How Can I Be Anything But Second Best to You?

Warning, this blogpost may contain nostalgia, profundity, and references to obscure pop culture references-- you have been warned.

So I just recently finished Paper Towns, comparisons aside for now, John Green is now not only one of my favorite YouTubers, but he now tops the list of favorite authors.

I recommend you go buy it if you have the means to. I bought the one with sad Margo-- it's less disconcerting I think.

I suppose you can consider this my sort-of book report, but at the same time I plan to tell you nothing about the book. It's like two girls, one cup-- you get to see my reaction but never understand what I saw in it.

Sorry, I know someone probably just ewwww-ed at that.

I can't say the book was anything exceptional, not to offend it, but what I mean is that it's a book very much about real life and real people for once-- no boy wizards, sparkly vampires, or unfortunate orphans can be found amongst these pages.

and unlike most books I've read in the past 5 years, it really made me think.

High school is a weird place, anyone who has been can tell you that it was the worst time of their life, or for some-- they very few I have in my life they live with this self aggrandized glory of who they were in high school.

In the end, it was just a place where we learned, and met people: good and bad, and somewhere along the line we became young adults and left it in a very unfamiliar state than when we entered. I have very few fond memories of high school, and even fewer friends leftover after the great schism that was college...but through it all it did shape who I am and what I wanted to be.

I suppose this is where the the belated learning comes in, how a book about high school can teach me more about high school than ever being in high school ever did.

I once heard a quote that went something like: the race is long, and in the end it's only with yourself...

I suppose nothing I'm going to say from here on out is fact, just something that from my own experience has been proven to be true: results may vary, if there are even any results at all worth sharing.

I'll never accept when people say life is short now that I think about it, how can life be short, it's the longest thing you'll ever do? No rather I've found that we instead spend most of our time not living our lives preoccupied with some intangible worry about something that will probably never befall us anyway.

Don't be afraid to live your life, and I mean really live it-- do not become a spectator, because in the end of it all you want your story to be one worth telling. Strive to become a legend, even if it's only in your mind, because in the end all that matters is what you thought of you.

They did hit on a point in Paper Towns, leaving is the hardest thing you'll ever do, until you do it and then you realize that unlike ripping off a bandage you are without the same feeling of regret and remorse, but rather waiting until you can do it again.

I've left home many times now, and find that Heraclitus wasn't exactly right and neither was Thomas Wolfe-- whether it's a river or a home, you'll find that sometimes if you're lucky, you'll find that going home to a place you once knew is the only way to preserve the person you once were.

College has given me a lot of perspective, much more than I ever had bumming around Manchester, New Hampshire with my best friends-- not that college is what changed me, but rather just seeing the world from a different place has altered my concept of reality.

I've learned that you have to learn to walk out your front door, even if it scares you, because to me there is nothing scarier than finding someone who was so afraid of being afraid that they lived their lives in pathetic familiarity. Do not fear the unknown, because by doing so you are merely prolonging the inevitable. To presume we live in a world of familiarity is to truly be a man on an island.

Do what you love, even if you're bad at it, even if it kills you-- because in the end that's what life is going to do. No matter who you are or what you do, we are all going to die--no one is exempt from our impending mortality, in the end we all have the same destination. The journey is what defines who you are, because you'll find that in the very end of it, our stories are all connected in the same boring place, hell who knows-- that place might even wind up being a paper town so you might as well make your mark on the map while you're still holding on the pushpins.