The Good Decision

I've made a LOT of mistakes in my life. I have done some seriously stupid things in my life, and allowed myself to do some goofy things that have put me where I am. I have lit myself on fire, accidentally and on purpose. I have crashed longboards going 35 miles an hour down a hill on a semi busy road in a city I live in. I have done legal and illegal things that have left lasting impressions on my life and my personality. I would say my good to bad decision ratio has been about 3:1 in my life until now. But one thing has never in my mind been anything other than the most amazingly right decision I have ever made in my life. One decision has influenced me my whole life to become a better person and do better in my life. The decision that set me on the path I am on now, in an attempt to become the best person I can be, and improve myself in so many ways. I decided to poke back the girl who poked me so innocently in high school band to make sure I wasn't lonely.
My wife, a sweet woman who has many siblings, is definitely the most important living thing in my life, and has been the light of my life through some dark times. Times where the things around me were terrible, and where the things inside me had gotten pretty dark too. She has loved me throughout the good and the bad times, and has stayed by my side, even when I didn't love myself. She has been stronger than iron when I needed support, and softer than cotton when I needed love and forgiveness. My wife has been the human representation of grace and love incarnate at times, and has been the most amazing person I could have ever met in my life. The life I have now is amazing and perfect, not because I have things or money, but because I have her.
Tomorrow she turns 23, and she deserves to have the whole world know that she is the most amazing and wonderful woman in the world. Sadly my only medium for spreading this word is my blog, so any poor sap unlucky enough to stumble across this gets to read the goofy sappy stuff that I write here and probably get sick from reading something so sickly sweet. But this is the honest to god truth about my life My wife is probably not the perfect woman. I am definitely not the perfect man. And life will not always be amazing, even if we are madly in love. But I can say one thing for sure, with absolutely no doubt, and no fear: I did not make a single mistake in dating, loving, or marrying her, and I can only pray that I never fail to make her as happy as she has made me. Happy birthday Love. You are my sunshine.

Nobody is Invincible

I want to write this post with the hope that anyone may someday stumble across this looking for answers or just because, and take something good away from this. I know that most people who come across this don't know me, and probably never will, but the long and short of my life story is this: I have always been a stubborn, hardheaded guy with a lot of attitude and emotion. Most people would not look at me and say "He is going to be stuck at home someday crying and afraid because of drugs" and they would certainly not have thought that the unstoppable Ace was going to be sitting at home every day afraid and terrified because the world seems so scary and confusing now.
So let me tell you something about the world. No one is invincible, and no one is perfectly safe from anything. You may be curious about trying something like pot or acid, and you may want to believe that it is safe and fine to use, despite what everyone tells you. And sure, there are a lot of people out there who are smoking and have been for years, who have dropped acid a thousand times and they don't have a single bad story, but the truth of the matter is, that isn't a life you want to live. It's so fake and lined with lies and false promises of enlightenment and pleasure. Since I have gotten clean I have come to love life for what it really is, and what it really has to offer for me. I have fallen in love with my life, and with my wife, all over again, and I can't even begin to explain how much better everything is now. It is like stepping out of your front door and discovering that after ten years of being blind, you can see again, or like finding out that you have been living with blinders on for years. It is terrifying to look at who I was before and think that I could have done that for years, or even worse, I could have just done it a few more times and not woken up one day. I still have a lot of anxiety as I detox from everything, and every day is a struggle to return to the guy I was before, with a lot of fear and uncontrollably scary thoughts that intrude on my daily life now. All it takes is one bad reaction for your whole life to change when you start up something like this. I can't say it has been all good or all bad, and that is just the truth of any situation. Growth never comes from stagnation, and very rarely is truly growing something easy or painless, because life isn't easy or painless. Don't let people convince you anything is harmless, because even if it didn't happen to them, it doesn't mean it can't happen to you. Drugs are not okay, because anything you use to escape reality is just that: an escape. There isn't any real merit to it, and the aftereffects can be destructive and terrifying. Ace out.

