life itself.
that's what the name of my blog is. short and simple. like a tootsie roll. or a pocky stick that's been snapped in half. or another sugary treat that fulfills the above prerequisites.
it's also the title of a movie that was released recently. this film is not the namesake of my blog, actually. as i've mentioned before, it's taken from the title of a glass animals song from their album "how to be a human being".
this song is hecka groovy. it's also the first glass animals track i ever heard. more importantly, it contains a number of relatable lyrical chunks.
according to the band, the song os about a nerdy man-child(?) who's obsessed with outer space and other nerdy stuff. as an astrology major with the emotional maturity of a child, i guess he's a pretty relatable character.
so what shakespearean verbosity does this song offer? none, really. it's not exactly poetry set to music.
but i've felt a connection to the lyrics since the first time i heard them. i can't relate to every line, but i can relate to the general message of the song. here goes.
"i can't get a job, so i live with my mum / i take her money but not quite enough"
•last year i was planning to get a summer job and do something productive with my time away from school. that ended up not happening for various reasons.
•i don't have my own house. i'd like to get one someday.
•i'm trying to be more responsible about earning my own money. at the moment, it's probably best for me to use my parents' money sparingly and learn self-sufficiency the best i can. i know that i can't keep mooching off them forever. but if i went cold turkey right now, i'd be in minusland money-wise...
"thought that i was northern camden's own flash gordon / sonic ray gun, gonna be a superstar"
•when i was younger i wanted to be a superhero. i dreamed that one day i'd wake up with psychic powers and use them to become super awesome and popular. but now, i know that's not realistic thinking. those dreams are in the gutter now. i think.
•i'm a comics nerd. see beda day 20.
•another childhood fantasy was to invent something out-of-this-world. a teleporter, a time machine, a hyper-fast spaceship... something super sophisticated and wildly impossible. sadly enough, modern physics more or less disproves (or at the very least discourages) any of these fantasies from being realized. which is a shame, really. i would even have settled for a sonic ray gun.
"cut back down to my knees / gotta get back, gotta get free / cut back down to my knees / lean back now, lean back and breathe"
•there have been many times in my life where i've felt on top of things, only to be sent crashing to the ground unceremoniously. this can happen socially, personally, academically... life is rough. at one particularly low point i was lying on the floor in distress and basking in the glory of being a miserable wreck. that was fun.
•and yet, life goes on. roll with the punches and whatnot. with a little bit of elbow grease, i get back on the horse and keep trying to get free from the things that are weighing me down. do i always succeed? no. is the struggle hard? yes. is it all worth it in the end? maybe...
•i think it's important to rest on your laurels every once in a while. look back on the person you were, and see how far you've come. make a list of all your achievements, regardless if you have thirty-one or just one. lean back, and enjoy life when you can!
•breathe!! things always seem worse in the moment. but i've found that many of them, in retrospect, turn out to be not so bad after all. of course, some things just suck in the moment and afterward too. c'est la vie. life isn't always sunshine and roses. there's a lot of darkness, hate, and pain too. but work through those things, and maybe the sun will come out for just a bit. it's hard for me to remember that and believe it'll happen, but i try. and that's all any of us can do.
there ya go. an in-depth look at why my blog is named the way it is. this ended up being like a medium-sized tootsie roll, but that's okay. i hope this explanation will inspire myself (and possible readers) to embrace reality for what it is - the good, the bad, and everything in between. the overwhelmingly complex yet strangely beautiful experience that can be expressed most simply in two words:
life itself.
