These days I've been distracted. I've been pretty stressed, and I feel like I've been neglecting my relationships. My work load isn't even that big. It just feels weighty. My job is contingent on my graduation, and my marriage is contingent on my job. Also, somehow, I just always have something in my schedule.

Last semester, late in, I deleted all my video games to make room for studying for finals. I figured I'd install them again at the beginning of this semester, and delete them around midterms if they were hurting my productivity. So I deleted them again on Wednesday. In their place, I have about 150 pages of reading material about patent law and intellectual property.

My piano teacher's husband didn't wake up, and when he was rushed to the hospital they found three tumors in his brain, and so they both need prayer. Also, My good friend is in a custody battle with her ex husband, and she needs prayer for that.

Didn't get much sleep this week. Monday and Tuesday it was video games; Wed-Fri it was homework.Also, every time I'm about to stop writing this blog, a song I like comes up on Pandora.

Tomorrow is Saturday. I have all the time in the world to get my long-desired sleep. I can push it off for another 3:55...

"This is the promise of our liberty."

The Blue Dream, considering the bitterness of her guilt and overwhelming sorrow, doesn't know if it's what she's meant to feel. A specter; the nostalgic imaginings of a former friendship, which has never been too far out of reach for her to attempt to grasp it, is now completely obscured by a wall of awkward social complexes. It's what we're trained to give-up against, even when opposed by the deepest longings of her heart and the hole left in it by a Red King.

I know better, and want nothing more than that my darling, Chowon, will never forget that I love her. I want an honest friendship that lasts forever -- humble and fearless. With God's blessing, I can give that to Chowon and work toward her happiness forever, experiencing great joy whenever her sincere smile is given back to me.

Dear Father in Heaven, please bless my friends with peace in their lives. More than anything, please give them a full sense of your love for them.

"I met the devil and I stared her in the eyes. Her hair had scales like silver serpents; I, a statue, stood there mesmerized. I took the fire escape and made it out alive. Yeah, I still burn from time to time, but I have a healing hand against my side"

So blogger has a problem with "referrer spam", which is where some dirtbag on the internet has a bot view your page a few hundred times a day. This fools noobs into visiting that site and becoming victim to whatever the site contains.

It's not too hard to tell which sites are fake and which are real, because many of the fake sites will just hit you with like 2 or 300 views simultaneously in less than a second. Also, it's pretty safe to assume that if you don't recognize the site, it may not be legitimate. But it's frustrating because usually I only expect like 12-20 people to read, and it clutters my stats hardcore. There's no way to exclude the sites from your stats. If your blog is too small or has too small of a viewership then your voice doesn't have much weight on the Google forums, but if your blog is huge and has huge viewership then a few hundred extra views doesn't matter that much.

Yeah, that all sucks and stuff, but the point of this blog is to say, I was really humbled by an exchange I had on the forums with one of Google's "top-contributors". The guy, http://blogging.nitecruzr.net , has been operating on blogger since 2005. He's also pretty well informed about the way blogger works in general. I've got to hand it to him, he's doing a great job helping people.

I've been on blogger since spring 2010, when I was assigned to make a blog by my freshman English professor. She was pretty cool. Before blogger, I was on Xanga since... maybe 2003? 2004? It was freshman year highschool, when I started blogging in order to keep better touch with one of my friends. Blogging has become one of my primary means of stress management. 

I don't blog for anyone else's reading pleasure, but I don't keep my thoughts to myself.... I guess.... I blog for the following reasons:

a) It forces me to organize my thoughts in a manner understandable by humans, including myself.

b) It encourages me to measure my ideas against my perception of public opinion -- so the whole world is holding me accountable.

c) Knowing that my thoughts are available to anyone who looks hard enough to find them liberates me from a certain kind of insecurity. I have no room to wonder, "will I still be accepted if someone knows me very well?" It's like taking a leap of faith. In order to make the leap, you have to come to terms with the fact that there's nothing you can do to change the outcome of the leap once you've taken it. Now that I am on the internet, the consequences of people knowing my thoughts are out of my control.

But I've had my blog for so long that b and c are almost not applicable to the continuance of my blog. If I want to make a difference, I may have to reshuffle my whole blog: get a better layout; decide on a theme that has appeal; write about things other than my own situation. I'm almost afraid that choosing a theme will stifle my motivation for blogging. I'll consider this for a while. I need to answer the following questions:

1. Do I want to add an external agenda to my blog?

2. What is my goal? What is the difference that I want to make?

3. Can I make that goal interesting and worth reading for outsiders? How?

4. Is the goal something I want to make apparent immediately? or do I sell-out for viewership and then let my goal drift-in when I've established myself?

5. Again, is this something I want to spend my time on? Is it something I can commit to?

If there's no legitimate difference for me to attempt to make, then there's no point for me to blog with any external appeal.

Oh well, it's getting pretty late. I need to sleep.

"Work on your blog, and get real traffic."

So I can't speak for everything the Black Eyed Peas produce, but I really like this song:

I could listen to it over and over. It's a bitter-sweet anthem for the united states. It talks about love that's not sexual, but kind, gentle, respectful, and honest. Where is that?

After all, God determines whether we live or die in any case. If I can protect anything, then God will give me the opportunity and ability to do so. I can't let myself be stretched thin looking out for the people I love. Can I love everyone? Is it safe for me to allow myself to be genuinely concerned for every person I meet? Am I even capable of really loving just one person with real, selfless love? If I can't do that, then how can I be useful to the greater good of humanity? Can I be sure that you'll be respected? Can I really pass the burden of your protection on to God?

