No One Man Should Have All That Power

I've started religiously listening to the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast. The first time I heard of it was when my roommate showed me a clip from it describing the effects of DMT, dimethyltryptamine, the most potent hallucinogenic psychedelic known to man (naturally produced by the brain during the dream state and near-death experiences). I'm naturally curious about such things, so when I was looking around for stuff to listen to on the mower at work this summer, I decided to subscribe to the podcast and check out a few episodes.

Joe Rogan is famous for being the announcer for the UFC and the host of Fear Factor. He's also a standup comedian and martial artist. His podcast is about cool and interesting things like drugs, mixed martial arts, comedy, current events, government, sociopolitical stuff, metaphysical stuff, philosophical stuff, or whatever he and his guests feel like talking about. Sometimes it's just him and his comedian friends sitting around getting stoned and shooting the shit. He is a critical thinker with a way of cutting straight to the heart of an issue and exposing bullshit. It's entertaining, thought provoking, and very informative. I absolutely love it, and recommend it to anyone that sees himself or herself as a cool person with a rational view of the world. But that's not what this blog post is about.

It had been a week since the last podcast, as Joe was on vacation, and I was going crazy waiting for a new episode to listen to. I downloaded the newest episode last night, got up all stoked to listen to it on the mower this morning, and arrived at work to find my headphones out of batteries. Major buzzkill. Oh well, I had a whole morning of solitude to reflect and think my own thoughts.

One of the main things I thought about was my summer fitness project, and why I did it. To understand that, I had to go all the way back to last summer...

 I had a summer fling with a girl I knew from Shad Valley. We were pen pals. She was doing research in Calgary for the summer, and we visited each other several times before she went home to Ontario for the school year. We had a falling out over the winter, and haven't been on the best of terms ever since. I saw her again at a Shad reunion in Florida this spring, and she was polite and friendly, but stone cold to any flirting. This was very unfortunate, because it turns out she is moving to Edmonton for grad school at the U of A this fall.

My motivation for start losing weight was, plain and simple, to look good for her when I saw her again in the fall. I saw us together in pictures from Florida, and it was obvious that in addition to what went wrong between us, my body wasn't doing me any favors in the situation either. She was fit, I was fat. All I wanted to do was to look so irresistibly good that when she saw me again, she'd want to jump my bones. I wanted her to think that she was wrong to not be interested in me anymore. Looking back, whether or not we actually got back together wasn't the point. It was about proving her wrong, reframing the issue, and placing the power back with me. It wasn't about sex. It wasn't about health. It was about power.

As the summer dragged on, it became more clear that that ship has sailed. I'm a very different person this summer than last, and she and I are looking for two very different things. But I'm still working out as hard as I ever did. I wondered, why?

I am building a better body because I despise the power that beautiful girls have over me. That's the best way I can explain it. When a beautiful girl views herself as "out of my league", on a different level of physical attractiveness than me, she has license to look down on me. I'm filed away in a lower classification of man, the ones she has no attraction to. Any interaction we have from then on is not on a level playing field; she has the upper hand. I'm attracted to her, but she's not attracted to me. She holds the cards, she's in control. She has power over me. Hopefully that makes sense.

I hate being controlled. I want to be able to have interactions that are, if not completely on my own terms, at least on equal terms. I want a girl to have the same sense of social accountability to me as I have to her. Right now, if I approach a beautiful girl and she blows me off, it's no big deal to her. It's no loss to her. It's like when gross drunk 40-year-old women hit on me at the pool hall and I tell them to fuck off, it's no loss to me because I can do so much better. But if I had big shoulders, hard arms, and hip-hop abs, a girl would have no choice but to, at the very least, consider what she has to lose. I'd be given a fair chance, or even the benefit of the doubt, not just in the dating world but in the world at large. Ever notice how good looking people universally get treated better? It's the ugly truth, no pun intended.

Fitness is one of the very best things I can do to to better my life, because of the way it makes people view you and treat you differently. r/fitness is full of stories about how guys got fit and all of a sudden, got so much more respect from friends and strangers alike, men and women alike. Best of all, it's something that is completely under my control. All it takes is a little know-how, a bit of hard work, and a lot of discipline. I'm feeling more and more powerful every day.

Big Time Muscle

I've been eating healthier foods, counting calories, and working out religiously all summer. I've lost a lot of fat. Here is my summer progress album! I went from 186 pounds and 23% body fat in May to 159 pounds and 12% body fat in August.

Today was the day I officially ended my "cut" and began my "bulk". During a cut, you take in less calories than you burn, resulting in a net loss. Lifting weights during a cut makes you lose fat instead of muscle to make up the difference. During a bulk, you take in more calories than you burn, for an overall gain. Lifting weights during a bulk makes you gain muscle instead of fat to make up the difference.

This morning I had a massive hammy, cheesy, peppery omelette and a protein shake. This afternoon I had a mess of bison roast, salad, and as much milk as I wanted. Over the course of the day at work, I felt absolutely amazing. It's so great to have fuel in the tank again, after months of eating a -1000 cal/day deficit.

I plan to bulk for the next four months, then re-evaluate where I'm at. Check back for another progress album in December!

So long, I'm off to the gym to lift some heavy shit :)

Eventually We'll All Have Lost Completely Everything We've Been

Last night, I ended up drinking in the hot tub with my two younger brothers and a few of their friends. It was totally unexpected. I came home around 9pm from collecting plant samples for a university biology course this fall, expecting to kill the rest of my Saturday night watching a movie in bed or something. Instead, I walked into my room to find my brother and 2 friends drinking Burt Reynolds's, and things just sort of escalated from there.

Alcohol is a hell of a drug. For all its vices and virtues, at the very least you can usually count on it to grease the wheels and make something interesting happen. One way it does this is making people open up and talk about topics they'd normally steer clear of.

My brother's friend started talking about how she'd been asked out to the movies that night by a certain guy, but turned the guy down. She told him she had to work til 9 and had to get up in the morning, but she ended up drinking in our hot tub til all hours and felt kind of guilty about her hypocrisy. I hazarded a guess that the guy wasn't that cool, fun, or attractive, and she didn't really want to go out with him very badly in the first place.

The girls in the tub rushed to this guy's defense, all quick to say what a nice guy he is. He's such a nice guy,  you guys are being mean. My brother chimed in to tell me how right I was. He described the guy as "if someone wanted to be a Hutterite, but wasn't a Hutterite. Skinny, old farmer clothes, good manners, and totally socially inept."

