Slightly Remarkable

I have decided to resume blogging without regard to how well-written my posts are as I had done previously. This post is, in essence, an overview of my life as it stands now. I’ll be utilizing the blog more often from this point forward for rants, rambles, and disorganized miscellany as an outlet for creativity, discovery, and other assorted intellectual or philosophical ideas.

I’ve been a barista — a Starbucks employee or “partner” as the propaganda-infused company calls them — for nearly a year now. I’m two weeks away from my one-year mark, but I’ve decided to quit. I have one more week of regular duties before my barista status shrinks into dormancy. Frankly, I love working at that place, but the wages are quite inauspicious, particularly when compared to my new job.

Oh, right, that brings me to my next update. I’ve been hired by LSC-Montgomery to manage the college web site in the College Relations department. My official title is “Web Specialist,” as I not only manage and update web content, but also create graphical advertisements, communicate with various departments, faculty, staff, and assorted student organizations, and plan events, but I also go a step further and program additional controls for the college. My current project, in fact, has been to develop a streamlined workflow program whereby advertisement and marketing requests made by varied clients can be converted into work orders for the necessary individuals responsible for tending to those needs. In other words, we’ve designed and built a system, from scratch, to make the entire department’s job easier. I’m pleased with it, and within the next couple days, we should have all the materials properly organized to present the project to the deans of the college.

I’m sure you’re wondering “What else have you been up to?” since everyone, and I do mean everyone, is curious about the ins and outs of Jona’s life. Well, I have been playing guitar more and more frequently of late, and have begun writing music. I will soon begin posting reflections upon the lyrics and music that I write, so that’s something you’ll all undoubtedly be looking forward to.

Since the beginning of May, I have been suffering from depression. It hasn’t been mild depression, and I am an opponent of medication in any form (in fact, I refuse to take pills for even the most minor of illnesses). I don’t think that anything would work, though, as my depression is a result of several factors. I found myself without goals or purpose for about a month, and even now I am struggling to discover the reason I frontload so much and work so hard. I’ve decided to be content with the success I aspire to achieve, and I have taken solace in the prospect that happiness will follow as a result of my success. Having come to terms with this issue, I feel I can move forward, unfettered and unaffected.

Near the beginning of March, I was the victim of a relational circumstance that I will never forget, and for which reason I have sworn off younger women for the time being. Without detailing events too vividly, I was both asked out and dumped within the same four-week period, by a girl with whom I am still good friends. Although, to this day, I do not understand at all what hit me, I have learned that the female population knows what they want even less than I myself do. This fact is both frightening and discouraging, and possibly contributed to my depression.

I am currently taking a history class with my good friend Shashwat at LSC-Montgomery. He is nearly 18, whereas I turned 19 at the end of March, and he’s already been at Texas A&M for a year. I’m slacking with my classes, not taking the full-time student amount of classes per semester due to the fact that I abhor school and everything to do with it. I find it difficult not to sleep in class; I generally refuse to do homework until the last minute (I procrastinate primarily because I hate homework); and, somehow, I manage to get A’s in nearly every class (with maths being the exception, once again due to my apathy and complacency more than anything else). I am a more independent learner and always have been. I have found that the American education system favors a specific variety of learner, and I see myself as something of an Albert Einstein when it comes to education, although by no means do I compare myself to a prestigious man such as Einstein. Nevertheless, I see more potential in independent learning than school, where you become another “student” with specific expectations and requirements, and no uniqueness or sense of individuality exists.

That nearly surmises my life as it is now. I plan on making increasingly frequent updates (and posts) to my site from this point forward, as I get my life back in order and begin moving toward the future that, I’m told, holds all the things I desire: happiness, success, financial liberty, and most of all, purpose.