Who we get stuck with

You know, this is the first time, possibly ever, that I've just stared at the quote underneath my blog title and thought about its meaning. "I'm gonna base this moment on who I'm stuck in a room with. It's what life is. It's a series of rooms. And who we get stuck in those rooms with adds up to what our lives are." I've blogged about the last four words before, but reading what I said then, I can't help but think how much I believe something completely different right now. It's not the end of that sentence that's so important, it's the beginning. Who we get stuck in those rooms with. That's what adds up to what our lives are. Not what happens, or where, or when, or why...with who. Following the line of thought that the quote suggests, the people in our lives make up the sum total.

I could have ended the post right there, but I continue. People. People in our lives. I think it's more than that - I think it's people who have been in our lives at any point in time. Even the lack of someone in our lives establishes an existence in our life, by negative differentiation. I cried during the entire first verse of "Silent Night" at church tonight, because this is the first Christmas I'm going through without my great aunt. I almost want to cry about it again right now, but I can't bring myself to it. I know that she's only gone in body, and not in spirit or my memory. Or anyone else's, for that matter. She was in my life, and she'll stay in my life, as long as I can bring myself to conjure up any shred of a memory I might have of her. I phrased that poorly. I remember lots of things about her. She'll stay in my life as long as I have that ability to recount that she was in my life. Same goes for anyone I've ever encountered, whether it be briefly, in passing, over a long period of time, or have lost, either physically or metaphorically.

The one constant in moments that seem to shape us, is people. Of the handful of identity-changing moments that I've had, someone has always been there. Of the handful of events that I'll never forget, people have always been involved. Fact of the matter is that there are too many people in this world for them not to be in our rooms. I don't really have any convicting claims, no final message. This is just an idea that I wanted to write down, because it came strongly onto me. Hopefully in reading this, you might think about the quote as well, or perhaps something that holds great value to you. My guess is that people will be involved one way or another.

Airing of Grievances

Wow, this might be the longest I've gone without blogging...
That wasn't a grievance I was airing, I just noticed it and found it bizarre. I mean half of those days was because I was still at school, sticking to my "the last post of the semester is the last one" rule, but since I've been home, nothing, really. I would have liked to post this yesterday, on the actual day of Festivus, but here it is anyway - seven posts I think I could have done without - my Airing of Grievances.

1. Celtics 81, Hornets 83. Eh...I've always kinda thought this to be a really lame post about some essentially meaningless basketball game. I worry that I have a tendency to do this every once in a while, and since this is the first one, it might as well encapsulate any other time this has happened.

2. A Half(time) Show. This was the first of two posts where I just berated what I could about the NFL during the 2011 Super Bowl. Here, it was the god-awful Black Eyed Peas halftime show, and in the next post, ripping the NFL in general.

3. Vocab + Saving the World? Sign me up!. I mean I literally said nothing in this post...

4. Minesweeper. Seriously? I had a post about Minesweeper? I mean it's a great game, don't get me wrong. Love it. Maybe this one should just go under "Things that belong on Twitter."

5. Fire Brand of the American League. I don't even go on these websites that I keep posting on my blog anymore...maybe I should have one consolidated post with all of the websites I thought I'd stay with.

6. Jam Band #1. This is when I thought I was good enough at guitar to come up with my own riffs, chord progressions, and what not. The only reason I'm capable of any of that is because I'm good at music, not necessarily guitar itself. Which is a pretty cool concept I literally just thought of. Yeah, I can play guitar, and yeah, I can play piano a lot better, but isn't what I'm good at music? Potentially more to come on this.

7. Seven credits, ten classes. I need to stop complaining about the amount of classes I'll end up taking by the end of my four years at Stonehill. I want to double-major, I want to come out with as many killer electives as I can, and I'm succumbing to my biggest pet peeve - people complaining about Stonehill. My rationalization is that I'm not complaining about Stonehill, I'm complaining about how I decided to run through my four-year plan (not as linearly as I could have)...but this is not the time nor place for this. Hopefully never is the time and place.

I was aiming for ten posts I could have done without, and maybe I could have filled it out, but I suppose it's a good thing that I didn't complete it. Turns out a lot more useless posts happened in 2011 for me, which gives me more confidence for the upcoming year in terms of my writing/blogging abilities. I have some ideas for the future (immediate future, to be precise), and always seem to have a list of blog post ideas in the back of my mind. Maybe that's why my writing has been better this year. I guess we'll see.

It's natural to be afraid

Two themes are coming together right now, which has prompted this blog post. Philosophy, and the end of a semester. I had had the idea in my head for about a week or so that I wanted to have an end-of-the-semester blog post, instead of having to wait until May to have one for the entire year. I've learned that life as a college student is now broken into 3-5 month segments, between semesters and summers. I learned the hard way this semester that you have to know what you're getting yourself into each time before it actually happens; when the time comes, and you're not prepared, it can hurt you. A lot. But what always happens is that there will be a new 3-5 month segment that you can be ready for, and can thrive in. And that's what I'm going to work on over winter break. This semester is over, and a new one is coming, and that's that.

But my other theme. Philosophy. I just finished my final paper, where one of the questions asked us how we keep meditative/contemplative thinking alive in such a technological world. Good question. When it all comes down to it, we absolutely have to find time to separate ourselves from the world. To, for lack of a better phrase, run away from life for a little while. Even if it's a short amount of time. Freshman year, I went to mass a few handfuls of times, just to be in a different sense for one hour a week. People who meditate do this, people who just sit around and think about the world do this. I have spurts where I do this in my blog. This post being one of them. Ironically enough, I'm typing it on a laptop that has connection to the Internet. As I listen to music on iTunes with my headphones plugged in. See? Even when you want to escape for a while, it's hard. But that doesn't mean you can't do it.

Life is hard. Again, this is something I've been learning the hard way for a few months now. But would it really be worth it if it were so easy? There's been more than one occasion this semester where I've just kind of felt everything pouring on top of me and that there was nothing I could do about it. But hey...the semester is over in four days, and I'm going to make it out alive. Unscathed, no, but I'll be there.

In response to my post about what breaks you, I can only sit here and think of the feeling of being broken, and that is what breaks me. Imagining myself just being completely shattered by something, feeling the stillness in the air...just picturing that freaks me out. It doesn't matter how I got there, but actually being there, or thinking about being there, is what breaks me. Maybe because in those situations, you can't prepare for how you're going to act. You don't know what it will be like when you're broken. It's a mystery. Which brings me around to the title of this post. Do some quick research and you won't be surprised to learn that it is a song by Explosions in the Sky. But, as is the case with all of their songs, it means something more. It's true, as well -- it's natural to be afraid. Sure, life can be hard, and throw you a 3-5 month period of time where it's going to be harder than usual. Maybe that freaks you out. It's freaked me out at times this semester, how hard it's been at times. But it's natural to be afraid. And the reason it's okay to be scared is because of the people you have in your life. No matter what happens, you'll be able to get through it, because it always ends up that way. One of my favorite quotes from Lost is "It only ends once. Anything that happens before that, is just progress."

Heh. I don't even really know what I'm trying to say anymore. I'm just kind of throwing everything together. Here is my point. As is always the case, I could have said what I wanted in probably 30% the time I actually spent saying it. But, as is always the case after that, I'm okay with that. I'm at a point where I still don't really know what this life is, but what's different about that now as opposed to the first two years of being at Stonehill is that I haven't really been thinking about it as much. And it's almost positively because I have no time to think about it, which is exactly the problem. This is something that absolutely should happen. Maybe not every day, but more often than I've been doing it. Maybe more often that you've been doing it, too. Take some time out of your life to think about your existence in the universe. Think about the existence of the universe in and of itself. Think about what life has thrown at you. Think about what breaks you, what home is to you, and everything in between. Just think. Spend some time away from everything that you're worrying about, and just be where you are. It's perfectly fine if, after you think, you get scared. It's natural to be afraid.

Time, pt. 7

Think about this question for a second...what would happen if we decided to move one day from December to November?

No, seriously...what if November had 31 days, and December had 30? What would change? The weather on November 31st should be exactly the same as all the old first days of December. Sure, everything in December gets bumped a day in the calendar week, but January 1st is still on the same day. Who even decided what months get 31 days? Why the hell does February only have 28? Why is any of this even a thing, if nothing other than arbitrary assignments to words to represent something that we have absolutely no control over? Does anyone really think that us calling something "July" means that the Earth faces the Sun for longer periods of its rotation? Where does this get us? Why do months and days in a month exist? What's their practical use, if nothing other than reminding us of something we could be perfectly capable of existing in on our own?

