Xanga Nostalgia

A friend posted on Facebook about her day off and how she was bombarded by solicitors at home that don't sell girl scout cookies. I remembered an old comic strip about religious solicitors that I shared on my blog awhile back and wanted to find that specific image.

So I fired up my dying 4 year old external hard drive to find the picture. Instead, I found my archived Xanga posts and photos. Even better.

It was no use. Clicking on the html files shows the bare writing without my original Xanga layouts. So that reminded me of the Wayback Machine.

I searched for my original Xanga URL - xanga.com/stupid_systemus. The earliest archived post was from 2005. This is what it looked like...

This perfectly sums up what I'm going through now. The Wayback Machine only took a few snapshots of my Xanga, but it was enough for me to binge on nostalgia. I 've always prided myself in having near perfect recollection of past events, but I've read accredited claims that when you remember past events, you're actually remembering the last time you remembered it. So I either have perfect recollection or my memory of past events keep changing.

Going through my posts, I imagined what I was like at the time.

Why I wrote that post...
Why I chose that layout...
Who commented the most on my posts...
How I wrote the way I did...
Was I generally happy, sad...
Was I hiding something...
What happened to me now...

In 2005, my subscribers were mostly college friends. My updates detailed college courses, weekend activities and sharing stuff I found online. That time period was formative for most people new to blogging... or the Internet for that matter. We were still trying to find our online identity/persona... or ourselves. My awkward phase in high school didn't really prepare me to much socializing online and off. I'm ways better now at public speaking and witty banter. Still, speaking is not as suave as the articulated mind.

At the moment, I feel like everything is at a standstill. I'm going through the motions of life... wake up, shower, get dressed, work, lunch with co-workers, head out, shopping, home, dinner, TV/Internet, sleep... repeat. I enjoy the company of my co-workers. At times, I feel so disconnected. It's as if everybody else has their life all mapped out. I had lunch with my co-workers at the office lunch room and I caught myself zoning out. Physically, I was there, but my mind was elsewhere.

Not to cheapen the experience of loss, I went through the same thing for a year after my break up 7 years ago. At the same time, my mind is probably exaggerating everything. It is, after all, past 2 AM (HIMYM reference). Time for some shut eyes.

I'm done.

A father plays poker with his drinking buddies after a long 60-hour work week. A college student goes on an impromptu road trip with his friends on Memorial day weekend. A mother takes her kids to the movies and the park on Saturday. A thirty-something professional goes clubbing on a Friday night. These are a few of many scenarios that people do to keep themselves sane and from getting overwhelmed with work, school, anxiety... life.

This is what we do. This is our getaway from stress. We go on vacations. We go to conventions. We go to parties. We attend concerts. Book readings. Autographs. Premieres. Sports. And more often than not, we take a picture of these precious moments. We want to capture that which made us happy... that which made us forget, even for an instant, the problems in our lives... that which made us remember that this is all worth it, as illusory as that statement may or may not be. We're all in the same boat. Everyone is fighting a battle we know nothing about. So it baffles me when people "rain on others' parade" for their happiness, or perceived "perfect" life.

There's an article being passed around to various outlets stating that Instagram photos are not what they seem. A Thai photographer published a series of photos showing the whole picture of a cropped photo on Instagram. One picture depicts a perfect yoga pose in the cropped out image. The whole picture shows a friend holding the woman to keep her balanced.

Another picture shows a book under a plate of vegetables and rice. The whole picture shows a bowl of ramen noodles and other items on the table.

I understood the point of these pictures and the exaggerated nature of cropping and filtering the images. However, people are using this to justify their disdain on others. They don't like someone because of the pictures they take with their friends or of themselves. They don't like (hate, even) people's vacation photos. Essentially, they don't like pictures of people having fun. For them, these are bragging and fake. These people are quick to deflect evidence of jealousy. But it might as well be... sort of.

People have control on how they should feel about certain things.

Events. Situations. Objects. Pictures.

Your negative feelings towards a person depends on the situation. If they really did do something to warrant your disdain and/or resentment, that's a different issue. If you don't like someone who you barely talk to because of their pictures, how happy they seem to be in said pictures or their captions in said pictures, then these feelings are negative projections from within that you've attached on someone else. It's not jealousy. It's envy.

This is what photography is about: a captured moment in life taken out of context. You set the frame and the shot. The audience projects their own experience to the photo.

If you're one of these people, I guess what I'm trying to say is...

It's not somebody else's fault that you're not happy with your current situation. Everyone has their demons. Just don't lash out, passive-aggressively or otherwise, to others that have something you don't.

I'm done.

The Journey, Beyond Two Souls

How you like that mash-up?

I recently completed Beyond: Two Souls. Last month, I also beat the game Journey. I wanted to do separate reviews, but the themes in these game couldn't be more fitting.

Journey was developed by the same team that created flOw and Flower. The game starts out with what appears to be a shooting star (or a meteor) racing across the sky. The scene pans across the screen overlooking a desert landscape. It cuts to a red-overall, shrouded character, the unnamed protagonist you play, with a red scarf with gold-embroidered designs. There is no dialog in the game. All you have are subtle onscreen prompts on how to control your character.

