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As my last journal entry has been more than a quarter of a year ago (and I actually had to use my fingers to make myself really aware of that fact although I'm, in theory, at least capable enough in mathematics to know that a time span of 8th February to 18th (or 19th, to be exact) May exceeds three months), I thought I'd just write a quick update regarding my last entry.
No, my psychological problems haven't changed. As far as I'm concerned, they at least haven't increased, but they definitely won't disappear by themselves. In addition to that, I become increasingly aware that a) being as introspective as I am can be highly damaging to oneself (i.e. knowing every single one of your mistakes but not being able to actively change them - not because it would be difficult for a normal person but because I myself am the problem) and b) that I see my personality as the scarred inside of myself, invisible to the outside. Living in this house, with this "family", is frustrating beyond anything I could articulate with words.
But, while I'm not optimistic of the outcome at all, I've at least managed to find a psychotherapist. I don't really believe that she'll be able to help me, both because I'm not even really able to articulate my problems (introspection only goes so far) and because I don't really have many optimistic feelings, anyway. And in the end, even if she somehow manages to help me, I'll still have lost a substantial amount of time of my life - all thanks to my biological parents who wouldn't even be qualified to have a puppy, let alone four children.
So what am I doing right now? I've played all puzzles of slither link at janko.at (more than 400 puzzles) and Kwon-Tom-Loop (more than 700 puzzles) - and although I'm bad at estimating things I wouldn't be surprised if I had spent nearly one week - 168 hours - with solving these puzzles in the past half year. Of course I'm done now. And I feel even more bored than before. Artificially creating a diversion for oneself never works because you either yearn for even more diversion or you aren't even distracted in the first place.
I'm currently in the middle of exams again, having already written my exams in economy, religion, English, maths, physics and chemistry since the middle of March. Next week a.k.a. The Week Of Doom (tm) consists of exams in music class (my second worst subject after sports, but as my marks in sports don't count, it's really my worst subject), a theory test in sports class and an exam in history class (unbelievably huge amounts to learn for that subject ... although I'm not as bad in history as I am in music).
Speaking of which, my results for the first semester of Oberstufe were more than satisfying - or would have been if I would feel satisfaction, which I don't. My grade point average was above 13 points; the corresponding mark would be better than 1,33. But a) it didn't feel like an accomplishment (not because I didn't study for it but for illogical reasons I can't completely explain myself) and b) I still don't know what I'm studying for. I know that a good grade point average in my Abitur will be helpful later on, but this "later on" is so vague and distant in my mind that whenever I study I also think about how pointless it really is. And at the same time, I have an irrational fear of bad marks which I can't explain to myself ...
As for my sleeping problems, they've become worse as the school year progressed. It's another of those problems that really wouldn't be any problems at all for a normal person but make a huge difference for me. On Thursday (a holiday) slept until, I don't know, 3:30 pm or something like that. Then I didn't go to bed until seven am today and didn't go to school, either. It's not simply a matter of "just go to bed earlier", it's a matter of a fundamental lack of discipline and care for myself that makes me unable to even win against my sleeping habits, not to mention all my other problems (some of which may very well result from an exorbitant lack of sleep etc.).
We had a project in English class about creating a short radio play in small groups and then uploading that onto a website. We finished the texts quite soon (although mine became much longer than intended) and then obviously were supposed to record them. I still haven't done it although our informal deadline was already some time one or two weeks ago. I don't even know why I'm not doing it. I just know that I can't. One day I tried to record it and actually managed to start the voice recording program, then stopped after the recording the first paragraph for several times because I was so discontent with my voice (not being able to pronounce the "th" just doesn't sit right with me - not because everybody else in my class can (they can't) but because I think that I know the pronunciations of everything I write but cannot translate it into proper spoken English.
Oh, and I have my music exam on Monday and still haven't started to study for it. I will eventually study for it; my psychotic (if that's the right word - I had a presentation (my first one in this school year) in German class about schizophrenia and the borderline personality disorder, but I'm still not completely sure what the difference between a psychosis and a neurosis is - or if it's something different altogether) and irrational fear of bad marks doesn't allow anything else. But I will probably end up studying until like 3 am on Monday morning, and I will probably feel after the exam that half of what I studied was a waste of time (and it doesn't matter whether I get a good or a bad result in the exam).
Other than that ... I've read "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins, a book "about atheism", or rather about why belief in a supernatural creator is a delusion (I had to look at Wikipedia to find a good description), why religion is a (dangerous) delusion and what consequences result from non-belief (i.e. atheists are, in general, not morally worse off or unhappier than believers). So far, so hostile. But while I don't completely share his opinion (i.e. that religion is (nearly) only bad, and that its risks outweigh its gains (I don't know the proverb exactly), I like his style of writing, his scientific methods (which only take you so far in criticising religion, of course) with several pages of sources (both books and Internet links - and I like that approach a lot), and the general notion that belief religion (or anything, for that matter) is only as safe from criticism as (I don't know the exact quote and I've currently lent it away) the belief of a man who thinks that his wife is beautiful and that his children are wonderful (or something like that), something I can wholeheartedly agree with. The book's popularity (although it has naturally received mixed reviews both from scientists as from theologists because the book isn't completely scientific (it can't be) and because it can't disprove religion (which is impossible)) is certainly justified, and I'd recommend its lecture to anyone no matter whether they believe or not. For atheists, its summaries of reasons for the non-existence of a God and the arguments for atheism (i.e. what to retort to the popular "But Hitler and Stalin were atheists!" (Stalin was, Hitler's beliefs are not clear but there's no definite consensus that he was an atheist; and it doesn't matter, anyway, because atheism doesn't make you do evil things), its incorporation of evolution (e.g. evolution is not only based on random factors) and the consequences of not believing; agnostics might find some reasons to feel compelled to become outright atheists, and theologists and sincere believers still should at least know the arguments against beliefs, because they will encounter them a lot in the future, I think. All in all, more than an interesting read (from my point of view, the p.o.v. of an atheist - I'm interested in how other people I lend this book to will react to it, though).
Well, that's it for today. This entry took a long time to write and will not be joined by others any time soon, I think. I had a non-negative kind of mood today so while I did something that was completely unproductive for school (e.g. not studying for music class but writing this), it probably still has done some good (for me, anyway).
In the end, all I can say is that I honestly can't say of myself that I'm fine but that I also now have professional help. And my rational world view tells me that if somebody or something can help me, it's psychotherapy.
While I appreciate concern for myself, I feel (really) uncomfortable if people talk to me about what I write in the Internet in "real life". To me, these two things belong to two different kinds of worlds or realities and mixing them up is not only confusing but also counterproductive.
I think I'll try to write about my progress in the therapy, but that won't be very often.
See you around.
MondSemmel's journal
Thoughts, rants and other strange topics
19 May 2007 @ 01:31 am
2 comments | Leave a comment
08 February 2007 @ 11:30 pm
Just a quick note about my complete absence on this blog. Basically, saying that I'm 'not really in the mood to write' would be a big understatement. It doesn't have anything to do with the blogging laziness (or however it is called) after two months' time (I think) but more with my general psyche ... I won't elaborate on this any further, I just wanted to say that I haven't magically vanished or forgotten this livejournal or anything like that, but that I also won't continue writing entries until I feel better (much, much, much better) psychologically.
See you some time in the more distant future, I guess ...
See you some time in the more distant future, I guess ...
10 January 2007 @ 11:36 pm
And another entry. I can't believe it's already Wednesday already - I've successfully survived three days of school already! I've just finished rehearsing all the vocabulary - the only thing we have to study for our second English exam in this semester on this Thursday - tomorrow. Actually, I've already rehearsed them several times. This time, I still needed between ten and fifteen minutes or so to read the nine A6 pages of vocabulary in our horrendously expensive vocabulary book aloud - "Words in Context". I wonder how much time a rapper would need - after all, they are known for their very, very, very fast talking speeds. I guess between three and five minutes ...
I actually managed to get a bit less than ten hours of sleep today which, while actually great in comparison to my usual ... five or so hours of sleep, will probably kind of be a problem today - today I only had to get up at eleven a.m. because my regular first lesson - physics - didn't take place, I didn't have school before the fifth lesson. As I said, that's very convenient - but tomorrow, I have to get up at 6:45 a.m. again ...
I've always had the opinion that for me, no amount of studying for school could equal sleeping enough before an exam. Of course I've never exactly tested that, but I still think it's true although that doesn't mean that studying was obsolete. And it's not like I ever had enough sleep for an exam^^. Well, I'll try as I always do ...
We got back several exams from before the holidays - from religion class, German class, music class. I'm finally convinced that I overestimated the Kollegstufe by quite a margin - or, more likely, I underestimated myself because I tend to compare myself to those who are better than me at school (e.g. one of my friends had a grade point average of 1.0 (it's impossible to be better) last year, I had one of 1.5). But in the end, I think this helps me more than it hurts because some part of me always feels challenged to become better, a sort of passive competition without any real prize (As far as I can recall it, I've constantly become better at school over the years - I'll probably look it up soon) ... Anyway, I received twelve points in the music exam (basically, the level of the exam was ... low ... very low - good for me, of course, but it felt kind of weird that I could have gotten thirteen points - a one - if I had avoided one silly mistake - although I'm totally inept at music), thirteen points in the German exam (kind of expected actually - I've never completely understood just how exactly German teachers manage to grade exams, but I've always had marks in this range in previous years, too) and fourteen points in the religion exam (now this was unexpected although the grade point average of this exam was ridiculously high at 10.2 points - it is my belief (pun intended) as an atheist that I just shouldn't get marks like that in religion class if I openly reject the ideas taught there ... of course, I won't complain). So all in all, I'm surprised by the results again but also kind of satisfied with the results - after all, I do study for these exams.
I wanted to write something about moral questions today (I already wrote an entry with something like that shortly after starting this blog) and I'll still do that, but I'm sorry if that part isn't as long as I want it to be. After all, I enjoy philosophic questions very much although it's usually completely impossible to find an answer that satisfies everyone and leaves no room for counter-arguments. And that's what I'll use today. While I wouldn't call myself completely conscienceless, I tend to look at things that other people would clearly call "evil" or "shocking" and sometimes just feel ... nothing. I don't gasp and feel all sorry for the poor people in third world countries or the tsunami victims in Indonesia or rape victims or murdered people or I-don't-know-what-s. It's just that when you read newspaper stories (or, for me, if you read them in the first place - I'm just not very interested in news and we don't even have a newspaper subscription ... of course there's the Internet, too, but even then I only read articles that sound at least remotely interesting which most just ... don't), all you really read are words on paper (or screen). To me, the quote "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" by Joseph Stalin seems kind of true - I would feel sorry if I had known a murdered person or things like that, but as I don't, I don't look at their deaths as tragedies but simply as facts. And although I acknowledge that this might pose some problems (like unscrupulousness), the other extreme - emotionally feeling for every unlucky person on this planet - doesn't work, either. After all, you can't spend your whole lifetime pitying others, you have to live for yourself (if you manage to, that is) ...
Anyway, a few of the more interesting thoughts and questions about this - about the "wicked deeds" mankind does all the time (I realize that this sounds strange, it's just a loose quote from an anime I watched, and I can't remember it exactly anymore) - are thoughts on when it's okay to kill (or, more generally, to take a life), when stealing is allowed, whether incest should really be forbidden, things like that. I'd characterise myself as very, very liberal (with a few exceptions although I couldn't name them from the top of my head) although I can't say that that's my political orientation - I'm too politically passive -, I just don't like conservative opinions. Of course, looking at how I see myself and others and how I grew up, it's not actually surprising - I don't like my family, except for Christmas and Easter there are basically no family traditions, either, I'm an atheist and all that, and finally, I've grown up with and gotten so used to new technology (in the form of the computer, nothing else, really), etc. - I've never had any reason whatsoever to become conservative (and although my parents aren't, either, that's not really an argument to become liberal - quite the contrary, actually ...), none.
So what about taking other people's lives? The first and immediate answer would be "Murdering people is wrong!", and I agree - but it's so much more complicated than that. First of all, I don't think that murderers necessarily have to be bad people - e.g. a murder by an insane person. In my opinion, this clearly shows that there isn't one kind of murder. I won't be able to give answers most of the time, but I am able to ask the questions: What's worse, murdering out of hate, aggression, anger, or murdering without any emotions at all? Does James Bond "murder" people in Casino Royale (I saw that movie with my sister yesterday)? He seems to feel almost nothing when he kills them, and he does it for justice, but is it morally right? What's worse, an assassin or a soldier on the battlefield? Both kill, both might do so for their own survival or both might do so because they like killing or because of the money or for various other reasons. But seeing both of them from the outside, without additional information, it's impossible to morally judge them. In a novel, both of these persons could be a hero, both of them could be a villain, or both could be some nameless characters without any backstory ...
It becomes even more difficult if you add other factors to the equation: For example, what about the (real) example of stem-cell research? Depending on your viewpoint, a five-day-old embryo already counts as a human and mustn't be used for research - or it may. This ethical debate is taken one step further if you remember that these researches could be used in medicines to heal or save people - is arguably killing someone to help someone else morally justifiable? Most people would say no, but depending on the case, I could very well say yes to this question. Yes, even if it involves "killing" five-day-old human embryo (Didn't I mention that my opinions would differ from most people?). And not just because I think that the gains outweigh the cost (I don't think this is the original expression, though.), but also because I've never understood why everybody makes such a fuss about the human life, that it's sacred and everything. Some people think that nothing is sacred to scientists. I disagree, but in my definition, nothing can be sacred to atheists. Not because they are bad but because sacredness in my definition is something religious, something that doesn't work if you don't believe in it. And, quite frankly, I don't believe in sacredness.
Let me give you a few examples: The most obvious example when killing a person to help somebody else is usually considered perfectly legitimate is saving somebody else. No matter whether it's in a movie like James Bond or in a fantasy novel or in real life - if the only option you had to save your friend (and if you had the courage to do so) attacked by a thug would be to kill the thug, wouldn't you do it? And wouldn't everybody say that as a last resort, killing was legitimate?
What about saving yourself? Your genetic survival instinct will value your life over the life of somebody else who just attempts to kill you. If you had to kill that person to survive, you'd do it, wouldn't you? Of course it's called self-defence in this case ...
I like the last example because it allows a mental jump to another interesting subject: As living organisms, we have to eat. In order to survive, countless animals (and plants, for that matter; in contrast to vegetarians, I don't think that the difference is all that great) will die for each and every one of us over a lifetime to ensure our survival. But if that's the case, if the life of a plant or an animal is nothing, then surely humans, whose evolutionary ancestors are animals, surely don't deserve special treatment, do they? If it's justifiable to kill animals and plants, it's also justifiable to kill humans in my opinion. I don't advocate killing humans because of that, I'm just saying that there's no special moral difference between killing a human being to killing an animal. Of course, it must be judged differently from a legal point of view because without laws prohibiting murder, the survival of our race would be in danger. Of course all the things I just said still don't allow me to just go out there and kill other humans - for one thing, nobody has actually done anything to me, then my conscience still wouldn't allow it even if my rationality would, and I don't exactly want others to kill me, either - I just mean that I don't see the big deal.
To me, the suffering of humans or animals would be the center of interest, not the fact that they get killed. Dead is dead, and beggars and kings alike become dust and dirt. But alive isn't alive, and there's a big, big difference between leading a life in luxury and suffering every day ...
Sorry, but it's getting so late =(. I'd love to continue this but I have my English exam tomorrow and although I know that this topic is controversial enough for debates, I have to stop it at this point. After all, I have written a lot, haven't I? Please don't murder me (pun intended) for this entry though, okay?
See you some time soon.
P.S. Time needed: A bit less than one hour and three quarters.
P.P.S. Aaand another day is over on which I didn't manage to call a psychologist. It's always been like this - no matter what it is, I always seemed to think of doing things like this closely before calling anybody wouldn't be possible for the day anymore and then I waste the remaining time simply because my unconsciousness doesn't want to call (I guess). Well, next try tomorrow...
I actually managed to get a bit less than ten hours of sleep today which, while actually great in comparison to my usual ... five or so hours of sleep, will probably kind of be a problem today - today I only had to get up at eleven a.m. because my regular first lesson - physics - didn't take place, I didn't have school before the fifth lesson. As I said, that's very convenient - but tomorrow, I have to get up at 6:45 a.m. again ...
I've always had the opinion that for me, no amount of studying for school could equal sleeping enough before an exam. Of course I've never exactly tested that, but I still think it's true although that doesn't mean that studying was obsolete. And it's not like I ever had enough sleep for an exam^^. Well, I'll try as I always do ...
We got back several exams from before the holidays - from religion class, German class, music class. I'm finally convinced that I overestimated the Kollegstufe by quite a margin - or, more likely, I underestimated myself because I tend to compare myself to those who are better than me at school (e.g. one of my friends had a grade point average of 1.0 (it's impossible to be better) last year, I had one of 1.5). But in the end, I think this helps me more than it hurts because some part of me always feels challenged to become better, a sort of passive competition without any real prize (As far as I can recall it, I've constantly become better at school over the years - I'll probably look it up soon) ... Anyway, I received twelve points in the music exam (basically, the level of the exam was ... low ... very low - good for me, of course, but it felt kind of weird that I could have gotten thirteen points - a one - if I had avoided one silly mistake - although I'm totally inept at music), thirteen points in the German exam (kind of expected actually - I've never completely understood just how exactly German teachers manage to grade exams, but I've always had marks in this range in previous years, too) and fourteen points in the religion exam (now this was unexpected although the grade point average of this exam was ridiculously high at 10.2 points - it is my belief (pun intended) as an atheist that I just shouldn't get marks like that in religion class if I openly reject the ideas taught there ... of course, I won't complain). So all in all, I'm surprised by the results again but also kind of satisfied with the results - after all, I do study for these exams.
I wanted to write something about moral questions today (I already wrote an entry with something like that shortly after starting this blog) and I'll still do that, but I'm sorry if that part isn't as long as I want it to be. After all, I enjoy philosophic questions very much although it's usually completely impossible to find an answer that satisfies everyone and leaves no room for counter-arguments. And that's what I'll use today. While I wouldn't call myself completely conscienceless, I tend to look at things that other people would clearly call "evil" or "shocking" and sometimes just feel ... nothing. I don't gasp and feel all sorry for the poor people in third world countries or the tsunami victims in Indonesia or rape victims or murdered people or I-don't-know-what-s. It's just that when you read newspaper stories (or, for me, if you read them in the first place - I'm just not very interested in news and we don't even have a newspaper subscription ... of course there's the Internet, too, but even then I only read articles that sound at least remotely interesting which most just ... don't), all you really read are words on paper (or screen). To me, the quote "One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic" by Joseph Stalin seems kind of true - I would feel sorry if I had known a murdered person or things like that, but as I don't, I don't look at their deaths as tragedies but simply as facts. And although I acknowledge that this might pose some problems (like unscrupulousness), the other extreme - emotionally feeling for every unlucky person on this planet - doesn't work, either. After all, you can't spend your whole lifetime pitying others, you have to live for yourself (if you manage to, that is) ...
Anyway, a few of the more interesting thoughts and questions about this - about the "wicked deeds" mankind does all the time (I realize that this sounds strange, it's just a loose quote from an anime I watched, and I can't remember it exactly anymore) - are thoughts on when it's okay to kill (or, more generally, to take a life), when stealing is allowed, whether incest should really be forbidden, things like that. I'd characterise myself as very, very liberal (with a few exceptions although I couldn't name them from the top of my head) although I can't say that that's my political orientation - I'm too politically passive -, I just don't like conservative opinions. Of course, looking at how I see myself and others and how I grew up, it's not actually surprising - I don't like my family, except for Christmas and Easter there are basically no family traditions, either, I'm an atheist and all that, and finally, I've grown up with and gotten so used to new technology (in the form of the computer, nothing else, really), etc. - I've never had any reason whatsoever to become conservative (and although my parents aren't, either, that's not really an argument to become liberal - quite the contrary, actually ...), none.
So what about taking other people's lives? The first and immediate answer would be "Murdering people is wrong!", and I agree - but it's so much more complicated than that. First of all, I don't think that murderers necessarily have to be bad people - e.g. a murder by an insane person. In my opinion, this clearly shows that there isn't one kind of murder. I won't be able to give answers most of the time, but I am able to ask the questions: What's worse, murdering out of hate, aggression, anger, or murdering without any emotions at all? Does James Bond "murder" people in Casino Royale (I saw that movie with my sister yesterday)? He seems to feel almost nothing when he kills them, and he does it for justice, but is it morally right? What's worse, an assassin or a soldier on the battlefield? Both kill, both might do so for their own survival or both might do so because they like killing or because of the money or for various other reasons. But seeing both of them from the outside, without additional information, it's impossible to morally judge them. In a novel, both of these persons could be a hero, both of them could be a villain, or both could be some nameless characters without any backstory ...
It becomes even more difficult if you add other factors to the equation: For example, what about the (real) example of stem-cell research? Depending on your viewpoint, a five-day-old embryo already counts as a human and mustn't be used for research - or it may. This ethical debate is taken one step further if you remember that these researches could be used in medicines to heal or save people - is arguably killing someone to help someone else morally justifiable? Most people would say no, but depending on the case, I could very well say yes to this question. Yes, even if it involves "killing" five-day-old human embryo (Didn't I mention that my opinions would differ from most people?). And not just because I think that the gains outweigh the cost (I don't think this is the original expression, though.), but also because I've never understood why everybody makes such a fuss about the human life, that it's sacred and everything. Some people think that nothing is sacred to scientists. I disagree, but in my definition, nothing can be sacred to atheists. Not because they are bad but because sacredness in my definition is something religious, something that doesn't work if you don't believe in it. And, quite frankly, I don't believe in sacredness.
Let me give you a few examples: The most obvious example when killing a person to help somebody else is usually considered perfectly legitimate is saving somebody else. No matter whether it's in a movie like James Bond or in a fantasy novel or in real life - if the only option you had to save your friend (and if you had the courage to do so) attacked by a thug would be to kill the thug, wouldn't you do it? And wouldn't everybody say that as a last resort, killing was legitimate?
What about saving yourself? Your genetic survival instinct will value your life over the life of somebody else who just attempts to kill you. If you had to kill that person to survive, you'd do it, wouldn't you? Of course it's called self-defence in this case ...
I like the last example because it allows a mental jump to another interesting subject: As living organisms, we have to eat. In order to survive, countless animals (and plants, for that matter; in contrast to vegetarians, I don't think that the difference is all that great) will die for each and every one of us over a lifetime to ensure our survival. But if that's the case, if the life of a plant or an animal is nothing, then surely humans, whose evolutionary ancestors are animals, surely don't deserve special treatment, do they? If it's justifiable to kill animals and plants, it's also justifiable to kill humans in my opinion. I don't advocate killing humans because of that, I'm just saying that there's no special moral difference between killing a human being to killing an animal. Of course, it must be judged differently from a legal point of view because without laws prohibiting murder, the survival of our race would be in danger. Of course all the things I just said still don't allow me to just go out there and kill other humans - for one thing, nobody has actually done anything to me, then my conscience still wouldn't allow it even if my rationality would, and I don't exactly want others to kill me, either - I just mean that I don't see the big deal.
To me, the suffering of humans or animals would be the center of interest, not the fact that they get killed. Dead is dead, and beggars and kings alike become dust and dirt. But alive isn't alive, and there's a big, big difference between leading a life in luxury and suffering every day ...
Sorry, but it's getting so late =(. I'd love to continue this but I have my English exam tomorrow and although I know that this topic is controversial enough for debates, I have to stop it at this point. After all, I have written a lot, haven't I? Please don't murder me (pun intended) for this entry though, okay?
See you some time soon.
P.S. Time needed: A bit less than one hour and three quarters.
P.P.S. Aaand another day is over on which I didn't manage to call a psychologist. It's always been like this - no matter what it is, I always seemed to think of doing things like this closely before calling anybody wouldn't be possible for the day anymore and then I waste the remaining time simply because my unconsciousness doesn't want to call (I guess). Well, next try tomorrow...
04 January 2007 @ 07:30 pm
Aaand another entry today. As I said already, I really want to increase my output again. Because when I'm not feeling depressive, I do enjoy writing, no matter what I say when I'm depressive ...
Sigh. It's Thursday already and I'll have to go to school again next Monday. As I've mentioned already, I don't really dislike school, it's just that I don't really feel regenerated or refreshed after the holidays so getting used to the school schedule tends to be a bit ... exhausting. Especially if your sleep schedule is so totally mixed up in the holidays (ranging from six to fourteen hours of sleep, going to bed between two and seven a.m., etc. ...). Well, I guess it can't be helped. After all, I've tried to change this sooo often and I've failed every single time ...
I've finally finished the first book of the Harry Potter series in English - I've never needed so much time for a book that doesn't even have 250 pages. Of course I always read at least one other book at the same time because ... well ... I've just read this particular book waaay too often. Anyway, it was an interesting experience to read the English version of a book that you've read so often in German, especially if you can remember some passages from the German book that you always found a bit strange ... I guess I'll do things like these more often in the next two years to become better prepared for the translation part of the final English exam ... or not. I'm not entirely sure yet.
Today I finally a) felt a bit better (depression-wise) and b) finally had a few at least remotely good ideas for topics although having a good topic doesn't necessarily imply a good article/journal entry. Can't help that though.
Being somebody who basically spent a huge chunk of his lifetime in front of the computer (and, therefore, also in front of the Internet) - and who still does, as much as before - I just wanted to praise the Internet a little today. I won't be able to cover many things you can do, perhaps not even a millionth of everything, but I'll try to mention a few things that I found particularly enjoyable/interesting/useful. Either generally or, if I manage to find some, backed up with links.
In my opinion, the Internet is so great because of ..
Sigh. It's Thursday already and I'll have to go to school again next Monday. As I've mentioned already, I don't really dislike school, it's just that I don't really feel regenerated or refreshed after the holidays so getting used to the school schedule tends to be a bit ... exhausting. Especially if your sleep schedule is so totally mixed up in the holidays (ranging from six to fourteen hours of sleep, going to bed between two and seven a.m., etc. ...). Well, I guess it can't be helped. After all, I've tried to change this sooo often and I've failed every single time ...
I've finally finished the first book of the Harry Potter series in English - I've never needed so much time for a book that doesn't even have 250 pages. Of course I always read at least one other book at the same time because ... well ... I've just read this particular book waaay too often. Anyway, it was an interesting experience to read the English version of a book that you've read so often in German, especially if you can remember some passages from the German book that you always found a bit strange ... I guess I'll do things like these more often in the next two years to become better prepared for the translation part of the final English exam ... or not. I'm not entirely sure yet.
Today I finally a) felt a bit better (depression-wise) and b) finally had a few at least remotely good ideas for topics although having a good topic doesn't necessarily imply a good article/journal entry. Can't help that though.
Being somebody who basically spent a huge chunk of his lifetime in front of the computer (and, therefore, also in front of the Internet) - and who still does, as much as before - I just wanted to praise the Internet a little today. I won't be able to cover many things you can do, perhaps not even a millionth of everything, but I'll try to mention a few things that I found particularly enjoyable/interesting/useful. Either generally or, if I manage to find some, backed up with links.
In my opinion, the Internet is so great because of ..
- blogs. I just wanted to mention that one first. Blogs are a recent development, of course, but they are still very enjoyable reads, and there are generally many great blogs for every subject. I guess the blogging phenomenon will grow even more in the future. There are many blogging communities and lists of good blogs, I'll just recommend 9rules which looks quite promising although I haven't looked around on their website as much as I ought to. I suggest you to give it a try - the fact that their blogs are listed in several categories including topics like "programming", "anime", "writing", "education", "entertainment", etc. is an added bonus, I think.
- news. All major newspapers also have websites where you can find latest news, including a wide variety of views. I have no idea how I found these specific articles, but I read these articles today, for example. Yes, among all the news there will probably be some rubbish, but still ... if you aren't overwhelmed by the huge amount of news and information, you can make good use of it. Or simply enjoy it. Or both.
- gaming. Playing via the Internet is simply an amazing experience that doesn't necessarily have any drawbacks if you don't do it in excess (like I used to). For me, it was perhaps the only real hobby I had that included playing with other people (although I was still very passive in every game I played). MMORPGs like WoW are perhaps the best example for this although online gaming doesn't necessarily have to cost anything (well, it does require an Internet connection).
