Nostalgic

Today was a Sunday, which means church. And that means Maywood Evangelical Free Church or, That Church I Went Too When I Was Wee.

This was a crazy experience. First of all, it was like a total nostalgia overload. The carpets were the same, the classrooms, the coat racks, the stairs, the foyer, the sanctuary, most of the people. It was all like just the same as five years ago when I went here. Second, everything was so small. It was like, "ohmagoodness, Maywood got hit by a shrink ray." Like, I mean, those words actually went through my head.

The ceilings were way lower. The classroom gates were knee-height. The coat racks were short. The foyer was claustrophobic. And the sanctuary was tiny! I remember a giant sanctuary that could easily fit like six thousand or seven thousand people with elbow space, and a ceiling so high that if you managed to get to the pinnacle and then you fell, you could live an entire life in the time it took to fall.

This was not that church.

It was so much smaller. The walls were closer in, the pews were crammed into each other, the ceiling fans almost brushed our heads. It wasn't the same church!

Now, the characteristics were all the same. There was that same soundboard that my cool friends got to use. There was the white stage that I wished was a big huge mint on many a Sunday because the little white mints my mom had were entirely inadequate. And all the people who sang were the same people, just barely perceptibly aged.

But it just wasn't the same church.

That aside, everyone inside the church was the same. We'd been gone for five years and in that time my brothers and I got a lot taller, my parents aged a lot, my dad put on some weight, my mom got shorter, Cole got facial hair, I got handsome, Seth got broad shoulders and Grant-- didn't actually change much.

Which means he fit in well at Maywood because every single person was exactly the same! They all went to the same church, wore the same styles of clothes, sang the same kinds of songs, listened to the same types of sermons, had the same faces. Weird. Weird weird weird.

This led me to some ponderings about spiritual stagnation I'll probably elaborate on later.

But anyways, Maywood was strange because it was like my family's house. On the one hand, everything is so familiar and just the way I remember it from five years ago. And on the other hand, so much stuff is different that it's not my church any more.

So that was my little piece of nostalgia for the day, if that is the appropriate word which it might not be.

Segue.

After church, I got to meet up with some friends at the Culver's right across from my family's house. It was cool because I made them drive all the way from their church to meet me there because I have to get ferried around by my family. And then it turned out their church was actually closer to Culver's than Maywood. And then we had butterburgers!

I had an intramural basketball game back at Northwestern and plenty of studying to do, so I decided that we should just eat from 12:30 to 1:30 to get to briefly see each other's handsome/beautiful faces again, and then I would leave and be back at Northwestern in time for the 3 o'clock game.

This was the stupidest idea.

1) It takes more than an hour and a half to get to Northwestern from Rockford, and when I got there I would have to unpack and change and get over to the gym. And leaving Culver's at 1:30 still entailed going home and packing up. No way that's possible.

2) I hadn't even started doing financial aid and tax stuff with my dad, which was one of the main reasons I went home for the weekend. I still needed to do that before I left.

3) We ended up talking for four and a half hours straight without pausing.

Stupid, stupid idea.

The talking was great, though. It was just three of us, and although one of these friends was a lifetime-ever-since-we-were-in-diapers-we-were-best-buds friend, the other was a girl I barely knew except from random encounters throughout our lives, so I anticipated the conversation being kind of awkward and eagerly abandoned.

Instead we discoursed on everything from relationships to parties to judgmentalism to college plans to relationships without stopping for breath.

It was awesome.

By the conclusion of this prolonged conversational encounter, I knew these friends ten times as well and as a bonus I broadened my perspectives on drugs & drinking.

(But not very much.)

But anyways, it was a great afternoon and then I went home and slaved furiously and FAFSA told me I would be a prince one day, and then I managed to leave by 6:15, and the timing on this was just perfect because right as I pulled up to Hinman (my dorm), a group of friends from community group appeared at the door like elves to ferry my luggage to my room and then I accompanied them to Whole Foods for no discernable purpose and I felt like I had good friends at college, which is a good thing to come back to.

And I didn't do any rapping today, but I discussed this habit with my mom in the car on the way back to Northwestern and she confirmed that my dad disapproves.

I will prove them wrong.

The Start of a Rapping Career

So right now I'm at my parents' house.

Let me break down how weird that statement is. 1) I said "my parents' house" instead of "my house" for the first time in basically my entire life. For 18 years or whatever -- maybe 17 years; I don't know how often I talk about residences -- it has always been "my house," and now it's "their house."

