my turn for FML?

Yeah, today was that bad. No, it's not about AP bio.

Today was our match against James Logan. Yes, I lost my match. No, that's not really why I'm extremely frustrated right now.

Before the game, I found out that my partner (we'll call him Person #1) decided to ditch today's match and not go. What. the. hell. He's my partner, for goodness sake. This forced me to play singles, which is not my strength, and in addition to a lack of warm-up time, I lost. Everyone loses, but not like this.

Now for after the match. Person #2 said he'd give me a ride home afterwards. Too bad that he LEFT BEFORE IT WAS EVEN OVER WITHOUT TELLING ME. I had to interrupt my dad and plead him to come over. Not what I wanted. At all.

So now for talk time:

Person #1: How can you do this to me? Ditching a match because "Strout never calls me during roll call and I don't feel like going"? What the hell are you on? We're partners, and we're not supposed to ditch each other just like that! You're lucky I didn't go tell Strout. Why? Because you're still my partner...I hope. Sometimes I hate being generous, and this is why! Think about others before you do such stupid actions! What kind of partner does what you just did?

Person #2: I thought you were a responsible person. I was dead wrong. You said you could give me a ride back. Even if you couldn't, which may have been the case, you could have at least TOLD ME. Instead, I had to wait there for nearly twenty minutes just so my dad could get to Logan to pick me up. And I had to interrupt him, too! Do you think this is fair to me? No, no, no, no, NO! I don't want to have to "remind" you every single time! You need to take responsibility for yourself, too!

In the end, if both of you are reading this (you know who you are), don't bother giving me an excuse. This is entirely unacceptable and unfair to me. Instead, think about what you've done.

"Do you know what it feels like--" whoa, whoa, whoa...

Last week, I had this interesting conversation with an "upset" person. She felt troubled, discouraged, anything related to sad. So she asked if I wanted to talk, and I said, "Sure, why not?"

(This is that same person I mentioned in some of my more recent blog posts.)

We discussed a few things, but the sentence that struck out the most was her saying, "Some days, I wake up worrying if I can keep myself alive for the rest of the day."

Whoa, stop right there.

We've all had our depressing moments, those times when we feel that everything is going wrong and there's no point in setting things write. For some people, they just want to end it right there. For this person, it probably isn't much different. Yes, I've been there, too. But I pulled myself out. How, you ask.

It's not that hard, really. Life sucks at some points; we have to take it, whether we like it or not. Moping about it may be the thing in our mindsets, but outside, it doesn't really help.

In addition, even if we feel the urge to end it all, we forget one really important fact: we are more fortunate than 50% of the world (no joke). We, here even in IHS, have things that other people can only dream of having. We get "free" education, we have durable homes, we have people looking out after us, the list goes on.

Back to our main person here. Is it worth it to end it just because you lost a bunch of badminton matches and for some other things that went horribly wrong in your life? I know you take losses really hard, and I don't blame you. But taking it this far will only make things worse. In fact, there is a time for all of us to just think to ourselves, "Why am I thinking this way?" The answer is solely up to you.

As Randy Pausch once said, "We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." In the end, take your life and make the best of it. And remember--there are always those less fortunate than you, and there is always someone looking out for you.

Friday the 13th (2nd month in a row :O)

Friday the 13th is always a fun day. Awesome things happen or...gruesome things happen. Thankfully, tonight was an awesome night.

(No, I'm not talking about Sadies; I didn't go.) Instead, I went to YP (Young People) meeting. (It's for the youth at Church in Fremont.)

Today, we talked about the conscience and what it means to have a pure conscience. After much thought today, the pure conscience is one that isn't conflicted and is for God only, nothing else. This conscience is what is needed when praying to God.

(now for the fun part)
People who normally have a "bad" conscience are the people who don't admit their mistakes, cover up other people's faults, or simply don't listen to that voice in their heads that says, "Do the right thing!" I know, I know, we've all been there, even me. But when we let ourselves become driven by emotion, fear, anger, or other conflicting thoughts, we turn away from our own judgment of what is right or wrong. I'm not saying that we should never listen to others (we should), but our common sense and good judgment is and will always be more important than everything else.