I came across something a couple of days ago, and I was really intrigued/frightened by it, because it's absolutely true. And seemed like something that fit exactly into what all my "time" posts are about. I've posted it below. If I ever become someone who owns a study and just reads books for fun (doubtful, but not ruled out), I want to read about how time doesn't exist. Because I don't think it does. Time itself does not exist...merely the assignment of words and numbers to represent what we cannot control. What happens if we strip those assignments?

Failure is not an option

I have some semblance of a theme in my blog where I post something near the start of finals, offering some sort of little reminder about them. And by theme, I mean I did it once. But here's something else. Might be for me, might be for you, might be for your friend. Might not be for anyone. I thought of a couple cool things to blog about this morning, but I have two finals tomorrow that I should be probably studying for. But let's be real...

Let's say you're taking a final in one of your upper-level major courses. Why worry about that? Would you really pick a major that you absolutely sucked at? Chances are you're pretty good at what you do, which is more than half the reason you ended up with this major anyway. Sure, your major might be getting tough now, but whose isn't? There's a reason you've stuck with it up until now, and this is just one more hump along the way.

But I have finals outside of my major, too! Alright, well you've been working with it all semester, right? You know a hell of a lot more about it now than you did in September. It's like in college basketball (or any sport, really) where freshmen aren't really freshmen at the end of the year, since they've been playing all year long. That's you, but over the course of a semester with this class. You don't know nothing, trust me.

But there are just so many and so little time to study for them...see above. What if we all actually need way less time studying and more time not worrying about the lack of time to study? If you don't know something at this point, your best-case scenario is that you somehow find a way to memorize it for the final, and then forget whatever it was by Christmas. It'll all be okay.

But...but nothing. Finals come, and finals go. Everyone's all caught up in the fact that finals are looming over everyone, especially once Thanksgiving break is over, but think about it. You take them, and then they're done. Finals aren't something you can put off. You can't prolong having to write a final paper, because the semester will literally end before you can do that. And you will have submitted your final paper. You will have taken that test. It's okay. It's okay right now, it'll be okay in a couple of days in the middle of your finals, and it'll be okay once all your finals are done. Because then it's Christmas! the world will end!

How Evil is the Empire?

When I first read about the signing of Kevin Youkilis to the New York Yankees, my first reaction was, well...nothing, really. I'm not sure if it's because I'm too focused on finals to care, or if I actually just don't care, or some other third thing, but seriously, I don't hate Youkilis for this. I didn't hate Ray Allen when he went to the Heat, either. Both of those moves made sense for the team and the player, and said player leaving his (formerly) dedicated team for a rival is something that I'm okay with for that person. And here's something I'm currently struggling with...exactly how much are the Yankees still our rivals? I sorta talked about this before, but not a great deal. Not that I'm going to delve too far into it here, either, but I just don't think the Yankees are as much our rival now as they have been in the past. I'll let the simple idea fester for a while, and instead focus on the Youkilis signing, with some parenthetical thoughts about Ray Allen's similar fate.

• Youkilis will get playing time with the Yankees, which have filled a void at third base, thanks to A-Rod's injury. He'll be in the middle of one of the best lineups in baseball, who led the AL in OPS this past season. (Similar case with Ray Allen, although the quality of Allen's playing time is the noteworthy part here - instead of being part of a Big Three and having the opponent's best defender on him, those best defenders gravitate towards LeBron and DWade, and Allen is left to be wide open for corner threes, something he'll hit when open. Recall what Shane Battier did to us in the postseason last year.)
• Keep in mind that the deal was only for one year, and $12 million. Not too far from his mid-30s, Youkilis is taking on the career trajectory of a journeyman, as someone who will play for three teams in two seasons. It seems like he's just looking for work now, some team that will sign him. If it's the Yankees, then it's the Yankees. Clearly, Youkilis doesn't have the blood of the Red Sox going through his veins. Which brings me to my final point.
• WE MADE HIM LEAVE! Sure, maybe the whole Youkilis/Valentine thing was the manager's fault, but I don't think Valentine said it just to stir the pot -- the notion had to come from somewhere. He wasn't hitting, he hadn't been hitting, and he had been starting to be an injury risk. As the manager, you don't call out your players publicly, but Youkilis was starting to become someone who was hurting the team, both on and off the field. The trade to the White Sox was all but inevitable. (Again, with Ray Allen, more or less the same thing happened. As things with Rondo heated, it was become more and more likely that Allen wasn't going to stay with the team.)

Maybe I'm just starting to see things for what they are in the world of sports, instead of being too emotionally invested in teams/players as I was in my younger days. Maybe I'm becoming overly skeptical and cynical of the Red Sox and Celtics organizations. Maybe I'm a huge idiot and I should be pissed off at Youkilis and Allen. But when it's all said and done, I completely understand what the teams and players were thinking when these moves happened. I'm not saying I support Youkilis and Allen, but I'm not about to get all over their cases for what they did.

7 songs getting me through these two weeks

So I have a test tomorrow in one of my math classes, and the final in said class is nine days after that. A week from Friday. I have an eventual paper in one of my classes, two other cumulative finals, a unit test, and then some homework/readings more or less every day until then. This isn't me complaining about it, this is me just saying what I have to do. It's a lot, don't get me wrong, but everyone has a lot to do this time of year. So what happens then? Music. Music, and blogging, in the face of studying for said math exam. Here are seven songs that are getting me through the last two weeks. Not necessarily going to help you, just me. Maybe you'll find something you like! But I want to think about good music for a while, instead of math.

1. Little Smoke - This Will Destroy You. As you know by now, I'm a sucker for instrumental music. This is more or less white noise layered over some kind of synth bass. The hell I know what it is, but I end up habituating to this song after three minutes, which is great to read to.

2. O Tannenbaum - Vince Guaraldi Trio. When I think about hosting a fancy Christmas party, with everyone in ugly sweaters, eating crackers and cheese by the fireplace, this song will be playing.

3. The Second Coming - Julez Santana. Look, I have to get motivated for finals, right? Nothing like my high school basketball pregame playlist.

4. Down and Out - Tantric. Eighty percent of the reason why I still love this song is that it's Evan Longoria's walk-up music. Boss.

5. Joker and the Thief - Wolfmother. This makes me miss baseball so much...and will somehow be relevant to me in the same way that "The Second Coming" is.

6. The Sky Above, The Field Below - Explosions in the Sky. It's something about staying on one chord for five minutes, but being able to do so much around it. This is a great song on its own, but listening to it just gives me a sense of peace.

7. Dirty Water - The Standells. After my last final of every semester, I play this song on the walk back to my residence hall. God, that feels good.

This pretty much sums of what kind of music I listen to at the end of the semester. Motivation music (despite being initially used for sports), instrumental music, and some semblance of ass-kicking music. I planned on coming up with ten, but I think these songs represent a decent subset of the music I'll be playing over the next two weeks. Oh, and The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. Bonus points if you read through this blog post and were surprised that I didn't mention it in any of the seven songs. That's because it's a complete given that I'll listen to the album several times.

Less is more is less is more is less

Afterthoughts from a conversation that me and one of my friends in my suite were having from our math class...this all started from one of his friends from home going out and buying hipster clothing. Which we thought was un-hipster, in and of itself. And this seems totally plausible -- you can't make yourself hipster, it just has to happen...right? Here's an even deeper thought-provoking question...how many people does it take for something to become mainstream? Think about it first in terms of clothing or accessories or music choice, but then think about it in terms of what it means to be a hipster as such. How many hipsters does it take before being hipster is mainstream?

And another thing. One fun game to play with your friends is to see who can be the least competitive. The more you try and be not competitive, the more competitive you seem. Anyone who claims that they're winning is immediately losing. Even if you walk away from the situation, you're still playing, because you're trying to be a noncompetitive as possible, thereby making you all the more competitive. HOW FUN IS THAT. Man, irony is awesome.

Welcome to the experiment

One of my favorite places to write down thoughts is the margins of any notebook I'm using. Whether it's philosophical questions in ethics, notes to myself/the professor in my math classes on homework, or thinking up experiments in psychology, something always gets put to good use. This is the latter. A series of empirical questions that could be carried out via experiment. I won't give away all of the details, because 1) I don't know what they are completely, and 2) if I ever actually end up running any of these, the fewer people that know what to expect, the better.

