Who am I?

I’m loud. I’m obnoxious... I’m quiet. I’m reserved... I’m smart. I’m cunning... I’m moronic and stupid... I’m strong. I’m tough… I’m weak and I’m fragile… I’m tireless and dedicated… I’m lazy and untalented.. I’m respectful.. I’m defiant. I’m energetic and outgoing. I’m boring and shy. I’m courageous. I’m timid. I’m a leader. I’m a follower.

I am everything, and I am nothing.

Not many people understand me. I don’t even think my own parents understand me, and I don’t have a problem with that. I’m fully aware that there is a good number of people who think I am the most annoying, obnoxious, and intolerable person they know (or at least in the top 3). I’m not that stupid. I see people’s reactions and I hear the things they say even if they don’t think I do.

But again, I don’t have a problem with that.

Over the last couple of years I’ve developed a very simple outlook on life. Since coming to LeTourneau University I have learned to open up and simply be myself. I’ve learned not to take things personally and to make my own happiness. Obviously everybody wants to be accepted and liked, and so do I. But I’m not going to change who I am, act the way other people want me to act, or say the things other people want me to say to gain that acceptance. I tried that for a long time and I most likely still would be if I hadn’t come to this school. These nerds, the ones we all like to make fun of and look down upon,.. they’re the ones that have it right.

I’m not exactly sure when it happened, but there came a point in my life when I decided to free myself. I decided I was going to let myself go and defy the normal decorum of life and be a lunatic because that’s primarily what I am. I don’t do it in the name of being defiant or rebellious, I do it because that’s who I am and what I do. I’m not different just to be different. I’m different because I am different.

So who am I?

I’m a product of two recently divorced parents. And by recently I mean like 3 days ago recently. We just sold and moved out of the house I had grown up in from the time I was 7 years old. I’m not looking for sympathy.. lots of parents are divorced (not to justify it or deem it as acceptable). Anyways, It’s been ongoing for about a year now but my Mom and Dad both lived at home until the sale of our house just 3 days ago.

Not that I was ignoring it, but I never gave the situation much thought since nothing had seemed any different to me. Plus I was away at school for 9 months out of the year. But there sure isn’t any dismissing it now.

The house was practically empty during the last couple days. It was weird. I laid in the jacuzzi one last time during the final night. I tried to think about my earliest memory in the house. 90% of the things I could think of related to sports in some way, whether it be playing floor hockey with by Dad, or my Grandpa trying to teach me how to catch balls instead of running away from them, or my mom taking my to and from school and practices practically every day of the week. I miss being a kid.

When I was finally done reminiscing the thing I thought about most was birthdays. I had 14 of them in that house and at every single one there would always be someone that asked that stupid question, “So do you feel any older?”

The answer was always no.

But after that night when I thought about everything in that empty house, for the first time I can now say, I feel older..

It doesn’t bother me.. the whole divorce thing. And if it did I would tell people. Its just life. Make your own happiness.

I’m also a product of my environment. From ages 14-15 I grew 7 inches in 19 months. All of the sudden I was tall and lanky and I had no idea what to do with these long arms and legs. I was gawky and unathletic and when I finally made my high school baseball team during sophomore year I was an easy target: The new kid, less talented, and funny looking. Also known as the Trifecta of Doom. In all honesty it wasn’t that bad. I never went home and cried myself to sleep and never wanted to either. I actually consider most of those guys good friends. I just wasn’t as cool and was given a hard time from time to time.

My sophomore and junior years of high school I was awful at baseball. God-awful. I still scratch my head at times as to how I even made the team. Anyways long story short I made varsity my senior year not because I deserved it, but because you weren’t allowed to put seniors on the JV team. But I used those guys on the team who gave me grief as motivation to get better. I grew into my body a little and slowly improved. Soon the guys on the team started to see me as a peer not just the tall skinny kid who sucked. And that help me be myself a little more too – and looking back, that was the key to everything. I felt less pressure at practices and actually felt like the guys were rooting for me instead of against me. We made the CIF Division I playoffs my senior year and I started both playoff games after being subjected primarily to scrub time during the previous 30 or so games that season.

In coming to LeTourneau and being on the baseball team I felt instantly accepted. I had a fresh start in a new place where nobody knew how gawky or unathletic or untalented I once was. But at the same time I wouldn’t change anything about my past. From my great struggles and brief successes in high school I knew that my best chances to succeed in this place was to let everything hang out, be myself, and make the most out of every single day.


I haven’t looked back since.

Letting Loose: Try it sometime

Ahh, blogging – the place where egocentrics unite under the thinking that everyone would love to hear their life story.. because their life is so great and all.

At least that’s what I thought of blogging whenever a few people started doing it. I have enough things to worry about, who could possibly have time to read about so and so’s perfect day at the beach and trip to best buy to upgrade from a 60” flat screen to a wall mounted 78” behemoth.

Not me.

