Also, barring any unforeseen circumstance, I will be moving into an apartment in Broomall with my brother and his girlfriend. This major change in my life will hopefully be a catalyst for me to make other changes. Some people have questioned this move, others praise me for getting out of my grandmother’s house. She was opposed to the move until I told her the real reason that I want to move.

It took me a bit of time to realize it, or perhaps admit it to myself. Sure, there’s the fact that I’m 22 and should be at least trying to live on my own and start a career and whatnot, but that’s not the true factor causing me to want to move out. There’s also the fact that it would take away from the stress that is caused by living in constant friction with my grandmother, combined with the   realization that I live in this house because my parents are dead. These are all good reasons that I’ve told people was the cause for me to want to move, as well as ones I believed myself. When it comes down to it thought, I want to move because I need to live in a place where I wasn’t with Alicia.

It’s been over a year and half since I’ve seen her. It’s been over 6 months since she’s even been willing to speak to me. Yet there is not a day that goes by in this house that I do not regret the ending of that four and a half year long endeavor into what sure felt like love. My depression lead to me to be apathetic in that relationship and the knowledge of that worsened said depression. Although I may have finally dug myself out of that pit, in order to get rid of that nagging regret I feel as though I need to physically be somewhere else.

One of the changes that I plan to force myself to go through is that once I move and get settled I plan to start looking for a job that actually requires me to have a college degree. This would also hopefully lead to an increase in income which I don’t necessarily need, but it would be nice to not live paycheck to paycheck and perhaps only work one job.

As it stands I’m working full time at Ace Hardware and doing third shifts part time at a Wawa. The manager at Wawa is trying to get me to make it my full time job and pull me away from Ace, however. I have previously told both managers that I will work more hours at whichever job is paying me more, so we’ll see how that goes. If I do make Wawa my full time job it would free up more time during the day which would help with the search for a higher paying, degree-requiring job. Then, should I get a job that pays enough and work there long enough I have several options that I’m planning.

One option would be to remain at Wawa and the new job (and perhaps Ace on the weekends) and save up money so that I can finally go to law school during next years’ fall semester and continue to work at Wawa. Another option would be to work at this new job that I would theoretically have and start going to law school at night. Either way it looks like a may be able to make steps in the right directions.

It’s weird, this is the first time in my life I’ve really had any kind of thought out plan and I actually came up with it myself, not under the pressure of anyone else. It’s a very stress-relieving feeling to know that I might be getting my life in order.

I use the title “I don’t know” because honestly I feel like I don’t ‘know’ anything right now. My life has just been getting to me the last couple days. If you had asked me last week I’d tell you that I’m the happiest that I’ve been in a long time, and I’d be telling you the truth. If you asked me today, and I was honest with you, I’d say that I’m not sure what keeps me going, why I wake up in the morning. It’s probably just my recurring depression, but it pisses me off, because I’ve been doing so well.

I guess it’s just that, quite frankly, I don’t really see many reasons for me to be happy. It’s probly not that case but I keep getting the feeling that all my friendships are superficial. I feel like no one really cares about me for me, they’re either related or friends of a relative or we’re linked by similar interests or work together or what have you. I just get the feeling like if I just walked away from my life today it would take everyone about a day to move on.  Hell, half the friends on my facebook friends list were either added for applications or people that are Alicia’s friends whojust haven’t deleted me yet. I don’t know, I guess what I’m looking for is just someone to have a conversation with where I feel like they are really interested in hearing what I have to say, not just that would feel guilty if they didn’t.

I’m probably exagerrating what’s happening, but sometimes there is just no rationalizing with my emotions.

I guess I’ll just blame on this recent snowstorm and the winter flashback. Perhaps with good weather I’ll feel better.

I had this dream the about a week or so ago. In this dream reality as I currently know it was actually a dream that I woke up from and it turned out that my parents were alive and I was giving them a tour around a school. It was kind of strange but the dream felt very real. I was standing next to my mother at one point, looking at my dad, and I just started crying because I was so happy. That’s when I woke up.

I think I had this dream because I subconciously know that I’ve been suffering from depression every since my dad died and that’s why I was looking at him when I started to cry out of happiness. I’m no psychiatrist, so I can’t exactly interpret it, but the dream made me feel really good, and even when I woke up and it wasn’t true, I still felt very happy.