• Do we get freaked out by a run of consecutive answers on a multiple-choice test?
• I thought about this as I was taking a multiple-choice test, and I would test people's comfort level with choosing the same answer repeatedly. The conventional worry is that one of them has to be something different.
• When we don't know the answer, what are we most likely to guess?
• This would be something a little different. It seems as though C is the answer you go for if you have no idea what to choose, since C just seems to be the common answer for what test-makers usually have as the right answer. I have a really cool procedure for this, so no secrets here.
• Do we feel better about a score on an exam if the points are added or subtracted?
• Let's say you get a 76 on an exam. That can come by virtue of earning 76 points, or by having 24 subtracted for you. Same score, but do we feel better about one over the other?
• On what terms do we like or dislike someone?
• Studies (lots of them) show that the more similar someone's appearance, beliefs, attitudes, opinions, blah blah, are with our own, the more we will like that person. The converse seems to be true. But under what circumstances? One thing I thought of is pronunciation of ambiguous names. My psych professor mentioned Kitty Genovese to us this week, except she pronounced it "gen-o-vee-say," as opposed to how I say it ("gen-o-veese"). I already have an opinion/impression formed regarding my professor, but if I didn't, would I dislike her more than someone who said it the same way I do?

Yeah, so if I ever become a psychologist, and have the independence/freedom to do whatever I want, I totally wanna see the answers to these questions. Haven't done any literature review to see if anyone's already gotten to these ideas (Editor's Note: "gotten" sounds like not a word...), but this would be really cool to find out. This is why I am involved with psychology. Cool stuff like this.

2062

Think about the year 2062. Fifty years from now, one hundred years from 1962. I feel as though I can fathom 1962 a lot more than I can imagine 2062, despite the fact that (hopefully) I'll be alive for the latter. Maybe that's because 1962 already happened, and we can look at it as it was, not as what it might be. Just something really interesting that I thought about once I decided upon my post title.

So. 2062. The year in which I will turn 71 years old. Again, if I'm alive. (Editor's Note: For all intents and purposes, let's say that I will be.) What the hell am I going to do with my life? My grandparents are in their eighties now, married for over 50 years. They go on cruises (I think), go on trips to casinos and stuff, and get early bird lunch specials ten times a week. They see their grandchildren, their friends, family, and neighbors. They watch TV, read, and go to sleep at a perfectly reasonable hour. I'm not saying that's the life. That absolutely is. I would love nothing more than to be able to do all of those things. But is that really what our generation will be doing when it's our time to be retired? One thing I'm looking forward to over winter break is playing Pokemon Diamond or Pearl. Seriously. Read a book or two maybe, see my friends, and go to San Diego for SURE stuff. But given the fact that I have no schoolwork to worry about, I'm enjoying winter break to the max. But what will we do when winter break becomes years? Will we be on our laptops? Will we be playing in virtual casinos instead of at Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun? I'm genuinely curious about this...what will we do when we retire? Has anybody thought about this? If you have any sort of answer to this question, please leave a comment. Not only does no one ever comment and I get sad, I actually want to know what people think about this, about what we're going to do with ourselves when we're in the midst of our retirement.

I'd like to buy a 3-letter acronym

I don't really have angry rant blog posts that often, and when I do, it's usually about anything short of a pure and wholehearted love someone has for Stonehill. This time, it's about the AL MVP Award that went to Miguel Cabrera over Mike Trout. I've done some thinking, and some reading, and I've decided that the decision is horseshit. Let's take a look at some common arguments made in favor of Cabrera winning the award:

-One is that Cabrera was on a playoff team. Namely, the AL Pennant winners, the Detroit Tigers. Detroit's record in the regular season? 88-74, one game worse than the Angels. Yep - Detroit would have finished fourth in the AL West, and Los Angeles would have won the AL Central.

-Well surely, a Triple Crown winner has to win the MVP Award, since it's such a rare feat. How about Ted Williams in the 1941 and 1942 seasons? Both times he won the Triple Crown, and finished second in the MVP voting. So the automatic decision to award a Triple Crown winner the MVP Award isn't that legitimate.

-A lot of stat-heads are moving towards the new age, the wave of sabermetrics. Statistics like WAR and WPA have been in many discussions. WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, is more or less how many more wins Player A is worth than a replacement Player B. Trout's WAR in 2012? 10.7. The best WAR in the majors this season, and the 20th-best WAR ever. Like, out of all the players in all the seasons of baseball. Cabrera's WAR? A measly 6.9, which was actually lower than his 2011 WAR of 7.3. Cabrera's 2012 WAR ranks tied for 496th all-time, and was only 5th in the majors this year.

-WPA, or Win Probability Added, is the change in Win Probability for your team after you come up to bat. Your team can have a Win Probability of 99% if you're ahead by more than two runs in the 9th inning, with none on, and two out. The more influence you have on the outcome of a game, the higher your WPA. This article makes a very interesting point about the lack of control hitters have toward their WPA, making it seem like a reasonable counterexample to the use of the statistics. Nonetheless, Trout's was higher than Cabrera's.

-And if you're all about making arguments that seem to come out of thin air, I'd like to play along. The Angels, sans Trout, would be a hell of a lot worse off than Detroit without Cabrera. How about Prince Fielder? How about reigning MVP/Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander? How about the AL Central? Every team (except Detroit) was in the bottom six in the AL in terms of ERA. The White Sox, Royals, Twins, and Indians had a combined 4.47 ERA. The Athletics, Rangers, and Mariners' combined ERA? 3.74. When you play half your schedule against teams with a 4.47 ERA, you're going to be more productive offensively.

Trout makes any team better than Cabrera does, but too many people in and out of the game of baseball are looking only at the numbers, when there's more to that when assessing the value of a player in regards to his/any team. You think Cabrera could steal 49 bases in a season? You think he could save 21 runs, defensively? (He actually cost Detroit four.) You think Cabrera could create runs on the basepaths? He can't do any of these things. Tell me something Cabrera does that Trout can't, on the baseball field. Go ahead, because you'll be looking for a while.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Tuesday/Wednesday

Note to self. For all future instances in which I suspect a lot of work/studying coming my way, just overhype everything to the point where I realize that everything isn't so bad. Which is exactly what happened this week. After watching Duke beat Kentucky last night, and the Stonehill women's and men's teams win in overtime, I don't feel bad about watching so much college basketball with two tests to prepare for. I found time to study for one test earlier today, I'll study for the other one tonight and tomorrow morning (before I take it), and then study for the other test at lunch, before I take it at 2:30. It's really not that bad of a week. I should probably not even blog about this anymore since it's literally over and done with tomorrow. Sure, I have some work after, due at the beginning of next week, but I'll live.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Monday

Well. EGSDW has turned out to  be not as horrifically terrible as I initially expected. I guess it's all in how you set it up on the whiteboard. That, and when you think about having things in terms of single units as opposed to one giant clusterfuck of work, it seems much more manageable. This is exactly what I've done. Compartmentalize everything into smaller, discrete units, and then everything seems easier! Having three tests in two days still kinda sucks, but it's nothing that hasn't been done before. Once the tests are over, I can worry about my two others classes' worth of work, due before the break, and then call it quits immediately thereafter. Between now and those tests, it's about immersing myself in the material as much as possible. Not even hardcore studying, but just staying engaged and involved with everything. If this week proves to be just like any other difficult week of class, then I can look back and see that it was just a stepping stone in the learning process, and all that fun, applicable stuff.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Sunday

No, I didn't forget to blog. EGSDW is just starting to take its toll on me, is all. As much as I wanted to fall into an immediate sleep about half an hour ago, life must go on. Taking care of a couple things here and there, as well as writing my article for The Summit about the men's basketball preview, must be accomplished first. I still have some reading to do, but I also have some blogging to do.

