Scattered life

I have a problem. You see, I'd much rather play around with the aesthetics of my blog page than actually blog. If you were a psychologist or a Hindi guru, you'd learn all you need to know just by my color choices. For the rest of you, it's no good. You all need a new post, which means I have to wade around in the swamp of my life, feel around with my feet to find and bring up the small bits of rusted metal, beer bottles, and rubber tires that would make my life seem interesting. So, here's what I dug up this time:

I'm writing a lot of letters these days. Compulsively, I write to everyone. I find it's a little exercise that calms my nerves while I am at work or in church. The only problem is that, when I am finished, I feel like I have wasted the hours that it takes to write them. I have nothing to show for it. The hours are gone, and I feel just as financially destitute, just as uneducated, and just as unfulfilled as before. Writing the letter only changed the position of the hands on the clock. Was writing to someone supposed to be like kissing a frog, only to have my life become miraculously beautiful afterward? I have no idea what my motivation is... but still, I write.

My family life is starting to make me just a little sad. As all of us kids start to grow up, we all think that the other siblings aren't growing as well. So when one makes a decision that seems odd to the others, we all remain convinced that their life would be so much better if they chose differently. Our family culture sometimes turns into one of control; if they're not going to do it our way, we'll withhold or manipulate, hoping that it will change their mind. I'm usually very able to give my family the benefit of the doubt, but not when it comes to this. You see, if there is one deal breaker for me in all types of relationships, it is in lack of respect. There's this attitude that says, "If you only did things my way, you'd be so much happier." It's painfully ignorant, and it makes pain shoot throughout my soul. It makes me want to cry. How can anyone be so sure that, even though there are so many different people in this world with different lives and different circumstances, there is one way to solve a problem, there is one path to success, and there is one way to be happy? People are not wind-up toys.

I think I talk a little too much. I'm going to try sitting on my lips for a while. The people around me are starting to give off little cues that I'm monopolizing the conversation. I can see it in their eyes. Even when people look away, you can still tell if someone is paying attention to you. The people I talk to are thinking about other things in their eyes if I don't lock my responses down to one, short sentence. I probably need to train myself to talk and think in sound bites, like spokesmen do when they don't want to be misquoted on television.

And then, while I was searching for accompanying photos for this blog post, I found these:

An underwater skyscraper

And an underwater tiger. They have no point, but I thought they were interesting.