I was right. This guy, by all accounts, was a real sweetheart and probably deserved a date with this girl. But the proof was in the pudding. She blew him off, was prepared to go home to bed, but came right over without hesitation when a hot tub get-together with a bunch of fun, cool, good-looking people was  presented. I brought this up, and all the guys heartily agreed with me. A huge percentage of nice guys are nice because that's the only way they can get any attention at all; they have little else going for them. But the attention that they get is rarely the kind they want. "As a guy, you're never really going to nice your way into anything", I said.

That was the line that really set one girl off. "You know Michael," she snapped indignantly, "one day, a nice guy is going to trump you in a big way, and you'll be left in the dust." At the time, I thought she was wrong but didn't want to fight about it, so I went to my classic argument-defusing line: "You know what? Maybe you're right" and moved on to something else.

I thought about it more later, and found that maybe there was an element of truth in what she said. I stand by my statement that you can't nice your way into anything with a girl, but what if there was a guy with the complete package? What if a guy came along who was confident, funny, good-looking, didn't give a fuck, and didn't take shit from anyone, but who could also pull off the flowers and cute movie dates and telling her she's pretty, without one side compromising the other? That would be one guy who could get any girl he wanted.

I used to be a nice guy in the worst way. It didn't work very well, but it's not like it didn't work at all. When it did work, it was great because it was based on genuine care and feelings. But over the past few years, I've changed and I'm not that nice guy anymore. I've become more focussed on being confident and true to myself and what I want. People say girls love jerks, and they're right, but they don't love them because they're jerks. Jerks have attractive qualities, like confidence and not taking shit from people, that nice guys often lack. Imagine if you took a jerk, and then made him not a jerk. You'd have the perfect guy.

I don't know where to go with this. Examining myself, I see that I've become a jerk in a lot of ways. Its opened up so many new opportunities with new girls, but its also burned bridges with girls I care about.   Will I ever get the balance right? Is it right to be deliberately screwing around with who I am? Am I doing this for the right reasons? What's going to happen if I continue down this path?

36 Days

I have this thing I do. I make the titles of my blog posts out of song titles or lyrics. I'll start out with an idea of what I'm going to write about, then try to think of a song that captures it.

This post is about how long it is until I go back to school. I started thinking about songs to fit the theme of a set amount of time. The first one I came up with was 36 Days, an old school Hawk Nelson song that I like to cover on voice and keyboard. I opened up iCal and counted the days one by one. It's exactly 36 days until the eve of the first day of classes. 36 Days from now, I'll be curled up in my bed in my familiar apartment dorm room, my sheets freshly washed, my class schedule on the wall, my clothes probably not yet fully unpacked. Ready to hurl myself headlong into what will hopefully be my final year of undergrad. 36 Days it is.

It's going to be a good year. I know this. I'm extremely excited, because this year is going to be unlike any year to come before it. Sure, I'll be surrounded by my apartment bros again, a group of guys who I can get down with and who have my back no matter what. Sure, I'll be free of the crushing weight of being around my family for long periods of time, able to act like a responsible and independent adult capable of making his own decisions. Sure, I'll have a better body and more motivation to improve it, due to my newfound addictions to healthy eating, and to picking things up and putting them down. But these things aren't what will truly set this year apart. This year is different because I have a goal.

I've never really had a goal in my life, I mean really had a goal. There have been times when I've set goals like "high marks" or "better social life", but those aren't all-encompassing goals by which I could govern my entire set of behaviors. I'll bet you're wondering what this goal of mine is. Here it is: I'm going to dental school, bitches.

Did that come out of nowhere? It did for me too. I was sitting down in my room one day, and Dad came in asking me if I was studying for anything this summer.
I asked if there was anything in particular he wanted me to be studying for.
He replied that I was really wandering around with my career choice. I wanted to be a doctor, but then not so much, or maybe I should study more genetics because that's kind of cool, or maybe not, or maybe I should just finish my degree and see what comes up, or maybe not, but not really doing anything. He said in 10 years, I might look back and kick myself, wishing that I had just done something and gone somewhere.
I said maybe you're right, but what should I do?
He said he never wants to tell me what to do, and supports whatever reasonable choice I make, but he recommends I be a dentist like him. He said I'd be very good at it, and I would enjoy it. It's much easier than being a doctor and you make more money.
I said something about it not being all about money.
He asked me to guess how much he pays the first year dentist that works 2 days a week at his office.
I don't know dad, how much?
$5000 a month. Not bad hey? That could be you in 5 years. Working 4 days a week, making 120 grand a year.

It was the money part that really hooked me. It was like he looked inside my head and pulled out a set of words that I'd been struggling to form, or maybe looking for permission to think. This is them, paraphrased:

"There are things you want to do with your life, right? You like traveling. You like hockey and music and concerts and wakeboarding and all that stuff. Well, there are a select few types of training that will allow you to make enough money to buy those things, and give you time to enjoy them. Dentistry has been really good to me, and I really think it would be good to you too."

This was paradigm shifting. All your life, you're told to do something you love, and you'll never work a day in your life. What a load of shit. No one is going to pay me to do the things I love. It's just not going to happen, that's not the way the real world works. The best case scenario is getting paid for something I like and that I'm good at, and using that to get the things I love. From a practical and realist worldview, dentistry is a perfect fit.

Now, I'm indescribably excited. I've got motivation to study my ass off. The GPA benchmark I've got to hit is 3.8, the median GPA of accepted dental students at U of A last year. My GPA right now is 3.7. Even if I'm not able to pull it up and get into U of A, it's more than good enough to get into a whole bunch of American schools. I'm legitimately shooting for 4.0 this year. It will take some sacrifices, but I'll be the first to admit that I slacked off for long periods these past two years in Biology. Now that I have my goal, I'll stay focussed in every class. I'll do every reading, and study my class notes for an hour or two every day. This is totally, completely doable, and I'm going to prove it.

Best of all, now that my goal has given me an exact framework of how hard I have to work at school, whatever is left over is truly my own. I can let loose on friday and saturday nights totally uninhibited by guilt or anything else. As long as I've got my goal well covered, I can fill in the cracks with whatever I want. I don't have to worry about undergrad degree requirements of independent research projects or anything like that. I can take dental prereq's, other cool shit that I like, and peace out to University of Southern California next fall. How unbelievably fucking awesome is that?!?

36 days until this all starts going down.

Boy Moves To A New Town With Optimistic Outlook

Vegreville feels much smaller than it used to.

