Ad Alta: To the Summit

Jealousy and Empowerment

adalta — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 07:55:29 +0000

It is nights like these where I am destined to write. I have no clear target in mind. The late evening began with a knotting of sheets, an inability to fall into the subconscious. I’ve been thinking lately. I’m wondering if I should become a journalist. I’ll be honest. I’m at the stage in my life where there are many unknowns. I find myself wondering which religion I want to follow, which political views to have, and what overarching view on life (if any) I should possess. while these have always been lingering thoughts, more recently they have become most troubling. Recently being the past year or so. Perhaps it was because of my leap into military training, which in a way made so much sense, yet on the other hand seemed so out of character for myself.

I know when I am having an internal conflict for a few reasons. First, I’m foggy. I’m grumpy. I can’t converse with someone without immediately arguing the contrary, fully believing that is my true stance, which may not be the case. The second is insecurity strengthens. All of a sudden, another life is more valuable or more productive than my own. While this is a healthy pressure when it is genuine, I have been measuring up to a person that is, truly inferior to my aims. Whatever that means. Let’s just say the jealousy is not justified.

One thing I do know about myself is that I enjoy asking questions. I love to learn about subjects often merely for the sake of conversation. I don’t like burying myself too deeply in a project, for I get bored easily. It seems as if my transient nature is not only reflected in my constant moving around physically, but also mentally. I need something fast paced, ever developing, changing, and enriching. I’m not sure if my wanting to become a journalist is the smartest thing at this point in time. Is it merely the wish to be listened to? To have the chance to validate my opinions? I do not know, but it has been far too long since I’ve allowed myself to dream again.

Advice from the seemingly endless number of internet writers advises me to start a blog to narrow my focus. Perhaps I could report on the things going on in the Middle East. About our policy, about the apparent flaws I find. It is a subject I am naturally attracted to. Maybe I could do that. Perhaps this would test my dedication.

adalta — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:57:59 +0000

i’ve gotta get out of here. i’ve got to run until the breath leaves my lungs, leaving me content or dead.

Those Nights.

adalta — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 02:31:19 +0000

It’s one of those nights where negativity looms in the space around your head. A dreadful knowing that the tasks before…..well fuck.

I’ts just one of those nights.

Where no matter who you call, what you eat, how little you sleep, the fog remains.

Perhaps it is not the paint or the gun, maybe it is the art and the drive intertwined.

adalta — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 21:06:46 +0000

Life is shifting.

It’s a definite life shift.

A need to embrace the things I love in order to succeed at my challenges.

The human can only sustain so much failure, so much pity, so much suffering.

Perhaps I need to be alone. This is the time to be alone. To thrive, to discover, to want, to yearn and then, if it is appropriate, the mirror neurons of my brain and another with connect in a hammock of love.

Until then, life is, as it should be, full of the ups and downs. The sleep deprivation for the sake of art, for achieving success, but not too much success.

Because sometimes there is beauty in the mediocrity, the sacrifice of one driven effort for the beauty of two.

Be what you want to, baby. Do what you want to.

From this point on, this life is mine, my run, my ecstasy, my failure, my emotions.

Frustration

adalta — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 12:52:19 +0000

I’m having trouble going through with the research of my paper because of my lack of confidence from various sources. I believe the motivations, successes, and brain power of others is interfering with my ability to succeed. Is it that I have to be the most successful at everything I do than others around me? No, not necessarily. At least I hope such is not true. But I must infer that a single individual can only withstand a certain amount of inferiority before they reach a sluggish state, frozen in a stick slime of inferiority complex which makes each and every step towards a target distracted, difficult, and depressing.

My need for change is a need to escape. If I were to enroll in an art school, would things change? Would the prodigal artists surrounding me intimidate me just the same? Would this building pressure continue to rise, rise, rise until some temporary enjoyment distracts me or a project is messily repaired to mediocrity? Such questions arise, yet the answer is quite clear. It does not matter where I go, or what my major is, there will always be someone of a higher ability and mental capacity.

So why care? It is something I desperately need to overcome. The poison from these feelings permeates my life and its many outlets. Others’ perception of myself has increased significantly, at it is pure acid through my veins. No matter how many promising sunrises I may wake up for, the tumultuous storm of self-doubt will remain until I rid myself of this filth. What to do? How to succeed? Why overcome?

I want to be a hardworking individual. Because it feels damn good to have it all done, to be ahead, to wither away layers of negativity and stress. As soon as those layers peel away, perhaps I will be more open to life, to love, to the many channels of art which my hand may produce.

Start working.

