i've said it before...

change is a funny thing:
the way it makes things different,
and the way it rolls around in your pocket.

for one reason or another, i looked at my old blog. it more or less spans my last year in college give or take three months 4 months in either direction.

it's slowly falling apart.

first the obvious changes: the big red x that is left in place of a quality 256 color jpeg of one of the better nights out you had in college . the tag-board that displays a "this tag board does not exist" message instead of a short conversation you had with someone you could never identify and who asked "how long have you been such a loser?" (in french no doubt), only to respond with "only recently, i imagine" and then, as if to show that they weren't any better than you, proceeded to use the babblefish online foreign language translator to answer in french.

less obvious changes: the text links that reveal the 404 error or the "this page does not exist" message instead of the offbeat news article about how the japanese space program was thinking of including ramen noodles as part of their astronauts' menu.

and finally, changes that are only discovered upon indepth examination: a person's character can change greatly over the course of two years. events and experiences don't mandate change, however. they can also strengthen certain characteristics. so as to say that if a person was an asshole two years ago, and spends the next two years becoming more and more of an asshole, they are still the same asshole they were before, but just a bigger one now.

something that's come to irritate me more and more about people is the inability to believe in change, or even worse to believe that change is a bad thing, ultimately resulting in a fear of change.

a base example, regardless of how petty it seems, would be musical tastes.

i remember when i was 10, the first genre i really got into was oldies music. early beatles, early beach boys, the dixie cups, dion and the belmonts, anything you'd hear when you turn on your radio's oldies station. that traveled progressively to motown and anything a capella or harmonized. when i started playing trumpet in middle school i totally got into jazz and could at any given time name 10 of the best trumpeters in jazz history. from there i really got into 80's big hair monster ballads. it makes sense then that i started listening to more and more 80's music. and then the doors and led zeppelin and janis joplin and the later beatles' stuff. when i started playing guitar, i loved everything acoustic -- the heavier the band, the more i liked the acoustic version. i think it was here when i also really got into surf guitar artists like dick dale and songs like "pipeline" or easier yet, the entire soundtrack to the endless summer. when i started playing bass, i got into blues and funk. somewhere in there i started listening to billie holiday and etta james. i think this is when swing came back, so i listened to brian setzer and big bad voodoo daddies. somewhere else in there, and the more and more i was exposed to it, i got more into hip hop and rap which i previously admitted to utter distaste for. same goes for country music. and before good charlotte and "the boys of summer", i listened to blink 182's enema of the state everyday one summer. then i heard a goldfinger song that i really liked. so i listened to more of their stuff. it wasn't punk. it wasn't ska. it wasn't pop (yet). but i liked it, so i started looking for other bands like them and got into allister, craig's brother, the ataris, fenix tx, and then i heard bowling for soup and fountains of wayne.

and then i moved away from all my friends and family whom i only occasionaly talk to now.

and it's not the fact that someone refers to these most recent bands among others as "steve music" that bothers me. it's the fact that they assume i haven't changed at all since i left/last talked to them. maybe it's just the fact that they assumed anything about me. that's something that's always bothered me. how can other people think they know things about me, when more often than not i don't even know what i'm doing.

my 10 year high school reunion is coming up in 3 years. since graduation, i've seen a couple Sprayberry-ans/-ites or whatever you want to call them. and the ones that haven't been around the entire past seven years bring with them memories of how i used to be and have even told me to my face that i was nothing like they expected me to be. whether or not that was a compliment isn't the issue. assumptions about what somebody is like or what they do or who they are is analogous to competing in the special olympics -- even if you win, you're still retarded. i said the same thing about arguing over instant messenger once before. i don't remember where i first heard it, just know that i heard it somewhere and didnt make it up, and that it only is used to stress my point. not that i think less of SO participants or anything. i saw christina ricci in pumpkin. i'm pretty sure i understand as much as i can.

anyways, back to my point. i would be the first to argue that you can't put your past behind you and leave it all behind. mistakes, triumphs, accidents -- they all make you who you are today. but you don't have to sit in a pile of shit and think to yourself that you're destined to sit in the pile of shit forever just because it's gotten deeper and deeper over the years. besides, it's probably not as bad as you think it is. look around. i bet there's someone with a big stick standing on the edge that'll help you out if you'd only ask for it instead of drowning in your own self induced misery. or the stick is floating in the pool of shit with you and you have to put forth some effort and do the work yourself.

i never wanted to be an engineer. i was taking ME classes because it looked like i could pretty much do anthing when i graduated. i hated my engineering classes. i didn't put any effort into anything in college but water polo. friends came and went. same with relationships. school was secondary to whatever i felt like doing at the moment. the summer before my senior year i kicked myself in the ass and decided that i wanted better than what i had. not that i deserved it, but that it was about time i earned something for once instead of just having things given to me. i stopped slacking off, i found things in class that interested me, i challenged myself -- this was my way out. i graduated with a barely passing gpa and my job was lifeguarding at a country club. i had been to zero interviews, done zero networking (not that i knew how to start), and basically was unprepared to find a real job. but i had my degree, and i kept looking for something i thought would be good for me. after a combined six interviews with two engineering companies, i was still sitting in a chair under an umbrella with a whistle in my hand and a really good tan. then i changed my approach from looking for something i thought i was supposed to do, and instead looked for something that i liked to do. i was already prepared for that, and i ended up getting the job. sure it was luck, but it was also being prepared for an opportunity.

i've changed so many times in my life. and i've admitted to recreating myself everytime i was put in a new situation, but maybe it's not as bad as i thought. maybe i put on a new front to see what works best in a given situation, so if i were confronted again with the same situation i'd be prepared for it...and any new opportunities.

and maybe i'm full of shit....but maybe i'm not
- posted by yeah...about that... @ 12:39 AM