Coming Closer to God

During all of this, I am finding new beauty in the world and in the things I have that I never truly appreciated before. God blessed me with amazing friends and family, and put me in places to lift me up, even when I was down. I am sure I have blogged about the family I grew up in, and the miserable things I went through, but I have realized something during all of this. God truly does give people the things they need to get through life, if they just learn to look at them and appreciate them for what they are. I may not have had the best family life at times, but I was blessed with so many honorary family members and people who could help me learn and be raised up. I was sad and lonely, and thought I would never be loved, and God blessed me with a wife who loves me so unconditionally that I can honestly say she is like God's love made manifest for me. I can't even begin to explain how amazing the things that have been put in my life are. I realized as well that when you get involved in drugs, you start to take things for granted. You just want to get high and blow by life, not really stopping to smell the roses or appreciate life. It becomes about just getting money and living well, and not about truly appreciating the blessings we have. The amazing world that God loved us so much he created for us.
I am reconnecting with my faith, and I am finding that God has been present in my life in so many amazing ways. He truly does lift you up when you suffer, and never lets any bad thing happen without a light to see in the end. People like to slip into the thought pattern that if God truly is all loving, then why do bad things happen, but the truth of the matter is that it is our own fault. We are broken beings, born of sin, and not truly whole because of that. Yet even in our suffering, he provides us with something no other person can: unconditional, unfailing love. He allows us to know him, experience him, and be with him, even in our darkest times, and our faith is rewarded.
I have a story to share, one that I will leave names out of because it is not my own story, but it is very pertinent to this. I know two guys, M and C. M is a recovering alcoholic who totally ruined his life by driving drunk and allowing himself to be overcome by his demons. C is a drug obsessed self proclaimed hippie, who claims to have knowledge of the working universe, and claims he put himself back on this earth through his own power after having some sort of breakthrough. M is recovering nicely, and has used faith in God and the support from his friends to rebuild. Keep in mind they both have the same job. They both work at the same place, doing mostly the same work. But M is well known as the best at his position, and is well liked, tolerant of others, and just a really great person. He loves and laughs, and has brought his life from shambles, back into the brightest of his days. He and I have been talking lately about how the bad times in life, when we stray, is when God just barely lifts up his hand of protection, to give us an idea of what life without him is like. At first things seem okay, and you can be happy and free for a time, but eventually, things will fall apart. In C's case, he suffers from so many physical ailments that he has no money, no time, and the only money he manages to bring in is from drug sales and from illicit activities. M n the other hand, with the same job, and no illicit money, has managed to rebuild his life, and has been amazingly blessed in life. He has so many fantastic things to be happy for, and he truly does have a life of joy and peace. In this one interaction of my life, I can see God working to help those who want his help.
Even now, as I am coming back to the faith, I am still plagued with fear and worries, thoughts of terror and fear, some of which may be evil playing defense as I try to come back to my faith, after having me in its grip for so long. I may never know what or why I am going through this. The only thing I do know is that hindsight is 20/20, and someday I will look back at this and wonder how I ever lived my life without faith. In my  darkest hours, I have cried out to God, and even though I am not being whisked away from all my troubles instantly, maybe it is part of my growth process, and God has a bigger plan for me than to just sit and "get better" when I ask. Not many people learn lessons when they are pulled from trouble without consequence. I have faith, and that is all I need.
On a very personal, and rather selfish note, I think that of all the mistakes I have made in life when I wasn't letting God guide me, he guided my wife to me, and put her in my life because in His all-knowing power, he knew that without her, I may have been sucked into the depths of disbelief and cynicism. He truly wanted to make sure that I wasn't left without a paddle. I don't know why, and I suppose that is one of the greatest things about Him is that we don't deserve, nor could we ever earn His love, but we get it anyways, because that is just the way a true God works. We can't question it, and we can't try to explain it, because the great I AM is not about knowing or understanding. It is about faith. Ace out.

Where the Anxious Things Are.