I've been back in town for less than a week, and I'm already starting to feel cooped up. I rollerbladed around the entire town last night. It took a depressingly short time, and I didn't find anything that interested me. I don't really have any friends here. My family is starting to get on my nerves. The whole place feels empty, stalled, a sort of hyperbolic time chamber where I wait for school to start again. For the first summer since highschool graduation, living at home and working in Vegreville doesn't feel like a good fit.

Unfortunately, it's too good a deal to pass up. Mom and Dad's roof over my head, Mom and Dad's food in the fridge, all of it for free. A full-time job outdoors with an extremely generous boss, who unquestioningly gives me time off whenever I need it, and pays me probably more than he should. A part time job where half my shift is standing around twirling a whistle, and the other half is sitting in an office surfing reddit on my phone. If a guy wants to make money over the summer, this is the way to do it. I don't even know what I'd do as an alternative summer situation, as this has become the default, but you can be sure that if this keeps up, I'll be looking for next year.

In the meantime, instead of sulking about being cooped up and not having friends in town, I've undertaken a project. When I got back from Florida, I noticed something in the vacation pictures: I was fat. I was noticeably, off-puttingly fat, and I needed to do something about it.

Dad had recently lost a lot of weight using Fitbit, a pedometer that syncs to an iPhone app where you record all the food you eat and activities you do. It tracks how many calories you burn and how many you eat, and puts it all in front of you to see. I got one too, and started the 500 calorie deficit per day program.

The first few weeks were tough. I couldn't get to sleep at night. I'd lay awake, craving fatty, meaty, starchy foods. Ginger beef. Steak. Pizza. Chicken wings. Burgers. Noodles. I was hungry all day, every day, even right after meals. Despite all this, I stuck with it and out-performed my program. I got my intake down to under 1500 calories a day. Coupled with my outdoor job burning ~3000 calories a day, as well as working out for at least an hour every evening, I started to shed pounds. Fast. I lost 12 pounds in 3 weeks. The whole family got into it, and we all started working out and watching what we ate. We even put in a kick-ass brand new home gym in our basement!

As I researched more about the topic of weight loss, I quickly discovered that while running a 2000+ cal/day deficit would drop the pounds fast, it was not a healthy way to go about it. I found that the maximum daily calorie deficit for cutting body fat, without losing muscle tissue as well, is a mere 800 cal/day. Since I'd been eating dramatically less than that for the previous month or so, I now feel like I'm feasting like a king! I fill up on lean meats, fiber, yogourt, vegetables, protein shakes, etc. No more empty starches or fats, like bread, white noodles, pizza, or pop. Feels good man!

I already feel so much lighter, quicker, more confident, healthier, and stronger. I can fit into some of my old pants again. Most of all, I'm looking sexier than I have in years, and it's only been a month! At the beginning of May, I was at 23% body fat. As of today, I'm at 15.8%. My goal is to be at 10% by the beginning of July, then start building some more serious muscle.

Who knows if I'll be able to keep this up during the school year. Probably not, at least not to the same degree. But as of right now, I can't imagine going back to the way I was, and I'm only a month in! I'm excited to continue sculpting this body for the rest of my summer in this tiny town, then hit the scene in the fall with a vengeance!

A Hangover You Don't Deserve

I haven't written here in a long time, in part because I'm in university and time is at a premium, but also in part because the things in my life that need writing about are largely no longer things I can talk about publicly.

Last night, I read a reddit comment about people believing that they deserve things. They believe that if they be good and work hard, they deserve a decent job, decent house, and loving partner. That's really the Western ideal isn't it? Go to school, get a job, get married, buy what nice things you can afford, spend time with your kids, retire, find a hobby, get old, and you're done. It sounds nice. The system seems to be set up in such a way that facilitates the largest proportion of people being able to accomplish this.

I have nothing against this ideal. People value what they value. A whole lot of people value that school-job-family-stability ideal, and for good reason. It seems like a totally worthwhile thing to pursue. If nothing else, there are surely much worse things to value than safety, security, and an attractive partner.

What I have a problem with, and what I found myself agreeing with the reddit commenter on, is the very idea of deserving something. The idea that if one does good and works hard then one deserves something good in return, or if one is lazy and kind of a dick then one deserves bad outcomes, is based on the antiquated idea of an omniscient higher power that directly enforces justice on earth.

This isn't to say that I don't believe in God, or don't believe in morality, because I do. What I don't believe is that morality is directly enforced on earth in response to an individual person's actions. The concept of an afterlife in which everyone gets their just deserts is irrelevant to the point I'm trying to explain. This isn't only about morality.

For example, I don't believe that anything says a person who puts hours into his resume and sends out hundreds of copies deserves to find his dream job more than someone who sends out 10. I don't believe that the guy who goes to the gym and runs a mile every day deserves a better body and a hotter girlfriend than the guy who does 25 pushups a day. I don't believe that the guy who studies 4 hours a day deserves a better mark than the guy who studies an hour or two a week. Of course, these nice things all seem more likely to happen for the motivated guy who puts in the effort, and in most cases, they probably are. There are actions and there are predictable consequences, but there is not a universal justice that makes sure, or even should make sure, they always turn out the way they are "supposed to".

You don't deserve anything. I don't deserve anything. If you are reading this on a computer, we are two of the luckiest people on the planet to be born into a country where we not only have all our basic needs looked after practically all the time, but have a free education and affordable creature comforts. We don't deserve any of these things, nobody does. If we want more of these things, we can work for them and get them, but we still don't deserve them. Nobody deserves anything, because in this life, there is no such thing as deserving something. You can get away with stealing and hurting people, if you're good at it. You can be a caring, interesting, fit, attractive person your whole life and never fall in love. You can put 8 years of your life into a Master's degree, and have to work at Starbucks to pay the rent in your 1-bedroom apartment. You can be a lazy piece of shit, and be handed a high-paying job because you hung out with the right guy in highschool.

I didn't deserve this study break, but I took it. I'll probably suffer the consequences tomorrow, or maybe I won't. More than anyone else, I am in control of what happens to me. If I bomb my Organic Chemistry final, maybe I should have studied more. But, just as plausibly, it could be an easy test and I could do great, and it wouldn't have anything to do with how much I studied or didn't.

There are actions, and there are predictable consequences, but even if I cause something good through my actions, that doesn't mean I deserved it.

We Are Midnight

I stay up later than I should. I pay for it incrementally every morning, a grumpy groggy shell for at least a couple of hours. Why do I do this?

It's not because I'm not tired. In fact, I'm usually mentally exhausted by 11:00 pm. I've never had any trouble falling asleep at night, not since 7-year-old Michael gave up his nightlight. I have the most comfortable bed in the world, and when I finally lay my head down, I'm out in 15 minutes max. It's usually a lot less.

