Nominative Determinism

 Nominative Determinism is the (half-serious) idea that people tend to gravitate towards interests and professions that match their name. this piqued my interest because that describes me. i have a Japanese name (despite not being japanese) and i turned out to be a huge weeb. while my interests are a bit more nurture than nature its still funny how the world works like that sometimes.

How to make a nice bowl of whatever the fuck

 i dont have a picture for this you'll have to take my word for it. this makes like one serving.

you will need:

- 1 russet potato (mine was pretty small like as big as my palm)

- 1 roma tomato

- 2 slices of oscar meyer(TM ) cotto salami

- stubbs(TM )  legendary bbq sauce (TM ) 

i specify on the bbq sauce because of its unique taste. for example if you used sweet baby rays or something itll taste different but i cant control you.

- teriyaki sauce (savory, not sweet, you could probs just use soy sauce too)

- salt, pepper, paprika 

- oil ( i used vegtable)

- one pan and one pot

i think this could be pretty good if you put in some pasta as well. i'll try that next time.

i dunno how much sauce and seasoning i used. the final product should be a little saucy though.

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okay start off by cubing the potato. i took the skin off put you could keep the skin on. i cut it into fairly sized pieces but i think dicing it more would be good. boil it in water with salt pepper and paprika (follow your heart when it comes to measuring) until you can stick a knife into them real easy. 

while your potatoes are boiling take your roma tomato and and also cube it. i cut it like if you were making tacos. put the tomatoes into you pan (i had a little non-stick one) with a little bit of oil and let them simmer over medium heat while you prepare your salami.

take two (2) thin slices of salami and cut them up pretty small. put them into the pan with the tomatoes. at this point i also put in some more oil. stir your concoction a little and then put in your bbq sauce. i stirred it around a little more and then let it simmer until the potatoes were done. i think it simmered for like a minute or two? 

(dance break (mandatory))

once your potatoes are done drain the water and put the potatoes in the pan. i also put more salt, pepper, and paprika. just a little bit. stir your meal until all the potatoes are covered in sauce (oh dont forget the teriyaki/ soy sauce. just a dash. a smidge even) and then let the whole thing simmer for like another two-three minutes. for reference, the tomatoes were mushy and the salmi was browned. it shouldnt be super saucy but you can still tell its has sauce. it was also burned a little on the bottom. a healthy amount. once it seems good enough turn off the heat and serve it on a plate or bowl... whatever.

and boom, you just made yourself a nice sodium filled meal. enjoy! 

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honestly just was put me putting things from my fridge into a pan and basically stir-frying it. im glad it came out as good as it did, although it might be too salty if you dont like salty things. stay tuned for more adventurous culinary delights

ice cream cake

 i hate it when ice cream cake is like 90% ice cream!!!!! its called ice cream cake, if i wanted a hunk of ice cream with frosting on top i wouldve asked for that!!!!!! who the hell do you think i am?!?!?!!?  

what keeps me going?

this is a question that ive asked myself a lot lately.

if im being completely honest, i havent had the best life. im pretty sure i came out of my mothers womb with mental problems, and situations (vague) involving my family havent really helped. all my aspirations i had growing up have fizzled and i find myself without a solid direction. day to day life is a great struggle to me. often times i feel like a divorced father. i guess in laymans terms, i see no reason for myself to live. 

upon hearing that, you may think: "no reason to live...?! monstii no!! dont kill yourself!!!" but you misinterpret me! i dont want to die! which is where my confusion begins... i suppose. kind of. well, ive noticed a unique phenomena in my life which i find interesting and slightly disturbing. 

as ive said before, life has offered me no shortage of turmoil over the years. however, if i had to pinpoint i specific time where it started getting really bad, it would have to be middle school, 7th grade. the only time i actually seriously considered killing myself. (i dont wish to elaborate further, but it was pretty stupid.) obviously, i didnt, (or did i? i could be a ghost.) but that ideation has haunted me over the years in my darkest moments. my darkest moments... thats the point i was trying to get to. 