Life has recently become hell for me. Not in a real sense, with suffering or pain in the physical world, but rather in an emotional, mental sense. I won't lie to anyone about this: I used to smoke pot pretty heavily. I don't know who this will surprise, and I do know it will disappoint some people. I have no excuses and no good defense. I used it to deal with a lot of personal problems, and as an escape. But recently, I have begun suffering severe anxiety, unrelated to that, I am sure. I have since quit smoking, of all forms, and even lowered my caffeine and fat intakes. I have failed to post for a long, long time now, and I feel that I owe a long and drawn out explanation to anyone that cares.
College, work, and social life has been taking up a lot of my time. I had overworked myself to the point of feeling like I had no free time, and the only free time I had I wasted getting high and laughing at things that only someone in my state of mind could have been comfortable laughing at. I let mirijuana get in between me and some of my closest friends, and in some ways, even for those who may not have known, I have become a bit of a disappointment. I owe the world an apology, because any life wasted by this is a life wasted. I ended up trying LSD and I regret every bit of the things I did while I spent my time on drugs. I am glad to say that in some ways, this anxiety has saved me from spiraling even further downward...
One thing that people who know me can attest to is that I have always been a nice, sweet guy, who loved to laugh and loved to love. Pot never changed that, but it made it less real. I have been almost three weeks clean from cigarettes and pot, and my caffeine intake has been lowered to almost nothing a day. I have lost weight, and begun fixing things I was stagnating on in my life. I am trying to get a better job in sales, that would double my wages, and give me the freedom I need to work around my college schedule, and give me the ability to live my life the way I want to.
Now for the hard part. The anxiety. I have never really dealt with a lot of this before, possibly from the pot, possibly just one of those things that never manifested. But I began having anxiety attacks that would put me in the hospital, afraid for my life and my heart. While there, I realised that I had been making severely stupid mistakes in my life, including smoking cigarettes with a heart condition. I am lucky to have had an experience like this in some ways, because I have become too scared of cigarettes and drugs to even consider taking them anymore... But the serious reality of anxiety is that you become obsessed with dark thoughts, that make you feel convinced you are dying, or that someone you love is going to die. Occasionally nightmares plague me like the disease that phrase is named after. It is exhausting, waking up feeling pain and fear and worse, all from the moment I open my eyes. The physical pain alone is enough to drive someone mad, but the mental anguish and assault that feels as though the demons of hell are knocking on the backdoor of your mind, trying to get you to hate yourself or the world. Life becomes a constant struggle to deal with the fear of driving, moving, talking, or doing anything of any import, because the fear of an anxiety attack is almost as bad as an actual anxiety attack. Tears we up in my eyes as I write this, because I feel as though I have brought this on myself in many ways. I am learning meditation techniques, and I am taking my heart medication again to deal with my high blood pressure, an issue that existed before this. I will never be able to get back the time I spent smoking and wasting away, but I have the future ahead of me, and with no desire to repeat the past, I feel as though I can now look forward to a bright future. I know the holidays are hard for me to deal with because they are something that I look back on with anger and fear because of abuse in my past. I know that there are likely a ton of good reasons for me to be anxious, and should therefore be able to handle the stress, but the magnificent wonder of anxiety is that the irrationality of it can be the hardest part to deal with. It just never feels like you are going to get a handle on the disease. I can assure you that in the span of a few weeks, I have been through a lot of terrible thoughts and emotions and fears, but I believe that with help from loved ones, and from the wonderful creator, I will be able to move along. I have learned meditation and coping techniques to face my fears, and carry on, but I know I will likely never be quite the same again. For now, all I can say is that I owe the world my sincerest apologies, and that I should be more active from now on, given things do not get worse on the anxiety front. Ace out.

Incredible Opportunities, and Hard Decisions to Make

I am faced with some incredible new moments in my life. I have a great opportunity to go to Japan for a semester for only 7,000 american dollars, and I am extremely excited, however, I am so nervous, and I know my fiancee is also very worried. I have wanted to do this for over 12 years of my life now, and I know this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. It is a 15 credit hour intensive language program for Japanese, and I have never wanted to do something so much. I know it will work out, but Prayers and good vibes are requested. I appreciate all the support from the (two) people who read my blog.
Also, on a slightly less exciting note, I am a beta tester for a mobile game! I was one of 10,000 people out of about a million selected to test the new Raid function of Brave Frontier. It is exciting, but simple. So that is neat.
But I am facing a new decision. I think I want to be an English teacher. I want to change my major, and I know why... After all this time, I have been trying to do something I thought was fun, as a hobby, and turn it into a profession. I enjoy making and playing music, but I do not like learning about it, or learning the basics of music theory. I hated it. Audio Studies was driving me crazy. However, after much thinking, the only thing I have ever done well in consistently, because it never bored me, it never made me feel annoyed, was English. I love. I have always kind of wanted to be an English teacher, especially because some of the most influential people in my life have been English teachers who took the time to get to know, and love me, and help me better myself. A certain Moum of mine has been so caring, and so helpful to me, I honestly feel that without her, I may not be quite the same person I am. I had a lot of anger as a highschooler, that I hid, and that I let control me sometimes. Moum, without ever knowing it, and without ever meaning to, she provided a motherly figure like I had never had before. She was always willing to talk to me, and even when I know I was annoying and frustrating, she was always patient with me, and I loved her for that. She made me want to be a better person, and as I felt more and more like she was my honorary family, I also became good friends with her Little One, who quickly became my little sister in everything but blood. That family made me who I am today, in some small way, and I want to be the kind of English teacher she is. I realise my fiancee may read this and think I am not giving her any credit, but I tell her every day how she changed me for the better. :)
Moum, however, I do not believe I have ever thanked properly, so whether or not she ever reads this, I want to give my thanks here, in a way I could never voice. Thank you Moum. Thank you for tolerating my loud mouth, arrogant childhood, and immature outbursts. I realize now that no matter how frustrating I may have been, she always made me understand the better side of things. I got answers from her about life situations that I would never have gotten answers from other family members. She gave me the confidence to strike out, and get back up when I failed. And she never once made me feel like I was inferior. She always spoke to me as an adult, and helped me understand when I was being a child. I made a lot of mistakes, and I know that I have disappointed her before, but even then, she never lost faith in me, and that helped me keep faith in myself. If you ever read this Moum, I love you. I am so thankful for your influence, and I am glad to have known you.
As for what I want to do as an English teacher, I think I would very much like to teach English in Japan, because that sounds like a great venture. It is something to think very hard about, and I am going to be doing a lot of thinking for a while. Until I have a solution, I will remain my chipper self. Ace out!