I think the reason I stay up is because I know that I've failed to make the most of the past day. Maybe staying up is a desperate attempt to squeeze one last little bit of meaning, fulfillment, or happiness out of this, one of my tragically few days on earth. Maybe if I stay up just a little bit longer, someone will text me or facebook me. Maybe I'll stumble on a picture that makes me laugh. Maybe I'll read a reddit post that makes me think, or consider something I've never considered before. Maybe an old friend will show up at my door, and I'll be whisked away from this lonely room on a midnight adventure.

I don't hate my life like I did once. It's probably never been better. But late at night, when my thoughts start to wander, all I see is a life that revolves around forcibly stuffing my brain with things I don't really care about.

Is this the way of the world?

"We are midnight, on a fast ride

Held a ticket in our hands for anywhere
Out of our minds, thought we could fly
As the morning comes we start to disappear."

Thanks for Nothing, Mayday Parade

On the trip from Edmonton back to Vegreville on new years morning, I listened to the new Mayday Parade album. My attention span has been drastically shortened by the internet age of instant gratification to the point that I can barely read books anymore, and unfortunately listening to a full album end to end is becoming a rarity for me these days. My rating of this one: 7 out of 10.

That night, I went out to the garage to try to write some music. I settled in at the piano, picked up a pen, and started scribbling on the back of an old lyric sheet for Hedley's "Old School". I wrote a whole song pretty much start to finish, without much planning or changing things along the way. It came out sounding very Mayday Parade. Personally, I don't like it that much. But it's a song that I wrote in the spirit of the moment that I think captures the way I was feeling quite well.

Lyrics below, music soon to follow. Let me know what you think.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Thanks for Nothing, Mayday Parade"

Pack my life up in the back of my car

It doesn’t weigh much. The only thing that’s there

Is the weight of the memories that make us who we are.

I don’t have many, but lately I don’t care. Because...

I live at least two lies, and I’m making my way between them.

There’s an archive in my closet of the pieces that fall away.

I try to buy the perfect clothes, and hang them up for exhibition.

But I never wear them. No, I never wear them anyway.

15 bucks an hour is the Good Doctor’s prescription.

Guess it’s working, cause I don’t feel ill.

But I feel down and I feel out, and I have got to figure out

what turned a boy into a man in this position.

I’ve got nothing to say. It’s not like I’m not okay, but...

I live at least two lies, and I’m making my way between them.

There’s an archive in my closet of the pieces that fall away.

I try to buy the perfect clothes, and hang them up for exhibition.

But I never wear them. No, I never wear them...

Bring it on home, bring it on home, bring it on home now.

Bring it on home, bring it on home, bring it on home now.

Bring it on home, bring it on home, bring it on home now.

Bring it on home, bring it on home, bring it on home now.

(I’m an airplane with an anchor, I’m a cancer in remission,

I’m a warrior in battle without any ammunition.

I’m a lawyer, I’m a liar, I’m a sleasy politician,

I’m a celebrated future man that lives in contradiction.)

I live at least two lies, and I’m making my way between them.

There’s an archive in my closet of the pieces that fall away.

I try to buy the perfect clothes, and hang them up for exhibition.

But I never wear them. No, I never wear them anyway.

Maybe it's not my weekend, but it's gonna be my year.

Happy new year! For my new years celebration, I watched the Canada vs. USA World Junior game, ate too much stuffed crust pizza and chips with salsa con queso, and got wasted while playing Mario Party 7 and 007: Nightfire on Gamecube with 4 other dudes. What did you do?

When I made my New Years plans, I was upset at how lame they were. New Years, I thought, should be spent at an awesome party with lots of people (read: lots of girls) dancing, drinking, and generally being as social as possible. There should be a kiss at midnight. It should be the opposite of staying in and playing old video games with a few other guys.

Looking back at the night, I'm still think it was pretty lame in principle, but I'm not upset about it anymore. Sure, I definitely could have made much more of one of the calendar's cardinal party nights. But unlike in the past, I recognize that not doing so was a result of my own lack of initiative, and not some innate social failing. I could have gone out, been social, kissed at midnight, and partied the night away if I'd made an effort to, and I know that I'd have kicked ass doing it. Since I don't have to prove that to myself anymore, I can accept the night the way it happened. I rang in the new year surrounded by friends, and I had a great time. That's more than a lot of people can say.

I plan to go twice as hard at the first King's party this term to make up for it.

I Want It That Way

Tonight a girl called me picky.

"You're such a picky person!" she said.

"Oh really? What am I picky about?"

"Everything! You're picky about food, about music, and even about people."

I've been called far worse things than picky before, and I had just been teasing her about her taste in music. But for some reason it hit a sore spot, I wasn't ready to move on.

"What if I just have high standards?" I asked. "What's the difference between being picky and having high standards?"

"Nothing" she replied. "Except high standards usually means you're looking for something."

High standards usually means you're looking for something.

This girl hit the nail on the head by calling me picky. Don't even try to feed me coffee, tomatoes, mint, or salad dressing. I probably hate your music. In the cases of food and music, I know what I like. I make a habit of trying foods or music I don't think I'll like or that I didn't like in the past, on the off chance that I discover something good. But by and large, I'm an excellent judge of my own tastes. I have high standards, because I know what I want and I'm actively separating the chaff looking for it. However, in the case of judging people, by this girl's definition, its definitely pickiness.

I'm quick to zoom in on someone's faults. Find a too many or too glaring faults, and I have very little difficulty writing off that person altogether. It's like I'm looking for reasons to disqualify people from being worth my attention. If the person isn't tailor-made to suit my taste, I don't usually even bother to remember their name. It's a very limiting way to approach one's social life, but its not like mean to do this. It happens by default, unless I actively work against it.

It goes double for girls. I'm really harsh with my deal-breakers, perhaps overly so. Smoking cigarettes, or an annoying laugh, or a stupid comment made in class, or a boring vibe, or even an interest in horses is enough to extinguish my interest in a girl. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with these deal breakers, but I've realized that I'm approaching from the wrong angle entirely. I'm focussing on the negatives, looking for a reason to give her a failing grade. I'm constantly ignoring a girl's beautiful qualities, and writing her off because she doesn't look good in that hoodie she always wears. Maybe if I approached from the positive angle, I'd be too caught up in a girl's positive traits to mind so much that she listens to Top 40 music.

