I did really well and was certain I had above the average.

Then, the clouds begain rolling over the WGE quad and I went inside and haphazardly thought I'd check and see if they had scores up yet. They were and . . . as . . . I . . . was . . . getting . . . to . . . the . . . bottom with hope against hope that I had a score to put my biggest enemies (i.e. all the people who do so remarkably well in everything) to shame. Unfortunately, my heart sank. Not just an 'aww, rats' sinking, but a sickening, sad, angry, regretful, and pitiful sinking that sucks all the good mood out of you. There really wasn't anything to be optimistic about. It was below the average, by a margin I would've never expected, and it had totally ruined my grade for the semester. Instead of disappointment, which happens but you get over it quickly, I had just frustration, remorse, and shame. Physics Test #2 relived.

So what do I do now? As much as people are like, oh a C isn't bad at all! Everyone gets C's! Unfortunately this is a skewed statement as the C's more often than not are from Chem, for example, or other notoriously difficult classes. Calc 3 is not notoriously difficult. In fact, it was preached to me many times as that it would be a semi-easy A. And it doesn't help that everyone around you who you know that didn't study as much or put as much pride or expectation into a test still did better than you. As glad as I am that I was able to actually sit my fat ass down and study for a solid period of time, I wish I had something to show for it. In fact, it seems like every time I feel like I put so much time into something, I always come up empty-handed. So is life. I just think its rather ironic that I, the only person I know of who didn't walk away from that test whining about how hard or 'so so' it was, actually ended up getting a much inferior grade than a good number of those.

But people have told me this several times and I know: there's nothing I can do about it so I should stop letting it bothering me. But you can't help it so I'm just going to watch a movie and hope I am in a better mood tomorrow.