You won't know

The other day I was talking to my brother, and he was telling me how in one of his classes, his professor was discussing how people's minds could be "shocked" into remembering certain things. We tend to store a lot of information in our heads, but we don't always readily have access to that information. We can be given details concerning a particular event that we can't remember, and our memories are suddenly "jolted" into remembering. What this professor was saying was that our minds could similarly be reminded of parts of our lives that we've never been able to remember, like our early childhoods or even our time of birth.

Now here's what I found interesting. When the professor brought this up, my brother thought that his time of birth would probably feel very disorienting and dirty, what with all the bodily fluids and whatnot. I thought exactly the same thing.

However, one girl in the class spoke up and said something along the lines of this, "I think it would be interesting to know what experiencing life for the first time would be like."

My brother told me that when she said that, it completely changed his perspective on the whole situation, and I'd have to agree.

That's a really powerful statement. Experiencing life for the first time... I really cannot fathom what that could be like.

I started to think about the whole thing, and I started to wonder why it is that we can't remember that far back into our lives. I came up with the idea that our memories are founded off of our emotions, and at such a young age, we don't have any knowledge of emotions to formulate memories. Sure, babies cry, and you could attribute that response to some kind of emotion, but at such an early age, crying is only a reflex, so that argument doesn't really hold any water.

So that would imply that emotions are learned, which would bring up the whole nature vs. nurture dilemma. Hmm... if that were the case, I think it could be said that at such an early age, we do have instinctive emotions, but since we don't lack the means to define them at that time, we don't retain the memories.

Arg, I don't know about any of this really. Memories might not be tied to emotions at all, it's just a thought that I had. Hmm, I wonder why I decided to write about this in the first place. I guess part of me is really curious as to what experiencing life for the first time would feel like, and I'm trying to project what that feeling could be on one of the emotions I am familiar with. In reality, it might be based off an emotion that I'm not familiar with... something that I would have only experienced that one time.

Hmm, very interesting. It's sort of like that emotion I described in my post where I talked about the best day of my life. I might not have a name for it, but I know it exists.

Well, I think I'm going to end here for now. I might come back and add more to this, but probably not. I doubt I'll ever experience anything that I could attribute to this 'elusive' emotion, and even if I do find something, I have no way of knowing if that's the same emotion I would have felt at the beginning of life.

I'm okay with that, I suppose. Sometimes wondering about life's intricacies makes it more enjoyable. I don't need to know everything, and if I did, things would get boring pretty fast.

Question time:

What is your very first memory?

Until next time,

Stay frosty

I will go on marching, proud and unafraid.

This semester has been stressful for me so far, but not because of classes. I'm stressed because it's time for me to start looking for internships for the summer, which will have a direct impact on me getting a job after I graduate. The stakes are high, to say the least, and I've been in a worrisome state for the past week or so.

Today however, my mentality changed.

I ended up going to a program meant to train people in how to prepare for a job fair, and after the program was over, I found that I had an exuberant amount of confidence. Actually, the level of confidence I presently hold, borderlines on uncanny.

This actually doesn't surprise me, as similar things have happened before. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but it's like my mind always rises to the occasion whenever I'm presented with a big dilemma in regards to performance. Right now, nothing can impede me on my overall goal; I feel insurmountable. It feels amazing to be honest with you. Have you ever felt like you were larger than life?

Another time this happened to me was back in High School. It was time to take the SATs, and that year was the first year that they decided to implement a writing section into the test. I remember thinking at that time, before I took the test, that I was going to fucking demolish that essay, regardless of what the topic was. I could just feel it inside me, the boundless potential to succeed. No matter what that test threw at me, I was going to scoff at it. And that's exactly what happened. I aced that essay, easily. No big D.

So I think I already figured out why I have these bouts of incredible confidence. I psych myself up. Whenever I'm presented with a large feat, failure no longer becomes an option, it's eliminated from my vocabulary, and it becomes entirely non-existent. It's as if I can do no wrong. Without the presence of failure in the back of my mind, I can't actually fail. Everything becomes a cake walk.

What I find interesting, is that when I use the F-word in my thoughts, it amplifies my confidence a lot. This is peculiar to me, because I don't like dropping the F-bomb left and right. I usually find it unnecessarily vulgar and immature, and while I do end up using it in my everyday speech, in reality, I never feel like I need to use it, and I don't honestly like it. Regardless of that however, it is quite the powerful word.

I find that when I use it in my thoughts, it just pumps me up. Today, for example, upon leaving the job fair training program, I said in my head, "I'm going to fucking own the job fair."

And I will.

What psyches you up?

The catch is that you can't use the typical answer that your friends psych you up. How do you psych yourself up?

Stay frosty.

P.S. Kudos for anyone who gets the reference in the title of the post.

Hatred never looked this good

So in my last post, I mentioned a discussion I had with a lot of my friends way back in the day. I didn't mention what that conversation was actually about, so I decided that I'm going to fill you all in (figuratively speaking, of course).