So it's undeniable that I'm picky with people. I'm not looking for something good in particular, only picking out things I don't like. Now I've got figure out what it is I'm looking for, so I can turn my pickiness into high standards.

The Adventure Final

Yesterday, completely out of the blue, I decided it was adventure time. I strapped on my rollerblades, pointed myself west into the city, and set out to see how far I could go.

My adventure turned out exactly how I hoped it would. I navigated residential areas, parks, bike trails, and dormant construction zones. I discovered smooth and winding longboarding hills, an adorable splash park, dozens of beautiful viewpoints, and storms of falling yellow leaves. I navigated by dead reckoning, paying to attention to street numbers or signs, and got my bearings from the tops of hills, like a modern-day voyageur traversing a landscape of raging concrete rivers.

The morning before the adventure was spent at The King's Interdisciplinary Studies Conference. Classes are cancelled for two days, and all students attend seminars, sessions, and speeches in the gym, then write a for-credit pass/fail paper on what they learned. The keynote speaker referenced the 10,000 hour rule, and put it into the perspective of making a 2-hour per day commitment to practicing something. His money quote was "you need to pick something that you can imagine doing for 2 hours a day, every day for 10 years, and still truly get joy out of it".

The adventure provided a few solid solitary hours to think and discuss this with myself. I tried to think of what I would want by 2 hour a day activity to be. I had to go all the way back to the very basics of the question: "what do you like to do?" Whenever I'm asked this question, I answer with "sports and music", which I think is a pretty decent answer. As far as I can tell, those are two of my favorite, if not my two very favorite activities. But what I realized yesterday is that I don't actually do either one of them very much.

Over the first few weeks of the semester, I've settled into my day-to-day pattern. As it turns out, I've spent probably less than 15 minutes a day, on average, on either one of my two favorite things. Instead, my free time has largely gone toward watching movies and TV shows, playing video games, and wasting time on the computer. I spend at least a couple of hours every day on some combination of these things. But yesterday, looking out across the river from the top of Connors Hill, I decided that it had to stop.

I mentally drafted and signed a pact with myself. It has two sections, one outlining the three things that I will no longer waste my spare time on, and the other outlining the three things I will replace them with. This is the pact:

Section 1) Things I Will Not Do Anymore

A) Movies and TV

- No more watching movies or TV shows unless it serves a direct social purpose. That means I will not watch by myself, or even if my roommates are sitting around watching in the middle of the day. I will only watch if it can truly be described as having a direct social function.

- The exceptions: I can watch all Oilers and Eskimos games, from the start of the 30 minute pregame show to the end of the postgame recap.

B) Video Games

- No more playing video games unless it serves a direct social purpose. That means no more playing by myself. I will only play multiplayer games with a direct social purpose.

- The exceptions: Game nights at Nolan's, COD with the roommates, Pokemon training for a specific tournament.

C) Computer

- No more wasting time on the computer. This includes, but is not limited to: obsessive facebooking, Reddit, stumbleupon, smogon articles for no specific purpose, flash games, etc.

- The exceptions: email, necessary facebook, specific skype dates, blogging, reading friends' blogs, and my five Oilers blogs (Oilersnation, coppernblue, BlackDogHatesSkunks, Lowetide, and mc79hockey)

- Activity directly related to Section 2, such as researching music or dating science, is encouraged.

Section 2) Things I Will Replace Them With

A) Physical Self Betterment

- Playing an organized sport, such as intramurals, Hicks Hockey, shinny hockey, King's hockey, curling, or indoor soccer

- Individual physical activity, such as running, rollerblading, longboarding, skiing, snowboarding, or working out.

- Any activity in preparation, organization, or planning for one of the above.

"No citizen has a right to be an amatuer in the matter of physical training... What a disgrace it is for a man to grow old without ever seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable." - Socrates

B) Social Self Betterment

- Managing social circle at King's. Apartment visits, King's events, general hanging out.

- Managing social circle outside King's. Anything involving friends from Vegreville, Shad, or MacEwan.

- Activities outside and beyond King's. Bowling, laser tagging, pub night, Whyte Ave, Oilers and Eskimos games, house parties, volunteering, shopping, exploring in a group.

- Researching and practicing dating science. Reading Magic Bullets or other resources, fighting approach anxiety, practicing openers and sets, day and night game.

"... there is no magic bullet to get the women of your dreams. There is no one thing, or even ten things, that you can do that will all of a sudden allow to you reach your full potential... If you've taken care of the fundamentals, any reasonable system can work." - Nick Savoy

C) Musical Self Betterment

- Actively practicing technique on voice, piano, guitar, and drums.

- Expanding Vocal, piano, and guitar repertoire.

- Anything with the intent of getting to play with others.

- Researching, discovering, obtaining, and listening to new music.

"The wise musicians are the ones who play what they can master."

- Duke Ellington

So if you catch me wasting my time on anything in Section 1, slap me across the head and tell me so. This is my life, and it's ending one minute at a time. There's only so many adventures left in me.

Dream On, Dreamer

I subscribe to All Time Low on my facebook feed. They just posted this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NKXSU0FDss

It's part of a series of interviews with popular bands about how they gained their passion for what they do, and how they harnessed that passion into getting to where they are. I watched the interview compilations for a few of my favorite bands including All Time Low, We Are The In Crowd, and Set Your Goals. I could see myself mirrored in every single one of them.

The recurring theme of the interviews was that today's bands would grow up listening to the bands that came before them, and be inspired by what those bands did and what they stood for. For example, All Time Low cited Blink-182, Green Day, and New Found Glory as their inspirations. There was never any grand vision or goal to be "as big as Blink-182". There was only ever a burning desire to play the music they loved, and have fun doing it. Each of the bands whose interviews I watched had a similar story. They would keep playing and keep pushing themselves, never giving up on their passion. With a whole lot of hard work and a whole lot of luck, they're living the dream.

I see myself in them because I had that dream. I vividly remember the first time I heard Relient K, how it blew my mind, and thinking how much I wanted to do what they did. I had my little garage band and played my little local shows. I burned Blink-182 CDs and sang along to them until I knew every lyric. I even went to music school to get my skills to a high level. I wanted it, but it was such a long shot that I guess I never really admitted it to myself.

As a result, I never pursued it wholeheartedly. To admit to myself that to "make it" in a band was my goal, why that would only be to invite failure. What the interviews with All Time Low et al fail to mention is that for every success story, there are hundreds of failures that drop off the map. I guess I couldn't deal with those odds.

