Not Going Back to School

It has hit me, finally. I am not in school. I haven't been now for 9 months almost to the day. I am not in school. It is so hard to believe. I am not going back. I am seeing these ads in stores and magazines of "back to school" sales. At my new job in the service industry my co-workers are talking about how they are starting school this week. The teachers at the local schools have been telling me as well. I went to a back-to-school party and I couldn't talk about classes that I am looking forward to or not looking forward to. I see all the free time I truly have.

What am I doing with my life? School has been the entirety of my life. A part of my mind was saying, "Alright. Adam, vacation from school is over" but I am still not going back to school. No matter what, I won't have to stress for hours upon hours about assignments. I have gone as far as creating my own class in my mind. Am I insane? Am I absurd? Neither. I am filling the void of having the passion of learning. I yearn to learn. The more I learn the more I see how much I truly do not know.

I am creating my own graduate school at the moment. I am self-teaching myself things I would never have dreamed of doing. I am an academic at heart. My eyes are wide open. It is time to enter the field that my heart is yearning for. It is time to learn. Struggle, do whatever but in my own means.

Yes I do plan on going to grad school still. In fact I am on the hunt for GRE books (My old ones are in a box in Reno somewhere). This is it. Time to master my own mind (Although I know it can truly never be mastered).

By the way to follow my journey of self-teaching Nietzsche read this blog.

Thank You Reminiscence

I am not typically a person who lives constantly in my own past memories and endeavors but occasionally I  have to reminisce. I have to dig deep and remember. Then I look at those memories and see how it has affected my life in some cases. Each one of those experiences is a part of who I am today. I may not have known it then but the present will and does define my future. I am not talking about destiny I am talking about how each experience affects me and creates my present character. These experiences rack-up and the more I have the greater my life. This is why I do not dwell upon experiences but today reminiscing happened, a lot of it happened.

It did start with a sill Facebook status game that I saw my mother and brother-in-law playing. Give me a year. My brother-in-law gave me the year 2001. This year was a very defining year for me. I was a young adolescent middle schooled puberty ridden boy. In-other-words I was awkward like all adolescents. This year was more than just that for me though this was the year when I left my rural roots to my urban life. I moved to the city that gave me experiences that shaped my life. I moved to Reno. The next 5 years, my teenage years were spent in that city drawing out the way I view the world, shaping my eye glasses and deciding what lens to look through to see Mother Earth for what she is.

I am not going to lie I was kind of an introvert during those years but slowly becoming more of an extrovert each year, then college made me an extreme extrovert. I think that was part of the small town life that I had been used to before I moved. I was extremely shy and probably awkward when I first arrived to my suburban sprawl middle school. I was still watching the Disney channel and catching Nickolodeon re-runs of Rug Rats, Doug and AHHHHH Real Monsters. Those good 90s cartoons I spent growing up watching. I met my oldest friend that year as well, Niki. She is very close to me. It is hard to believe that we have been friends for 10 years, a decade of memories and many more to come.

In 2001 I also broke both my arms, one in the Spring and the other one in the Fall. It was also the year that 9/11 happened a defining moment for the United States and a moment that probably helped shape my peace loving ways, well maybe not the event itself but the aftermath that took place. All of these memories from 2001 overwhelmed me.

Then another thing happened to me today. I had to reminisce even more. I got an Amazon package and it was supposed to be Zinc Oxide Powder so I can finish making my homemade deodorant but somehow it turned out to be Sandi Thom's album "Smile...It Confuses People." I am not sure how that happened but it did. I bought this album originally back in the summer of 2007 and somehow lost it but the song "I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers in my Hair)" is on this album. I had to listen to it because it is one of my favorite songs. This song has a very vivid memory of me driving around Reno to Hug High School for the Hilary Clinton event that took place that year (2007). I was driving my 1988 Camouflaged Suburban overfilled with the University of Nevada Young Democrats blasting that song. I am sure we looked ridiculous. A bunch of tree-hugging liberal hippies in a gas gosling camo SUV blasting worldly music, getting an endurance high because we were about to meet Hilary Clinton. That is what I call America and of course Reno Classy.

So that song brought back memories and it happened to be one about the Camo Suburban (Whose name was Tony). That suburban memory then took me back to high school memories but at the same time so did a movie I watched today. This movie was focusing on senior prom. Showing how some high schoolers struggle finding a date for Prom. I was very lucky when it came to that issue but little did I know at the beginning of my senior year that I would attend three Proms that year. I was just a debate nerd and theatre geek. The proms I went to I had a lot of fun. Even going with girls who at the beginning of my senior year were not my original choices. Some of them I didn't even realize it was going to happen. I went to my senior prom with my girl friend at the time, then I went to my tech school's prom with a friend who I met in middle school but hadn't talked to again until my senior year of high school because we went to different schools. Then I ended up going to Churchill County High School's prom with a fellow debate nerd. I felt like a ladies man. Shortly after Prom I would drive around town in that camo suburban and having road rage telling cars to "moooooooove your ass" (Moooing like a cow). That suburban also broke down on the Golden Gate bridge when I did a mission trip with my high school youth group.

Now that I look at all of these experiences that I reminisced upon I can now see how each one has formed a part of my character that I am today. A little red neck, a lot environmentalist, peace activist and I am single to mingle right now. Each one of those experiences just add to my personality.