- Wikipedia, other encyclopedias and search engines. Online sources might not be as reliable as offline sources - books, etc. - but they are so much more accessible. You will find something, no matter what you are looking for, if you search for the right terms. Of course, you have to be used to search engines or you will be overwhelmed by websites you aren't interested in. And did I mention that you don't have to own tons of heavy books if you use websites like Wikipedia (although, again, a combination of both is probably better)?
- global interaction. Forums, games, communities, blogs, chats, e-mails - no matter what it is, you are interacting with people from around the globe. They may be thousands of kilometres or miles away, but you can still chat with them, e-mail them. Interact with them.
- anonymity. Yes, anonymity can be abused. But it also has tremendous advantages. You can create your own presence in the Internet even if it's different to your real life - for example, somebody who may always be intimidated by others in real life may feel more safe in conversations on the Internet, perhaps even feeling more accepted. I've never really used this option myself, but it's definitely there.
- file sharing. Yes, it's illegal. No, that doesn't matter to me. Illegal doesn't mean "morally wrong", it just doesn't. The popular comparison of comparing file sharing with shoplifting is just wrong. If I illegally download a movie (e.g. an anime) via file sharing, I don't steal it. And if I wasn't able to get it via file sharing, I would not buy it, either. The shop doesn't lose any money because of me, no matter whether I download the file or not, because I never was a potential customer. The only thing I can be accused of is copyright infringement. You can be accused of copyright infringement if you make extensive use of unnaturally large and unnecessary quotations. Yes, it's illegal, but it's just not a big deal. In my opinion, the fear of file sharing can be compared to the fear of mighty rulers (corporations) who are afraid of the poor, suppressed peasants (file sharers). Those who have the power make the laws, but they can't pass moral judgement, too. (Sorry for getting carried away, and I realize that the comparisons aren't entirely accurate.)
- websites like www.answers.com, www.soyouwanna.com, www.about.com and other online guides. I simply like the fact that these websites exist, although they may not always be entirely accurate or very detailed. It's the principle of the thing - you can ask something and somebody will answer your question, for free no less (!) - or somebody asked already and you can find an answer/a guide for basically everything there is. I still don't understand exactly how these websites finance themselves - I just can't believe that Internet advertising is so effective, but it apparently is. And the guides from some websites are actually very good!
There are tons of things that are just as interesting and that I haven't mentioned - web comics, video sharing communities (e.g. Youtube or Google Video), the fact that there are websites and communities for every topic on this planet - I just don't have time or space to mention them all. In the end, the Internet is one of the greatest inventions ever, I think. Of course it depends on countless other inventions, so that may not be entirely accurate, but still ...
Anyway, that's it for today. See you some time soon.
P.S. Time needed: About one hour.
Current Mood: indescribable
02 January 2007 @ 12:14 pm
Hi there! Here I am again. I'm not really sure what to write about today, but I at least wanted to write something. And I'm quite proud about myself for being awake at this time in the holidays ... after all, I went to bed at 2 am today and woke up at 10 am or so - which is very, very, very uncommon for me. Compared to getting up at 5 pm, this is ... an improvement. Of course, I'm a little tired now, but still ...
New Year's Eve was nearly the same as usual, too. This year we ate Chinese food and a few other people were there, too. Then we went outside and let the small children have fun with the fireworks. But in the end, it's all just very, very boring. And I can't understand why people enjoy it so much. In the end, fireworks are nothing more than the things that excite children - flashy colours, loud bangs and explosions, things like that. And I don't really understand why people celebrate it, either. After all, it just means being one year closer to death ... or one day, to be more precise.
New Year's resolutions don't make any more sense to me, either. I don't make resolutions, and I don't really think I've ever made them. After all, they are usually broken shortly after they are made, I wouldn't know what to make a resolution about, anyway, and in the end, if you need a special day like New Year's Eve to make a resolution, you can't be that serious about it, anyway. At least I couldn't.
Having to write on my own without anyone telling me what to write is quite difficult - of course there are numerous things I could write about, but it never seems to be the right time for them. Or I'm not in the mood to write about them. Or I don't have enough time (okay, that may be a problem for other people, but not for me). Or I can't find the right words. Or other things like that ...
Well, then I'll just write a bit more about school, marks, things like that. One of the girlfriends (this particular piece of the English language still feels ... strange - after all, the normal, female friends of a girl are called girlfriends, but the normal, male friends of a boy are called friends) of my sister who decided to go to Gymnasium after Realschule and who is currently in something like a transition (?) class (Realschule ends at 10th grade, and the Kollegstufe of Gymnasium starts at 12th grade, so the pupils of Realschule have to learn all the things they didn't learn at Gymnasium in this year) asked me some questions about the Gymnasium and about the Kollegstufe, some of which kind of startled me. She seemed ... well ... quite concerned about her marks. Of course, the transition from Realschule to Gymnasium must be kind of sudden for your marks, which is probably even more true if you actually were very good in Realschule and now your grade point average dropped by one whole mark or so in this transition class. I still don't really understand why one could be concerned about it. I just don't. I always tell myself that I still care about school too much for no good reason - about marks, at least, as active participation in class makes a whole world of difference for your experience of school and it costs absolutely nothing, neither time nor anything else, so I'd never change that - while she seemed to care so much about it. Of course I told her that I'm not really the best example to compare herself to - after all, I do get good marks, and I was kind of surprised about them myself at the beginning -, but I still don't get it. Or perhaps that's not the most accurate expression. What I mean is that I could never feel like that for myself. I don't even really enjoy my marks right now (not because I think that they ought to be better but because ... well ... they are just numbers, nothing else), so I just can't understand how other people could be so ... dependant on them. I can't be sure that I wouldn't act similarly if my grade point average dropped so suddenly, but still ... I just can't imagine it.
Although I study for school and although I try to get good marks, I don't do it for any real reason. I absolutely can't imagine working in a real job for real money later on, and I can't imagine what it's like at university, either. I don't know why I'd actually want to have my own job, either. I just have an uncommon connection to money. I can't imagine what I'd do if I suddenly earned anything on my own. I don't really spend more than two hundred euros every year. Of course, I don't buy my clothes, the things I need for school, and so on, but I don't need new clothes, either. I just wear new ones if I my mother buys me some, but I don't really care about any of that. My room is so very, very empty, too. Some books, some magazines (some with sudokus and other puzzles, the rest about computer games) - which I don't really buy anymore, either -, lots of things about DSA ("Das Schwarze Auge", a German pen & paper role-playing game which I already mentioned a few times previously) - which I don't buy anymore, either - and lots of computer games - which I don't buy anymore, either. No music CDs, no CD player, no videos, no television, no things normal teenagers would have. Hell, I don't even know what normal teenagers have. I just now that all I need is a computer. No, I'm not happy with it. I never said that. I'm just not more happy with anything else, neither with music, nor with social contact, nor sports (brrrr), nor anything else.
I guess I could say I'm infinitely bored. All the time, no matter what I do, I'm bored. Nothing manages to keep my interest, and while I can watch a movie and maybe laugh about jokes in it, enjoy the storyline, and so on, I return to my bored state as soon as it's finished, often times before it's finished. Or I play some games of freecell while I watch a movie. I've played about 1600 games of freecell so far, probably more ...
Surfing the Internet, reading blogs, watching stupid funny movies from YouTube or Google Videos or sources like that - everything is just so completely arbitrary ..
That being said, I just don't understand how anybody could actually be concerned about his or her marks. I don't understand why they'd have to finish school with a good grade point average. Oh, of course, I understand that it's preferable to a worse grade point average, but still ... I just don't understand it. I don't understand how people can work towards a goal because I don't have any goals at all. I have no idea whatsoever what a goal for me could be, either. I'm just ... well ... vegetating from moment to moment without goal or purpose. It just doesn't make any difference what I do - as soon as I'm finished with doing it or even before that, I become bored again. Perhaps I never actually stop being bored ...
Well, that's it for today. I'm still bored. See you tomorrow or whenever.
P.S. Time needed: One hour.
Current Mood: 
bored
bored28 December 2006 @ 02:24 am
First of all, sorry for the long pause since my last entry. Ten days (eleven, actually, since it's after twelve o'clock already), more than one week again ...
Interestingly enough, writing feels a bit ... rusty now, I guess. Which shows that, on the one hand, regularly writing entries in this journal has definitely helped me to become more fluent in English (well, at least in writing it) - and on the other hand, the long pause already has negative impacts on that. Thinking of fitting words and prepositions takes longer than before. Well, I'll have to live with that. I guess language skills - skills in foreign languages - are like plants: No matter how beautiful a plant is, no matter how lively, in the end, it's guaranteed to wither and to die if you don't regularly water it. Our second exam in English is on January 11, shortly after the end of the Christmas holidays, and I guess it won't hurt to update more regularly (if I find a good topic). After all, I still want to get good marks for some reason unknown to me.
So what's happened? Well, naturally, I've "survived" the first part of this school year with a total of nine exams, a theory test in sports (The only test/exam that I didn't really study for (which still means that I read all the rules twice) - but as trying to teach me sports rules is completely hopeless, it didn't really matter. And after all, my marks in sports class won't appear in my final certificate ...), several tests in several subjects, including an announced multiple choice test in German class about "Maria Stuart" by Schiller in which nobody managed to get fifteen points because there was a question that basically everybody understood differently than our teacher - but she didn't want to give us the point for this question because the grade point average was already too good. After all, there were several people with fourteen points, including me ... I stand by my point: Multiple choice tests are easy (at least at school). My last day of school was Thursday because, as previously mentioned, I still had an outstanding surgery because it didn't work out in November. So on Friday, I had to get up at shortly after 6 am (basically, too early), be at the hospital at 7 am and wait one hour and a half before I had my surgery (I'm not going to mention what it was about again) - with a narcosis instead of a local anaesthesia. Basically, the conscious part of the surgery was over very fast - I was brought to a surgery room or however it's called, then got a syringe into my left arm, and then I fell asleep shortly after the injection. When I woke up, the surgery was done, but I had to wait a few hours before I was allowed to go home. And it's still so very, very, very annoying whenever I walk around in the house, not even mentioning that I certainly won't try to ride a bike for a while ...
And then the holidays. Christmas was slightly different from usual - one of my cousins (I don't know ... eight, nine years old?) had a small case of blood poisoning from an infected wound last week, and as she had to stay at the hospital for a few days, it wasn't certain whether she would be able to there on Christmas or not, and as we celebrate (...) Christmas together with the families of two of my uncles, it wasn't certain whether we could do that. Anyway, it worked out, and then it was as usual: Going to the church (something I never do if I'm not forced to, i.e. on Christmas, Easter, etc. - after all, I'm an atheist ...), being bored to death, then going to the house of one of my uncles and celebrating (...) Christmas there, eating dinner and singing Christmas carols before unpacking the presents. Christmas is always (very) slightly nice, because while yes, it's not bad to see your relatives, it also means seeing your relatives (you know what I mean - the usual remarks of relatives tend to be of various degrees of embarrassment), having to go to church (which I hate), etc. In the end, Christmas is not more for me than it is for most other people who celebrate it (that's why I put a "(...)" after the word "celebrating" before - because I technically don't celebrate it) - a day on which you get presents. Doesn't sound very nice, but it's the truth for more people than just me.
Anyway, my Christmas presents were quite good actually and much appreciated (with a much higher monetary value than usual, so don't think I always get this much (although there are probably many people who get much more than that)): I got the "His Dark Materials" series (you might know this one - it consists of "The Golden Compass", "The Subtle Knife", and "The Amber Spyglass") - in English, of course. I'm not sure whether I'll keep it, though. I have already read the books in German before and although I liked the style of writing and the story, I disliked the ending of the trilogy so much that it left a bad aftertaste long after I had read it. And while that's probably not fair to the series, I don't feel like reading more than 1200 pages if I won't like the ending anyway. But if I give this series back, I'll definitely exchange it for other English fantasy novels. I and my sister also received five more books by Tamora Pierce, the "The Circle Opens" series and a single novel belonging to the same fantasy universe, "The Will of the Empress". Although I technically only got the latter book, I'm still going to be able to read all of them, so I thought I'd mention them, especially because we now own all books by Tamora Pierce (she might have written one or two more books by now, but if she has, the series these belong to aren't completed yet, so we probably won't buy them until they are) in either German or English. If you like fantasy novels for teenagers, I suggest you to give her books a try. Apart from a tiny but nevertheless funny little rabbit/hare/bunny (I don't really know the difference anyway) made of clay that I received from one of my little cousins (her remark "It has glasses!" was quite funny^^ - if I haven't mentioned it already, I have glasses, too (quite strong ones, actually) - I'm short-sighted by the way), I also got a small silver ring from my father and my sister in the form of a Chinese dragon. I don't care about appearance at all so I don't have any jewellery whatsoever, but if there's one thing I'd wear as jewellery, it's jewellery that's connected with fantasy worlds. Magical signs, fantastical creatures, things like that. Not because I believe in the existence or positive attributes associated with them (e.g. luck in the case of the Chinese dragon) but simply because I like fantasy worlds. I'm not sure whether I'll always wear the ring or not, but I guess I will. If I manage to get used to wearing rings, that is ...
And finally, I also got my biggest (both in size and in value) wish: A 20'' widescreen LCD display (the SyncMaster 205 BW if you are interested in the model) which replaced my old 17'' CRT. In addition to the fact that a LCD is better for the eyes as far as I know (certainly better for them than my very, very old CRT was), I also wanted a widescreen display. Although the display of my LCD is much bigger than the one of my old CRT, I now have much more room on my table simply because the LCD display's depth is almost non-existent whereas my CRT's depth was approximately as long as its width ...
Now I just need a new computer to start playing computer games again - if I want to, that is. And I'm not sure yet. After all, playing computer games is as much of a waste of time as everything else I do at the moment. My problem doesn't lie in the thought (or maybe truth for other people) that excessively playing computer games would get in the way of studying. In fact, I'm a living proof that playing computer games all the time doesn't have to have a bad impact on marks at all. And I don't (want to) care about good marks, anyway. But I just think that playing computer games won't make me any happier than what I currently do (that is, essentially nothing - surfing the web, studying for school, watching anime (I hate words that don't have plurals because they come from a foreign language - in this case, Japanese)) - nothing else), and they will probably make me sleep even less than I already do ... Well, I'll see. I haven't made up my mind yet, anyway.
I could go on about what I did today (technically, yesterday), but I guess I've already written too much already. Anyway, I'll try to update more regularly again but I won't promise anything. In the end, I don't write for anybody except for me - myself -, anyway ...
P.S. Time needed: About two hours. I'll need a few entries before I'll be able to write as fast as I did before, I guess. And I did a few other things besides writing, anyway.
Interestingly enough, writing feels a bit ... rusty now, I guess. Which shows that, on the one hand, regularly writing entries in this journal has definitely helped me to become more fluent in English (well, at least in writing it) - and on the other hand, the long pause already has negative impacts on that. Thinking of fitting words and prepositions takes longer than before. Well, I'll have to live with that. I guess language skills - skills in foreign languages - are like plants: No matter how beautiful a plant is, no matter how lively, in the end, it's guaranteed to wither and to die if you don't regularly water it. Our second exam in English is on January 11, shortly after the end of the Christmas holidays, and I guess it won't hurt to update more regularly (if I find a good topic). After all, I still want to get good marks for some reason unknown to me.
So what's happened? Well, naturally, I've "survived" the first part of this school year with a total of nine exams, a theory test in sports (The only test/exam that I didn't really study for (which still means that I read all the rules twice) - but as trying to teach me sports rules is completely hopeless, it didn't really matter. And after all, my marks in sports class won't appear in my final certificate ...), several tests in several subjects, including an announced multiple choice test in German class about "Maria Stuart" by Schiller in which nobody managed to get fifteen points because there was a question that basically everybody understood differently than our teacher - but she didn't want to give us the point for this question because the grade point average was already too good. After all, there were several people with fourteen points, including me ... I stand by my point: Multiple choice tests are easy (at least at school). My last day of school was Thursday because, as previously mentioned, I still had an outstanding surgery because it didn't work out in November. So on Friday, I had to get up at shortly after 6 am (basically, too early), be at the hospital at 7 am and wait one hour and a half before I had my surgery (I'm not going to mention what it was about again) - with a narcosis instead of a local anaesthesia. Basically, the conscious part of the surgery was over very fast - I was brought to a surgery room or however it's called, then got a syringe into my left arm, and then I fell asleep shortly after the injection. When I woke up, the surgery was done, but I had to wait a few hours before I was allowed to go home. And it's still so very, very, very annoying whenever I walk around in the house, not even mentioning that I certainly won't try to ride a bike for a while ...
And then the holidays. Christmas was slightly different from usual - one of my cousins (I don't know ... eight, nine years old?) had a small case of blood poisoning from an infected wound last week, and as she had to stay at the hospital for a few days, it wasn't certain whether she would be able to there on Christmas or not, and as we celebrate (...) Christmas together with the families of two of my uncles, it wasn't certain whether we could do that. Anyway, it worked out, and then it was as usual: Going to the church (something I never do if I'm not forced to, i.e. on Christmas, Easter, etc. - after all, I'm an atheist ...), being bored to death, then going to the house of one of my uncles and celebrating (...) Christmas there, eating dinner and singing Christmas carols before unpacking the presents. Christmas is always (very) slightly nice, because while yes, it's not bad to see your relatives, it also means seeing your relatives (you know what I mean - the usual remarks of relatives tend to be of various degrees of embarrassment), having to go to church (which I hate), etc. In the end, Christmas is not more for me than it is for most other people who celebrate it (that's why I put a "(...)" after the word "celebrating" before - because I technically don't celebrate it) - a day on which you get presents. Doesn't sound very nice, but it's the truth for more people than just me.
Anyway, my Christmas presents were quite good actually and much appreciated (with a much higher monetary value than usual, so don't think I always get this much (although there are probably many people who get much more than that)): I got the "His Dark Materials" series (you might know this one - it consists of "The Golden Compass", "The Subtle Knife", and "The Amber Spyglass") - in English, of course. I'm not sure whether I'll keep it, though. I have already read the books in German before and although I liked the style of writing and the story, I disliked the ending of the trilogy so much that it left a bad aftertaste long after I had read it. And while that's probably not fair to the series, I don't feel like reading more than 1200 pages if I won't like the ending anyway. But if I give this series back, I'll definitely exchange it for other English fantasy novels. I and my sister also received five more books by Tamora Pierce, the "The Circle Opens" series and a single novel belonging to the same fantasy universe, "The Will of the Empress". Although I technically only got the latter book, I'm still going to be able to read all of them, so I thought I'd mention them, especially because we now own all books by Tamora Pierce (she might have written one or two more books by now, but if she has, the series these belong to aren't completed yet, so we probably won't buy them until they are) in either German or English. If you like fantasy novels for teenagers, I suggest you to give her books a try. Apart from a tiny but nevertheless funny little rabbit/hare/bunny (I don't really know the difference anyway) made of clay that I received from one of my little cousins (her remark "It has glasses!" was quite funny^^ - if I haven't mentioned it already, I have glasses, too (quite strong ones, actually) - I'm short-sighted by the way), I also got a small silver ring from my father and my sister in the form of a Chinese dragon. I don't care about appearance at all so I don't have any jewellery whatsoever, but if there's one thing I'd wear as jewellery, it's jewellery that's connected with fantasy worlds. Magical signs, fantastical creatures, things like that. Not because I believe in the existence or positive attributes associated with them (e.g. luck in the case of the Chinese dragon) but simply because I like fantasy worlds. I'm not sure whether I'll always wear the ring or not, but I guess I will. If I manage to get used to wearing rings, that is ...
And finally, I also got my biggest (both in size and in value) wish: A 20'' widescreen LCD display (the SyncMaster 205 BW if you are interested in the model) which replaced my old 17'' CRT. In addition to the fact that a LCD is better for the eyes as far as I know (certainly better for them than my very, very old CRT was), I also wanted a widescreen display. Although the display of my LCD is much bigger than the one of my old CRT, I now have much more room on my table simply because the LCD display's depth is almost non-existent whereas my CRT's depth was approximately as long as its width ...
Now I just need a new computer to start playing computer games again - if I want to, that is. And I'm not sure yet. After all, playing computer games is as much of a waste of time as everything else I do at the moment. My problem doesn't lie in the thought (or maybe truth for other people) that excessively playing computer games would get in the way of studying. In fact, I'm a living proof that playing computer games all the time doesn't have to have a bad impact on marks at all. And I don't (want to) care about good marks, anyway. But I just think that playing computer games won't make me any happier than what I currently do (that is, essentially nothing - surfing the web, studying for school, watching anime (I hate words that don't have plurals because they come from a foreign language - in this case, Japanese)) - nothing else), and they will probably make me sleep even less than I already do ... Well, I'll see. I haven't made up my mind yet, anyway.
I could go on about what I did today (technically, yesterday), but I guess I've already written too much already. Anyway, I'll try to update more regularly again but I won't promise anything. In the end, I don't write for anybody except for me - myself -, anyway ...
P.S. Time needed: About two hours. I'll need a few entries before I'll be able to write as fast as I did before, I guess. And I did a few other things besides writing, anyway.
Current Mood: 
tired
tired17 December 2006 @ 09:54 pm
Another entry after a rather long absence. Sorry for that. And I can't promise that I'll update more regularly again. I need inner integrity to write journal entries, and if I don't possess that, I'll sit in front of my computer and do less productive things than that, even though I'd have more than enough time to write an entry. Anyway, can't help it.
School. Well, I still don't mind school, I never did, but after these approximately four or so weeks full of written exams, I'm quite sick of our education system. After all, it's absolutely pointless to press all these exams into this little tiny time frame, and I also don't get why I'm supposed to write exams in subjects like music. If I wasn't aware of how pointless it was, I'd try to change this system. Anyway, I hope I'll be able to endure the next two years. I don't think I've ever been as exhausted as I've been in this school year. And it's bound to become more exhausting ...
Anyway, I've survived my exam in physics class and religion class although I felt worse in the physics class exam than I did in music class or history class, for example, and that was kind of stupid. But as I still managed to understand the correct solution afterwards, it's okay, I guess. Religion class, however, was just completely unbearable. If I have to deny (I didn't find a good translation for German "verleugnen", I'm afraid) my own identity, my own (lack of Christian) beliefs, that's simply unacceptable. Yes, I did babble on about Christian beliefs, the way God was seen in the Old Testament and all the other topics we had in religion class ... but in the end, I don't have any connection to them. I just repeat what I've been told, but my heart is not in it (of course it isn't - I'm an atheist). I won't get the marks I want to get that way, and I feel bad about myself before, during and after these exams, so I'll switch to ethics class next year. Then again, I should have done that years ago ...
It's always difficult to think of a good topic to write about. Or maybe it isn't. It's just hard to think of a topic that I feel like writing about. I have a list of topics I could choose from, but that doesn't help me one bit because the ideas for these topics came from other days when I felt differently, when my mood was differently, or maybe the topics just aren't recent enough any more. That's why I'll write about ... oh, well, random stuff today if I can't come up with any special topic.
Anime are still fun. Of course there are also disappointments (e.g. unfinished series - series that aren't continued any more but don't end satisfyingly at all) in between, but generally, I enjoy them. There are stories full of clichés, stories about samurai and yet more samurai, stories that don't really have a story but are still enjoyable, and so on. Just like western cartoons, I guess. Then again, I don't really know - my experience of western cartoons is very limited. The important part is probably that I don't regret watching these anime. I wish I'd understand Japanese, I guess I'd enjoy these movies even more. But watching them in English isn't that bad, I guess. It's just so pathetic to hear people scream or generally show any real emotion (hatred, sorrow, affection, anything) in translated English when you can listen to the same part of the movie with the original Japanese audio ... the English voices often don't even have nearly as much emotion in them as the Japanese originals. In my opinion, the translators are to blame for that. But as I don't pay for these series, I guess I can't complain, can I?
It's also interesting to note that the archetypes are sometimes so different in anime than in western stories and movies. For example, there's often a young cat girl in the series that's highly energetic and playful but doesn't do much more than annoy the main characters. Or the heroes that can't show any emotion at all. Or all those young, ambitious but too reckless fighters that just "want to become stronger", etc. I'm quite amused whenever I notice archetypes like these but I also use them to become more aware of western archetypes which might be just as funny to Asian audiences. I haven't seen any normal magician as a hero, for example, and almost no heroes in the anime were muscle-bound. Of course there had to be some female heroes or villains with exaggerated breast sizes (Although the stereotypical event in some anime where a male character trips and falls onto a female character is kind of funny - after ending up in a ... embarrassing position, the character belonging to the "weak gender" (or however it's called in English) misinterprets this as a form or sexual assault and hits the male character so hard that he ends up flying into the sky or at least crushing into a wall - without any permanent injuries, of course), but I was also positively surprised that there were also anime which managed to maintain a good - very good - story without resorting to this.
Sigh. Looks to me as if I'll need better topics in the future. I just can't concentrate enough. Sorry for that.
Anyway, that's it for today. See you sometime soon.
P.S. Time needed: A bit less than one hour or so. With countless interruptions ... and I didn't know what to write about to begin with, anyway.
11 December 2006 @ 08:45 pm
It's always amazing what a body can (or can't) withstand. I've slept for about three hours today (the last time I looked at my alarm-clock it was about 4 am). I didn't feel like going to bed immediately after my last entry. Anyway, I'm still awake now although going to school and back by bike was definitely ... interesting. Basically, while my mind seemed to have had enough rest to stay awake for some time after getting up (although it wasn't easy), my body hadn't had enough rest. I thought the body needed less rest than the mind, but I guess I confused something there.
Anyway, everything feels a bit slow and foggy today, but I guess that's the result if you don't give your body the rest it wants. Then again, I don't particularly listen to the needs of my body, anyway. But I'm still awake, and while I don't feel productive after having school until after 5 pm and only three hours of sleep, I can't really go to bed just yet. After all, I have to learn for physics class for the same nonexistent reason I learn for any other subjects at school ... oh, and although I thought that after this week, the exams would finally be over, it goes on until Wednesday next week, so basically nearly until the holidays. And then, after the holidays, everything will start immediately again with my second exams in my intensive courses...
This week: Exams in physics class on Wednesday and religion class on Friday (the latter one already sounded difficult before our teacher told us that we'd have to be able to cite passages in the Bible to get best grades - I mean, seriously, she sounded as if she really assumed that we had all read it already^^ ...), then learning three pages of vocabulary and three pages of information (topic: "Life in the community") for English class and reading the first two acts (70 pages; to be fair, however, it's a Reclam) of Maria Stuart by Schiller for German class (and our teacher will write a test about it on that day to ensure we've read it that far), both until Monday next week, and finally a theory test in sports class on Wednesday next week ... not as much as the past few weeks consisted of, but still enough to become sick of it.
Depressions are a funny thing. I'm not depressed any more, no. I'm not happy, either. But I'm ... I don't know ... maybe I'm too lethargic to be depressed right now? Or maybe it has to do something with having been at school today for so long? I don't know. Anyway, I did manage to go to my doctor's and get a referral for a psychologist (and the list of local psychologists to begin with) and addresses for two dermatologists (I got my referral for one already but didn't have addresses for any of them; I have to see a dermatologist for an allergy test). Although I'll take my time before going to any of these, I guess ...
The difference between being really awake and between merely not sleeping is apparent when I tell you that I've needed about more than half an hour to write this far. As I don't really have any time to spare (again, exam in physics class on Wednesday and in religion class on Friday), I'll end it here for today.
Sorry for any unusual orthographical mistakes in my entries, by the way; if (I don't really read my entries again after finishing them) it's worse than usual, it's probably caused by an insufficient amount of sleep lately.
See you some time soon.
P.S. Time needed: A bit less than three quarters of an hour.
11 December 2006 @ 01:55 am
[Negative, depressive thoughts again today. Sorry for that. This entry contains offensive sentences, and remarks, but please don't take anything of that personally.]
