Consider this your serenade

So I used to have this really cool ability to talk about something without actually talking about it. Which seems paradoxical at first, which is exactly the thing. There was a period of time when I was all about contradictions in writing, and playing off the interaction between the opposites to truly get to the bottom of what the hell I was talking about. That is, of course, without actually talking about it. And that ability has seemed to escape me, and this is my first shot at getting it back in quite some time. And I don't suppose I'll know how well I've done until I look back at this post in a few months, and can tell (or perhaps not) exactly what I was thinking about at the time. Sure, I know now, but I mean, I'm writing it...if I don't know what I'm talking about right now, I shouldn't be writing.

Way back when, I talked about how one stanza in a song kind of jumps out at you, and seems to have much more meaning than the entire rest of the song. I'm going to play off that a little bit, on a little less semantic note. You ever go driving around, maybe on the highway, maybe through your city or town, at nighttime? There are the songs that are absolutely made for this, of which a few come right to the top of my head. And some are there because of the entire song, but others are there because of that one stanza, or even phrase or measure where you just belt it out at the top of your lungs. And you can't help but tilt your head back a little bit and smile as you try and hit the high notes, always seeming to come close, yet never minding. It's a damn good feeling.

On to the next one

Gah, I haven't blogged in far too long. Nice to see you, everyone. I don't really know what the hell I want to even blog about, despite the fact that I've come up with several topics in the past week. Namely, Red Sox greats during our time, Duke's losses to N.C. State and Miami, the beginning of the Bruins season, and sending in my application for the final time to be a Peer Mentor. But while I want to blog about all of these things at once, I kinda don't really wanna blog about any of them right now. I get in an anti-feverish mood whenever Duke loses, where suddenly, I just don't feel like doing anything anymore. Which is exactly what this blog post is. By which I mean, not really anything. But you know what? Screw it. I've come to the realization, for a few months now, that I've had fewer, yet seemingly more meaningful posts. And don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the deeper, Values Game-esque blog posts. I think they're some of my favorite to write, and I think that people seem to enjoy reading those the most. And it's because there are some great conversations to be had with those kinds of topics. But for now, I chalk up this blog post in the loss column. Sure, you want to see a win at the end of the day instead of a loss, but there are still some things to be learned from a loss. I won't go into those things too much now, but it's always on to the next one. Even after a win, there's another game to be played, another blog post to think about. This one may not be as stellar as some other posts, but it's also better than some posts, too. So, you go back, look at the film, and it's on to the next one. Soon enough, there will be a much stronger blog post than this, so until then...

"Done, I'm done, and I'm on to the next one."
"All My Life," Foo Fighters

The wrong kind of moneyball

"They told us we didn't have any marketable players. We need some sexy guys...it was the farthest thing removed from what we set out to be." -Theo Epstein, former GM of the Boston Red Sox

Let's talk about that. First off, I completely agree with this. When Epstein was GM, the Red Sox were all about Moneyball, sabermetrics, Bill James, OBP, and the like. We had a farm system that was developed and became the core of two World Series-winning teams. All of this was coupled by key acquisitions. This quote, in reference to after the 2010 season, perfectly explains the kind of organization that Red Sox ownership wanted to put together. And frankly, it's not about baseball anymore. I talked about something like this after a month of the 2012 season, and I think that rang true throughout the year. Now, it's about looking good, and about being a brand name that you want people to buy into. Which I understand as a corporation, an organization, and a professional sports franchise, but I think that the ownership is going about it the completely wrong way. It's not about looking good, it's about being good. Frankly, I could care less if the Red Sox have sexy players - I care if they have ones that increase the total in the win column. Just look at the San Antonio Spurs, often referred to as the NBA's most boring team. The Spurs are perennial contenders for the NBA Championship, because they have a talented core who knows who their identity is as a basketball team. The Red Sox have fallen away from that, and it's happened with guys like John Lackey, Bobby Valentine, and Carl Crawford. Perhaps the pinnacle of this is Josh Beckett, who is more or less a microcosm of all of this. Back when we had the Beckett that was kicking ass, he just kept his mouth shut, pitched his game, and did his thing. But as the team went haywire, so did he, becoming a problem in the clubhouse, with the media, and ultimately, on the mound, leading to his trade to the Dodgers. The Red Sox are trying to do things the wrong way, and it doesn't look like things are going to change anytime soon. I've been saying it for a while now, but the Red Sox need a change of ownership. I gave them one year after the Francona/2011 collapse happened, and that one year consisted of the first losing record since 1997 and the fire of Valentine after one season. Things have to change on Yawkey Way, or else the downfall of the Boston Red Sox will become the norm, which is something that no one wants.

The life of a San Die-gon

I love the feeling of knowing I want to blog and knowing exactly what I want to blog about. Here are a few things I've had on my mind today:

"Wash." by Bon Iver is one of their most underrated songs. There's a video someone made to "The Only Moment We Were Alone" of the side of the road as you drive, and I think this song would also fit perfectly. Of the few times I've been on the Stonehill shuttle as of late, I've always loved to just stare out the windows at the world passing by, listening to moderately melancholy music. The sky is dark, but I can still make out the trees along the highway, all the houses along the side of the road. It's a great song for that imagery, I think, and could be the beginning of a playlist of similar songs. Quiet, still, melancholic, but carrying some greater, silent power with it.