It's kindof like electing Ron Paul for President. I know plenty of people who'd love to have done it, but they didn't vote for him because they "didn't think he'd win". I can't be kind to just everyone, because they won't be kind to me. They can't be kind with me, because they know that others won't be kind to them. Where does it start?

Sometimes I think I'd rather be naive, kind to everyone, and constantly suffering injustice, instead of "street smart", "wise", concerned for myself, and full of ignorance! Ignorant of the regret that I would be suffering if I only knew the good I could have done.

What a waste of life we're living!!! What uselessness!! We're all so fake and worthless!! I used to think that life was pointless because I felt powerless, like it was impossible for me or anyone else to make an impact on the world. Now I know that life is pointless, because I am unwilling to make an impact on anyone.

I'm so angry just thinking about how much we're being lied to by our culture. How long I have been tricked into thinking that love is impossible! Yeah, what if I get beaten, killed, or much worse things? At least I did what was loving, and I acted with incredible destructive force; the violent wrath of His Love and Forgiveness -- the forgiveness that crushes worldviews and breaks world governments at their knees. This is forgiveness that we can give to each other in our own lives! Nobody will accept this idea. Apathy will never stop. I don't expect to change anything about the way the world operates, but dammit I will not give up Love in my life for fear of my surroundings!

""Easy as pie""

I don't like to debate.

What's doubt, really? A worldview is such a large thing; how can anyone keep their whole worldview in their immediate frame of reference at any time?

My excuses are worthless. I'm consistently disappointed by how irresponsible I am. God created us for so much more than what I've done. Am I fulfilling my purpose? Nobody really knows. I'm a shade of black in a dream about nothing.

Somehow, however, God remembers me. Jesus offers me a couch to sleep on and says something a little more accommodating than, "You can stay here as long as you're looking for a job.".

I hate debate. Everyone's beliefs are so deeply buried in them that they won't be changed.
If you can convince me that I'm wrong, maybe it's because I'm wrong.

"That's a dangerous thought." Is it?
"Don't be pulled away." From what?
"Be careful in your search." For truth?
Why isn't everyone encouraging doubt in their own minds in order to strengthen themselves and avoid ignorance? I'm so sick of hearing people get offended by opinions that disagree with theirs. Who the hell are you or I to tell anyone that they are wrong?! (Except that "I'm *obviously* right"...) The sooner people realize that all the human knowledge that exists is "best-guess", the better.

I can't compare my emotions to other people's emotions anymore. Each time I present an idea to my friends, they call me weird. I used to recreate my thoughts and feelings in order to develop ideas about the reasons people do the things they do, but now I'm beginning to think I missed the train that everyone else boarded. Is it valuable for me to continue introspecting to build a reference for my worldview?

If "I think" is the only evidence I have that "I am", then my thoughts and perceptions are the only things I can build a worldview on. If my thoughts are not the thoughts of the rest of humanity, then my worldview is not applicable to others on a personal level, and might not be valuable for development of interpersonal skills. So, the value of knowing myself exists entirely in understanding my "coping" methods. Emotions are unavoidable consequences of having a brain, and ignoring them leads to all sorts of deterioration of our physical self. Adequate coping methods are as necessary to survival as shelter or tools.

Is there a point, then, where development of self-awareness via introspection begins to yield diminishing returns? I guess only if you're weird. Everyone I know thinks that they're weird.

"is it true? is it helpful? is it important? is it necessary? is it kind?"

Well I did it. It went by a lot faster than I expected. 4 years of collecting games, and probably weeks or months solid off of my life in total.

It's time to be an adult. It's time to take my work seriously and make loose composure my earthly refuge.

I uninstalled all my games except one. I only kept Baduk (Go). That was because playing that one is productive, and in a lot of ways too difficult to be considered video gaming.

...

I'm considering deleting it too, just to be complete, but I really, honestly don't think it'll be a problem. Playing that against the computer is so difficult that it's a chore.

I don't know how to feel about myself now.

I'm not ready for bed yet.

I'm gonna make some tea.

And read a book.

"I spoke my peace. I spoke with the wrath of His grace."

I got XNA to work. Here's my thoughts...

Now I know this is going to make me sound a little bit like a flake.... but......

I have..*counting*...~97 video games on my computer. Most of them I never play, but I keep them because I don't have any way to install them again and they have a little bit of nostalgia value. The number of video games that I play regularly is 3. The question is: if I uninstall the addicting ones, will I immediately become addicted to other, older ones?

Idk... some of those games are going to be very hard to come by in the future.

Therefore, I'm thinking I'll just uninstall the problem game. That game is Smite. This would be a much easier decision if I were the only one who played it, but it's the only game that me and my roommate play together. If I uninstall it, then it's going to remove one of the big things I have in common with my roommate. (kinda sad, huh?)

When I talk to Chowon next I'll ask her opinion about it, and maybe command her to command me to uninstall the big ones, haha. ... but then again, maybe I'll uninstall all of them. idk.

Having XNA is exciting, though. My C# with Game libraries is rusty. I read the MSDN about 3 years ago.

The networks project that I'm working on was due last week, but I've asked around the class and it appears that nobody has finished it successfully, and many of them just turned it in unfinished. I really hate the thought of that... Most everyone has the same problem, and someone told me the problem has something to do with the LeTU firewall. At any rate, there's another project due tomorrow... I'll talk to the prof about it.

In other news, Happy Halloween!