“Nothing more than a change of mind, my dear. I always talk better lying down.” -James Madison, 4th United States President
I find myself writing this from the top bunk of a bed in a hostel in downtown Hamburg during the pouring rain because I currently have my life completely together. The owner of my former apartment decided that I was not to live there anymore and my new apartment in the lovely, smaller city of Bremen is being renovated and so I am in a bit of no-mans land between the two.
I am supposed to have been writing in my blog relatively often since I created my website but unfortunately with finishing your Bachelors, Moving to a new Continent, Traveling, Partying, Moving more, Working, and trying to get used to a new life is enough to stop you from focusing on smaller personal things you wanted to accomplish. These are nothing but excuses though. That is why I am here, dedicating 31 days to start writing about whatever comes into my mind, hopefully, as is my plan, I will continue writing after November. Probably not daily but at least more often. I hope you enjoy my disjointed, unpolished and slightly erratic thoughts.
If my family was rich and I knew I could have gone to University without external help, I might not have joined the military. If I didn’t join the military, I would lack hundreds of thousands of incredibly unique experiences that have changed how I think, see the world, interact with others, prioritize things and who I am. Few things in the world will peel away options from you like the military. You don’t choose when you wake up, what you do, where you go, when you eat, who you interact with, who you work with, etc. These are all decided for you and you can either accept the new life, or you can suffer. With all these options pulled away, you can focus on the most basic things for a human-like, how you are. How you treat yourself and how you treat others. I don’t think you have 100% control though. I think you can affect who you are, but I think you can’t force yourself to be different.
I like to be around people, I really don’t have issues with it. I am good with people, communication and connecting are things that come relatively naturally for me, but too many people and I can’t handle it. Large parties always make me so uncomfortable, it’s so informal and distant. I am good where we are all hanging out connecting to each other but when it is just a mass of people, I can barely handle it. I have tried to put myself in those situations more often to get used to it but I hate every second of it, and “enjoying” is probably the last word anyone would ever use to describe my state at a large party. I have forced this off myself but I realize now, at 24, that it’s just never going to happen and I try to not put myself in that kind of situations, even though it is relatively unavoidable sometimes with friends who are going to meet up and party.
I also really believe that you today, are different than past yous. Like 24-year-old Matt is not the same person as 21 or 18 or 16-year-old Matts. They share the same body, but they are not really the same person. Who I am now, is not the same as me from last year, honestly, I’m not even the same me as I was 3 months ago. Obviously, I have always been Matt, but a different Matt. 21-year-old Matt is dead, he was a person that I would never be now. The way I realized this was by talking to friends who I used to be close to, then fell out of contact with then re-connecting with and seeing what you talk about. Past Matt, 16-year-old Matt was pretty damn conservative, politically but most importantly personally. He was kind of religious, he thought if you did drugs you were a bad person, He judged people pretty quickly and never really allowed his opinions to change. If he had a bad first interaction with you, you two were pretty guaranteed to not be friends. It happened in school, at work, on his hockey team etc. Matt-16 was the worse kind of know it all and he kind of looked down on people for no reason other than because they didn’t fall into line with his beliefs and weren’t as up their own ass like he was.
I think everyone has a past version of themselves that they like the least. For me, it is absolutely Matt-16. Stupid haircut, thought he was too cool for school, knew everything but in honesty never learned anything. There is a great quote from former President John F. Kennedy, it comes from what is possibly his most famous speech of his career titled “The Nation’s Space Effort” it is the one at Rice University about his desire to go to the moon. The quote is “The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.” Through his time in the military. Matt-16 changed to Matt-18 and that laid the foundation for the Matt-24 that people know today, me. I learned so much about the world, about people from everywhere, Florida, Puerto Rico, Lousiana, Rhode Island, Virginia, California. I learned about life through so many peoples lives. Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, poor or relatively well off, former drug users or virgin goody-goodies, athletic or ridiculously nerdy. Outgoing and friendly or sheltered and “odd.” I had no options, either these people would be my friends or I would be alone. My first experiences in the Marine Corps changed who I was forever because for once I was forced to see other people on the same level as me. No one was better than me, and I was better than no one. We all had the same goal and accepted each other. My knowledge of the world increased exponentially with every new person I met and with every bit more that I learned, the more I realized that there was so much that I didn’t know. I understood that there was tons of cultures, views, opinions, and experiences that I didn’t have, but also that I sadly might ever have…. but that’s why I am here, that”s partly why I am here in Germany in a new culture, living a new life, with a new language and new people. Because I don’t want to live my whole life only seeing one view. I want to be the stranger, I want to be the uncomfortable one, I want to have to be the one that has to change the way they live.
I don’t speak enough German. I am disappointed in myself for that, I should text and speak to everyone I know that can speak German in their language. I have started with one friend. She never questioned it and I think it is because she knows I should have been doing that since May and not only starting the last week of October (last Saturday when I started) but better last than never and in that vein, it’s about 11:30 now and it’s better posting this late than never posting this.