Love and Friends

I’ve never been in love. At least I don’t think I have. What is love really? I believe that there is a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone. I mean I love my good friends more than probably anything in this world, but I’ve never actually been in love with anyone. Maybe what I felt in my lifetime was just lust, but feelings don’t always make sense. They say that the heart wants what the heart wants… I don’t know if I believe in that. One time while my friend was talking about his girlfriend of over 2 years, I asked him, so what is love like? He tells me, “Have you ever been to Cedar Point? Well love is like that one wooden roller coaster there.” He said that, you want to go on it even though it is kind of sketchy and there are times on that roller coaster that are a lot of fun, but then again it also can get painful.  I just looked at him and thought he was a genius. I mean even though I’ve never felt a love like that before, I could understand that. I mean I’ve seen love like that before.

            In my life I dated a few girls, but never had a serious girlfriend. One of the strangest dating things was when I was a senior in high school. I’m lucky that I got out when I did because I found out she was kind of crazy. The funny thing is that me dating her started off as a joke. I played football and she was a cheerleader. So one day me being stupid I just looked at her and said, “Hey girl, you sitting with me at team dinner?” She got this really confused look on her face, and then said, “If you want me to…” Well later that night we had that team dinner. She didn’t sit with me so me being stupid again I walked up sat beside her and chatted her up. As a side note I’m not normally the type of guy that does this, or at least I’m not good at it, but I have days where I’m more outgoing then others. Yeah I know I’m strange. After all this she began to want to talk to me more and let me know she was into me, and I was like this is weird. I didn’t really want anything to do with a relationship at the time. It ended pretty fast.

            I also remember in my senior year in high school I made a lot more friends and started to grow apart from some other ones that were once best friends. I don’t really know how it happened, but in my senior year I became more popular. I think it was because I was on video announcements and people thought I was funny. More people wanted to be my friend, and I welcomed it. I remember though that the crew that I hung out with for most of my high school life and a lot from before that started to leave me out of things. I never really understood why, but honestly at my current state I could care less. They have disappointed me a number of times and I honestly believe them to no longer be my friends.

            The people that I love most in my life are the best friends that I made while I’ve been in college, and like 2 people from my hometown. I mean they make me feel so much happier. They are the best people to hang out with, and they always seem to have my back. I’ve been through a lot with these people and I don’t know what I’d do without them. I know that in my life friendship is one of the most important things in my life. I’ve always been good because of the friends that were with me along the way. Man, I know that I would lay down my own life for these people. I’ve always liked to help and do nice things for my friends because that is what always makes me feel good. They say that you determine your own happiness, and I believe this to be true in most parts, but I know that having friends like I have has made being happy a whole heck of a lot easier.

            Just sitting down and talking with my friends is even great. I mean we go out and do fun things together, but when you can connect with somebody on more of a personal level I believe that it makes friendships much more stronger. I remember having conversations with my one of my friends about our past experiences and how similar they were or the time I talked with another one of my friends and we talked about how we were going to move to a beach and start a shop that sells tanks, and then with the money we make from that we were going to make a documentary about looking for buried treasure in the ocean, and I would be the boat captain because I've always wanted to be one. Then eventually become really wealthy. I figure I want to live on a beach in the future because I talked to another one of my friends saying how we wanted to live next to each other on the beach and have parties by our houses.

            Friends are the most important things to me because friends are what keep me going in life. I know that I can call up this select few of people and they will be there because we are friends. I know there was a time that it was hard to tell if people were my friends. Like I knew they were my friend, but I wasn’t sure if I was their friend. I learned that these people were just fake and I had no need for them to even be my friend, especially because I have some real good best friends. I know that we will stay in contact even though it’ll be hard over this summer. I will need to see them because I’ve spent an entire school year with these people and it is going to be hard to not see them for an entire summer. Plans have already been made for things to do this summer with my friends, and I’m sure new plans will be made. I’m planning on visiting someone from college when I’m not with my parents or working over this summer. 

