One of the things I’ve learned sine joining the military is that I am not special, that 99% of individuals in the world are not special. When we stay within our small groups of family, friends, and coworkers, we get used to being someone to all of them, someone that is important and worthwhile and special. But there are millions of people out there with the same problems as you, the same flaws as you, the same skills as you, the same ideas and thoughts and creativity as you. If you live in the USA, you’re one of about 300 million people, one of 6.5 billion human beings on the planet earth. Those are ridiculously large numbers of people, and almost every single one of us thinks that we are special. (I mean, look at me, typing away, expecting people to desire to read my writing.) I never really thought about any of this before I joined the Air Force, but my time in basic training brought it to my attention.

Every single week 1,000+ men and women arrive at Lackland AFB to begin the path to becoming a member of the US Air Force. And that’s just the Air Force, thousands more join the Army, the Marines, the Navy and the Coast Guard. We all get our hair cut, get stuck in the same uniform as all of the people around us, and get taught to obey, and serve, to become part of a team, part of something greater, realize that we aren’t just individuals, but part of a nation, and more importantly part of a group of people that are ready and willing to defend that nation. But, just the same it’s easy to drown in the anonymity, to slip away into a sea of faces and haircuts and uniforms. This great machine of military training continues to humble me as each week I see hundreds of Airmen arrive on base for Technical Training and hundreds graduate to begin their careers in the Air Force.

But this look into the vastness of humanity, and the fact that you’re not, as mommy might have always told you, “special just the way you are” is not meant to be depressing or upsetting in any way. I think that it should inspire every single person in the human race to greatness. I don’t want to be a face in a multitude of faces, I want to do something worthwhile to make my face stick out, so people know me and know what I’ve done, and that whatever I do, I will do well. It’s one thing that’s helped me grow and evolve a lot from the person I was before I joined the military. I’m not as lazy any more, I don’t half-ass everything, or do the bare minimum. If I have a task before I will put my all into it, I will do my very best, I will learn from my mistakes and not make those same mistakes again. And I think it’s paying off, I’m doing very well in school right now, and I plan on keeping that up through my time in the Air Force, and through the rest of my life.

What I want you to do is take a step back, think about how many people 6.5 billion really is and think about how many of those 6.5 billion people want to do the same exact thing as you. What are you going to do to be different, to shine above the rest, to make yourself be special? If every person pushes themselves to their limit, learns as much as they can, works as hard as they can, and always does the best that they can, the world would be a tremendously better place. I don’t expect to change the world and I don’t expect you to change the world, but why should that stop us from trying?

Change what you can, live with what you can’t. Always do your best. Ask questions, find answers, help others, and make everything you touch better because of it.

Be special.

It’s been about a year and a half since I’ve written anything for the world to see, but here I am once more.

In all actuality, I just remembered that I had a blog, when I had stumbled across another friend’s blog who actually updated his from time to time.

So since I’ve last updated I’ve gotten married, joined the Air Force, gotten another tattoo, and done some other exciting stuff. I’m currently living in Mississippi learning how to be a weather forecaster. It’s pretty cool most of the time.

I will try and start updating somewhat frequently again. I know I’ve said that before, and failed miserably, but who knows, maybe this time it will work. I’ll tell lot’s of fun stories about the adventures I’m having. Or make some up about all the adventures that I’m not having.

But anyway, the moral of the story is that I have to be up at 0400, so I really should have made this decision earlier in the day.

Good night and good luck,
don’t let the bed bugs bite
or the vampires suck,
tuck your sheets tight,
and remember to brush your teeth.

There’s my tattoo:

[Show as slideshow]

It means love in Tagalog.

Also, it’s seven days into NaNoWriMo and I haven’t even considered doing that, so I don’t think that’s going to happen.

The new World of Warcraft expansion is coming out in 6 days, so while it will be hard, I’ll be updating, and even think about updating even less.

The end.

But I started wearing blazers.

And I got a tattoo.

So that’s a move in the right direction right?