But then my mom got one (she has cancer).. so I couldn’t think of blogging like that anymore. I read her first couple entries and soon saw it as something to waste time with during class and a way to keep up with my family’s lives without having to call home every night.

Mmm, I like blogging now.

On a 100% completely unrelated note, I took an AP Psychology class my senior year of high school – mainly because I heard it was easy for an AP class and I wanted the opportunity to get college credit before I even graduated from high school. Easily the best class I have ever taken and while Psych isn’t my major I’m still fascinated with the way people think and why we do what we do. And in case anything is wondering: Psychology Principle 101 – People are so predictable.

So anyways, knowing what I know about psychology, I’ve begun thinking about how it relates to social media.

Take Facebook for example. A great way to stay connected with friends and open up to those people about who you really are. Right? Wrong. This may not be groundbreaking information here but Facebook isn’t the portal where everyone shows who they really are. Your Facebook profile isn’t who you are, it’s who you want other people to think you are. And by other people I mean the cool people, or maybe the guy or girl you wish you were dating.

I was the hugest dork in high school and still am today, so for me Facebook (and Myspace back in the day) was a way to keep up with what was ‘cool’ and what was ‘uncool.’ Through this I soon discovered that I was 90% uncool, 8% cool, and 2% retarded. So in an effort to boost my rep, when the Facebook status bar omnisciently asks me “what am I doing/thinking” I’m not going to say “Sitting at home relaxing with my parents.. man I’m so bored.. I have no friends” (even though that is exactly what I was doing and thinking) because it’s a Friday night and being at home by yourself is an ‘uncool’ think to do. Instead I would simply put nothing because no one updates their status on Friday nights anyways because they are too busy having such a great time with their friends. Bottom line is no one puts anything on Facebook that they don’t want people to see or read. Like when girls put mug shots of themselves with the caption “no makeup.. ugh I’m so ugly.” No! you don’t think your ugly you think your attractive and you put that picture up there because you know your attractive and you cant wait to read all the comments from girls saying “jealous” or guys saying “still hot” and blah blah blah.

So anyways to conclude, Facebook is merely the place you try to look cool and fit in with the in crowd, and for those who are in the in crowd then I guess it really is just a place to be yourself and show off (but I wouldn’t really know 'cause I’m not in the in crowd).

Then there is Twitter. Twitter is interesting because it’s mainly used by celebrities and fans as a way to follow those celebrities and feel like they matter. But its slowly gained momentum and now I see a good portion of average Joes using twitter not just for celebrity updates but for their own updates as well. Twitter is a little more genuine to me than Facebook. Its spontaneous and random and to me that’s just more real. I joined twitter about three years ago and used it to blow steam and pop off at the world when I was frustrated. It was whatever was left of the uncool me that hadn’t already reached the surface.. reaching the surface.

I was a caged animal when I first arrived at LeTourneau in fall of ’08. Like a wild lion being taken from his happy stomping grounds in the African desert and placed in a Zoo, I was so uncomfortable at first. This place, the people, the rules, they were like nothing I had ever experienced before. Not all of it was bad, but I needed a place to let loose so I hopped on Twitter and let all of my thoughts wander freely.. many of which would be deemed unacceptable. For the record I have come to love LeTourneau and wouldn’t change anything about it.. actually maybe a couple things.

And finally there is blogging. Blogs are real. At least this one is. You see, that inner me that is often suppressed in efforts to try to be cool and stay cool on facebook/twitter/real life/whatever else there is, that inner me, it wants out and now its being let out. Out of its cage and on the attack! ROAAR!

I don’t like to sugarcoat things. I see things for how they really are and I tell it like it is (The real me does anyways, maybe not the FB me). I know – and fully understand, that no one is going to waste their time reading every word I have to say on here. Even my friends won’t. Like I said earlier, people have their own problems and their own lives to live, why should they care about anything I have to say? That doesn’t mean they aren’t my friends. It just means that they’re people.

I would love for everyone to read this and see who I really am, but in reality there are probably only going to be 3 people in the world that end up reading anything I say on here and two of those people are my mom and my sister.

Anyways, I’ve created this blog because I am about to embark on a 2 month long extravaganza. And what is this extravaganza? Well it’s a baseball league of 15 teams ranging from Illinois, down to Nashville, Tennessee, and up to Pennsylvania that plays 55 games in roughly 65 days (more details coming). Now I realize that isn’t an extravaganza to 99% of people in the world but it is to me so I’m going to talk about it and whatever else I feel like talking about.

And I’m not doing it for you, whoever you are reading this. I’m not doing it so you can know what I’m doing and how I’m feeling. I’m doing this for me, so I can know what I’m doing and how I’m feeling. Because in this self-conscious, egocentric technotropolis of a world we live in, I think we’ve lost some of that feeling.. And I want it back.


So with all of that said, welcome to MY WORLD… The world of Red Bull (always wanted to say that).