College

As the year is coming to a close I’ve been looking back at my first year in college and kind of reminiscing on how good it really was. Sure it started out kind of rough, but know that I’ve been here I’m so glad that I made the decision to come to the Ohio University. At the beginning of the year you know I wasn’t too happy about being here. I was kind of sad. I had a few friends from my home that I missed. It was hard for me. Especially since before college I was never away from home for longer than a week and a half. Also I’ve never really been good at making new friends. I mean a lot changed from my senior year in high school, but after this year in college I feel like a whole new man. At the beginning of the year I didn’t leave my room too much, but when I did is when I really started to live my life. I did some fun things made a lot of good friends.

            I remember this one time when I wasn’t really feeling like going out, but I was convinced. While we were walking I saw these large nuts lying on the ground. I picked one up and just looked up. I see this pole that was in front of me. I started thinking you know I got pretty good aim, I want to see if I can hit this pole with the nut. I reached back and threw this nut as hard as I could. I didn’t have as good of aim as I thought I did because when I let go I saw, as it was not flying towards the pole. Actually it flew right towards some kid walking in the street. This nut absolutely railed him right in the back of the head. The kid turned around and looked for the person that had hit him in the head. I hid in the group of people that I was with, but my friends pointed me out and told him it was I. The kid looked over and I was like, man I’m real sorry my aim isn’t so good right now. He initially looked as if he wanted to fight, but after I apologized he cooled off a bit. I was like hey here’s a dollar. I honestly don’t know why I gave him a dollar, but he thought that I was really drunk because he was like hey how about two dollars. I said no man on dollar is enough and then he walked away.

            I’m not saying that what I did was always the right thing at the time, and I’ve done some questionable things at times. They may have been questionable, but that doesn’t mean that it was loads of fun! You know they say you only live once…. actually I hate the phrase Y.O.L.O. so I’ll stop right there. I remember going out on nights, making a ton of late night Good Fellas runs, going to Courtside on slice night, or even just hanging out with my friends in the dorm.

            I remember the first time that I went to Courtside on slice night it was really crowded. I went with a few of my friends. Between my friend and I we would constantly be counting the number of people we knew from outside of our dorm. I believe I won the competition. We also had a good time picking out the girls that we white girl wasted. I remember that night I even saw a girl from my high school dancing on top of a table. A lot of the basketball team and a few from the football team where there. They walked around like they owned the place, and a lot of the girls would be making their way to them to introduce themselves. I mean it’s understandable because well they are like the most famous people in this town.

            When Fest season came around I was really excited. I heard a lot of good things about these fests. When High Fest came around I went out and was ready to have fun, but as I went up and down High street I was generally disappointed. It was like most house parties, but there were more people. The thing these parties had in common with the usual house parties was that it was hard for a male to get into them, but I was told it was easier when it was earlier. I guess I should have gotten there earlier. When Palmer fest was in coming up I told myself that I would be ready and go early. I went with more friends so it was already more fun. I remember just chilling at houses, and seeing people that I haven’t talked to in a while. Then it was really great when everything started to get crazy when the house was on fire I had a house that I could seek shelter in. I was grateful to have my friend know the owner. I even had fun during the weekend at oak and mill fest even though I was hardly on the streets for long. I bought my ticket for 9fest and I was so pumped. It was great I got up close and got to see Chip the Ripper and even got to meet DJ Ev near the end of the performance.

            All in all I am glad that I could share these experience with the people that I believe to be my best friends. These are the memories that I will never forget for the rest of my life. I know that there are going to be even more great things that are in store for me here, and I hope to make more memories as my college life goes on. I learned to live my life in the moment and I honestly believe that it makes it so much more great. 

Dreaming While Sleeping

In life there are many things that are strange. One of these things that I find strange are dreams. Dreams have always been interesting to me. I was told that you always have a dream, but why can’t you always remember them. I’ve gone what seems like months without ever waking up with a solid dream in mind. Also in my life though I have had some dark and crazy things happen in my dreams. Most of the dreams that I remember are some that bad things happen. I even at one point hopped on the internet to look what certain things in dreams meant. I get that into dreams. Maybe this is why the movie “Inception” is near the top of my favorite movies of all time. I once spent an entire night researching dream walking similar to what they did in the movie. I’m not one that really believes that is possible, but it was very interesting the things that I found in my research. Who knows maybe one day these types of things will be possible. Although, that may be a little scary if someone could enter your dreams, because that’s some Freddy Krueger stuff. It seemed like the more website that I looked at the more strange things people had done to try and walk into other people’s dreams. Somebody posted how you are supposed to focus on a person you want to dream walk to and fall asleep in an office chair while it’s spinning. Others said you need to take this special plant and cook it like a tea and drink the watery mixture. All in all I think most of these people are probably crazy, but it still interests me because I think it is cool.