Sunday night (well, 12:20 pm, so technically, it's already Monday). As usual for this day and time, depressive thoughts rein my consciousness. Everything is ridiculous. Our politicians are stupid, stupid, stupid, they sell our democracy for their own personal gain; nobody ever does anything (and I involuntarily support this mentality by not doing anything, either), everybody is simply stupid, stupid, stupid. And in all this political mess between our way to a totalitarian police state (e.g. wanting to store personal data, e.g. telephone conversations etc.) by propagating (unfounded) fear of terrorism and the attempted destruction of freedom and independence of one of the things I love most - the Internet -, I become more and more aware that I've never wanted to be part of any of this, yet I'm here, a bit more than eighteen years old, German, student at a Bavarian Gymnasium, in a life I never wanted.
I was born without being asked. For the past several years, or at least as long as I can remember (after all, the memory process is, unconsciously, highly subjective, and I have no way to know whether my memories match reality) there hasn't been a moment where I'd have answered the question "Imagine you were some kind of being before being born. If you had been asked whether you wanted to be born or not, would you have responded 'yes'?" with "Yes.". Instead, if somebody would ask me now, I wouldn't hesitate before saying "No.". In fact, I'd wish to have this choice right now to escape from what I perceive as an overwhelming misery.
If it wasn't so sad, I'd laugh at all this. Why do I exist if there's nothing that justifies my existence? Why do I exist if I don't want to exist? And why can't I simply choose not to exist anymore? Why does this body I hate, why does this "myself" that I hate, why does all this not allow me to end it? Or, alternatively, why can't I be part of these mindless but happy masses, unaware of the fact that other people break down because they constantly think about fundamental questions, unaware of the fact that our current politics mock the ideals of democracy, unaware of everything except for their own, puny, unimportant lives? Why can't I be stupid? Why do I have to think about all this, constantly, without relaxation for my mind?
I simply want to go to bed, sleep and never wake up again. And at the same time I'm afraid of going to bed because I'm afraid of dying while I sleep. My thoughts, my mind, my personality, everything is torn between depression and anxiety, between pessimism and self preservation. And I hate all of this.
Now imagine that my personality was different. Imagine that I was interested in weapons, imagine that I'd direct my hate and depressions at others instead of myself. I'm not liable to start an amok run, of course I'm not. I'm simply saying that if my personality wasn't completely incompatible with starting an amok run, my thoughts would certainly qualify for one. Then again, they aren't aggressive enough.
I'll try to go to the doctor's tomorrow morning and come to my first lesson (religion class) afterwards. I still don't have their list of psychologists because I haven't gone there since I was offered to come back to them a day later or so to pick it up because they couldn't find it right now. And if I don't go there consciously, I won't do it at all, I know that much. Then again, I've kind of lost the belief that a psychologist could help me with my problems ...
Nothing has changed since the last time I've written an entry like this one: I'm not happy. I'm not depressed all the time, either, but when I'm not, I still don't feel any positive emotions.
And while these depressions are probably (I haven't been at a psychologist's so far) partly based on a physical illness, their psychical counterpart isn't hard to grasp, either. It's the vicious circle of questions without any answers. Why do I live? Why do I go to school? What are my reasons for living? What are my reasons for trying to be good at school? What good does it do to be good at school? Why should I be happy about anything in my life? Why can't I stop thinking about all this? Why should I go to school tomorrow? What are my reasons to get up after going to sleep today? What do I want to achieve in life? Why do I want to achieve it?
No answers, only questions.
And I'm quite talented in falling into this vicious circle wherever I am, it doesn't even require any effort. A simple reaction in my brain, a simple spark of thoughts, and I'm back in this trap. I don't need an apparent reason. Today started quite normal (including waking up at 3 pm), without any especially negative thoughts. And then, some hours later, after coming back from the play we watched today ("Absurd Person Singular" by Alan Ayckbourn, but in German instead of English), it gradually became worse. And now it's almost at rock bottom ...
No, I'm not in this state all the time. In fact, my condition is only rarely this bad. And it varies in the rest of the time, too. But I enjoy almost none of my moments, no matter how hard I try. I don't get sucked into this vicious circle while I watch movies, and I can laugh at funny scenes while watching them, too. But as soon as I stop, reality approaches and closes in again.
What good does it do to get good marks at school if I don't see what good it will do? Oh, yes, I'll go to university. But then? Then I can use my university graduation to get a better job. So what? I've never been interested in money. My life centers around a computer with an Internet connection, a bed and food. I could probably afford that much with the money I'd get from the state if I was unemployed. I don't have a reason for any of this, or an answer to any of these questions.
And before I end this entry, let me give you a short summary of a conversation I had with my mother an hour ago or so in the kitchen: I asked her which (political) party she generally voted for, she told me and said she always voted for the same party no matter what it did because she had sympathized with its goals shortly after she was allowed to vote. She was aware that this wasn't really intelligent, but she has never changed this, either. [Things like these are the reasons for me referring to my mother as stupid, by the way.] Then we had a short conversation about politics with me mentioning all the things I disliked about them, after which she mentioned that I should remember that my life was relatively simple compared to theirs. I didn't really understand what she referred to, but she's right, of course. My life is still relatively simple. I don't really help in this household at all (I've mentioned my reasons for that already), I get up, go to school if I have to, come home and sit in front of the computer. But this isn't an excuse for anything. Perhaps politics are more complex than my life, but, again, that doesn't excuse anything. The people in charge of any country should be intelligent and capable enough to overcome any difficulties in this regard instead of working for personal gain and fanning the fear of terrorism. After I complained about never having chosen to be part of any of this - neither this life nor this state -, my mother knew that I accused her by saying this, too (and it wasn't the first time, although I've never accused her as directly as I've done in my livejournal), and after saying something unimportant, she then said that she had only gotten me for personal enjoyment. And that it was too late to change anything now (which doesn't excuse anything, either) ... I replied something along the lines "And that's your fault/mistake.", I went back into my room and locked the door.
Why hasn't some god judged my stupid, naive mother, why was she ever allowed to get me (us), why didn't anyone ever stop her? Choosing to get children isn't an altruistic decision, it's an egoistic one. It's the most egoistic choice one can make. Lack or insufficient use of contraceptives (condoms, etc.) when having sex can cause unwanted pregnancy, too, but (except for rape) it doesn't justify anything, either. I never wanted to be born, but because some stupid woman and some stupid man wanted to get children, I suffer as a result. I can sympathize with everybody who kills his parents in an amok run. Sadly, my personality, my ethics and my moral don't allow me to do anything like that. But I will blame them for what they did, and I won't forgive them until they die, and probably not even then.
And what now? It's 1:46 am and I have no interest whatsoever in going to bed if I have to get up again for another pathetic day, but in the end, I won't do anything different. Perhaps I'll be rebellious to my own good and stay awake some more, but sooner or later, I will go to bed, go to sleep, wake up at 7 am, probably without any depressive thoughts any more, but still without any happy ones, either. And then everything begins again ...
P.S. Time needed: About one hour and a half. And today, writing didn't help at all.
Sunday night (well, 12:20 pm, so technically, it's already Monday). As usual for this day and time, depressive thoughts rein my consciousness. Everything is ridiculous. Our politicians are stupid, stupid, stupid, they sell our democracy for their own personal gain; nobody ever does anything (and I involuntarily support this mentality by not doing anything, either), everybody is simply stupid, stupid, stupid. And in all this political mess between our way to a totalitarian police state (e.g. wanting to store personal data, e.g. telephone conversations etc.) by propagating (unfounded) fear of terrorism and the attempted destruction of freedom and independence of one of the things I love most - the Internet -, I become more and more aware that I've never wanted to be part of any of this, yet I'm here, a bit more than eighteen years old, German, student at a Bavarian Gymnasium, in a life I never wanted.
I was born without being asked. For the past several years, or at least as long as I can remember (after all, the memory process is, unconsciously, highly subjective, and I have no way to know whether my memories match reality) there hasn't been a moment where I'd have answered the question "Imagine you were some kind of being before being born. If you had been asked whether you wanted to be born or not, would you have responded 'yes'?" with "Yes.". Instead, if somebody would ask me now, I wouldn't hesitate before saying "No.". In fact, I'd wish to have this choice right now to escape from what I perceive as an overwhelming misery.
If it wasn't so sad, I'd laugh at all this. Why do I exist if there's nothing that justifies my existence? Why do I exist if I don't want to exist? And why can't I simply choose not to exist anymore? Why does this body I hate, why does this "myself" that I hate, why does all this not allow me to end it? Or, alternatively, why can't I be part of these mindless but happy masses, unaware of the fact that other people break down because they constantly think about fundamental questions, unaware of the fact that our current politics mock the ideals of democracy, unaware of everything except for their own, puny, unimportant lives? Why can't I be stupid? Why do I have to think about all this, constantly, without relaxation for my mind?
I simply want to go to bed, sleep and never wake up again. And at the same time I'm afraid of going to bed because I'm afraid of dying while I sleep. My thoughts, my mind, my personality, everything is torn between depression and anxiety, between pessimism and self preservation. And I hate all of this.
Now imagine that my personality was different. Imagine that I was interested in weapons, imagine that I'd direct my hate and depressions at others instead of myself. I'm not liable to start an amok run, of course I'm not. I'm simply saying that if my personality wasn't completely incompatible with starting an amok run, my thoughts would certainly qualify for one. Then again, they aren't aggressive enough.
I'll try to go to the doctor's tomorrow morning and come to my first lesson (religion class) afterwards. I still don't have their list of psychologists because I haven't gone there since I was offered to come back to them a day later or so to pick it up because they couldn't find it right now. And if I don't go there consciously, I won't do it at all, I know that much. Then again, I've kind of lost the belief that a psychologist could help me with my problems ...
Nothing has changed since the last time I've written an entry like this one: I'm not happy. I'm not depressed all the time, either, but when I'm not, I still don't feel any positive emotions.
And while these depressions are probably (I haven't been at a psychologist's so far) partly based on a physical illness, their psychical counterpart isn't hard to grasp, either. It's the vicious circle of questions without any answers. Why do I live? Why do I go to school? What are my reasons for living? What are my reasons for trying to be good at school? What good does it do to be good at school? Why should I be happy about anything in my life? Why can't I stop thinking about all this? Why should I go to school tomorrow? What are my reasons to get up after going to sleep today? What do I want to achieve in life? Why do I want to achieve it?
No answers, only questions.
And I'm quite talented in falling into this vicious circle wherever I am, it doesn't even require any effort. A simple reaction in my brain, a simple spark of thoughts, and I'm back in this trap. I don't need an apparent reason. Today started quite normal (including waking up at 3 pm), without any especially negative thoughts. And then, some hours later, after coming back from the play we watched today ("Absurd Person Singular" by Alan Ayckbourn, but in German instead of English), it gradually became worse. And now it's almost at rock bottom ...
No, I'm not in this state all the time. In fact, my condition is only rarely this bad. And it varies in the rest of the time, too. But I enjoy almost none of my moments, no matter how hard I try. I don't get sucked into this vicious circle while I watch movies, and I can laugh at funny scenes while watching them, too. But as soon as I stop, reality approaches and closes in again.
What good does it do to get good marks at school if I don't see what good it will do? Oh, yes, I'll go to university. But then? Then I can use my university graduation to get a better job. So what? I've never been interested in money. My life centers around a computer with an Internet connection, a bed and food. I could probably afford that much with the money I'd get from the state if I was unemployed. I don't have a reason for any of this, or an answer to any of these questions.
And before I end this entry, let me give you a short summary of a conversation I had with my mother an hour ago or so in the kitchen: I asked her which (political) party she generally voted for, she told me and said she always voted for the same party no matter what it did because she had sympathized with its goals shortly after she was allowed to vote. She was aware that this wasn't really intelligent, but she has never changed this, either. [Things like these are the reasons for me referring to my mother as stupid, by the way.] Then we had a short conversation about politics with me mentioning all the things I disliked about them, after which she mentioned that I should remember that my life was relatively simple compared to theirs. I didn't really understand what she referred to, but she's right, of course. My life is still relatively simple. I don't really help in this household at all (I've mentioned my reasons for that already), I get up, go to school if I have to, come home and sit in front of the computer. But this isn't an excuse for anything. Perhaps politics are more complex than my life, but, again, that doesn't excuse anything. The people in charge of any country should be intelligent and capable enough to overcome any difficulties in this regard instead of working for personal gain and fanning the fear of terrorism. After I complained about never having chosen to be part of any of this - neither this life nor this state -, my mother knew that I accused her by saying this, too (and it wasn't the first time, although I've never accused her as directly as I've done in my livejournal), and after saying something unimportant, she then said that she had only gotten me for personal enjoyment. And that it was too late to change anything now (which doesn't excuse anything, either) ... I replied something along the lines "And that's your fault/mistake.", I went back into my room and locked the door.
Why hasn't some god judged my stupid, naive mother, why was she ever allowed to get me (us), why didn't anyone ever stop her? Choosing to get children isn't an altruistic decision, it's an egoistic one. It's the most egoistic choice one can make. Lack or insufficient use of contraceptives (condoms, etc.) when having sex can cause unwanted pregnancy, too, but (except for rape) it doesn't justify anything, either. I never wanted to be born, but because some stupid woman and some stupid man wanted to get children, I suffer as a result. I can sympathize with everybody who kills his parents in an amok run. Sadly, my personality, my ethics and my moral don't allow me to do anything like that. But I will blame them for what they did, and I won't forgive them until they die, and probably not even then.
And what now? It's 1:46 am and I have no interest whatsoever in going to bed if I have to get up again for another pathetic day, but in the end, I won't do anything different. Perhaps I'll be rebellious to my own good and stay awake some more, but sooner or later, I will go to bed, go to sleep, wake up at 7 am, probably without any depressive thoughts any more, but still without any happy ones, either. And then everything begins again ...
P.S. Time needed: About one hour and a half. And today, writing didn't help at all.
Current Mood: Depressed.
08 December 2006 @ 08:48 pm
[If you are interested in my opinion about good, bad and normal students, you might be interested in my entry about Good teachers, bad teachers, my teachers..., too.]
Looks as if I'll never be able to escape the vicious circle called lack of sleep. Tired as usual, but it's not as bad as on Tuesday (although I'll probably still get interrupted a lot). Today I got my history exam (which I wrote last week) - and I was more than surprised about the result. Fourteen points - after hearing what our teacher expected, I'd have been surprised if I had gotten even twelve points. Then again, I'm still not completely sure whether some teachers don't (perhaps subconsciously?) give people they like (or who participate in class, at least) better marks than those who don't. Perhaps it's not a big deal on the whole, and I'm probably wrong, anyway, but I know I'd have a hell of a hard time correcting everything equally. Then again, if there are students in history class who don't care enough about history class to study at all and consequently receive between zero and two points, maybe I don't give myself enough credit. Anyway, I'm a bit ... confused because I actually thought that studying would matter more in history class. But I didn't really manage to find even one question in the history exam that was explicitly and solely reproduction ... and I'm better at thinking and explaining in history class than I am at remembering everything correctly, because I simply have a hard time studying for history class. Of course I'm quite pleased about the result, but it was simply unexpected. (Again, sorry for the bragging. I won't omit my bad marks, either - remember, six points in badminton class, and more marks like that to come in the future^^)
Well, anyway, noticing that I do far better in Kollegstufe than I thought I would - at least so far -, I've started to ask myself why that is so. My perception of the world is one in which you can become whatever you want to become if you want it enough. It's not about bad luck, luck or destiny. It's about wanting to, really wanting to, and about effort. Luck can help, bad luck can hinder, but in the end, it boils done to oneself, not others. Of course, that view doesn't help me with my depressions, because there's the seemingly tiny but in fact very, very big question about the "why and for what ". Why and for what would I put in effort? And as I don't have any reason to do so, I constantly struggle to keep going. My view of the world means that if I just had some reason, some motivation - however silly, I would just have to believe in it - I could do everything. Become president. Or a bestselling author. Fly to the moon. Become a mass murderer. Everything. But as I don't have any reason (and it's probably a good thing that I neither have reason nor motivation to become a mass murderer), that doesn't work.
But so far, although I don't have any deeper reason or motivation to study for school but to get good marks (and that is, frankly, no reason at all), and although that means that I require constant mental effort to start (and continue) studying for a subject, I've always done it. I can't remember a single exam (the written, announced ones - of course, I haven't always been prepared for unannounced tests and marks) that I haven't studied for so far. None. Except for those I couldn't really study for - those in German class in school years before this one, for example. But apart from that, I've always done at least something for my school marks. And although there are always people who are better than me at school, I have the ability not to base my success or well-being on others (in fact, the only one who really negatively impacts my well-being is me), so I don't have a problem with that. And I think they deserve it - they study more (or better) and deserve better marks. And I'm in no way in a position to complain about my marks, anyway.
That being said, I consider studying for school - it doesn't have to be much, half an hour, nay, a quarter of an hour per day and a small part of all the free periods at school would probably be enough - to be an important part of being a good student, but by no means the most important one.
But before I get to that, I guess I should give you my definitions of "good students" and "bad students". Good students are probably relatively good at school (because they study for school), they participate actively in class (by asking intelligent questions, answering the answers of teachers, etc.), they don't annoy other students in class or do other things that interrupt the lesson in a way that keeps other students who may (or may not, it's about the principle) be interested in the lesson from concentrating or understanding, they (try to) pay attention to what is said at school, they do their homework (that's a pretty obvious point) and they don't see school as a total waste of time (or at least acknowledge that if they don't even try to learn anything at school, it will be a waste of time) and teachers as their enemies. That's my definition of "good student"; of course, it's by no means perfect and probably lacks a few key points, anyway.
Bad students are ... well ... bad students. Some points are simply the opposite attributes I've given to good students, some are more, some are less. Bad students
are probably bad at school (but not necessarily so), they don't participate in class at all unless forced to by their teacher (e.g. by being asked something directly), they might (but not necessarily so) even annoy other students and make it harder for everybody to concentrate (by chatting all the time without caring about whether or not they annoy other students at all), they don't listen to the teacher and basically just mark time ("Zeit absitzen" in German) without profiting from school in any way, and they do see school as a total waste of time, they don't do their homework because they don't want to, not because of a valid reason, and they finally often get into arguments with their teachers. Again, that's my definition of "bad student", so it's not perfect and probably lacks a few key facts, too.
Both things listed are stereotypical, of course. Humans vary, so students vary, too. And as I said just a few days before, it isn't always advisable to put everybody into single categories. But I use these guidelines when I think of somebody as a "good student" or a "bad student".
Finally, as these categories only describe a very small percentage, normal students, the majority, are the rest. Perhaps they don't participate a lot in the classroom, perhaps they don't study very much or not at all, perhaps they don't do their homework all the time, perhaps they annoy others from time to time, perhaps they don't pay a lot of attention, perhaps they are bored by school from time to time, but they aren't all the time. They also enjoy school at least from time to time, they don't see school as a battle between student and teacher, and anyway, they are just "normal", not extreme in either direction. I'd put students with good marks but bad manners (annoying others, etc.), students with good marks but no participation in lessons and students with highly specialised marks (e.g. getting more than above average marks in subjects they enjoy a lot and more than below average in those they don't care about) into this "category" as well as bad students who are interested in school but just don't manage to get better marks and students who get bad marks but try to participate actively.
Actually, the last two could be put into the "good students" category, as well. As I said, marks don't really matter all that much (for me, anyway - yes, I have good marks, and yes, I'm slightly happy about receiving good marks, but I don't try to get good marks for any real reason). "Good student" does not necessarily equal "only has the best marks", and it's no different the other way around, either.
Again, this was all very stereotypical, I'm sorry for that. I'll try to get into more detail in my next entry because I'm quite interested in this topic. And yes, I think of myself as a good student (I probably wouldn't have written this entry if I would consider myself a "bad student"; then again, I probably wouldn't write this journal if I wouldn't, either).
See you sometime soon. I'll try to spend the weekend with sleeping (and going to a play with both English intensive courses on Sunday evening), sleeping, sleeping and studying for my last two written exams next week (apart from a theory test in sports class the week after next week). I might increase my output of entries after those last two exams, but I'm not completely sure about it. In any case, I'll try to increase it in the Christmas holidays before our second written examination in English class on January 11.
P.S. Time needed: One hour and a quarter.
P.P.S. My apologies if you feel pigeonholed (nice word!) by this entry. Feel free to comment or criticise my definitions, and please don't feel offended.
Looks as if I'll never be able to escape the vicious circle called lack of sleep. Tired as usual, but it's not as bad as on Tuesday (although I'll probably still get interrupted a lot). Today I got my history exam (which I wrote last week) - and I was more than surprised about the result. Fourteen points - after hearing what our teacher expected, I'd have been surprised if I had gotten even twelve points. Then again, I'm still not completely sure whether some teachers don't (perhaps subconsciously?) give people they like (or who participate in class, at least) better marks than those who don't. Perhaps it's not a big deal on the whole, and I'm probably wrong, anyway, but I know I'd have a hell of a hard time correcting everything equally. Then again, if there are students in history class who don't care enough about history class to study at all and consequently receive between zero and two points, maybe I don't give myself enough credit. Anyway, I'm a bit ... confused because I actually thought that studying would matter more in history class. But I didn't really manage to find even one question in the history exam that was explicitly and solely reproduction ... and I'm better at thinking and explaining in history class than I am at remembering everything correctly, because I simply have a hard time studying for history class. Of course I'm quite pleased about the result, but it was simply unexpected. (Again, sorry for the bragging. I won't omit my bad marks, either - remember, six points in badminton class, and more marks like that to come in the future^^)
Well, anyway, noticing that I do far better in Kollegstufe than I thought I would - at least so far -, I've started to ask myself why that is so. My perception of the world is one in which you can become whatever you want to become if you want it enough. It's not about bad luck, luck or destiny. It's about wanting to, really wanting to, and about effort. Luck can help, bad luck can hinder, but in the end, it boils done to oneself, not others. Of course, that view doesn't help me with my depressions, because there's the seemingly tiny but in fact very, very big question about the "why and for what ". Why and for what would I put in effort? And as I don't have any reason to do so, I constantly struggle to keep going. My view of the world means that if I just had some reason, some motivation - however silly, I would just have to believe in it - I could do everything. Become president. Or a bestselling author. Fly to the moon. Become a mass murderer. Everything. But as I don't have any reason (and it's probably a good thing that I neither have reason nor motivation to become a mass murderer), that doesn't work.
But so far, although I don't have any deeper reason or motivation to study for school but to get good marks (and that is, frankly, no reason at all), and although that means that I require constant mental effort to start (and continue) studying for a subject, I've always done it. I can't remember a single exam (the written, announced ones - of course, I haven't always been prepared for unannounced tests and marks) that I haven't studied for so far. None. Except for those I couldn't really study for - those in German class in school years before this one, for example. But apart from that, I've always done at least something for my school marks. And although there are always people who are better than me at school, I have the ability not to base my success or well-being on others (in fact, the only one who really negatively impacts my well-being is me), so I don't have a problem with that. And I think they deserve it - they study more (or better) and deserve better marks. And I'm in no way in a position to complain about my marks, anyway.
That being said, I consider studying for school - it doesn't have to be much, half an hour, nay, a quarter of an hour per day and a small part of all the free periods at school would probably be enough - to be an important part of being a good student, but by no means the most important one.
But before I get to that, I guess I should give you my definitions of "good students" and "bad students". Good students are probably relatively good at school (because they study for school), they participate actively in class (by asking intelligent questions, answering the answers of teachers, etc.), they don't annoy other students in class or do other things that interrupt the lesson in a way that keeps other students who may (or may not, it's about the principle) be interested in the lesson from concentrating or understanding, they (try to) pay attention to what is said at school, they do their homework (that's a pretty obvious point) and they don't see school as a total waste of time (or at least acknowledge that if they don't even try to learn anything at school, it will be a waste of time) and teachers as their enemies. That's my definition of "good student"; of course, it's by no means perfect and probably lacks a few key points, anyway.
Bad students are ... well ... bad students. Some points are simply the opposite attributes I've given to good students, some are more, some are less. Bad students
are probably bad at school (but not necessarily so), they don't participate in class at all unless forced to by their teacher (e.g. by being asked something directly), they might (but not necessarily so) even annoy other students and make it harder for everybody to concentrate (by chatting all the time without caring about whether or not they annoy other students at all), they don't listen to the teacher and basically just mark time ("Zeit absitzen" in German) without profiting from school in any way, and they do see school as a total waste of time, they don't do their homework because they don't want to, not because of a valid reason, and they finally often get into arguments with their teachers. Again, that's my definition of "bad student", so it's not perfect and probably lacks a few key facts, too.
Both things listed are stereotypical, of course. Humans vary, so students vary, too. And as I said just a few days before, it isn't always advisable to put everybody into single categories. But I use these guidelines when I think of somebody as a "good student" or a "bad student".
Finally, as these categories only describe a very small percentage, normal students, the majority, are the rest. Perhaps they don't participate a lot in the classroom, perhaps they don't study very much or not at all, perhaps they don't do their homework all the time, perhaps they annoy others from time to time, perhaps they don't pay a lot of attention, perhaps they are bored by school from time to time, but they aren't all the time. They also enjoy school at least from time to time, they don't see school as a battle between student and teacher, and anyway, they are just "normal", not extreme in either direction. I'd put students with good marks but bad manners (annoying others, etc.), students with good marks but no participation in lessons and students with highly specialised marks (e.g. getting more than above average marks in subjects they enjoy a lot and more than below average in those they don't care about) into this "category" as well as bad students who are interested in school but just don't manage to get better marks and students who get bad marks but try to participate actively.
Actually, the last two could be put into the "good students" category, as well. As I said, marks don't really matter all that much (for me, anyway - yes, I have good marks, and yes, I'm slightly happy about receiving good marks, but I don't try to get good marks for any real reason). "Good student" does not necessarily equal "only has the best marks", and it's no different the other way around, either.
Again, this was all very stereotypical, I'm sorry for that. I'll try to get into more detail in my next entry because I'm quite interested in this topic. And yes, I think of myself as a good student (I probably wouldn't have written this entry if I would consider myself a "bad student"; then again, I probably wouldn't write this journal if I wouldn't, either).
See you sometime soon. I'll try to spend the weekend with sleeping (and going to a play with both English intensive courses on Sunday evening), sleeping, sleeping and studying for my last two written exams next week (apart from a theory test in sports class the week after next week). I might increase my output of entries after those last two exams, but I'm not completely sure about it. In any case, I'll try to increase it in the Christmas holidays before our second written examination in English class on January 11.
P.S. Time needed: One hour and a quarter.
P.P.S. My apologies if you feel pigeonholed (nice word!) by this entry. Feel free to comment or criticise my definitions, and please don't feel offended.
Current Mood: Moodless.
05 December 2006 @ 11:58 pm
Aaand another journal entry. First of all, the written examination (I'm still not sure whether it's the best word for German "Klausur", but I haven't been able to find a better substitute for it yet) in music class was far easier than expected (although I have no idea how much I actually got right). Basically, as our lessons in music are totally without any structure whatsoever (the result of a bad mixture of a teacher who already doesn't tend to teach in the most structured way, the necessity for her to constantly explain even the most basic terms in music because most students in the class don't know them (including me, of course) - of course, I have to write that down then, which makes everything even less structured in the end than it was already ... and there are probably other reasons, too) except for the structure on the copied papers we regularly get, it's very hard to keep track of what we actually really do in class. Which made studying for the examination kind of difficult but the exam itself was easier than expected. Far easier, actually. I might have gotten some (or lots of) things wrong, but the questions in themselves weren't difficult. Looks as if I was scared (if that's the right word for it) of the music exam for nothing. And only one to go until I will be free from music exams forever!
