Shades of Gray

I hate what I have been and sometimes I do not know if I will be anything else. But I do know one thing that I will do so with friends at my side and with the strength of my heart.

As I rapidly drop into a mid life crisis from a strange angle of the universe.

Are you truly yourself? Do you do and say what you really think? Do you lie to everyone around you about who and what you are and ultimately lie to yourself about everything without even realizing it? How many times have you said something or not said something to try and not hurt someone? How many times have you hurt yourself rather than hurt someone else? Have you ever done something for someone literally just because? So many people do things for what is in it for them. Even the most seemingly altruistic actions come down to selfish realizations.

ANd yes Gentle reader I too am guilty of these lies, deceptions and half truths guilty of greed and selfishness. Cocky and opinionated and full of shit more often than not. However, as with socrates I feel that I am ahead of some others. I realize that this is the way it is. The oracle at Delphi told socrates that no man was wiser than he. socrates pondered this for a long time and figured out the oracle was not saying that he was more wise than anyone else. But Just as wise as everyone else except that he realized that in the greater scheme he was no better than them.

There are too many times where we do and complain about the exact same thing. Where we fall apart and blame other people for it. I am trying to take responsibility for my life and my actions. Then I feel like the world is not set up in that way in the first place. That the name of the game that we americans have set up is to push the blame off on others so that we feel villified and superior. When we get to one another and know that there is no one else to blame we scramble to find another thing to blame. "Why God?" is a common logic for that one. Though there is a lesson that I learned a long time ago in a saying. God helps those that help themselves. Whatever deity that is out there has given you the hands to work with to improve your own situations. To strive beyond your limitations and succeed where others fail. But we also must be wary of falling into the old vices as well. Sex is not a sin. So much sex that you ignore the rest of your life is a sin. Self destruction is the only sin that I see man capable of. Transgressions against others come around to transgressions against yourself.

There are times when I feel very unwanted. When I have a person that I am getting along with very much and they step away from me to be with someone else completely and I am left with the shattered remnants of my life to put back together again and plod on that is one thing. But when a person takes from you and takes from you again and again until you feel like a hollow reed being played by a blowing wind what are you supposed to feel and do from there. I am feeling very angry right now about the problems that I have been having with some dealings with my personal relationships with a few people. I am not sure how to handle it or where to take it.


There has got to be something more than this. There has to be some better answer and solution to all of these things. Just wish I could figure out what they are. I will work on it as best as I can but I hold out little hope.

wondering why people even bother to keep on going with life. All most people can hope for is a dead end job that will pay them just enough to get by and maybe squeeze out a kid or two to start the cycle all over again when they die so deep in debt their grandchildren will still be paying for it.

SO why do we bother? I think it is sex and candy. Other than that I cannot come up with a reason.

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This world continues to boggle my mind. It seems so pointless. The american lifestyle that I live in is so twisted and broken it hurts me just to consider it. That I feel like I am going to fall apart constantly and that I will never be more than what I am right now. Some expatriated soulless pathetic thing with delusions of grandeur. too many people create hate and pain between each other without regard to the rest of the world. Pain itself is the pain of the soul hate of what we are and what we are becoming not only in ourselves but in the face of what we see each other becoming. Some people lose themselves in the release of drugs, sex, violence, physical pain and any other pursuit that lets them stop thinking for five minutes. WE have to go beyond numbing our pain and move towards correcting the causes of the pain. Escapism is an incorrect way to handle this. We can enjoy pleasures and vices but we cannot live in our pleasures and vices . all we will end up doing is spiraling deeper into the pits of our hate and despair.

Change with concious thought and direction is a good thing. The biggest problem with change is when the goal for the change becomes clouded or lost in the bustle of activity to get the change to happen in the first place. You end up corrupting the high ideals that brought about the change in the first place. In short you end up with a revolution that revolves upon itself and comes back to become the same thing that it removed in the first place.

When deciding to change things make short sharp and quick changes with an eventual goal in mind. Shoot for smaller things that become larger as time goes by. Aiming for a borad change across multiple sections of society ends with violence and tears.

We are constantly shackled in gilded chains. Forget for a second about the things you have or do not have and think about the things that you do. Not even a stretch here no world hunger no charity work. Think about what you do. Not about people that you do not know about the people you do know.

Leave a treat for a coworker anonymously and do not tell them it was you. There is a favorite quote of mine. I have been your gaurdian angel for some time now. Remember that thing the other day that made you smile for just a second and made your day just a little brighter? that was me. But I have to go now and I hope that you can make it on your own for just a little while.