I’ll post a picture of the tattoo sometime in the future, I promise.

I started working at GameStop in East Meadow last week.

Hopefully I’ll be able to tolerate that for the next couple of years before I graduate and get a “real job.” (Meaning continue to live at home as I go to grad school for another degree I won’t use. just kidding. or am i?)

Nine out of ten porcupines agree that people who perform polls don’t know what a porcupines response means.

In other news… um, nope, never mind, that’s it.

Sorry.

I’d like to say that I’ll start updating regularly again, but I can’t promise that (and half the time I do promise that I don’t follow through anyway).

So what’s been going on?

Well, I didn’t write a novel in July, and for whatever reason TH CHALLENGE: Awesome violently spiraled and crashed to the ground moments after lifting off.

I go back to school in two weeks, so we’ll see how that goes.

Six months from yesterday I turn 21, so that’s pretty exciting.

I got a vanity plate that reads “L2P NUB.”

I started playing massive amounts of World of Warcraft again, and while I know that it’s definitely not healthy, I can’t seem to help myself.

I started watching How I Met  Your Mother with Joyce, it’s a pretty fantastic show. We managed to watch the entire first season in four days.

That’s about it for now.

That took my less than five minutes, but even knowing that I probably still won’t be able to convince myself to be able to give up five minutes every other day or so to update.

Not that I have anything interesting to say anyway…

THE CHALLENGE: AWESOME has begun, check it out.

I also started my 50,000 word novel today, so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m sitting in my backyard on our picnic table enjoying an excellent breeze, wondering if the clouds overhead are holding any raindrops for the thirsty earth.

I’m sorry for not writing anything at all in the past twelve or so days. I don’t really have any good excuse. I mean, I have been busy, but I’ve also had a tremendous amount of spare time in which I could have been writing.

I got tired of waiting for myself to have enough motivation to design my own WordPress theme so I went to Free WordPress Themes and chose this one. Marisa, I know you wanted flamingos, but none of them had flamingos, sorry…

So… what is new and exciting?

Joyce and I started taking Iaidō last Sunday, and we’ve got our second class coming up tomorrow morning. I’m pretty excited about it and I hope that it will help me in my goal to get into/stay in some form of not amorphous bloblike shape. I also plan on starting to go kayaking with my dad next week and hopefully get out with him a couple of times a week. Joyce and I are going to be taking swing dancing classes this summer, too, so that should be a lot of fun and even more of me not sitting on my ever fattening-ass. If I can find someone to do it with, I might also bike down to Jones Beach a couple (or more, if possible) times. And lastly, I plan on going out surfing with my friend and maybe learning how to balance myself up on a piece of wood in front of waves. (Although, with my foray into snowboarding in January, we’ll see how that goes…) So hooray for not being a couch potato!

Speaking of being a couch potato, all that I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks is playing Halo 3 and World of Warcraft. Yes, I did start playing WoW again, I apologize to all of you who are disappointed in me. Along those lines I started doing really well in Halo and kept ranking up and stuff. And then a couple of days ago I hit a wall. Really hard. And bounced off, and down like four ranks. I’m not exactly sure what happened but I’ve been incredibly sucktastic the past few days, and for whatever reason I’ve been playing more because of it. In other video game news, Diablo III was announced today. I never played the original Diablo games too much, but I always enjoyed them, so I’ll probably pick this up when it comes out. The other reason I’ll pick it up is because Blizzard Entertainment is the only video game company that I trust in completely and has my heart. Sighhh, oh Blizzard… Although I do have the theory that Blizzard will simultaneously release Starcraft II, Diablo III, and the World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King and take over the world in the resulting chaos. But we’ll see.

