end.

"No. Fuck it." Every time I try to come up with an interesting line, I try to impress. I try too hard. Trying isn't the fucked up part of it. The fucked up part is that I'm not doing any of it for myself. I'm doing it for the rest of the world so they'll pay attention to me. If I tried to impress myself, if I tried hard to work on my life, it'd be so much better. But I'm not. So. No, fuck it. This time, I'm writing a testament for myself.

Under all the stories I tell, under my white boy accent I got from my friends, under the outgoing and lazy traits I've seen to be popular, under all the shit I've filled my mind and body with is someone I didn't know. I was everything I had wanted to be all along, but I had constructed a fake personality to be, and I had become what I pretended to be. This was my one outlet, to write while thinking of my real voice, a pretender pretending to be the person I had forgotten in hopes he'll come back, and I'll be true again. Everything I've done these past five years wasn't me. I don't think I can fake this life anymore, lest I lose my soul for good.

The world isn't a mystery. Read a thousand books, and you'll learn to see everything fits together, and you'll realize just weren't looking from the right angles. The world has a plot we construct for ourselves. We can't forsee all the accidents and mistakes, but you can expect them and account for them if you can learn to read the storyline. My entire life I've been able to read the signs, but I've lived like an actor following a script, unable to avoid penned tragedies. I speak with a goddamn mumble because at some point, I just memorized the lines and stopped paying attention to what the fuck I was saying.

When I say I'm tired, it's not something that can be fixed with rest. If someone stabs you in the chest, you can't fucking sleep on it and get better in the morning. I don't know where I'm going from here. I don't know what I'm going to do. But I can't let my life go on cruise control any longer. I am so tired of believing the lies and excuses I've told myself to get by. After all the books I've read, every single one has a better ending than I've seen to occur in real life. I don't know what I believe in any more. People attribute the greater things they don't understand to God and Science and move on. I attribute God and Science to those greater things, and I'm going to move on.

I know the secrets to being happy. I know the secrets to flawlessly destroying yourself.
I don't know how to live. I hope I find out.

This is my testament. Thank you for reading.

I bought back my heart with it's weight in blood,

I set it to beat to the tick of a time bomb, and I have destroyed everything the very moment I gained what I had been looking for... for so long.

Take my body, and burn it in a boat.

I think I've had my last meltdown. I've thrown away almost everything in a short span of time, and I don't think I even regret it. The semester is over, winter is entering it's long stretch, and I've started sleeping all day waiting for the sun to set. I'm not quite sure what point there is to being here, but here in this room I am, waiting for something to start, so I can start anew. I realized I can spend my entire life alone. I'd be depressed, of course, but wouldn't I be just as depressed by being continuously wrecked by other people and myself?

This will be short.

I need money to buy a better place to sleep in and eat healthier. I need a job to have money. I don't want to work anywhere where I'll start hating myself. And I can't think of a single place where I'd be fine with working. So I'm more or less fucked.

There should be someone to hear me out about all I have to talk about. I don't want them to tell me anything, just hear what I have to say simply because they're interested. Not because they care, but because they read what I write and let it affect them. But I'm not sure if there's anyone who'd listen to me, much less be changed by me.

I guess that's why I started this blog.

Travel Journal #1

I hope, no, I day dream that if I make any more mistakes, I can learn from them. I have become more conscious of my day to day affairs, and I have realized that I accomplish nothing every day. I want to change.

I sit in a car, somewhere I don't want to be, on my way to somewhere I don't want to go, and I want to rid myself of the part that is easily pressured and convinced by others along with the part of me that is desperate enough to want to listen to them. However, this requires me to first convince myself, which is naturally impossible.

I have given up on relating to the desires of other people, because everything they claim to have is everything I want, but everything I see them do I mentally ridicule them for or is impossible for me to accomplish. I really want to be sorry for once and genuinely change myself, but it seems no-one I know is capable of it, and we're all humans, so maybe I can't either.

I haven't been in love for a long time. It might be best for me. On one hand, I have been far more clear-minded, but on the other, I haven't been truly happy in so long. The piss has been taken out of me, I have no vigor to help accomplish anything on the numerous lists of things I wish to do. I need to forgive myself for my past errors, but I want someone else to first, or it's impossible to think I can get past my past self.

It seems like I destroy or under-appreciate everything I have, and I am told I do it because I enjoy being upset. I am told I do it because I enjoy being unhappy and depressed. I am told I do so because I am only happy when I am suffering. After being told that for so long, I've almost come to believe it myself. If I desire anything, it is for these statements to be proven wrong by myself or someone else. Because despite all my unhappiness and 'suffering', I'm not truly happy.