Tomorrow looks promising as far as getting stuff done...it will be the only night between tomorrow and Thursday with no exciting college basketball. (Duke/Kentucky on Tuesday, and Stonehill basketball Wednesday.) What's phenomenally convenient is that I got a paper due Friday pushed back to being due Wednesday, by email. In the grand scheme of things, I lost a little bit of work this week, only to have to do it in the following days, but I'll take it for now. Just one less thing to have to worry about. Maybe I'll give my whiteboard a makeover tomorrow, seeing how it looks like EGSDW could use a little restructuring at this point. Staying on top of everything will be key, and I think I'm ready for the challenge. Knowing that I'll still have work to do after this week will surely be a theme when I'm done with all this...I won't be able to have a true day off until the first day of winter break. Either that, or the world will end the day before. One of the two. Hopefully we all make it out alive. Also hopefully, tomorrow's post will seem more epic, as opposed to the "right, I have to blog tonight in the middle of getting all my work done" feeling. Oops.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Saturday

Well, it's the second day of Epic Get Shit Done Week, and I haven't really gotten anything done. Today I went to the Stonehill football and men's basketball games. Football lost 13-10 in a close contest, and basketball won 78-59, in a not-so-close contest. Still a lot of fun. I'm really pumped that the basketball season has started, and that a lot of people were at the first game. Hopefully it continues. As for my work...I read eight pages for one class, and that's about it. I'm about to head on the shuttle/red line home (Pats game tomorrow!!) so that'll give me an hour of reading for a different class, plus some time tonight. The whiteboard still looks pretty not white, but there is some progress. Minimally, but some. Tomorrow doesn't look as promising for being epic either...the second half of EGSDW will be a lot more productive, I think. And hope. And need it to be.

Epic Get Shit Done Week: Friday #1

The title of this post carries so much power with it that I'm actually slightly intimidated by my own words to even write this post...I've decided that the next seven days, from approximately now to approximately this time next week, will either be my crowning achievement of the semester, or my ultimate demise. In an effort to ensure the former happens, I've proclaimed this week to be the first ever Epic Get Shit Done Week. For the last two-plus years in college, I've had days where I've just had so much to do that I need to define said day as epic, write said stuff on my whiteboard, and get it done. At the end of the day, there's this nice kickass feeling to completing an Epic Get Shit Done Day. I can only imagine how this time next week will feel.

So, to save myself from tanking and running around with my head cut off, I blog. Consider it a week-long running diary, updated every day. Each day gets its own post, because I'll most likely be needing to be epic for each of the next seven days. Which I can already foresee as difficult. There will be lots of rationalizing, lots of planning, lots of internal prioritizing, and more. Three tests, a paper. One for four separate classes, which will individually count for 22, 14, 21, and 20% of my final grade in each of those classes. Roughly a fifth of my GPA will be determined by seven days. Seven days out of the fifteen weeks of the semester. Heh. This should be fun.

10 songs on shuffle

One idea and one thought before I get into this post:
Idea: I should start tabbing or categorizing my posts. Perhaps initially on just a very broad spectrum. I say this because I'd like to be able to have a place where all of my music posts are, a place where all my sports posts go...but I would be so torn by some more convoluted posts that it seems likely to never come to full fruition. Like many things I've tried here.
Thought: There are some songs (enough to make me think about a post about it, but not enough to actually follow through with it) that come on shuffle and I'm just like YES. "Name" by the Goo Goo Dolls is one. "Lost?" by Coldplay is another. On the radio or iTunes or my iPod, some songs just come on and you're so excited that it happened on its own. Now. This post. Ten songs, namely the first ten songs, that come on my iTunes via shuffle. I'm scared, but I think this could be potentially fun. Here we go:
(Editor's Note: Oh, right, I'm also adding a quick sentence about what I think of the song.)

1. 7/4 (Shoreline) - Broken Social Scene. Really fun song. Even more fun is that it's in 7/4. Seems logical.

2. Story of My Life - Social Distortion. One of my favorites by them, a really fun song to sing to.

3. Secret - Maroon 5. Best part is when the first guitar comes in at 49 seconds.

4. Teahouse of the Spirits - The Panic Channel. Awesome song from Madden 07 with sweet-ass chords.

5. Exit - U2. I'm ashamed to say that I don't know all of the songs on The Joshua Tree by heart...this is one of them.

6. Bright Lights - Matchbox Twenty. This would be one of those "YES" songs. In the running for greatest song ever.

7. Jumper - Bedlight for Blue Eyes. Sweet cover of the Third Eye Blind hit. I think the bridge is the best part of the cover, with the piano replacing the guitar in the original.

8. Dust Bowl Dance - Mumford & Sons. Probably the most badass song off Sigh No More. Just mad fun to sing.

9. Far Behind - Candlebox. I get the feeling that this is one of the more underrated/unknown songs of the '90s. Good song.

10. Tripping Billies (Live) - Dave Matthews Band. Sweet live edition of the song, as most of DMB's stuff is.

Well, I think that may have been less fun than I anticipated, because I was kind of expecting something that didn't really seem to fit with the kind of music I listen to...although I suppose that's the reason it's called shuffle. Time to go listen to "Bright Lights" again.

Our house

I forgot that November was good for something....COLLEGE BASKETBALL.

To hell with the snow, wind, rain, coldness, homework, tests, whatever...college basketball is starting, so all of that doesn't matter anymore. Tomorrow, I'll be having my traditional Skype call back home to watch Duke's first game, which is on ESPNU. I don't care if it's against Georgia State. It could be against a high school team and I would still be this excited...not to mention that we're playing Kentucky on Tuesday. Like, the Kentucky. Big games early on = AWESOME. (Editor's Note: Right, so for anyone who's picked up reading my blog since March, I often refer to Duke as though I am a part of the team. Which I am.)

But what's equally as exciting is the start of the Stonehill basketball season. The men open up against Chestnut Hill College on Saturday, and I want it to be just as crazy as Cameron Indoor Stadium. That might be asking for a little too much, but it doesn't mean we can't come close. Remember the New Haven football game? Well we have another one of those on Saturday, too. Playoffs. Stonehill football in the playoffs, Stonehill men's basketball kicking off. Fun stuff. All three games (Duke, football, basketball) are home, too. Which brings the post title in play. Our house. Any time anyone wants to come to Merkert and try and beat us, they're going to have to do it on our home court, in our house. And it's not just the basketball teams' house. It's all of ours. All of Stonehill. Be at the first game to show everyone exactly what we think of our house. Be at the second game to do the same thing. Go to every game for that reason.

This post doesn't nearly encapsulate how excited I am for all of this. Maybe if you see me around campus tomorrow or Saturday you'll be able to tell. Either way....I'm pumped.

Eat your own dog food

This past summer, Vicki and I made a deal. I would register to vote, but I wouldn't actually vote until I could give reasonable explanation as to why I was voting for whoever I'd vote for. Well. It's the day before the election, I lack an absentee ballot, and am planning on going to Watertown tomorrow afternoon to vote. Because if I'm going to vote, well damn it, I'm going all out. I don't want to fill out a piece of paper and mail it in two weeks before Election Day. I want to walk in, wait in line, then fill out a piece of paper. (Which is funny, because we discussed in Ethics a week ago how precisely no one enjoyed doing this. Yet, here I am...) And one other thing before I go into any of this. I've come to observe that it might not be socially appropriate to ask someone who they're voting for. Can someone tell me why it's inappropriate? Maybe I'm just too oblivious to anything important to see this as more than what it's worth, but seriously? How easy a question is that to answer? "Did you do this or that?" And if you don't want to answer because you might be in conflict with the majority, or perhaps what I believe, well then shit, shouldn't you rethink that? If you believe in a candidate, let it be known. Don't go around parading it, but if someone asks you, tell them. Failure to do so, to me, shows a lack of faith in either the strength of your beliefs, or a lack of faith in whose question you're answering. Neither seem good. Just think about it.

That being said. I'm voting for Obama. Why? Well, for a while, I felt as though it seemed like this was something I would just do. Which is a bad reason to vote for a Presidential candidate. Two debates later, I had an answer. For me, my reasoning doesn't come in terms of policies or plans. If I really had that strong a grasp on economic, foreign, domestic, and other policies, then I would probably not be a math major. I lack almost any foresight as to how the economic fate of the country will be in the next four years. A quote that one of my best friends showed me was some politician saying something to the effect of, "You tell me what'll happen in the next four years, and I'll tell you what my four-year plan is." I totally buy into that. I don't know what's going to happen four days from now, let alone preside over a country of hundreds of millions of people for four years. No thanks. So what's left to go from? After watching the second Presidential debate, I just got this vibe that Obama believed in what he was saying a hell of a lot more than Romney was believing in his own words. And yeah, that means something to me. What'll happen if we're faced with some nationwide crisis? Maybe like, an economic crisis? Hell will freeze over before the four years of a President's term will go exactly how he says he plans it will. What I care about is what's going to happen when things start to run amok. And I believe that Obama will have a broader safety net when and if that happens.

