Say Something by A Great Big World & Christina Aguilera cover

Hey all,

If you're reading this I just did a cover today cause I discovered this song so if you could all give it a listen and tell your friends and subscribe and like it or just listen to it that's cool too thanks a million

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KdXNf_jBh4

Camp College

I never went to camp as a kid. Never left home for weeks to be with other kids my age. Never discovered myself away from home. I'm also a homebody and I'm okay with that. I feel no need to impress anyone with my presence. But being at college for just a semester has already done a number on me. It has been wounding and unpredictable and is already molding me into a tougher human being. My mom told me I was being belligerent the other day and I'm proud of that. College is boring and wasteful and causes me to be extra contemplative and stressed, which is not a good combination in small doses so you can only imagine me now...

I feel ages away from accomplishing anything; I'm trapped. Other college freshman are so full of possibility and drive and maybe I'm wrong but it's discouraging that no one talks about the common struggle of the newbee. Starting this phase of life kind of sucks, to put it bluntly and un-poetically.

To outline a beginner's college experience for those for whom college is a distant memory or to whom the idea is foreign at least:

- you are generally alone (assuming you're far enough away from your parents' house and no one you like enough to talk to from high school attends your university)

- you are alone and on your own (unless your parents don't intend for you to learn any valuable life lessons like supporting yourself and being responsible for your own life)

- you are poor (I don't care who you are you're poor)

- university meal-plan food gets old fast

- if you were challenged in high school, general education classes make you want to trip and fall down a staircase and spend weeks on the verge of death in the hospital because it would be more fun than sitting through class

- if you don't have a car: you're stuck with public transportation and limited destinations

- if you do have a car: your friends are only friends with you to bum rides and you have to pay for parking

- you're paying a shitload (excuse me) and are constantly questioning why because of people like Steve Jobs and pop stars that are 10 years younger and can't sing on key to save their life

- a lot of other things but you get it

I don't mean to be negative but I also do because complaining makes the heart grow fonder of complaining. It's a drug.

The list above is not one you find in college brochures. You will not find it online or in magazines or when you go to tour your number one. They don't tell you these things because college is a business. You're paying a company to teach you how to do something and to give you a piece of paper when you're done that will somehow prove you're qualified for a job even though Wikipedia did most of your papers for you; that doesn't get put on the diploma, by the way.

But college is socially acceptable. Apparently blowing thousands of dollars to be taught things you could teach yourself if you were motivated enough is considered "succeeding in life." We know it's messed up but no one wants to do anything about it because systems and money are security blankets, they make us humans feel like something about real life makes sense instead of accepting that it doesn't. But university is not user friendly and it, again, sucks.

I won't rant much further, you get the message. I just encourage people to find some kind of happiness. Go to college when you want to for what you want to. Don't go for a degree. And don't second guess yourself. Do what you want because you're paying for it. In that regard, college is helpful. It helps to narrow your focus when you realize you can do almost anything you want because you're paying money to go to learn how to do it so might as well get your money's worth.

I don't prentend to know everything about the college experience. I'm only a freshman and everyone's college experience is much different.

So on that note:

Parents: love and respect your children enough to tell them to do what they want and warn them that it will be difficult and challenging - doing what you love is a brave thing

Kids: listen to your parents unless they're crazy; in that case, listen to yourself and do what you want because in college you discover that nothing was ever worth waiting for, that things aren't going to happen unless you make them happen, and that you deserve what everyone else does and no one is better than you but that you aren't better than anyone else either - you don't owe anyone anything unless you decide to

goodnight and wish me luck on finals week good Lord.

also I didn't reread or edit this post for errors so I'm sure it was a fun read!

Thanks for reading my complaints and jumbled realizations

This Post Will Turn You Into A Zombie

I got on to write a blog post and I realized that when I post things on the Internet, my posts are about posting things on the Internet, especially my tweets sometimes. I don't do this all the time but my thoughts usually go in that direction. I'm a metaposter (sorry).

But on a different note, I realized that my entire generation is the epitome of lazy. There are a select few outliers that fight that assumption, but mostly lazy is what we are. We don't aim to create. We like to feast on and relish in the creations of the generation that preceded us, and, while writing this, I'm realizing that it truly is appealing; to never have to work for anything.

But that's so empty. I don't want to just live and die leaving nothing behind but my mistakes; because, inevitably, because we are human, we can rest assured that we will have mistakes to leave behind even if we do accomplish nothing but successfully making it to a timely death 60-80% unharmed, assuming that heart disease and/or some form of cancer will take hold of the body's ability to function as it should but not altogether stop it from moving towards that ultimate and inescapable end: death.

I don't mean to depress, I promise. This is more of a positive post, however hard it is to believe that. I mean to encourage myself, primarily, to get away from all the distractions and other things that disconnect us from human interaction and the creativity that our environment has the potential to inspire. I'm exhausted of sitting idly by and watching as others do things that I know I can, act on ideas that I've had, too.