            I remember this one dream that I had once, and in it I heard a news report that kids were being “abducted” from the playground area mostly closer to the nighttime. So one night I decided to do some detective work on my own and I went down to the playground. I did some looking around and while I was doing so I thought I saw something move in the forest area on the one side of the playground. As I made my way over to the forest area I hear someone behind me. I turn to look and there is a small kid asking me what I am doing. I tell the kid that I am just looking around. The kid is interested and he stands beside me as I look into the woods. I thought I saw something move again so I move closer. When I look really hard and don’t see anything move I turn to the kid to tell him to go home so I can leave. As I turn to look at the kid something dark pulls him into the woods. I take off after this shadow type creature running as fast as I can. I decide to take an angle thinking that I know the path that it is taking. I want to cut it off. It actually works and I inch closer and closer. As I reached my hand out to grab the creature, it abruptly stops turns around and grabs me by the throat. At this exact moment is when I wake up from my dream out of breath.

            I find it odd that in a lot of dreams you wake up when something unexpected happens, or when you die. A lot of times if it never has happened to you in life than you don’t know what to expect of it in a dream so you wake up I guess. Although I know in my life there have been some times where things happened in my dream that have or couldn’t happen in real life. Once I even had a dream than woke up to find it happening in real life, it was some crazy déjà vu. Sometimes you have reoccurring dreams and other times it is just a new story, but they are always interesting. I even had a dream once where I wasn’t the hero of the story, which is something that is not normal.

            Yet the most intense dream that I have ever had started out with me in a diner. I was wearing a business type suit and I had a badge and a gun because I was an actual detective. I had a partner with me that was a black man that was a little taller than me. We were in the diner investigating a recent crime. My partner was talking to the customers in the diner, and I was talking to the waitresses behind the counter. As I’m talking to the waitresses I hear a commotion coming from behind me. I turn to look I and see a man turn my partners gun back to him. As I see this I immediately pull my gun and point it at this man, because I don’t want my partner hurt. I yell for this man to put the gun down, because I hesitated to pull the right away. The man with the gun quickly points the gun at me and fires three shots. Two bullet hit in my chest near each of my shoulders and the third hit me in the lower right side of my stomach. Normally a person would wake up from being shot, but I continued to dream, and feel what seemed like I was actually being shot in real life. I ended up pulling the trigger on this man, and killed him with a shot to the head. I stumble forward and look to the woman behind the counter and tell her to call 9-1-1 and pass out within my dream. Next thing you know I am coming back into consciousness within my dream and I look up as lights go by. I look to my left and right and there are doctors looking forward and looking down with panicked looks on their faces. I look down at my chest and I see blood all over and coming from where I was shot. I pass out again from within my dream. Next thing you know I’m back to consciousness within the dream again and I was in a wheelchair outside in a courtyard wearing a robe and pants. I open my robe a bit to see bandages. I peeled the bandages back and I had bullet wounds on my body. This is when I actually woke up from the dream. When I arose from my sleep my chest hurt really badly, especially at the places where I was shot in my dream. It was almost like I had actually been shot. I could talk what would probably be a really long time about dreams, but for now this is all.

Random Animation

Photoshoppin

For this photo this first photo I started adjusting exposure, contrast, saturation, definition, highlights, shadows, sharpness, de-noise, temperature, and tint. This made it so the image looked like there was almost a purple/night looking sky, with a green glow around the girl. I  thought it would then be cool if she was in an alien invasion so I added spaceships in the background.

For this photo I again started with adjusting the exposure, contrast, saturation, definition, highlights, shadows, sharpness, and de-noise. After I did this I then thought it would be somewhat funny if this mans accomplishment of making to the top of that cliff was looked down upon by the birds. He also looks like he is king of those birds now.

In this final photo I mainly adjusted the exposure, contrast, saturation, temperature, and tint. The changing in temperature and tint helped it change the color green. The image kind of looked spooky so I added a creepy looking ghost to the photo.