Totally changing gears, I totally know what I want to do with my life now. Not that I ever really had any doubt about it, but it's totally official now, after having lived in Pure Math Land for a few days. Coincidentally enough, it's actually not pure math. It's sports and stats. Which, as I said, it more or less has always been. Ideally, I sit behind a computer, think about baseball, and go on the Internet to resolve my thoughts. Which is exactly what I'll be explaining in a second. I just also want to mention that I'd be a freelance psychologist...some kind of independent research who just runs experiments on whatever the hell I feel like. No field, no specialty...just finding out stuff about us. That is the perfect lifestyle for me.

Alright, so this whole baseball/stats/Internet thing. Allow this to be the official plug for SPES and Statistics in Baseball. For anyone who doesn't yet know about it, there's this awesome program at Stonehill where students will be teaching classes to other students, about whatever we damn well please. There are classes about the chemistry of cupcakes, stereotypes at Stonehill, designing for the iPad, and my completely unbiased favorite, statistics in baseball. I sarcastically say unbiased because I'm teaching said class. What we get to do for 12 weeks this semester is go on places like FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference and answer whatever questions I (or we) can think of during the semester. Seriously, I get to do this. HOW COOL. I seriously want to do this stuff for a living and get paid and get to watch baseball games for free and support a team just because I work for them, even if they suck.

So, yep. That's that. Now I just have to make all of these things happen. Got a little over 24 hours left in San Diego; gonna try and get one blog post out tomorrow about the whole thing, head back to the East Coast, and then get ready to go back to Stonehill for another great semester. I feel good right now. Maybe it's the Foo Fighters playing out of my laptop, but I just feel ready to take the world on. It's a good feeling.

The world is ending in ten minutes

So, I wrote this post last night before I left this morning for San Diego. The end.

Alright, alright, I can't sleep until I do this. I'm listening to The Only Moment We Were Alone in bed, preparing to wake up at 4:00am to get ready to go to San Diego. For whatever reason, tonight, I prayed. This isn't the first time I've prayed - I do it in bed every once in a while. Not even to talk to God or whatever...it's very simple, really. In whatever position I'm at in bed, I'll find a way to interlock my fingers and just "talk" to God in my head. I capitalize God here because that's how I learned to pray, when my mom would tuck me and my sister in our rooms when we were younger. "Dear Lord, thank you for the beautiful day, and for all the wonderful things we did..." always starts my prayer. Then I'll thank God for some stuff, and ask for different things - sometimes, to not be angry, sometimes, to protect my family and keep everyone healthy, but tonight, I asked to please let me keep the love I have for everyone with me, in my heart, wherever I am. And I thought about that, about keeping love with you. And how, in that moment, I couldn't think of anything more beautiful than knowing everyone who you want to love you, knows that you love them. All bullshit aside, no matter what, those people know you love them. And for whatever reason, I thought about the only Values Game question I have any real difficulty answering: "If the world were ending in ten minutes, what would you do?" I've always said that I would cry until I knew what to do next, which has always been truthful, but for a lack of any real idea of what I would do if the world were ending in ten minutes. But thinking about that love, that I have for the people I love, and that they have for me, knowing that such a love exists is all I need for the end of the world. I thought further, and concluded that, yeah, I do have that love. Sometimes it's not always apparent or obvious, but deep down, I love everyone who loves me. I love everyone who has had an impact on my life, in any way. I wouldn't be right here, in bed, 43 minutes after when I wanted to fall asleep, without this chain of events. And if the last ten minutes of my life are spent knowing the world will end, well, I'll be a happy man. I'll listen to First Breath After Coma, time it so the ending happens at the same time as the world ending, and think about this love.

Alright, I've been typing on my phone for eleven minutes now, so here's a recap of what just happened -- this started out as some semblance of a diary entry for myself (not that I have one (not that this blog wouldn't count, I just don't have an explicit diary)), turned into this exposition of a grand realization, and now comes the part where you get to play along and think about your own life and your place in this universe. I ask you what has burdened me for a couple of years now: the world is ending in ten minutes. What do you do?

Valley of the shadow of death

I'm going to die.

I mean, eventually, hopefully a long, long time from right now, but yes, I'm going to die. Such is the nature of life, that the only way we are not to die is if we are never born. And as I type this, and as you read this, we're too late for that. Every fragment of a millisecond of our existence pushes us closer to death. It's not even some discrete measure of units closer to death, it's just always happening. A continuous flow of nearing death.

So what, then, if we are to always walk through the valley of the shadow of death, per the 23rd Psalm? According to the Bible, it is the Lord that shepherds us, restores our soul, leads us to righteousness, and bring goodness and mercy to our lives. And that's cool and everything, but I'm not exactly the most religious person. (Although I will concede that the Bible is home to some pretty awesome quotes.) So what am I supposed to do in the valley of the shadow of death?

Why can't I just do all those things in Psalm 23, but give myself the credit? What's stopping me from being righteous, soulful, good, and merciful on my own peril? What's stopping any of us from doing that on our own accord? Not that I'm knocking the Lord or anything, but if I can't give Him the credit, who does it go to? I think it's kinda bitchin' how we get to be all awesome and everything to spite death for our entire life in the universe. And once we die, well, either we'll go into the house of the Lord forever, or nothing. Maybe nothing will happen, and in that case, I guess no one can really look back on their life. Which means all we have to go from is what we're doing right now, in the universe, and to know that no matter what, we kicked as much ass as possible. We didn't hold back, we did what we wanted, and lived the kind of life we wanted. Why let something like the valley of the shadow of death stop you from that? Either way, you're going to die. Why go through life afraid of that, when you can embrace this inevitability and live life as best you possibly can?

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?