Shining Representatives and the Waiting Game

Well I guess it has been a while huh? Been caught up in my new time consuming activity “shiny chaining” in Pokemon Omega Ruby. I swear…if you are being optimistic…finding one shiny Poke (doing the chaining method) in the wild takes up…a good 2 to 3 hours (probably more). I’ve already caught 5 of them by using this method…I might need a new hobby? 😛  I don’t know why, I like making Pokemon that represents my friends in some way and make them completely badass and as awesome as possible. Hence I like to ask my friends what favorite Pokemon they have so I can do this “weird” thing of mine. Is it weird? I’m not the only one that does this right?…Just me? (well I know I’m weird anyways so bleh  ). So what better way to make Pokemon represent my friends than a shiny Poke! You know, since it’s like damn near impossible to find these on their own. However, being the Pokemon nerd I am, I’ve managed to find quite a few shiny Pokemon across Pokemon games (I think like 18 total…). For those who don’t know…the chance of finding such a thing in the games is 1/8192…(bumped up slightly more in later games but still). This is like….less than 1000th of a percent. I’ve joked that I wish I could be that lucky with winning the lottery…or with my love life…or anything else really 😛

Anyways, I guess that is what has been going on with me recently…and just waiting on for my new job to take me in, train me, and then go to work (the Target job). Which comes to something I really don’t like doing: waiting. I’ve seen my friends procrastinate, I’ve heard people talk about if they had more time to do things, etc. etc. Me? I hate the waiting game. I think “hate” is a strong word, so yeah. I’ve been waiting on this Target job. I’ve been waiting on this Navy Lt. to get back to me about stuff. The big one, I have to wait on the JET Program until around mid-April to see if I get the job I REALLY REALLY want (teaching English in Japan). I think my mind had been so fed up with waiting, and the prospect of waiting so long, that at one point I had a nightmare about it. If I had to describe it, I was trying to get to some floor, and I was pressing the elevator button like a madman. I think I even climbed a couple flight of stairs to get higher or something. Elevator broke down, I was dumb and walked in, tried to press the button to go higher, I was on “top” of the elevator machine….proceed to panic my ass off, almost get compacted into a pancake by this elevator, and I wake up. When your subconscious is telling you something like this, I think it’s time to reflect a little. Maybe that you just gotta wait for great things to happen in your life. Or maybe take a backseat for a moment, take a chill pill, I don’t know… I believe that you can always keep improving; that you can keep getting better and better. That you can use your own efforts to make your own life, and make your own future, and not just wait around for things to happen, or worse, for other people to come in and make a person you don’t want to be. However, I guess I gotta accept some things as they are and try to work my way around that, in a more productive and healthy way (hopefully not getting any more body and soul crushing nightmares).
I guess in an odd way, chaining for those shiny Pokemon is an exercise in patience?….or it might be that I really am a HUGE Pokenerd…
To end on a more lighter note, quoting from a certain Aerosmith song

“Remember, the light of the end of the tunnel…maybe you, good night!”

Past Thoughts – Lowering the Pedastal

Quick update: Miracle happened. Got a job. Target. Okay Reality Update over.

Now, due to my random ways, I want to put out there one of the more interesting “arguments” I’ve had with “myself” in the past. You know, those weird philosophical or controversial arguments you try to settle in your head but it gets no where? The topic I want to address is the age old question: boys or girls, which is better?

When I was younger, I believed that women were superior to men. Yeah, I’m not kidding. Of course I know men have their distinct advantages, usually more muscle mass and whatnot. However, it makes me glad that I don’t have to experience the greatness (i.e. pain) that comes with a menstrual cycle and childbirth. It just seemed to me that girls/women are better with communication, they seem so gentle, kind, and understanding. I’m not saying ALL girls/women are like this, that is just blatant over-generalization (which one shouldn’t do). I don’t know what particularly influenced me to think this way. Maybe it’s that women are portrayed as less violent? Maybe its how women are idealized in society one way or another? Maybe it’s just the dumb hopeless romantic in me? Who knows.

As I got older, basically getting into college, I’ve come to realize that, this question of which gender is better, really doesn’t have any meaning behind the answer. Learning that different societies recognizes different genders, the possibility of being born with BOTH male and female traits, and everything other category that I can’t even list/don’t even know. I realized at one point that I put women so high on a pedestal, that at times, it seems like I don’t even treat them like human beings. Sure, women (and men) are degraded and objectified, but what about the other end of the spectrum? What if something is put up so high that they become isolated? Of course, I stopped this kind of “putting women on a pedestal” thinking. Just because one person of a certain group is a certain way, it doesn’t represent that ENTIRE group. If you like pink, great, you like pink. If you are a guy and identifies with the color turquoise, that’s great too. You are a man that wants to dress up dolls? Go for it. You are a woman that wants to be an engineer? Awesome sauce, become that awesome engineer. We all have our flaws too, but we tend to attribute certain flaws to certain groups, which again, is over generalization and that is just…not good. A certain person is an asshole? Why? Maybe simply because that person is just an asshole? Not because of what sex, gender, ethnicity or anything of that sort.

Men are men, and women are women. Sure, we are different, and we tend to emphasize those differences. However, don’t forget what similarities that we share. We all share a brain, two arms, two legs, a heart, emotions, feelings, experiences, all the greatness that comes with being human.

It doesn’t matter if you are a man, woman, transgender, transexual, homosexual, whatever kind of category you identify with, just don’t forget that we all share something in common, we are human. Simple, full of emotion, breathing, thinking, creative, spontaneous, crazy awesome human beings.

(Well that turned out to be a bit preachy…but I guess I wanted to put this out there. :P)