Me Now:

This isn't one of those entries where I take stock of my life (it is the new year after all) and list out what is going on and how I am doing. I'm not going to talk about trying to become a better person or how I need to grow up...

When I write these things I have all of these thoughts pouring through my head and I pretty much start the next paragraph whenever something interesting happens by. The above paragraph is a perfect example of this...I have no idea what I'm going to write about. But I sure do sound good.

I tend to think competitively. Whenever we have a discussion in class and I find myself completely disagreeing with what is being said I sit and I think as hard as I can to come up with something to say that will at the same time prove them wrong and make me sound like a genius. That sounds egotistical and maybe it is. I just like pushing myself to look at things from a point of view that is as different as possible from everyone else. I suppose that when I say "I think competitively" I mean: I talk competitively. I love lively discussions about religion or politics or anything. As long as people are passionate I really don't care what the discussion is.

I like big conversations. I like when things matter. Relationships are probably the best example of this but they aren't the only one. Talking to my roommate about Med School, or to my best friend about internships...these are big conversations too. I like the ones about relationships better because I have more experience in dealing with them than I do with Medical Schools or engineering courses. And the relationship ones are more fun.

Because relationships make people happy. They should anyway. And I like it when my friends are happy. I like it when I'm happy.

And happiness isn't an accident and it isn't a conscious choice either. Happiness is a feeling. Yes you can choose to be happy, but really being happy shouldn't be a choice, it should happen all on it's own. And yes you can accidentally be happy, but that sort of happiness is limited to finding a great song on the radio, or finding five dollars in a jacket pocket in the fall.

Not that the little things aren't important. Because they are. Without little things it would be impossible to have big things.

And you can say: "Todd, you chose to go after this girl and that, eventually, has made you happy, so didn't you, in some way, choose to be happy?"

I suppose that there might be some logic in that statement but there is no real connection between the choice and the resultant feeling. Right now I can choose to go to bed and read, a decision which will make me happy, because I like bed and I like reading. But it isn't the choice itself that makes me happy, it is what I do that makes me happy.

It's holding her, or seeing her again after weeks apart, or getting an e-mail from her. All of these things are the things that make me happy, not the choice that I made to like her and try and make it work.

My point is that I didn't choose to be happy, it happened all by itself much after the decision was made. The happiness is what has made the decision a correct one. Just like I am happier when I get home from class after dragging my ass out of bed even though it's 3 degrees outside and windy and I didn't want to go but I know I should...the happiness and contentedness comes much much later. And the reason for my being happy is completely different from the reason I chose to go to class in the first place.

This is getting long and it probably completely incoherent but I feel like it is important to point out, as grandly as possible, how awesome my girlfriend is.

The last few months have been amazing. Like...imagine that you had a crush on your older sister's roommate because she is hot and then, years later, you meet up at a bar, get drunk, make out, and four months later are in a relationship on Facebook.

Or maybe it's nothing like that. Those are all big things.

Fuck yes.

Todd

"I wanted to shout it from a mountaintop but I didn't have a mountaintop, I had a blog."