when a character's family dies, or he loses his powers, his lifes work gets destroyed, his enemy grows to be unstoppable or whatever, he hits rock bottom. the despair event horizon. then, after days, weeks, months have past, he looks at himself in the mirror, or maybe his best friend sits down and talks with him, perhaps someone slaps him in the face, and says "what the hell are you doing?!?" the character realizes: "what the hell am i doing!?! i have a goal to accomplish/ life to live!!!" or whatever. then he claws himself out of the pit hes been in and goes on to fight the good fight. you see, thats happened to me. way too much. 

im really not sure when it started, i think sophmore year of highschool when i first felt actually started feeling emotions. (wish i was joking there) up until then, i wasnt necessarily at rock bottom, but some strange state of being where i had cast away my humanity and lived something like a robot. inside i was some husk of a person, living as someone that deep down i wasnt, or maybe didnt want to be. i looked at myself, and i told myself, i cant live like this. ("what the hell are you doing?!?") so, i made the effort to change. i got involved on my school community, made friends, started dressing the way i wanted to, and i was honest with myself with what i really wanted in life. that was a big help, being brutally honest with myself. even if it made me vastly different from everyone else. (which, in hindsight actually helped me make friends!) for the first time in my life, i was happy. really happy! its when i first has the thought; "its great to be alive in this world." 

however, life sometimes has other plans for you. sure, personally i put myself on the track to be a healthier, happier person, but its not like my QOL actually changed all that much. i still lived with my family and i still had crazy anxiety. i still didnt have much freedom and i started having trouble at school. also a certain event happend that would prove to be a constant source of struggle in the coming years. it turned into a constant struggle of

despression --> wait get better!!! --> fight fight fight! --> im losing steam. --> depression --> repeat.

i got myself caught up in a battle of extreme highs and extreme lows that has lasted until relatively recently. i hate being depressed, but keeping that "high" is unrealistic and takes up so much energy. ive come to realize that keeping a "middle" is a much more viable option in terms of maintaining my mood. whenever i find myself at that "low", i keep in mind that its not the end of the world. i cant really tell myself "what the hell are you doing?!?" every time i feel depressed. imagine your friend staging a huge intervention every time you got depressed. thats what i was doing to myself. pretty stupid. for a little bit i thought i became apathetic, but i came to the conclusion that i really shouldnt let my emotions run so rampant.

all that i didnt even answer the question at hand. now to be honest, i actually kinda already knew, but its still an enigmatic part of me that writing all that spew above kinda helped me process. 

to put it curtly: i keep going because i can. or rather, i cant not keep going. i really have nothing else to do. "going" is my default state. giving up is out of the question because it never was a question in the first place. im much like a shark. if one day i decided to stop doing whatever it is im doing, i would die. the notion of "giving up" to me is also like the notion of randomly attacking someone i pass on the street; like, yeah, i could, but i wouldnt, cause thats stupid.

why am i like this?

another question i find myself asking recently. why am i like this? other people have told me, and i am pretty aware, that im a pretty unique person. not in a "rare gemstone" way, but more in a "Doctor Gonzo" way. "huh, thats not something you see everyday". i often wonder why im like this, and ive come up with various potential psychological and societal reasons for why i came out the way i came out, but at the end of the day its just the way that i am. i am the way that i am, because i was born a human in this day and age on this funny planet we call earth. i am the way that am because i exist, and i dont think i really need a reason to exist. to me, asking why im like this and why i keep going is like asking me the meaning of life. how the hell am i supposed to know?! it is just because it is??? do you really need answer that badly?!? why do you keep on living, if youre so smart???? fuck off!!!!

maybe i should go to therapy. 

common summer problems

 due to a number of factors, i often find myself stuck in my house during summer or other school breaks. this causes me to waste my time online working on projects that usually go nowhere. its pretty depressing. this also makes it so that i hardly have any memories of summer, so there are large gaps in my memory between school the years. this summer, being the last summer of my "youth", i wanted things to be different. i wanted to grow a spine! go out there and do some cool stuff! and... ive done some cool stuff. relatively. my initial idea of going on adventures around the city proved to be kinda unrealistic... and my usual family problems have made my life quite hectic... but also due to those same family problems i got to spend a good amount of my summer living alone, free to do whatever i want. those ~two months will go down in monstii history as a highly formative period in time of self discovery. (to be honest, most of what ive done is explore my neighbor hood. i went to the mall and a library once, but ive come to realize i hate taking the bus.) 