When I think about my parents being alive in reality though, it sounds terrible to say, but I’m kind of glad things happened the way they did. I wouldn’t be who I am today if it weren’t for what I went through in the past, good and bad, even though I usually think of it as mostly bad, it could have been worse. I grew up with a loving family for a good part of my development, and even though it delayed much of my growth as well, a more recent loss, the end of my relationship with alicia, has enabled me to look and myself and achieve that growth. Basically, I’m glad for what has happened to me, because I truly like the person that I have become and I’m a much better person than I used to be. In the words of Bender Bending Rodriguez “I’m even greater than I thought I was!”

Well I finally updated after a while, but I figured I should, especially since I’ve been doing really well lately.

There isn’t really much going on in my life right now. I’m kind of taking it easy and as stuff comes up. I’m calling this my vacation, which equates to me working at Ace and not doing anything else. In my free time I’ve been hanging out with people and going to movies. I’m in the middle of reading “Meditations and other metaphsyical writings” by Rene Descartes, which i’m breaking up intermittently with a collections of works simplly called “Love Poems”.

That’s really all that’s going on currently. Later in the year, maybe August or September I plan on applying for a job at the airport, for the free flights. My plan is then to travel and see everything that I can. I still eventually plan to go to law school, but if I were to go now, I’d just fail out and that wouldn’t accomplish anything.

So yeah, I’m basically just killing time, and enjoying it.

So I will now describe some of the stuff that I did within the past week, randomly deciding to start with Monday. Monday after classes, I went to band practice where we basically did a dress rehearsal for Wednesday’s concert, afterwhich I went to dinner. After Dinner, I had to do yearbook pictures for like six of the organizations that I am in, but only three of them showed up for it, and I simultaneously covered duty for someone for about an hour.

Tuesday was Stephen Colbert day, in that after class I met up with Scott Ware, Lisa, and Ed’s sister to go see The Colbert Report in Philadelphia. We left campus around 1, and stopped at Chik-fil-a, because it is awesome, and we weren’t sure when we would be able to eat again. We ended up getting around there for 2:30ish and mostly waited around until about 7:00 when filming began. The guests that night were Michelle Obama and the Roots, and the played cool music to keep the crowd pumped, it was pretty awesome. Afterwards we went back to campus so we could catch The Office at 10 on TBS, The Daily Show on Comedy Central, and, of course, The Colbert Report that we were at that day.

Wednesday I got to wake up early and go to my one-on-one with my GA Volpi at 11. Then I went to lunch most likely, then to history and domestic violence classes, the latter of in which I had a final. After that I went back to my room to watch Scrubs and get ready for the band concert later that night, as I had an RA all-staff meeting at 5 to attend. After the all-staff meeting, I had a meeting with my RA staff, and then had to go get ready for the concert. The concert was followed by a little after concert get-together in the band room, where I mostly just talked to Granma, Gail, and Aunt Connie, who had all came to see the concert. From there I went to my dorm to prepare for the Josh Low Radio Fun Time Show, which occurs every Wednesday this semester from 10pm-12am on Widener’s radio station WDNR. We decided to push past the midnight end period however as no show follows mine and we were having fun doing the “Josh Low Radio Fun Time Show: After Hours – Midnight Society”.

Thursday for me was a day without classes, so instead I worked on the articles for The Dome, Widener’s Newspaper that I had to turn in at the end of the week. This really just meant that I had to make some phone calls and meet with Mike Lombardo. Before doing this I first got together with my senior research group and we ran through the presentation we would be giving the next morning. After I was done working for that I got ready for the Phi Sigma Pi dinner we were having at Pica’s restaurant that night. I then went to the cafeteria and had a light dinner in preparation for not knowing what Pica’s would be like. That was followed with the dinner which was a good time. I got back home in time to catch the end of the Flyers game, as well as the second half of the new episode of The Office, and the new episode of Scrubs.

Friday gave me the pleasure of being able to wake up early and be part of the first Criminal Justice senior research presentation at nine o’clock. I think our presentation went well and I watched several others until around eleven, when I left to join Scott Ware to catch Ed’s senior capstone presentation at Lathem. We went to lunch in the cafeteria after Scott and I failed to find free food on campus and were joined by Lisa, Scott Siegel, and probably some other people, but I have a terrible memory. Then we went back to my dorm room to make sure we caught the repeat of Thursday night’s episode of The Colbert Report, as it had been very awesome. I wrote my articles for the Dome afterwards and then Lisa and I headed out to meet Kim at the Relay for Life at Villanova. We arrived at around five o’clock and stayed there until about 6:30am. This meant no sleep, but also meant catching a couple bands, several episodes of the office, a moonbounce and an inflatable boxing ring.

