There's a thin line between writing and verbal diarrhea.

Time marches on. Many things and feelings have come and gone, but time still marches on. Yet, I am not sure if time is a constant. In fact, I think it isn’t. Somtimes it rolls along like a pebble at the bottom of a stream as the water rushes by with simple fury. Other times it seems to groan awake like a steam locomotive, and it presses on with raw power leaving the lone cowboy to spur his horse and charge after the caboose. Time is fluid. It is not constant, but it never stops marching on.

Wow. Five states in four days. Going a hundred in Arthur’s Mercedes. Four states in fourteen hours. 2:37 a.m: “Let’s go to Chicago.” An emotional high. The sun rising out of Lake Michigan in front of me, Chicago at my back. Beauty. Don’t understand it, and that is why I believe it. I love life. Existence is bliss. Post-insanity depression. Thanks guys, I’ll never forget you.

“Another time, twice, in fact, I tried hard to be in love. I suffered, too, gentlemen, I assure you. In the depth of my heart there was no faith in my suffering, only a faint stir of mockery, but yet I did suffer, and in the real, orthodox way; I was jealous, beside myself ... and it was all from boredom, gentlemen, all from boredom; inertia overcame me. You know the direct, legitimate fruit of consciousness is inertia, that is, conscious sitting-with-the-hands-folded. I have referred to this already. I repeat, I repeat with emphasis: all "direct" persons and men of action are active just because they are stupid and limited. How explain that? I will tell you: in consequence of their limitation they take immediate and secondary causes for primary ones, and in that way persuade themselves more quickly and easily than other people do that they have found an infallible foundation for their activity, and their minds are at ease and you know that is the chief thing. To begin to act, you know, you must first have your mind completely at ease and no trace of doubt left in it. Why, how am I, for example, to set my mind at rest? Where are the primary causes on which I am to build? Where are my foundations? Where am I to get them from? I exercise myself in reflection, and consequently with me every primary cause at once draws after itself another still more primary, and so on to infinity. That is just the essence of every sort of consciousness and reflection. It must be a case of the laws of nature again. What is the result of it in the end? Why, just the same. Remember I spoke just now of vengeance. (I am sure you did not take it in.) I said that a man revenges himself because he sees justice in it. Therefore he has found a primary cause, that is, justice. And so he is at rest on all sides, and consequently he carries out his revenge calmly and successfully, being persuaded that he is doing a just and honest thing. But I see no justice in it, I find no sort of virtue in it either, and consequently if I attempt to revenge myself, it is only out of spite. Spite, of course, might overcome everything, all my doubts, and so might serve quite successfully in place of a primary cause, precisely because it is not a cause. But what is to be done if I have not even spite (I began with that just now, you know). In consequence again of those accursed laws of consciousness, anger in me is subject to chemical disintegration. You look into it, the object flies off into air, your reasons evaporate, the criminal is not to be found, the wrong becomes not a wrong but a phantom, something like the toothache, for which no one is to blame, and consequently there is only the same outlet left again--that is, to beat the wall as hard as you can. So you give it up with a wave of the hand because you have not found a fundamental cause. And try letting yourself be carried away by your feelings, blindly, without reflection, without a primary cause, repelling consciousness at least for a time; hate or love, if only not to sit with your hands folded. The day after tomorrow, at the latest, you will begin despising yourself for having knowingly deceived yourself. Result: a soap-bubble and inertia. Oh, gentlemen, do you know, perhaps I consider myself an intelligent man, only because all my life I have been able neither to begin nor to finish anything. Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?” –Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground. Part I. Ch. V.

I remember it as if it were yesterday: sitting just outside of the pasture fence with Andy, my best friend, dreaming about and discussing our futures. We were ten or eleven then, and everything that we predicted, and hoped would happen up to now, has happened. Seriously. I have gone to college; he has gotten a good job, just as we said we would. Every single thing. Andy even bought that 4-wheeler a couple weeks ago. It’s kind of scary

I was thinking of the name of Mr. Silliman's blog, and whether my blog is also just a collection of the parts of my…um…thoughts. I have decided that it most definitely is. For example, I usually journal on my computer and then cut, paste and post only parts of what I wrote. Why do I do this? Why don’t I post it all? Well, primarily, I am ashamed or at least embarrassed of the other stuff. Or, I don’t understand the things that I don’t post, and I fear that they might be misunderstood and misinterpreted by someone else reading them. …I just lost my concentration, but I guess that is all I have to say now.

Did the excitement of the thought of writing this come from my dislike for the homework that is now being postponed, or did it come from my like of writing?

What do I do when everything I do seems to have two motives: one selfish and one selfless, one lazy and one ambitious, one bad and one good? Should I just expect that my sinful nature is secretly controlling me and hiding itself behind a righteous façade, or should I expect that God is drawing me nearer by revealing the conflict within me(see Romans 7:15-25)?

I can't explain myself well enough.

My “weekends” are continuing to descend into my week. Thursday afternoon is now part of the “weekend.” I barely sleep on Thursday nights anymore, just pretty much because I don’t have to. I don’t like to do homework when it is daylight, so that is causing some sleep schedule problems too. I don’t mind any of it though, nor do I regret not planning ahead so I could sleep more. It will all be over soon, and then maybe sleep will be appealing again.

I have been thinking too much. I don’t want to think anymore. It is a burden. It only leads to more thinking, and less answers. How could I ever think I could find answers by thinking? How could I ever put that much trust in my mind? I want to work; I want to run. I want my muscles to ache, not my mind. I want to be tired, but not like this. This isn’t tired; this is a poor excuse for tired. Thinking, not sleeping, it makes me weary, not tired. If I were tired, I would want to sleep, but the bed brings no rest, it only brings weariness. I want to work. I want to run.

3 hours of sleep
6 shots of espresso
9 thousand thoughts
12 hundred weary words
15 times ten miles to home
18 hours of class every week
21 nights since I have had sleep
24 hours in a day, why want more?