MORE KUMAH

More Kumah letters! Just to clarify, I had sent out the response to his first letter the day I got this. So he should have that letter by now.

Dear Skype,

This summer camp sure is long! We went swimming the other day. I passed my swim test but failed the race. I suck at running. :(

There is a petty officer here with the nickname "Honey Badger". He is really short and yells "I don't give a fuck" a lot.

Also during PT the other day, instead of yelling cadence we sang the Bel Air theme.

The internet has invaded boot camp. That... or I have gone insane and stuff is fucked. Speaking of fucked...

WRITE ME PLOX! I am lonely and have no idea what day it is. We don't have any normal calendars here, they just tell us what day of training it is. Sorta.

I know today is Sunday and now I remember; including myself there are 3 atheists in my division. Is pretty cool.


I miss you guys, and porn, and weird parts of YouTube. Probably miss porn the most though. Soz but true. Don't send me any though. I'll get by. Send me letters though. :(


- Kumah "SemenRecruit"

Will be sending out responses to this letter very soon, in a few days. I'll talk to each of you individually.

Again, if you want to send Kumah something, here's his address!

SR Hall, Harrison, P.
USS John F. Kennedy, Ship 09
Div 143
3415 Sailor Drive
Great Lakes, IL 60088-3515

A Very Personal Post

Sometimes I see an absolutely beautiful girl, in personality and in form, and I think, "maybe I should just give up everything I'm trying, and just settle down and become a 'regular' person, and actively try for a relationship."

Give up what, you might ask? A regular person? That's a horrible thing to say! You're a regular person too!

Well, simply put, I believe that when you're in a relationship, you submit yourself to another person's hopes and dreams, fears and anxieties. While this is true in most close relationships, like platonic friendships, I think being in a romantic relationship amplifies that effect. Perhaps not unduly, either: if you're sharing your life with someone, your decisions and your life's path will greatly affect them.

But everyone has a whole host of fears and anxieties, which tend to manifest in ways which I don't care to be the subject of.

One of my most strongly-held beliefs is that each person has the right to identify, face and overcome their issues on their own terms. I absolutely deplore when one person is bothered by someone's personality flaws, when that issue is not affecting them. More often than not, I ascribe this to empathy gone wrong: the person who is bothered is primarily bothered because that is how they would react if they themselves had the issue. If one cannot accept something in themselves, it tends to manifest itself in judgement.

This is one of my greatest fears in a relationship, because I feel like it restricts the aforementioned right.

But it's deeper than that. It's not merely a belief in a right, but my life's purpose. Let me repeat: my entire life's purpose is to face the problems I've dealt with my whole life and overcome them. Or at least, it has been for the past 5 years. Perhaps it's because I once felt ashamed of them, and the only way to make them go away was to "fix" them. Or maybe it's because these problems have presented obstacles which retard me in exploring my passions.

I "intentionally" (read: by my nature, I found no other choice, but fully embracing the journey consciously) set out on a journey 5 or 6 years ago to "live." I know, it sounds strange, but in many ways, I was deathly afraid of doing just that previously. I can't say I knew what it meant at the time, either. But I knew, abstractly, that I wanted to form more fully. I wanted to encounter more things that would make me question myself. I wanted to face issues head-on, even if some days it would cause me to not want to leave my bed.

Whatever decision I make to attempt to pursue my life's purpose, I don't want it to be a liability in a relationship.

Over the past few years, I've found myself relying more on comparisons to myself than to others to judge my relative progress in my life. Many have said this is the way real progress is made, and I agree. Many things I was once ashamed of I have now worked to accept to some success.

For example, I have never graduated college. I have, in fact, never tried. First, I had nearly completed my computer science A.S. when I found a job doing programming. I decided that, because I wasn't up to the mathematical challenges of computer science, and that my real passions lie in music, that I would begin studying music.

Of course, "studying music" for me means many things. Although I'd played and composed for 10 years, I couldn't sight-read. I had no formal musical vocabulary. So I had to begin at the beginning. And I am very happy and greatly enjoying this journey.

I still have that same job programming, and it allows me great freedom. But I have no external trappings of "success," I don't think. But internally, I gather steam and live a more "complete" life, gaining more knowledge and more maturity each day.