Instead, I did the prudent thing. Now I'm going to school to be a doctor, and the odds are good that I'll make it. But in doing so, I'm all but guaranteeing that I'll never be the next Blink-182 or the next All Time Low. Some other group of kids, a bunch of kids who want it worse than me, and are willing to accept the high chance of failure, they'll rise up and take that place that I secretly wanted.

I am going to be successful, but I gave up on my dream to do it. What does that make me?

"Meh, It's... something."

I got the afternoon off work today, so I took the opportunity to finish up a project that I've sporadically been working on throughout the summer. Today I finally finished the full-instrumentation recording of my song Iron Rainclothes.

It was a long and arduous process. First, I figured out all the individual parts on their respective instruments, and practiced them until there was a chance I could play them all the way through without screwing up. This was made difficult by the fact that I don't know how to play guitar, bass, or drums very well. After that, I hooked up my macbook to my sound board and recorded every part individually. This was made even more difficult by the fact that I REALLY don't know what I'm doing with recording software, effects, and techniques.

But today, all that came to an end when I put the finishing touches on the vocal harmonies. I'm proud of the result. The song is simple, the playing is simple, and the recording is a hack job if there ever was one, but I'm still proud of it. Hopefully, the next one goes faster and smoother. Ideally, I'd find a few fine fellows who appreciate pop punk music as much as I do, and who could help in the instrumentation department. I have so many ideas for stuff that I simply don't have the skill to get out of those instruments myself.

Here is the song, for your enjoyment. Iron Rainclothes by First Class Honesty!

http://soundcloud.com/first-class-honesty/iron-rainclothes-full

Things I want to do RIGHT NOW

1. Fly to somewhere with big roller coasters, and ride them all. Repeatedly.

2. Go somewhere hot, with sandy beaches and big waves. Learn to surf on them.

3. Join/start a pop punk band. Tour the nation, become a sensation.

4. Road trip to Chicago and see The Fold live at some tiny obscure venue.

5. Meet The Fold after the show and tell them "I came all the way from Edmonton for your show!" and creep them out a bit.

6. Play pond hockey (in the southern hemisphere, of course).

7. Find one of those places with giant trampolines and high-tech landing mats. Do ridiculously dangerous flips into them.

8. Explore something awesome. It has to be big enough that it takes more than one day, and requires camping out.

9. Play a tabletop RPG. Stay in character, no matter what.

10. Go to an NHL playoff hockey game. Feel the atmosphere. Boo the Canucks.

Notice that none of these involve Vegreville, or residents thereof.

Supremacists

A few months ago, I went to a smallish concert with a couple friends. The headliners were metalcore superstars August Burns Red, supported by modestly popular pop-punk/melodic hardcore band Set Your Goals, and two other metalcore bands I'd never heard of.

I'd been introduced to Set Your Goals by a coworker the previous summer, and had been hooked ever since. I had just spent two weeks repeatedly listening to their albums in anticipation of the concert. This was as excited as I'd been for any concert since Relient K back in Grade 9. Believe me, I was pumped.

I finished up my biology lab, and hauled ass down to the Starlite room. I walked in, and made a beeline for the merch tables to me a sweet Set Your Goals t-shirt. But something was wrong. I looked around the tables once, twice, three times. There was no Set Your Goals merch on display. It turned out that Set Your Goals, for whatever reason, was unable to make it to this particular stop on the tour. It was to be all metalcore, all night. I soon caught sight of the two friends I was meeting. They had been watching my consternation from the balcony, and were having a laughing fit at my expense.

These two friends are not normally so mean spirited. But in the weeks leading up to the show, there had developed some minor bad blood between us over the content of the upcoming show. As previously mentioned, I was jacked beyond belief for my beloved pop-punk Set Your Goals. These two fellows, however, belong to a breed of music lovers that I like to unofficially call Metal Supremacists.

Metal Supremacists are fans of blisteringly fast drums, abrasive guitars, complex rhythms, and unintelligibly screamed vocals. They emphasize the extremely high level of skill required to perform this style of music. For them, it's all about the pure technical mastery of the instruments, and the sheer physical feat of playing so fast for so long. But perhaps most importantly, Metal Supremacists consider most other styles of music to be inherently inferior.

In the weeks leading up the to concert, I'd posted facebook statuses about how excited I was for Set Your Goals. Metal Supremacists from all over my friends list, not just the two i was attending the show with, were quick to jump all over them. They would exalt August Burns Red and the other two mediocre nobody metalcore bands on the tour, and openly bash Set Your Goals. There were several extended flamewars, some of which spilled over into real life verbal debates. My position was that I preferred the catchy beats, hooky melodies, and relatable lyrics of pop-punk to the technical spectacle of metalcore, however obviously impressive it may be. Their position was that pop-punk is crap, Set Your Goals are talentless hacks, August Burns Red should be crowned kings of the musical universe, and I'm an idiot for not thinking so.

My friends at the show were downright giddy that Set Your Goals wasn't there, or perhaps more specifically, they were downright giddy that I didn't get to see them. But I still had a good time at the show, and ABR was very impressive, as I knew they would be. Which begs the question, why can't we all just get along? Why can't we all have our favorites while graciously accepting the tastes of others as different? This experience brought such questions into fine focus for me, at least as far as music is concerned. In the months since the show, I've found myself listening to a much wider variety of music. But more importantly, I've started respecting them more as well. If your favorite is Garth Brooks, Metallica, Lady Gaga, or Jay-Z, that's none of my damn business. I don't agree with you, but I respect your choice to like what you like for whatever reason you want.

P.S. Offer not valid for fans of Justin Bieber. THERE. IS. NO. EXCUSE.

Oilers Hockey

Some of my earliest memories are of listening to Oilers games broadcast on 630 CHED, and watching Oilers games with dad in our old house. I couldn't have been older than four, and I didn't really follow what was going on, but I very clearly remember cheering for the Oilers. I remember dad telling me that the Oilers weren't a very good team, but that they used to be the best team in the world. I remember him telling me about Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player ever, and how he used to play for the Oilers. The Oilers won their last Stanley Cup a month before I was born.

I remember him teaching me about the current Oilers. Doug Weight, the best player on the team. Todd Marchant, the fastest skater. Curtis Joseph, the best goalie. Mike Grier, hardest hitter. Ryan Smyth, the hardest worker.

Dad's favorite players were always the hardest workers. He used to take me to a couple games a year, back when tickets were cheaper. He would take me down to ice level during the warmups and point out which players were hard workers. I specifically remember him beaking Rem Murray for being lazy. These days, he's a fan of Shawn Horcoff, not of Dustin Penner.