I lack fear. I am not afraid of anything but losing my very own soul. It has come to mind that people are driven by fears that they have to overcome. If everyone else has fears, maybe I need to start being more afraid. If I have something to conquer, even myself, I can get better. I hope I can get better.

I don't feel like I'm growing much these days.

This scar turns purple in the winter.

Fuck everything I was originally going to say in this post. Because it was entirely meaningless shit I pulled out of my ass to make a filler post for this part of December.

I'm not a goddamn patron saint, but forgive me if I want to mean something to someone.

I don't know who I am, or where I'm going. That's what I was going to say. But that has become a lie this night after too much stress and too much night-time backseat driving. I know where and who I am, and where I'm going doesn't concern me. I haven't slept in around twenty four hours. That's helped clear my mind more than I can tell you. I have thought, it is true I want fans. Though I only want a fan I can be a fan of.

But let's start with the basics. I want to tell almost everyone I know this:

"Don't ever talk to me again. I don't intend on seeing you from here on out. If you're wondering why, the reason is so simple I can't hardly understand it myself. I couldn't until now, after five years of interference between my heart and my mind.
I surround myself with people who see me as someone more than just someone. Each person I consider a friend or lover is a bigger part of my life than myself, and is essential to me.

I thought about whether or not I'm essential to you, and I'm sure you don't have to tell me what the answer is.

Tonight, I realized I'm expendable, a detachable part of your life. There are six billion people on this Earth, and to you, I'm just another one you just happened to become familiar with. I'm not your best friend, I'm not your lover, I'm not someone you need. I am someone you hang out with because I am funny, or I'm a hypocrite and I ask for attention. I could so easily walk out of your life and hardly affect you, and because that is what it is, I'm going to do so. After this, I will never talk to you past a common greeting. You can tell our friends I'm a dick for all I care. But as far as it's going to go, you are going to watch me walk away and not fight for a single damn thing. And I'm not going to fight to change someone else. So what you're going to do here is watch me walk away without a single 'good-bye'."

And it will go unsaid. Because I don't have the guts to say this to anyone without the naturally made opportunity, and no-one has the patience to hear this out without interrupting me. However, here in this journal lies my resolution, and I will hold to it, because no-one else will hold me to my promises. I am so entirely sick of thinking after a night of going out how bad I felt being there. But that's my life, a motto of repetition,

J. Cassaday, Feeling Bad Everywhere.

I've found myself a liar in a mirror, and he's fun to talk to.

So ends Fall, and the onslaught of Winter begins.

Winter is hell. Every hell imaginable.
Although I'm sure it's debated which is worse, a death by fire or by freezing, I'll be the one to side with slowly dying by lack of heat is a pathetic and incredibly horrific way to go.

That being said, I would just love to die from a lightning strike. That would be the most fulfilling moment of my life. I don't have a deathwish, but being killed by a natural phenomenon and electricity somehow makes me think that is the most bad ass cause of death. I'd hate to drown, freeze to death, burn to death, die of old age, diseases and/or on a surgical table somewhere.

But death by the all famous Zeus' Wrath? Sure, go ahead and turn me into a metal rod.

But I have more expectations of my life to let it end any time soon. I have matured, like a caterpiller into a butterfly. Except not really. (For those of you that don't know, a caterpiller that goes into a cocoon isn't the butterfly that comes out.) I have more or less had my tumor of intelligence removed alongside my depression, and so now I lack any motivation but to live, eat, breathe, shit, and sleep. Not in that order. And there may be a few other things. But it seems like in a week I only have eighteen hours that seem any different from one another. Just like in a blizzard, everything really gets whited out to be the same.

It's odd, I don't know who I am anymore, but whenever I write, through stories or this blog, I always sound the same, just a bit older and a bit more immature. All my life, I've lived a shaken snow globe, and in the blizzard you can't see the town, so it's odd for me to know where I am when it all settles down.

So status update; I'm alive, without love yet still wide-eyed in my time, I'm doing just fine getting my gangster Bachelor's Degree and later my all-powerful Master's Degree.

"But what field?!" I hear the crowd shout. But what else could I major in? Journalism, of course, is all I can seek. "But won't you be poor and start living on dirt floors?!" But of course! It's all I can do to make myself seem legitimate and dedicated, considering I've never worked a god damned day in my life. I mean really, if someone came up and offered me a job, I'd take it. Seriously. I need money.