I don't think I was ever ready to move on. Now I understand why: I didn't have the tools. I didn't have the tools to move on from where I was, and if I had moved on from where I was, I wouldn't have had the tools I would have needed to live the rest of my life.

I don't have goals which are similar to common ones (buy a house, have a family, make more money than I did last year; I judge no one who has these goals, though). And of course, because I'm not dedicating my life to some great pursuit (yet, anyway) -- I'm not giving things up in pursuit of a PhD, or living alone in the woods for 5 years to better describe the human condition -- where I am right now in my life can look a bit... silly. As long as I continue moving forward in some way, then I am happy with my progress.

I don't feel like being told that my goals are silly or immature. They're not and I'm not. I don't really feel like being told anything. Call me stubborn, but I've 'walked the walk' in many ways. I don't compromise these beliefs in any serious way, if only because the proclamation of these beliefs follows an instinctual, base reaction.

And now we finally return to the original subject: why I feel a relationship would not allow me to continue to pursue these things.

Well, I should say, it's not quite true that I don't think any relationship would allow it, it's just... most. In my experience, there aren't many understanding people who are capable of putting aside their OWN personal issues to understand, to the best of their abilities, someone like me.

In my view, I reserve the right, always, to turn on a dime to follow some new "answer" to the purpose of my life, whatever that may be. Because at this point in my life, I'm not willing to compromise on finding that answer to placate someone else. Because, I have my whole life ahead of me, and I only get one of those. Just. One. And living one's life is one of the most beautiful evolving pieces of organic machinery.

Perhaps sharing your life with someone else is the ultimate goal of life, you say? One of the "must-see" attractions? Maybe. But to that I say that one cannot travel with someone else until they can travel alone. (And of course, people "travel with" others their whole life -- friend, family, etc. I do not discount help or relationships in living one's life, but just the limitations that tend to be imposed upon you in non-platonic relationship).

I think someone who would accept these things exists, but I consider it unlikely that I will run in to them.

And, perhaps unwisely, I'm concerned about being damaged during the 'finding" process. I know, it's a depressing thought, but one IS affected by experiences like dating, often negatively. How can you not be? You're opening yourself up to other's sensibilities, to other's hopes and dreams about who they would find. I think that telling yourself that you won't be damaged, and that it "all works out" is a rationalization. (Of course, it "working out" and being "for the best" are certainly possibilities -- it's all a matter of what you're willing to sacrifice. I say, though, that for some people, like me, it's an acceptable conclusion to come to, although perhaps not socially so.)

I don't relish the idea of short-term relationships, nor the idea of repeatedly being fit in to someone else's mold.

If I'm going to find someone, they must to fully accept me for me. I won't accept anything less. Ever.

And it's not a struggle to live that. It's easy. It comes naturally to me, as growing comes naturally to a tree.

It's mail day!

I knew this blog would come in handy one day. Like, for example, when my server's down and I have something really important to disseminate to multiple people. I know people don't use these blog things anymore, but I figure I'm behind the curve so it's time for me to start using a blog.

In any case, we have finally received a letter from Kumah!

I've included an image of the letter below for those who want the "authentic" Kumah experience, and the transcribed text.

TATTERS! Kumah is a little broken now. : ( I have some relevant facts and stories for y'all.

• The more you sweat, the less you pee.


• Everything I've been told was a lie.


• I can sweat so hard my glasses fall off

Some stories:

• I had to do 50 squats while saying "page 1, page 2, ... page 50" because I forgot to write page numbers on my watch log.


• I walked out of the restroom with shaving cream on to grab some new socks, got caught and was forced to march around the barracks (compartment) saying "look at me! I'm a clown!"

It sucks here, but it's an adventure. I am in pain a lot. But the uniform makes me look damn sexy. You know you want it.

Give my address to the Skype, give it a kiss, tell GS I'm sorry I forgot Him.

Tell slashermoviess I miss her, haven't forgotten about her, and the food here sucks.

-KUMAH :3

P.S. NO PACKAGES. I will get beat.