I grew up through the 90's and early 2000's, watching the Oilers try to compete with large-market teams. In those days, there was no salary cap, and the Oilers couldn't afford to resign their best players. Teams like Colorado, Detroit, and Dallas could always spend more money on good players, so they were always better than the Oilers. It wasn't fair, and I felt a monstrous sense of injustice. Dad said that meant the only thing the Oilers could do was make sure they were the hardest working team. If they worked ten times as hard as the rich teams, they could beat all of them.

I remember the Oilers usually barely making the playoffs, battling hard, and usually losing the series to Dallas or Colorado. One time they actually beat Dallas, and I was so proud of them! They promptly lost to Colorado in the second round, but Dad had been proven right: if the Oilers work ten times as hard as the rich team, they can win.

It was hard cheering for the underdog team. Other kids cheered for Colorado, because they had Joe Sakic and Peter Forsberg. This was blasphemous to me. I almost punched a kid on my hockey team for saying Peter Forsberg was the best player ever, not Wayne Gretzky. I knew that just because the Oilers weren't very good was no reason to cheer for one of those evil rich teams.

The games were always exciting to watch. Since the Oilers' only chance to win was to outwork the other team, that's what they had to do. They had no choice but to skate harder, bodycheck harder, and fight harder than the other team. That was my team. That is the team I cheered for.

In 2005, the new NHL collective bargaining agreement put a salary cap in place for the NHL. That meant the Oilers could afford good players. It didn't really hit home for me until I heard the Oilers had traded for Chris Pronger and Mike Peca. This was absolutely earth shattering. I remember where I was when I heard it; sitting in the car in a Future Shop parking lot waiting for Dad to get something. Chis Pronger represented everything the Oilers couldn't have before. I thought wow, if the Oilers have players like Mike Peca and Chris Pronger AND work harder than every other team, they could win the Stanley Cup!

We all know how that turned out. The playoff run was amazing while it lasted. It brought people together. I was never prouder of my team. Chris Pronger the superstar. Dwayne Roloson the goalie. Ales Hemsky the kid phenom. Ryan Smyth the heart and soul. Georges Laraque the unbeatable fighter. Fernando Pisani the unlikely hero. That was Oilers hockey. That was a sublime display of what it is I love about hockey.

Ever since, it hasn't been the same. The Oilers aren't the same as the Oilers I grew up cheering for. Of course the players are different, but the team's identity is gone too. The playing field is now level, but they lose even more than before. They don't work hard like they used to. I follow the team more closely than ever, but I can't cheer for them like before, because they don't work like they used to. They have a better chance to win any given game, but they lose more of them, and don't even go down swinging. Before, they had a good reason to lose, but they won anyway. Now, they have every reason to win, but they lose anyway. The hockey they play is not the Oilers hockey I remember, not the Oilers hockey I was raised on. There have been some fun moments, but I haven't seen that hockey since 2006.

The other night though, I got a glimpse. The Oilers, with half their lineup injured for the rest of the season, came up against their provincial rivals the Calgary Flames, with a chance to officially eliminate them from playoff contention. A last-place team with nothing to lose, up against impossible odds. Their only chance: to work 10 times harder than the other team. The Oilers were up 4-1, and lost 5-4 in a shootout, but I haven't been so proud of my team in literally five years. I really did feel like I was watching playoff hockey, Oilers hockey.

It's almost like I'm afraid to stop "following" the Oilers and start "cheering" for them again. If the game against the Flames is any indication, I might be able to do that before too long. The Oilers can lose 90% of their games for the rest of my life, as long as they play like that. Then I can cheer for my team again.

Yes, I'm an Oilers fan. Are you?

Restless Heart Syndrome

"Electric Campfires"

It so happens I’m tired of lingering darkness,

Of the brazen anthems that drag me into consciousness,

Of the half-hearted sprinkle that precariously secures me there.

I’m tired of lukewarm milk and dusty toast,

Of the yellowed spatula and crusty dishcloth.

I’m tired of the obstinate climate and its insistence on cold.

I want an intimate relationship with the sun.

I want electric campfires, and gently pulled hair.

I want sparkling spray, leaping from green lake water.

I want summer back.

I wrote that poem for a creative writing class in the darkest depths of January 2010. I was absolutely sick and tired of waking up at 6am into pitch blackness, getting some food into me, and going off to try and survive the day at Grant MacEwan. I was tired of my room, my commute, my classes, my cooking, and my neighborhood.

It wasn't that I hated school, and the life structure it demanded. I actually liked it, and enjoyed it a lot, for a time. But I got tired of it. Maybe it was the winter blues, maybe it was boredom, probably a combination of both plus other things too. I think the perfect word to describe what happened was that I got restless. I desperately needed to shake things up, make some changes to break up the monotony. The upcoming summer at home seemed the perfect respite, and it was once it finally arrived.

But after a time of summer, I got restless again. I was sick and tired of my job that I'd at least modestly enjoyed for the previous few months. I was tired of my family, my house, my coworkers, and my town. Just like school, I like all of these things a lot. But I'd settled into a routine and I couldn't wait to get away to King's in the fall.

Predictably, it's happened again. I'm tired of winter at King's. I'm tired of my residence, my roommate, my classes, my cafeteria diet, even the campus itself. Again, I like these things a lot, probably more than their home or MacEwan counterparts. But I'm restless, and I need to shake things up again. I need to break up my routine, so badly. The slowly lengthening days tease me with their promise of electric campfires and gently pulled hair, of sparkling spray leaping from green lake water.

These are my dreams, feeble as they are.

My buddy J-Dubs has given up Facebook until the end of the month, and is having trouble finding constructive ways to utilize her free time. As a result of her craving for online interaction, she seems to have turned to her blogger account. She's cranked out two posts in two days, and somehow finds this to be enough moral high ground to chastise me for not posting since January. Well J-Dubs, maybe you're right. Here's a post just for you, written in your trademark rambling style, interspersed with pictures :)

(Good thing I'm a hockey player)

Last night was an interesting night. I spent the evening studying for a biology midterm that I will write in about 3 hours' time. Despite my classmates freaking out over it, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had relatively little difficultywith the material on the study guide. If the last bio midterm was an 8 for difficulty, this one seems to be a 6. I had trouble motivating myself to read through all theslides.

Since biology seemed so easy, and here's crossing my fingers it actually is, I wrapped up studying by 11:30 and went on the internets. I facebook chatted, read Mendel's Soup (my nightly tradition), caught up on all the Oilers blogs, and so on. At around 12:30, I was wound down enough to sleep, and so returned my macbook to my desk.