Worrying about other people is my [favorite past time] / [part time job]. I try to be the most reliable person for anyone other than myself. Although, once whatever problem is dealt with, I completely ignore the person I was helping. I think it's because I can't stand to have anyone I know be upset except for myself. I don't know what to call it, it's simply my condition. I'm not interested in breaking down my psychological processes. It's a pain in the ass.

So I might fail college. Probably not, but I should put a lot more effort in. Funny, I should be writing my speech paper and finishing a story that someone commissioned, but I find myself updating my blog.

It's 'cause I find talking to no-one more entertaining than my other priorities.

I don't think people should talk to me. I want people to want to talk to me.

I am a victim of my own thoughts and ideas.

How has it come that my sun filled hours and nightly ones have been possessed, no, for a better word, HIJACKED by day dreams and fantasies?

This is absurd. Is my life truly so boring I have want of another? Does my longing run so deep as to constantly think about what might life could be like? (Or in some situations, what my life could be like if I was someone else entirely.)

And so this wandering train of thought brought me to a point of wondering: " What do those who have everything they want day dream about?" Do they at all? What is life like without impossible aspirations to strive for? Boring? Satisfactoy? Awesome as fuck?

Someone get back to me on this. It's important to my well-being.

Striking a different tack, when will I finally accomplish something I can always feel accomplished for doing? It's nerve-wracking nowadays. I've begun to lower my standards. Screw love, I'll settle for a pretty girl who likes me. Screw being famous, I'll settle for one day liking myself. And LASTLY, screw you, because there is no one reading what I write.

I think, therefore I am.

I think I am alone, so I must be, correct?

I wondered why we never used the front door at my grandmother's old house. Now I know.

People take for granted something, or someone, that actually serves their intended purpose. This is my new excuse for not doing what I'm told.

"As Life Gets Longer..."

It's occured to me I must force upon myself reason and logic in order to be happy. All my actions are far too willy nilly, crazy, and generally insane. And I've been about seventy-five percent miserable throughout this period of idiodicy.

"Think before you speak." I've never really thought about any of the important decisions beforehand. I've always rushed in, for better or worse. And when things have turned out for worse, I've fought with all of my available strength to change the world to suit my decision and make it better. Odd way to have lived. Even odder way to live now, considering what all I've done has resulted in.

If wishes were horses, it wouldn't matter. I don't even have a goddamn high horse to ride in on. There's no changing the past, unfortunately, and it's even harder to make the future what you want it to be. Especially for those of you out there who don't know what the hell they want.

But it doesn't really help me either way to know what I want. Doesn't mean I can have it.
I want a back massage. (Not going to get one anytime soon.) I want to be loved. (Not going to happen anytime soon.) I need to get a good night's rest. (Might happen.) So maybe the Rolling Stones were right.

You can't always get what you want, but sometimes, you can get what you need.









Yeah right, as if I'd end on something cheesy as that.

So check out my band's website. Because we need more followers.
MYSPACE.COM/beautifulstates
... I should probably get people to read my blog first.

The Wishing Fields.

"Uh, dude, some retard put onions on your onion-less pizza. Is that a showstopper for you or would you like that remade? Oh, alright, cool, I'll throw in some free food too." - Some Donatos guy.

If you don't give up, life still can fuck you over.
Bullshit life into believing it'll work, and it might.

I love when people surprise me by being clever and interesting. It makes it seem as if humanity has a hope by circulating positive karma. I do my best. I try to be so much more entertaining than I really am. I am never confident in anything I do because I never get reassured enough, and when I do, I don't believe the person reassuring me. I more often than not get shit for all the things I do.

I've become a realist who encountered a full-blown romance and let it change me. It's annoying grip on me becomes more prominent every day. I like it. I hate it. I think I'm in love with myself for being in love with someone else, unfortunately. I'd run if I could, but I already gave in and gave up. So I quit smoking because I knew it'd impress her. I quit smoking as a personal testament to a truce on the war against myself. I quit smoking because I was beginning to enjoy it too much, and that's slightly tragic.

I can't get lost in anyone like I get lost in her. I won't trust anyone like I trust in her. If worst comes to best, I'm going to college, getting married, having a child, and settling down too early for anyone else to respect me for. Not necessarily in that order. It'd be interesting to see the reactions of my family should best come to worst. I don't want to miss having this opportunity in the future, because I know the value of what I have now.

But hey, if worst comes to worst, I'll be tragic enough to write better.

I have a cut on the inside of my lip. It's killing me. It won't go away. Salt water, listerine, nothing will cure it. But I know it'll be gone eventually. It won't end my life. Although while I have it, damn this cut.