And then I didn't sleep enough today and consequently lack any energy whatsoever. I'm not quite tired but it's a close call. And I can't go to sleep too early because a) I will wake up at midnight and b) I always need so much time to fall asleep even if I try to. Well, anyway, to top it all, my usual school day from 7:55 am to 2:45 pm (including two school breaks in between - conveniently not one right after the other so I can't just go home then ...) received an uncalled for addition of my first psychology lesson this year (there were always some reasons why we didn't have them) - so after riding home by bike I had to come back later for my psychology class from 4:30 pm to 6 pm. Really annoying, especially in winter, even more especially as it's the first time this year (And it couldn't be ... you know ... in a time when I don't write exams?) and to top it all, it just had to be so late in the school schedule (I realize that there must be priorities for "non-standard" classes, but as there are 27 students in psychology class, I hardly consider psychology class as "non-standard"). Oh, and we also received no less than 16 copied papers each. On our first lesson! Well, we were told that these papers are nearly all the papers for this semester, but still ... it's simply frightening to see a pile of paper that is bigger than the folder you use for school. But in the end I survived it to tell you the tale :P. Psychology does sound kind of fun, but in the end, I'm a bit sceptical about the big focus on Siegmund Freud. Explaining everything human kind does by basing it on conscious or unconscious sexual behaviours and desires that already start very early in human life is too much of a simplification to me (Frankly, I don't buy it.). Yes, Freud may have been the pioneer of modern psychotherapy, but I'd rather get a summary of his ideas in two lessons and then move on to more modern psychological theorists ...
I'm totally unable to stay concentrated today. Sigh. It's no use, I guess. I'll try to write a proper entry on Thursday or Friday, when I have a bit more free time (a whooping six days - almost a week! - before the next exam in physics class on Wednesday) - and, I hope, when I'm able to concentrate properly again...
P.S. Time needed: Half an hour or so. Basically, writing this entry consisted of nothing more than interruptions and staring at the screen including not remembering basic vocabulary items, and chatting on Trillian. Well, days like this one have to exist too, I guess. As long as I'm able to write more in half an hour on a usual day than what I managed to do here, it's OK.
And then I didn't sleep enough today and consequently lack any energy whatsoever. I'm not quite tired but it's a close call. And I can't go to sleep too early because a) I will wake up at midnight and b) I always need so much time to fall asleep even if I try to. Well, anyway, to top it all, my usual school day from 7:55 am to 2:45 pm (including two school breaks in between - conveniently not one right after the other so I can't just go home then ...) received an uncalled for addition of my first psychology lesson this year (there were always some reasons why we didn't have them) - so after riding home by bike I had to come back later for my psychology class from 4:30 pm to 6 pm. Really annoying, especially in winter, even more especially as it's the first time this year (And it couldn't be ... you know ... in a time when I don't write exams?) and to top it all, it just had to be so late in the school schedule (I realize that there must be priorities for "non-standard" classes, but as there are 27 students in psychology class, I hardly consider psychology class as "non-standard"). Oh, and we also received no less than 16 copied papers each. On our first lesson! Well, we were told that these papers are nearly all the papers for this semester, but still ... it's simply frightening to see a pile of paper that is bigger than the folder you use for school. But in the end I survived it to tell you the tale :P. Psychology does sound kind of fun, but in the end, I'm a bit sceptical about the big focus on Siegmund Freud. Explaining everything human kind does by basing it on conscious or unconscious sexual behaviours and desires that already start very early in human life is too much of a simplification to me (Frankly, I don't buy it.). Yes, Freud may have been the pioneer of modern psychotherapy, but I'd rather get a summary of his ideas in two lessons and then move on to more modern psychological theorists ...
I'm totally unable to stay concentrated today. Sigh. It's no use, I guess. I'll try to write a proper entry on Thursday or Friday, when I have a bit more free time (a whooping six days - almost a week! - before the next exam in physics class on Wednesday) - and, I hope, when I'm able to concentrate properly again...
P.S. Time needed: Half an hour or so. Basically, writing this entry consisted of nothing more than interruptions and staring at the screen including not remembering basic vocabulary items, and chatting on Trillian. Well, days like this one have to exist too, I guess. As long as I'm able to write more in half an hour on a usual day than what I managed to do here, it's OK.
Current Mood: tired
tired02 December 2006 @ 09:04 pm
Our history exam was ... annoying. Studying everything and then finding out that only about one sixth or so of everything you've (Contractions today! Yay! Not using them in my last entry really showed me how much I've already become used to them ...) learned is actually required is quite an unpleasant surprise. Ah, well, it's only history class, and it's over now! Only three written examinations in history class to go in my whole lifetime! Of course, the next written examination is in music class, and ... well ... it looks as if studying for it will be just as bad or worse than for history. I've already started, and apart from the fact that I don't really understand what I have to learn and what I don't, it's also horribly complicated (and meaningless) to somebody who has never ever been interested in music. If my computer was completely silent (which it isn't, not even close to it), and if I lived somewhere with no other audible sources (like other people in the house) I wouldn't have to rely on music to drown (I had to look that up) all those sounds out. I don't pay attention to music; I don't notice anything special about music; I don't play a musical instrument (and don't intend to do so, ever), and so on. Well, that's what I get for choosing music class instead of art class (because I thought that music would actually be easier ... oh, how very, very wrong I was). Really, really bad decision. I hope I don't do something like this when I decide what to study in university ...
And now today's topic.
Naturally, everybody is different. This is natural for everything in the universe, be it simple things like the fact that there can't be two different things (like two atoms, or two humans), at a certain place at a certain time. Or the fact that human traits, characteristics, abilities, etc. vary from person to person. But while these do generally differ from person to person, they also differ in each of us ourselves, depending on time and location. OK, so that did sound horribly and utterly complicated, which is perfectly fine because that's just what it's like when I write something :P. What I meant, anyway, is the topic of identity. Who am I? Am I the same person when I'm in a classroom at school when I answer the question of a teacher, or when I ride to school by bike, or when I'm in my own room? The way I see myself, that's not the case. It's a matter of different masks for different occasions.
In the classroom, I'm a (depending on subject) good pupil, very good in certain subjects (e.g. in my intensive courses) to normal (e.g. chemistry) to plain bad (e.g. music). Of course, I act accordingly - I say more in subjects when I have a clue of what the teacher talks about than if I don't, of course. And in school breaks, I'm different to my myself in the classroom. I (tend to) act/behave/am (it's important that this is not as distinguishable as one might think) way more confused in interaction with other people than I do/am when I'm relatively alone/"safe" (when chatting in my own room, for example, or talking when I'm safely sitting in a classroom where a maximum of two or so people might ask me something at the same time). A few (or a few more) weeks ago, somebody in a school break said something along the line "He's not really like that now, is he?", referring to me after I acted/behaved/was confused again. This question/remark wasn't said in a rude way or anything, but it got me thinking. What am I really like? And do I act confused or is it more?
Of course, there's more along the lines than simply this question. Because it can be extended to many, many situations in my (or anyone's) life. For example, I'm different - noticeably different - when I'm completely alone (in my own room) compared to being in even close contact to other people. I spend more time thinking when I'm left with myself. I'm not confused, bewildered, bemused or anything like that then. Not even closely. I might be depressed, or daydreaming, or in deep thoughts, or very concentrated when I'm playing something, or very, very, very bored, but I'm not confused. At school, concentrating is a lot harder, simply because I'm not used to being in the presence of other people (and I won't ever get used to it, I know that for sure). But I'm not always acting/behaving/being confused, just sometimes, for example when several people talk to me at the same time, something that really overtaxes me to some extent, but I might also exaggerate it a bit, of course. I'm not able to do multitasking at that level. I can play "Freecell" (a very basic card game in Windows) while watching animes at my computer without any problem, but I can't really interact with several people at once. That's me. In the end, it's a combination of a lot of different factors.
Some people talk of masks and how we sometimes don't show our usual self in the presence of other people; their usual premise consists of the thought that behind this mask, there must be a "true" core that makes up what we define as "ourselves". I have a different approach to that idea. I think that we wear, that we are several (different) masks everywhere, wherever we are. Whether we are at home, in our own rooms, or in the presence of family, or in the presence of strangers, or at school, or in front of a class of students ... we wear masks everywhere.
Nobody else can really say what I'm like, because they don't have enough material to judge me from. They only know me from my interactions with them and others, but unless they have secret cameras not only installed in my own room when it's locked and sealed off from the rest of the world but also inside my own mind, they have no means to say what I'm really like. But neither do I. My own body is something like a mask in itself, too. My emotions, my basic needs (hunger, sleeping, etc.), and in the end, even my own brain itself prevent me from making a rational judgement about what my "core" is like. If it exists. You can't even judge a person in a book because the author's image might not represent "reality" - his image of the person might be blurry, he might manipulate it for some reason, and so on. In the end, we can't judge other people easily, and the question of identity shows how complex we all really are.
If the owner of a factory is a miser and only pays his workers the lowest loan permitted, almost to the point of starvation, we make a judgement about him, calling him greedy, unfair, harsh, inhumane, because he makes his workers suffer. If we find out that he donates everything he gains in his life, everything he gains from this factory, to some welfare organisation, our judgement of him will waver and we'll end up confused because we didn't expect this person we considered to be a miser on first glance to do something like that. And then we might find out that he has an ulterior motive to do so, for example to win the love of a woman ... or that he does all this because it was the will of his father ... or that he's really forced to do everything ... or that he's a robot, and somebody else does all this for completely incomprehensible reasons.
Or we might even wake up and find out that everything was just a dream, or it might all just be a story, or a lie told by somebody. What about the person we assumed to be a miser at the beginning? We can't really verify whether anything (or everything) in this story was true, and we don't know all pieces of this puzzle. We don't know what the core of this person is really like. We only see that on the surface, he, like everybody, is different in different environments. Or at least that's the way I see it; you might come to different conclusions.
My thoughts on tolerance, prejudice and things like that draw on these thoughts. A certain president of the USA might act stupidly in whatever he does, but he might be a loving father, I don't know about that (and frankly, I don't care). I might (or might not, as it's only a fictive example) have had an unpleasant experience with foreigners, but that doesn't make these foreigners (or all people of that country) bad people. Somebody might act rude towards me, but I don't know whether this person acts rude all the time or because I reminded him of his twin brother who had repeatedly tried to strangle him ... or because I had said something that was an offense in a language he knows and I don't. And so on.
In the end, I try to judge the behaviour and actions of a person, not the person him- or herself. Apart from the fact that I hate being judged myself, I know that prejudices and intolerance don't lead to anything good. Of course it's hard. And I don't always succeed, not even closely. But I try to keep it in mind. And yes, it's probably not any better to separate people and their actions and call them different things. But it works for me. That way, I can at least suppress the urge to kill all those reporters who write all those articles full of prejudices and lies about "killer games". Or those politicians who have just recently come to the conclusion that they are legally allowed to ban "killer games" without first proving scientifically whether they are even bad for teenagers. ( Analysis by German Bundestag about this (in German) ) With the same reasoning, they could ban bread. Anyway, this way, I simply tell myself that these politicians are just completely stupid (a prejudice, but I know that it's one at least), which doesn't really justify anything, but makes me feel better. A little. And I can still call their behaviour completely idiotic, unjustified, etc (no prejudice but simply a judgement of their actions without judging the persons themselves at the same time).
[This - the last paragraph - had absolutely nothing to do with the entry, by the way, I just remembered it and thought it was worth mentioning for its idiocy.]
Ah, one more thing. I neither have nor try to get a girlfriend, but the usual remark you basically read everywhere when somebody asks a question about matters of love - "Just act naturally. Be yourself." - or something like that becomes far less easy to understand if you compare this with my view. Because what is really natural about anybody? What is natural about myself? Who am I, "myself"? Do they mean "Act like you usually do in the environment of other people?", or "Be like always." (which really wouldn't be any real help at all, not that this remark usually is, I guess), or something else? In my opinion, this advice can't really be followed. I don't think that we really have one nature. I don't think there is this categorical one true form, core, nature of any of us. Just a lot of different layers and masks, depending on situation, that may switch fluently - or not. But this doesn't have to be negative. It just shows that all our facets are much too complex to form a single core, a single identity, which would make us more easier to understand, of course, but it would also end up far more boring. And it could really reduce us to far less than what we really are.
In the end, all this was nothing more than toying with thoughts in my mind. I'm neither saying a problem exists, nor am I offering solutions; I'm merely asking questions. Because I like asking questions. Because I like toying with things in my mind. And because I'm able to do so without necessarily needing other people to discuss this with, just myself (which doesn't mean that you shouldn't comment this entry if you find it worthy of a comment; I simply meant that I don't depend on comments to write a journal). Myself and some of my masks that make up myself (and no, I'm not schizophrenic) ...
P.S. I like using strange examples. I really do.
P.P.S. Time needed: A bit more than one hour and a half.
And now today's topic.
Naturally, everybody is different. This is natural for everything in the universe, be it simple things like the fact that there can't be two different things (like two atoms, or two humans), at a certain place at a certain time. Or the fact that human traits, characteristics, abilities, etc. vary from person to person. But while these do generally differ from person to person, they also differ in each of us ourselves, depending on time and location. OK, so that did sound horribly and utterly complicated, which is perfectly fine because that's just what it's like when I write something :P. What I meant, anyway, is the topic of identity. Who am I? Am I the same person when I'm in a classroom at school when I answer the question of a teacher, or when I ride to school by bike, or when I'm in my own room? The way I see myself, that's not the case. It's a matter of different masks for different occasions.
In the classroom, I'm a (depending on subject) good pupil, very good in certain subjects (e.g. in my intensive courses) to normal (e.g. chemistry) to plain bad (e.g. music). Of course, I act accordingly - I say more in subjects when I have a clue of what the teacher talks about than if I don't, of course. And in school breaks, I'm different to my myself in the classroom. I (tend to) act/behave/am (it's important that this is not as distinguishable as one might think) way more confused in interaction with other people than I do/am when I'm relatively alone/"safe" (when chatting in my own room, for example, or talking when I'm safely sitting in a classroom where a maximum of two or so people might ask me something at the same time). A few (or a few more) weeks ago, somebody in a school break said something along the line "He's not really like that now, is he?", referring to me after I acted/behaved/was confused again. This question/remark wasn't said in a rude way or anything, but it got me thinking. What am I really like? And do I act confused or is it more?
Of course, there's more along the lines than simply this question. Because it can be extended to many, many situations in my (or anyone's) life. For example, I'm different - noticeably different - when I'm completely alone (in my own room) compared to being in even close contact to other people. I spend more time thinking when I'm left with myself. I'm not confused, bewildered, bemused or anything like that then. Not even closely. I might be depressed, or daydreaming, or in deep thoughts, or very concentrated when I'm playing something, or very, very, very bored, but I'm not confused. At school, concentrating is a lot harder, simply because I'm not used to being in the presence of other people (and I won't ever get used to it, I know that for sure). But I'm not always acting/behaving/being confused, just sometimes, for example when several people talk to me at the same time, something that really overtaxes me to some extent, but I might also exaggerate it a bit, of course. I'm not able to do multitasking at that level. I can play "Freecell" (a very basic card game in Windows) while watching animes at my computer without any problem, but I can't really interact with several people at once. That's me. In the end, it's a combination of a lot of different factors.
Some people talk of masks and how we sometimes don't show our usual self in the presence of other people; their usual premise consists of the thought that behind this mask, there must be a "true" core that makes up what we define as "ourselves". I have a different approach to that idea. I think that we wear, that we are several (different) masks everywhere, wherever we are. Whether we are at home, in our own rooms, or in the presence of family, or in the presence of strangers, or at school, or in front of a class of students ... we wear masks everywhere.
Nobody else can really say what I'm like, because they don't have enough material to judge me from. They only know me from my interactions with them and others, but unless they have secret cameras not only installed in my own room when it's locked and sealed off from the rest of the world but also inside my own mind, they have no means to say what I'm really like. But neither do I. My own body is something like a mask in itself, too. My emotions, my basic needs (hunger, sleeping, etc.), and in the end, even my own brain itself prevent me from making a rational judgement about what my "core" is like. If it exists. You can't even judge a person in a book because the author's image might not represent "reality" - his image of the person might be blurry, he might manipulate it for some reason, and so on. In the end, we can't judge other people easily, and the question of identity shows how complex we all really are.
If the owner of a factory is a miser and only pays his workers the lowest loan permitted, almost to the point of starvation, we make a judgement about him, calling him greedy, unfair, harsh, inhumane, because he makes his workers suffer. If we find out that he donates everything he gains in his life, everything he gains from this factory, to some welfare organisation, our judgement of him will waver and we'll end up confused because we didn't expect this person we considered to be a miser on first glance to do something like that. And then we might find out that he has an ulterior motive to do so, for example to win the love of a woman ... or that he does all this because it was the will of his father ... or that he's really forced to do everything ... or that he's a robot, and somebody else does all this for completely incomprehensible reasons.
Or we might even wake up and find out that everything was just a dream, or it might all just be a story, or a lie told by somebody. What about the person we assumed to be a miser at the beginning? We can't really verify whether anything (or everything) in this story was true, and we don't know all pieces of this puzzle. We don't know what the core of this person is really like. We only see that on the surface, he, like everybody, is different in different environments. Or at least that's the way I see it; you might come to different conclusions.
My thoughts on tolerance, prejudice and things like that draw on these thoughts. A certain president of the USA might act stupidly in whatever he does, but he might be a loving father, I don't know about that (and frankly, I don't care). I might (or might not, as it's only a fictive example) have had an unpleasant experience with foreigners, but that doesn't make these foreigners (or all people of that country) bad people. Somebody might act rude towards me, but I don't know whether this person acts rude all the time or because I reminded him of his twin brother who had repeatedly tried to strangle him ... or because I had said something that was an offense in a language he knows and I don't. And so on.
In the end, I try to judge the behaviour and actions of a person, not the person him- or herself. Apart from the fact that I hate being judged myself, I know that prejudices and intolerance don't lead to anything good. Of course it's hard. And I don't always succeed, not even closely. But I try to keep it in mind. And yes, it's probably not any better to separate people and their actions and call them different things. But it works for me. That way, I can at least suppress the urge to kill all those reporters who write all those articles full of prejudices and lies about "killer games". Or those politicians who have just recently come to the conclusion that they are legally allowed to ban "killer games" without first proving scientifically whether they are even bad for teenagers. ( Analysis by German Bundestag about this (in German) ) With the same reasoning, they could ban bread. Anyway, this way, I simply tell myself that these politicians are just completely stupid (a prejudice, but I know that it's one at least), which doesn't really justify anything, but makes me feel better. A little. And I can still call their behaviour completely idiotic, unjustified, etc (no prejudice but simply a judgement of their actions without judging the persons themselves at the same time).
[This - the last paragraph - had absolutely nothing to do with the entry, by the way, I just remembered it and thought it was worth mentioning for its idiocy.]
Ah, one more thing. I neither have nor try to get a girlfriend, but the usual remark you basically read everywhere when somebody asks a question about matters of love - "Just act naturally. Be yourself." - or something like that becomes far less easy to understand if you compare this with my view. Because what is really natural about anybody? What is natural about myself? Who am I, "myself"? Do they mean "Act like you usually do in the environment of other people?", or "Be like always." (which really wouldn't be any real help at all, not that this remark usually is, I guess), or something else? In my opinion, this advice can't really be followed. I don't think that we really have one nature. I don't think there is this categorical one true form, core, nature of any of us. Just a lot of different layers and masks, depending on situation, that may switch fluently - or not. But this doesn't have to be negative. It just shows that all our facets are much too complex to form a single core, a single identity, which would make us more easier to understand, of course, but it would also end up far more boring. And it could really reduce us to far less than what we really are.
In the end, all this was nothing more than toying with thoughts in my mind. I'm neither saying a problem exists, nor am I offering solutions; I'm merely asking questions. Because I like asking questions. Because I like toying with things in my mind. And because I'm able to do so without necessarily needing other people to discuss this with, just myself (which doesn't mean that you shouldn't comment this entry if you find it worthy of a comment; I simply meant that I don't depend on comments to write a journal). Myself and some of my masks that make up myself (and no, I'm not schizophrenic) ...
P.S. I like using strange examples. I really do.
P.P.S. Time needed: A bit more than one hour and a half.
Current Mood: Thinking.
30 November 2006 @ 09:51 pm
I am not sure about school systems in general, but our German school system is definitely not perfect, I know that much. With other words. Six written examinations in three weeks (as I have written the test in chemistry class on this Tuesday already, only five are left now): This week: history on Friday (tomorrow); next week: music on Monday and German on Thursday; the week after next week: physics on Wednesday and religion on Friday.
That being said, it is even worse that my two worst subjects (which, to me, is the same as saying the classes in which I am not interested at all - lack of interest equals being worse in a subject to me (and the other way around, so I will not complain)), history and music, are so close to each other, and that we have been told in German class that if we want to give our teacher an essay for practice before the written examination, we have to send it to her via email until this Saturday, 12 am. Which basically means that I will probably either not be able to do this or do nothing else tomorrow afternoon. No time to relax, anyway, as I will have to study so hard for music class.
But I am probably not in the position to complain right now. The first round of written examinations in my intensive courses - maths class and English class - have been handed back to us ... and ... well ... ah, who am I kidding? This is my journal, a place where I am completely allowed to brag ^^ ... my results were completely satisfactory for me. More than satisfactory, actually. 15 points in our test in maths class and 14 points in English class. Although I did not really think I deserved as much in any of these tests. If I had had to correct my own tests, I would probably have subtracted two points from each test. I am not completely sure why. I simply did not think that I would actually be able to see a "15" on my paper, I thought it was something like an unreachable barrier not supposed to be actually reached by pupils. And now I have received 15 points several times already ... I guess my expectations for Kollegstufe (this year and the next, the two years I have to do for my Abitur, the equivalent of the A-levels) were a bit off. Oh, and I was also surprised to get so many points in my test in English class even though there was still at least something written in red (red = colour for corrections/comments by the teacher - I wonder whether it is the same colour in other countries, too ...) in almost every exercise. Well, I am not going to complain about good marks ...
And then there is the test in history class tomorrow. Basically, while I was still pretty confident that I knew everything in economy class, I do not have this confidence in history class and I will not have it in music class, either. As I have mentioned already, my marks correlate directly with my interest in a subject, although that is probably the case for everybody if there are no other factors (good/bad teachers, unlucky incidents, things like that) involved: I am interested in maths, English, physics (although our teacher in physics class is not really that good, I am still interested in the subject in it self because it deals with formulas in the same way maths does), German (although I hate the tests because my wrist hurts if I have to write too much without using a computer), economy (because the teacher is good; last year, I did not like this subject at all), and that is it. Studying for these subjects is basically a piece of cake because I do not get distracted while studying, I actually enjoy doing so (not all the time, of course, but you do not have to study that long for the normal written examinations, anyway), and as I like these subjects, I pay attention in class which means that I basically just have to refresh what (Damn it, we had relative pronouns in English class today and I was confused for a second whether using "what" in this case was correct - I hope it is, anyway ...) I already know. I do not have to force myself to study in these subjects, I just do it. It feels naturally.
Then there are classes like chemistry, religion, sports. I am completely certain now that choosing (Protestant) religion class instead of ethics really was not a good idea. I am an atheist, I am not christened, I do not believe in God (using a capital "G" for something that is so much less than even a mere theory to me feels ... strange) at all, and I simply do not have any emotional connection to this class. I will try to switch to ethics class next year because it really starts to get too much. I simply feel a little misplaced in this class. Actually, I have no idea why I have not switched earlier. In elementary school, my father wanted me to go to Protestant religion class instead of something else. And then I just stuck to it for some reason I can't (as "cannot" seems to fade away from the English language, our teacher said that it was not that important to avoid using a contraction here, too) remember. Perhaps I just did not like the stories of "Well, all we do in ethics class is watch films" - after all, I believe in using my time at school for something else than sleeping. But now I guess one really does learn something in ethics class, and that is why I will switch if it is somehow possible. And as for sports class ... well, I am just bad at sports. I am still very underweight (just to repeat myself - I am about 1,83 m in height and about 56 kilograms in weight) for my height, my hand-eye-coordination is simply abysmal (if you doubt my words - I have just received 6 points in badminton in sports class on Wednesday, and lost all matches in badminton afterwards, too - with scores like 2:12 (the two points being mistakes by my opponents) and the like ... and it is just as bad in other ball games, too) and I have absolutely no muscles. And I lack good body control, anyway, but that is probably enough for another full entry (about identity, in which way my body is part of me, etc.). I am not really bored by these subjects or stuff like that, I just feel misplaced. I can't do anything to improve my scores in sports class (but I do not really have to, anyway, because only a selection of the marks in Kollegstufe will be put in my Abitur, and I will not be crazy enough to put my marks in sports class in there ...), and I always make strange mistakes in religion class because I have no first-hand experience with belief in anything, which makes religion class a bit hard. As for chemistry, I am simply not that interested in it. I still understand (close to) everything, and I think that the written examination was not that bad, either, but I there are simply subjects where I am so much better (both in marks and in understanding) ...
And then there are my worst classes: history and music. I simply do not care about history class. I hear what the teacher says, I write it down, but it never enters my mind. It stays outside. I do not care about connections that have happened so far in the past. In addition to an overwhelming lack of interest in (school) history (it is almost as bad as my indifference to culture from time to time) in general, our current topic, the history of Bavaria, Prussia and Germany in general between ~1800 to ~1873, bores me even more. I also do not like the way this is taught - history books with about 360 pages and nothing but texts in small print and sources in small print are simply ridiculous and just increase the confusion. And in comparison to maths class, for example, it is simply so hard to do anything but write down what the teacher says whereas you can do exercises yourself in maths class. It all accumulates to a total disaster. Pure boredom in history class means that studying everything is a pain, that it does not really work out no matter how often I try to understand everything, and that I get distracted all the time. It is really the same with this entry. I have my written examination in history class tomorrow but I just could not continue wasting my time by trying to cram nonsense into my brain ...Music class is different because I understand even less there, because I have the slightest hint of interest for music (but not for music theory), and as I simply feel so completely overwhelmed by everything I hear there (I basically do not understand anything), I try to force myself to understand everything. I would say that it is still better than history class. In contrast to studying for subjects I like/am interested in, studying for history or music simply feels unnatural.
By the way, my total lack of interest in history class is reflected by the fact that I basically know nothing about my parents' pasts. And I have never really asked them anything about it. But I have dealt with this topic already, so I will leave it at that.
[I guess I should mention what I would change in history class: Deal with international, recent politics instead of things that are so far in the past (I do not mind learning about the past, but what we do is much too detailed), talk more about politics (or replace two years of history class with one year of history class and one year of social studies (= civics in AE)), get rid of all these useless history books and create books that make you interested in history instead of repelling you, and finally change teaching methods from a teacher-centered model to a student-centered model, however that is supposed to work. Or at least use some modern media like video projectors ...)]
I "give everything I have got" in every subject, by the way. What I meant was just that I "have got so much less" in the classes I do not like/I am not interested in. As I actually do stuff for school I am good at school, but my marks or at least my understanding in classes varies very, very strongly from subject to subject. That is probably the essence of this entry. That and the fact that this might be different for other people. I have always seen school marks as a reflection of my interest - if I was really interested in something, I was completely certain (and my marks showed this, too) that I could achieve best marks in it. This might be different for others.
Oh, and I also wanted to mention that I do not like the idea of big written examinations in close proximity to one another. I do not know what to suggest instead of that, but I simply think that there must be a better solution than learning for the written examinations, then getting rid of everything you studied for one subject and starting to study for the next one, rinse repeat. Because at the end I might end up with good marks but I will not end up more intelligent/with more knowledge.
See you sometime soon. But as I said, I will probably not have very much time to write entries in the near future, so it might take a few days until I write something again.
P.S. In case you wonder why I have not used contractions ("it's" instead of "it is", etc.) in this entry: We have been told that we will lose points in our next test in English class, and as I would rather not lose any, I will have to endure the painful ordeal of trying to change my habit so I will not automatically use a contraction every time when it is possible. But it is interesting that it takes a noticeable effort to do so now - it seems as if I have become quite used to using contractions since I have started this journal ... or, possibly, already before. I will not write like this all the time, don't (:p) worry, but once in a while ...
P.P.S. Time needed: One hour and a quarter.
That being said, it is even worse that my two worst subjects (which, to me, is the same as saying the classes in which I am not interested at all - lack of interest equals being worse in a subject to me (and the other way around, so I will not complain)), history and music, are so close to each other, and that we have been told in German class that if we want to give our teacher an essay for practice before the written examination, we have to send it to her via email until this Saturday, 12 am. Which basically means that I will probably either not be able to do this or do nothing else tomorrow afternoon. No time to relax, anyway, as I will have to study so hard for music class.
