Intelligence. All of my life peope have told me I am intelligent. For awhile I beileve it, and then all of a sudden one day, I just changed my mind. I "woke up" in the real world. Nah, they just said it to be nice. Everyone says it about their own kids, their own students, and any other mediocre person they were trying to look nice too. So then I started to test myself. I'd try to do rediculous things just to see if I could do them. No need to state them here, most of you should know me well enough to know some of them. So then I took the ACT, aka the Intelligence test. The whose who of anywho you're trying to impress. I scored a 25. Not bad, but if you told someone got a 25, I wouldn't call them intelligent. I never studied for it, just showed up for the test that saturday morning when I much would have rathered sitting on my computer probably reading waste of time websites. I took computer Science. It just looked interesting to me, honestly that was why I tried it. Infact it scared me. A branch of computers I've nevever touched, what the hell am I thinking? I don't want to lose my sweet Haxor street cred. So I took it anyway, and ended up making my way to the group of students in the class who were in the top 5% of my graduating class. You know the kids who use the random feature on wikipedia as a trivia tool....for fun. I didn't get it. I thought the class was easy, Iearned the current classes concepts by working on something we wouldn't "get around to" in the class. I stayed with that group for the remainder of the yaer, and ended up being one of 3 who actually went into computer science as their field in college. I had proved my teacher wrong on a concept, and in doing so won the "program of the year" award at the end of the year, which in itself suprised me becuase I didn't even go to the awards ceremony, a friend of mine told me. I had friends who struggled through assignments that I would complete within the time it took the teacher to explain them. In a field teachers twice my age said was for "geniuses" (whom which I had and did fairly average in their classes), my only exlpanation was that it just came easy to me. I think the average ACT score for the rest of my Computer Science group was easily above a 32. The kind of scores you get when you go to harvard, when you go to school for free, scratch that, when you are paind to go for free. Stuff that doesn't happenw hen you go to a local college with a 25. |||So then continued the tests. i'd get bored and try to perfect something, sit and figure out lock combinations. Minesweeper, A 98 seems high, but I've only met 1 other person to ever do it in person. Sure the world record is like 39, but the one person who could keep up with me isn't exactly a social butterfly (not saying I am, but I do actually like people alot), went to a private school for the last two years of her high school career, so I'm cool with that. Bowling, i was the team captain after only bowling for a year on my own. I dunno, I guess I just pick up on stuff easily. Same with countless other games and activities, they just kind of clicked, and then one day I met the rubik's cube. Another challenge? Why not. It's something to do right. It might be the metaphor of nerd, but I never said I wasn't. I'd like to think I'm not, but who am I to tell anyone what I am. Oh the Irony. So how did I handle the cube? After 3 days of figuring out it on my own, I managed to solve 2/3rds of it using pure logic. Being the impation person I am I looked up how to solve the last layer using a "formula". eww, gross, a formula. Cheating? You could say so. So I "perfected" the cube to my standards. A toy that has been out for 20 years or so, and after 4 months, I consistently solve it in about a minute. Granted the record is something rediculous like 10 seconds, but the average learning curve for the rubik's cube didn't exactly include me. So I moved onto a new challenge, the 5x5x5 rubik's cube, the Professors cube. I made 1 rule. no strait up formulas. None, nada, nein, uhh-uhh. When I bought it, the store owner told me that the 3x3x3 is cool, but if you can solve the 5x5x5, that is something to be proud of. I took me 3 weeks of near continous train travel, but with the technique and no formulas, I solved all but 2 pieces. For the first time in a long time, I was proud of my self. I bought the 2x2x2, and the 4x4x4 and solved both in less than 48 hours. Sure, people say you are intelligent if you can solve the 3x3x3, but after accomplishing more than that, my reasoning says exactly the same. "If you look at it logically, its not really that hard." I don't feel smart, shit just makes sense to me. I made a rule that I can never walk and solve a rubik's cube, so I don't look like a nerd. As much as ive gotten into Rubik's cubes, I've stuck with that rule. I went to Europe with 3 people I didn't know. Now 3 weeks in, 2 of them ahve bought Rubik's cubes, and I'm teaching them how to solve it. I don't agree with them on a personality leve, but they are cool and we get along well enough. One of them got a 30 something on the ACT and we differ greatly with our viewpoints. Is he more intelligent than me? Am I than him? Whose to decide, and if you decide what do you base it on. He's got me with the numbers, but I was teaching him the nerd toy. I'm one of the more random people you will ever meet. Just gon a half our car ride with me when I have all of my music on me. Metal. Pop. Folk. Rock. Jazz. Lounge. Rap. You'll hear it all, and not in blocks... compeltely randomly, and its not becuase I don't care because you'll also find out just as quickly, I am a music nazi, of the himler variety. I will insult your musical taste, just to see how you will react. I'll turn the cube just to see how the pieces will move. One by one until they fall into place. But not just any place. my place, where I want them to go. On a long enough time line you can grasp any concept. This essay has been one strait stream of consciousness, and I'm not the best at grammar, I just don't erally care. So I'm going to leave this esssay as is without having the polishing period to straigten all of my lines and make sense of all these passing thoughts. I'll leave it to my natural intelligence, so I don't fake a word. So the big question, Am I intelligent? you decide. Who'se to say anything I said is mroe intelligent than say washing your car, becuase I'm not about to. That would be inconsiderate.