Weird.

Anyways, that's the breakdown.

This conceptual turnaround is probably just because they move so much and I haven't actually had time to live in this particular house so it feels all "theirsy" instead "miney." Like, if they would just stay put I would probably still claim partial ownership.

But still. I mean, it's so familiar on the one hand -- half-unpacked boxes in the corners, stocked bookshelves and counters, homeschooling books and Gameboy games on the coffee table, a mess of linguistic materials on every flat surface.

But on the other hand, it's a weird house with a weird shape in a weird place right next to a hill, and we've never had a house right next to a hill. It's definitely not home.

So in conclusion, my family's nomadic nature is driving me out of identification with them.

In other news, I spent four hours yesterday writing raps when I should have been doing homework. This is terrible. It's stupid, it puts me behind in work, I feel vaguely dissatisfied at the end of it .... But I just can't stop. It's insanely addictive, like playing Minecraft at 3 A.M.

And the worst part about writing raps is that the flow is fickle. Some days you can sit and write down garbage-y little end rhymes for an hour straight without popping out any really catchy lines. And then other days your pencil hits the paper and it's a lyrical laboratory inside of your brain. And when that happens you just can't stop, because you're Drake and you know you're going to get that call if you just keep laying down flows.

Actually, as grim and depressed I sound about this habit, I don't really regret the time spent. It's fascinating, and you improve so quickly that it stays entertaining. If I didn't have homework, I would write raps every hour of the day.

In other other news, my family left me alone for a few hours today to do homework and I decided to test my verbal efficacy without the inhibition of human presence.

Pros: I got to hear what my voice sounded like saying raps. And the rhymes actually translated to audio pretty well.

Cons: I had to hear what my voice sounded like saying raps. It was pretty awful.

No, but really. I was already kind of psyched up because I had listened to a dozen or so white rappers on YouTube and it sounds ridiculously bad. But then at the same time I had Eminem going through my head. And so I wasn't sure what to expect. And then I kind of spat a few raps just out loud and my voice sounded like a cross between, like, Kanye and Drake and Weezy.

And I've recorded my voice before and listened to it -- even singing -- so I know that what I hear isn't what reality hears, but when I recorded my voice and played it back, I just didn't have my expectations in the right area.

First of all, my voice is so deep. And not even mellow deep. Just like cracky "I'm a golem" deep.

Second, I sound super unconfident. Even when I spit lines like I'm angry, which I've learned makes them sound stronger. It still sounds all timid and white suburban.

Third, I have a lisp. Weird. Weird weird weird weird weird. Like, I was kind of prepared for how deep and cracky my voice would be. I was kind of prepared to be less confident-sounding than Eminem. But a lisp? Honestly, genetics? That just came totally out of left field. Like, when I talk normally it's only sort of audible, but when I try to rap it's just ridiculous. It sounds like I have a fat lip, or maybe half a tongue.

So in conclusion, there are many impediments to my rapping career at the moment. I would say quality of lyrics is kind of a low priority at the moment. That's not as hard to improve in. But nature has left me with a few obstacles to being able to captivate with my presentation of these flows and I'm going to need to sort that out before I contact Lil Wayne or Dr. Dre.

In final conclusion, it is only 12:15 and I'm headed for bed. Being home has huge advantages.

Life's Like a Big Snake

This metaphor plays out in a lot of ways. First and foremost, life has the ability to choke you whenever it feels so inclined. Like forcing you to stay up until 4 A.M. last night working on a pre-lab for the worst lab in all of history. That lab took four full hours, by the way. Four entire boring, sleep-depriving hours. Dreadful.

And now tonight it's 2 A.M. and I'm writing a blog post again. Which is actually okay, because I'm doing this just before I embrace unconsciousness, as opposed to just before I begin working on pre-lab report that I should have done four days ago.
tldr: I can sleep soon.

Today was quite the day.

For one thing, I was so tired that it was like the longest day that has ever happened on the entire Earth. Honestly. And it made concentration difficult in everything. Thankfully, there's only two classes on Wednesday. But there's also the big fat lab on Wednesday, and that's the pits.

I'm so tired my thoughts are all convoluted and are coming out accordingly. What I'm trying to say is: after I barely woke up in time for orgo this morning, it was cold out and I had to eat a donut for breakfast because I forgot to bring a pop-tart, which I'm not complaining about because it was delicious and sort of nostalgic with sprinkles on top.

