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bigboifreddyfloater
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Name: J-Full
Country: United States
State: New York
Metro: Ithaca
Birthday: 2/5/1985
Gender: Male
Interests: I like just about everything...
Expertise: I'm not an expert at anything, but I'll always put forth a good effort.
Occupation: Student
Industry: Economics
Message: message me
AIM:  jayzfull2007
Yahoo:  j_full2007
Member Since:
6/25/2004
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| Sometimes life starts to get out of control, then you let yourself down. Then you pray about it, get back on God's path and keep on truckin'...that's my plan and I'm sticking to it.
J-Full
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So i know I said that I was done with the blog for good, but it's a new year so, stop bring up old mess! But anyway I guess I felt inspired to write another entry.
So I'm sure that everybody knows by now about the young man that was gunned down in the San Francisco train station. The thing i still can't grasp is why a cop would discharge his weapon so close to another officer, not to mention the man was clearly restrained. That's just bad training and I hope the take the BART police to the bank. While what happened in the bay area was certainly tragic, I'm sure a lot of people don't know about the young man that was shot in Bellaire, Texas, in his own driveway, in front of his mama. The police officers thought he was driving a stolen car. Basically the victim, Bobby Tolan was a minor league ballplayer and his pops was a former major leaguer so I guess Tolan's car was a little nice. But the cops rolled up on him in this mostly white neighborhood started yelling "get on the ground". Bobby's parents came outside to see what was going on the cops got rough with Mrs Tolan, so Bobby said something along the lines of what are you doing to my mom. The cops shot him. To find out more click here
Fortunately for Tolan he didn't die. But we all know that this kind of situation isn't anything new. Unarmed Black men have been getting gunned down by police officers for decades, centuries even. And no matter how upset the people get over this, it's never going to change. I believe that most of the officers in these situations don't get out of the bed in the morning and say "I'm gonna kill a Black man today" And to be honest being a police officer is a tough job so I empathize with them on that aspect. But the reason it's never going to change is because the reason these officers are killing these Black men is because they're afraid. Afraid for their life. In a job where you constantly come in contact with dangerous individuals you can't help but be afraid when you stumble upon a "situation" late at night. Now who creates the "situation" and who's involved in the "situation" is what makes it end up tragically. So let's say officers run up on a group of white men acting a little rambunctious after last call. The officers ask the men to calm down and try to get them to get in their cars and stop causing a disturbance. Worse case scenario somebody gets arrested for being too drunk or cursing. Now let's say these same guys are now Black and acting the same. A bunch of guys just laughing and joking with friends probably loudly. The cops approach the black guys but instead of getting them to calm down the cops automatically let fear grip them. They assume the black men are armed, unholster their weapon and let their senses go on high alert. Any sudden moves and the cops start firing until the men stop moving. And in reality the cops had no chance to react differently, if you're afraid for your life and you have a gun more than likely you'll shoot until the person you feel is threatening your life stops moving.
As I said earlier the underlying cause for these kilings most times is fear. This fear was manufactured hundreds of years earlier with slavery. Black men have been villainized for centuries. We've been made out to be big viscious monsters that like to rape white women and kill mercilessly. That's not to say that there aren't Black men who do these things or that there aren't dangerous Black men, but that shouldn't be the first thought associated with Black men. But this idea that the black man is to be feared has spread like a virus and affects each and every one of us. The virus is too far gone, I don't think there's any cure for it either. And that's exactly why police officers will never stop using excessive force, they can't help it. They aren't going to wait until they see a gun, hear a gunshot, or get attacked. They're just going to keep firing until they feel safe. Self preservation is human nature. But at the end of the day that doesn't make it any righter or tolerable even.
J-Full
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| About a month ago right before Thanksgiving I was at church and the pastor was talking about having an attitude of gratitude as it relates to our relationship with God. Now I found this interesting because in general i don't find the preacher to be rather moving but this sermon was sticking with me. He was talking about not being a fair weather Christian, only thanking God when things are going well in your life.
Now to backtrack a little... at the beginning of the semester I was praying and I asked God for financial wisdom. That same day I got my stipend check for a little over $10k. It was one of those rare moments when you chuckle to yourself and ask if God's playing a joke on you. So fast forward to today. I'm flat broke. I totally mismanaged my stipend. So poorly that I had to borrow against next semester's stipend. To make it worse the stipend for next semester comes 10 days later than I expected which means paying my January bills will be a mystery. But I pray that I learn a valuable lesson about managing my finances. Now I'm stuck in Ithaca, NY for the holidays. Which isn't that bad minus the negative degree temperature. Christmas with my family is never a big deal and I'd just be doing the same thing that I'm doing now. Nothing. But I wouldn't mind the warmer climate and a chance to catch up with some high school and college friends. But things could be worse so I'm trying to remain positive in this tough situation. And on a more positive note I did really well in my first semester of grad school. Best grades since high school. I'm trying hard to have an attitude of gratitude.
Happy Holidays,
J-Full
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| Yea i know i got uppity and went off and started my own blog, but I kinda miss the xanga community. Most of my xanga fam aren't on here anymore but there's still a few who blog on occasion. Truthfully nothing eventful ever happens in my life. I do the same thing everyday, wake up, shower, go to class, eat lunch, study, come home, watch tv, sleep...repeat! The only difference is on the weekends I don't have class. But I came here to accomplish a goal so I'm going to have to suck it up and do what I have to do. My goal is to get all A+s but i'll settle for all As. It's a tough row to hoe, but God brought me here for a reason so it's time to make the best of it.