Tonight is one of those nights
where you feel like a dock floating calmly
above the rocking waves as all of the ships rungs slip untied.
Everythings great, but you can see whats unraveling infront of your eyes.
The boats all slowly drift away in their own directions.
Too many ships to catch.
Too little time to try.
Ize.

The Great Jonesome.

One of the toughest things I've ever had to deal with is going on right now, my complicated relationship with my father. It's not that my father and I don't get along, it's that the reasons we don't get along run so deep and so astray that you can barely place your finger on them, let alone understand them in context to how we feud constantly.

My dad is depressed. I can tell. He never really does anything that he wants to do, he never sees his friends, he always just kinda bounces around at home, and does various little things to pass the time, but you never see him really break lose and laugh like he isn't worrying about something, or has some dark thought looming in the back of his mind. I don't remember the last time I've seen him lose himself in a moment. Always worried about money, always concerned way too much about some things he has absolutely no control over, and that bums me more than anything else in my life. There is not a damn thing I can do to help him pick his shit back up to where he enjoys life again.

Today he asked me to go fishing when I had a few people over, and as much as I didn't want to go, I would have if my friends weren't there. I can't just drop them to go hang out with him, and he just seemed so dull and lonely when I told him no. He went by himself and caught a good deal of baby catfish to bring home for our aquarium, but just that look on his face when I said no, and how he paused just long enough to kind of sag his shoulders and sink back into lonesomeness.

It's not that he is depressed now so much that bothers me, it's that he's been like this for a few years, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of him growing out of it. He could very easily grow old without ever getting his life back, and it scares me. I like the guy as much as I don't get along with him, and I wish I could get into his head to take his life back in his control, and just have some fucking fun for a change. Some real fun, where you aren't worried about looking stupid or drunk in front of your son, or getting in trouble a little bit. Just fucking get out there and don't let the years wither you away, or find something new that interest you, and run with it. Pick up a new hobby, a new trade. Bring back out an old one. I played with Lego's today for four hours, and it was the most fun I've had in awhile. A simple activity I did for hours growing up still makes me enjoy my day even 10 years later.

You're life never stops, and you only once, don't ever forget that.

An observation on settling in.

Note: I don't plan on writing much of the material on this site in this form, but I needed to have a final thought on traveling to Europe.



If you have traveled for more than 2 weeks at a time, you'll understand this better from experience, but as for the rest of you...this is for you. It is a very strange unique feeling coming back to "home" once you've been away from it for so long. The people for one is a very strange component. You get a good feel for people's opinions of you when you come home, it's quite a cool feeling. I came home to three of my friends standing in my front yard waiting for me to come home. I had friends tell me they thought I had came home a day earlier than I had, and they were calling me and texting me to try and hang out. People were excited to see me. It was great. People's parents new I had gone to Europe. They asked me about it, and sincerely seemed happy to see me. It was great. You are so overwhelmed with just catching up with everything. I've been home for going on 36 hours, and I have been overwhelmed with the amount of things I've done already catching up with friends. I've had too much to do, and I won't be caught up for awhile. Trying to see too many friends at
once, try to tell stories, and answer multiple questions at once.

There was one thing that I missed in Europe, and that was Goldstar. My first meal back was with my extended family at Goldstar and I spent so much time telling stories, and answering people's questions, that by the time I looked down at my food I had eaten 2/3rds of my meal without realizing it or having the single thought of enjoying it or tasting it. You feel like you are short sticking people. You feel like you are squeezing them into your oh so important daily planner. I hugged my friends when I came home. I don't hug my friends. I was excited to see my family, and I'm not a family person. I was excited to argue with my friends over stupid shit. I was excited to give my friends stupid gifts I had got them from the EU. It was quite overwhelming. All of today and yesterday has blended together, and I have a feeling the next few days will.

People say you go backpacking through Europe to "find yourself", and get a worldly perspective. The worldly perspective aspect is true, you get a completely different view on everything in the world compared to you, and in relation to you, your culture, your country, and your life-style, and somebody can tell you until you are blue in the face about how different or how similar it is, but they will never understand until they are over there. As for the "finding yourself", I don't find that to be entirely accurate. You are out of your daily routine for so long you start to see it from an outside perspective. You realize what you like about your home self, and you realize what you don't. You find things you want to do, and at least for me, things I wanted to change.

It's still sinking in what I just finished doing. 35 days across the great European world. It will be months before I realize how much this will effect my life. It was worth every penny.