Then I went and looked up philosophy topics in the library for two hours between classes because the activation energy to open my government textbook is significantly higher than the amount of energy in a standard sized donut, even with nostalgic sprinkles. That was a good waste of time because I creeped myself out a smidgen and also remained conscious which means I was accomplishing something.

I'm not sure if that actually logically follows.

Math was so boring, but Kal Nanes knows my name and he doesn't know some other peoples' names and I'm sure that counts for something and Michael didn't come to class for the second day in a row and maybe he's sick or he dropped it! Which means I now have 1.3 friends in math class instead of 2.2, which is sort of unhappy.

And there's not enough time to eat lunch on Wednesdays but one manages, and then it's time for lab and the next four hours are a muddled blur of frustration, anxiety, frustration, fatigue, temporary emissions of alertness, and long, subdued periods of gazing at noncompliant vials.

By the time a four hour lab is over, you feel like you just fell off the edge of the Earth and everyone you know managed to keep their balance and not fall with you.

And then they hopped into Formula One cars and drove off to dinner and texting and fun affairs that are difficult to participate in from Lab D-221.

Anyways, where was I? Oh yeah. Danny's car had a flat tire so we had supper and then we shared manly conversation and frustration at the Wildcats.

And then I went to my room to waste time gazing at pixels and I realized that worship is tomorrow, and that I haven't actually practiced, and that we're singing Meant to Live by Switchfoot, which is not a simple tune, and that last week I sucked at electric guitar because I hadn't practiced and also possibly because I was tired -- and I only had control over one of those variables, and so I got out my guitar and OH MY GOD MY TINY LITTLE AMP DIED.

It had sort of had one foot in the grave for a little while. But there aren't words to describe it when your own tiny little black box of magic that can clip on your belt and be sunshine gives into illness and dies. And then you feel like some kind of sick fiend because when you play he wheezes and rattles like a poorly revitalized corpse and you can't change any settings to make him come back to life, and you try to strum some more and he sounds like he's throwing up and he just isn't alive at all.

An hour of Amazon and USPS hoops later, I had my little guy tucked away in a cardboard box, going home to his parents in exchange for money, which is kind of twisted.

And then it was a late hour and I had to get practicing for that difficult song, and I really did give it a go. I spent almost three hours working away at it, watching the YouTube video like actually literally nine hundred times and looking up so many tabs and strumming away. But somehow the sound was just not adding up -- and any goodness I can achieve on my own with a guitar is cut down by about seven eighths when I play in public. By this standard, I was likely going to cause temporary blindness when I played tomorrow.

But I still wasted more time fiddling away at that guitar and then we changed the setlist and it turned out that I didn't have to have spent all those hours, but somehow it was less frustrating than it should have been because at least I knew Meant to Live. Slowly. Alone.

And then I worked on a project until now which took too long, but will be over soon.

And holy cow, this blog is about a snake.

Okay. Life is also like a snake because it goes in different directions depending on what part of it you're on. That makes less sense written than imagined. And life can buck and throw you off, or raise you to a great height unexpectedly.
And it can.. bite you.

For a variety of reasons, I'm abandoning this analogy.
G'night.

2 A.M. Is Powerful

It's two in the morning at the moment. I don't know how it got to be this way. There was a combination of inefficient project management, time used deleting Facebook and further time spent checking out Blogspot which led me to this moment. And 2 A.M. is powerful.

It inexplicably drains all of one's initiative and hope. I still have to do a lab write-up. I might get a terrible grade on this lab. I might fail organic chemistry. I might be so exhausted tomorrow that I inadvertently pour hydrochloric acid onto my lab partner and then fall asleep like a deaf narcoleptic puppy. In lab goggles.

Life could be truly terrible.

Life could be absolutely the worst. And you know why? Because it's 2 A.M.

Oh, it's been coming on. Midnight starts to flex its muscles. Half past and the sickly, dull talons of the early morning are beginning to get hungry. One o'clock and there's already that subtle collapse, that drooping of the eyelids and miserable outlook characteristic of the wee hours of the morning.

And then everything rushes along like an exponential curve tightening into Sheol and before you know it you're gazing with bleary eyes at a monitor for what feels like minutes but is actually hours and you know that time's slipping by and people are falling asleep on every side and not staring at LCD pixels, and tomorrow you're going to be so tired, and you're behind on sleep anyways, and there's four hundred different assignments to do tomorrow and there is no conceivable way life is going to be okay.

And then you hit Blogspot and everything is good.


Or else you stumble into StumbleUpon. And then you're hosed.