Yes, I've thought about the character of the individual running for President. Yes, I've paid attention (albeit meekly) to policies. Yes, I know what some of the ideals are concerning the rights of citizens and humans. That's not as important to me. Nor will anything I say do anything about what you already believe. There's a reason group polarization exists. And I don't mean to imply that I can change anyone's opinions about who should be President. I don't think I can do that at all. This post is more for me than for anyone else (at least this latter half), but it never hurts to throw out a way of thinking that might have been overlooked. It might just change something, even if only in theory.

Time, pt. 6

Something interesting about Daylight Savings Time that I've never noticed. We get to either skip ahead or go back in time. Essentially. If you were awake past 1:00am (the first time) this past Sunday (Editor's Note: Wait, that's today?! Wow, this was a long day...), think about what you were doing at, say, 1:30. An hour later, it was 1:30. Meaning that everyone, according to our calendars, clocks, government, and anyone else who buys into this, had two moments of their life at 1:30am on November 4th, 2012. Consequently, we won't have any moment at 1:30am on whenever DST happens in the spring.

But think about any changes in the grand scheme of things. Time, in this sense, is something we're (quasi-)arbitrarily assigning to live in accordance with. Hell, Arizona doesn't even follow DST. So clearly, there are some caveats with this system. Well, what does that say? From 1:00am-2:00am (the first time) this morning, I was in my 183,347th hour of life, if my math is correct. (And by math, I mean online duration calculator.) The second 1:00am-2:00am I had, I was in hour number 183,348, despite the clocks reading the exact same thing as they had sixty minutes prior.

When I planned to blog about this all day today, I knew what I wanted the body of the post to be (see: above), but didn't really flesh out the conclusion. Now, I'm lacking one. Is this a point for the nonexistence of time? Does everything happen once and only once? How do we define our lives in terms of those hours? The easy solution would be to just be asleep during these times and take it as it comes, but the easy way is rarely the fun one.

I'm still alive and everything

^ That was the subject title of the email I just sent my AP Stats teacher from high school (Ms. Trenholm, who I've mentioned here before). I decided that emailing her for the first time in four months was more important than continuing my Physics homework (which it totally was). Four months is a lot to have to fill someone in on, which I suppose is just an indication that it shouldn't always take that long to check in with people you haven't talked to in a while. But what's always good about those people you talk to and have talked to, is that you will talk to them, and it will seem as though it were only yesterday since you last spoke. People might come in and out of your life from time to time, but the ones that keep coming back left enough of an imprint at some point that they won't go anywhere. Sometimes, you just have to let them know that you're still alive and everything.

Hurricane Sandy running diary

Damn straight I'm doing a running diary today...despite the fact that this Monday will be like any other Monday for me as of 2:15pm (when I would normally get out of class), not many Mondays have hurricane status updates. Which is badass, and thus requires a running diary. Not entirely sure how long this will last (the duration of the hurricane seems like a fair starting point), but I'm not sure of a lot of things I end up blogging about.

12:13pm: I have to remember today to keep looking at my computer screen for the time instead of my iHome, which I unplugged last night in case power went out. Whenever I plug it back in, it starts at noon, so by my watch now, it's 16 minutes ahead. Then again, I could always just change the time...

12:31: You know when the windows in the car are so rainy on the outside that you roll down the windows to clean the water off? I want to do that to the window in my room, except that I would get hurricaned if that happened. Oops.

1:03: When the speed of the wind is faster than the speed of the rain, and thus makes it rain in all different directions, it becomes either really cool or really concerning. I guess that depends on whether or not you're dry.

1:09: I'm only waiting for the moment my storm window breaks and the rain starts to pellet my actual window. At that point, it's only a matter of time before New Hall falls to the ground.

2:23: Days off from school are good for two things. Actually, three, but there might be some mutually exclusiveness involved. Days off are good for doing nothing, getting ahead on your homework, and watching The Price is Right.

4:17: I suppose the previous couple of hours would be filed under "doing nothing..." suite bonding has consisted of cleaning the suite, knee hockey, Stratego, and NHL12. Just a typical hurricane in New Hall 415.

4:47: I don't think I've actually talked about the weather at any point today...this is more of a what-I-do-today diary than anything about the hurricane...uh, it's pretty windy and rainy outside, and it's wet...yep...definitely wet outside...

7:21: Right now, it's about the midway point between when Stonehill said they would decide on whether or not to cancel class, and when they changed their decision time (9:00). Tensions continue to be pretty light, but restlessness is increasing as the winds and rain pick up outside.

8:32: Gotta love the fake listserv about classes being cancelled. Even better might've been everyone's initial reactions to it, and then everyone's reactions to realizing that it wasn't real. I wonder how everything will play out in half an hour...

9:17: Well, we have class. Not really surprised after this one, since Stonehill's been pretty adamant about having classes for us. Which I'm totally fine with, because this is why we're here and everything. No one's paying tens of thousands of dollars to not go to class...I could do that for free. So I suppose this should conclude my day-long running diary of Hurricane Sandy. Which, in hindsight, turned out to be me coming back to my computer every once in a while to type whatever I was doing. Which officially puts this running diary third in my list of three running diaries, as far as how much I enjoyed it. Better idea heading into it than it ended up being, but hey. Live and let learn.

Seven credits, ten classes

^ That's what I need and what I have to graduate after next semester's completion. I need 23 credits to graduate, and I'll be taking 16 next semester. After that, I'll have the entirety of senior year to finish those seven credits...which I'll be about 25 over on, much to my delight. I just finished some moderation of my four-year plan, and for the first time in over two years, can actually see the light at the end of the tunnel. Instead of just getting my math major done one way or another, and probably throwing some semblance of a psych minor together, I'll end up double-majoring in the two, with room for a few electives. When everything's all said and done, I think I'll be able to say that every semester included at least 16 credits, had class every day of the week, had five classes, blah blah blah. On what legitimacy I have to complain, I don't know...whatever, man. I know I'm doing this all to myself so I probably shouldn't complain, and I don't really think I am, despite the tone this post has seemed to have taken on. To hell with it. I'm here, right? Might as well take as many classes as I can without going nuts...

Thinking spaces

I've never been one who's big on traveling. At any point in my life, really. I dunno, I kinda just wouldn't seem that impressed by certain things. My dad would love to go see the Grand Canyon, and I'm probably totally underestimating it, but it just seems like a giant crater in the earth. I don't really know how much (or what) I'd get out of being somewhere like that.

Where I do want to travel, or at least insert myself in the place of, is where thinking happened. Namely, a thinking space. I have my own on campus -- the waterfall with the weird statue right outside Martin, where I just like to sit and listen to the rushing water. I've end-of-the-year blogged there before, and I plan to at least one more time. But that's six minutes from where I live on campus...what about a place where others have thought?

My main (and currently only) place I would like to be is the Monahans Sand Dunes, in Texas. Why the hell would I want to go to Texas? Well, it's where Explosions in the Sky got the inspiration for The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. On their website, they talk about the creation of each of their albums. Regarding the sand dunes, they say, "This place is hard to describe. You're just surrounded by weird, untouched desert. And you can see all the stars in the sky. Michael once described it as 'like being on another planet.'" Any other weird, untouched desert would be exactly that to me (boring), but to know that the band laid on the sand and listened to music, which was the beginning of the album falling into place...just seems like something I'd be all over.

What breaks you?

I think that by now, you have a pretty good idea of how much I enjoy listening to Explosions in the Sky. Namely, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place and how much that album and its contents are a part of me. A part of my core, or my essence. There is a lot in life that builds our core and creates our essence, and there are also many avenues in which we have the opportunity to put forth what that essence is. It all comes from the core of who we are. But exactly who are we? Who am I? Who are you? Think about that...who you are. Think about what you've built around your core to create the true essence of your soul. (In this context, "soul" pertains more to the core of us as humans, instead of the conventional, metaphysical use.) Seems like a self-reflection that you may have already encountered, which wouldn't be all too surprising. But now, think about why you built around your core. Why we all have some sort of essence that fulfills our soul.

To me, we have this soul/core/essence ordeal set in place in order to protect us from that which breaks us. There's something out there that has more power over anything else, and that is whatever has the capacity to break us. Again, referring to the core of us as humans. Something that absolutely consumes you and controls every aspect of your mind and body. For me, I'm not sure what that is yet. I don't know what breaks me. This concept is still fairly novel to me. That being said, I know exactly how to build up to that moment of feeling as close to broken as you can be.

