As long as I can remember, I’ve always been a deep thinker. Maybe what I think about is nonsense, maybe it’s not, but it’s always there. I am always watching what’s happening in my life from a viewpoint outside of my person. Weird, right? It’s a bit like watching a movie... albeit, not a very good one.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about happiness, embracing my introvertedness by being me first, reinvention, and getting in flow. However, one trap I fall into by reading too much and devouring knowledge is that my focus shifts to the reading and learning.

As if I’m preparing for a test.

In high school and college, I was a test taker. Math tests, science tests, history tests, I could ace them all with little to no preparation. After high school, I abandoned mathematics and the sciences because it seemed there was only one right answer (maybe two) and the rest were wrong. Following that realization, those classes that had previously been my strengths bored me.

In college, I became a history major. I feel like now, while I enjoy learning about history... even find passion there at times, I became a history major for the wrong reasons.

I was fascinated with the essay exam. Here was a test with no clear cut right answer. Here was a test where not knowing the answer didn’t necessarily equal failure. Intriguing, right?

So, I mastered the essay exam. Again, I’m a test taker... but somehow still lacking the practical knowledge I was supposed to learn.

Go ahead, ask me what I learned from Dr. Birkholz’s biology class about cells. Ask me how to find the limit of an equation. Ask me how to conjugate verbs in French. I don’t recall.

Ask me what I remember about Ms. Curtiss’s history lessons, and I’ll say I remember how great the girl who sat next to me looked, smelled, and made me feel. every. day. And maybe a little about enlightenment and the French Revolution.

Fast forward to today. I am currently 23 books in my yearly goal, and each book has great information to offer... but even that information, absorbed so recently, is slipping away. Sigh.

Inspiration never seems to last, and the darkness always returns. Focus dissolves as the distraction of a pretty blue-eyed blonde with perfect freckles on her perfect tits presents itself. And I know how to get her too. I have learned so much about making the perfect girl my own... someone to share life with. I have learned so much about never settling.

Yet, unapplied knowledge just slips away. I can never seem to slip outside of my mind long enough to apply practical knowledge and make it stick.

Then there’s the darkness that is always lingering not far... the darkness that, ironically, is a result of my enlightenment. So many people I meet have faith. Faith in God. Faith in people. Faith in the planet. Faith in humanity. Faith in the sciences.

All I see is an end goal. One that is the same whether you’re a happy person... or you’re not.

One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason—but one cannot have both.

So true.

I know there is an abundance in the world, and I need to lose this scarcity mindset and never settle. But, as mentioned earlier, the Tinder girls are looking for more than a match. They no longer look for sex without strings, they’re hoping to find true love. They may find it.

But for all the abundance in the world, I’m feeling lonely. I have yet to meet the girl who revs my engine that doesn’t lose me with her own limiting beliefs.

It may be time to focus on me again. Start applying this newfound knowledge before I lose it forever. Find me, then maybe she will find me too.

What i'm listening to:

Dancing in the Dark
Bruce Springsteen
Born in the USA