Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Why I'm Blogging - An Introduction

I started this blog simply as an outlet for me to talk about the world, laugh about my life, give advice to everyone and no one, chastise idiots, learn, grow, and share. I'm sarcastic, passionate, opinionated, and at times a bit vulgar. I love music, and I'm fascinated by politics. I intend to study law.

I personally believe that both nature and nurture shape the development of small humans, and so, in order to properly understand a regular sized human, you must embark upon an exploration of his or her history. So, here is mine. Forgive me for my lack of perfect chronology, but I try to make it somewhat easy to follow.

For all you know, this baby could grow up to be a serial killer. This is not a picture of me. I am not a serial killer.


At a young age, I experienced a family move from Nebraska to Florida. Growing up with frequent visits "back home", I fully feel that I simultaneously grew up in a rural and an industrial society. Therefore, I know everything. Well, not really. But I find it fascinating to compare the two.

I have two younger sisters, and grew up with an ever-rotating array of pets. I no longer live with my parents, but I still feel a certain attachment to the animals. Currently, my parents feed and nurture two dogs, two cats, a rabbit, and a guinea pig. In our backyard is buried a different dog, the rabbit's spouse, and all of the rabbit's lost babies. I fully believe that my mother's incessant need to surround herself with pets is directly related to the awful shell-shock that she experienced by moving to Florida. For someone who lived on a farm for thirty years to uproot and follow her husband to a shockingly stereotypical suburb outside of a big city, I'm surprised we don't have more animals in our house. Hell, I'm surprised we don't have a goat.

I may look cute, but my shit smells to high heaven. Believe me. 
My father is a professional motivational speaker. I grew up not only suffering from an odd mid-western dialect, but an odd way of phrasing my words. I'm often the subject of humor among my friends, peers, and superiors. I blame this fully on him. Thankfully, I've grown to embrace it rather than shy from it, and therefore, do not attempt to mask my language or other oddities. (A prime example is Nebraska's bad habit of referring to "flip-flops" [sandals] as "thongs." You can imagine the shock of my kindergarten teacher when I naively fretted to her about losing my "thong". I have a funny life.) In addition to being a speaker, my father suffers from a myriad of medical problems, most notably heart disease, diabetes, and degenerative disc disease.

In the third-ish grade, I was proclaimed "gifted" by the elementary school counselor  Thanks, you rotten bitch. I was then trust into "egg-head classes," and for the remainder of my elementary and subsequent middle school life, suffered from horrible social failure. In middle school I also joined the band as a trumpet player. That didn't help. But, as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer pointed out, any and all misfits are free to be "independent together!" I had friends, just not popularity. I grew to not care about that as well, which is perhaps a factor in my general attitude as a young adult.

You think this shit is easy to put together at 6am every morning? Nope.
In high school, I was your typical fake goth. Gifted classes and marching band did not need to slaughter my image, I consciously decided to do that myself. I was also an over-achiever. I graduated high school with a 4.1 GPA (thanks to weighted honors and AP classes) and as a "scholar with distinction" based on certain random academic requirements. I was an officer in the marching band, the secretary of the NHS, a youth deacon in my church, and completely miserable. Little did I know it, but late in middle school, I had begun to develop a very acute case of generalized anxiety disorder. Every year that I aged, it got progressively worse. This drove me to accomplish everything and enjoy nothing. It also drove me to drugs and alcohol by the age of 16. I present to you, ladies and gentlemen, a weed-smoking, sex-loving scholar. Yes, they exist. Thankfully though, I dropped the dog collar and purple hair around the same time that I picked up marijuana. I guess I decided that it just wasn't worth my time anymore to put outrageous amounts of black makeup on my face every morning. In hindsight, I can't say  that I regret making that life change.

For the record, I didn't lose my virginity until I was 16. It was two weeks before my 17th birthday so I'm tempted to say that I was 17 so I seem less promiscuous, but what is a blog without honesty? I was in a happy long-term relationship, but of course, high school "love" never lasts.

Wait... you mean prom WASN'T a rehearsal for my future wedding? Why didn't anyone tell me?
I came into college as an honors student and a sophomore because of all the AP classes I took. I selected Political Science as a major, and planned to graduate with my bachelors degree in three years and then proceed on to law school. I auditioned for the marching band, and made it. College marching band has probably been one of the best experiences of my life. I later added a second major (Interdisciplinary Social Science) and a minor (Law and Society). I eventually got a part time job at a sub shop. I literally did... everything. It finally drove me into therapy in the spring of my second year, where I was diagnosed with GAD. At some point in my college life I had finally crumbled under the constant anxiety, and also developed major depressive disorder (clinical depression). I was very destructive to my body. Finally, after one of the worst summers of my life, I was put on medication for the depression and anxiety. It was too little too late to help me on my LSAT though. A 159 might be considered good by normal standards, but my brain does not allow me to apply normal standards to my life.
Yes, it's true that my inner nerd was driven by mental health issues all along. But old habits die hard.
I'm working on it though. Now in my third and final year of undergraduate studies, I'm working towards my ideal "health trifecta" - an positive mixture of strong emotional, physical, and spiritual health through a combination of traditional and alternative medicine.  I'll probably post a lot about that.

This is how I like to imagine myself, except I'm a bit paler. And a bit... rounder. And a lot less balanced. And... oh, fuck it.
I'll post a lot about other things too and I hope you have fun getting to know me. I also hope that this brief (or not-so-brief) history of my life helps you understand where I'm coming from, why I am the way that I am, and why I post the things that I post.

Happy blogging!

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