| | 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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| | Posted 8/15/2008 1:44 PM - 27 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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