Reaching Out

I've had my ups and downs in life.

Most of them occurring for me Post-High School and more-so Post-College.

But sometimes you just need a place to vent, or a place to talk things out. Regardless if the other side has answers for you or not.

I am thankful that some of the bloggers here have listened to me over the years.

You guys know who you are.

On that note, to any random readers reading this (who am I kidding, even I know that no one reads the Minds anymore :) ...although I hit 30k this week!), feel free to email me, or most other bloggers, if you have an issue, and just need someone to talk to.

Most of us don't bite...and the ones who do, are usually doing it in a playful way. Hopefully.

Investments

Dating is an investment.

The more you put into it, the more you hope that the payout is.

As such, you need to make every date count for the most, be it a first date, or the eighth.

Recently I made some long-term investments, that unfortunately didn't pan out.

Sure, money and time and effort was put into it.

But ultimately, who cares about all those things.

If you worry about everything you put into it, and that you got nothing out of it, you will ultimately fall behind the game, and start making bad investments.

So if you believe in something, put your all into it, and hope that it pans out!

Opening Up

Over the course of the 19+ months I have had this blogger account, I have had conversations with a few of my fellow bloggers, some of whom I follow, they follow me, or no connection at all.

It has given me the ability to see what people are truly like, especially in this environment, where people are open, since they are veiled.

And then I have met others on here, who have opened up to me, and I to them, about our real selves and personalities, and what we really want in life, or what we actually are like.

Part of the change in the style of this blog was that it needed a sense of direction. (BTW, background picture, taken by the Minds themselves. I think it's pretty cool.)

Last week I was talking to Cymbaline (from Obscured By Clouds), and she asked me what I thought was the reason I went back and read other blogs, and kept returning to them. And when I realized what that is, I would be able to blog better myself.

Well, whilst I was unable to answer that question, one of the things about the other blogs I read, is that they are all personal feelings, and one writer.

So that led me to get rid of the others, making this blog be more about me.

And to write more about myself, and my thoughts, than just posting for the sake of posting.

We'll see if it works out :)

Except Altie I guess...since I was all talk and no blog to begin with!

Death Is A New Feeling

Many people have experienced deaths of someone close to them.

Be it a friend in elementary/high school who had cancer. A family member of old age. Or many other options.

Others have never experienced it.

And then Cory Monteith died.

Sure, Cory was 31 years old, and died of a drug/alcohol overdose, but to many teenagers, this was their first idol, who they had an attachment to, to die.

Yes, many other stars have died at young ages, regardless the cause, but I think this one is the first that affects the American youth as a whole.

Whilst Amy Winehouse was 27, her major fan base in America was people in their 20s. The same for Heath Ledger, and Brittany Murphy, all with slightly older fan bases.
Even Aaliyah, who was 22 at the time she died, didn't have the same impact on teenagers in America.

The fact that this happened when schools were out, may be a blessing, since the next time these kids think about it will be late September, when Glee returns for 3 episodes (the third of which will be a Cory/Finn tribute), before going on an indefinite hiatus.

If they had been in school, they would've talked about it a lot more amongst each other, possibly needing some people on hand, to help them though the "difficult times".

The way I see it, by September, most of them won't remember it as strongly, and when Glee returns, they will help remember him for who he was, and help the teenagers of today, move on with them.

Open Letter To A Rose

This letter is in bullet points, and no specific order:

Dear You.

- You've been there when I am up. But even more importantly, you have been there when I am down.

- You have given me more than I could ever have asked for, and asked for even less in return.

- I may seem to spend extravagantly on you, but you, and what you stand for, are what keeps me going through life, and let me earn the monies to spend.

- The parents I was once hidden from, are now close "friends".

- We met in the most random of ways, yet forged a strange friendship, that was odd and improbable.

- Made me comfortable to be who I am.

- Random words that probably only make sense to you: Cupcakes. Ice Chests. Agatha Christie. Chocolates. HIMYM Calendars. +.

Thank you for being there when I need you the most.

Sincerely,

WM

The Minds Have Returned

With this blog being dormant for a long period, the Minds have determined that it is time to come back.

For at least the next couple of weeks, there will hopefully be a post a day, just like things were back when this blog launched.

Topics that are in the works include marriage issues, privacy and an open letter to someone that's always been there for me.

I hope that those that have been here since Day 1 are still around, and those that are just discovering me, will stick around!

Blogaversary

I was going to ignore it altogether...but really, my life has changed a little bit with all of you in it.

So to my 89 posts, 12,000+ Page Views, and those 9 special followers...

Thank you.

Without you guuuuuuuuuuuuu

Absolutely Nothing

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Chops"
because that was the name of his dog
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and a gold star
And his mother hung it on the kitchen door
and read it to his aunts
That was the year Father Tracy
took all the kids to the zoo
And he let them sing on the bus
And his little sister was born
with tiny toenails and no hair
And his mother and father kissed a lot
And the girl around the corner sent him a
Valentine signed with a row of X's
and he had to ask his father what the X's meant
And his father always tucked him in bed at night
And was always there to do it

Once on a piece of white paper with blue lines
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Autumn"
because that was the name of the season
And that's what it was all about
And his teacher gave him an A
and asked him to write more clearly
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because of its new paint
And the kids told him
that Father Tracy smoked cigars
And left butts on the pews
And sometimes they would burn holes
That was the year his sister got glasses
with thick lenses and black frames
And the girl around the corner laughed
when he asked her to go see Santa Claus
And the kids told him why
his mother and father kissed a lot
And his father never tucked him in bed at night
And his father got mad
when he cried for him to do it.

