There has been a lot of concern upon my mental health in the past few weeks, but a lot of it is gone, and I am, dare I say, better. I haven’t been depressed or have had suicidal thoughts in the past few days and I am expecting this to continue. I am not the same old Josh, I am a stronger, better Josh. This time, I will be indestructible.

There is a lot of difficulties with love in my life, and I am not so desperate for a girlfriend anymore. I have totally given up on that. It’s now time to concentrate on me, and what I have to do, such as: finding a job, preparing for college, thinking about moving out of my parents’ home, trying to publish my poetry, and understanding my own thoughts . I’m in more of a “go with the flow” style of life right now. I am quite relaxed. Being able to drive helps… a lot. I can get out of the house whenever I want, and it’s a lot more liberating.

Now it’s nothing more than up and above, the new Josh is here, love him or hate him.

I have been a lot in these past few months. I’ve been suicidal, damaged, heart broken, ripped apart in almost every way possible. Now, I feel like I have everything back together again. I feel better, and happy in my own skin once more. Yeah, being single sucks and all, but I have my license now and being with friends helps fill that empty void that is left in me. It will always be there, I just need to find ways to keep filling it, somehow. In this world, I am labelled so many things, but there is one true fact. I’m me.

First order of business is to clear the elephant in the room… Iris Bentley. I wish I had never broken up with her to be honest. I wish that we could be together again, because her and I had something. I treated her wrong, and I know it now, but I made my mistakes and I’ve learned from them, and I want to do it over again. If there was a do- over button in life, I would have pushed mine a long time ago. But, as Randy Pausch says, “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” And sometimes, hands need to be folded, the hard part is it’s like folding on pocket aces.

Not a lot of people like me, and that’s just fine. People can love me or hate me, I really don’t care anymore. Everyone else should not judge who I am or what I believe. People should not judge because I am a Christian, or because I listen to metal, or because I write poetry. I’m not here to please everyone possible, I’m here to live my life the way I want, and if I want to live it a certain way, people better stay out of my business.

On the same token, I give people the respect to live their lives the way that they want. I don’t force my beliefs on anyone, and if someone is/ was offended by what I have done, I’m sorry. I don’t live to bully people or make others feel bad.

I think the biggest question anyone can ask themselves is, “Am I comfortable in my own skin?” The answer varies for everyone for a multitude of different reasons, but for me, I feel like the answer is yes. There are some changes I would like to make, but overall, I love myself, not too much, I’m not narcissistic or anything, but I know that God has some amazing things in store for me. I believe that he is putting me through all of these trials to prepare me for something great that I will do in the future, and I am ready to serve in God’s army.

I am labelled many things, but the most important is, I’m me. I am who I am, whether people like me or not. I have been through things that no one would dare go through. I’ve been through my lowest, and my highest. There are things that I’m not too proud of, and there are things that I love talking about. “You cannot change the cards you are dealt, just how you play the hand,” and now, I’m changing my game.

I feel completely lonely. It seems like no one wants to hang out, and I’m literally trapped inside of my home. I feel isolation every day, and it’s driving me insane. No one seems to like me anymore, or just enough to keep small conversation. No one wants to hang out, no one talks to me. Why do I have to always be the one to initiate things? I invited 30 + people to my grad party, not even five bothered showing up, I had a fourth of july party, only a couple people decided to show up. What the hell is wrong with everyone? What did I do to insult you all? seriously, I feel like I pissed off everyone I know and they don’t want to talk to me.

Also I feel unloved, and I’m not talking about family love, that’s different, and that doesn’t count. All of my exes now hate me, and every girl I’ve ever liked has shot me down when I asked or confessed my feelings. I’m better as a friend? How in the hell is that fair? What is it? Am I not attractive enough? I am depressed almost 24/7 and I hate it. If I die tomorrow, I feel like no one would come to my funeral. I also feel like I’ll be alone forever. Don’t give me the bullshit “ms. Right is out there, just wait..” because I’m fucking tired of waiting. I found ms. Right a long time ago, and she decided to be selfish. I’m sick of being alone.

I have a few really good lines, but I am too lazy to write a full poem at the moment, so I am going to write a mini- poem for your viewing pleasure…

I’ll do what I know is right,

And if I should die tonight,

That would be just alright,

But I will continue to fight.

