It's an interesting feeling, knowing you're going to be eighteen soon and a whole new set of responsibilities and privileges will be set upon your shoulders. I've wondered lately if maybe I'm not ready for the world beyond high school
Lately I've been battling with more than just OCD. The OCD is well taken care of, but it still lingers in all my actions. I'm used to its presence. It was almost comforting when it kept coming back when I was struggling, knowing it would soon restore order and my life wouldn't be full of all the randomosity it would have without it.
I miss my friends. I talk to them almost every day online or in person. But lately, the conversations just don't exist. It's either a few greetings, seeing what the other is doing at the moment, then silence. My method of conversation is usually saying something is happenign with me, and I usually expect someone to take it from there, talk about their experiences in relation to mine. But not anymore...
I'm talked with myself recently about what to do. Not in any multiple personality sort of way, but like rehearsing a speech infront of your bathroom mirror. I've asked myself, "What do you want out of life?"
Honestly, I wanted peace. To have a set course of action and to go with it without constant interference. Constant changes in my plans due to others' opinions. I want to go some where, move out, leave it all behind, and just... Cry.
When I talk to my friends, it's about my latest interference, what's keeping me from doing something, what's making my heart ache and my head pound. OCD, schoolwork, where to move to, role-playing, my permit, work, some jerk, and so on. It never ends, I believe.
I want to be a little more uplifting with this post, but I realized something. Maybe the conversation can be worked on by both parties, mostly because I do try and say what's on my mind, but people don't add to it. Though to be fair, I do often repeat what I said the night before, just in a different fashion and thinking I've had a 'revalation,' in terms of finding another philosophical way of helping myself.
I often do find those philosophical cures for various problems, but the problems are finding the logic behind them, the reason as to why I should do something. And willpower.
I'm sitting alone online right now, no one to talk to either because they're offline or away. I just wonder about what I should do anymore. I think I'm going to leave for California. It seems nice.
Besides the current nerve-wracker of talking with my friends, my most recent problem has been finding a state I want to live in. I got paranoid, my OCD coming in to play, and I started narrowing what states I'd live in. How this is OCD is that I feel /compelled/ to go, even I don't want to. But then I talked with some friends and realized that normal people pick a place they like, don't think about crime rates, enviroment, economy, cultural avenues, etc. (actually, they do, but once they pick a place and like it, they tend to ignore that stuff if it doesn't appear to be too extreme) and just go.
I did just that last night (err...yesterday morning. It's one o'clock now...) and narrowed it down severely. Michigan wasn't really high on my list in the first place, but it did make it on there. I dropped it first, after looking it up on Wikipedia. Then Colorado and Arizona. I think I dropped one because it seemed boring and hot, the other seemed to be way too extreme in its weather. I don't remember anymore. I think Arizona would be a fun place to visit, but not to live in.
That left Wisconsin, Illinois, Washington, California, and then just staying in my home state of Oregon.
I looked up Wisconsin next. To my surprise it seemed quite pleasent. Cheese state (I love cheese), has a great turn out for Whitetail Deer season (I love venison. Now I seem like a glutton), one of the most bike-friendly cities is there (Milwaukee), high German-immigrant ancestery there (I'm German, it seems to be a perfect place to learn German, which I think I will be doing in the near future), and next to the Great Lakes.
Then I looked up Illinois, mostly for Chicago. Chicago has a college that seems to be the birthplace of, or the first place to teach, sociology. I talked with someone who lived there and goes there frequently. They sadly weren't much help. But listening to my dad, it's in the middle of Tornado V/Alley, so is Wisconsin. This makes for a bit of danger. Not much to really dissuade me, but meh.
The one thing these two have in common is the extreme cold and amazing heat that comes to them. I have an aunt and uncle who lived in Minnesota only just a few years ago for many years. All they say is that it's cold and flat boring. I'm guessing both Wisconsin and Illinois must be something like this. But they did live in the countryside of Minnesota, so I guess it would be a little unfair to take their word for the entire region.
But the element that knocked them off my list of places to possibly live (might be fun to visit a bit, though) was their feel. When I was in OCD mode for this, I went from Maine, Vermont, etc. on down. Now I am selecting places based on what I've heard of them in the past and what I seem drawn too. I am not particularly drawn to the East Coast that much. Really the only place that interest me is New York, but only on a minute level. I feel more comfortable with places on the West Coast.
The Midwest is just a place to me, and it doesn't feel it'll be that rewarding to move there. So now I'm down to Washington, California, and my current home. Illinois and Wisconsin will be future destinations for a vacation or two, though.
Washington has always been a mysterious place to me. I've heard numerous things about Seattle and Bellevue. Seattle has a high Asian population, and from my one visit there, I must concur. That opens up a lot of Asian culture to me, and I love Japanese culture in particular. I feel this would be a great place to move to. Bellevue has been voted one of the top twenty-five safest cities in the United States. And it has several videogame development companies there. The idea of living there seems like a pretty good one to me, mostly because I feel I would fit in with the culture there.
Now California, that's another story. Looking at the top twenty-five safest cities, Washington only had one on the list, New York had three, but California had /nine/. Now that feels good to me. The cities themselves I'm not particularly interested in, but the idea that so many cities there are on that list means something right is being done. Also, I've seen a psychic who said I should move to Los Angeles, make a difference, change the energy of that place. I found out through Wikipedia that California is generally very open to new ways of thinking, so becoming a parapsychologist and doing past-life regression therapy may not be as hard as it would be in Chicago or Milwaukee. Los Angeles also is considered the hub of change to a lot of people. Hollywood is in California, and Los Angeles the second-largest city in the U.S., making for a constantly changing world if I choose to live there. I need constant change or I get bored, so it seems logical.
Oregon is my home, but I only really like Portland and Eugene. Eugene's a college town and Portland the largest city in Oregon. I'd be willing to live in Portland for awhile, then go to Eugene to finish my last two years of college to get my bachelor's. (Plan on going to PCC for my Associate's, since community colleges are cheaper, and why go to an expensive college to get the same classes you can get at a community college at half the price?) I want to travel, so I don't know how long I'd actually stay in Portland, let alone Oregon.
Gah. Life sucks. I'm done ranting.
I actually like life, it's fun and I'm meant to learn from it. But sometimes I wish I could learn the lessons and move on to the next life, one far more fun and interesting. Though I must admit, my life is fairly interesting in its own way.
Meh. Life goes on. I'm thinking California. Seattle is fun to visit and screw around in. Maybe I'll attend community college there. Huh...that's an idea. I've lived in Oregon for eighteen years, I know a lot of it, don't really /want/ to live here except for the idea that it'd be cheaper than living in whole 'nother world, practically. I'd get support from my family and still be around my friends too.
I'm going to think on that a bit more. Washington has a tax when you buy something.
Peace.
David Nilato Community Member 
|
|
