Family Vacation

Does anyone else find family vacations to usually end up more stressful than any vacation ever should be? Is it just me?

My family actually gets along pretty well at home. There are rarely confrontations and harmony is the presiding notion o'er the land. However, there's just something that clicks the second we get into the car to drive off to the "relaxing" time away. Inexplicably a trip to the beach will end with everyone pissed off riding home in silence because of one thing or another. So, with my four hours of free time (due to the aforementioned silence) I tried to figure out why a predominately happy family can just suddenly become of group of, for lack of a better word, haters.

My first thought was the change in mood was just an outpouring of stress that had been slowly building since our last vacation. But, that couldn't have been the reason seeing as everything had been harmonious up to the point. There had been no slow build up of angst. Next I figured it was the brevity of the trip. With two working professionals and two kids both having full time jobs, the most we could get away for was three days. But I don't think that was it, I mean it was our only vacation and we were savoring it.

I've deduced that it all came down to expectations. Everyone expected our vacation to be centered around something different. My sixteen year old sister wanted to spend all day everyday shopping, my mom wanted the family to sit around and play cards together, the old man just wanted to sit on the beach for three consecutive days, and I just wanted to find a bar that served the "not quite 21" community's needs. When everyone started pulling their separate ways, it all just started falling apart. We didn't spend enough time on the beach or do enough shopping and I was far to sober for my own liking.

I guess this trip is just a microcosm of daily life in our society. For some reason or another people don't make their expectations clear. Either they don't know what they want, or they're scared to be labeled as "pushy" or "self-centered." I think that one of the most selfless things that you can do is put your expectations out there for the world to see, and then, not be a complete dick when things go your way. At least then, there's no confusion.

Maybe its just me.

Summer as a College Student

Remember the days when summer was by far the greatest time of the year? I remember when all day everyday was playing outside, going to Carowinds, going camping, and just generally enjoying myself. We all counted down the days until summer and overwhelming joy that accompanied that first breath of true summer air you inhaled as you walked out of school for last time for three months.

Now, I hate summer.

Summer's become a burden to the college student or, at the very least, a burden to this college student. Its three months of moving back into a world of rules and restrictions; a world of constant explanation of intentions. I have more responsibility with my job during the summer than I do with class during the school year. These are the most stressful times of my year by far. Days upon weeks of spreadsheets, conducting and tabulating surveys, meetings, meetings to plan for meetings, meetings to discuss the outcome of a meeting, etc. The sad part of it is, work is probably the most interesting thing I do during the summer.

But work isn't the worst part of summer. Its the seemingly pointless and transient nature of the season. Summer has become an inconsequential pretense to the school year. Its the state-mandated break in between Carolina Cup and football season. This summer I've started to realize that summer isn't a time where you can really build anything. Its like trying to protect a sand castle from the rising tide. The best that you can do is attempt to maintain. Its difficult to build a lasting relationship or cultivate a friendship that will meaningfully last into the coming academic year. This is a sad truth, but (it would seem) a truth nevertheless. Even when you feel like it's the right thing to do, convincing someone else that what you've got is lasting is tough.

Well, I suppose just like everything else I'll figure out summer right before I graduate and everything changes again.

An appropriate first song today

Just one of the many great songs by the Avett Brothers. Enjoy.

Insomnia

I slept really well last night. I was asleep before my head hit the pillow and I didn't wake up once during the night. I woke up this morning fifteen minutes earlier than normal feeling refreshed and ready to attack the day with the strength of a gorilla.

This all made possible with another week-long stint of not sleeping. A relapse back into my insomniac days when I would literally go four and five days at a time without getting any substantive sleep. At first I hated this. I was tired all day everyday, but couldn't sleep. I'd lie in bed for hours upon hours just waiting to fall asleep, just to give up once I realized it was morning already. I was living on coffee and the occasional Adderall. However, at the deepest point of my despair, a strange thing happened. I started to enjoy it.

I liked having no constraint on the things I wanted to do. The hours of the day become inconsequential when they weren't defining when you slept and when you didn't. The excuse "I don't have time" went right out the window. I found myself reading the books and watching the movies I'd always sidestepped, citing a busy schedule or lack of free time as my excuse. I'd take walks, clean stuff, and go on stumbleupon.com for hours on end. Eventually I began looking for something that helped me separate the days from one another. Sure, you've got sunrise and sunset, but how often do those phenomena actually define people's activity? This went on basically my entire freshman year of college. Up for three or four days, crash for fifteen or twenty hours, repeat.

Then, like a lightswitch, I could sleep again. My life again had a rhythm. Sure, I gave up watching the short films of the great foreign directors like Olivier Assayas and Frédéric Auburtin and I haven't really read a book that wasn't required since then.

But hey, at least I'm one of the living now.

Summer Thus Far

Initially, I created this blog to highlight the overwhelming boredom that has been the hallmark of my last four or five summers in Rock Hill. For some reason I thought that a blog with two followers (thanks Emily and Brooks) would somehow provide me with some semblance of entertainment. It turned out that I didn't need it. Inexplicably the cosmos has aligned and Rock Hill and the surrounding area is offering fun things to do. Oddly enough, none of these things are new. Perhaps I just started to realize them. Here's a list of the things that've kept me entertained thus far this summer.

(1) Beer. Nothing new. I like beer.
(2) Stumpy Pond. Adam told me about this place his uncle used to take him when he was a kid called "Stumpy Pond." Its a small lake around Great Falls, SC. My buddy Jeff and I go out there once a week now to fish and drink #1 Beer. I've yet to catch anything but severe sunburn, but its relaxing anyways and it's a nice drive to get there.
(3) Planning for school. I'm finally moving off campus. Don't get me wrong, no bad roommate experiences or anything (I wonder how Powell and Jeff feel about that) but its time to have my own room again. I never realized how much stuff you need to make a place livable. However, it is a nice reprieve from the drudgery of work.
(4) Traveling. Nowhere spectacular. Just a repeating cycle between Clemson and Charleston. Throw in a trip to the Dieu with Rhetto from the Ghetto and you've got a nice little summer going.
(5) Paydays. Paydays are entertaining in that they remind me why I don't drink during the week and, in turn, fund my poor life decisions during the weekend.

So, summer's about 2/3 done and it's not as bad as I thought it would be. This, however, does not dampen my resolve to return to Clemson as soon as possible. Ready to rage again. Go Tigers.