7:30, "The Only Moment We Were Alone." When I feel most alive. Although I believe there's somewhat of an addendum to that, to feeling most alive then. I think that we feel most alive when we are closest to death. Think about driving on the highway, where a car almost clips you going 85 miles per hour. Your heart is pounding out of your chest. Think about looking down from the 20th story of a building, knowing that you wouldn't survive a fall. Same feeling. When I listen to that part of the song, it's the same thing, except quieter, since I know it's coming. The chills start running throughout me...I can feel my breathing getting heavier. The slow buildup of everything creates that feeling of nothing going on, but everything going on at the same time. And then the floodgates open. Everything seems to pour out as though a dam just broke. Except it's not a dam...it's me.

Think about what breaks you. Something that threatens the core of your being, your soul. Don't run, because it will follow you. Let it control you. It's okay, because it's only temporary. Let yourself feel as close to broken as you can possibly be. Feel how alive you are. That feeling is real. It's your core.

"They didn't break me. I am broken."
-House, "Broken"

I Believe

Alright, it took a couple days after it happened, but here it is. All about Stonehill's nationally televised football game against #3 New Haven, and the epic 45-41 loss that lasted almost four hours.

As for the game itself -- literally the best football game I've ever seen. Both teams played tremendously well. New Haven made it very clear why they're ranked third in the nation - an offense that absolutely does not stop, and a defense that can completely shut down the running game. Not to mention that they went 6-0 without their quarterback. The QB that we all saw was playing in his first game of the season...pretty impressive. The game was filled with lead changes, long drives, defensive stops, high-energy plays, and lots of tension. Stonehill football put the program on the map, against a team that many people thought they had no business coming within double-digits of. Yet here we were, one third-down stop from a nationally televised upset.

But, as usually is the case with Stonehill sports and my blog posts, it's not always about the game. This post is no exception - this is about the fans. That was easily one of, if not the best sports environment I've ever been a part of. Including two World Series games, BC basketball games against North Carolina and Duke, and a couple of awesome Stonehill/Bentley basketball games. This was my favorite night at Stonehill during a school year ever, and almost was better than Playfair. To put anything near the same level as Playfair is one of the highest honors I can send out. And it's because everyone was putting everything they could into this game. As drained as I was after the contest, I felt that others were just as emotionally and physically exhausted as I was. But guess what? This doesn't have to be the exception!!!! It wasn't as though we brought in another school to come cheer with us...what everyone saw was Stonehill. This is what it could be like every week, peeps. Football has the potential for one home playoff game, and everyone better be at that one. There was such an awesome environment at the New Haven game that I don't want it to go to waste. I don't want people to say, "Remember how fun being at the New Haven game was?" No. I want people to say, "Remember how fun going to football games was?" Same goes for basketball. The Bentley game is my favorite of the season, because everyone goes, and everyone goes nuts. But why can't every game be like that?!

Sure, not every game is nationally televised against one of the top teams in the country, with a thousand free t-shirts and rally towels. But every game is free, at Stonehill, and features a damn good team. That should be reason enough. So, this is my call to everyone. Imploring you to get absolutely pumped up for Midnight Madness, and to make sure that this Thursday isn't the most-attended basketball event of the year. Here are some quick tips on what to bring to games:

• Yourself! Trust me, it's so much fun going to basketball games. I know I'm only talking football and basketball here, but whatever sport you want to support, go support them. Be at the games.
• Purple stuff. Everyone should have some kind of purple t-shirt. Wear it when you go to the game. Bring the rally towel, or a cowbell, or a vuvuzela, or whatever.
• Noise. See above for some material examples, but your voice is always killer. Yell, scream, chant, cheer, and get involved in the game.
• Someone else. Literally one person. Then tell that one person to bring someone, and so on. Everyone has friends, everyone knows someone. Get them to go with you. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I'm not trying to sound like I'm the greatest fan of sports at Stonehill, because I'm not. I don't want to be. (My voice can't hold up that long.) But I want everyone to feel excited about going to sports games for the team, not because it's something to do on a Saturday afternoon. Alright, I'm done. I've more than made my point...I hope. GO TO GAMES!

60 feet, 6 inches

One of the best quotes I ever read about pitching went something like this - if you have one pitch working for you in a game, you'll keep your team in the game. If you have two pitches working well, you'll give your team a chance to win. And if you have three pitches going, you'll dominate. Seems like the most true thing I ever heard. The cool part is that I created a metaphor from that for life. A metaphor, in my opinion, much more fleshed out than the first time I tried this. Think of your three pitches as the three aspects of college life - your school/work, your interactions with others, and your free time for yourself.

Your school and work is your fastball. You know it's going to be there, everyone else knows it's going to be there, and you absolutely have to establish it early in the game. Throw strikes, pound the zone, and everything will work off your fastball.

Your interactions with others can be thought of as your curveball. Not in the sense that life throws you curveballs - I prefer to stay on the pitching side of curveballs, as opposed to the batting side. The curveball is something you can throw in as a wrinkle, something to offset the fastball. It's just something to keep the hitters honest, in the same way that everyone needs some form of social interaction after long enough.

Finally, the changeup is your free time for yourself. The overlooked, yet crucial pitch in any repertoire. With the free time you have for yourself, you can use it so much to your advantage, that you can get by with a fastball and a changeup. Throw in the curve every now and then, and you'll keep hitters off guard. Changeups set up the fastball - using some free time for school work sets up the fastball to be that much more effective. And there's nothing wrong with a changeup that's supposed to start as a ball. We all need a pitch with low expectations every once in a while. At the very worst, it's a setup pitch for the next one.

So there's your arsenal. Three pitches that you can work together into a successful outing. And once you get into a rhythm of pitching, the next pitch almost seems to call itself - after an inside fastball, a changeup off the plate might be good. Pitching, like college, is all about the mindset, and the execution once the mindset is strong.

I want a standing ovation

No, I don't mean the one during Orientation where you scream it as loud as you can, people come running over to lift you onto their shoulders, and everyone around starts cheering for you. Although that would be pretty nice.

I want one of those standing ovations that pitchers get after they get pulled from an incredible outing, or after they finish what they know will be their last inning of the game. Kind of like Derek Holland's departure from Game 4 of the 2011 World Series, coming off 8 1/3 shutout innings in front of the home crowd. Something really nice and humbling where you walk off the field to the tens of thousands of fans cheering for you. Maybe a nice tip of the cap; always a nice touch. Given that I probably won't play organized baseball for a while, especially not on front of thousands of fans, this might never happen. But it is always awesome to see it happen in the MLB, knowing that some dude just went out there and threw a gem.

Family

Well, life goes on.

This morning, we laid my great aunt to rest, with her husband, next to her mother. As I've thrown out many times here, I'm not totally on one side or the other of religion - some times I'm buying into everything, and other times, I kind of just stand off in the distance, watching and wondering if any of it means anything in the grand scheme of the universe. And what I felt, today, is that all of the traditions and customs took a back seat to something bigger, something intangible - family. Family is something that pushes me towards religion, instead of away from it. Burials, independent of any other burial that's ever happened, could be entirely meaningless to me. But being buried with and next to the people you love, where everyone can see the headstones...I feel the meaning in that. And I've felt the meaning of family over the last couple of days. Something Aunt B always stressed, especially during our phone calls when I'd be at school. She'd always tell me how much it meant to have such a loving family, and children who would call her, even if for only a few minutes. I believed her, and knew that we've always been a close family (taking it outside the sense of my sister and parents), but have never actually felt it as strong as I have in the last two days.

I don't want a family member passing away to have to rekindle such a strong sense of the word, but maybe it has to be that way. Maybe then will it be conserved. I've never really thought about the exact emotional connotation of the concept of family. It's kind of like home, in a sense of the concept and feeling. But right here, right now, isn't the place nor time for me to figure this out. It takes time, contemplation, effort.

I'm not expecting my experience to shape what you think about the definition or semantic association with "family," so I won't pretend that it will, or has. What I do hope is that it gets you thinking about your own experiences. Times when you felt the presence of family. Create your own meaning. Assign your own values to the term, and live in the experiences that come out of those values.

