reflection

 After doing this last assignment and seeing this movie, I feel that I am as ready as I have ever been to advance on in life. I am six months away from graduation, and it is definitely time to start figuring out what i want to be doing with my life and exactly how i want to be spending my time. Time is not limitless. We are not limitless, and for all we know there is no existance after we die. So to live for nothing is ludacris to me. It is time to start looking for jobs, places to live, and things that I want to be doing in the next few years. I am very excited to be going onto this next part of my journey, and am thrilled that I had an opportunity to reflect on myself in this class before I finally move on to real adult-hood.

Who are you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J8M_KGdrWQ&feature=youtu.be

1. Who are you in the eyes/perception of others? In the eyes of others, I am silly and crazy. I always say and do things before I really think about it. I am also seen as selfish, although I really do not mean to be. Like I said, I say and do things without thinking, so often times I say things that can come off as insensitive. Often times I come off as careless, just because I fail to think before acting on great occasion. And a good amount of the time I could be considered absolutely impossible to deal with, but usually that's because I am intentionally annoying somebody out of pure joy for myself. 
2. How do you see/perceive yourself? I view myself as an artist. I am a musician, and have played for years and years. I have been in a few different bands, but have always played with the same core group of guys. For a while we even played with my younger sister as lead vocalist. I like to think of myself as imaginative, even though I feel like the majority of the time I can't think of anything worth writing down. I swear there's imagination in there somewhere! I like to consider myself easy going, and usually don't have a problem with anybody else's suggestions. However, occasionally I get annoyed, and go along with whatever we are doing but make it clear that I am not exactly excited about it. But most importantly, I think, is that I am always afraid of letting people down. I have the hardest time saying no, not because I am easy going, but because I would rather just go with the flow than disagree and start some sort of silly discussion. 
3. Why are you here? For me, "here" is living. I am here to achieve all that I can achieve. I want to become something great. I want to be proud of my accomplishments. If I were not here, living, then I would not be able to do any of this.
4. What are the implications of your identity to others? Unfortunately, the implications of my identity are that my identity isn't always obviously distinguished. Depending on where I am, what I am doing and who I am wish, my identity adjusts to any situation and allows me to at least some what fit in.
5. How are you effected by the identity of others? Depending on who I am with, I am able to change how I act and what I say. If I am around my parents, or a person who demands respect, I act a certain way. If I am around peers, I may act a bit more foolish. If I am around people I do not really know, I could be mute for hours and just take in my surroundings.
6. Is identity static? Identity is absolutely not static. We are changing all the time, and with change comes change in thoughts, feelings, and ultimately our identity. Although we will always be who we were, we can still add on and become so much more. The most important part, though, is to never forget where you started or where you are coming from, and to always have your eyes on the road ahead.

Final Fear.

The timing of this assignment was very bizarre for me. When we first got the assignment, I had just learned that my grandfather has stage 4 lung cancer, and so basically was running out of time. The news hit rather hard, and started making me wonder about how quickly life can just fly by. Then, at the doctors office they thought I may have some sort of cancer, and so I had to go and see a specialist for it (The reason I wasn't able to make it to class last week). Thankfully it was all good news, but it was still a crazy time.
So, because of all this, my mind started working in a mysterious way. Instead of being scared of dying or whatever else, I was more intimidated by the fact that if I were to die, I would leave without ever feeling a real sense of accomplishment for anything, and that was scary as hell. In class, I was worried about getting up in front of everybody, because I was anticipating most people not necessarily understanding or caring about my one real "fear," as opposed to talking about scary spiders or what have you. Then, in class on the first day, we started talking about depression and suicide and what have you, and I felt like if I said anything then it wouldn't really apply, because my fear was the opposite of theirs. Everybody was afraid of life, where as I am terrified of dying before I feel content with myself.
I am graduating soon, and so am supposed to find a job and figure out what I'm doing with the rest of my life. But now, instead of just trying to find a job that makes me money, I have realized that I need to be doing something that is going to push me to be better, and to feel accomplished. Otherwise, I will never ever be happy with my life, and life is too short to waste being unhappy.
So, to sum up, my biggest fear is dying without feeling like I have accomplished anything great. Hopefully someday soon I can figure out what it is that I need to pursue to find that feeling, but until then, I will always have that thought in the back of my mind that if I go today, I will have wasted all of my time. I want that thought to go away.

Fear

For this assignment, I am not exactly sure how my classmates will react. I have not prepared anything except for to talk about fear. I wasn't exactly sure how to create a way to express it, so I thought I would talk about it instead. Hopefully my classmates will understand it, but I expect most will think it is either silly or do not get it.

Bliss

A lot of the time, I do not put all of my creativity into something because I just want to get it done. I was this way especially when I was younger, just trying to get by without having to put full effort into anything. However, the past few years I have been working a lot harder at trying to find my full potential. I actually am in the process right now of recording, mixing and producing an EP of my own songs for my Capstone. We finished recording the guitars not too long ago, and I must say that already the songs are sounding absolutely wonderful. I know now that when it is all complete I am going to be thrilled with it, and at this moment am extremely happy and proud of the results that I have so far. A few more weeks and I will have a six song album completely under my belt! How exciting.

55 alive!

As a five year old, I decided to put a bobby pin in my nose and pretend like it was a bull ring, so that I could run around and charge without consequence. When I was twenty, I thought the coolest thing I could do was actually to pierce my nose, and so I did. For about four months I had a real ring in my nose, just after I had taken out the ring that I had in my lip for over six months. As a 55 year old, I would like to think that I have gotten over all of the silly games with my face, and have started worrying more about real life situations and stuff that will actually affect me and my family. At this point in my life, maybe I will have grandchildren, and so will be able to take the bobby pin bull ring idea and play it with them. That would be pretty humorous to me. To be able to take something that I thought of now as an assignment idea, and use it with grandchildren as a way of cheaply entertaining them. Hopefully though, they will not move forward with that idea when they are older and start piercing their face! But if they do, good for them. Who am I to say no? BUT, I have no idea what I would really do with anything when I am 55. I'd like to hope for the basics, and just see me alive in thirty-three years. After that I guess I can decide what I would like to do with my bobby pin.
Until then...

5 again!

When I was five, I used to do a lot of stupid things. For instance, my favorite thing in the world was to eat Smarties, but first I would put them up my nose and see if I could blow them out. For this assignment, I decided to do something similar to that, and use a bobby pin as a bull ring. With imagination running wild, instead of a bobby pin you can almost view it as me being a bull. I know, pretty childish, right?