If me and my generation are going to claim something for ourselves beside debt and the latest Apple product, I think we've got to be well-rounded. Not in the college application sense, but in the sense of being naturally well-rounded; the kind of established emotional awareness and sensibility technology robs us of.

The world today tells us that we are to be logical and sensible and without emotional bias. Or it tells us that our heart and our hormones know best. But there is a happy medium that is natural if we'd eliminate unnecessary forces.

I realize I'm babbling at this point so I'll end on this: stop reading my blog posts or anyone's blog post turn your computer off and read a book or start a journal or walk down the street and look at things. Real things

At the expense of irony:
Thanks for reading.

Give Me Love by Ed Sheeran

This is an older recording, from about a couple months ago, but I covered this song with my friend and I'd appreciate everyone checking it out, thanks!

http://danielfitzmusic.bandcamp.com/track/give-me-love-ed-sheeran

America's Pants

How come I can't just have what I want when I want it?

This isn't really a problem. As Americans, we just think it is. I promise this isn't a strongly-worded hate post about how Americans are gluttons and swine and we all need a reality check because there are starving people in Africa (not to make light of that, just using it here because that is an argument commonly used). I love America. I think we've made some pretty long strides, or perhaps leaps, throughout the timeline of humanity and I appreciate this. But I fear that these long strides may have caused our pants to rip in a couple places that aren't so flattering.

In too many cases, I have found that American culture equates instant gratification with revolutionary cultural and technological advances - an incredibly dangerous thing. Convenience is glorified and it, to be honest, terrifies me. Now you'd think that I'd be satisfied by the counterculture of today's American society that strives to embrace inconvenience, old-school, and uniqueness. But because of this, "unique" and "different" have only become labels and fashion statements that people attempt to fit themselves into. And even worse is that we KNOW this. We fully acknowledge the fact that we have twisted those meanings. Hence, the term "hipster" now has a negative connotation.

Now instead of going on about my opinion on the answer I posed in the beginning of this post, I'd rather I just let it lie. The internet will fare just as well without my opinion and I don't feel led to share, I simply would just rather people think about it themselves. Is the question relevant - is there a need for it? Does it make sense to ask today? Why or why can we not have what we want when we want it? Is it healthy for human beings to be able to do so? Are we better or worse off with more availability and ease?

Thanks for reading - hope everyone's Monday was bearable.

With A Little Help From My Friends

I just want to take a minute and write about friendship. I love my friends. I could go on about how I really appreciate the friends who were super consistent and always there for me with the whole you-know-who-you-are speech, but I think that defeats the purpose. Everyone has "friends," but I count myself so incredibly blessed to have actual friends. People that I can trust and just be myself, even if "myself" is a little weird and out of place and perhaps a little ambitious. People I can stay up and out with until 1:30 am watching dumb movies and having conversations about sleepwalking with their moms. I thank God for the friends that I can call and just cry with. I mean really cry, and not feel obligated to hold back.

But out of all these people that I love in my life, there is one person that I have known for years now. We don't see or really talk as often as we'd like because it's just so hard to find opportunities to, but without her, I'm not entirely sure if I'd be who I am today, complete with all my quirks and flaws. You know that your best friend is your best friend when you can sit in silence, or do nothing for an extended period of time, and not feel weird about it. There are few people that I can do nothing with and that time of nothing is more important to me than it would be if we had gone and had a night on the town. She's my best friend, I love her, and I'm going to miss her when we part ways this fall.

I encourage anyone reading this to thank the people in your life that have been good to you. Because chances are, you don't deserve them. I don't deserve the good people in my life but I'm so selfish that I wouldn't trade them for anything. Ever. My mom, my siblings, and my step-father are the best out of all because somehow they deal with me 24/7. I love them for that. And all of my unrelated friends are incredible, too.

You don't need a national holiday or a birthday to make the people around you aware of how important they are. And it's never too late to change your perspective from selfishness to gratefulness.

Thanks for the read.

Living Beautifully

If this post ends up being ridiculous, I'm sorry, just bare with me because it's really late and there are a lot of thoughts in my brain tonight.

I do this thing, sometimes, where I totally lose myself IN myself. I think meditation is truly beneficial to the self and stepping back into the depths of the mind can be helpful, but it's hard not to lose yourself. There's an image that the media subtly impresses upon the women in current society: the perfectly complex woman. She is sophisticated but not elegant, quirky but not too awkward, playful and imaginative but not ignorant, and naturally and uniquely beautiful.

You would assume that Hollywood's glorification of the "beautiful personality" would only help women feeling pressured by the doll-like physical figures of women in television, but I think it may only contribute. While women should celebrate their personalities rather than objectifying their physicality, the media has created yet another expectation. This new 'ideal' woman is cute but not realistic. Not to say that she's everywhere, I don't think we can afford to demonize the media. But I've been thinking about this.

