Who do I still think I am??

This one's about a quote, traits, and three things.

30DBC PROMPT: "'All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.' (Edgar Allan Poe) Write a story, a poem, your thoughts, or an essay. It's Saturday so be creative and have fun with this prompt.", courtesy of Prosperous Snow celebrating .

What's up folks? Happy middle-of-the-weekend to you all, and like Charlie ~ said late last night in case you missed it, we survived Friday the 13th and we're all awesome. Right? Hope so.

I'm a fan of Prosperous Snow celebrating ...I enjoy her poems and her blog entries, and her choice for today's prompt is very nice. I definitely got up on some Poe in my younger days- I remember writing an essay about him in college- and I'm familiar with his mainstream works in more of a fleeting sense now, but I still can appreciate his writing anytime someone mentions him.

The quote is an interesting bit of surrealism...everything is something else viewed through the lens of different realms. You and I can be looking at the same exact thing and still see it differently. The way we hear sounds, view colors, and feel textures...nothing is universal. Do we even know we're alive, or are we just sequences and scenes in a play being acted out for forms of higher intelligence that watch us like we watch television?

We know history because it's passed down over time through books we're given in school, and we accept it as truth because we're supposed to trust authority and elders...which in reality becomes "It's true because this book and I say so." Yet the mantra in the age of the internet seems to be "Pics or it didn't happen", and even then everything is subject to a Photoshopped skepticism, so why should we believe history happened a certain way? What if everything that happened leading up to our arrival in this universe was the dream within someone else's dream, and that lucky bastard won a contest where the prize was the understanding that his tales became the accepted version of the history of all mankind? If you woke up tomorrow and found out that everything you had learned was in one way or another complete fiction, what (if anything) would change for you going forward?

As technology advances, we're blurring the lines every day between reality and make-believe. What society only dreamed of fifty years ago is, for the most part, what we're living today...and the things we dream of for the future will someday be commonplace, so much so we'll often wonder what we did in "the good ol' days" without such conveniences. And a large percentage of us, for as long as the Earth shall live, will just be a replaceable part that stays the same; a necessary anomaly in a world of constant upheaval and change. Largely unnamed and faceless in the grand scheme, we'll do our time here until the next batch rolls in to do life slightly better than we did in a time of even greater expectations.

We the people...living in infinitely dreamed dreams.

BCF PROMPT: "Is your personality more like your mother's or your father's?"

In all honesty, I'm not even sure how to properly answer this...I've always, well, for large parts of my life at least, had a fractured relationship with both my mom and my dad, who divorced long before I can remember anything. Those who know both me and my dad have said (albeit not endearingly) that I'm just like him, and my mother says that between my biological brother and I, I'm more like her. There are times I can see both and times when I'd prefer to see neither. I'd rather be known for being myself than a resemblance of someone else. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

About fifteen years ago I was in a transitional place in life. I was on my own for the first time...my dad and stepmom had kicked me out of their house, where I'd been living since I graduated high school. I hadn't really been on speaking terms with my mom in a few years, so it was all on me to decipher this whole "adulthood" racket. I think I had a lot more figured out back then than I do now, actually. But somewhere along the way, in the first year or two of living on my own, I stopped and allowed myself to do an assessment of my life up to that point (I was 23 years old). It turned into a stream-of-conscious firestorm with a machine gun cadence and an air that suggested an old soul hardened by a wisdom the narrator may not have necessarily wished he had. It's one of the longest items I've ever written, but believe it or not it didn't take very long to come up with...lines hit me as quickly as I could get them down on the page. If you've got a few extra minutes, you can check out "Nobody's Son" .

MUSICAL BREAK!!

I couldn't seem to get this out of my head during the "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  prompt...

THE DAILY BOX SCORE:

"Tell us three things that you absolutely love about yourself."

Anyone that knows me knows I have a really hard time with stuff like that. I just don't see myself in those kind of terms, and I subscribe to a theory that if I have to tell you I'm good at something or superlatively notable, then I'm probably not what I think I'm saying I am (for example: if I tell you I have people skills  , but you see that I'm obviously lacking in that department, are you gonna believe me or your judgement?) If it doesn't come naturally and I have to remind you, then it's not there. See what I'm sayin'?

Anyway, it's not really my thing to talk about myself like that. Maybe it's self-esteem issues, mixed with some humility and a general lack of self-awareness (or I kinda don't care). And remember yesterday how I briefly mentioned my anxiety's circle of life? There's also an ego/egoless circle of life that goes like this: people will tell you to be your own advocate at certain times, but when you are, other people get turned off by that because you're "too full of yourself", and when you're accused of being like that a natural reaction is to overcorrect or undercompensate in the opposite direction so as not to say too much, because nobody likes the guy who toots his own horn so loud that they can hear him over the rest of the ensemble even though we're always encouraged to be the one who stands out from the crowd. So it's a struggle, and it is very real.

Is "Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"  open on Sundays? Damn near everything else I know of is either closed or has some kind of screwy hours. I know there's the "Blog City Sunday Social Book" , which looks like a good time. I'll have to check it out.

If you're like me, you love cheese. And if you love cheese, you're concerned that there might be a cheese shortage epidemic   in the near future. Something to do with unsanitary conditions and bacteria...but aren't some cheeses supposed to be made with trace amounts of unhealthy-to-the-max particles? Isn't that kinda what makes some cheeses cheesy? If this is just an excuse for when the price of cheese starts to skyrocket, well, then get me a helmet, 'cuz I'm goin' up after it.

I think that's all I've got for today...it's been quiet around here and I haven't really felt like going anywhere. Trying to stay off my leg as much as possible because I don't wanna deal with the soreness or the moodiness it leads to when I do actually use it like it's intended to be used. Would you believe I've had a splint since Monday and I haven't worn it yet? I probably should...but the only place I've really been to in the past week was PT, and they frown on me wearing stuff like that. I guess I'll hafta lace that sucker up sooner or later, because I'll be needin' it a little more in the coming days. Anyway, well, hey, thanks for spendin' your Saturday night here with me...you could've been anywhere on the internet, but you chose this , so I'm not the only one who's lacking for things to do this evening. Peace, all you create, and GOODNIGHT NOW!!