Two Steps Back, One Step Forward

Something interesting occurred to me today. Something, I’m sure probably doesn’t mean much in the grander scheme of things, but it got me thinking. (we all know that me actually thinking is dangerous, but we’ll ignore that for now) I was reading some older blog posts by many of our classmates, both sophmore and freshman, and I realized that writing style has a huge effect on the point one is trying to get across. Personally, I view my own style and halting and clunky, barely able to string enough words together for a coherent sentence (sometimes making me wonder why I bother at all), and I see many of my classmates with similar problems. And then I stumbled upon some posts that were beautifully written... I looked at them, read them, and my first thought was that I was insanely jealous of this person who could actually get a thought down on their page without sounding like a lunatic. But then I actually looked at the writing. I saw that this person had a huge vocabulary, which was one of the things that made the writing flow, it wasn’t redundant every other sentence. It was also obvious that they put a lot of time and thought into their posts.

It made me wonder. Why, when so many of the people at ASTI (and indeed, outside of ASTI) have the potential to be great writers, couldn’t seem to be able to achieve this level of skill. And of course, I am including myself in these people that probably could, but don’t... I don’t really know what I’m trying to say anymore, but this insight into writing, into the world, made me think of how much harder I could work, and how much better I could do. If only I’d get my feet under me and do it.

Side Note no. 2

So I read an article the other day about a mass grave found in either Pensylvania or Philedelphia (can't remember which)....

They were irish immigrants coming here to america for opportunity... hired right off the docks and brought to work on one of the toughest miles of railroad. The finished it, they did well, but some got sick and died of Chlorea. The official story is that they all died of the disease....

Recently, they found the grave of the 40-something immigrants... piecing together fact and legend, and using a lot of different methods... so far EVERY IMMIGRANT they have dug up was clubbed to death (with the exception of one, who has a bullet hole in his skull). The anthropologists on the site suspect that the first layer of bodies (the last layer they'll dig up) actually DID die of Chlorea, and that the others were murdered so that there was no chance of the disease spreading past the valley...

mmk, think about this, weigh your options, would YOU be willing to murder 30 immigrants and then probably kill yourself to ensure that many others outside your contained area would live?
It's a horrible scenario, and I have no idea how I'd deal with it... but life is often horrible, and things like this DO happen, the proof is right here.

Always wear shoes, you may have to be runnin'

Side Note no. 1

A few questions I was thinking about today.... tell me what you think of them?

What if we have no identity? what if identity is just an illusion we've built to make us feel superior?

How did we create a language? A language I'm typing in now, how do I know that you understand a thing I'm typing? How do we know that everyone perceives a word in the same way?

What would life be without a little risk?

Is there truly such a thing as safety?

It's actually possible to fully lower you mental walls? or do we only lower them to allow others a peek inside?

Someone who knows everything; do they really know anything at all?

Are advances truly "advanced"?

Are all fears irrational?