To finish it up, Kumah sent this text to me the night before he left:

Now, if you want to send something to Kumah, you have two options.

One, I will be sending Kumah a response on Monday, April 2nd. It will include any responses that people want me to send, coming from us as a group. If you want yours to be private, make sure to e-mail it to me at bootable@gmail.com, or send me a PM over Skype. But try and get it to me by the 2nd!

Second, if you want to send Kumah something, here's his address!

SR Hall, Harrison, P.
USS John F. Kennedy, Ship 09
Div 143
3415 Sailor Drive
Great Lakes, IL 60088-3515

The Importance of Being Honest

By far, one of the most important things I've discovered about life is the importance of being honest. Except I don't mean being honest with others, but instead, being honest with yourself.

While the other kind of honesty, being honest with others, is very important, especially when it comes to friendships (and avoidance of getting into sticky situations with those you might not feel so loyal to), it all starts with being honest with yourself. Why?

For one, if you're not honest with yourself, it's going to be very difficult to make changes in your life. If you refuse to admit that something is causing a problem in your life, you can't even begin to touch the problem if you can't see it. While this obviously applies to such heavy-hitting situations as addiction, for example, it also applies to the most benign of problems. Take procrastination, for example. I'm sure when you've procrastinated, you've told yourself "I'm going to do this later... I'm obviously not going to let it go as far as I did before." But you are, and therein lies the problem. You aren't even aware that internally, you are refusing to take on a task. Once you admit "no, I do not want to do this, and I am not going to do this," you see the problem. If you realize you're not going to do something... that you don't want to do something, now you have something to work from. Once you can see what you're actually doing and feeling, you can now, in turn, feel something about this. "It bothers me that I'm not going to do what I'm supposed to do." What's after that? Up to you; you're moving forward if you can get to that point.

I think the idea that they may not turn out to be who they think they are scares most people. If you believe you're good at something, or moreover, you have some motivation to believe you're good at something ("oh, I may suck at classes, but I learn differently than everyone else, and I'm smarter"), it may be extraordinarily difficult to face that you may, in fact, be terrible at what you think you're good at. And this causes many problems. One sign is unnecessary defensiveness: when you lie to yourself, you know it, somewhere deep inside.

Often, there can be other motivating factors to surrounding yourself with beliefs that aren't true. What reason does one do this? Is it something from your past? Being honest with yourself can be one way to find these motivations. Once you uncover them, you can work on dealing with them. And this is all the more important, because these phantom motivations can often affect many diverse areas of our lives.

Your self esteem, and the very concept of who you are, can be heavily affected by dishonesty with yourself. If you cannot admit who you are to yourself, you do not know who you are. You may not even be aware of what you're capable of, both good and bad. Everything I talk about here can even cause you to build up a fake personality for yourself, based on your insecurities; once that personality is out in the world, interacting with external forces, what it believes is not going to be reinforced, and you'll further entrench yourself in your beliefs. Therefore, it can cause insecurities.

I find that once you are honest with yourself, it can improve your sense of worth and respect. I mean, after all, if you're important enough to yourself to work at getting to know, you might well be important to others, right?

I find that often, you cannot be honest with others if you're not honest with yourself. Obviously, you cannot admit that you have done something wrong, if you refuse to believe it yourself. Less obviously, it manifests itself in other behavior, such as overtly lying to someone. Often, lying to someone is much less about the other person than it is about yourself: if you believed you were capable of making a good decision, yet you had not made one, you may externally create a situation that makes it look more as if you had done the correct thing. One of the things you might do is lie to someone else you care about. To you, you were almost trying to fix the situation. But to them, all that they can see if that you let them down.

This is all in service of one thing: making it look to yourself as if you had, in fact, made the correct decision. You just don't want to face it. And then what happens? You never confront the reason you hadn't made the correct decision in the first place, so you have no opportunity to fix it.

Finally, and most importantly, when you lie to yourself, you don't learn. Failure is one of the most important aspects of learning. When you fail at something, either a goal that you set for youself, or a goal that someone else has set for you, you can glean some useful information out of this. There's usually a reason you failed, but if you refuse to admit you failed because the very idea of failure to you is unacceptable, you don't move forward. Often, people come up with reasons that avoid accepting that there was something they could have done, or something they would have wanted to do, to avoid failing: the results aren't applicable to me, the challenge wasn't fair, it was another person's fault. Sometimes, this is true, but you'll know when it is and when it isn't... if you're able to be honest with yourself, no matter how difficult that is.