right now as i write this blog post im stuck inside again. my family is back home and its so hot out... and my depression has made me want to nothing but sleep all day. here i am... with those same feelings. the feeling of being trapped, waiting for school to start again as an escape from my home life. once again... ive become stagnant. 

to ensure i actually do remember all the things ive done over the summer, ive been taking pictures and videos on a camera ive had since like, fifth grade? ive never really had much use for it until now. looking back at all the photos ive taken has given me a little more resolve. mostly its just pictures of flowers i thought looked interesting... but they remind me of the feelings i had at the time when taking the picture. this summer has actually been very long for me. ive gotten over a lot... i think i can go through some more. summers not over yet. 

(i was listening to CURE -strawberry road version- by honeydip when i was writing this. it made me emotional. silly movie moments like that are among the things that keep me going.) 

college students

the other day, i went to my college to finish registering for classes. and something that left an impression on me was the people. or rather, the students. if i were to imagine a "college student" in my head, those are the kind of people i wouldve imagined. it was kind of surreal. 

young, fit, twenty-somethings with extensive skincare routines that probably visit their local cafe for matcha every morning. tote bags, pimple patches. i met a girl with dyed eyebrows and a girl that looked like she stepped right out of the advertisements at a lululemon store. when i was waiting in line at the student resources center, a person with a military backpack and a singular pin that read "GENDER IS DRESS UP". college students... im a college student. from the outside looking in, do i look like all of these other people? 

as i wrote this blog post, i thought about comparing "myself" to the "average college student". then, i realized, does that even exist? if theres something that school taught me, its that people are both stranger than you think and more normal than you think. its easy to think of people as 2-D characters, or "stereotypes", and then lump big groups of people together and pretend that they all live the same life, have the same personality, so on so forth. i have no idea who those people are. who am i to treat them like some "other", when for all i know they could be walking enigmas? sure, a lot of them could share the same views or have similar personalities, but that doesnt mean they are carbon copies of each other.  everyone that i saw at my college has at least 20 years of life experience on them, and who knows what happend from the moment they came out of the womb to going to a community college? one of the strangest persons ive ever met also happend to be the most "background characters" ive ever met. he didnt have a single "special" or "cool" interest, but ive never known i guy so fundamentally out-of-the-ordinary! some of the most normal and "un-cool" people ive met are the kids with dyed hair and social anxiety at art club! every person you pass on the street or briefly interact with online is a whole lifes worth of ideas and experiences and i think thats what makes life so beautiful, and so strange. judging people based on superficial aspects is an act against god and thats probably the most extreme opinion you'll get from me. good night. 

on the topic of college and career choices

in the next month, i will attending college. the college im going to, despite being a two-year community college, has a great number of opportunities and accommodations. of them is multiple choices for pathways in the music major, which is my major. there is music business, composition, education, therapy, and some others im forgetting. for the longest time i assumed i would be taking the composition path, but that thought greatly unnerved me. at first, i didnt want to go to college because i felt like i'd be wasting my time and money. however, i got a scholarship that paid off my whole schooling which changed my mind. studying composition and music theory? sounds like a dream come true! at first. as i thought about it a lot more, i realized that as much as i love writing music and understanding it in a mathematical sense, i dont know how much learning more about it would actually help me move my life forward. ive already taught myself the basics back in my freshman year of highschool and ive been writing music ever since. its very fun. but the prospect of doing it to put food on my table? not exactly appealing. ive already accepted the fact that i would have to work very hard in order to make a living in the realm of music, but due to my fundamental nature i feel like committing to something as loose as trying to make it as an artist or composer would lead me to some form of uncertain doom. i wouldnt have something to work too, which is the biggest problem. with something like artistry, the "common goal" is to "make it", usually by being famous or at least known enough that you can make things and people will pay you for it. the ideal of a artist is to put yourself out there so the "right audience" finds you, allowing yourself to be free to make things that you like and make you happy, with the bonus of being paid for it. in our modern society, the associated grind with that sort of goal is doing things like posting consistently on social media, engaging with fans, networking, doing commissions, that sort of thing. that sort of life is impossible to me. 