There, on the edge of my desk, sat my DS with Pokemon Black version. "No", I thought. "No way. If you pick that up now, you won't put it down until sunrise..."

What was probably two to three hours later, I put it down. I didn't dare look at the clock, because I thought maybe I could trick myself into thinking I went to bed at a reasonable time. One little problem: I wasn't tired anymore. It was too hot in the room. Too much light. I was thirsty. My pillow didn't feel right. Etc. etc.

I thought back to the nap I'd taken that afternoon. Why is it that at night, I can only fall asleep on my side, but usually wake up in the morning on my back? In the daytime, it feels much better to fall asleep on my back, but I can't say I've ever slept from morning til night. I tried laying on my back, and it worked! Probably because it was so close to morning by that time.

I dreamt I was back in highschool, playing basketball. For those of you who don't know, I was never very good at basketball, and spent a lot of time on the bench. In this game, we were playing a team full of super tall black guys, and we only had 6 players, one of which was a fat kid who was even worse than me. So there I was, playing defense against these massive black guys who were all at least a head taller than me. But I remember somehow, in dreamland, I was all of a sudden really good at defense. The score was tied with a minute to go, and a timeout was called.

I said something about how we're only at this point because of improbably good defense, so lets hang on and keep it respectable, and hope for a lucky break. The fat kid, however, called me out. He went into some kind of inspiring Braveheart speech about how if I wasn't willing to always give it everything I had, play to win, and go for what I wanted, I didn't deserve to be on the court. It really was inspiring, I wish I could remember it better. I agreed, and asked to coach to take me off and put the fat kid on. He got dunked on, and we lost the game.

I feel like the dream was trying to teach me a lesson. After being at an all-time high in confidence in first semester, it's been going downhill this term. The last few weeks have brought on a sort of mini confidence crisis, and I've noticed myself unwilling to take chances that only months ago I was making a point never to pass up. I think the dream was telling me I'm capable of more than I give myself credit for, and if I don't go for it, someone else will. That unfortunately doesn't explain the fat kid's epic fail, but you've got to accentuate the positive ;) Any theories, english majors?

I slept through my first class, but its ok because it was a review period for biology, which I am totally going to own this afternoon. I had better.

How's that J-Dubs? Awesome? I thought so.

Totally Worth It

My dad is into snowmobiling. He is into snowmobiling in the way I am into Pokemon. He subscribes to about 4583720 different snowmobiling magazines, has two nice mountain sleds which he likes to customize and modify, and just upgraded his enclosed 5-sled trailer to a massive all-aluminum monstrosity. The man loves his snowmobiling.

Now don't get me wrong, I like snowmobiling too. It's fun. However, in my opinion, it is more trouble than it's worth. Take the amount of work it takes to buy and maintain nice equipment, multiply by the amount of work it takes to pack and load it all up, integrate by the 13 hour drive to and from the mountains. While I'll admit throwing a snowmobile around powder bowls and powering up 45-degree, 100-foot hills is great fun, it's not worth it to me. It gets boring too quickly. It's just too much work, and it's not even close actually. Dad, on the other hand, would probably make the trip every weekend, or every day if he could.

This echoes my opinion of several of dad's hobbies. Flying a plane is kind of cool, but not even close to worth the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars' worth of training required. Motorcycle trips are fun, but the exhilarating curves are too few and far between to be worth the hours of cold, straight, boring highway it takes to get to them. Fancy food is nice, but it's not worth the entire afternoon shot by shopping, cooking, and cleaning. As with snowmobiling, Dad probably thinks I'm crazy, and would pour countless more hours into these pastimes if given the chance.

What causes this disparity of values of work vs. fun? Is it just because Dad has a better work ethic than me, and doesn't attach as much inherent negative value to his hobbies' prep work? I used to think so, because he definitely has a better work ethic than me. But I changed my mind when I extended my thinking to one of my brother's favorite hobbies: paintball. My brother thinks nothing of the huge amounts of prep work and clean up associated with paintball, and he's definitely lazier than me.

There are all kinds of inspirational quotes saying something along the lines of "anything worth doing is hard work", and I don't disagree with that. But many things NOT worth doing are hard work too, and everyone seems to have a different set of values to determine what is too much work, and what is totally worth it. From now on, those will be my official designations. I will label activities or pursuits either "too much work" or "totally worth it".

Here are a few examples:

TOO MUCH WORK:

-Snowmobiling

-Flying

-Motorcycling

-Cooking fancy dinners

-Paintballing

-IV Breeding Pokemon

-Jazz

TOTALLY WORTH IT:

-A decent sandwich

-Playing hockey

-EV training Pokemon

-Digging snow caves

-Playing an instrument well

-Waterskiing or wakeboarding

-Blogging

All We've Ever Had is Time

There's this mentally handicapped guy that goes to my school. We are friends, though I'm not 100% sure he knows my name. Let's call him Doug (not his real name). He's not severely handicapped; he's independent enough that at first I thought he was just kind of weird.

Doug has the absolute definition of a one-track mind. The only thing, and I mean literally the only thing he ever talks about, is how time flies. Every single conversation we've had, every single conversation I've overheard between him and someone else, and every conversation with him that anyone's ever mentioned revolves around the notion that "time flies". Doug's gotten real good at this conversation, goodness knows he's held it enough times. He's got four dozen euphemisms for "time flies", like "yep, it just keeps chuggin' along, just like a freight train!", or "man, ______ sure is comin' up quick, it'll be here in no time flat!". Even his little blurb below his facebook profile picture is about how time flies.

Time does fly. Doug is right, perhaps more right than I'd like to admit. I need look no further than the little paintings that past residence students have left on the stairwell walls. Each flight commemorates a floor from a given year, a bunch of identical shapes personalized with roommates' first names and last initials, and a little quote or picture.

"WWF Forever" one reads. Another has the MXPX head. Girlier ones have things like "Laurie H. and Jennifer R. BFF 2001" or "Small town girl and city slicker meet, unfortunately, in 407". These little tokens of memories mean nothing to us that call this place home right now, but they are dearly beloved to people long since grown up and moved away, not really so very long ago.

Like Doug is always quick to point out, before I know it I'll be grown up and moved away too. I'll never get these days back. Doug helps remind me that it's a crime to waste the time I've been given at King's. He helps me remember that, every time I feel like just trying to get through the week so I can sleep away the weekend. I'm older now than I've ever been, and it only gets worse.

So truly, as cliched as these words are, make the most of every day. Doug does.