I want to be beautiful. Every woman does. We want to be interesting and unique and mesmerizing. And we are. And not because others are able to recognize that beauty despite the influence of the media, but because we know we are. I look at my eleven-year-old sister and I think she is beyond beautiful. There is something about her - she trusts herself.

Women need to be able to trust themselves. Once we let society and the world peel away at our inner voice until it is reduced to nothing but a whisper, replacing it with the mechanical judgements and second-guesses of modern society; once our beauty becomes about ourselves, we have lost the battle. This really applies to everyone now, not just women. Our beauty should not be about us. We should focus on being beautiful for the world (not the way you're thinking, though).


Beauty (as defined when typed into Google search):

1. A combination of qualities, such as shape, color, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight.
2. A combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.

It is not a bad thing to want to be pleasing to others - it is only bad when this want becomes an all-consuming desire. We should want to be pleasing to the world. As human beings, we should want to contribute something beautiful to the world. I think definition 2 is more applicable to this post, but take from it what you will. I won't try to convince you of my personal beliefs anymore. I simply think that we should attempt to view beauty, not as a tool, but as a way of life.

Thanks for reading.

Almost-Regret and Way Too Much to Digest

If I said that everyone has a past relationship that they cringe in shame to look back on, I think you'd know what an understatement that is. If you have not experienced such relationships, I applaud your success and wish that you are never acquainted with such almost-regret. But it's pretty much unavoidable, in my opinion.

I call it almost-regret because, really, I almost regret those relationships. There are only two (can we just collectively "Amen" for that, please?), but they taught me a whole lot about being self-reflective. I think in order to have a great relationship, you have to experience a "worst" relationship; it's pretty much entirely comparative. There's not some static definition of the perfect relationship. While the cliche idea is that, yes, the perfect relationship is relative, I think it's true that none of us even know what our perfect relationship is. We can identify what we need in a companion but that doesn't necessarily mean we know what a relationship with that ideal companion would look like.

Anyway, I appreciate those repulsive relationships in a strange way. I can look back, not often, but often enough to remind me of the raw humanity that we have to account for when we enter in to a relationship with someone else. Expectations are trouble (as we have all discovered) and you can't always trust in the way you think things are. But you also can't let yourself become consumed with doubt (both of which I'm guilty of - and I don't think it's uncommon to be).

My parents divorced four years ago. I can only recently begin to function outside of this truth. For the longest time, I've attempted to be rational about relationships to counteract the emotionally loaded relationship I witnessed crumble before me. But rational relationships between human beings is a significant paradox. Being rational, especially when the motive behind the rational thinking is fueled by emotion, is counterproductive. Dismissing the feelings behind human emotion is incredibly irrational.

The best way to overcome a failed relationship, whether it is your own or one of those close to you, immediately impacting you, is to embrace the fractured emotions and accept that there is always a better something waiting to happen to you, but only if you allow it to. I almost regret my parents' divorce but I've learned so much from that brokenness that I'm not sure where I'd be today without it (and, mind you, every family's divorce is different -mine was significantly messy).

Hopefully this made sense. Thanks for reading and, as Ellen would say: be kind to one another.

P.s. I had way too much to eat for dinner tonight.

I hope I get an A+ in people-watching...

For my philosophy class, we're studying inwardness (all the Hegel and Kant theories), and to further our studies, we've been given an assignment in which we are to "watch someone."

Guidelines:

1. They must be quiet; one of those folks that don't like to speak up much in class.
2. They cannot be someone in the administration or a student in the actual class.
3. We can't know them or have talked to them before.

Apart from simply watching them, we have to write journals about them.

I feel so creepy. And it's not because I've been eyeing (discreetly) this quite girl in my American Studies course, but because I'm also writing journals about her. If we're going to get real, I know everyone already watches the people around them. It's human nature to people-watch. But writing journals about them takes it to a whole 'nother level, usually referred to as stalking. As if it weren't enough to document all of their mannerisms, we can't use their name. We can only call them "Subject," or "the subject."

I need this assignment to bring my grade up to an A; I'm like .000006 away from an A. I'm also going to need an assignment for my American Studies course once I'm done using the entire class time to document the way this girl crosses her legs and speculate about her brain activity...

Newborns and Newly Born

Due to this blog being a newborn, I am welcoming it into the interworld through this post.

I had my reservations about creating a blog. I figured that I wouldn't have much to write about, but I'm afraid that may have been an understatement; I have plenty to say. So I suppose this is my best bet at communicating my stories and thoughts. I named it as I did because, from my freshman year of high school, I've been referred to as The Whale because I eat copious amounts of food. I don't gain any weight but that will probably change as my age advances and my metabolism, inevitably, slows (I guess I should adopt a workout routine). If there's anyone out there reading this, I'd just like to say thanks. I hope you except my newborn blog, swaddle it in comments and views, and that you remain open to what it intends to say.

Did you know: Baby whales are called 'calves.' (weird)

Happy Literal Day of Birth to my blog.