Hanging Off the Bridge

Hanging Off the Bridge
Originally uploaded by Anthony Topper.

Jess and I went to Richard M. Nixon Park on Saturday. This is my favorite photo from the outing. This shot was from a foot bridge over a creek.

I hung over one side and Jess hung over the other side. Under the bridge was a small dam, which is seen in the bottom half of the photo.

The top area above Jess's head is the bottom of the bridge.

Jess complained that her hair was getting wet.

Sick

Guess what? I have a weeks vacation this week and today I got a fever and my entire body hurts.

Photo Slide Show Experimentation

Well, I found this site: bubbleshare.com that lets you make photo slide shows with audio captions. My buddy Jordan and I wrote eight 30 secondish musical loops, one for each photo. Recording the audio through there site was a major pain. I wish I could have just uploaded an mp3, but *shrugs*

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Rambling

Crap, I've been writing a lot of crap on here lately. All of this altruistic thinking is starting to hurt my brain. I need to lighten up for a while me thinks.

Time off

I've been kind of wondering what I was going to do while I was off work. I need a brain break.

Don't get me wrong I'd love to travel, but I just can't afford to do that right. I'd really like to just get into a slower rythym in my mind. Where it's not racing with so many thoughts; constantly calculating and analyzing.

I am going to sleep soon.

The Cycle

This is the cycle. Suffering. Self-Evaluation. Lofty Expectations of Myself. Discouragement. Small Amounts of Improvements. Contentment.

This is what I've noticed anyway. Budhists say the ultimate goal is to remove desire since if we desire nothing we can not suffer. I say bunk, what is life without desire?

Lust and temperance

I feel like this lust is what is causing my anxiety. I feel death to my spirit if I do not drink of it's gradification. The anxiety makes me physically feel ill. The anxiety causes impatients because I so desperately want the anxiety to go away.

Jealousy occurs when someone else is getting the affection that I used to get. My desire tells me the easiest way to appease the jealousy is to obtain affection elsewhere. Jealousy is rooted in pride and pride says that I deserve affection and I must have it because other people have it. Pride says we must have some of this wonderful affection.

Temperance is the armour as to not partake in lustful activities but it doesn't stop the origination of the feelings from within. Temperance will not last if the source is not dealt with.

When I have affection I do not find myself being insecure about the affection leaving. This is a matter of my own experience. Some people are used to the affection leaving and are very insecure. Usually when security turns to insecurity is when the worst of my anxiety hits me. The emotionally unintelligent situations I've found myself getting into is when this happens. It's usually an emotional problem of the other person that causes them to take their affection away.

On one hand, what I need to do is find an emotionally intelligent and mature partner who has enough temperance and security not to run off and seek their needed affection elsewhere.

On the other hand, I also need to be temperate myself until I find this person as to avoid getting hurt again. This person needs to satisfy me intellectually, physically, spiritually, and emotionally. What happens is I often get lured in when a percentage of these are satisfied. I figure that some of these things can be worked out after the fact, but the truth is that hasn't been the case for me. Sometimes it's taken me years to realize.

My word of wisdom is don't get emotionally involved with someone unless they satisfy you with these four basic qualities. If you find yourself attracted to someone who can meet these but doesn't yet, just encourage them and don't get emotionally involved, be temperant and restrain yourself. In the mean time, don't close the door to other opportunity waiting for someone to change and don't try to fix them. Just be a source of encouragement and good times.

Don't be jealousy because their are plenty of people out there that can be your source of affection. One person at time is the only honest way to be.

There is no shame in being still looking for the right person.

Please people add your thoughts.

Beaten Up

I feel beaten up lately. Trying to analize some aspects of myself. Scrutinizing myself. Looking for motivation. This has been good for me I think but I feel sore now. Too much I need a brief reprieve. I have off work all next week. I have no plans and keep thinking about what I am going to do to lift my spirits.

Anyone got any ideas?

Temperance

Temperance: Moderation and self-restraint, as in behavior or expression.

Temperance is armor against impulseness and impatients. It's clear to me that impulseness and impatients are clearly traits to be scorned. Impatients seems like it's going to be a tougher trait to work against than pride.

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when longing is fulfilled, it is a tree of life."
—Proverbs 13:12

I'm not trying to sound overly pious here. I just see truth where truth is.

Battling My Demons

It is high time to awake out of sleep.