Predicting the 2012 MLB playoffs

Despite how impossibly easy it is for me to conceive of a 2012 postseason without our beloved Red Sox, there is still one way I can talk about baseball without having to relive the horror that was April 5th, 2012, to October 3rd, 2012. More on the firing of Bobby Valentine later, but in the same style as my 2011 predictions, here goes nothing:

League Division Series
Yankees vs. Orioles
Yes, I'm continuing to ride the hot streak of the Baltimore Orioles, now lasting an approximate six months. They'll beat the Rangers and finally get the chance to face the Yankees, an opportunity they haven't had since early September. I think the Orioles have more pitching than the Yankees, and with the first two games of the series in Baltimore, they find a way to get the upper hand heading into New York. The Yankees are good, but Baltimore has been too good for too long for me not to think they can keep it up.

Athletics vs. Tigers
How can you pick against Oakland? A team that has been playing very well, and quietly so, also has the young pitching to shut down the Tigers' offense. Justin Verlander has pitched very well against Oakland (2-0 in 2012), but as we saw last year, it's the hot teams that ride the postseason train. Oakland moves on after a grueling five-game set that no one pays attention to because of the Yankees/Orioles matchup.

Nationals vs. Braves
Bud Selig got very lucky when it became evident that the Braves and Cardinals would have a one-game playoff to determine who moves on in the playoffs - the exact same scenario that would have happened last year, barring the total collapse of Atlanta. This could be the most exciting of the LDS matchups because of the pitching on both sides. It's young, effective, and backed by a good-enough offense. I don't have much confidence in this pick, but I like Washington. I'm not really sure why, but I do.

Reds vs. Giants
The Giants just don't seem to do it for me. They lack an incredible offense, and despite their strength in pitching, their bullpen has been very shaky for most of the second half. Cincinnati has turned it up several notches and has the back end to finish games. Cincinnati moves on easily.

League Championship Series
Athletics vs. Orioles
Didn't see this one coming in April, huh? The best part is that one of them has to move on. I think that being bad for so long finally caught up to Baltimore - all of their young players seemed to click at the same time. (As opposed to, say, the Boston Red Sox. There, I said it. We suck.) Which is what Oakland's players seem to be one or two years off from doing. I think that both of these teams can contend in their respective divisions, and that their 2012 season wasn't a fluke. As far as who moves on to the World Series, I like Baltimore. With the momentum that any team has coming into the postseason, Baltimore is the one that can win any game: an AL-best 46-35 road record, SIXTEEN extra inning wings, and a 29-9 record in one-run games. Baltimore edges out Oakland to move on to its first World Series since 1983.

Nationals vs. Reds
Of every possible LCS matchup, this seems to be the most appealing. It's seemed pretty clear that these have been the two best teams in the National League, especially since July, and both teams have the tools to win a championship. However, Washington seems to have the edge across the board, despite the recent tear the Reds' offense has been on. Pitching wins championships, and Washington's corps will tame the Reds offense more than Cincinnati's pitchers can slow down the Nationals' offense. It's a Baltimore/Washington World Series, something I totally didn't plan, but love how it played out.

World Series
Nationals vs. Orioles
Everyone always speculates at playoff time what the worst World Series matchup would be for the TV ratings. (Editor's Note: Oakland/Cincinnati. Who would care?) I think that this matchup has potential to be one of the most-watched, being two teams who haven't seen the World Series in a long time, and playing in the same area. As far as the baseball goes, no one has been able to stop the Nationals this year. They were swept by the Dodgers in April, losing three games by four runs. Sweeps by the Yankees, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, but never getting blown out. Nothing they couldn't overcome. With Strasburg, they have an unstoppable pitching staff. Without him, they have had four guys who have stepped up across the board. The pitching takes Washington to the top, winning the World Series in their first appearance.

So, there it is. Winners from every series. Logically, I think I make sense. Then again, there's a pretty good chance that all of these could be wrong. Probably that one. Oh well...

Conservation of love

This isn't really something I'm planning on going into a whole lot of depth on. Partly because I don't really know what detail it consists of, partly because I've bawled my eyes out enough tonight, and partly because life goes on. Physics homework, editing and printing a paper, and some self-fulfillment of my soul are necessary before I go to sleep tonight. This is going to work on the latter.

Right now, I imagine love kind of like matter or energy. Granted, I didn't think this until only a couple of days ago, but I think that this is something I'll believe for a very long time. Energy and matter are conserved, meaning that none is ever lost. There are probably lots of other things I could say about that to make it more understandable, but I'll leave it at this.

Love is like this. Never lost. Namely in someone's passing. Yeah, when someone whom we love, and loves us, leaves us, we've lost that love with that person. But it's not destroyed. It is conserved and sent elsewhere. In the hearts of the ones closest to us, in the hearts of those closest to who we've lost. We still love that person we've lost, even if they might not be around to see it. Everyone else who remains with us will see it, and have a little part of their own love to keep, and to share with everyone else.

Think of a snow globe. Or any sphere, or container, or whatever. I like the idea of a snow globe. Everything is contained. Nothing comes in, nothing goes out. Love is a snow globe.

First Breath After Coma

Man, dying sucks.

I guess I need to rephrase that, since I’ve never died in my life. Having someone die that you know and love sucks. As a completely ill-timed aside, I find it comforting that I can still take on the same tone of voice when I blog, even in the wake of my great aunt’s passing. It lets me know that there’s already a part of me that can move on, even if there are other parts that are really sad and upset over this. As I type this, I’m sitting on the same bench behind New Hall that I sat at the last time I talked to my aunt. A few weeks ago. It’s been even longer than that since I saw her, and it was one of the last days before I left for school this year. I remember sitting outside with her, just taking in the sunlight and crisp air around us. It was a stillness that felt alive. Now, staring at the trees around me, it’s a stillness that feels…well, still. It’s like I’m suspended from just carrying on as if nothing happened. Which I suppose is normal. I dunno...I’ve never had to go through this, really. It sucks, and it will suck for most of this week I assume, and it will suck this weekend when I go home and see her one last time. It will suck to see my parents crying, and my grandparents crying, and my grandma Connie crying, and my sister crying. It sucks now just thinking about that happening.

I was going to name this post “Memorial,” after the Explosions in the Sky song, and obviously in reference to my aunt, and to remembering the life she had. But I believe that life is more than what it was. In fact…

“Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the future.”

      -William Wordsworth

See? It’s right there. Life is approximately three times as much as what was. Life is that which is, and which will be. And as sad as it is to lose someone who I’ve come to love throughout my entire life, and who I’ve known to only do the same in return, I know that I’ll be okay, and that life goes on. There will always be a first breath.

Rest in peace, Auntie B. I love you and will always keep you with me.

Conflict of the Soul

One thing that I've never really talked about directly on my blog is my poetry. Currently, it would be a "lack thereof" case, but there was a period of time where I regularly wrote a poem every few weeks. And I suppose that this is what precluded my blog, as far as a representation of me goes. Well, actually, no. Well, actually actually...to hell with it. Allow me:

The Only Thing I Could Do
My first anthology/batch/whatever of poems came throughout high school, and ten out of the thirteen that I ended up finishing and included in this particular Word document were about the girl I had a crush on at the time. Made for some real compelling stuff. A lot of it was just a crafty way to put all of my thoughts in words -- I remember telling one of my friends that I wasn't writing poetry, I was just putting thoughts together with awesome word selection. Which was exactly what I was up to - I got an idea in my mind and just ran with it, writing words down in my agenda book or something. I would never (and still haven't) spend a week writing one piece, because the thoughts would just not be the same from the moment I initially had them. (Editor's Note: Seems like a pretty prominent theme of this blog, huh?) Oh right, the title. I think I've talked about "The Journey" enough. Specifically here and here. That should be enough to draw some conclusions.

Pilgrimage to the Elements of Life
My General Religious Studies course was awesome. The professor lives in Watertown, I still chat with him whenever I see him on campus, and he had some really cool stuff to show us. When we got around to Christianity (after Judaism, Buddhism, and Islam), I remember this one passage from a book about people going on pilgrimages (the theme of the course) to a sacred place in France (Lourdes). And these elements of life that the book talked about were rock, light, and water. If my memory serves me well, of course. And having gone through Religious Studies, and then Philosophy in the spring, I was all spiritual and stuff, going to mass most weeks, thinking about stuff like that, and just embracing any uncertainties that I had. I wanted to name my second collection of poems after some goal, or something I was doing. Kind of like the first bunch. A pilgrimage to the elements of life wouldn't be about rock, light, or water. It would be about finding what elements were in store for me, on a mental, emotional, and sometimes spiritual level. It was a little broader than just navigating my possible spirituality, but I think that some of my best poetry is in there.