I started writing a book called The Wishing Fields. I don't know what it's about. Because I'll never get it right. I got it from a dream. Lke most my worst/best ideas. I'm working on it. The overall idea is a girl who comes to expect more than what she has, and a boy who's reaction is to want to give her more than he has. They both don't know each other well enough to justify a damn thing, but they are an essential part of each other's life. She can predict his life, he's sure of nothing but that he loves her, and is guaranteed to fuck up until he gets it right.

Second chances are usually much more effort than they're worth.

The fifty-second chance is usually the one that'll kill or make you.

The Cure for Boredom amongst people is Blogging.

Whew.

I'm tired of parties. But this only happens when I'm at one.
I'm starting to worry about my life more. Future goals, college, love, etc.
I have no ambition, and no motivation to drive me.
All I speak is pure drivel these days.

I like blogging. It's a slate I can pour all my thoughts upon.
And simultaneously be truly obnoxious.
I care. About you, myself, my friends, my family. Sort of.
Just not enough. Not nearly enough. Only adequately enough to keep going.
And going.

I remember days where I used to just hang out and enjoy my life. Not simply tolerate it, but actually feel like I belonged where I was. Thinking about those days brings out a nostalgia I never knew I had. Sitting around the John Deere curb with my skater friends, talking shit about pretty sunsets, life, and still saying we loved the shit, the shit tastes so good.

We used to walk around at night, sometimes after other school's football games (ours was nothing to speak of) meeting new people, being hilarious, and existing as people who believed that our lives would become nothing, but we had what we had, which was enough to sustain us. It's not our lives as a whole that make an era, those moments are what make us. Not golden years, since there are no such things. No, golden moments. Moments we won't forget, and will look back upon, saying: "Don't fucking remind me of those times. Those were the good days." Because as a whole, these teenage years are stress, bad decision making, drama, holding out for a better time that won't happen.

No, it's those golden moments that make our lives worth it.

It's like that old, shining, nostalgic Americana period that never existed anywhere but we know happened. It happens in those moments where you're lying on your friend's roof looking at passing cars. It happens walking through lit-up empty football fields in the middle of the night. It happens when you have no where to stay, and you ask some girls if you can crash on their floor, and they let you. (Thanks, Megan and Laura.) It happens when you first realize that happiness does occur, and it is occurring to you.

I never realized spring is so heart warming, and that all these things I remember actually were worth remembering.

Don't fucking remind me of those times. Those were the good days.

It still feels like winter to me.

"A cold open is the technique of jumping directly into a story at the beginning or opening of the show, before the opening credits are shown."

And then I realized that's what my entire life is. Just constantly jumping back and forth between stories, with no clue what is going on or any idea about what's happening. But I suppose that's what makes it all the more exciting, albeit equally frustrating.

So I lied. I said I would post three times a week, when I haven't even touched this for a little more than half a month. I guess making promises make me betray them through procrastination. I hate my personality.

Good news for those of you (who? no-one, in all actuality) who read this and despise me. I've had all my personal possessions taken away from me (apart from my cigarettes and lighter) and I am being forced to live like a monk for awhile.
Who knows, I might actually work out or get things done now that I have no outer distractions.

I was on the bus earlier. A blind person got on the bus with a seeing eye dog, and when she sat down, someone had the deformed brain cells to say to her: "That's a beautiful dog you have there." I hate people sometimes. They make me irate.

Irate is by and by a good word...

I realized I have an intense dislike for hope. As a ridiculously sized double edged sword, it really does crush you if it doesn't come through. But if you remove hope and lack expectations, you won't ever feel the happiness of that rare occurrence where your expectations are fulfilled.

Uh, yeah.

Where are my fucking glasses?

Anyway, I was totally and utterly destroyed a couple of nights ago (emotionally, like the whiny little bitch boy I am) after going out and having my heart crushed. (Wah wah, hear me cry.) So afterwards, I went to drown myself in my other friends' comfort and their alcohol (read: shit beer) while trying to recover from my traumatizing experiences that I so regularly indulge in. I surprisingly succeeded.

It's funny, watching a small intoxicated Vietnamese friend of mine trying to drunkenly walk in my friend's girlfriend's (although technically she's also my friend, so the pretext was not required) heels.

I need to take things as they come. Moderation. Not to look the gift horse in the mouth, but not to ignore the fact there IS a goddamn horse.

I'm not good with moderation.

Two things dawned upon me.

1. The word friend is incredibly cheap.

2. Ugh. I still like her. Almost love her. Even though there's no chance of me being happy with her.

But you know, in the end, after all your excuses have been cast away, it's all about the girl. That's all there is to it.

