Focused Insanity

There are quite a few benefits to being crazy and random. Recent benefits have included-

- Landing a role in the Hanszen play, thanks to acting (?) like a crazy Frenchman

- Chasing squirrels (Great stress relief! And it's good for the environment!)

- Finding random places in buildings to study in the middle of the night (Shhh... It's a secret)

- Meeting lots of new people (albeit, under unusual circumstances)

This is all great and fun. However, intentionally trying to be crazy does have some side effects by rubbing off on "normal life" in some weird ways. These negative effects have shown themselves a couple of different ways.

- Sneaking into the Employee section of Fondren is NOT a good idea. (sorry)

- Listing "death" as one of the most dangerous complications of malaria on a test is not an acceptable answer. (Death still ranks pretty high on the dangers list in my book)

- Having to give justification for why you're behaving the way you are all the time is pretty tiring.

- Getting the urge to go do something crazy every time I sit down to do work.

Also, getting used to ignoring social norms can sometimes cause you to miss certain social cues. I picked up supplies at the bookstore today, and walked all the way out of RMC before I realized that I hadn't paid for them. When I went back and bought them, the lady said she had seen me walking out, I was just apparently being oblivious to her reaction. :P

So, I find it difficult now to support living with behavioral patterns of breaking comfort zones simply for the sake of being different or expressive. I think my post Civilized Unconformity was heading the right direction. Sometimes, our comfort zones lead us to overlook local or global problems. We get caught up in our lives, and keep focusing on ourselves. This ends up with time, money, and attention all going towards the wrong ends. That is where I need to be stepping out, waking people up to what needs to be happening. It's great if I get people to act differently just to have a little more fun, but it's a whole lot greater if I get them to act differently about social justice.

This obviously is going to lead to some changes in the type of craziness that goes on here on 4 Walls Broken. Trust me, it'll still be interesting, and I'll still spice it up with some very entertaining activities. But putting meaning behind the effort for change is going to help the focus of these projects a lot.

The other changes that go along with that apply just to my major. I'm in the process of creating my own major, addressing many of the same issues that I've just mentioned. I had a late night planning session in my secret lab recently, using a system of notecards, embroidery floss, duct tape, and loud music to plot out the course of my studies, and the rest of my life.

If you're going to try to figure out your whole life, you might as well make it look complex and fascinating, right?