Class is Cancelled

President's day has been extended here at the Academy. What started off as a four day weekend for me, seeing as how I had no classes on Tuesdays turned into what can be best described as an impromptu winter break. Snow days left us stranded in our dorms, until Wednesday night, making me miss both a Math review session, and a Kanji test in Japanese. (Look at my new keyboard!!        こんいちわ!!) I have been rather stressed, cooped up like a lion, with all this pent up energy and no classes to expend it on. Even with my new 3ds, I am unable to focus on anything without a proper outlet. I also came to a small impasse in Majora's Mask for my 64. I got the new version, and my 64 is currently much less attractive. I need to distract myself for a day, and take my final challenge on in the game, before I start on the new version, so expect my final Majora's Mask post sometime this Sunday.
Lastly, I have a fun little story to share with the world, but I know I am going to get flak for this, so I will be hiding out for a while after I post this. I went to a friends house on another slick day, and I had another accident, this one much more... high speed, than the previous. I was on another side street, going about fifteen, keeping great balance, and a safe speed, when someone passed me, and lost control of their car. I swerved to get away from them, and lost control myself. Luckily, with a little quick wit, and more than a little adrenaline, I managed to shift my weight towards the side of the road, avoiding the other car, and slamming into the lawn of some random stranger. The other car, being the genius it was, regained control, and sped off, not even bothering to see if I was okay. Aside from some cold finger, and a very sore right arm, I escaped mostly scot-free. I am definitely not going to risk any more icy adventures though. Obviously I can't trust myself or others. Luckily, I am fine, and hopefully not too many people will scream at me. Ace out!

Extreme Frustration

I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news, is that I had forgotten how insanely frustrating the Water Temple for Majora's Mask is, and I took much longer than anticipated to beat it. The good news... I BEAT THAT STUPID TEMPLE AND I AM GOING TO BE FACING THE FINAL DUNGEON TOMMOROW! I feel that I timed this extremely well, because that means I can finish the game the exact same day that I get the new 3DS and can play my remastered version of the game!
To give a brief description of my journey, I must explain the new creature I could become, and describe its useful abilities. I am now able to transform into a Zora, which is a fish-based life form. I have blades on my arms that allow me to fight very effectively. I also have VERY incredible swimming abilities, one of which include using my magic meter to engulf myself in electricity, and damaging enemies heavily. It is my second favorite mask, and has my absolute favorite effect. The swimming is incredibly fun.
The first part of this run is unique, in that there are three very complex tasks I needed to complete in order to access the third dungeon. First, one has to sneak into the outsider-hating clan of all-female thieves, and obtain a hookshot, in order to obtain a fourth bottle from some beavers, after beating them in a race. Trust me, as crazy as this sounds... it is pretty standard for this series. It makes sense if you play through the whole game. Finally, I had to get a photo of one of the female thieves, and give to a rather... lewd fisherman, in order to obtain a seahorse, and have him guide me to the last three eggs.
After delivering the eggs of a very distressed Zoran woman to the scientist, they taught me a new song, I am able to enter the third dungeon of the game. Full of... you guessed it, water, it is one of the hardest because the main room consists of a large pool of water with many levels, with a flow that goes in a circle in one direction. One has to switch up the flow of water to access every room. After obtaining the ice arrows, you are able to access higher, even harder to reach areas, and eventually fight the boss.
The boss, named Gyorg, is a large fish, who swims around a central platform, and attempts to knock you into his water so he can eat you. It is an extremely frustrating boss, and even worse, partway through, it spews out about twenty minifish that swarm you when you have to hop in the water to deal damage with your electricity. It took me longer to access and beat this dungeon than to get in and beat the first two dungeons combined. Partly due to the incredibly complex process beforehand, and partly due to the complex nature of finding the hidden fairies in this dungeon.
But, in conclusion, I have beaten the temple, acquired incredible defense, and a new type of arrow. I got away stronger, and I get to face one of the most interesting portion of this game next. Maybe not the most cheerful, and definitely not the easiest, but I will have a lot of fun. Sadly, the first part of this involves the most complex maze ever, involving a scavenger hunt and a mirror shield. Ace out!