Hope you enjoyed!

The Voice

~~

I hear a voice inside my head,

Who is with me until the end,

He has no name or face,

Just the voice I cannot chase,

He tells me things in my mind,

Things easy to learn but hard to find,

The tells me that people are bad,

And he tells me they make him sad,

To keep them safe, they have their rules,

The voice says that they are fools,

They have their religions to blame the hate,

But when rules get broken, they question their fate,

The voice tells me to do bad things,

He tells me to bring down their kings,

I don’t need a god, I don’t need to be saved,

The voice shows me how I should have behaved,

The voice knows how to ruin their hope,

With the sickness, the voice helps me cope,

The voice is all I need, he sets me free,

The voice says be who you want to be,

The voice knows the truth,

And even in my youth,

The voice makes me smart,

I have been from the start,

The voice is filled with rage,

He’s a lion in a cage,

The voice tells me to make them go away,

And let them into the ground decay,

The voice tells me things I want to hear,

With his silent whisper in my ear,

The voice inside wants to come out,

All he does is scream and shout,

I’m letting the voice out today,

It is now time for him to play.

The birth of It

Shoot me once, I hit the floor,

Shoot me twice, gone forevermore,

I walked through fire for you,

I can no longer tell what is true,

My soul is burning,

I can’t stop yearning,

For the one that took my heart,

Right from the start,

And now I’m falling,

For you I’m calling,

This void I cannot escape,

Is a prison of my own fate,

My world is being ripped apart,

I cannot stop the destruction of my rampart,

Please try to piece together my mind,

Be afraid of what you might find,

The twisted monster that lives inside,

The one who will no longer hide,

The monster is your birth,

And I will release IT upon the earth.

Cutting the Grass

~~

The sun’s beating down on my back,

I fight off the heat’s deadly attack,

I march forward into the untamed wild,

Weeds overgrown, walls defiled,

Scythe in hand, I start to fight,

The overgrown weeds to meet their blight,

The fight is long, the day is hot,

I battle hard what Mother Nature wrought,

The sweat rolling from my brow,

I know I must win somehow,

From my scythe the weeds fall like rain,

The heat of the sun does my energy drain,

The day is done and my work finished,

The sweat pouring and my energy diminished,

But it seems my work is in vain,

For in one week, I must fight the weeds again.

I haven’t been in the theaters for a while, and I have noticed that things have become a little more expensive, which means that movies have to be all the better to make it worth the money (about $20 a person). I took a little gamble on my first time back and I saw a movie I really didn’t know much about. Jonah Hex, directed by Jimmy Hayward, based on the DC comic book, albeit a few changes in the movie. Overall the movie was decent, with decent acting and a decent plotline.

Jonah Hex is set in civil- war period America just before the fourth of July. It opens with a nice graphic explaining things up to the plot point. Jonah is a confederate soldier who comes to his senses and betrays the army to do what’s right. Hex becomes an outlaw in the south, fighting against the confederates, he kills the family of Quintin Turnbull, which in turn comes to bite him in the ass as Quintin ties him to a cross and kills his family and makes Hex watch as his family is burned alive. Turnbull then takes a hot branding iron and brands Hex’s face with the initials QT (which later he burns off with a tomahawk leaving him with a brutal scar). He is found near death by native Americans who then try to bring him back to life, but instead Hex walks a void between life and death where he can now touch and wake up the dead to talk to them. Hex, with a heart filled with vengeance, hunts for Turnbull but finds that he burned himself alive. Hex then becomes a bounty hunter, and in turn gets a price put on his head. The union army finds that Turnbull is alive and is planning on destroying America with a secret weapon. The general then decides to summon Hex to fight against Turnbull and stop him before he can blow up the north with a nuke- like secret weapon.