Love is a Verb
After my run with spirituality, and getting the fill of another batch of poems, it was time to move back towards the emotional expressions with words; something I had a little more craft with, instead of simply writing down my thoughts as they arrived. A lot of what's in here is kind of a storytelling affair, but again, with that careful placement of what my thoughts are and how they seem to me, how they resonate. I remember even now some of the surges I had that led me to these poems, and what I was doing, where I was sitting. I can picture some cozy winter night, bundled up beneath a blanket, sitting in front of words that just became incredibly meaningful. And having just said that makes me kind of crave winter. And I hate winter. (Actually, I've been less hating of winter since I got to college. Potentially more on that in a couple of days.) Coziness and comfort seems to just take away hatred, I guess.

Conflict of the Soul
I've been saying it a lot this month, but I totally mean it - soak in whatever philosophy is thrown at you; something will stick eventually. In my reading for class on Wednesday, I came across the idea that would eventually become Freud's iceberg, with the id, ego, and superego. And how the id (irrational desires) and ego (rational thoughts) are always at conflict with one another, creating a conflict of the soul. We've talked about the soul a lot in class, too. Not as something spiritual that moves on into the next life, but more of a being, an intangible existence within us. Something that needs to not be in conflict, essentially. After alternating between poems of love and philosophy for a few years, it feels like it's time to go back to exploring these unanswered questions. I can't think of nearly as many as I had freshman year, though. I also don't know what to do with the handful (if that) of poems I've written since my last official Word document. Maybe an EP? I just like this phrase, conflict of the soul. I want to let it linger in my mind for a couple of days and see what I can pull out from it. Obviously, if I blogged about it, something good will happen soon, since I had enough of an idea to put this together. Until then, we'll see...

My #stonehillprobz

I wanted to fire off this post before my tour at 2:30, so I don't have a ton of time. Probably not as much as I'd like, but that means that I have to work and think quickly, which is good, because I'm agitated. As many people might or might not know, I have a Twitter. I also go to Stonehill. A by-product of those two facts is that every once in a while, I'll see #stonehillprobz pop up on my Twitter feed. And sometimes out of curiosity, I'll go see what people are complaining about. A priest riding a bike. Our sprinkler malfunction issues. Emails. Slow wi-fi. You get the idea.

WHAT THE FUCK, EVERYONE.

Sorry if I sound higher and mightier than everyone, which isn't my intention, but can we care about something that matters!? Can we complain about something that actually means something to this community? Who cares if there's a priest riding a bike. Is he not a person, just like I am a person? If I were riding a bike, would that be a problem? Sure, maybe everyone's being clever and tweeting about trivial problems that happen at Stonehill, but why is no one tweeting about what makes us thrive as a community and a society? Why is the It Needs To Get Better movement not on #stonehillprobz? Why aren't bias incidents there? How come I don't see anything pertaining to the nature of Stonehill, and the soul that this community has?

A couple of self-limitations that I'm aware of:

• I'm not saying that I have nothing to complain about. I have something right here, and I'm letting it all out on the table. Because this matters to me. If you really think that it's a fundamental problem with Stonehill that our sprinklers don't work, then you're not seeing the big picture.
• I understand that the couple dozen tweets I read is not a representation of the Stonehill population. I know a damn lot of people here that really care about many things, and I'm glad to know them.

But come on. Every single time I talk about Stonehill, I talk about how much I love this place and how good it treats me. You have to let it treat you this good. If you sit idly by and punch out 140 characters about the long lines in the Dining Commons, then nothing's going to happen. You're cutting yourself short on all that this place can do for you. When you actually go out into the world, whether it be on campus, in the community, internationally, or wherever, and do something, you start to eliminate those problems. Real problems, I mean. The best thing about Stonehill is its community. You go around and ask a random sample of 100 students what their top three things about Stonehill are, and I'd be surprised if any more than ten didn't mention the word community. All I ask, or implore, at this point, is this -- if you're going to have a problem with some aspect of Stonehill, make sure it's something you actually care about. Make sure it's something that matters. If you genuinely care about our sprinklers not working, then fine. That matters to you, and I respect that. But if you're just calling something a problem because you can, or because you feel like it, then please don't. You're discrediting all that this place is, and what everyone has done to make it exactly what it is. And to me, there's no bigger discredit than making Stonehill anything less than the incredible place that it is.

Mathematical Matt

Cool so psychology is awesome and fun and interesting and stuff, and that's why I'm minoring in it/might want to double-major with it. I'm in the middle of reading about self-perception/self-cognition for my Social Psychology class, and I was going to blog about that stuff in general, or ten studies that I thought were really cool. Like one that concluded that people tend to favor letters that appear in their own name more than other letters (suggesting the existence of implicit egoism). Then I read this, verbatim, from the text:

"For example, men and women are more likely than would be predicted by chance to live in places (Michelle in Michigan, George in Georgia), attend schools (Kari from the University of Kansas, Preston from Penn State University), and choose careers (Dennis and Denise as dentists) whose names resemble their own."

And my immediate line of thought was something along the lines of "Oh, that's silly....wait...I'm a math major...the adjective I used during my summer Orientation that started with the same letter as my name was "mathematical"...WHAT"

This is why psychology is awesome.

Time, pt. 5

"How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal, and you have to be willing to work for it."
  - Jim Valvano, 1993 ESPY Awards

The first encounter I had with time on my blog ended like this - "I have a theory. Time is always changing, so something good is bound to happen eventually." After toying around with the concept of time for a little while, it escaped me until today, where we talked about it, very briefly, in (none other than) my philosophy class. Turns out my theory is totally wrong. Well no, not wrong, but I just don't believe it anymore. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that time is neutral, and can be used destructively or constructively. Time is just there, and what really matters is what we do with it, for justice or injustice. This makes perfect sense now - you're somewhere, at a juncture in life, or in society, and you want to be somewhere. Sitting around waiting for it to happen will get you nowhere. Don't let time hang around and control you. You need to be on top of the time that you have so you can make the most out of it.

"Time changes everything."
"That's what people say. It's not true. Doing things changes things. Not doing things leaves things exactly as they were."
  - House, "One Day, One Room"

I'm in love with your honor

Another Wednesday, another philosophical blog post. Hopefully this doesn't become exclusively what my posts are, but after having some decent ideas for posts slip away, this one has seemed to stick. Thus, I blog.

Socrates. Long story short, he went around asking everyone in Athens about essentially everything. Let's clump that into "justice." Finding out what is just and unjust in the world (not necessarily in the legal system, but morally). What Socrates came to realize was that no one really had any idea what they were talking about, and were as a result ignorant of everything in the world. (Think of The Little Prince.) He, for understanding this, had much more wisdom than everyone else. Fairly convoluted, but when you break it down, the man knew what he was talking about, ironically enough. But anyway, everyone in Athens starts getting on Socrates' case, saying that he's corrupting the youth and all this other stuff. Socrates makes his defense to no avail on trial, and gets sentenced to be executed. Instead of having someone else pay off the courts, or escaping into exile, Socrates accepts this fate, to be killed at the hand of society.

Well why, Socrates? Why opt for death? In his acceptance of the penalty, Socrates was standing in perfect accordance with everything that he lived his life for until that point - it would be cheating the system to bail and run away in exile. The just thing to do, the morally sound reasoning, would be to be put to death. Which is something that I can only fathom to be incredibly hard to do, let alone actually follow through with it. He's lived his life in a certain way all along, so why should death get in the way? Death doesn't change his logic and reasoning, just in the same way that life never did. Even in the face of death, Socrates is able to uphold his honor and to live, until the end, with a steadfast moral compass.

The most resonant part about all of this is how Socrates explains death. He begins by saying that being dead is to be non-existent, or that the soul undergoes something in dying. To the former, he says, "why, imagine that someone had to pick the night in which he slept so soundly that he did not even dream...on that assumption the whole of time would seem no longer than a single night." One night that lasts an eternity. That's what death could be. Why should we fear that? On the other hand, Socrates explains the transformation of the soul into a place where one can question great leaders of the time, and to truly gain an understanding of what is just.

Death could be the greatest thing, and so many of us fear it. Which makes it all the more impressive when anyone embraces it, greets it. To live one's life all the way through, even in the face of death. I can't say that this epiphany has made me unafraid of death, but it does make it a little bit easier to think about.