But I am probably not in the position to complain right now. The first round of written examinations in my intensive courses - maths class and English class - have been handed back to us ... and ... well ... ah, who am I kidding? This is my journal, a place where I am completely allowed to brag ^^ ... my results were completely satisfactory for me. More than satisfactory, actually. 15 points in our test in maths class and 14 points in English class. Although I did not really think I deserved as much in any of these tests. If I had had to correct my own tests, I would probably have subtracted two points from each test. I am not completely sure why. I simply did not think that I would actually be able to see a "15" on my paper, I thought it was something like an unreachable barrier not supposed to be actually reached by pupils. And now I have received 15 points several times already ... I guess my expectations for Kollegstufe (this year and the next, the two years I have to do for my Abitur, the equivalent of the A-levels) were a bit off. Oh, and I was also surprised to get so many points in my test in English class even though there was still at least something written in red (red = colour for corrections/comments by the teacher - I wonder whether it is the same colour in other countries, too ...) in almost every exercise. Well, I am not going to complain about good marks ...
And then there is the test in history class tomorrow. Basically, while I was still pretty confident that I knew everything in economy class, I do not have this confidence in history class and I will not have it in music class, either. As I have mentioned already, my marks correlate directly with my interest in a subject, although that is probably the case for everybody if there are no other factors (good/bad teachers, unlucky incidents, things like that) involved: I am interested in maths, English, physics (although our teacher in physics class is not really that good, I am still interested in the subject in it self because it deals with formulas in the same way maths does), German (although I hate the tests because my wrist hurts if I have to write too much without using a computer), economy (because the teacher is good; last year, I did not like this subject at all), and that is it. Studying for these subjects is basically a piece of cake because I do not get distracted while studying, I actually enjoy doing so (not all the time, of course, but you do not have to study that long for the normal written examinations, anyway), and as I like these subjects, I pay attention in class which means that I basically just have to refresh what (Damn it, we had relative pronouns in English class today and I was confused for a second whether using "what" in this case was correct - I hope it is, anyway ...) I already know. I do not have to force myself to study in these subjects, I just do it. It feels naturally.
Then there are classes like chemistry, religion, sports. I am completely certain now that choosing (Protestant) religion class instead of ethics really was not a good idea. I am an atheist, I am not christened, I do not believe in God (using a capital "G" for something that is so much less than even a mere theory to me feels ... strange) at all, and I simply do not have any emotional connection to this class. I will try to switch to ethics class next year because it really starts to get too much. I simply feel a little misplaced in this class. Actually, I have no idea why I have not switched earlier. In elementary school, my father wanted me to go to Protestant religion class instead of something else. And then I just stuck to it for some reason I can't (as "cannot" seems to fade away from the English language, our teacher said that it was not that important to avoid using a contraction here, too) remember. Perhaps I just did not like the stories of "Well, all we do in ethics class is watch films" - after all, I believe in using my time at school for something else than sleeping. But now I guess one really does learn something in ethics class, and that is why I will switch if it is somehow possible. And as for sports class ... well, I am just bad at sports. I am still very underweight (just to repeat myself - I am about 1,83 m in height and about 56 kilograms in weight) for my height, my hand-eye-coordination is simply abysmal (if you doubt my words - I have just received 6 points in badminton in sports class on Wednesday, and lost all matches in badminton afterwards, too - with scores like 2:12 (the two points being mistakes by my opponents) and the like ... and it is just as bad in other ball games, too) and I have absolutely no muscles. And I lack good body control, anyway, but that is probably enough for another full entry (about identity, in which way my body is part of me, etc.). I am not really bored by these subjects or stuff like that, I just feel misplaced. I can't do anything to improve my scores in sports class (but I do not really have to, anyway, because only a selection of the marks in Kollegstufe will be put in my Abitur, and I will not be crazy enough to put my marks in sports class in there ...), and I always make strange mistakes in religion class because I have no first-hand experience with belief in anything, which makes religion class a bit hard. As for chemistry, I am simply not that interested in it. I still understand (close to) everything, and I think that the written examination was not that bad, either, but I there are simply subjects where I am so much better (both in marks and in understanding) ...
And then there are my worst classes: history and music. I simply do not care about history class. I hear what the teacher says, I write it down, but it never enters my mind. It stays outside. I do not care about connections that have happened so far in the past. In addition to an overwhelming lack of interest in (school) history (it is almost as bad as my indifference to culture from time to time) in general, our current topic, the history of Bavaria, Prussia and Germany in general between ~1800 to ~1873, bores me even more. I also do not like the way this is taught - history books with about 360 pages and nothing but texts in small print and sources in small print are simply ridiculous and just increase the confusion. And in comparison to maths class, for example, it is simply so hard to do anything but write down what the teacher says whereas you can do exercises yourself in maths class. It all accumulates to a total disaster. Pure boredom in history class means that studying everything is a pain, that it does not really work out no matter how often I try to understand everything, and that I get distracted all the time. It is really the same with this entry. I have my written examination in history class tomorrow but I just could not continue wasting my time by trying to cram nonsense into my brain ...Music class is different because I understand even less there, because I have the slightest hint of interest for music (but not for music theory), and as I simply feel so completely overwhelmed by everything I hear there (I basically do not understand anything), I try to force myself to understand everything. I would say that it is still better than history class. In contrast to studying for subjects I like/am interested in, studying for history or music simply feels unnatural.
By the way, my total lack of interest in history class is reflected by the fact that I basically know nothing about my parents' pasts. And I have never really asked them anything about it. But I have dealt with this topic already, so I will leave it at that.
[I guess I should mention what I would change in history class: Deal with international, recent politics instead of things that are so far in the past (I do not mind learning about the past, but what we do is much too detailed), talk more about politics (or replace two years of history class with one year of history class and one year of social studies (= civics in AE)), get rid of all these useless history books and create books that make you interested in history instead of repelling you, and finally change teaching methods from a teacher-centered model to a student-centered model, however that is supposed to work. Or at least use some modern media like video projectors ...)]
I "give everything I have got" in every subject, by the way. What I meant was just that I "have got so much less" in the classes I do not like/I am not interested in. As I actually do stuff for school I am good at school, but my marks or at least my understanding in classes varies very, very strongly from subject to subject. That is probably the essence of this entry. That and the fact that this might be different for other people. I have always seen school marks as a reflection of my interest - if I was really interested in something, I was completely certain (and my marks showed this, too) that I could achieve best marks in it. This might be different for others.
Oh, and I also wanted to mention that I do not like the idea of big written examinations in close proximity to one another. I do not know what to suggest instead of that, but I simply think that there must be a better solution than learning for the written examinations, then getting rid of everything you studied for one subject and starting to study for the next one, rinse repeat. Because at the end I might end up with good marks but I will not end up more intelligent/with more knowledge.
See you sometime soon. But as I said, I will probably not have very much time to write entries in the near future, so it might take a few days until I write something again.
P.S. In case you wonder why I have not used contractions ("it's" instead of "it is", etc.) in this entry: We have been told that we will lose points in our next test in English class, and as I would rather not lose any, I will have to endure the painful ordeal of trying to change my habit so I will not automatically use a contraction every time when it is possible. But it is interesting that it takes a noticeable effort to do so now - it seems as if I have become quite used to using contractions since I have started this journal ... or, possibly, already before. I will not write like this all the time, don't (:p) worry, but once in a while ...
P.P.S. Time needed: One hour and a quarter.
Current Mood: Blah.
25 November 2006 @ 06:29 pm
[This entry contains negative thoughts. If you don't like reading things like this, don't continue.]
I've had about twelve hours of sleep today, going to bed at an amazingly early time of eleven o'clock yesterday and sleeping until about eleven o'clock today. Of course I woke up several times in the meantime, but this amount of sleep was still desperately needed. I haven't written down my dreams for some weeks, and my gradually increasing problems with sleeping haven't helped in this area, either, but I guess I'll try to write something down tomorrow again if I remember anything. I had memories of about two dreams today but as I didn't write them down I've completely forgotten everything about them. Except for the fact that I got up in one of them and it was already 7 o'clock - pm. It's really strange dream about getting out of bed and then waking up afterwards, still lying in it.
Anyway, apart from having a flu I feel - kind of - well today. Not especially well, and still not as much as it should be, but it's still appreciated.
Today's topic:
I've been meaning to put my thoughts and relations to my "family" in a written form for a long time. I don't have a special reason to write about this today, but there are always possible allusions to things that have recently happened, of course.
It's hard to decide where to begin. I guess I'll summarize everything in a few sentences and then write everything in (much, much more) detail.
If I had to summarize my thoughts about my family in a few sentences, I'd probably say something like the following: "The word "family" isn't really an appropriate word for what I [actually, everybody in my "family" feels the same way, except for my little brothers who are too young for thoughts like these, I guess] perceive as a relationship of convenience ['Zweckgemeinschaft' in German, meaning a relationship that's based on mutual advantages or dependencies rather than feelings or emotions]. My father who has a girlfriend - although he's still married to my mother - is rarely here whereas my mother is here all the time, and yet I feel nothing for either of them. Almost no feelings for my two little brothers. The only person I like - kind of - is my sister. Although they've never treated me especially badly in any way - I've never been abused or hit or things like that -, I still think that neither of my parents should have been allowed to get children. That sums it up well, I guess..."
And now in detail. I'll begin with a bit of my personal history as far as I recall it - it may or may not be important for the rest of this entry, I'm not sure yet.
I was born in Munich on October 24, 1988, where we lived in an apartment on the second or third floor of a block of flats. My sister Helena was born about ... 20 months or so later, on July 9, 1990. I went to kindergarten in Munich (I didn't like kindergarten) and then to primary school (Grundschule) for a year. In that year the neighbour of my grandmother in Emmering died of old age and as my grandmother had looked after her so much and helped her until she died, she/her relatives (which included us) were given first dibs on the row house. My parents finally decided to buy it and as I was only seven years old at that time and as my parents lack in so many ways, I wasn't really told that we'd move until two weeks or so before the end of the school year. Moving to our new house that (part of the cheaper price my parents had negotiated) was neither renovated nor empty (there was still all furniture in there) ended up kind of crazy (renovations, removing old furniture, et cetera), of course, and we were able to sleep in the house for the first time on the final day of the summer holidays, the Sunday before the Monday when school started. One year (I think) after moving here, my brother Daniel was born, and another two years or so later (I don't really care), my brother Philipp.
My mother (~52) is about ten years older than my father (I don't know...39? 42?), and there's a similar age difference between us, the children: Philipp (~6), Daniel (~8), Helena (16) and me, Tobias (18). The "~" signs serve a purpose here - they show that I don't really care about their ages.
Especially in Laim (part of Munich) where I lived until I was almost eight years old and then still for some years in Emmering, my parents were constantly arguing - seriously arguing, with raised voices, including constant talk of divorce, disagreements about everything, my father blaming my mother for whatever she had done, etc. - until a few years ago. My father who is kind of hot-tempered still likes to yell at my mother or at least raise his voice against her from time to time, but nobody really cares about that any more.
My father slowly pulled away out of this family, and while he still pays everything (my mother doesn't work although she briefly worked after completing studying mathematics at university after eight years), he doesn't really come here often. Maybe a few times per month to do whatever. My mother stays at home all the time when she doesn't bring my two little brothers to kindergarten respectively school or goes shopping for groceries.
I always played lots and lots of computer games, doing little else than reading and playing video games. Especially since I've been at the Gymnasium, I've been spending almost all my free time in front of the computer - the computers of my parents at the beginning and then my own. From July 2002, since the release of Warcraft III, and until the end of the summer holidays of this year, in August 2006, I played between five and ... well... more hours a day every day (basically without pause after school and lunch, meaning that I played much more on weekends). And I became totally indifferent to the remarks of my mother and my father, who neither managed to stop me from doing so nor showed any signs of good parenthood, anyway. Actually, I could have been playing anything - all those bad "killer games", or whatever - and they probably wouldn't have noticed it, but I was happy with this game. I actually became pretty good in it, and in retrospect, I think I enjoyed Warcraft III (and its expansion, The Frozen Throne, which was released in 2003) a lot more than World of Warcraft, which I started to play when it was released in February 2005...
(By the way, although my parents can be blamed for irresponsibility and possible bad effects from playing too much (and doing nothing else), I did not suffer from bad marks at school because of playing so much. In all my years at Gymnasium, I averaged between about 2 and about 1.5 in grades (best being 1, worst being 6). Despite playing computer games all the time, I still managed to motivate myself somehow to study for school.)
When I'm at home - which means all the time I don't spend at school, basically - I'm in my room, nowhere else, except for things like meals. I don't know when I started it, but I now lock my room every time as soon as I'm in it. The door serves as a barrier from my "hideout" - my room - and what outsiders would call my "family".
My little brothers aren't really that bad, I just don't really like them. The age difference is too big, and they constantly wake me up every day because they are so loud. As mentioned, I like my sister, but she has her own friends and we don't really do anything together except for going to things like cinema or theater together from time to time.
And as for my parents...I don't consider them more "parent" than being my biological ancestors. I'm not really capable of feeling real hate to anybody (and I'm not
happy about this fact), but if I was, I'd hate them. Instead, I simply don't care about them in much the same way they didn't manage to care about me.
All they were able to do was to be bad examples in basically every aspect of life.
Relationship: The relationship between my mother and my father is non-existent/negative. Actually, it's so completely non-existent that I'm perfectly sure that we (the children) would have had a better life if they had been intelligent enough to divorce ten years or so ago. Yes, perhaps we wouldn't have had as much money, but perhaps whoever I would have stayed with would have remarried and started a real relationship with real, genuine feelings ...
Parenthood: Apart from the fact that they should never ever have gotten together (actually, my father and my mother got to know each other via an ad in a newspaper, so there wasn't even any romance involved), and that they should never ever have gotten any children together (because they are a complete and utter failure as parents), they didn't do anything right afterwards. Yes, I was given something like autonomy which could show a "liberal view" on parenthood. But I never felt supported by them. And while I know all the stories of overly zealous parents who push their children beyond their abilities, I missed this. Because this meant that all the strive to do anything in (or with?) my life (go to university, get a good job, whatever, things I don't really care about all that much even now) had to come from myself. And as this motivation that always crumbled a bit, anyway, didn't really have any kind of foundation, it doesn't really exist any more. Which means that it's even harder for me to motivate myself somehow to learn for school (because nobody else does, anyway). To me, becoming a parent means more than conceiving a child and then leaving it almost without any guidance or help whatsoever.
Support: Non-existent. Perhaps there was some kind of support, but I never felt supported in my abilities. One of the things I remember that I could be thankful for (but I'm not because it's a drop in the ocean compared to what they didn't do) is the fact that I was given a CD about learning touch typing by my mother, which enabled me to learn touch typing in two months or so. But as my father wasn't really there anyway and as my mother had been bad at school (somehow barely managing to go to university and then basically spending university for everything else than studying), they neither really tried nor would have been able to help me in anything.concerning school. I didn't need help - I was one of the ~six or so best students in my class in every year, I think -, I just feel that I could have done so much better if I had had any help. I might never have been highly gifted or stuff like that, but I think that I could have developed abilities that I now lack completely. And I'm not talking about social interaction, because that implies a wish for social interaction that I don't really have (or at least unconsciously refuse to admit). I mean stuff like the ability to learn (Of course I study for school et cetera, but most of the stuff I learn seems to be gone soon after finishing the tests, and I've never really learned learning if you understand what I mean (you probably do). Learning feels artificial and unnatural to me, and it seriously shouldn't.), everything concerning general knowledge (I simply have almost no general knowledge - I can't even mention all the states of Germany, I often don't even know where a certain country is located, I have no knowledge of history at all except for the things taught at school etc., simply because I received zero support in this area at home), and so on.
Trust and respect: I have no respect for my parents. It might have been there long ago in the past, but it simply disappeared when I noticed all the mistakes they made, their lack of good judgement, their lack of support, everything. I consider my father totally irresponsible because he decided to get four children although he doesn't care about them at all (and, something that would be funny if it wasn't so sad, he blames my mother for our behaviour, for our resistance to help in the household, for everything, because he can't admit that he completely failed in everything a parent [words like these - the singular of "parents" - show that the German language still needs to adopt more English words] is supposed to do). And my mother ... well ... I think that she's notoriously annoying, that she's a coward and an idiot for not filing for divorce long ago; I think that she's not very intelligent; and that she's completely overtaxed with the current situation but still doesn't do anything against it. I have zero respect for either of them, and I wouldn't trust them with any of my problems, because they'd neither understand them nor be able to help me. Do you see what this means? I never really had an adult person I could trust with my problems, and I never really had a role-model in my family I could aspire to be. The closest to this would have been my cousin Kilian, but as he and his wife now have two children, we aren't really able to see him often. I never tried to ask him for help in anything, anyway, but I at least respect and like him and his wife.
Bad judgement: This is what it boils down to, I think. I think that every step my parents took since deciding to marry wasn't the correct one. They should have divorced after their constant arguments, which they didn't do. They decided to buy a house although all this did was glue us together more tightly into a relationship of convenience, glued by money ... They decided to get not only two children, although their marriage already didn't work out then, but even two more, an even worse decision.
The house: Basically, nothing gets done here anymore. There's dust everywhere, everything looks untidy, the whole cellar is full of garbage, unfinished things, etc; basically, everything is a visual allusion to the fact that this family never really worked out.
And apart from all these mistakes and wrong judgements and all these feelings of contempt I have for them, there are other negative results, too. My wish for a family on my own has completely disappeared when I noticed that what I live in was a so-called "family", too. I've never felt the wish for a close relationship to a girl either, possibly caused by seeing how devastatingly bad a relationship can turn out (in addition to my introversion, of course). My dislike of society stems from the fact that I dislike the closest possible community a person can have - family. And every time I see somebody who apparently has normal, nice, good parents, I feel a slight sting of jealousy that I can't prevent.
I don't think there's much more to add except for the fact that while nothing really changed with me when I turned 18, I've been feeling like an adult since the age of ... I don't know, 14 or so. It doesn't really matter. What I mean is the fact that I've always felt that I couldn't depend on anyone (whether this was true or not didn't really matter), and that I had to do everything myself. And now that I question my motives for doing what I do, there's nothing that supports them.
Actually, I think I wasn't really able to grasp what I wanted to say in this entry. I blame my parents for everything bad that happens or has ever happened to me, for everything, basically - for their lack of support, for their parenthood (for the fact that they are the reason that I was born into a life I didn't want), simply for everything, for my introversion, my depressions, and so on. If they weren't my parents, and if I led a normal, better life, I'd be able to feel pity for their idiocy. But this way, I'm unable to.
After completing this entry, it definitely feels as if it was overdue for completion. Perhaps it's necessary to know this bit about me, I don't know. I only know that I won't be able to forgive them until they are dead, and perhaps not even then ...
See you some time soon. I guess I'm a bit burned out of writing now, and this entry was longer than usual, anyway. And as the next three weeks include two written examinations each, I guess that I won't really have much time to write anything, anyway.
[Just for the record: I know that black and white thinking never helps in any situation - it may lead to prejudices, extremes, wrong conclusions, et cetera. I didn't mean that my parents were bad people (but not necessarily that they are good people, either). They are simply completely overtaxed and shouldn't have gotten children, then none of us would have any problems as a consequence. But as they chose to do so, I can blame them for their lack of good judgement, and although my mother might give me something nice from time to time, like bringing me cut apples and carrots like today or things like that, neither of them were able to give me what I really wanted. I guess the combination of a passive introvert - me - and my parents is unlucky and this situation wouldn't be so bad if it was between them and somebody with different traits. Perhaps my little brothers will enjoy growing up, more than I did, who knows? All this doesn't change anything I said above, however, I merely wanted to make a counter-point to my own entry when I was in a different mood. Animes still make me smile, all their clichés aside...]
P.S. Time needed: About two hours and a half, I think.
I've had about twelve hours of sleep today, going to bed at an amazingly early time of eleven o'clock yesterday and sleeping until about eleven o'clock today. Of course I woke up several times in the meantime, but this amount of sleep was still desperately needed. I haven't written down my dreams for some weeks, and my gradually increasing problems with sleeping haven't helped in this area, either, but I guess I'll try to write something down tomorrow again if I remember anything. I had memories of about two dreams today but as I didn't write them down I've completely forgotten everything about them. Except for the fact that I got up in one of them and it was already 7 o'clock - pm. It's really strange dream about getting out of bed and then waking up afterwards, still lying in it.
Anyway, apart from having a flu I feel - kind of - well today. Not especially well, and still not as much as it should be, but it's still appreciated.
Today's topic:
I've been meaning to put my thoughts and relations to my "family" in a written form for a long time. I don't have a special reason to write about this today, but there are always possible allusions to things that have recently happened, of course.
It's hard to decide where to begin. I guess I'll summarize everything in a few sentences and then write everything in (much, much more) detail.
If I had to summarize my thoughts about my family in a few sentences, I'd probably say something like the following: "The word "family" isn't really an appropriate word for what I [actually, everybody in my "family" feels the same way, except for my little brothers who are too young for thoughts like these, I guess] perceive as a relationship of convenience ['Zweckgemeinschaft' in German, meaning a relationship that's based on mutual advantages or dependencies rather than feelings or emotions]. My father who has a girlfriend - although he's still married to my mother - is rarely here whereas my mother is here all the time, and yet I feel nothing for either of them. Almost no feelings for my two little brothers. The only person I like - kind of - is my sister. Although they've never treated me especially badly in any way - I've never been abused or hit or things like that -, I still think that neither of my parents should have been allowed to get children. That sums it up well, I guess..."
And now in detail. I'll begin with a bit of my personal history as far as I recall it - it may or may not be important for the rest of this entry, I'm not sure yet.
I was born in Munich on October 24, 1988, where we lived in an apartment on the second or third floor of a block of flats. My sister Helena was born about ... 20 months or so later, on July 9, 1990. I went to kindergarten in Munich (I didn't like kindergarten) and then to primary school (Grundschule) for a year. In that year the neighbour of my grandmother in Emmering died of old age and as my grandmother had looked after her so much and helped her until she died, she/her relatives (which included us) were given first dibs on the row house. My parents finally decided to buy it and as I was only seven years old at that time and as my parents lack in so many ways, I wasn't really told that we'd move until two weeks or so before the end of the school year. Moving to our new house that (part of the cheaper price my parents had negotiated) was neither renovated nor empty (there was still all furniture in there) ended up kind of crazy (renovations, removing old furniture, et cetera), of course, and we were able to sleep in the house for the first time on the final day of the summer holidays, the Sunday before the Monday when school started. One year (I think) after moving here, my brother Daniel was born, and another two years or so later (I don't really care), my brother Philipp.
My mother (~52) is about ten years older than my father (I don't know...39? 42?), and there's a similar age difference between us, the children: Philipp (~6), Daniel (~8), Helena (16) and me, Tobias (18). The "~" signs serve a purpose here - they show that I don't really care about their ages.
Especially in Laim (part of Munich) where I lived until I was almost eight years old and then still for some years in Emmering, my parents were constantly arguing - seriously arguing, with raised voices, including constant talk of divorce, disagreements about everything, my father blaming my mother for whatever she had done, etc. - until a few years ago. My father who is kind of hot-tempered still likes to yell at my mother or at least raise his voice against her from time to time, but nobody really cares about that any more.
My father slowly pulled away out of this family, and while he still pays everything (my mother doesn't work although she briefly worked after completing studying mathematics at university after eight years), he doesn't really come here often. Maybe a few times per month to do whatever. My mother stays at home all the time when she doesn't bring my two little brothers to kindergarten respectively school or goes shopping for groceries.
I always played lots and lots of computer games, doing little else than reading and playing video games. Especially since I've been at the Gymnasium, I've been spending almost all my free time in front of the computer - the computers of my parents at the beginning and then my own. From July 2002, since the release of Warcraft III, and until the end of the summer holidays of this year, in August 2006, I played between five and ... well... more hours a day every day (basically without pause after school and lunch, meaning that I played much more on weekends). And I became totally indifferent to the remarks of my mother and my father, who neither managed to stop me from doing so nor showed any signs of good parenthood, anyway. Actually, I could have been playing anything - all those bad "killer games", or whatever - and they probably wouldn't have noticed it, but I was happy with this game. I actually became pretty good in it, and in retrospect, I think I enjoyed Warcraft III (and its expansion, The Frozen Throne, which was released in 2003) a lot more than World of Warcraft, which I started to play when it was released in February 2005...
(By the way, although my parents can be blamed for irresponsibility and possible bad effects from playing too much (and doing nothing else), I did not suffer from bad marks at school because of playing so much. In all my years at Gymnasium, I averaged between about 2 and about 1.5 in grades (best being 1, worst being 6). Despite playing computer games all the time, I still managed to motivate myself somehow to study for school.)
When I'm at home - which means all the time I don't spend at school, basically - I'm in my room, nowhere else, except for things like meals. I don't know when I started it, but I now lock my room every time as soon as I'm in it. The door serves as a barrier from my "hideout" - my room - and what outsiders would call my "family".
My little brothers aren't really that bad, I just don't really like them. The age difference is too big, and they constantly wake me up every day because they are so loud. As mentioned, I like my sister, but she has her own friends and we don't really do anything together except for going to things like cinema or theater together from time to time.
And as for my parents...I don't consider them more "parent" than being my biological ancestors. I'm not really capable of feeling real hate to anybody (and I'm not
happy about this fact), but if I was, I'd hate them. Instead, I simply don't care about them in much the same way they didn't manage to care about me.
All they were able to do was to be bad examples in basically every aspect of life.
Relationship: The relationship between my mother and my father is non-existent/negative. Actually, it's so completely non-existent that I'm perfectly sure that we (the children) would have had a better life if they had been intelligent enough to divorce ten years or so ago. Yes, perhaps we wouldn't have had as much money, but perhaps whoever I would have stayed with would have remarried and started a real relationship with real, genuine feelings ...
Parenthood: Apart from the fact that they should never ever have gotten together (actually, my father and my mother got to know each other via an ad in a newspaper, so there wasn't even any romance involved), and that they should never ever have gotten any children together (because they are a complete and utter failure as parents), they didn't do anything right afterwards. Yes, I was given something like autonomy which could show a "liberal view" on parenthood. But I never felt supported by them. And while I know all the stories of overly zealous parents who push their children beyond their abilities, I missed this. Because this meant that all the strive to do anything in (or with?) my life (go to university, get a good job, whatever, things I don't really care about all that much even now) had to come from myself. And as this motivation that always crumbled a bit, anyway, didn't really have any kind of foundation, it doesn't really exist any more. Which means that it's even harder for me to motivate myself somehow to learn for school (because nobody else does, anyway). To me, becoming a parent means more than conceiving a child and then leaving it almost without any guidance or help whatsoever.
Support: Non-existent. Perhaps there was some kind of support, but I never felt supported in my abilities. One of the things I remember that I could be thankful for (but I'm not because it's a drop in the ocean compared to what they didn't do) is the fact that I was given a CD about learning touch typing by my mother, which enabled me to learn touch typing in two months or so. But as my father wasn't really there anyway and as my mother had been bad at school (somehow barely managing to go to university and then basically spending university for everything else than studying), they neither really tried nor would have been able to help me in anything.concerning school. I didn't need help - I was one of the ~six or so best students in my class in every year, I think -, I just feel that I could have done so much better if I had had any help. I might never have been highly gifted or stuff like that, but I think that I could have developed abilities that I now lack completely. And I'm not talking about social interaction, because that implies a wish for social interaction that I don't really have (or at least unconsciously refuse to admit). I mean stuff like the ability to learn (Of course I study for school et cetera, but most of the stuff I learn seems to be gone soon after finishing the tests, and I've never really learned learning if you understand what I mean (you probably do). Learning feels artificial and unnatural to me, and it seriously shouldn't.), everything concerning general knowledge (I simply have almost no general knowledge - I can't even mention all the states of Germany, I often don't even know where a certain country is located, I have no knowledge of history at all except for the things taught at school etc., simply because I received zero support in this area at home), and so on.