I’ve already spilled over into my dealings on Saturday, but I did get home at about 7:30 from Relay. I then slept for about two and half hours then got to wake up and get ready to represent The Dome at Widener Day. I called Ed, who was awesomely willing to help me out with it, and we tried to convice current and prospective students to write for the paper that we aren’t going to be here for next year.  This ended at 12:30 afterwhich I caught a quick lunch at the cafeteria, and went to watch the Flyers game at one o’clock. The game was frustrating me, so I decided to go to sleep during the third period. This game me an extra hour or two of sleep before Alan came to Widener to pick me up and begin his birthday festivities. We went to Becca’s house and had some pizza and watched tv and then left for Harrah’s Casino in Chester where we were getting together for his birthday. We hung out in their sports bar till around 1:30, and I had a really good time. It made for some interesting stories of its own which are too long to add to this already too long entry. I will say though, that it was awesome.

That brings me to the current day, sort of. I pretty much laid in bed until around 1:30 today, trying to catch up some of the sleep that I had missed previously and then went to check out Theatre Widener’s Production of “Noises Off” which was really funny. I then went straight to dinner as I had not yet eaten. After dinner we went to Walmart to try to purchase a VHS tape with which we could record the replaying of The Colbert Report tomorrow, but they were all sold out. I then came back to my dorm to hang out, and was joined by both Scotts, Lisa, and Ed. We ended up mostly watching random stuff and Scott Ware played some guitar hero. Everybody slowly filtered out until about midnight, then I just watched some TV, listened to some music and worked on this post.

That must have by far been my longest entry, and my best attempt to try to use my memory. The week ahead looks like it will be much more calm. As an additional note, I found Felix the Cat: The Movie on youtube, which I shall probably soon check out as they have yet to put it on DVD.

I’ve already commented more than once how long this post is, but I decided it was necessary to add the next Josh’s Law to it anyway:
Josh’s Fourth Law:
Bismarck is the coolest word ever.

It’s so exhausting to wake up and wish you hadn’t
Dreams filled with machines of Kevorkian’s patent
Each day feels the same
Filled with sadness and its shame
Try not to let your thoughts show
But even those not close to you know
With your freinds you put on a smile
It occupies your mind, for a while
Feeling alone in the company of others
Your mind goes back to previous lovers
You think of how you’ve messed up your life
But you refuse to grab the knife
Although it could bring you great relief
You don’t want your time to be that brief
Now questioning once solid beliefs
Taken from you by apathetic griefs
Your days are filled with despair
Think if there’s a God, he’d be more fair
They give you pills to lift you higher
Until they work there’s nothing to stoke your fire
You lay your head down on your bed
Waiting for the day when you are dead

It’s pretty morose and it needs editing, but I figured I’d post it anyway. Now to go to back to bed and try to sleep once more.

Everyday I wake up and nothing ever changes. To add another quote, this one from the anime FLCL, “every day we spend here is like a whole lifetime of dying slowly”. That is how I feel so many days, and even more nights, at this point.

The only hope I have is that the Prozac has an affect on that sense of dreariness. Hopefully it will be my blue pill of happiness.

As of today I have been on medication for a week, which means that today’s is the first day for me to step up the dosage. Hopefully this will help somewhat with how I fell, but I have no way of predicting when it will start working.

I really can’t think of anything else to say, other than saying that I have nothing to say.

I think the fact that I’m slightly actually starting to take a little better care of myself could factor in to how I feel. I’m now on medication, but besides that I’ve been taking multivitamins and sleeping a pretty good amount. I also got some ankle supports so that my ankles may stop hurting.

I don’t really have much more to say, which I take to be a good thing. I will however, include another excerpt from Josh’s Law, as this is a postive post.

Josh’s Third Law
If an argument arises in which one of the parties is Josh, one of the following must be true:
-Josh is Right
-Josh is not right on purpose, to either confuse people, or to help them strengthen their arguments
-The matter is too unimportant for Josh to be bothered with knowing the right answer, so it doesn’t matter if he’s wrong

I know that since I’m 21 I shouldn’t be thinking of things with as much finality as I do, but half of me still doesn’t expect to live past 26. Even so, I had planned to be married by around 25 and maybe have some kids before 30. When I look at my life as it is, I don’t see that being possible anymore.