My life is pretty lonely here in Ithaca and the cold weather isn't helping things. I really need to make friends but that involves being social. And while i'm not unfriendly I am by no means social. At least not around strangers. But walking home in the dark and 20 degree weather with the wind cutting into my face like a new razor on warm butter, i get a chance to do a lot of thinking. And honestly if it weren't for the internet I wouldn't have one single friend here in Ithaca. I'm able to keep up with my old Duke friends via various internet based communication applications. God forbid I'm without internet for an extended period of time. I just might jump off one of these waterfalls. But I am making pretty good grades so that keeps my spirits up. And I have a wonderful girlfriend that I get to talk to daily. So all in all life isn't terrible. I just want to be able to make it home for Christmas this year and I'll be happy. I haven't seen my family in 2 years almost so it'll be good to get back to Atlanta.
On a totally unrelated note. I finally broke 100 in golf. That's supposed to be a big milestone for golfers. It takes some people a year or two. I did it in 5 months or so. Next goal, break 90. Golf season up here ends on this Sunday, so I think i'm gonna give the clubs a rest and go out on top.
I guess that's all for now. I have a linear algebra test next friday, so if you're the praying kind, toss a prayer up to big G for me. This is the only class I'm struggling in. So i need all the prayers I can get.
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| So what's good xanga, I know I only blog every few months or so on here but I do read my subscriptions and for the most part all of the blogs I've subscribed to have fallen off. Lol I guess we all outgrow or lose interest in xanga at some point. Or some of us get uppity and get our own blog and site (insert shameless plug for www.j-full.com ). So i was reading some subscriptions and noticed that someone's blog that I used to read no longer showed up on my subscriptions page. Turns out I had been blocked. Which made me chuckle because I totally deserved it at various stages in my life. I'm sure I've angered/disrespected this person on more than one occasion. But that was then and this is now. Now I'm a totally different person, I've made like a 175 degree turn from the person I used to be, at least in terms of the negative aspects of my old person. I say 175 because I'm sure I still have some of my old bad habits.
But what prompted this self scrutiny/examination was today when I was walking down the hall during a break in math class. I randomly started thinking about this econ summer program I did a few years back. I remembered how when we introduced ourselves, I wanted to get a laugh out of the class so I said I like long walks on the beach and candlelight dinners. Of course i got the laughs and people generally liked me. Which to me was important back at that time. But by the end of the program most of the people didn't really like me too much. Mainly because I was a jerk and I probably thought I was cooler and smarter than almost everybody there. And while my relative intelligence is still up for debate, I'd say that i was def...nah lemme stop.
But the reason why I brought that up was that during the breaks and stuff from class I don't really talk to anyone, I keep to myself and I usually study what we went over in the first half of class. I often find that people will strike up conversations with me. The people are kind and all but I generally don't talk to people I don't know unless they talk to me first. I like it better that way. Mainly because I'm extremely shy and self conscious. But if you were to ask people that knew me a few years ago they'd probably laugh at that claim. The difference between then and now is that then I was pretending, I'd crack jokes, make inappropriate comments, get shit faced drunk, to make myself feel more at ease. I think the shrinks would call it social anxiety. And now that I have a chance to start from relative scratch I feel like I have a chance to better represent my true self. I'm a friendly person and sometimes I can get a few laughs but most people only get to see that side of me once they get to know me and/or I become comfortable around them. That's the way I was in high school. And I tell you when i first got to Duke i'm sure people had a whole lot more positive things to say about me then. Now I'm sure they'll say "Jeremy's a good guy but...". I understand that we all change over the course of our lifetime but I felt that I took a turn for the worse after a few months in college. But I've since turned my life around and I'm excited about my fresh start. And I hope that the people I meet here only have positive things to say about me, or at least very few negative things to say about me. Because the reality is that deep down I'm really not the obnoxious drunken philanderer that most folks knew me as. That's not to say that I haven't done those things but rather to say that that's not who I am nor want to be. It's like saying that just because you know how to swim or have swam in a swimming race, it doesn't mean you're a swimmer. Or that because you've fought before, doesn't mean you're a fighter (in the negative sense of the word). I trust you get what I'm trying to say here.
But as I begin this new phase of my life, I have figured out how I want to be viewed and who I want to be: I want to be friendly, kind, and a hard worker. I want to be viewed as a good person and a Christian. Now out of all those things the most important to me is that I be viewed as a Christian. The reason I say that is because a lot of people claim to be Christians but don't behave like one. I was one of those people myself, saturday sinners and sunday saints. I don't want people to look at me as a hypocritical Christian. And while there is innate hypocrisy in being human, I want to minimize my own personal hypocrisy. And I'm not saying that I'm the perfect Christian but I'm trying very hard. And when people think of me, I want them to see me as a Christian first and foremost and if they don't agree with Christianity I want them to see me as a person of strong moral fiber. The reason I thought about this was that I was thinking back to a conversation I had with a Christian about finding Christian music and the whole time she was kinda giving me the sideways glance as if she didn't believe that I had turned my life around. She was a person that knew me back in my most heathen days so she might've been more skeptical of me than most. But I want to be believable when I tell people I'm a Christian. And while we shouldn't judge one another there's some level of natural judgement that occurs whenever we interact with people or situations.
Some people might even argue: "Why do you even care what people think of you" I'll tell you why, a wise person once told me: "In the absence of truth, perception is reality." So if I were to die tonight, I want people to have good memories of me, whether they actually know me or whatever they perceive. I want what people perceive and what I actually do to be positive and most importantly line up with God's will. But that is a very difficult task. But hey if being a Christian were easy, heaven wouldn't be much of a prize, now would it.
I'm outta here before I start rambling,
J-Full
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