I think the main reason that I haven’t been writing lately is that all I’ve been thinking about is writing and why I haven’t been doing it. I keep telling myself to write, so in being true to myself I’ve been completely ignoring any ambitions or sparks of creativity and not writing anything. But… starting July 2nd I will be participating in THE CHALLENGE: AWESOME with eD! Thomas and his friend Brandon Mendelson. You can head on over to the website there to find out more about what to expect and how awesome it truly is.
And to make the month even more insane and out of my league I’ve decided to write a novel. Even though it is not November I will be following the rules of NaNoWriMo with the goal of having 50,000 words of novelesque fiction story by July 31st. We’ll see how that turns out. I have no obligation to tell anyone what the novel is about or show it to anyone, ever. But if it has any form of potential goodness I’ll see about editing it and making it available to the world. Also, for those of you who talk to me on a regular basis, keep pushing me to give you updates on how well I’m doing with the word counts and such and don’t let me slide if I decide that it’s too much and I give up.

The last big news is that I quit Best Buy. I had my last day on Wednesday (the 25th). I’ve been pretty unstressed out about life since then. I’m going to be working at Walbaums with a friend of mine in the deli starting on Monday, so we’ll see how that goes. I will be making substantially less money and be working less hours and I am completely broke. You might wonder why I would do something like this, and I wonder a bit too. But I really did hate being there. It seems less bad now that I’m gone, but I would get extremely depressed as soon as I walked through those sliding doors.

So yeah, that’s life. I’ll try to be on here more often letting you know what’s up, really I will.
I would also like to thank those loyal 4-8 people who were checking up every day to see if I had updated, I hope this made it worth it!

I was away this weekend with Joyce. We went to Pennsylvania to visit my family, wish my Grandmother a happy birthday, and just relax and have a good time.

Which we did. We stayed with my sister, who I hadn’t seen in a few months, and who is much, much less insane and much more laid-back than the rest of my extended family who lives in the area. We played a couple games of Scrabble, which my sister won, as always (well almost, I think I’ve beaten her twice. ever.). We also went strawberry picking which I felt was much more like work than anything else, but Joyce and Jules (my sister) both seemed  to enjoy themselves so it wasn’t too terrible, I guess.

Saturday was my mom’s mom’s birthday, so we went there to have dinner. Her new catch phrase is “I’m 85, I can do whatever I want.” I kept responding with “Yes you can Grandma, yes you can.” That was a fairly enjoyable evening. My family wasn’t as crazy as they normally are, and they didn’t scare Joyce (or at least, she won’t admit it).

On Sunday Joyce and I went to Longwood Gardens which was beautiful, as always. It’s a pretty fantastical place, so I recommend that everyone go there. It’s pretty cheap to get in, and if you have student IDs (or say you’re students, they didn’t even check us) then you get in for half off. It’s full of flowers and trees and grass and cacti and all sorts of fauna. It’s beautiful. I might post some pictures if I ever get around to stealing them from Joyce.

Then Sunday night we came home. I come home to find my father and mother on the porch talking to some people from down the street that I’ve never met before. Apparently, on Friday night, a drunk kid hopped the fence behind our house and my dad went out to tell him to get off of our property. This kid then tackled my father in the middle of the street and proceeded to start hitting him, as like twenty other kids were gathered around. My dad didn’t hit him back, because… I’m not really sure why, but he didn’t. Now my dad is in pretty good shape, I know that he could toss me if he wanted to, so this kid wasn’t really hurting him this much. My dad actually said he was laughing when the kid started hitting him in the abdomen because he couldn’t even feel it.

Then one of the kids who lives across the street from us and his friends pulled this guy off of my dad. They then proceded to form a wall between my father and him and tell the kid to leave. They wouldn’t tell me dad who he was or let him see him. So I’m kind of upset that I wasn’t there Friday night to go out and kick this kid in the face a few times because my dad wasn’t willing to.

Then I wake up this morning and my mom tells me that our diagonal neighbor across the street said that there were kids at the bottom of our driveway last night drinking and yelling “Come out Mother Fucker!” I wish I had heard that, because I would’ve called the cops. Then gone out with a baseball bat and incited them to come at me.

Oh well.

So I go away for the weekend and Levittown turns into Hempstead… What is the world coming to?