In our "pow wow" my friends and I all decided that it would be good for ourselves if we expressed what we didn't like about each other. A good idea in my opinion and a great learning experience. Most of the time you never know what other people don't like about you, because if they're your friend, they'd never want to tell you and end up hurting your feelings. So what that means is that when your friends do tell you what they don't like about you, its a great opportunity to grow as an individual.

I think the idea for the whole thing came to me when my friend and I were at the mall discussing a problem that one of my other friends had that he probably didn't realize. I remember thinking that someone should probably let him know, because he most likely wasn't aware of his problem, and that's when the idea hit me. (For the record, I don't bad mouth my friends behind their backs)

Fantastic.

However, there was a problem with our conversation that night - nobody could come up with anything that they didn't like about me.

Seriously?

There is no chance that I am a perfect human being. This turn of events actually disappointed me greatly. So now I am going to turn this question to all of you:

What don't you like about me?

Stay frosty.

Fascinate

Okay, so the other day I was at lunch with two of my friends, nothing special, just the same old story, same old song and dance. We were conversing about whatever came to mind, and my one friend told me that when I tell stories, I have great delivery. He said to me that he loves it every time I have something to say.

That's a pretty neat compliment. If I remember correctly, he told me to use that ability, because not many people have that.

Well I got to thinking, and I remembered a conversation I had with one of my other friends back in High School. I was among a group of friends, and we were having a "pow wow" as my one friend so adequately put it. Some pretty interesting topics came up during that conversation, and one of my friends actually told me that he thought my life was fascinating.

Fascinating! That's an awfully powerful word if you ask me. Think about what fascinates you. How many things can you even think of that legitimately fascinate you? Not many I bet. I, personally, can't think of a single thing at the moment. I mean sure, I can say that redheads fascinate me, and that video games fascinate me, but do I really mean that? I think it would be more accurate to say that those things interest me, rather than fascinate me.

Fascination is an overused word which has lost it's overall meaning, in my opinion. It's just like "awesome"; How often does something fill you with awe? Not often, yet we use that word all the time, and so it has lost it's meaning. I feel the same way about fascinate. Let's grab a definition:

fas⋅ci⋅nate

 –verb (used with object)

1.	to attract and hold attentively by a unique power, personal charm, unusual nature, or some other special quality; enthrall: a vivacity that fascinated the audience.

Back when my friend said that my life was fascinating, I kind of just scoffed at it. How on Earth could my life be fascinating? I never considered myself to be particularly interesting, to be perfectly honest. Nobody had ever said anything like that to me before, and I'm still not sure if I could consider my life to be fascinating, but now I have two people who are interested in my life and what I have to say - and those are only the people that I know of.

Am I really that interesting? Well if you read my blog, I guess you find me interesting, otherwise you wouldn't keep reading, right?

Well, maybe it has more to do with what my first friend said, about how I have great delivery with my stories. Maybe all it is, is the way I talk about my life. I speak in a way that others find appealing, and so they become enthralled and want to hear more. I guess that could be an accurate depiction.

Hmm... maybe the way you tell a story is more important than the story itself. I can see how that would be possible. You could have done something really cool, but if you're not passionate/involved in how you tell it, then some people probably wont be interested.

So then that would mean that all the people who live interesting lives, might not actually be that interesting, but they tell their stories in such a way that others are compelled to listen. The opposite could be true as well - Someone could be a very uninteresting person, but they could have experienced some of the coolest things in life.

Well, while that is all very plausible, I also believe that the people who are good at telling their stories are probably good at it for a reason. If you live an interesting life, it has probably forged you into the interesting person you are today. Did that make sense?

What I'm basically saying is that the people who are deemed to be interesting/fascinating probably have legitimate reasons for receiving that praise.

So then does that really mean that I'm fascinating? I'm just an ordinary guy in my book. I can't think of anything particularly special about me other than that I'm not afraid to think and feel. I can be charismatic at times, but not all the time. I don't get it =\

Maybe I'm better off not knowing why people find me interesting. If I did know, it might make me try too hard to get people interested in me, a quality that I wouldn't like to add to my repituar. Besides, I'm not one to try and impress people. If you're impressed with me, that's your decision to make, because I'm not going out of my way to impress anyone. I am what I am, and you can take it or leave it.

I've always preferred to let people create their own opinions of me, rather than have me try and tell you what I'm like. I act differently around different people, so technically, everyone experiences a different Matt. Wow, there's a thought. I guess I'm the only one who knows what I'm really like, and everyone else sees one of my many hats.

I like that. I like it a lot.

I guess that would make me chaotic in the sense that my personality is random. If I'm meeting a person for the first time, I don't know how I'm going to act towards you, because I act differently around different people. How very intriguing.

I'm going to ponder on this some more...

How do you honestly see me?

Don't sugar coat anything. I want the brutal, honest truth.

Stay frosty.