First, I want to talk about the plot. It differs quite a bit from the comic book in Hex’s upbringing, which I don’t find appealing at all, and the new plot that they wrote has a lot of holes in it. They don’t explain the relationship between Hex’s character and Megan fox’s character, Lilah. At least she’s not just eye candy, she does plenty of ass- kicking on her own. There are also many holes in the relationship between Hex and turnbull; I didn’t understand what was going on between them half the time, and why Hex turned on him. They also randomly would switch to different times in the plotline, which got a little confusing. Also, the story was a little too short. It was just action after action after action, they really didn’t slow the movie down at all. Toward the end, they kept switching back and forth between the actual boss battle and some random dream battle between the same two people, which just got annoying.

The action was done really well though. There are a lot of cool western shootouts and and really cool fight sequences. The camera was steady throughout which I liked, and Hex, in a couple scenes, had some really cool weapons at his disposal, but for how action- packed the movie was, I would have liked to see more of these cool weapons, also one of those slow- mo shots of the bullet soaring through the air would be cool too.

The acting was alright. Not everyone really had the wild- west accents (except for Brolin and Megan Fox who did a stellar job.) There was not a whole lot of emotion in the movie, which again goes back to the storyline really. Josh Brolin also mumbled a lot which made it quite hard to understand what he was saying. The acting also seemed… forced. A lot of the actors did not really capture the characters for me, which is a major nail in the coffin for this movie. Megan Fox was really the only stand- out actor in the movie, but she always does a great job. Also some of the characters seemed to have posh British accents, which really made no sense.

Another blow for the movie was there was almost no character development. I really had no idea who anyone was or why they were even there. The pictured Hex as a vengence- ruled madman who gets a sick pleasure from killing, and Turnbull as a complete sociopath hell bent on killing everyone, and Fox’s character was practically an ass- kicking prostitute. Turnbull’s minions seemed brainless and anyone else was rather insignificant.

I did like the background music, which consisted of wild- west style guitar or banjo, at sometimes having electric instruments, and even some full songs. The music did set the mood very well, and at the right breaks, the lighting was both realistic and dramatic, setting the mood as well. (one of the only things that the director did right.)

Overall, the movie really wasn’t worth the twenty dollars (that’s ticket and refreshments), but it was still a cool action ride. Unfortunately, I had to pee the entire time, so it was a little harder to concentrate. The movie was mediocre, not the best, but not the worst. There are many improvements that could be made, but there are a couple things that they did well. It would be a cool movie to watch with friends on a boring Saturday night, but I don’t think it’s worth the money in theaters.

In a rating… 4.5 out of 10 stars.

Online relationships… They are, to me, obviously relationships that start online, either in a chat r0om or on a page such as E- Harmony or any of those sites. I have been in many confusing, complicated, online flings, but only two real relationships started online.There are definitely some interesting people you meet online… my poison is a little chat application called “Whoshere” on the I- pod.    I ask myself constantly, is it worth it? especially with longer- distance relationships such as the one I’m in now. Sometimes, it is difficult to stay faithful, but I try my best. my girl and I see each other very rarely, but we do our best to make things work. From a neutral point of view, I look at these online relationships and I ask myself, are these the key to finding true love,?

Statistics show that one in five relationships start online now, and the trend is growing. I have a few insights into why, being one of these one- in- five myself.

1. There is less nervousness when you talk to someone online. I don’t really know why, but I feel a lot less nervous meeting someone online rather than in person, and very candidly, I actually prefer meeting someone online first. I feel that appearance has to be the major factor

2. You can know a little about the person before you talk to him or her. On the chat application that I use, there are ares where the person can type out information about themselves. This makes it a little easier to pick someone who shares the same interests, and it’s a little easier to keep conversations going. In person, you really have to pry out information on people, but it’s sometimes displayed on the clothes they wear. I’ve been in many awkward pauses because the person and I had nothing in common.

3. People tend to be more of themselves online. In today’s society, we hide our true selves in fear of being judged. Online, we tend to ease up on our fortifications and our true selves come out. It simply makes it easier to understand someone.

4. You can’t read facial emotions online. This can either be really good or really bad depending on the conversation, but whereas in person, someone can read your facial expressions, online you can’t. This makes it easier to convince people of things, or even lie.

5. If you don’t want to talk to someone, you can ignore or “block” them. there are many, many people online who are either looking for only sex or to belittle people, these people, called “creepers” can be really annoying, even sometimes psychologically damaging when it turns into cyber bullying. Fortunately, in the cyber world, there is a little button called “ignore” or “block.” when activated, that person can not talk to you, sometimes, they don’t appear online anymore. We can’t “block” people in real life.