Once on a paper torn from his notebook
he wrote a poem
And he called it "Innocence: A Question"
because that was the question about his girl
And that's what it was all about
And his professor gave him an A
and a strange steady look
And his mother never hung it on the kitchen door
because he never showed her
That was the year that Father Tracy died
And he forgot how the end
of the Apostle's Creed went
And he caught his sister
making out on the back porch
And his mother and father never kissed
or even talked
And the girl around the corner
wore too much makeup
That made him cough when he kissed her
but he kissed her anyway
because that was the thing to do
And at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed
his father snoring soundly

That's why on the back of a brown paper bag
he tried another poem
And he called it "Absolutely Nothing"
Because that's what it was really all about
And he gave himself an A
and a slash on each damned wrist
And he hung it on the bathroom door
because this time he didn't think
he could reach the kitchen.

Absolutely Nothing by Osoanon Nimuss from The Perks of Being a Wallflower

10,000 Page Views

Not much to say in this post...except that when I started blogging, less than a year ago...I never thought I would have 1,000 page views, let alone 10,000.

So this is just me blowing that little paper horn that people use for New Years, in celebration of a mini milestone.

So thanks for all the reads, people of the internet!

Status Update

By Chris Jones | ESPN The Magazine

Illustration by Mark MatchoRebecca Marino has a seemingly envious job and life that she's choosing not to lead.

This story appears in ESPN The Magazine's March 18 One Day One Game issue.

YOU PROBABLY HADN'T heard much about Rebecca Marino, at least not until she decided she wasn't going to be that Rebecca Marino anymore. The 22-year-old Canadian tennis pro has announced she's leaving the game again, having already taken a seven-month hiatus and mounting the briefest of comebacks, citing in part the twin devils on her shoulders: depression and idiots on the Internet. Before she held her mid-February conference call to talk about her second departure and her mental illness, she deleted her Twitter and Facebook accounts because she knew what was coming and that it would do her no good. "Social media has taken its toll on me," she said.

In some ways, Marino's story is a small one: Lots of young people decide they've taken the wrong path in life and try to correct it. They go back to school or change their majors or quit their internships. But what makes Marino's story larger is its counterintuitiveness, the seemingly envious job and existence she is choosing not to lead. She was a good player, once ranked as high as 38th in the world, with an overpowering serve and forehand. (After she faced Venus Williams during the second round of the 2010 U.S. Open, Williams said: "Now I know what it's like to play myself.") When someone is blessed and gifted enough even to approach that kind of spotlight, we assume she is going to try to reach the center of it. That's the natural order of things. Nobody chooses to stay in the dark.

Unless the dark is the only place that feels safe. I've also battled depression, and I believe I know what or at least how Marino is thinking. I've thought a lot about giving up my job and vanishing -- if I'm being honest, I've occasionally thought about vanishing in bigger ways too. When I'm in a good place, it seems insane to me that I've ever thought that way. My job is a dream job; my life is a dream life. But depression's worst trick is its powers of distortion. It takes the good and makes it nearly invisible, and it takes the bad and amplifies it. People with depression also have long memories for hurt. Stings linger and layer.

"With professional athletes," Marino told The New York Times, "people put them on a pedestal sometimes, and they forget that they're actually a person still." For someone like her, social media -- where she was berated for her weight or by gamblers who lost when she lost -- isn't the wound. Depression is the wound. But social media is the infection that makes it worse, and there are only so many ways to resist it.

You can choose to become callused and awful like me, the monstrous result of my finally having followed the easy advice and grown a thicker skin. An anonymous stranger on Twitter recently said that he'd like to see me "eat a shotgun." Not that long ago, I would have gone after that guy with all the rage I could muster, which would have been plenty. Instead, I made a joke about it. Later, a (real-life) friend mentioned the exchange and how messed up it was -- not just that someone publicly hoped I would kill myself, which is really something if you stop and think about it, but that I'd laughed it off. My friend was right. I don't like that I can't feel anything anymore, my newly flatlined self. And if my tiny spotlight has changed me this much, imagine the horrors that a larger one could do.

Rebecca Marino did that imagining, and it led her to make a different choice from mine: She decided it was better to try to change her world than herself. She doesn't yet know what she'll do instead, but she's talked about going back to school or applying for different jobs, quiet jobs, anonymous jobs, such as a cashier or restaurant hostess. Then at least the strangers in her life will always have faces.

I understand her decision. In fact, I envy her in a lot of ways because she's rescuing the best parts of herself before it's too late. A thick skin doesn't seem like something you would want someone you love to have. You would want them to be able to feel fully. You would want them to be warm and open, affected by the people and lives being lived around them. You would want them to have a big heart and for them to be able to keep it safe, even if that meant they had to hide it away in the dark.

Mr. Google

So, like every obsessive blogger, I check my stats once in a while.

Simple things, that blogger generally provides me with. Things like, "Page Views", "Most Popular", etc.

But then I found a website that can tell me where I rank in Google Searches, based on different search queries.

Some of my posts, I was fairly surprised, when it would give me the ranking, it would say: "Your page is ranked #19 in this query".

19!!!! Yes, I am starting to make a dent in this world.

But then I got a real shocker...one of my pages came up listed as "Your page is ranked #1 in this query."

#1!!!!

NUMBERO FREAKIN' UNO!!!

Granted it was on Google.uk and not Google.com, but still, I'm impressed. :)

I just wish I knew who some of the people reading my posts are...because the ones getting the most reads, are all people I would love to have a conversation with.

Motivation to Continue Motivating?

Awesome Gem of Motivation

Motivational - Day 2

Motivation Comes Standard

People need often need motivation.

Heck, I need it just to post.

So, I'm not necessarily going to re-start posting anything worthwhile. But as a way to get back in the game, how about I post motivation every day (or so) , for all of us to laugh at/with/too/etc..