I will what I will.

I spend a lot of my time thinking, over-thinking, and analyzing. Its interesting to me that I can take so much time to weigh and measure, and yet still feel like I am someone who "accepts" things readily and lives in the moment.

I've come to a realization- something I've thought about many times before but never really paid attention to - so many of my thoughts and actions are responses to potential reactions of other people. Very often I limit myself, or present myself in a different way based on who I'm around and how I want them to think of me. This isn't new. I've always sort of prided myself in my ability to be a social chameleon. I'm finding, however, that it's coming at the expense my individuality.

Very few people know the me that I know, the one I'd like to show in all situations.

I had made the resolution some months back to be "unapologetically me." And while I have grown fond of that idea, now I believe I have the confidence to actually integrate the ideology into my life.

I'm tired of this fractured understanding of who I am. Rather than have only a glint of my true personality shine through a situationally affected character, I want to shine as myself constantly, and compromise only slightly as the situation requires.

It's time to make myself happy based on what I want and need. If who I am and how I act doesn't fit with someone else's idea, that's fine. Just don't expect me to change.

Its funny, as I look back on my life, the younger I was, the less I really cared what other people thought of me. Age makes you self-conscious, and that's a deceit I do not desire.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Rambled Understanding

A schism. A division of infinite depth and recursion. Everything separates in order to recombine. Atoms, thoughts, people. What is the atomic weight of words? An omnipresent mass of cognition. Each thought in our heads is made up of pieces of fractured sensory input. Strings and conglomerations and wisps of those thoughts fire off in sequences that give our minds a sense of self-awareness, a consciousness. We are conscious because we are aware of our thoughts. But there is an order above us. Our minds are pieces of a larger consciousness. Our power of perception as individuals is dwarfed by the power and purpose of the whole. Together, we all perceive the physical world, set a baseline understanding of color, shape, taste, sound, but this is not just for our own edification. R.A. Wilson said that, "[Humans] are sensory organs the Universe created in order to perceive itself." Our modalities exist not to serve our consciousness, but to relay that information elsewhere; we are to the universe what eyes are to us.

And so it goes, just like that, on up the chain.

As above, so below, and "It's turtles! Turtles all the way down."