Hello world! I'm baaack!! I've been gone camping since friday with no service, so obviously I couldn't really journal, but now that I'm back I have plenty plenty to say.
starting with: the camping trip itself! I'll leave some pictures below, but essentiallly it was an island, we kayaked out about a mile around a peninsula to a shoddy dock off the side, got on, made camp, and there we were! wind wasn't too bad and so the water was still enough, but it was still quite the workout! I will say one oddity of the island is that on one side it was extremely windy, and on the other.. completely still and calm. Dunno what that's about but it was cool! I was there with my Uncle and my Cousin, who is tall as hell might I add, but she is in here teenage years now and oh so awfully moody. kinda hard to be around her. Although the scenery was nice and whatnot, what truely stood out was the lack of a device whatsoever. Unlike my family who still have 5G capable smart phones, my flip phone lacks and 5G capabilities, meaning I was completely without contact to anyone for the duration of the 3 days. This may not seem like a lot, but it really hammered how different it was, I truely just had to figure out what to do, I had to sit with myself, no major dopamine distractions, for 2.5 days, and it made me reflect heavily, a lot. It made me think about my drivers linsence failure until I felt terrible, then better, then terrible again, until finally accepting that these things do happen, I felt as sense of finality on the matter I often do not on topics about myself that bother me. Similarly, I was thinking about love vs lust, (connected vaguly to me starting red rising) and how I worry I conflate the two, looking often for hookups and making the excuse I'm looking for love. Not that hookups are bad, persay, but rather that I confalte the two ,leading to problems when I try to prolong a relationship. I felt terrible, like I would never find love, I would only either be using someone for their body or allowing myself to be used for mine, but again, without the ability to distract myself, I truly had to think it through, I came to the conlusion that while I cannot "be better" in a single day, I would be much more choosey on who I date and who I let into my life, I do not need everyone to love me, just those I truely also want to love. hard stuff, but it was really nice to actually have to think about this stuff without the ability to simply distract it away. along with this, I also was a reading machine, I finished blue highways and got through half of red rising extremely quickly.
so, now that I've finished blue highways, what did I think? well! a lotttt of things, but mainly that it was a very good book. a small synopsis, blue highways is about one william least heat moon travelling america in his dinky truck around the backroads of america trying to find meaning in life after losing his entire world (job, wife, kids). he drops everything to go travel, not sure if he will make it homne. as he travels, he meets people and tries to uncover meanings of life both through his (supposed) naitive american heratige and the stories he hears of those people. I like a lot of his anicdotes about life, I like what he says. I enjoy his sort of thinking that "life shouldnt be figured out" and "some things are better left mysterious" and how that adds to life, rather than detracts from it. I like his envy of simplicity, while also recognizing he will never acheive that total simplicity, something I relate too. I like his musings on worry and sadness and love and what they mean. I wish some of these lessons were not told through the lense of 80's style bigotry, but non-the-less he tells a good tale and has a lot of really interesting takes, I wish I had highlighted more things haha
once I had finished that I started red rising (blue highways to red rising, funny that) and its good! its a very classic young adult novel that I would even say is a cut above many of the rest. I'm 162 pages in, I like the very very very obvious dialogue of billionares and how they are generally still products of an even higher power (society at large) while also recognizing they do little to change what benifits them. Hearing the talk of Eo made me sad, a I said earlier, conflict of lust and love I found myself thinking about what it means to love someone like that, I worried I would only ever lust after people I deem pretty and not love based on who I actually enjoy being around, its an internal conflict for me that has been going a long time, but again, as with much of my self growth, I think I am learning, changing, and slowly working around to become a better man.
I started ace attorney as well on the drive over, really fun game, basically a ridiculous book about being a "lawyer" thats semi interactive, theres only ever one path forward so its not like you can make choices, not that you really need too, its just that entertaining haha.
finally, jack is coming tonight, I really really look forward to seeing him.
My tent and campsite on the island
dock on the island
me, my uncle, and my dad playing texas hold em.