Pride: When I did a search on google for '"battling pride"' nearly all the results where related to scripture in the Bible. There were 331 results for this search. After gathering some wisdom from these results I took a different angle in my search and typed in the word 'humility'. 15,700,000 results appeared. I quickly found an article containing a list of 'Twelve Ways To Humble Yourself'. I adsorbed this list and continued on.

I am making a list that I can pratically apply:
1. Learn to know your wrong doings and talk to other people about them
2. Respond to other peoples accusations with patients
3. Don't seek out being honored; be modest; don't flaunt your good traits
4. Compliment the people around you
5. Refrain from gossip

Then I went to blogsearch.google.com and searched for 'humility'. Sticking mostly to myspace blogs for familiarity sake.

I left the following comment or a variation of on a couple peoples pages:

"Hey, I was blog searching for the word 'humility' and came accross your blog. I've been working on battling pride and have found myself needing some humility.

I am making a list that I can pratically apply. Here's what I got so far:
1. Learn to know your wrong doings and talk to other people about them
2. Respond to other peoples accusations with patients
3. Don't seek out being honored; be modest; don't flaunt your good traits
4. Compliment the people around you
5. Refrain from gossip

If you have anything to off send me a message."

We'll see what comes back.

Planning and Order

The last too weekends have been bar free. It's nice waking up in early in the morning. It's also nice keeping the money I'd have spent in my pocket.

Not sure what's next on the agenda. Promoting more order/planning is the name of the game. I'm still a little short on the motivation to do a whole lot. I tried working on music last night and ended up dismembering the track I had high hopes for.

My real problem writing music seems to be arrangment. I've been working on finding a method that works and I am just going to have to realize that I am going to come up with a lot of crap in the mean time.

YorkArts Show

Went to the an art show yesterday at YorkArts. Afterwards went to the OffCenter Grille for some post-show festivities. It was a bunch of people from the show hanging out and drinking free wine. I met a bunch of seemingly neat people, four of whom happened to be left-handed.

Later on I got invited back to this girl's hotel room, which I declined. Down with impulsive sensation-seeking behaviour!

My lips were stained red from drinking the wine. A girl, perhaps women would be better, Crystal, kept calling me Underworld boy. Ran into Lauren who I usually only see at the YorkArts' events. Finally this fellow, Jason, took a bite out of the huge cheese slab at Crystal's pressuring. What followed was Flip'n hilariously. One by one throughout nearly the entire restuarant patrons were prompted to take a bite out of the giant hunk of cheese. Keep in mind the OffCenter Grill is a pretty upscale place.

All in all, lots of cute artistic girls floating about and being friendly. Cool artistic people. Free booze and food. For the most part the evening was really nice.

Working on New Track

I spent a couple hours last night working on a song. It's showing some promise. For those of you who are interested I use Nuendo and Reason to produce all of my music. They make a nice combination especially with the newest version of Reason, 3.0.

***

I also finished Hand Me Another Brick last night. After reading Cryptonomicon, a 900+ page book, it felt like a breeze going through this one. Haven't decided what to read next but, I've been trying to be frugal so, it will most likely be something already on my shelf.

***

Thinking ahead to this weekend, I am going to try to continue my not-going-to-the-bar crusade. Although, I've been in hermit mode for a little too long. I've also been anxious lately; I feel like I am constantly in a rush. I just want that feeling of calm, like stopping to smell the roses type of shit.

New drawing

I spent last night drawing a picture. Check it out on myspace.com/ice5nake. I made it my profile picture there.

Support my union

I'm not some union freak, but listen people. Check out yorkguild.org.

Take a couple of minutes to write my bosses and tell them to give us a fair deal. Just visit the link above to find out how.

Hand Me Another Brick

Starting reading a book called "Hand Me Another Brick" yesterday. My sister gave it to me long ago. It talks about this dude Nehemiah in the Bible and the principles he used to be an effective leader. Those of you who don't know who Nehemiah is, he's the guy that rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem. It's only like 150 pages so I should have to it done soon.

Oh and I finally finished Cryptonomicon. After "Hand Me Another Brick" I think I'll either go get "Bladerunner" or perhaps something by C.S. Lewis. Either that or I'll just read something on my shelf I haven't read yet.

Saving paper

I logged onto my Cingular account and discontinued receiving paper statements in the mail. I did this with my PHEAA school loan a while back. Just small steps of conservation.

Visit: http://www.wasteage.com/