TheBlabb.

adalta — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:06:38 +0000

The inner energy which I am attempting to capture before it disappears stems from my desperate need to develop a paper topic that will actually benefit my struggling mind. I have never found a paper topic I was truly interested in…nothing that i wanted to pour over books for. Perhaps that is not my style of writing, yet, nonetheless it needs to be developed. My want of taking advantage of the limited time on this Earth is sometimes paralyzing. I feel as if the older I get, the less the ideas come, and the more I lose hope in the fact that I can actually change the situation around me. My life is swamped with politics, internships, and military forces which are, at times, extremely rewarding, but I want and need change. I need change. I always need change. Because I can’t stick with anything. I was born in a world of research paper writers when all of my genius lasts the length of a million short stories. I want this paper to force me to read the literature that makes my quotation book overfill, I do not care if it matters to anyone but me, I want it to change something inside me. Am I being to ambitious? Perhaps. What if I do not want to influence anyone? Does that make this unpleasing? What if I want mere expression. What if I am the expressive type? Is this avoiding failure? We will see.

http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/contents.php

adalta — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:11:20 +0000

The Contents of Your Daily Life How many hours a day do you spend in front of a television screen? A computer screen? Behind an automobile windscreen? All three screens combined? What are you being screened from? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? Is watching things as exciting as doing things? Do you have enough time to do all the things that you want to? Do you have enough energy to? Why? And how many hours a day do you sleep? How are you affected by standardized time, designed solely to synchronize your movements with those of millions of other people? How long do you ever go without knowing what time it is? Who or what controls your minutes and hours? The minutes and hours that add up to your life? Are you saving time? Saving it up for what? Can you put a value on a beautiful day, when the birds are singing and people are walking around together? How many dollars an hour does it take to pay you to stay inside and sell things or file papers? What can you get later that will make up for this day of your life? How are you affected by being in crowds, by being surrounded by anonymous masses? Do you find yourself blocking your emotional responses to other human beings? And who prepares your meals? Do you ever eat by yourself? Do you ever eat standing up? How much do you know about what you eat and where it comes from? How much do you trust it? What are we deprived of by labor-saving devices? By thought-saving devices? How are you affected by the requirements of efficiency, which place value on the product rather than the process, on the future rather than the present, the present moment that is getting shorter and shorter as we speed faster and faster into the future? What are we speeding towards? Are we saving time? Saving it up for what? How are you affected by being moved around in prescribed paths, in elevators, buses, subways, escalators, on highways and sidewalks? By moving, working, and living in two- and three-dimensional grids? How are you affected by being organized, immobilized, and scheduled rather than wandering, roaming freely and spontaneously? Scavenging? (Shoplifting?) How much freedom of movement do you have–freedom to move through space, to move as far as you want, in new and unexplored directions? And how are you affected by waiting? Waiting in line, waiting in traffic, waiting to eat, waiting for the bus, waiting to urinate–learning to punish and ignore your spontaneous urges? How are you affected by holding back your desires? By sexual repression, by the delay or denial of pleasure, starting in childhood, along with the suppression of everything in you that is spontaneous, everything that evidences your wild nature, your membership in the animal kingdom? Is pleasure dangerous? Could danger be joyous? Do you ever need to see the sky? (Can you see many stars in it any more?) Do you ever need to see water, leaves, foliage, animals? Glinting, glimmering, moving? Is that why you have a pet, an aquarium, houseplants? Or are television and video your glinting, glimmering, moving? How much of your life comes at you through a screen, vicariously? If your life was made into a movie, would you watch it? How do you feel in situations of enforced passivity? How are you affected by a non-stop assault of symbolic communication–audio, visual, print, billboard, video, radio, robotic voices–as you wander through a forest of signs? What are they urging upon you? Do you ever need solitude, quiet, contemplation? Do you remember it? Thinking on your own, rather than reacting to stimuli? Is it hard to look away? Is looking away the very thing that is not permitted? Where can you go to find silence and solitude? Not white noise, but pure silence? Not loneliness, but gentle solitude? How often have you stopped to ask yourself questions like these? Do you find yourself committing acts of symbolic violence? Do you ever feel lonely in a way that words cannot even express? Do you sometimes feel yourself ready to LOSE CONTROL?

wipe out

adalta — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:10:31 +0000

this is how im getting rid of my boredom

1. i’m going vegan.

2. i’m walking. a lot.

3. i’m playing guitar.

4. i’m thrift store shopping.

5. i’m cooking.

6. i’m reading german.

7. i’m updating more common place.

what i know

adalta — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:52:08 +0000

all that i know is when i move into a new house, i look for the best way to get fresh air. i open the windows wide and face the frosbite cold wind just to have the feeling of outside. all i know is that the trees and my own to feet provide me comfort and unbelievable relief from all things that are heavy. i know that i want to be set in my ways philosophically in order to help others develop theirs and to be influenced in the most productive way. i dont want to be a sea of theories floating around, ready to be fished out when the situation arises or the crowd agrees. i want to be a pillar, a beam of personal progress and self confidence that is steadfast in my ways.

if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you

but make allowance for their doubting, too.

that another key phrase that i want to be following. one thing i can be sure about. i find comfort in nature.

adalta — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:42:46 +0000

i did art. and its sexy. and i love it.