Now that I think about it, I've been in this situation too many times. Being emotionally driven, not confessing my mistakes to let it out of my system...all these things took me away from pure conscience, away from God. I'm not perfect, but I will, from this day on, always keep God in mind; when I go to Him, I use my pure, raw conscience--nothing else will matter.

I know that what I said might make no sense at all to some of you, but just try to understand the second to last paragraph...you may learn something about yourself :)

Not again...

About a week or so ago, my carpool talked about quitting badminton to help her extremely illiterate UN group. I thought, "I guess that's reasonable..."

Yeah, it is, BUT...I am now left without a ride.

Maybe you could've told me A DAY EARLIER if you were going to quit, because now I have to ask different people every day for a ride home! I can't do that forever! At least tell me if something's going to happen!

People these days...caught up in whatever they need to do to the point where they forget about those around them...what a shame.

All in all, GEE, THANKS for leaving me here.

It's done. I knew it.

You did it.

You chose to give up on me, to never believe that I can get better.

Now I'm all up for grabs. No one knows what's going to happen now. Thanks to you.

This year, I came to badminton hoping for a successful season. That thought has now turned, and I need a much different way of getting there. At least I can still do what you can never do--believe and trust.

Oh, really?

(This is a follow up to my post on 3/3)

I know you're mad.
I know you're stressed.
I know you want to kick something right now.

I'm not going to lie--I feel the same way. I also know that both of us are very hard-working and want to achieve the same goal--to be the best we can be. Unfortunately, we have very different ways of getting there.

You want to get there by making me feel afraid.
I want to get there by working hard with you.

With your mindset, all you care about is getting there. You don't care what really happens to everyone else. I used to think that way...and it cost me heavily.

Not to say that I'm completely emotionally driven, but I know enough to the point where I have to consider how others think. Throwing dirty words to your own teammate isn't really what I had in mind. Both of us are upset, and both of us know that we're going to have a really rough road ahead of us.

If you don't think that I'm taking my responsibility for my part, then I would have quit a long time ago. This brings me to my next point--venting all our frustration out. I admit--I sometimes find myself in cases where I can't control myself. Yesterday was an example. You saw how I took it out on people.

This proves how I'm not much different than you. I make the same mistakes you make, you say I cause almost all the troubles. I did the exact same things. Where do we go from here?

There's only one direction to go--forward. Because we're still partners, we have to trust each other. Without that trust, nothing else can happen, and all those hours of training will just go to waste.

I'm losing it...

Of all days, March 3, 2009 was just one of those days where everything that could've gone wrong went wrong. I woke up sick, nearly fell asleep in the first three periods just from medicine side effects, failed the bio unit test, and just lost my sweatshirt.

But my stress has just received some more building blocks...

Okay, so we were playing mixed doubles against several people. We lost to them, some by a few points, some by several points. And then you give me "a way to feel better" by saying:

"Really, I don't trust you right now. Sometimes I'd rather play singles than mixed with you."

Uh huh. "Constructive criticism." Too bad it's so faulty.

Yes, I do realize that I need to train harder. I have a long way to go. But I'm not the only one--you do, too. Also, it's not proper to "encourage" someone by saying, "I don't trust you." Now I even wonder: if I agreed to play mixed with you, then how did it end up like this?

Truthfully, I did not trust you in the beginning at first, either. But I never said it. Why? Two reasons:
1) I didn't want to hurt you.
2) I thought you could improve.

Of course I want to improve. Of course I want to be really proficient. But you saying that doesn't make me feel better. Do I feel better dragging people down? NO.

I can take the criticism, but I can't take the fact that I'm pulling everyone down. Mixed doubles is a team effort. You don't get better by destroying the self-esteem of others. I have enough troubles already.