Praying for Peace

I want to post about Japan because it was amazing, but before I do I feel compelled to write about a recent event on the campus of UT-Austin. A student ran around campus with an AK-47 shooting random shots (thankfully without actually shooting anyone), before killing himself on the 6th floor of the Perry Castañeda Library (PCL).  As a staffer/student who has pretty much been around UT since 2003 (I feel old), I always wondered at the back of my mind the possibility of a gunman opening fire on campus. With a student population of 50,000, it seemed possible there could be just one that would do something like that. 

On the first Wednesday of every month at 11:50 a.m. the school conducts a siren test throughout the whole campus. The sound is so eerie and occasionally creates images of a disgruntled student causing tragedy on campus.

Sadly, on September 28th- a Tuesday, the sirens went off and everyone began receiving text messages alerting them a gunman was on campus and to stay put. After a while, the UT community was told the student had shot himself.

The incident has made me think about society's general perception of mental illnesses and the importance of getting help. I use the word general because I know I'm making a really broad generalization, but in my experience it seems like people associate a stigma with mental illnesses. I'm aware that plenty of pharmaceutical companies are spending millions of dollars trying to get people who may not really have a mental illness to purchase their products. I understand there are people who think taking a "happy pill" will fix their problems. Still, there are people who have a genetic predisposition to mental illness. Sometimes the genes never get expressed, but other times, whether it be environmental factors or whatever else, people suffer.

My heart breaks for this student who resorted to suicide to finish whatever torment he was experiencing. I imagine his friends and family are asking themselves what they could have done to prevent this from happening. I did not know this student, but I really wish that at some point he could have received psychiatric help, some sort of counseling, some sort of comfort that would help him make it another day.

Flakey-Flake Flake

**This was originally written on September 7th! I just took a while to complete it... go figure...**

I promise I like blogging, I really do! As you have probably noticed, my last post was from seven months ago. Oops. I have been busy with life ;-).

Looking through my journal entries over the past few years, I notice right around New Year's I think back on the year that has just passed and how eventful it has been. Well, I guess I see myself as having a pretty eventful life, because 2010 was exceptionally eventful! Ladies and gentlemen, a brief look at what I have been doing since last March!

1. Emi and I took a FABULOUS trip to New York!

2. I ran my first half-marathon (with Emi as well!)!

3. Sadly, my wonderful Toyota Corolla, Betsy, was totaled in a car accident on March 25th. I sprained my neck and was in a lot of pain for a while, but the silver lining is that I was able to purchase a cute green Nissan Sentra I proudly named Clover.

 

4. I moved into an awesome apartment right along the Greenbelt. I literally walk outside of my apartment and I can go on a hike!

5. I went skydiving for the first time! Incredible! Anyone who knows me well enough knows I am TERRIFIED of heights so the fact that I jumped out of an airplane at 13,000 ft. and enjoyed it is a miracle :-)

6. I was able to go to Japan to attend my cousin's wedding and see my family! At least one post will be dedicated to that trip. Too much to mention for now!

... I guess I keep asking myself why I keep starting and stopping blogs. I think I have a few reasons:

1. If I don't get some sort of creative writing outlet then I will get depressed thinking that the only writing I really do are e-mails at work all day long.

2. I think the quality of my writing is deteriorating the longer I'm out of practice. When I write in my personal journal it's completely sloppy because I know the content will not be seen by anyone's eyes but mine :-). Writing in a blog will hopefully force me to evaluate my writing.

3. I can entertain people who are bored.

 As you can tell, not feeling too insightful tonight. Meh, I guess that's part of the fun. Thanks for reading and I promise there is more to come!

A Hero From Georgia

I am sure by now everyone has seen and heard the news about the Olympic athlete from Georgia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, who died after crashing his sled during a training run on the luge. I hear about tragic accidents, homicides, etc. every day on the news, but this situation is hitting me so hard, and I can't get over it. I am so overcome with sadness for his country and his family. Imagine training as hard as humanly possible to represent your country in the Olympics! Especially considering he was representing such a small country, he and his family had to be infinitely proud of him. I can't imagine the pride and excitement that a person feels when they get to compete in the Olympics.

While I am overcome with grief for Kumaritashvili's family, I can not help but feel a bit disgusted by the media's response to this tragedy. When I decided to write about this, I was unable to spell Nodar's name off the top of my head (if you can then I'm very impressed!). In an effort to find out how to spell his name, and perhaps link a news story in case anyone had not read about it, I googled "Olympics death." I found tons of news stories on the accident, but what I couldn't find was a simple news article without videos. ALL the articles had "VIDEO" in the headline- the video that highlights Nodar's horrible crash, showing in slow motion his delicate body slamming into the steel poles at 90 miles per hour. Also piled into the articles were zoomed in shots of the paramedics trying to revive him. The pictures showed his lifeless face, laced with blood.

How is this dignified? How does this happen? Do we have such a curious fascination with death- so much to the point where we will shamelessly document in great detail the final moments of this precious life? How on earth must his family feel? How incredibly horrible to see the video replayed over and over! If this happened to ANYONE I loved and cared about, I think I would be just as much traumatized by the sensationalist journalism, perversion, and greed of humanity as I would  be about the death itself. Obviously, me posting this blog won't take away the millions of videos and pictures of this special human being's life being taken away. I can only hope that in the future this trend of disrespectful journalism doesn't continue. I understand our first amendment rights, but seriously out of respect for the Kumaritashvili family I feel that the press as a whole crossed the line.

Needless to say, I will not be posting any link to news stories regarding Nodar Kumaritashvili's death. I will continue to pray for his family, in hopes that they can find comfort, resolve, and meaning in this terrible tragedy. RIP, Nodar- my heart aches for you and your family :-(

Fourth one? Really?

Blogs are such an interesting thing. In one sense it's a diary, except that it's on the world wide web, so there is a sense of restraint... if you're me at least.  Like many of my peers, this isn't the first blog I have published. My blog first started out on Blogspot. After forgetting to post, and to be embarrassingly honest, after trying to keep up with the hot new blog trends (or so I thought), I switched to Xanga. For some reason it seemed hipper and cooler... I guess similar to the MySpace vs. Facebook phenomenon... oh MySpace... I think I also dabbled in the MySpace blog for a bit too. 

Either way, here is my fourth try. I feel like it's always awkward to start out, so I'm not making this public until I've been writing for a while. Once I do make this public people will be able to read this first post, but I feel like I need to get back into the flow of typing my thoughts before I start telling the world to read my blog.

So what's the point of this blog anyways? I love reading blogs. My favorites include FailBlog, Cake Wrecks, Passive Aggressive Notes, and of course PostSecret.  I imagine how awesome it would be to post something hilarious and/or inspiring every single day. Alas, this is not me. Perhaps some day, but for now this blog is simply my outlet for putting my thoughts "out there." My hopes are that someday, someone out in the universe will read my thoughts and feel less alone than they were before they read my blog.