Trust and respect: I have no respect for my parents. It might have been there long ago in the past, but it simply disappeared when I noticed all the mistakes they made, their lack of good judgement, their lack of support, everything. I consider my father totally irresponsible because he decided to get four children although he doesn't care about them at all (and, something that would be funny if it wasn't so sad, he blames my mother for our behaviour, for our resistance to help in the household, for everything, because he can't admit that he completely failed in everything a parent [words like these - the singular of "parents" - show that the German language still needs to adopt more English words] is supposed to do). And my mother ... well ... I think that she's notoriously annoying, that she's a coward and an idiot for not filing for divorce long ago; I think that she's not very intelligent; and that she's completely overtaxed with the current situation but still doesn't do anything against it. I have zero respect for either of them, and I wouldn't trust them with any of my problems, because they'd neither understand them nor be able to help me. Do you see what this means? I never really had an adult person I could trust with my problems, and I never really had a role-model in my family I could aspire to be. The closest to this would have been my cousin Kilian, but as he and his wife now have two children, we aren't really able to see him often. I never tried to ask him for help in anything, anyway, but I at least respect and like him and his wife.
Bad judgement: This is what it boils down to, I think. I think that every step my parents took since deciding to marry wasn't the correct one. They should have divorced after their constant arguments, which they didn't do. They decided to buy a house although all this did was glue us together more tightly into a relationship of convenience, glued by money ... They decided to get not only two children, although their marriage already didn't work out then, but even two more, an even worse decision.
The house: Basically, nothing gets done here anymore. There's dust everywhere, everything looks untidy, the whole cellar is full of garbage, unfinished things, etc; basically, everything is a visual allusion to the fact that this family never really worked out.
And apart from all these mistakes and wrong judgements and all these feelings of contempt I have for them, there are other negative results, too. My wish for a family on my own has completely disappeared when I noticed that what I live in was a so-called "family", too. I've never felt the wish for a close relationship to a girl either, possibly caused by seeing how devastatingly bad a relationship can turn out (in addition to my introversion, of course). My dislike of society stems from the fact that I dislike the closest possible community a person can have - family. And every time I see somebody who apparently has normal, nice, good parents, I feel a slight sting of jealousy that I can't prevent.
I don't think there's much more to add except for the fact that while nothing really changed with me when I turned 18, I've been feeling like an adult since the age of ... I don't know, 14 or so. It doesn't really matter. What I mean is the fact that I've always felt that I couldn't depend on anyone (whether this was true or not didn't really matter), and that I had to do everything myself. And now that I question my motives for doing what I do, there's nothing that supports them.
Actually, I think I wasn't really able to grasp what I wanted to say in this entry. I blame my parents for everything bad that happens or has ever happened to me, for everything, basically - for their lack of support, for their parenthood (for the fact that they are the reason that I was born into a life I didn't want), simply for everything, for my introversion, my depressions, and so on. If they weren't my parents, and if I led a normal, better life, I'd be able to feel pity for their idiocy. But this way, I'm unable to.
After completing this entry, it definitely feels as if it was overdue for completion. Perhaps it's necessary to know this bit about me, I don't know. I only know that I won't be able to forgive them until they are dead, and perhaps not even then ...
See you some time soon. I guess I'm a bit burned out of writing now, and this entry was longer than usual, anyway. And as the next three weeks include two written examinations each, I guess that I won't really have much time to write anything, anyway.
[Just for the record: I know that black and white thinking never helps in any situation - it may lead to prejudices, extremes, wrong conclusions, et cetera. I didn't mean that my parents were bad people (but not necessarily that they are good people, either). They are simply completely overtaxed and shouldn't have gotten children, then none of us would have any problems as a consequence. But as they chose to do so, I can blame them for their lack of good judgement, and although my mother might give me something nice from time to time, like bringing me cut apples and carrots like today or things like that, neither of them were able to give me what I really wanted. I guess the combination of a passive introvert - me - and my parents is unlucky and this situation wouldn't be so bad if it was between them and somebody with different traits. Perhaps my little brothers will enjoy growing up, more than I did, who knows? All this doesn't change anything I said above, however, I merely wanted to make a counter-point to my own entry when I was in a different mood. Animes still make me smile, all their clichés aside...]
P.S. Time needed: About two hours and a half, I think.
Current Mood: indifferent ...
22 November 2006 @ 03:06 pm
It's really easy to forget just how relatively good everything in your life is when you read about the problems of others. I'm not saying that I like my life, but objectively speaking, there are billions of people who lead a worse life in poverty, illness, countries in the Third World, children whose parents suffer from AIDS and who live with the chance of becoming orphans every day...or, for example, a normal student aged 18 at a normal Gymnasium, and who decides one day (on November 20), "surprisingly" for his whole environment, to appear in a black outfit at his Gymnasium, equipped with four handguns, two melee weapons, and fourteen (I'm not sure about the numbers, but they do, frankly, not matter at all) blasting compositions, and starts an amok run, injuring 37 people on his way but killing nobody and finally killing himself by triggering a handgun that he had put into his mouth.
And then all those newspapers like Spiegel and whatnot and his social environment act "surprised" by his actions. He had been showing hate for his environment and self-loathing for five years and nobody had ever helped him. And to top everything, instead of assuming responsibility for the fact that they, society, failed him, or asking themselves how the hell this could have happened (again, they were basically warned five years in advance...), they blame video games ; of course, which tabloid newspapers and serious newspapers alike all call "killer games". Because they don't want to assume responsibility for their failure, they criminalize a community that has millions of members in Germany alone.
It's so completely ridiculous that it makes me sick.
Sadly, I don't have any English sources for you, but I will try to translate interesting parts from these two sources from Spiegel Online for you.
The amok run itself:
The student at shortly before half past nine during school break on the schoolyard, wearing a long black cloak and a black gas mask that covered his face. After being laughed at for his appearance and not being taken seriously by the students, he started firing. That's probably when those smiles faded from their faces. After injuring a total of 37 people, he shot himself.
And then some younger students describe him in this first article, saying he had been "mocked" as a "man in black" because he always wore black clothes and black sunglasses. And then they say things like "Nobody liked him, but we couldn't believe that he'd do such a thing, either."
And then this article goes on and on, describing the horror and terror of these "poor" students, that most of the 700 students need help because of the shock, their parents and siblings, too...
The article afterwards:
The bold text: "He was lonely, frustrated, despaired - and full of hate. <Name> didn't see a meaning in his life anymore. But he wanted to take those he blamed for that to death with himself - and get revenge with this final showdown. Portrait of a teenager who lusted for attention."
And then they continue the article by presenting the irony of this situation (without wanting to). Somebody talks about him, saying "It was clear that he'd go crazy some time, judging the way he talked", mentioning his unconditional hate for his surroundings, and using typical journalistic brilliance by saying things like this: "From where and whether he took pleasure of perverted role-playing with scenes of execution or other games that glorify violence, he didn't want to say. The suspicion seems logical." (Remember that I translate these articles, and apart from my hating their contents, they aren't very easy to translate, either...)
And then they say that he was "addicted to the Internet", that he "sat in front of his computer for the whole time", that he played Doom 3, Counter-Strike, etc...and then they mention that politicians take this incident to start a new discussion about "killer games".
Actually, I'm too sick of this to continue.
Okay, so let me summarise: Because somebody who was mocked and hated by his surroundings, somebody who, according to his own letter of departure (or whatever it's called) was actively terrorized by other people in class, somebody who, according to himself, was always shown how insignificant he was, turned all these negative experiences and emotions into hate and who finally decided to release it on the day before yesterday, this is surprising? I don't see why.
I don't feel pity for his victims. I feel pity for him, the true victim. And for all video gamers who are now criminalized again. Instead of showing that it's their fault that things like this happen - just to mention it once more, he had been suffering for five years and nobody had helped him - politicians now say that they want to ban killer games et cetera.
And of course, his environment who mocked him and so on hasn't been judged or criticized at all. The newspaper article even badmouthed this desperate person after his death. And they wonder why it will happen again? It's their fault. Their very own fault that will either make amok runs common or turn us into a police state in which everything is banned that the politicians call bad and which, therefore, must be the root of all evil.
Nothing more to say by me, really. Please tell me if you ever hear of intelligent politicians. I'll keep an ear open while one eye desperately looks for a country in which politicians assume responsibility themselves.
That's it for today. I'm really not in the mood to continue. Polarisation of the masses so they don't have to think anymore...perhaps somebody ought to think about the true meaning of democracy. Either democracy isn't the best solution, or what we have here isn't democracy. Your call.
See you sometime soon.
P.S. Time needed: 45 minutes or something like that.
P.P.S. Again, translations were difficult and don't have to be exact. You get the picture, I guess...
[Sigh. There's a character limit of 4300 characters in comments. I had 6190 characters. But as it's my journal, I'll simply place this comment into the main entry.
Comment written on 23.11.06, 20:00.:
Thanks for the detailed answers.
@my teacher:
As for the "he killed nobody" bit - I simply wanted to stress that because it was worse in Erfurt, wasn't it? I'm not sure whether to call it "bad luck" or "good luck" for him that he didn't manage to kill anybody, but as he even shot a pregnant teacher, that doesn't make anything he did any better, I agree.
I admit that I probably didn't inform myself about him as well as you did, and my actual criticisms were more against the journal and against politicians than against him or his surroundings in general. That's what I wanted to reach, anyway.
I guess I didn't notice that he over-dramatized his own problems in the end. However, it's probably not bad to remember that people whose conclusions are like these might suffer from personality disorders or have other psychic problems. I'm not saying that he definitely had anything like that, but I find it plausible after reading his letter of departure. He thought in black and white, turned to hate, et cetera. And if he had a psychological disorder, what then?
What would you do in a fictive case when a very strong yet mentally challenged person accidentally kills somebody; he didn't understand that he'd kill the person, he didn't understand things like life and death, and his IQ is that of a child? In my opinion, this person's responsibility is definitely limited. I'm not saying that it's as bad in the case of the amok run, but it might go in that direction.
I don't like anything about "killer games". The word itself is polarisation; it's not defined exactly, and in the end, it's just another thing that conservative politicians don't understand and therefore blame for everything.
I've probably never mentioned it, but I've never really played any ego shooters or other things the media might call "killer games". I was hopelessly overtaxed by them. My hand-eye-coordination is lacking in my opinion, and I didn't really feel any different from playing ball games in sports class where I simply can't imagine the curve of the ball and therefore often don't manage to catch it. It was the same in these ego shooters, so I never played them apart from 2-3 LAN parties in the past where nobody liked the games I like - RTS games, real time strategy games.
But my problem lies in the fact that a) there are politicians who'd rather ban every single computer game as "killer games" than think about other reasons for incidents like this one, and b) none of my friends are somehow in the risk of becoming a murderer because they play ego shooters yet politicians say they might be potentially dangerous because of that.
I simply think that democracy in its current state doesn't really work out the way it's supposed to be. But that topic is too big for these comments, I guess; I'll probably write about it some time in the future.
@acid-sugar:
Yes, that's what I meant. They (whoever "they" is, exactly - politicians, journalists, policemen, it doesn't really matter) see something they don't like or understand and choose it as a scapegoat because that's the easy way out of an otherwise much more elemental problem.
I found his livejournal but didn't have the time to read it yet. His perception of the world seemed kind of one-sided, and yes, while I could agree to and relate with some things he wrote - his emotions, his problems, his fears - I couldn't agree with his conclusions. I don't think that teachers are evil, and I think that it's justified to limit our personal freedom by forcing us to go to school, because that does so much more good than harm in the end. But he didn't (want to) see things like that.
What I dislike is that the media and the politicians have a pre-set image of what his reasons were ("killer games", "evil" role-plays (I'm not saying that it's good to replay scenes of execution, but they only assumed that in the article I read, and that's ridiculous), "bad" music like heavy metal, etc.) and try to find proof for that. That's the same way Intelligent Design works: They have the pre-set notion that there's a creator and want to find proof for that. In my opinion, both things are wrong. They aren't open-minded (I don't really expect that from a religion, but I do expect it from politicians - the ideal politicians, anyway) and they conclude without enough evidence...
And there still aren't enough studies about whether or not there's any effect of these games at all, something that's abused sooo much.
I agree with your conclusion in university. Sounds interesting. I guess I'll enjoy university ;).
And these allusions are much better and much less overused than the popular allusion of "99% [or another high figure] of those who go crazy and start amok runs ate bread [or something else that's very common] before, whereas only 1% [or another low figure] played ego shooters. Why isn't bread forbidden?". Thanks for that.
It's also worrying that some politicians go as far as to say that they don't only want to ban "killer games" but that they also want to censor the Internet. And that's frightening. It probably won't happen, but the notion alone is frightening. I might say bad things about German politicians, because I don't like the general double standards I perceive of politics (pay lip service to everybody and then actually do that which nets you most money, e.g. from corporations and lobbyists), but at least we aren't China. Yet.
I'd probably be hard-pressed to self-reflect myself properly, but that's what everybody should do, not what's done. I don't do anything to improve the situation, either, so I'm not actually much better than these politicians. But I try not to submit to my prejudices, at least. I'm unsure whether all of those I accuse manage to do that.
And as I like conclusions: I guess I reacted so aggressive because I could have been doing the same things that this guy did, suffering in school (fictive scenario, I neither did nor do suffer in school), going to a shooting club, learning how to shoot, get guns in one way or another, and wreak havoc right here in my school. And my parents wouldn't have noticed until it would have been too late because I don't really think they are good parents.
That's probably why I can identify so much with this person. Not with his conclusions and with what he's done, but with his emotions and problems.
Again, thanks for the comments.]
And then all those newspapers like Spiegel and whatnot and his social environment act "surprised" by his actions. He had been showing hate for his environment and self-loathing for five years and nobody had ever helped him. And to top everything, instead of assuming responsibility for the fact that they, society, failed him, or asking themselves how the hell this could have happened (again, they were basically warned five years in advance...), they blame video games ; of course, which tabloid newspapers and serious newspapers alike all call "killer games". Because they don't want to assume responsibility for their failure, they criminalize a community that has millions of members in Germany alone.
It's so completely ridiculous that it makes me sick.
Sadly, I don't have any English sources for you, but I will try to translate interesting parts from these two sources from Spiegel Online for you.
The amok run itself:
The student at shortly before half past nine during school break on the schoolyard, wearing a long black cloak and a black gas mask that covered his face. After being laughed at for his appearance and not being taken seriously by the students, he started firing. That's probably when those smiles faded from their faces. After injuring a total of 37 people, he shot himself.
And then some younger students describe him in this first article, saying he had been "mocked" as a "man in black" because he always wore black clothes and black sunglasses. And then they say things like "Nobody liked him, but we couldn't believe that he'd do such a thing, either."
And then this article goes on and on, describing the horror and terror of these "poor" students, that most of the 700 students need help because of the shock, their parents and siblings, too...
The article afterwards:
The bold text: "He was lonely, frustrated, despaired - and full of hate. <Name> didn't see a meaning in his life anymore. But he wanted to take those he blamed for that to death with himself - and get revenge with this final showdown. Portrait of a teenager who lusted for attention."
And then they continue the article by presenting the irony of this situation (without wanting to). Somebody talks about him, saying "It was clear that he'd go crazy some time, judging the way he talked", mentioning his unconditional hate for his surroundings, and using typical journalistic brilliance by saying things like this: "From where and whether he took pleasure of perverted role-playing with scenes of execution or other games that glorify violence, he didn't want to say. The suspicion seems logical." (Remember that I translate these articles, and apart from my hating their contents, they aren't very easy to translate, either...)
And then they say that he was "addicted to the Internet", that he "sat in front of his computer for the whole time", that he played Doom 3, Counter-Strike, etc...and then they mention that politicians take this incident to start a new discussion about "killer games".
Actually, I'm too sick of this to continue.
Okay, so let me summarise: Because somebody who was mocked and hated by his surroundings, somebody who, according to his own letter of departure (or whatever it's called) was actively terrorized by other people in class, somebody who, according to himself, was always shown how insignificant he was, turned all these negative experiences and emotions into hate and who finally decided to release it on the day before yesterday, this is surprising? I don't see why.
I don't feel pity for his victims. I feel pity for him, the true victim. And for all video gamers who are now criminalized again. Instead of showing that it's their fault that things like this happen - just to mention it once more, he had been suffering for five years and nobody had helped him - politicians now say that they want to ban killer games et cetera.
And of course, his environment who mocked him and so on hasn't been judged or criticized at all. The newspaper article even badmouthed this desperate person after his death. And they wonder why it will happen again? It's their fault. Their very own fault that will either make amok runs common or turn us into a police state in which everything is banned that the politicians call bad and which, therefore, must be the root of all evil.
Nothing more to say by me, really. Please tell me if you ever hear of intelligent politicians. I'll keep an ear open while one eye desperately looks for a country in which politicians assume responsibility themselves.
That's it for today. I'm really not in the mood to continue. Polarisation of the masses so they don't have to think anymore...perhaps somebody ought to think about the true meaning of democracy. Either democracy isn't the best solution, or what we have here isn't democracy. Your call.
See you sometime soon.
P.S. Time needed: 45 minutes or something like that.
P.P.S. Again, translations were difficult and don't have to be exact. You get the picture, I guess...
[Sigh. There's a character limit of 4300 characters in comments. I had 6190 characters. But as it's my journal, I'll simply place this comment into the main entry.
Comment written on 23.11.06, 20:00.:
Thanks for the detailed answers.
@my teacher:
As for the "he killed nobody" bit - I simply wanted to stress that because it was worse in Erfurt, wasn't it? I'm not sure whether to call it "bad luck" or "good luck" for him that he didn't manage to kill anybody, but as he even shot a pregnant teacher, that doesn't make anything he did any better, I agree.
I admit that I probably didn't inform myself about him as well as you did, and my actual criticisms were more against the journal and against politicians than against him or his surroundings in general. That's what I wanted to reach, anyway.
I guess I didn't notice that he over-dramatized his own problems in the end. However, it's probably not bad to remember that people whose conclusions are like these might suffer from personality disorders or have other psychic problems. I'm not saying that he definitely had anything like that, but I find it plausible after reading his letter of departure. He thought in black and white, turned to hate, et cetera. And if he had a psychological disorder, what then?
What would you do in a fictive case when a very strong yet mentally challenged person accidentally kills somebody; he didn't understand that he'd kill the person, he didn't understand things like life and death, and his IQ is that of a child? In my opinion, this person's responsibility is definitely limited. I'm not saying that it's as bad in the case of the amok run, but it might go in that direction.
I don't like anything about "killer games". The word itself is polarisation; it's not defined exactly, and in the end, it's just another thing that conservative politicians don't understand and therefore blame for everything.
I've probably never mentioned it, but I've never really played any ego shooters or other things the media might call "killer games". I was hopelessly overtaxed by them. My hand-eye-coordination is lacking in my opinion, and I didn't really feel any different from playing ball games in sports class where I simply can't imagine the curve of the ball and therefore often don't manage to catch it. It was the same in these ego shooters, so I never played them apart from 2-3 LAN parties in the past where nobody liked the games I like - RTS games, real time strategy games.
But my problem lies in the fact that a) there are politicians who'd rather ban every single computer game as "killer games" than think about other reasons for incidents like this one, and b) none of my friends are somehow in the risk of becoming a murderer because they play ego shooters yet politicians say they might be potentially dangerous because of that.
I simply think that democracy in its current state doesn't really work out the way it's supposed to be. But that topic is too big for these comments, I guess; I'll probably write about it some time in the future.
@acid-sugar:
Yes, that's what I meant. They (whoever "they" is, exactly - politicians, journalists, policemen, it doesn't really matter) see something they don't like or understand and choose it as a scapegoat because that's the easy way out of an otherwise much more elemental problem.
I found his livejournal but didn't have the time to read it yet. His perception of the world seemed kind of one-sided, and yes, while I could agree to and relate with some things he wrote - his emotions, his problems, his fears - I couldn't agree with his conclusions. I don't think that teachers are evil, and I think that it's justified to limit our personal freedom by forcing us to go to school, because that does so much more good than harm in the end. But he didn't (want to) see things like that.
What I dislike is that the media and the politicians have a pre-set image of what his reasons were ("killer games", "evil" role-plays (I'm not saying that it's good to replay scenes of execution, but they only assumed that in the article I read, and that's ridiculous), "bad" music like heavy metal, etc.) and try to find proof for that. That's the same way Intelligent Design works: They have the pre-set notion that there's a creator and want to find proof for that. In my opinion, both things are wrong. They aren't open-minded (I don't really expect that from a religion, but I do expect it from politicians - the ideal politicians, anyway) and they conclude without enough evidence...
And there still aren't enough studies about whether or not there's any effect of these games at all, something that's abused sooo much.
I agree with your conclusion in university. Sounds interesting. I guess I'll enjoy university ;).
And these allusions are much better and much less overused than the popular allusion of "99% [or another high figure] of those who go crazy and start amok runs ate bread [or something else that's very common] before, whereas only 1% [or another low figure] played ego shooters. Why isn't bread forbidden?". Thanks for that.
It's also worrying that some politicians go as far as to say that they don't only want to ban "killer games" but that they also want to censor the Internet. And that's frightening. It probably won't happen, but the notion alone is frightening. I might say bad things about German politicians, because I don't like the general double standards I perceive of politics (pay lip service to everybody and then actually do that which nets you most money, e.g. from corporations and lobbyists), but at least we aren't China. Yet.
I'd probably be hard-pressed to self-reflect myself properly, but that's what everybody should do, not what's done. I don't do anything to improve the situation, either, so I'm not actually much better than these politicians. But I try not to submit to my prejudices, at least. I'm unsure whether all of those I accuse manage to do that.
And as I like conclusions: I guess I reacted so aggressive because I could have been doing the same things that this guy did, suffering in school (fictive scenario, I neither did nor do suffer in school), going to a shooting club, learning how to shoot, get guns in one way or another, and wreak havoc right here in my school. And my parents wouldn't have noticed until it would have been too late because I don't really think they are good parents.
That's probably why I can identify so much with this person. Not with his conclusions and with what he's done, but with his emotions and problems.
Again, thanks for the comments.]
21 November 2006 @ 05:38 pm
We had our test in economy class today. It was far easier than I thought. Anyway, as we read a very controversial newspaper editorial in English class (it's a good idea to give your pupils texts as controversial as this one, though, because it's the perfect example of an article that a pupil will want to comment, and the lesson was about writing a letter to a newspaper editor). I'm talking of this article: A Germany still to break free of the past by Angela Lambert. I looked up the author of this article because I wanted to see whether I could find anything interesting about her. Apart from her age, there wasn't really anything useful, though.
Anyway, here it is. I don't know how long it took me to write the article, but I assure you that I enjoyed writing something as tart as this one.
Please note that I haven't used a single (offensive) four-letter-word in this article, so courtesy and political correctness are guaranteed...sort of.
#######
A Journalist still to break free of the past
Dear Angela Lambert,
I've read your editorial about Bavaria on August 31, 2004. I can't say that I'm surprised to read an article like that, but I was surprised to see that you didn't notice your logical flaws in it yourself. I'm concerned that your readers haven't been able to spot these, however, and I can't leave it uncommented.
I'll start by saying that your description of Bavaria doesn't match reality. Are you aware that Bavaria consists of more than Berchtesgaden, a city that's a rather extreme example to choose (It's in the southernmost and easternmost corner of Bavaria, nowhere near its center or its capital, so it shouldn't really be taken as a representation for all of Bavaria, should it?)? You've perceived an inflated and surreal picture by comparing all of Bavaria to a tiny spot of a big state.
I'm also worried about your manipulative description of Bavarians. Your sole purpose of describing Bavaria as a paradise and its inhabitants to something like perfect people without the use of a single negative adjective is manipulation. One, your readers will think that you want to describe Bavarians in an honestly positive way, so they'll be even more crushed by your - in my opinion wrong and unreflected - conclusions in the second part of your article. And two, you don't really describe them positively. Instead, you adopt the old pattern of painting a picture of frighteningly positive contents of someone or something. It's supposed to look like heaven or paradise, but in reality - in your reality, anyway - , it's not. It's like comparing a real person's smile with the potentially inflexible and rigid painting of a smile. In their subconsciouses, your readers will see this painting of a happy life as a lie, and it is. But it's not a lie and untrue because there's some nasty secret or an unprocessed past as you claim, but because we Bavarians are normal people, and normal people can't be perfect. We aren't perfect, but neither are you or your people.
I like arguing the in my eyes moot point of others telling me what I think, consciously or subconsciously. You said that "[t]he ideas of implacable military might and the propaganda of the Nazi era evoked by such imagery are still closely linked in the European unconscious". I'll tell you something. These images have never had the time to get into my unconscious because I'm bombarded with the opinions - unfounded opinions, I think - of elders who are so afraid of their past that they think they have to constantly remind us of what happened to them so that we don't suffer the same problem. My response? Rejection. I'm a human being myself, I'm capable to think myself, and I don't need these constant and annoying reminders. In reality, it's your subconscious that's still closely linked to this imagery, isn't it? You were born in 1940; you were five years old at the end of WWII; and now your fear of this history has led you to write an article like that. But in reality, you repeat the history you fear so much by writing articles as full of prejudices as this one.
Germany has constantly been praised for its critical reflection and procession of the past. In fact, our procession of our past is probably better than that of England, but I'm not going to use the same generalization you used when you said that "[e]veryone in Berchtesgaden - everyone in the whole of Bavaria - is white". It's simply wrong. Perhaps you should have spent more than six days in a state before making unfounded claims about all its inhabitants like this one. Instead of thinking of factual proof for my claim that there's less racism in Bavaria than in England, I'll simply leave it unfounded, as you don't seem to need reasons for your claims, either. You are free to prove me wrong, of course. Finally, are you aware that as a country in the center of a continent, it's far harder for immigrants from countries in the Third World or from Asia (those who wouldn't be white) to come to Germany, specifically Bavaria, instead of other countries? Germany is mainly a country of destination for immigrants, so there are naturally less immigrants than in countries which are both countries of transit and destination. Maybe you ought to have thought of things like that, too. Neither I nor anybody I know has ever showed any racist tendencies, either, and while I'm totally aware that racism is a problem everywhere, it's in no way a worse problem in Bavaria than in the rest of Germany or abroad. Why do you blame us for the lack of non-white people here?
I'll complete this letter by showing you your gravest mistake. You finished by saying that we - again generalizing Berchtesgaden and what you saw in six days to Bavaria and all of Germany - have to "accept the changes of the last half-century and join the present-day multicultural, multiracial, inter-marrying reality of 21st century planet Earth". I've already shown you why your claims in these areas aren't based on fact or ratio. But have you noticed that you weren't able to meet your own high standards yourself? You've shown so many prejudices in this commentary. You have let your own fear of the past take advantage of you. If I were somebody else, I'd call you senile. Instead, I'll simply remind you that unfounded prejudices like yours haven't only been the cause of racism but also of WWII, the very historic event you mentioned in your article. Your fear of your own history puts you into the danger of repeating it.
I'm curious who you will blame for WWIII. My suggestion: Blame yourself.
Regards,
Tobias,
student at a Bavarian Gymnasium
*Terms like "non-white" were used for the lack of a better word and aren't supposed to be seen offensive; my vocabulary is limited.
#######
That's it for today. Hope you liked my letter, although I'll probably never send it to her - the article was published in 2004, and although I enjoyed seeming tart, I'm not really the type of person who would send a letter as aggressive as this one. And if I ever actually want to send a letter to an editor that I want to get published, I'll have to work on the length of what I write...
See you sometime soon.
P.S. Time needed: I have no idea. Probably more than usual, but I can't be sure. I'll settle with "at least one hour".
P.P.S. We were told that you start a letter to an editor with the phrase "Dear Sir,", no matter which gender he belongs to. However, as this letter was rather formulated as an attack than as a normal letter to an editor, I decided to stick with this one.
Anyway, here it is. I don't know how long it took me to write the article, but I assure you that I enjoyed writing something as tart as this one.
Please note that I haven't used a single (offensive) four-letter-word in this article, so courtesy and political correctness are guaranteed...sort of.
#######
A Journalist still to break free of the past
Dear Angela Lambert,
I've read your editorial about Bavaria on August 31, 2004. I can't say that I'm surprised to read an article like that, but I was surprised to see that you didn't notice your logical flaws in it yourself. I'm concerned that your readers haven't been able to spot these, however, and I can't leave it uncommented.