also, if i were to pursue a life that consists of primarily making artwork and music, i would drive myself insane. by nature i am a perfectionist, and also very solitary in terms of creative projects. whenever i have worked on a creative project, ive felt a need for a certain "something" in my art thats figuratively larger than me. you know how some artist characters in movies are, highly neurotic over their work not having a certain "feeling" or not being able to portray their worldview sufficiently? thats how i get. i feel the overwhelming need to perfect my art. and if i fully gave into that feeling, (or i guess "applied myself" fully to art,) i would work tirelessly and obsessively and for what? in a independent creative career, your "work" is only half the battle. no matter how many songs you write or pieces you create, you still have the matter of selling and advertising, which is a whole other can of worms, especially in our age of internet where there are thousands of other people making things just like you. and in my case i have an irrational dislike of interacting with people online, which makes that sort of path even worse for me. 

that being said, in the case of interacting with people in real life, its quite the opposite. i love people in real life. for most of my life i have thought of myself as something of a lone wolf, someone who prefers to be by himself. however, as i have gone through highschool and have said hello and goodbye to a lot of amazing (and not so amazing, but otherwise very interesting) people, ive realized how sentimental i am and how much i love being around other people, especially when working towards a common goal. (thanks, theatre!)  ive grown a lot in terms of interacting and understanding people and social conventions, and i realized it would be a big waste to go and live my life in solitude after growing to love people and having friends, especially after living my whole life scared of making connections and talking to others. then, this train of thought made me realize the kind of life i would like to live going foward, which still has to do with music, but in a different scene than actually writing music for a living. 

i think that everyone has a "thing". something that theyre really into. something that feels natural to spend hours dedicated to. for me, my "thing" is music, but ive come to realize music isnt what makes me feel "alive". or, it isnt the "driving force" thats kept me going all these years. its not what i "live for". i didnt realize that the things you love doing as a hobby are different than the things you'd love doing as a career. i think its like the difference between your best friend and your spouse. 

once i realized that, i felt pretty scared. i was in denial about that fact for a while because that train of thought questions the path i was dedicated to pursuing. if i dont live for music, then what do i live for?what would i be truly comfortable doing as a career path? the answer right now is... im not sure. but i have a pretty good idea of the direction i do want to go in, which incorporates my love for music and my desire to work with people. 

for all of my highschool life, i was a dedicated member of the theatre program. i did every show and showed up to as many events as i could. i'd say about half of my time in highschool was in the auditorium. while i'd like to say i was so dedicated to doing theatre because i love theatre, (for the record i do love theatre but not as much as music) i think the main reason i stayed is because the people and the work. i made lots of friends and acquaintances doing theatre, and i learned how to interact with people without dying. i slowly fell in love with getting to know a great variety of people from different backgrounds and aspirations, and i think the most magical part of it was seeing so many different people get along and work very hard together towards a goal. that part was great too, a lot of the time the work was hard or tedious, and added a lot to my already big workload from school and home, but in the end it felt worth it to contribute something and be apart of something bigger that goes on to be great show. in a perfect world, i'd like go on to work in an environment like that. which is what lead me to choose the music business program over the composition program.

at the college that im going to, the music business program puts together a music festival called "fredstock" in the spring. of course, thats not the only reason why i chose the music business program, but i guess thats what really settled the score for me. i'd really like to have the experience of being apart of putting something like that together. right now, its seems like a dream. of course, im probably romanticizing it in my head, but im an optimist by nature. at the very least, i'd like to have the experience of being apart of a rock concert at least once. in my opinion, theres really nothing like live performance. and im now realizing... yeah i really do live performance dont i? not being apart of the performance, mind you, but being backstage. the unsung heroes of all live shows: the tech crew! i dont know. whatever. its not really whatever. im very excited about this whole thing. 

and if i hate it...? im still young, i'll figure something out.