Restless

I have never in my life felt so much like I want to run away.

I want to get on a plane to Europe and backpack across it.  Maybe see Australia while I'm at it.  I just can't shake the sense of wanting to be anywhere other than here.

I am disappointed

I'm disappointed in people who claim to be friends but then deliberately do things to hurt and degrade me.

I'm disappointed in people who make assumptions about me and then don't even bother trying to find out if they're true or not.

I'm disappointed in people who don't stand up for what they believe is right.

I'm disappointed in the callousness of people.

I'm disappointed that the guy I like doesn't like me back.

I'm disappointed that I don't know what I want to do with my life.

I'm disappointed in myself for not really trying to achieve the goals that I set.

I'm disappointed in some of the relationships that I have, even though I know it's partly my fault.

I'm disappointed that so many people don't seem to understand me.

I'm disappointed that I'm not happier.

Life has been better.

Inarticulate scream of rage

So right before Christmas, I got new neighbors.  This is the fourth tenant that's lived in that apartment since I moved into the building and I never had an issue with a single one of them.  Now obviously, one of the hazards of apartment living is that you will hear things through the walls.  It happens, but if everyone is courteous about it, it doesn't have to be a problem.  I try not to play music, or do anything loud really, between 10 pm and 9 am.  Because that's when people are asleep.  I feel like that is a pretty generally accepted rule.  Don't be crazy-loud at night.

My new neighbors don't seem to share this notion.

A thing that confuses me is that all of the apartments in my building are one bedroom.  Yet my new neighbors are a mom and her son (~10 years old).  There are possibly more people living there because I hear multiple voices A LOT.  Which makes me feel kind of judgmental.  Maybe she's a single mom and can't afford a two-bedroom place.  Unfortunately, there is a direct correlation between my benevolence and my quality of sleep.  Both of which are running on empty right now.

The biggest problem is the son.  His shrill little-kid voice carries through the wall like you would not believe.  Also, "bedtime" seems to be a foreign concept to these people.  He is routinely up at 1 am yapping on  like a deranged monkey.

Last night I was woken up by him delivering a monologue, at volume, about the relative merits of singers like Lil Wayne, Cee Lo, and Jennifer Hudson.  You don't even want to know about the shenanigans they get up to in his gym class.  I certainly didn't.

Now, I can be confrontational when it is warranted, but I'm not quite sure what to do in this situation.  Part of the problem is that when I get woken up abruptly I kind of come up swinging.  So in the throes of my sleep-rage, all I want to do is punch my way through the wall and scream at him to shut up.  That is not the best attitude to have when going over to ask someone in the middle of the night to get their kid to be quiet.  People are touchy about their children anyway, and diplomacy is not my strong suit when I'm in that mood.

I could go over at some other point during the day or in the morning, but my more rational side argues that the kid is just talking (albeit loudly) and I can't very well enforce a bedtime on a kid that doesn't happen to belong to me.

That doesn't make it any less infuriating, however, when I'm forced to go sleep on the couch because some yammering child seems to be yelling through the wall directly at my head.  I genuinely started thinking about rearranging my bedroom so that the bed isn't on the wall that I share with their apartment.  But then, I like the way my apartment is.  I shouldn't have to change everything around just so I can actually sleep through the night, right?  Surely that can't be unreasonable.

"The truth denies simplicity"

Do you ever wonder about what labels fit you?

I'm definitely not an optimist but I'm not really a pessimist either.  Realist seems like it might be a good fit although I'm a bit iffy on exactly what that entails.  Sometimes I'm cynical, but does that make me a cynic?  I'll admit to being sarcastic but that's all in good fun.  I think I lean more toward being a conservative than a liberal but I'm not really sure what those mean either.

It makes me think of when I was in college and was making playlists of my music.  I wasn't ever really sure what fell in which genre so I grouped them into things like "skater," "doo wop," "loud stuff," "dance," and "clap your hands."  I've never felt like I'm very good at knowing what labels mean what.*

Or when my mom made me register to vote.**  I didn't know what party to register with, so I told her some of my opinions and she told me which party was closest to that.  That seems kind of wrong to me.  I know it's an inherent flaw in the two-party system, but there probably aren't that many people who actually toe the party line so they don't really fall fully into that camp.

Labels are funny like that.  They help us make sense out of the world but, as John Green said, "the truth denies simplicity."  Things are usually complicated.  Take the other day for example.  I was following through on my plan of getting back into shape by walking to the library to get a book.  I was wearing my new running shoes, the weather was gorgeous and my iPod had a fully charged battery.  All good things.  I ended up with three blisters, a stabbing pain in my foot, and the most annotated book I've ever seen.  And yet, it was a good day.  All of those things made me happy.

I'm not really sure why I started talking about this.  Probably partly because I've been watching a post-apocalyptic tv show*** and it's all about who you were and who you are.  The constant labeling of people "us" versus "them" shows how distrustful everyone can become.

Sometimes it seems like the sole purpose of labels is exclusion.  But I know that isn't all there is to it because labels can include people too; tie them together.

Maybe it's just that labels describe people in broad strokes but the closer you look the less it works until it all falls apart.  Like how macroscopic physics just doesn't work on the microscopic scale.  People are too rich and complicated to ever be exactly one thing.  And if they were, wouldn't it be boring?




*I'd really like to know the definition of "hipster."

**I believe that voting is a responsibility and a privilege.  You have an obligation to vote but you shouldn't vote if you aren't informed on the issues at hand.  I don't stay informed so I, generally, don't vote.

***Survivors.  It's really interesting; kind of depressing too but all those post-apocalyptic things are.  It's not a depressing as Breaking Bad.  I've only managed to watch half an episode of that.