So be that angel for someone else stop and help someone change a tire, smile and compliment someone out of the blue, hold open a door for someone, smile and guess old ladies to be 18 years old and be truly shocked when they smile and laugh at you, Call an old friend, forgive someone just because, find a way to make someone else's day just a bit brighter. Gaurdian angels can be everywhere if we all just try a tiny bit. If we can get everyone to just do one small thing each day to make someone else just a little happier think of what we could do with a year of that? If everyone did just one thing.

There is an hour between shadow and storm that most people do not ever even realize is there. The times in the middle of the night when the world goes to sleep without you. When all you see is the darkness of life surrounding the shell of truth. that you cannot trust your thoughts or perceptions because the shadows are so thick. It makes sense of why primitive man held the night in such reverence and awe. Why it scared them so much that they could not find a better way to cope with it than to hide in their caves and shelters huddled close to the fire. Nighttime is a time of magic and change. The thoughts that carry us through the day dissipate with the setting of the sun.

I get sad when my friends go away after a good evening with them. When they leave it makes me think of all the other things in my life. There are days when I wonder if going to school and teaching is really what I should be doing with my life. I have no one that is going to come after me so I live mostly for me and for my fiancée and a few friends here and there. The world seems so utterly complex in the ways that it folds around itself. There are too many things that people worry about every day. I wish life could be simpler. Maybe I should get a job driving a truck like Alan wanted to do. Make money so that I could take care of Jodie and maybe make our dream of having a campground happen. Perhaps that is the way to go. Maybe I should look into becoming a locksmith instead of a teacher? God my hands hurt me though. I do not know if I could work for very long.

When I can sleep the shadows come to terrorize me into my own private hell. When I cannot sleep I live in that same hell. Damned either way I sit here awake yet again. The things that matter most to people are the small kindnesses. The friend that is there when you cry, the meal to a hungry man, the gentle caress of a lover and many many more of such things.

WE seem to forget in our pursuit of little pieces of paper that the things that make us truly happy have nothing to do with those little pieces of paper. So today if you read this remember for just one second to forget the paper and remember the people around you.

www.pamburton.com First off Pam who makes wonderful art for Kushiel's Dart and other fantasy series.

Adept (username): Simon
Age: 29
House in the Night Court: Cereus (Fragility, Beauty)
Servant of: Kushiel, Angel of Punishment
Marque: Ibis
Price of An Assignation: 26,680

The Adepts of the Night Court Meme by blueberrypocky
Adept (username):
Age:
House in the Night Court:	Cereus (Fragility, Beauty)
Servant of:	Kushiel, Angel of Punishment
Marque:	Ibis
Price of An Assignation:	26,680
Quiz created with MemeGen!

Second thing an interesting which house are you.

The shades of gray are those little things that do not seem like much but give us the things that matter the most in the end. That real smile, that one touch, the silly things we do to cheer each other up and many many more. Each thing in ou r lives each person that touches our lives even indirectly is a shade of gray that gives our lives depth and meaning beyond simple existence. So many of us miss so much because we worry over big things when we should be thinking of the little things instead and letting the big things take care of themselves.

my fiancee wonderful woman that she is bought me a gift for my birthday. unfortunately she bought me a DVD. Why this is unfortunate is that there is a little device in DVD players that censor out regional movies. That is each section of the world has a region code that makes the dvd player work or not work. Unfortunately the DVD she got is from the wrong region not even thinking about it.

So really just kinda here depressed again on a birthday. Trying to find good things to think about but only finding my fiancee and some of my friends.

my favorite time of the year. I have the steel for my bracers and I have a pattern that I will be using to build them.
http://www.armourarchive.org/patterns/bazubands_wma/

they should be awesome for my cassiline costume.

Working on a costume for a character from kushiels dart. Specifically the casiline Joscelin I will have to figure out what the beast way to create this look is. Also I think I need to work up some ideas of how to learn to fight the way that the Casilines fight. Create some positions and take some pictures.

The Basic longsword fighting from the late medieval period looks like a good start. Also some sort of mixed in fillipino stick fighting looks like it would be good for the dagger styles.

The casiline bow and othe such positions that they mention in the book should also be easy to create.

Just starting to get an idea of what to put here. Some things are beyond understanding but I think that this one might be figured out in the end. So many things seem to weigh on me today that I am not sure which to deal with first. Finding so many things that meant so much yesterday that mean nothing today.

But like my family crest says.

Facta Non Verba
Deeds Not words