Sports Injuries

            I have always had a love for sports. Throughout my life I played all kinds of sports like, football, basketball, lacrosse, baseball, softball, soccer, racquetball, volleyball, golf, and tennis. The sports that I played for my school was football, basketball, and lacrosse. Those are my favorite sports. When it came to practice I would always try to be the hardest working person on the team. I pushed so hard. Some say that I went too hard.

            It all started back when I was in seventh grade. I went to block the defender on the opposing team in football. When the one defender turned to two, I tried my hardest to block them both. My hand ended up getting stuck in between the two of them, and my hand got bent back. Suddenly I got this strong feeling of pain. I stepped back because the play had ended. I looked at my hand and it was just dangling at the wrist. I started to scream and I yelled to my coaches, holding my arm in the air, I think it’s broken! My coaches told me to lie down so the referees could call a timeout. I stood on the sidelines icing my wrist until the game was finished. And I told my parents I think we should go to the hospital. I had broken my first bone. They casted me up and sent me back into the world. Little did I know this would just be the first of multiple injuries in the future.

            My eighth grade year I sprained my ankle while I was trying to tackle the running back, and my freshman year I did the same thing to my other ankle. My sophomore year I was in as a tackle when my quarterback threw an interception. Their team turned into a blocking formation, but I saw the ball carrier and I was focused on tackling him. I ran as fast as I could and suddenly I saw an opponent coming towards me. When he went to block me my left foot was planted in the ground, and it got hyperextended. I hoped stepped and soon realized that I couldn’t put weight on my leg and I rolled off the field and directly on the trainer’s table. I soon was told that there wasn’t that big of a problem, but I had to sit out of football for a week and go to physical therapy.

            After working through physical therapy I got back to sports, and lasted all the way until lacrosse season. During lacrosse season I started to have some pain in my shoulders. It continued so I decided that I would see a doctor. The doctor told me that I had some instability in my shoulders with tendentious in my rotator cuffs. I had to yet again go back to physical therapy to strengthen my shoulders.

            I worked as hard as I could in the off-season to get back to playing for football season. I made it in to two-a-days and I started to feel a strong pain in my right foot. I went to the trainer and she told me that she didn’t think it was too serious. I continued for two of these two-a-days and I finally said this is way too much pain to be having. I went to the doctor and they told me that I had a stress fracture in my foot. This injury put me on crutches, and had me out until the last four games of the season.

            After football season I played basketball and developed some back pain. I found out that I had strained a muscle in my back. I had to go to see a chiropractor and the chiropractor told me that I had two vertebrae in my back and my neck that didn’t move like they were supposed to, and this could also add to some of the pain that I was having. After basketball season was over I decided that I was going to skip out on my lacrosse season to try and give my body a break.

            While I was working out in the off-season getting ready for football, I didn’t have the luck in staying healthy. During a agility workout I landed wrong on my leg and it hyperextended again. It hurt really bad and this time I actually got an MRI on my knee. They told me that I had a chronic tear in my ACL and that I had tore both of my menisci. They looked at my medical history, and told me that they probably made a mistake when looking at my knee the first time. Because this was a chronic tear means that it was probably a problem for a long time. They told me that I probably had a partial tear in my ACL and I was continually tearing that until I finished it off. I had to undergo surgery, and I was on crutches and back to physical therapy yet again.

            This put me out for most of my senior year in high school, but then when it came to summer I still wanted to exercise. The only thing that was the problem with this was that I was again having pain in my shoulders. It seemed to be getting worse even though I was still doing the exercises that my physical therapist told me to do for the rotator cuff tendonitis. I went to the doctor yet again and they told me that I should get this thing called an MRA. An MRA is where I would get one MRI go to an x-ray machine so I could get a shot of this dye directly put into the shoulder joint then I got another MRI. I got this done on both shoulders. The news was that I tore both of the labrums in my shoulders, and I had to get surgery on both of them.

            I have had a lot of problems with injuries in my life. I always have gotten through them. I had 4 surgeries in 2 years with 4 years of physical therapy. I’m glad to say that I’m nearing the end of my time at physical therapy and I’m hoping to have a good bill of health for a long time.