I need to smoke.

Because SMOKING, DRINKING, and SNORTING COCAINE makes you cool.

Right?

The latter half of a monday is the killing half.

There should be an accent...

PART DEUX (Yeah, I like faux-french. Hence my remarkable usage of the word faux.)

Someone once told someone who told me less is more.

Now it seems to me that seems a bit situational. If you’re overdosing on heroin, obviously less would have been just a bit more healthy for you. I’m not sure if that’s what the someone meant, but it’s the way I see it.
Because whenever I get more of what I want, my life is proportionally better. Less of what I want: my life gets proportionally worse.

I hate semantics. Which is all I seem to discuss.

I’m going to start writing a book. Dunno how, considering I am almost certainly incapable of writing in the third person. (It’s not natural, I tell you.) But I’m going to try. And then publish my work. And watch in despair as no-one buys the two copies sitting on the shelf in your local bookstore.

I bet if I cried on a webcam people would like me more.

I’ll be updating this blog tri-weekly. (No, not every three weeks, that would be semi-monthly, as in once or twice a month. You are fucking stupid.) So probably Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. For future reference, I’m not doing this for anyone. Because there’s no anyone who reads this, to my knowledge.
Maybe I’ll get a cute Internet stalker. At least that would make life a bit more interesting.
Whoever’s reading this (probably myself) should send me presents. They help my self-esteem and overall quality of life.

I could probably turn a better profit making shirts on the Internet than I could being a writer with an English major saying: “I am most unquestionably intellectual, hence my remarkable usage of the word ‘irascible’.”

Fuck, now I’m just as bad as those tools who sit at their computer making fun of English majors.

There should be an accent over the e in cafe. But there isn't.

If there's one thing I know, it's that I haven't had enough sleep.

Getting up in the morning takes more effort than it should. Really. I have to threaten myself to convince my legs to slide out of bed. I'm sure there should be an easier way.

There's a rolling sensation in my gut, like two boxing prizefighters with a long grudge decided so say "Fuck it", and go all out. Or maybe I'm hungry. I won't know until I feast later on today.

I decided my friends weren't good for my health, and cut about half of them out of my life so that I don't become so frustrated I die of an emotional heart attack. Hormones drive teenagers insane. Which is only several levels of fucked up because we build the foundations of our life during these years. Great, isn't it?

I noticed the vending machines in the school's cafeteria are the same models that were used in prisons ten years ago.

Being broke makes you think that you'd be better off with money. Well, you're probably right. But you'd still have some amount of problems that would distress you. (If you have a disposable income, please give me a donation. After all, the world doesn't need another starving writer, does it? I'm sure a well-fed writer dining on corruption and the treatments of the "better" life probably writes so much more eloquently than me.

Probably.

Maybe I'll find out what other starving writers think when I move to California next spring. I might find other people to bitch about life with me.

That fire in your eyes tells me something you don't know about yourself.

Not popular. I don't want to be popular. Beyond the fact that it goes against the law of indie conservation (The less popular something is, the better it is. For scientists, x= (1/y); x being ratio of awesomeness, y = amount of people who know about it. x being 1 is means it's either the coolest thing in the world no-one knows about, or it's shit. Or both.) but more because I wouldn't know how to deal with the incredible pressure being popular brings.

Not that I'll ever be popular. But maybe over time, over the course of thousands of years, I might become respected by at least five people. Or three.
Fuck, maybe I should start a webcomic. Everyone likes a webcomic.
These days, good writing isn't hard to come by. Great writing is. I can't do either, so I'm probably screwed.

This Mountain Dew Voltage tastes like melted down gummi bears.
Which makes me wonder. Why the fuck do we colour our beverages? Blue soda. Purple juice. It's not healthy, or sane by any means. Does it appeal to you? Does it make it better than anything else you could pick? Does it enhance your drinking experience?

I don't know, but it tastes good (read: delicious).

So I'm wondering why I'm here at a party and my friend is walking and talking (unintentionally mind you) like Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow.
It's interesting. Kind of fun. But I'm simultaneously hating myself for even being here.

Beer is disgusting, liquor is terrible until you're drunk, being drunk is exciting.
Except when you're sober, and you realize (perhaps the morning after) that everyone else being drunk is kinda... fucking stupid. Or incredibly entertaining. It all really depends on what your personality boils down to.

"How are you doing?"
I'm just fine.

You have your hunger, I have mine. This blog (read: inelegant diary) isn't about anything in particular, just something I can put down, like a butterfly nailed on a display.

I think I'll smoke a cigarette. I want something to be addicted to.