This undermines the very idea of our lives, because life is a series of attempts and results. If you ignore those results when they can actually have some impact on you (a success is great and encouraging, but if you've succeeded, you don't really need to change anything, do you?), you're not living.

The more I think about things like this, the more I realize how counterintuitive it is. Everything we see is external: the things around us, the people around us, even the effects we have on external things. But it all begins internally, inside ourselves, where often, we cannot see what is going on.

8-Bit Catherine's Freedom (Riven), and Misc. Stuff

A few months ago, I put together a sequel to my 8-Bit Myst Theme: 8-Bit Catherine's Freedom, from Riven! I've kept it secret... until I polished it a little bit. Here it is:

8-Bit Catherine's Freedom - Riven (right click to download, or listen to it in your browser below)

Of course, the most important thing is that Robyn Miller wrote the original, and it's copyright Cyan World, Inc. Remember that.

I created it much like I did the 8-Bit Myst Theme, using Cubase and several VST plugins (see the 8-Bit Myst post for details). It should nearly be a note-by-note recreation, made to sound like it was on an original NES. That means it's NOT a remix; I have a feeling it'd be way more awesome if it was, and that may be one of my upcoming projects. But until then, I hope you enjoy this. :)

In other news, on Wednesday, I got back from visiting nomad, Ed, GS, BroBro (GS' brother), and Odo in Minnesota at nomad's house. It was AWESOME. Someone should be posting pictures soon. I made pancakes. and biscuits.

Also, I have a full time job now at Princeton Theological Seminary, as an analyst in the IT Department. I'll be helping people over the phone, but also streamline the department a bit; come up with ideas to improve flow, help restructure the ticket system. That's the fun stuff. It's not my ideal job, but it is perfect right now. Why?

I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have gotten this job, because it will work around my school schedule, and allow me to save up a good amount of money for college and beyond. Additionally, it's something that requires some skill, so it makes me feel useful. It may not be something I want to do with the rest of my life, but it's something I need right now. My plan for my life is on track... now I just need to keep up the courage.

-TW :)

New Original Song: Glass Rabbit

So today, I had this... repetitive melody creating itself in my head, and I decided to sit down and record it to see if I could do anything with it. Well, while I was doing that, I came up with something else totally cool, and it eventually became this.

The first new song I'm posting on my new blog: Glass Rabbit (right click to download, or listen to it in your browser below) 

 

To me, it sounds reflective. Like, I could see this playing during a video montage of memories tinged with sadness, or just a longing to return to the memories, but an acceptance that they're in the past. I dunno, tell me what you think of it! Constructive critisism always welcome. :)

Oh, btw... I have completed my NES version of Catherine's Freedom, from Riven. However, I'm working on polishing it up. It seems a straight note-to-note conversion of the music is kinda boring. I'm going to try some things to spruce it up. So, look for that soon!

-TW :)

P.S. Thanks to vid, for suggesting 'Glass Rabbit' as the name! :D

8-Bit Myst Theme

So, GS posted about this on his blog awhile ago, but I shall post about it, to give it more exposure.

I took the original Myst theme, and remixed it to sound like it came from the NES. Then GS expertly synced the original intro to Myst to the music, and tada!

If you want to download the mp3 of the theme directly, you can get it here! http://mwitkowski.net/stuff/NESMyst.mp3

Remember, Myst and all related properties, including the intro video and the original theme, are copyright Cyan Worlds, Inc.




If you're interested in what I used to make it, I used Cubase SX 3 to recreate the music (you could use any VST-compatible sequencer, though). To create the NES sounds, I used the VST plugins SYNTENDO, Triforce (by Tweakbench), and NES VST (google 'em :D).

Additionally, GS made a "making of" video, outlining how he synced the two.




So, enjoy! I may be creating more 8-bit Myst stuff soon, so... any suggestions on what song?

-TW :)