I'll start by saying that your description of Bavaria doesn't match reality. Are you aware that Bavaria consists of more than Berchtesgaden, a city that's a rather extreme example to choose (It's in the southernmost and easternmost corner of Bavaria, nowhere near its center or its capital, so it shouldn't really be taken as a representation for all of Bavaria, should it?)? You've perceived an inflated and surreal picture by comparing all of Bavaria to a tiny spot of a big state.
I'm also worried about your manipulative description of Bavarians. Your sole purpose of describing Bavaria as a paradise and its inhabitants to something like perfect people without the use of a single negative adjective is manipulation. One, your readers will think that you want to describe Bavarians in an honestly positive way, so they'll be even more crushed by your - in my opinion wrong and unreflected - conclusions in the second part of your article. And two, you don't really describe them positively. Instead, you adopt the old pattern of painting a picture of frighteningly positive contents of someone or something. It's supposed to look like heaven or paradise, but in reality - in your reality, anyway - , it's not. It's like comparing a real person's smile with the potentially inflexible and rigid painting of a smile. In their subconsciouses, your readers will see this painting of a happy life as a lie, and it is. But it's not a lie and untrue because there's some nasty secret or an unprocessed past as you claim, but because we Bavarians are normal people, and normal people can't be perfect. We aren't perfect, but neither are you or your people.
I like arguing the in my eyes moot point of others telling me what I think, consciously or subconsciously. You said that "[t]he ideas of implacable military might and the propaganda of the Nazi era evoked by such imagery are still closely linked in the European unconscious". I'll tell you something. These images have never had the time to get into my unconscious because I'm bombarded with the opinions - unfounded opinions, I think - of elders who are so afraid of their past that they think they have to constantly remind us of what happened to them so that we don't suffer the same problem. My response? Rejection. I'm a human being myself, I'm capable to think myself, and I don't need these constant and annoying reminders. In reality, it's your subconscious that's still closely linked to this imagery, isn't it? You were born in 1940; you were five years old at the end of WWII; and now your fear of this history has led you to write an article like that. But in reality, you repeat the history you fear so much by writing articles as full of prejudices as this one.
Germany has constantly been praised for its critical reflection and procession of the past. In fact, our procession of our past is probably better than that of England, but I'm not going to use the same generalization you used when you said that "[e]veryone in Berchtesgaden - everyone in the whole of Bavaria - is white". It's simply wrong. Perhaps you should have spent more than six days in a state before making unfounded claims about all its inhabitants like this one. Instead of thinking of factual proof for my claim that there's less racism in Bavaria than in England, I'll simply leave it unfounded, as you don't seem to need reasons for your claims, either. You are free to prove me wrong, of course. Finally, are you aware that as a country in the center of a continent, it's far harder for immigrants from countries in the Third World or from Asia (those who wouldn't be white) to come to Germany, specifically Bavaria, instead of other countries? Germany is mainly a country of destination for immigrants, so there are naturally less immigrants than in countries which are both countries of transit and destination. Maybe you ought to have thought of things like that, too. Neither I nor anybody I know has ever showed any racist tendencies, either, and while I'm totally aware that racism is a problem everywhere, it's in no way a worse problem in Bavaria than in the rest of Germany or abroad. Why do you blame us for the lack of non-white people here?
I'll complete this letter by showing you your gravest mistake. You finished by saying that we - again generalizing Berchtesgaden and what you saw in six days to Bavaria and all of Germany - have to "accept the changes of the last half-century and join the present-day multicultural, multiracial, inter-marrying reality of 21st century planet Earth". I've already shown you why your claims in these areas aren't based on fact or ratio. But have you noticed that you weren't able to meet your own high standards yourself? You've shown so many prejudices in this commentary. You have let your own fear of the past take advantage of you. If I were somebody else, I'd call you senile. Instead, I'll simply remind you that unfounded prejudices like yours haven't only been the cause of racism but also of WWII, the very historic event you mentioned in your article. Your fear of your own history puts you into the danger of repeating it.
I'm curious who you will blame for WWIII. My suggestion: Blame yourself.
Regards,
Tobias,
student at a Bavarian Gymnasium
*Terms like "non-white" were used for the lack of a better word and aren't supposed to be seen offensive; my vocabulary is limited.
#######
That's it for today. Hope you liked my letter, although I'll probably never send it to her - the article was published in 2004, and although I enjoyed seeming tart, I'm not really the type of person who would send a letter as aggressive as this one. And if I ever actually want to send a letter to an editor that I want to get published, I'll have to work on the length of what I write...
See you sometime soon.
P.S. Time needed: I have no idea. Probably more than usual, but I can't be sure. I'll settle with "at least one hour".
P.P.S. We were told that you start a letter to an editor with the phrase "Dear Sir,", no matter which gender he belongs to. However, as this letter was rather formulated as an attack than as a normal letter to an editor, I decided to stick with this one.
Current Mood: Finished. Yay!
19 November 2006 @ 08:03 pm
As you may or may not have noticed, I have almost ceased (it's funny how words like these sometimes suddenly pop into my mind, which shows that reading English books does make sense) to update this livejournal. Well, the reason is simply - I've started to feel a total lack of energy for everything I do, which not only means that I don't spend as much time as I used to for writing my journal but that I spend less time on other things, as well. My interest gradually seems to fade away from so many things...after suddenly stopping playing World of Warcraft in the end of the summer holidays, I'm currently in the process of losing interest in so many school classes...history - I don't care. Music - I could care less. Religion - a waste of time. The rest of school is okay, I guess, but these three subjects are like stomach aches - nobody asks for them but they still come and ruin your day...
Anyway, it's kind of amazing that I'd currently feel hard-pressed to tell others how I spend my days. I honestly have no idea. Time passes by somehow but it doesn't feel spent in meaningful ways.
Anyway, I've been meaning to write an entry about what I guess could be one of the best characterisations of me that I've ever seen, and on Wikipedia nonetheless!
Without further ado, I'm happy (<-> ironic allusion to other presentations - in other words, I tried to be funny; you have to laugh here) to present the interesting similarities between this article about the schizoid personality disorder and myself. (A quick note at the beginning - I know that there are always people who read articles about illnesses and things like that and whose first thoughts after reading these articles are that they have to go to the doctor's because they have this oh-my-god-it-couldn't-be-worse illness, no matter whether it's a flu or a tumour. I'm not like that. I've read all all the articles about specific personality disorders on Wikipedia - according to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), there are about ten personality disorders, and I didn't find any similarities between any of the symptoms of these any myself whereas the symptoms of the schizoid personality disorder match me in an almost frightening way. And yes, I know that one isn't supposed to make unfounded assumptions about any illnesses without contacting a doctor (or, in this case, a psychologist), but as my general practitioner's (= family doctor, but that's informal) secretary wasn't able to find her list of psychologists, and as I've been told that all psychologists have waiting lists of half a year or more, I'd rather leave it to my own judgement than wait half a year before I can be sure whether my assumptions are 100% correct.)
Well, let's take a look at the criteria according to the DSM-IV. As far as I know it's fair use to quote a list like that if you list your source even if it's probably copyrighted, so I'll do just that.
Criteria for a schizoid personality disorder:
1. Yes, I feel that way. The "desire" part is difficult, because I can't honestly understand why I should understand relationships like that if I don't enjoy them in the first place. I don't feel like part of a family, either. My father has a girlfriend (or ladyfriend, or whatever) and he's here at about three to five times per month or so (he kind of uses our home as a workstation), so I don't even feel any emotional connection to him. As my mother is always here, I have to have some emotional connection, so my connection varies from complete indifference to hate, switching from time to time depending on my current mood. The only person in my family who I like is my sister. Definitely check.
2. I guess that's the easiest point. I've been doing solitary activities exclusively - stuff that I could do alone, and only alone - since...I don't know I've been ten years old or so. Computer? Solo. Books? Solo. Sports? No way I'd ever do things like that. Dancing? Why would I ever want to do such a thing? Become part of any kind of clubs, sports or otherwise? I've never wanted to do something like that. Again, there's no question about it. Check.
3. In addition to the fact that points like these are a tad personal, I can't really say anything about it. I don't have a girlfriend and I've never tried to get one, I'm a virgin or whatever the proper word is for males, and I've never felt the need to have sexual experiences. I don't really think that I wouldn't like to have sex, but I simply don't feel any kind of real interest, either. Check.
4. That's what I meant when I started this entry. My interests are actually declining, and they are declining fast. And the "enjoying" part is kind of difficult, too. Currently everything feels increasingly dull and boring, and even if I'm interested in doing something - reading a book, for example - I don't really enjoy (or take pleasure in) it, either. I guess that's why I find it increasingly harder to study for school, too - of course it has never been much fun (it's studying, after all), but now there simply isn't any fun left in so many subjects...check, no doubt.
5. I have a few people who I call friends, and I'm not taking that away from them, or me. But it's just a fact that a) I don't want to rely on others as confidants and b) I guess the number of times people I've had friends stay here or visited others hasn't surpassed 100 (that's an inflated number, actually, it's probably less) - since I've been 10, and including birthdays. Apart from birthdays, I don't invite people over at all. I always feel bad about calling people my friends because I give them nothing in return, either. The only time I ever spend with them ("them" being a number of about four other people in total) is in school pauses. Check.
6. I've always felt indifferent to things my parents said to me, be it the fact that I don't want to participate in the family (actually, using the word "family" for whatever this is is an insult to the word), complaints from my parents or them being happy about my marks. I didn't care. I find it hard to be happy about good marks or sad about bad marks, either. And I've always felt that since others are so different to me, I don't really have to care about their criticisms, and I don't. Of course, this particular point has it's advantages, too - for example I've never felt susceptible to peer pressure. Never. Check.
7. I find it hard to care about other people, I don't think I could really love anybody, I feel indifferent to myself, I never feel any passion or commitment to anything, and I always feel like an emotional iceberg in the presence of other persons. I felt like that way when my grandmother died, and I've increasingly had the feeling that I wouldn't feel different if my parents had a serious accident with fatal injuries or something like that, either. Again, check.
Four of seven of these symptoms mean that you might be schizoid. I have seven of seven. What's my prize?
And now (shorter) the criteria according to ICD-10:
"According to the ICD-10, schizoid personality disorder is characterised by at least three of the following criteria:
1. Same as above. Check.
2. Same as above. Check.
3. Same as above. Check.
4. Same as above. Check.
4. Same as above. Check.
5. Same as above. Check.
6. Same as above. Check.
7. New. I'll make it short, though. I've never really felt like being part of any kind of community, be it school or being German (my patriotism equals zero). I tore the (copied and impersonal) letter of our mayor to pieces in which he talked about things that I'm not interested in and don't want to be a part of like "responsibility" for "our nation" and things like that. I don't care about fashion, either. Check.
8. Definitely. I love fantasy stories for this particular reason, and I'm interested in writing fantasy novels or basically any stories because I find fantasy so much more interesting than reality. Computer games are the same. Introspection - well, I don't know how many people of my age are interested in meditation or lucid dreaming or things like that, although I haven't done anything in these areas lately, either. Still, check.
9. Same as above. Check.
Again, three of these nine criteria make you schizoid. I have nine of nine.
And what do I do now, after having myself firmly established as a schizoid (at least in my eyes)? Well, easy. I continued reading the article about it.
They question whether it's really a mental (or personality) disorder because it doesn't necessarily mean that you have any problems when you have it. I feel so, too. I don't think society (this word has a negative connotation for me and it has always had it, which further proves my point) has the right to judge things like that. I don't have any problems with being introverted in the way it is described there.
I personally separate my introversion from my depressions and lack of happiness that I've been feeling for so long, but I might be wrong, of course. If I choose to go to a psychologist, I'll tell him firmly that I don't want him to consider this introversion as an illness or a personality disorder or a problem, and that he's supposed to focus on my depressions and nothing else.
Self image - I found this especially illuminating because It matched me so well. Other people have a hard time to understand that I don't have a problem with being unable for extroversion. I've also always felt there was a difference to everybody else. And I couldn't agree more with the quote by Beck and Freeman (whoever they are) that people like me consider themselves as “observers rather than participants in the world around them.” (source: Wikipedia). But I don't have really have a problem with that, either.
All I want is to be able to feel normal, genuine emotions towards the things I do, feeling happy when I'm interested in something and if I like doing it (which isn't how it is right now).
I'm not interested in becoming better in social surroundings and I don't see why I'm supposed to. I see no sense in becoming better in communication with others if all I want is not being forced to communicate with them (at least face to face) in the first place, anyway (Stress on forced - I'm forced to talk to other people in school, for example, I don't choose to. And although I admit there are people I like to talk to, but they aren't many, not at all, and they are only a tiny percentage of my daily conversations (which aren't that many).). This is probably best described when I say that if I didn't need modern society's comfort, I'd probably be a hermit far, far away on some lone mountain or something like that.
And to stress it again: I don't feel inferior to others. In fact, I'm perfectly comfortable with my skills and abilities, and although there may be people who are better at school or more intelligent or things like that, I'm not depressed because of that. I'm depressed because I'm mortal and because I don't enjoy life, not because of an imaginative (and, anyway, objectively wrong) inferiority to others.
Ah, and "schizoid" and "schizophrenia" don't necessarily have anything in common; the first parts of the words simply mean "split", so "schizoid" simply means "split from society".
As mentioned in the article, I don't see why I'd want any treatment to something I don't see as a problem, and it's uncertain whether these treatments help at all, anyway. After all, they would probably help me to improve my communication to other people, not my lack of interest in doing so.
I'm not interested in "socialization groups", either.
In conclusion, I've probably never found anything that describes me as accurately as this article does. There isn't really anything else to say, I guess. I have no problem with the way I relate to others, just with my own lack of emotions and with my depressions, and I'd want my psychologist to keep this in mind with whatever he or she would do, too.
We have a test in economy class on Tuesday, so I might (stress on might, which isn't that probable) write something in the days afterwards. I'll see. I probably won't increase my output of entries very soon, anyway.
See you sometime.
P.S. Time needed: One hour and a half. Which isn't really that strange as this is something that actually concerns me.
Anyway, it's kind of amazing that I'd currently feel hard-pressed to tell others how I spend my days. I honestly have no idea. Time passes by somehow but it doesn't feel spent in meaningful ways.
Anyway, I've been meaning to write an entry about what I guess could be one of the best characterisations of me that I've ever seen, and on Wikipedia nonetheless!
Without further ado, I'm happy (<-> ironic allusion to other presentations - in other words, I tried to be funny; you have to laugh here) to present the interesting similarities between this article about the schizoid personality disorder and myself. (A quick note at the beginning - I know that there are always people who read articles about illnesses and things like that and whose first thoughts after reading these articles are that they have to go to the doctor's because they have this oh-my-god-it-couldn't-be-worse illness, no matter whether it's a flu or a tumour. I'm not like that. I've read all all the articles about specific personality disorders on Wikipedia - according to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), there are about ten personality disorders, and I didn't find any similarities between any of the symptoms of these any myself whereas the symptoms of the schizoid personality disorder match me in an almost frightening way. And yes, I know that one isn't supposed to make unfounded assumptions about any illnesses without contacting a doctor (or, in this case, a psychologist), but as my general practitioner's (= family doctor, but that's informal) secretary wasn't able to find her list of psychologists, and as I've been told that all psychologists have waiting lists of half a year or more, I'd rather leave it to my own judgement than wait half a year before I can be sure whether my assumptions are 100% correct.)
Well, let's take a look at the criteria according to the DSM-IV. As far as I know it's fair use to quote a list like that if you list your source even if it's probably copyrighted, so I'll do just that.
Criteria for a schizoid personality disorder:
- "A. A pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of expression of emotions in interpersonal settings, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by four (or more) of the following:
-
-
- neither desires nor enjoys close relationships, including being part of a family
- almost always chooses solitary activities
- has little, if any, interest in having sexual experiences with another person
- takes pleasure in few, if any, activities
- lacks close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
- appears indifferent to the praise or criticism of others
- shows emotional coldness, detachment, or flattened affectivity
-
- B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia, a Mood Disorder with Psychotic Features, another Psychotic Disorder, or a Pervasive Developmental Disorder and is not due to the direct physiological effects of a general medical condition."
- Source: Wikipedia (and their source: DSM-IV)
1. Yes, I feel that way. The "desire" part is difficult, because I can't honestly understand why I should understand relationships like that if I don't enjoy them in the first place. I don't feel like part of a family, either. My father has a girlfriend (or ladyfriend, or whatever) and he's here at about three to five times per month or so (he kind of uses our home as a workstation), so I don't even feel any emotional connection to him. As my mother is always here, I have to have some emotional connection, so my connection varies from complete indifference to hate, switching from time to time depending on my current mood. The only person in my family who I like is my sister. Definitely check.
2. I guess that's the easiest point. I've been doing solitary activities exclusively - stuff that I could do alone, and only alone - since...I don't know I've been ten years old or so. Computer? Solo. Books? Solo. Sports? No way I'd ever do things like that. Dancing? Why would I ever want to do such a thing? Become part of any kind of clubs, sports or otherwise? I've never wanted to do something like that. Again, there's no question about it. Check.
3. In addition to the fact that points like these are a tad personal, I can't really say anything about it. I don't have a girlfriend and I've never tried to get one, I'm a virgin or whatever the proper word is for males, and I've never felt the need to have sexual experiences. I don't really think that I wouldn't like to have sex, but I simply don't feel any kind of real interest, either. Check.
4. That's what I meant when I started this entry. My interests are actually declining, and they are declining fast. And the "enjoying" part is kind of difficult, too. Currently everything feels increasingly dull and boring, and even if I'm interested in doing something - reading a book, for example - I don't really enjoy (or take pleasure in) it, either. I guess that's why I find it increasingly harder to study for school, too - of course it has never been much fun (it's studying, after all), but now there simply isn't any fun left in so many subjects...check, no doubt.
5. I have a few people who I call friends, and I'm not taking that away from them, or me. But it's just a fact that a) I don't want to rely on others as confidants and b) I guess the number of times people I've had friends stay here or visited others hasn't surpassed 100 (that's an inflated number, actually, it's probably less) - since I've been 10, and including birthdays. Apart from birthdays, I don't invite people over at all. I always feel bad about calling people my friends because I give them nothing in return, either. The only time I ever spend with them ("them" being a number of about four other people in total) is in school pauses. Check.
6. I've always felt indifferent to things my parents said to me, be it the fact that I don't want to participate in the family (actually, using the word "family" for whatever this is is an insult to the word), complaints from my parents or them being happy about my marks. I didn't care. I find it hard to be happy about good marks or sad about bad marks, either. And I've always felt that since others are so different to me, I don't really have to care about their criticisms, and I don't. Of course, this particular point has it's advantages, too - for example I've never felt susceptible to peer pressure. Never. Check.
7. I find it hard to care about other people, I don't think I could really love anybody, I feel indifferent to myself, I never feel any passion or commitment to anything, and I always feel like an emotional iceberg in the presence of other persons. I felt like that way when my grandmother died, and I've increasingly had the feeling that I wouldn't feel different if my parents had a serious accident with fatal injuries or something like that, either. Again, check.
Four of seven of these symptoms mean that you might be schizoid. I have seven of seven. What's my prize?
And now (shorter) the criteria according to ICD-10:
"According to the ICD-10, schizoid personality disorder is characterised by at least three of the following criteria:
- Emotional coldness, detachment or reduced affectivity.
- Limited capacity to express either positive or negative emotions towards others.
- Consistent preference for solitary activities.
- Very few (if any) close friends or relationships, and a lack of desire for such.
- Indifference to either praise or criticism.
- Taking pleasure in few, if any, activities.
- Indifference to social norms and conventions.
- Preoccupation with fantasy and introspection.
- Lack of desire for sexual experiences with another person"
1. Same as above. Check.
2. Same as above. Check.
3. Same as above. Check.
4. Same as above. Check.
4. Same as above. Check.
5. Same as above. Check.
6. Same as above. Check.
7. New. I'll make it short, though. I've never really felt like being part of any kind of community, be it school or being German (my patriotism equals zero). I tore the (copied and impersonal) letter of our mayor to pieces in which he talked about things that I'm not interested in and don't want to be a part of like "responsibility" for "our nation" and things like that. I don't care about fashion, either. Check.
8. Definitely. I love fantasy stories for this particular reason, and I'm interested in writing fantasy novels or basically any stories because I find fantasy so much more interesting than reality. Computer games are the same. Introspection - well, I don't know how many people of my age are interested in meditation or lucid dreaming or things like that, although I haven't done anything in these areas lately, either. Still, check.
9. Same as above. Check.
Again, three of these nine criteria make you schizoid. I have nine of nine.
And what do I do now, after having myself firmly established as a schizoid (at least in my eyes)? Well, easy. I continued reading the article about it.
They question whether it's really a mental (or personality) disorder because it doesn't necessarily mean that you have any problems when you have it. I feel so, too. I don't think society (this word has a negative connotation for me and it has always had it, which further proves my point) has the right to judge things like that. I don't have any problems with being introverted in the way it is described there.
I personally separate my introversion from my depressions and lack of happiness that I've been feeling for so long, but I might be wrong, of course. If I choose to go to a psychologist, I'll tell him firmly that I don't want him to consider this introversion as an illness or a personality disorder or a problem, and that he's supposed to focus on my depressions and nothing else.
Self image - I found this especially illuminating because It matched me so well. Other people have a hard time to understand that I don't have a problem with being unable for extroversion. I've also always felt there was a difference to everybody else. And I couldn't agree more with the quote by Beck and Freeman (whoever they are) that people like me consider themselves as “observers rather than participants in the world around them.” (source: Wikipedia). But I don't have really have a problem with that, either.
All I want is to be able to feel normal, genuine emotions towards the things I do, feeling happy when I'm interested in something and if I like doing it (which isn't how it is right now).
I'm not interested in becoming better in social surroundings and I don't see why I'm supposed to. I see no sense in becoming better in communication with others if all I want is not being forced to communicate with them (at least face to face) in the first place, anyway (Stress on forced - I'm forced to talk to other people in school, for example, I don't choose to. And although I admit there are people I like to talk to, but they aren't many, not at all, and they are only a tiny percentage of my daily conversations (which aren't that many).). This is probably best described when I say that if I didn't need modern society's comfort, I'd probably be a hermit far, far away on some lone mountain or something like that.
And to stress it again: I don't feel inferior to others. In fact, I'm perfectly comfortable with my skills and abilities, and although there may be people who are better at school or more intelligent or things like that, I'm not depressed because of that. I'm depressed because I'm mortal and because I don't enjoy life, not because of an imaginative (and, anyway, objectively wrong) inferiority to others.
Ah, and "schizoid" and "schizophrenia" don't necessarily have anything in common; the first parts of the words simply mean "split", so "schizoid" simply means "split from society".
As mentioned in the article, I don't see why I'd want any treatment to something I don't see as a problem, and it's uncertain whether these treatments help at all, anyway. After all, they would probably help me to improve my communication to other people, not my lack of interest in doing so.
I'm not interested in "socialization groups", either.
In conclusion, I've probably never found anything that describes me as accurately as this article does. There isn't really anything else to say, I guess. I have no problem with the way I relate to others, just with my own lack of emotions and with my depressions, and I'd want my psychologist to keep this in mind with whatever he or she would do, too.
We have a test in economy class on Tuesday, so I might (stress on might, which isn't that probable) write something in the days afterwards. I'll see. I probably won't increase my output of entries very soon, anyway.
See you sometime.
P.S. Time needed: One hour and a half. Which isn't really that strange as this is something that actually concerns me.
Current Mood: None.
13 November 2006 @ 05:22 pm
I always forget how much I like late summer/early autumn when it finally starts to get really, really cold in autumn and you start to feel that it's going to be winter sooner rather than later. In plain English: I have a sore throat and illnesses typical for this time of the year - a flu, a cold, I currently have to cough all the time, et cetera. I'm feeling kind of ill, but just not ill enough to justify not going to school because I know that it will backfire in the end (i.e. when I have to learn (or is it "study "here?) everything that I've missed on the days I stayed at home). Oh, and there's the fact that you always seem to have headwinds (= winds that blow to your direction so you are slowed down by them) at the worst time possible, e.g. when you already left late for school - it somehow felt like driving three times as far as usual although it was the same distance in nearly the same time. Well, I shouldn't complain too much. After all, riding to school per bike is the only "sport" I do except for sport classes on Wednesday at school. And I did have tailwind (= the contrary of headwind; I had to look the two words up) on the way back home today, so Murphy's law didn't decide to turn the wind against me again as it enjoys so much on other occasions...
Well, this weather still sucks. But I like winter apart from that because I can open my windows (i.e. tilting them a little, not opening them completely - I save that for late spring and summer) without bazillions of insects coming in who are intent on stinging me in every square inch of my body (the frequency of slowly fading slightly red points - healing stings - on my arms is strangely regular and with nearly equal distances from one to the next, although there aren't really that many stings) - as I stay up late all the time (especially in the holidays and on weekends) and as I always try to have the window open (because my computer will warm up if I don't, and because the air gets so stuffy (I had to look that up) because I stay in my room all the time), it's either sitting in front of my computer without turning on the lights in my room, or closing the curtains (actually, that's no part of the solution, as they are always closed), or closing the windows, which I hate.
That's weather to me in a nutshell - well, that and sweating, of course. But I don't do any different things in summer or winter as all my hobbies (that makes it sound as if I have more hobbies than I do) are indoor activities, and as I don't enjoy going outside (after all, I have zero reasons to do so - I don't enjoy the weather, and I'd just get bored within minutes). The biggest differences are really my way to school (i.e. being slower in winter because I either drive slower or end up dropping from my bike because of icy surfaces) and sport class.
I had an interesting adventure in hospital on Friday - I was supposed to have a minor surgery, the kind which can be done in ten to twenty minutes with local anaesthesia...for normal people. As I may or may not (probably not) have mentioned already, I had a kind of adventure some months before at my dentist's who used local anaesthesia (she had done the same thing with the same result once before already) - fixing some teeth, the usual stuff. I wonder why people are usually afraid of dentists - the only thing I'm (slightly) afraid of are injections, and they are usually done in far less than a minute. You may feel sick afterwards, but that's only temporary. I didn't even need any pain killers to limit the pain after the removal of my wisdom teeth, and I felt completely okay after one evening respectively two days (I let them remove the teeth in two visits) or so...
Anyway, so I got my local anaesthesia and tried to prepare me for the kind of thing my body enjoys to do and that happened once before: mind-numbness, giddiness and dizziness which felt close to the point of becoming unconscious, but the whole thing only lasted for a few minutes or so. Not pleasant, I know, but bearable. I'd rather feel close to being unconscious for a few minutes than having my teeth ache for far longer.
The dentists were kind of afraid about me, and they were far more terrified by the results than I was (after all, they were able to finish everything properly, starting ten minutes after the injection or so), and their reasons for my feeling that way were something along the lines of low blood pressure, not eating enough, lack of sleep, and so on. I was okay with that because everything about that was correct - I have a kind of low blood pressure, I didn't have time to eat on that day and rushed to the dentist because I was late already, I generally don't sleep enough, etc.
So anyway, after going directly to the hospital after school (and I had to rush back home in a free period before because I had forgotten some papers for the hospital) on last Friday, and although I had an appointment at one am - directly after school - I had to wait something along the lines of one hour and a quarter, just to get told afterwards that they can't legally use local anaesthesia if I've ever had any complications with that beforehand. Basically, the whole thing was a waste of nearly two hours (I had to go home by bus etc., and the explanation and all that took some time, too) of my time (although I had had a book with me), again although I had an appointment at one pm...yes, I do realize how hospitals are and that appointments never work out, but the result was just a bit worse than I expected.
Result:
- a waste of two hours of time
- getting told that they can't legally use local anaesthesia, like, ever, if I don't do a test for allergies (again, I understand their reasoning - after all, I could legally sue them if something serious happened me to me, my complaint is more along the lines of getting told that I have to make a test for allergies and they couldn't just do it now after wasting my time already; I was also told that I'll probably have to go to my local doctor who will send me to a dermatologist (doctor for skin-related things; they seem to do allergy tests, too) - more wastes of time, yay!)