You encounter these cloth-like materials all over the environment. They seem to be made from the same material as your character's cloak. You can "call" these things with your character's quipping noise that sounds like random staccato-ed cello notes. They gather around your character and allow it to move faster and hover about for a few seconds depending on how long your scarf has gotten.

Of Life's Main Quest

I timed my jumps within milliseconds after the flash of light brightened the area. A bolt of lightning hit the ground shortly, followed by the deafening sound of thunder. That was my 100th consecutive time dodging lightning. I found the perfect area between two iron rods jutting out of the ground to the constant storm in the sky. I could get between 8-10 lightning strikes to the ground before I've dodged myself out safely under one of those iron rods. It takes less than a second before lightning strike follows the flash of light. I needed to do this 100 more times in row without getting hit by lightning in the Thunder Plains. Otherwise, I start over again. Getting 200 lightning dodges in a row unlocks the Venus Sigil, which can be used with the Venus Crest to fully upgrade Lulu's Onion Knight doll and have Break Damage Limit, Triple Overdrive, Magic Booster and One MP Cost.

I never got around to fully upgrading the Onion Knight doll. I only managed to get the Venus Crest, which allowed Shiva, one of Yuna's Aeons, to break the damage limit. There were 7 Celestial weapons for each character in Final Fantasy X. It's been more than a decade since I played this game, but I probably only fully upgraded 5 of them. I put most of my effort to completing other side quests for powerful Overdrives, abilities, accessories and other items to prepare myself for the end game. This also includes collecting more gil, the currency in most Final Fantasy games, and grinding my characters to exhaustive random battles to get them as close, if they were not already, at max level.

This was, or is, the tactic I used since I played my first role-playing game with Final Fantasy VII. I'm sure many other gamers did the same, with or without strategy guides. I always felt that I was getting my money's worth if I did most, if not all, of what the game has to offer. Mind you, this was before they rewarded gamers with XBox achievements and PlayStation trophies. I took these as personal goals. Getting to know the background stories of the characters in the game through side quests was a good bonus as well. I wish I could say the same for me in real life.

I saw a Facebook post with a link to what I think was a picture or just a comic, comparing life to a game. Basically, we do side quests and other unimportant things because we don't want to do the main quest. This hit too close for me. In most of my games, there is a point where I would know most of the story. Before moving on to the next area, I'm given an option to explore. I knew I could go ahead and end the game, but I chose to do side quests. Yes, I'm preparing for the final battle. More often than not, though, I'm always over-prepared.

Take Final Fantasy VII as an example. I didn't need the Knights of the Round summon to defeat Sephiroth for the final battle. I didn't need to get my characters up to level 99. Were the side quests worth it? Of course they were. Spending 30+ hours grinding all my characters close to max level inside the Crashed Gelnika was not worth it. That includes me accidentally overwriting the save file with 30+ hours worth of leveling. I knew I could handle the last battle. That's the difference between these games and real life.

Right now, I'm at the point where I'll have to take the next step. So far, going to work is a chore for me. I don't see myself getting promoted any time soon since I'm only a contractor. I chose to isolate myself from most co-workers. I have nothing in common with them. They're older, married and have kids. The office setting at work just doesn't lend itself to lots of socializing. It's a much different environment from when I worked at my first job. It's been almost a year working for my company and not even once did we do some sort of community service or an end of the year company gathering. Even my mom's job, which is much smaller than my company, have a company outing and retreat every year. It's not like I need it or anything. At least something to keep myself invested.

With friends, it comes and goes. I don't hang out with friends in college as much as I used to. I don't have that many close friends near me. I feel more close to the friends I met online. I have friends from the mall I met through playing Pump it Up over the years. It's a different kind of friendship. They are just as important.

Love life is non-existent. I don't really consider casual flings a love life, but I've been in numerous "flings" just this year alone. The no strings attached arrangement and not seeing each other after is nice, but not what I'd consider always doing in the long run. I want something more concrete. But I've overly digressed.

The point is, unlike a game, I don't know what the next step is. There is no official strategy guide for what I'm about to face. Heck, as a contractor I don't even know if I'll still have a job in two months. I don't know if I'll meet the woman of my life any time soon. I don't know if I'll be reunited with old friends, lose friends or gain new friends. That's why I'm stuck doing side quests. I don't know if I'm overly prepared or just not ready.

The main quest is a scary beast. Conan said it best: "Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you are kind, amazing things will happen." We don't really know what the future has in store for us. Things just happen. The best thing you can do (and something I'll do) is to live life to the fullest and being okay with the uncertainty. Also, "the best course of action is to tread lightly."

I'm done.

Distorted View on Karma

I think people who seem to always get unlucky or the bad end of the stick with life have this distorted view on Karma. When you're down and always think you've never made it, all your hope just disappears and you find yourself becoming bitter and angry. Your entire life view is changed. You lose trust in people. You think that the only person you can really trust is yourself. You start seeing things in this distorted view on Karma. You can't help it. You're the product of your own making. It may be someone else or some event that led you to this point in your life, but it was you who allowed yourself to become this person.