It seems easier to meet people online than in person, but in a relationship, you will eventually want to meet them. From experience, the process of going from knowing someone online to them being an actual physical human being is a bit.. awkward. I tend to get very nervous and conservative in my actions out of fear of making a bad first in- person impression. Something seems different in person and online. Conversations are different, moods are actually felt instead of estimated, and you don’t have your handy emoticons or text- speak at your disposal.  After the relationship get time to grow though, it changes, and become more personal, more based on when you get to see each other next rather than the small talk online.

It is hard for me to handle long- distance relationships. A yearning grows in me just to be with them as much as I can, which is really hurtful. Relationships are built on trust, and trust is harder than ever in long- distance relationships. I heard a quote from one of my friends a while ago. “Being in a relationship means giving someone the power to break your heart, but trusting them not to.” This is ever more true for long- distance.

Another part of most relationships is sex. In my mind, sex is the most pleasurable act there is. It releases, I believe, ten times more endorphins  than a dose of heroine, and it become really addictive. This is probably the worst part of most online long distance relationships. After you have sex, there is a bond there, something that is unbreakable. Sex, in my mind, is the ultimate confession of love, and you can figure out why. This is not true for all relationships, though. There are plenty of relationships where they are waiting until marriage, which is perfectly normal.

One of the perks of a long- distance relationship is that eventually, you can cut the person from you life completely. This is always the hardest part of letting go is getting your heart back. It is a little easier, in my mind, if they are far away. My first girlfriend is rather close, and I see her once in a while, which is rather scary because I don’t know what her or her parents would do. If you’re in a long distance relationship, chance are that you will never see each other again.

There are a lot of perks about meeting someone online, but there are also downs. For example, when you need your girl/boy the most, chances are that they won’t be able to see you. If you get put in the hospital or something, you want your girl/boy to be there. this also goes the other way, when my girl was put in the hospital, I would have given anything to get over there to be with her.

Another down is not being able to see each other often, if at all. My girl and i see each other only every couple of weeks, which really sucks. And really, when she is over, all we really want to do is cuddle and be close to each other. It gets really hard, and when we don’t see each other, we really miss each other. Our conversations degenerate to “I love you” and “I miss you” half the time. It’s even worse for me, because of certain “gifts” I can become addicted to peoples’ presence, but that’s another blog for another day.

In conclusion, online relationships are a growing phenomenon. They’re also, however, a double- edged sword. They have their perks, but they also have their downfalls. So to answer the question, “are online- relationship sites the key to finding “the one?”" I would have to say, yes!

I notice more and more that the news media does not do their job. They care more about profit rather than bringing important information to people. An immediate example, there is a war in the middle east with thousands of soldiers dying, there are millions of barrels oil leaking from the gulf coast yet the biggest news that I see is that Tom Izzo decided to stay at MSU. This is not the first time that this has happened, and it definitely will not be the last.

The news industry is rampant with corruption, greed, and defamation of character. The news media is obsessed with making the big money rather than informing the people. whenever there is ever a celebrity scandal, despite someone being shot or something catastrophic happening, that always is the top story. The media even drags things out way longer than they should be. For example. The Tiger Woods scandal is still in the media and continues to headline, whereas the oil spill in the gulf is already fading out into the mini- stories.

Maybe I grew up with the wrong idea of the news media, but I thought that they were supposed to present the news that matters, not the news that’s going to be the most controversial or scandalous. I want to hear the news about what is going on, not who is going on. It is not all hopeless though, there are still some news companies that still bring the honest, important news to us, but that may be because news is all that they show (of course I’m talking about channels such as CNN or MSNBC.) I do not watch them, I normally watch local news, so I’m not claiming to be an expert on anything.

So here is my request to the news media: Present the stories that matter first. I want to hear about what’s going on in the middle east or what they are doing with the oil before I want to hear about Tom Izzo (and I’m sure that I’m not the only one.) Please and thank you. Also, enough is enough with character defamation. I know that the lives of celebrities are public, but the negative light helps no one.

Your friend,

Josh Robbins.