- getting told that they'll simply use narcosis instead
- having to move the appointment to the last Friday before the Christmas holidays because of all the examinations I write before
The third point is probably the worst. I mean, seriously - isn't using narcosis for a small surgery where local anaesthesia would be completely enough a sledgehammer approach (= using exaggerated things to solve a problem)? I'm also quite unsure whether narcosis is really any better than local anaesthesia for my consciousness anyway (so why can't I just get everything behind me and do it with local anaesthesia), and finally, I don't want to use narcosis if I personally don't have any problems with local anaesthesia. I want to leave narcosis to serious things like broken bones (never broke a single bone although I basically only consist of skin and bones (I couldn't find a good English idiom for this one, sorry about that)) or serious organ surgery, not to something as trivial as this.
"As trivial as this"...let's just say that if they hadn't made this big fuss on Friday, I would have had fulfilled one of the religious preconditions of becoming a Jew (and no, it's not about becoming a Jew, I still am and stay an atheist, this was just for the sake of the paraphrase (because I didn't want to write it more directly); my reasons were different ones (phimosis if you really, really have to look it up)).
Anyway, that's it for today. We've finished our first two written examinations in English class and maths class so far, and I'm kind of excited to see how I've done (and I'll write about them when I get the results, I think, but not before), although I'll probably scorn myself for not scoring better than I could have done (as both examinations were really, really not difficult, less than I expected them to be). I blame my illness and a lack of sleep, that's always easier than taking responsibility for one's own actions.
Anyway, see you at another time. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps on Wednesday, perhaps on another day, I don't know yet. I'm currently just not at the height of my health.
P.S. Time needed: Circa one hour and ten minutes.
Well, this weather still sucks. But I like winter apart from that because I can open my windows (i.e. tilting them a little, not opening them completely - I save that for late spring and summer) without bazillions of insects coming in who are intent on stinging me in every square inch of my body (the frequency of slowly fading slightly red points - healing stings - on my arms is strangely regular and with nearly equal distances from one to the next, although there aren't really that many stings) - as I stay up late all the time (especially in the holidays and on weekends) and as I always try to have the window open (because my computer will warm up if I don't, and because the air gets so stuffy (I had to look that up) because I stay in my room all the time), it's either sitting in front of my computer without turning on the lights in my room, or closing the curtains (actually, that's no part of the solution, as they are always closed), or closing the windows, which I hate.
That's weather to me in a nutshell - well, that and sweating, of course. But I don't do any different things in summer or winter as all my hobbies (that makes it sound as if I have more hobbies than I do) are indoor activities, and as I don't enjoy going outside (after all, I have zero reasons to do so - I don't enjoy the weather, and I'd just get bored within minutes). The biggest differences are really my way to school (i.e. being slower in winter because I either drive slower or end up dropping from my bike because of icy surfaces) and sport class.
I had an interesting adventure in hospital on Friday - I was supposed to have a minor surgery, the kind which can be done in ten to twenty minutes with local anaesthesia...for normal people. As I may or may not (probably not) have mentioned already, I had a kind of adventure some months before at my dentist's who used local anaesthesia (she had done the same thing with the same result once before already) - fixing some teeth, the usual stuff. I wonder why people are usually afraid of dentists - the only thing I'm (slightly) afraid of are injections, and they are usually done in far less than a minute. You may feel sick afterwards, but that's only temporary. I didn't even need any pain killers to limit the pain after the removal of my wisdom teeth, and I felt completely okay after one evening respectively two days (I let them remove the teeth in two visits) or so...
Anyway, so I got my local anaesthesia and tried to prepare me for the kind of thing my body enjoys to do and that happened once before: mind-numbness, giddiness and dizziness which felt close to the point of becoming unconscious, but the whole thing only lasted for a few minutes or so. Not pleasant, I know, but bearable. I'd rather feel close to being unconscious for a few minutes than having my teeth ache for far longer.
The dentists were kind of afraid about me, and they were far more terrified by the results than I was (after all, they were able to finish everything properly, starting ten minutes after the injection or so), and their reasons for my feeling that way were something along the lines of low blood pressure, not eating enough, lack of sleep, and so on. I was okay with that because everything about that was correct - I have a kind of low blood pressure, I didn't have time to eat on that day and rushed to the dentist because I was late already, I generally don't sleep enough, etc.
So anyway, after going directly to the hospital after school (and I had to rush back home in a free period before because I had forgotten some papers for the hospital) on last Friday, and although I had an appointment at one am - directly after school - I had to wait something along the lines of one hour and a quarter, just to get told afterwards that they can't legally use local anaesthesia if I've ever had any complications with that beforehand. Basically, the whole thing was a waste of nearly two hours (I had to go home by bus etc., and the explanation and all that took some time, too) of my time (although I had had a book with me), again although I had an appointment at one pm...yes, I do realize how hospitals are and that appointments never work out, but the result was just a bit worse than I expected.
Result:
- a waste of two hours of time
- getting told that they can't legally use local anaesthesia, like, ever, if I don't do a test for allergies (again, I understand their reasoning - after all, I could legally sue them if something serious happened me to me, my complaint is more along the lines of getting told that I have to make a test for allergies and they couldn't just do it now after wasting my time already; I was also told that I'll probably have to go to my local doctor who will send me to a dermatologist (doctor for skin-related things; they seem to do allergy tests, too) - more wastes of time, yay!)
- getting told that they'll simply use narcosis instead
- having to move the appointment to the last Friday before the Christmas holidays because of all the examinations I write before
The third point is probably the worst. I mean, seriously - isn't using narcosis for a small surgery where local anaesthesia would be completely enough a sledgehammer approach (= using exaggerated things to solve a problem)? I'm also quite unsure whether narcosis is really any better than local anaesthesia for my consciousness anyway (so why can't I just get everything behind me and do it with local anaesthesia), and finally, I don't want to use narcosis if I personally don't have any problems with local anaesthesia. I want to leave narcosis to serious things like broken bones (never broke a single bone although I basically only consist of skin and bones (I couldn't find a good English idiom for this one, sorry about that)) or serious organ surgery, not to something as trivial as this.
"As trivial as this"...let's just say that if they hadn't made this big fuss on Friday, I would have had fulfilled one of the religious preconditions of becoming a Jew (and no, it's not about becoming a Jew, I still am and stay an atheist, this was just for the sake of the paraphrase (because I didn't want to write it more directly); my reasons were different ones (phimosis if you really, really have to look it up)).
Anyway, that's it for today. We've finished our first two written examinations in English class and maths class so far, and I'm kind of excited to see how I've done (and I'll write about them when I get the results, I think, but not before), although I'll probably scorn myself for not scoring better than I could have done (as both examinations were really, really not difficult, less than I expected them to be). I blame my illness and a lack of sleep, that's always easier than taking responsibility for one's own actions.
Anyway, see you at another time. Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps on Wednesday, perhaps on another day, I don't know yet. I'm currently just not at the height of my health.
P.S. Time needed: Circa one hour and ten minutes.
Current Mood: 
calm
calm08 November 2006 @ 08:21 pm
Just a quick update for today: I'm sorry, but I can't finish all the stuff for English today. Let's just say that between 5 hours of sleep today (I didn't become tired until three am again, although I only slept for three hours on the day before, too...), sports class (let's just say that my face was still completely red when I returned home and looked into the mirror; I felt accordingly, too), still feeling ill, and having a stomach ache for two hours or so after returning from sports (I simply lay down until 8 pm...- that is, until a few moments ago), I simply didn't get to doing it. And now I'll try to have a look at the stuff I didn't remember (luckily, it isn't so much - it's common knowledge that you learn things more quickly if you like the subject) myself instead of writing down so much more. Sorry. But I'll either finish it tomorrow (unlikely) or I'll tell you how my test was, anyway (more likely).
07 November 2006 @ 09:40 pm
Sigh, I've really seen better times. Instead of a continuous feeling of being depressed, everything felt so...strange today, as if it didn't involve me. Just a flurry (?) around me, faster than my eye could see...I won't blame any psychological reasons for this one, though, at least not directly. Let's just say that I lay in bed at twelve 12 pm today (Or yesterday? I mean the night from yesterday to today, but midnight is a peculiar time in the strange am/pm time model) but couldn't sleep until after 3 am, leaving me (as I still didn't fall asleep immediately) with about three hours and a half of sleep.
I blame the fact that I slept so much on the day before (as I said, I couldn't fall asleep until two am or so that day, but as I simply stayed in bed instead of going to school (although I'm unsure whether I feel any different today; I certainly don't feel healthy...), I got about seven hours of (interrupted) sleep until finally getting up at 3 pm), and being ill, because I didn't continue to worry any more this night. Anyway, so with three hours and a half of sleep and a school day that consisted of copying the things I had missed yesterday from my classmates (partly in free periods, partly in school lessons) which kind of didn't work so well together.
Another point that told me that I wasn't doing so great health-wise was the fact that a) I hadn't felt any hunger when I lay in bed at all, but then, three hours later, when I had finally become tired, I started to feel very, very hungry. I didn't go to eat anything, though, because then I'd probably not have been able to sleep at all any more...and although three and a half hours of sleep don't seem like much, and although I am tired now, I was at least able to endure today up to this moment without collapsing or something like that. So anyway, suddenly feeling that I was hungry (when I hadn't felt anything before) was a strange experience, and today was the same when I couldn't eat anything in my first school break (wow, I wonder why I had to look a word like that one up - with the importance of school breaks for students, I really should have been aware of this one), then ate something in my second, then felt so sick in my third that I thought I had eaten too much (Or too fast?) and didn't eat anything for lunch, but when I still felt sick a few hours later, I tried eating something for lunch and my sickness either magically disappeared (unlikely but still possible, I'm not someone who'd be aware of the signs of his body) or I was simply hungry but couldn't tell the difference between sickness and hunger. And that's frightening.
I don't really want to add a completely unwanted eating disorder to my list of problems with myself; especially since, if you've overread it, I weigh (I've weighed me today with two not-that-great scales, and that's the average of 57 and 59) approximately 58 kilos at the moment with a height of about 1.83 metres (which I haven't measured in quite a while, but I doubt that much has changed in that area) - 128 pounds with 6 feet. I know it's almost at the point of being physically dangerous, but I can't change it, it stays the same (well, almost the same) no matter what...
Anyway, so today wasn't so great. I'm starting to feel tired, and sick again, and my head's aching, and everything, and I'm obviously complaining more than I should, but I can't help it.
However, instead of doing things that won't help anybody (including me) - like complaining - anyway, I'll try to give you a glimpse of what we are supposed to know in our first written examination in English class on Thursday. Luckily (to me) the examination won't stress on context so much, because, quite frankly, I haven't learned as much as I wanted to, and I'm really too sick to learn right now. Not sick of learning, mind you, but I simply couldn't possibly force myself to read any things for school any more today...I'll obviously look at things I can't remember properly from the top of my head (and a few key notes of what we are supposed to learn - the topics, not what they consist of - for our written examination that our English teacher put on our school wiki). I was also given a cartoon that I'll give a look tomorrow, I'm really not in the mood to do that today, too.
Anyway, here I go. I might have to continue this list tomorrow if I don't manage to finish it today because of being too tired.
1) History of the English language: Basically, it's about a very rough understanding of which cultures came when to England and a more thorough understanding of how they influenced the English language because of that.
The first trace of any culture in Great Britain is Stonehenge (1500 BC or so; I've never been strong at remembering numbers or facts without being able to connecting them properly to something else), but as we don't know who built it exactly, we'll leave that aside.
The next people are the Celtic tribes which came to Great Britain in approximately 700 BC; they came from the European mainland, and they stayed, so they were able to influence the English language with a few words like bog (toilet or swamp) and budget.
Next were the Romans from Italy who invaded Great Britain in 43 AD or so; as they built many castles and increased Britain's infrastructure but left in 409 AD or so, the only direct traces in modern English language are the names of cities - Winchester and other names ending in "chester" or something like that (coming from Roman "castrum" or something like that for "castle").
The Anglo-Saxons then came to Great Britain in 450 AD, so they and the Romans never met. That's important, because the Anglo-Saxons are the main origin (that's a sloppy expression, but I'm not up to the task of finding a more appropriate one) of the English language and as the Romans were gone already, they didn't influence it at all. The Anglo-Saxons stayed, too.
Finally, the Normans invaded Great Britain in 1066 AD, and they, too, stayed. All or almost all words of Roman origin that are in the English language now came to English indirectly through the Normans, not directly.
The only other moderately important sources were the Vikings, Latin, and colonies, but only few words remained from there.
After the Normans seized the power in Great Britain, Norman became the language for the ruling class for almost three centuries or so. In contrary, English (from the Anglo-Saxons; the word "English" comes from "Anglo", not from "angel", of course) became the language of the ordinary people. That's why connotations shifted:
Normal, simple words in English, the language of the farmers, were confronted by fancy, more complicated words in Norman, the language of the nobles:
A few examples (as we are supposed to know a few of them):
It's "save us from evil" in English Christina prayers, but "deliver us from evil" in Norman.
All the words for living animals - pig, swine, cow - are English, but the words of the meat on the plate of the
rich aristocrat are Norman - pork, beef, ham, and so on.
The four-letter-words (offensive words that I would not dare write in a journal like this one (you are supposed to laugh here)) come from English, as well.
To spit is English, but to expectorate (next time I'll ask immediately how to spell it instead of getting it wrong in my folder and then having to look it up in OALD; let's just say that my solution looked like "expicterate" or something like that) is Norman. The Norman word is more formal, again, but it means something slightly different, too.
You put out (I hate prepositions, and I'm not sure whether this is right, but I'm not going to look up anything from my folder for this entry) a fire in English, but you extinguish a fire in Norman (the word "fire extinguisher" comes from that, too, but the Normans didn't have these yet, I'm afraid).
And so on. You get the picture.
<< Possible missing: Great Vowel Shift, but I'm not sure whether we are supposed to know this in detail - it isn't difficult, though - if you want to speak Middle English, you just pronounce words the way they are written, not differently (a few words have developed and changed over time, too, but that's the general idea) as you would today. Today would be pronounced as "todai", not "tudei" as we do.>>
2) Importance of accents: Although this issue can be exaggerated, accents are still a useful class indicator in modern British society. Of course, every time my attempts to demonstrate the pronunciation of these accents are very, very rough and may be wrong at some points. Feel free to correct me, but remember that there is a reason for phonetic symbols...
Generally, accents vary much more from region to region for people of lower social classes. At the upper end, there is almost no accent, to the point of textbook English and even beyond, at Received Pronunciation, RP, English without an accent that you don't learn in your family; instead, you receive it public schools (remember that "public" schools are, in fact, independent from government and paid solely by the parents, something I struggle with every time I read the word "public" in the word; this is only true for British English, however).
This means that if you can hear a person's accent, you can generally assume (but never be 100% sure, of course; the exception proves the rule as we all know (sorry if I've got this proverb wrong, I looked it up at this page)) that that person belongs to a lower social class. This doesn't really exist in this form in Germany.
Important accents: Cockney: Dialect of London's lower classes: vocalization of l in some words (milk becomes "miuk"), different pronunciation of some things (rain is pronounced as it is spoken - as "rain"); glottal stop (glottal becomes "glo -- al" then, butter becomes "bu -- a"; frequently dropping aitches ("aitch" is the word for the letter "h", something we had in a text about this phenomenon)("Hereford" becomes "Eriford" instead of "Heriford"), etc. [I forgot that they also pronounced "th" as f - so "thin" becomes "fin", "both" becomes "bouf", etc.)
I had to look up Northern English (not in my folder, but our school wiki was so tempting^^); this includes pronouncing words like butter as "buta" instead of "bata", and dance and aunt as "dans" and "ant" instead of "daans" and "aant" (I'm not sure about that, though) - short a's (I think apostrophes are allowed in case of using the plural of a letter that might otherwise be confused for another word) instead of long ones.
Finally, Scottish wasn't as affected by the Great Vowel Shift as England was, I think, as words like "knows" and "nose" are both pronounced as "noos"; dress becomes "dräs" instead of "dress" here, too. [Finally, "rain" becomes "ren"; forgot that agen (error on purpose).]
As we don't have to learn the chapter on differences of social live and rules of English behaviour/differences to German behaviour, I'm still missing the nine terms the English anthropologist Kate Fox used in a book about the English to describe English behaviour (that would be number three) and examples for them, class markers (although I'm not sure what belongs to this topic) and finally, cartoons, but that comes tomorrow, and the parts I'll mention here won't be so big. [Ah, and, of course, the fairly recent veil incident that Jack Straw started (although he probably didn't predict this magnitude...)]
Anyway, that's it for today. This entry took longer than I thought, but I'm rather pleased with the fact that I was able to recall almost everything. It's typical for me to become more awake as time passes by, although I don't really understand it, though, and now I'm completely awake without any trace of being tired, so I took my time and wrote this entry as far as I did.
P.S. If anything sounds strange to you in this entry, it's because writing with the amount of sleep I had today doesn't really warrant sane journal entries. I've tried my best, though :P.
P.P.S. Time needed: 2 hours. I can't say that I was particularly fast, and there were a few interruptions, but I was thorough, at least. I have to get up two hours later than usual for tomorrow, though, so sleep shouldn't be an issue today, anyway.
P.P.P.S. I'd never have thought that remembering dreams was so easy. Basically, there have been more days of me remembering at least one dream when I had a proper amount of sleep (let's say...seven hours; not that I get these seven hours in school weeks, mind you) since the day I decided to remember them than remembering none. Hell, I even remembered something today, although those were only a few fragments, on a day with almost no sleep at all. I think it's interesting how much easier some things (sadly, not all of them) become if you put your mind on them and really want to do them. I haven't had the time to continue reading the book about lucid dreaming yet, but it's necessary to remember dreams first before continuing, anyway.
P.P.P.P.S. I joked about four-letter-words earlier, but the truth is that I don't swear. I simply don't, there's no particular reason involved. Neither in German, nor in English, and the worst things I say are "damn it", "dammit" or things like that - or no swearing at all. I guess I got sensitised by all the swearing in the Internet (I used to flame a lot earlier, too, but I don't any more) - don't get me wrong, I'm not an upholder of morale standards (that's the LEO equivalent of "Moralapostel"; I don't think that LEO's solution has the negative connotation I intended the word to have, though) I just don't do this - swearing - in particular.
I blame the fact that I slept so much on the day before (as I said, I couldn't fall asleep until two am or so that day, but as I simply stayed in bed instead of going to school (although I'm unsure whether I feel any different today; I certainly don't feel healthy...), I got about seven hours of (interrupted) sleep until finally getting up at 3 pm), and being ill, because I didn't continue to worry any more this night. Anyway, so with three hours and a half of sleep and a school day that consisted of copying the things I had missed yesterday from my classmates (partly in free periods, partly in school lessons) which kind of didn't work so well together.
Another point that told me that I wasn't doing so great health-wise was the fact that a) I hadn't felt any hunger when I lay in bed at all, but then, three hours later, when I had finally become tired, I started to feel very, very hungry. I didn't go to eat anything, though, because then I'd probably not have been able to sleep at all any more...and although three and a half hours of sleep don't seem like much, and although I am tired now, I was at least able to endure today up to this moment without collapsing or something like that. So anyway, suddenly feeling that I was hungry (when I hadn't felt anything before) was a strange experience, and today was the same when I couldn't eat anything in my first school break (wow, I wonder why I had to look a word like that one up - with the importance of school breaks for students, I really should have been aware of this one), then ate something in my second, then felt so sick in my third that I thought I had eaten too much (Or too fast?) and didn't eat anything for lunch, but when I still felt sick a few hours later, I tried eating something for lunch and my sickness either magically disappeared (unlikely but still possible, I'm not someone who'd be aware of the signs of his body) or I was simply hungry but couldn't tell the difference between sickness and hunger. And that's frightening.
I don't really want to add a completely unwanted eating disorder to my list of problems with myself; especially since, if you've overread it, I weigh (I've weighed me today with two not-that-great scales, and that's the average of 57 and 59) approximately 58 kilos at the moment with a height of about 1.83 metres (which I haven't measured in quite a while, but I doubt that much has changed in that area) - 128 pounds with 6 feet. I know it's almost at the point of being physically dangerous, but I can't change it, it stays the same (well, almost the same) no matter what...
Anyway, so today wasn't so great. I'm starting to feel tired, and sick again, and my head's aching, and everything, and I'm obviously complaining more than I should, but I can't help it.
However, instead of doing things that won't help anybody (including me) - like complaining - anyway, I'll try to give you a glimpse of what we are supposed to know in our first written examination in English class on Thursday. Luckily (to me) the examination won't stress on context so much, because, quite frankly, I haven't learned as much as I wanted to, and I'm really too sick to learn right now. Not sick of learning, mind you, but I simply couldn't possibly force myself to read any things for school any more today...I'll obviously look at things I can't remember properly from the top of my head (and a few key notes of what we are supposed to learn - the topics, not what they consist of - for our written examination that our English teacher put on our school wiki). I was also given a cartoon that I'll give a look tomorrow, I'm really not in the mood to do that today, too.
Anyway, here I go. I might have to continue this list tomorrow if I don't manage to finish it today because of being too tired.
1) History of the English language: Basically, it's about a very rough understanding of which cultures came when to England and a more thorough understanding of how they influenced the English language because of that.
The first trace of any culture in Great Britain is Stonehenge (1500 BC or so; I've never been strong at remembering numbers or facts without being able to connecting them properly to something else), but as we don't know who built it exactly, we'll leave that aside.
The next people are the Celtic tribes which came to Great Britain in approximately 700 BC; they came from the European mainland, and they stayed, so they were able to influence the English language with a few words like bog (toilet or swamp) and budget.
Next were the Romans from Italy who invaded Great Britain in 43 AD or so; as they built many castles and increased Britain's infrastructure but left in 409 AD or so, the only direct traces in modern English language are the names of cities - Winchester and other names ending in "chester" or something like that (coming from Roman "castrum" or something like that for "castle").
The Anglo-Saxons then came to Great Britain in 450 AD, so they and the Romans never met. That's important, because the Anglo-Saxons are the main origin (that's a sloppy expression, but I'm not up to the task of finding a more appropriate one) of the English language and as the Romans were gone already, they didn't influence it at all. The Anglo-Saxons stayed, too.
Finally, the Normans invaded Great Britain in 1066 AD, and they, too, stayed. All or almost all words of Roman origin that are in the English language now came to English indirectly through the Normans, not directly.
The only other moderately important sources were the Vikings, Latin, and colonies, but only few words remained from there.
After the Normans seized the power in Great Britain, Norman became the language for the ruling class for almost three centuries or so. In contrary, English (from the Anglo-Saxons; the word "English" comes from "Anglo", not from "angel", of course) became the language of the ordinary people. That's why connotations shifted:
Normal, simple words in English, the language of the farmers, were confronted by fancy, more complicated words in Norman, the language of the nobles:
A few examples (as we are supposed to know a few of them):
It's "save us from evil" in English Christina prayers, but "deliver us from evil" in Norman.
All the words for living animals - pig, swine, cow - are English, but the words of the meat on the plate of the
rich aristocrat are Norman - pork, beef, ham, and so on.
The four-letter-words (offensive words that I would not dare write in a journal like this one (you are supposed to laugh here)) come from English, as well.
To spit is English, but to expectorate (next time I'll ask immediately how to spell it instead of getting it wrong in my folder and then having to look it up in OALD; let's just say that my solution looked like "expicterate" or something like that) is Norman. The Norman word is more formal, again, but it means something slightly different, too.
You put out (I hate prepositions, and I'm not sure whether this is right, but I'm not going to look up anything from my folder for this entry) a fire in English, but you extinguish a fire in Norman (the word "fire extinguisher" comes from that, too, but the Normans didn't have these yet, I'm afraid).
And so on. You get the picture.
<< Possible missing: Great Vowel Shift, but I'm not sure whether we are supposed to know this in detail - it isn't difficult, though - if you want to speak Middle English, you just pronounce words the way they are written, not differently (a few words have developed and changed over time, too, but that's the general idea) as you would today. Today would be pronounced as "todai", not "tudei" as we do.>>
2) Importance of accents: Although this issue can be exaggerated, accents are still a useful class indicator in modern British society. Of course, every time my attempts to demonstrate the pronunciation of these accents are very, very rough and may be wrong at some points. Feel free to correct me, but remember that there is a reason for phonetic symbols...
Generally, accents vary much more from region to region for people of lower social classes. At the upper end, there is almost no accent, to the point of textbook English and even beyond, at Received Pronunciation, RP, English without an accent that you don't learn in your family; instead, you receive it public schools (remember that "public" schools are, in fact, independent from government and paid solely by the parents, something I struggle with every time I read the word "public" in the word; this is only true for British English, however).
This means that if you can hear a person's accent, you can generally assume (but never be 100% sure, of course; the exception proves the rule as we all know (sorry if I've got this proverb wrong, I looked it up at this page)) that that person belongs to a lower social class. This doesn't really exist in this form in Germany.
Important accents: Cockney: Dialect of London's lower classes: vocalization of l in some words (milk becomes "miuk"), different pronunciation of some things (rain is pronounced as it is spoken - as "rain"); glottal stop (glottal becomes "glo -- al" then, butter becomes "bu -- a"; frequently dropping aitches ("aitch" is the word for the letter "h", something we had in a text about this phenomenon)("Hereford" becomes "Eriford" instead of "Heriford"), etc. [I forgot that they also pronounced "th" as f - so "thin" becomes "fin", "both" becomes "bouf", etc.)
I had to look up Northern English (not in my folder, but our school wiki was so tempting^^); this includes pronouncing words like butter as "buta" instead of "bata", and dance and aunt as "dans" and "ant" instead of "daans" and "aant" (I'm not sure about that, though) - short a's (I think apostrophes are allowed in case of using the plural of a letter that might otherwise be confused for another word) instead of long ones.
Finally, Scottish wasn't as affected by the Great Vowel Shift as England was, I think, as words like "knows" and "nose" are both pronounced as "noos"; dress becomes "dräs" instead of "dress" here, too. [Finally, "rain" becomes "ren"; forgot that agen (error on purpose).]
As we don't have to learn the chapter on differences of social live and rules of English behaviour/differences to German behaviour, I'm still missing the nine terms the English anthropologist Kate Fox used in a book about the English to describe English behaviour (that would be number three) and examples for them, class markers (although I'm not sure what belongs to this topic) and finally, cartoons, but that comes tomorrow, and the parts I'll mention here won't be so big. [Ah, and, of course, the fairly recent veil incident that Jack Straw started (although he probably didn't predict this magnitude...)]
Anyway, that's it for today. This entry took longer than I thought, but I'm rather pleased with the fact that I was able to recall almost everything. It's typical for me to become more awake as time passes by, although I don't really understand it, though, and now I'm completely awake without any trace of being tired, so I took my time and wrote this entry as far as I did.
P.S. If anything sounds strange to you in this entry, it's because writing with the amount of sleep I had today doesn't really warrant sane journal entries. I've tried my best, though :P.
P.P.S. Time needed: 2 hours. I can't say that I was particularly fast, and there were a few interruptions, but I was thorough, at least. I have to get up two hours later than usual for tomorrow, though, so sleep shouldn't be an issue today, anyway.
P.P.P.S. I'd never have thought that remembering dreams was so easy. Basically, there have been more days of me remembering at least one dream when I had a proper amount of sleep (let's say...seven hours; not that I get these seven hours in school weeks, mind you) since the day I decided to remember them than remembering none. Hell, I even remembered something today, although those were only a few fragments, on a day with almost no sleep at all. I think it's interesting how much easier some things (sadly, not all of them) become if you put your mind on them and really want to do them. I haven't had the time to continue reading the book about lucid dreaming yet, but it's necessary to remember dreams first before continuing, anyway.
P.P.P.P.S. I joked about four-letter-words earlier, but the truth is that I don't swear. I simply don't, there's no particular reason involved. Neither in German, nor in English, and the worst things I say are "damn it", "dammit" or things like that - or no swearing at all. I guess I got sensitised by all the swearing in the Internet (I used to flame a lot earlier, too, but I don't any more) - don't get me wrong, I'm not an upholder of morale standards (that's the LEO equivalent of "Moralapostel"; I don't think that LEO's solution has the negative connotation I intended the word to have, though) I just don't do this - swearing - in particular.
Current Mood: strange