We humans don't have our priorities set straight. 
    I don't mean to be offensive in any way. I'm also not just saying that to say it. The sentence above is a simple fact of life. The most selfless, humble person will have times when they have to choose between something and want to go with the choice that benefits them the most. Sometimes it's a question of whether to eat the french fries or go with the salad; other times it's a career choice.
    Whatever it is, humankind has a tendency to go with whatever will make them happier in that particular moment. Hey, screw the salad! I'll run the calories off later...as long as it doesn't interfere with watching Keeping up With the Kardashians. So maybe I'll just not run it off tomorrow. But next time, I'm definitely choosing the salad...
    You see where this is going. But thanks to enough people out there having both willpower and a fierce hatred of procrastination, our world is still able to move along despite all of these priority problems. The fact still is that when it comes to this stuff, about 99.99999999 percent of us still need work in the priority department. 
    Where this is all leading to is something I mentioned above. A career choice. For me. That I'll most likely be doing the rest of my life. Now, I might be a wee bit young to be thinking about all of this, but hey! You can never start too soon! Unless you're one of those crazy soccer Moms getting your kid into the sport at 4 1/2 in hopes they'll earn a scholarship or something. 
    Okay. So here's my problem. I love writing. You can msot likely tell because I have a short story and poetry section on here. For whatever reason, I can't stay away from the pen and paper for my life. I live writing. I breathe writing. Well, hopefully I don't breathe it. I would really hate to get those smelly ink fumes in my system. Yuck.
    Of course, it's only natural for me to be a writer when I grow up. Not only would I get to sit at the computer all day and write stories, but I get paid to do that. There is nothing better to me. The work hours also seem to be a bit more lenient than the rest. Not to brag, but I can type pretty fast, so I'd probably have time to chill out before everything's due.
    There's just a small problem. Ever since I've been a little kid, I've had a strong desire to help people. I bounced back from being US President, Mayor Of An At Risk City, Humanitarian, and even a version of Supergirl, without the really revealing costume. Finally, after realizing that politics have more to do about charisma and power than actually helping stuff, I looked into the medical field.
    I was stumped. There were so many choices! Finally, I decided that I wanted to mainly work on the human brain. After proudly announcing that I was going to be a psychologist, I got laughs and even, "God, that's the worst job I could imagine!" Yeah....it didn't boil over well. So I thought for a good while longer about what I wanted to be medicalwise. Finally, I decided.
    I wanted to be a schizophrenia geneticist.
    Allow me to explain. Schizophrenia is a mental illness where the lines between reality and nonreality are blurred. This causes people to have it to have both visual and audio hallucinations. Some side effects are extreme paranoia and detatchment. It's pretty bad. Also, I have a family history of it, so it's a cause close to my heart.
    The question I have about it is what exactly do people have in their genetic codes that gives them the potential for getting it? What turns the "switch" on, and what gives people the "switch" in the first place? As a schizophrenic geneticist, I would research that and try to figure out not only how to turn the "switch" off but to also be able to tell someone if they have the potential for acquiring this mental illness.
    If I were to be successful in this research or contribute an important piece of material to this study, I'd be helping a lot of people. And that's all I want to do, is to help as many people as possible. Now, I might not EXACTLY go into genetics, but if I were to go into the medical field I would want to be reasearching and finding a cure for schizophrenia. 
    So now I will have to eventually choose what I want to pursue. Do I want to be a writer, which will give me happiness and a job I love, or a schizophrenic reseracher, which is a job that could give me satisfaction in the long term and will be an effort to help people? I'm honestly stuck and I don't know what to do. I know what the obvious answer should be, but I'm committing my whole life to this.
    Again, we humans do not have our priorities set straight.
    So what do you guys think? What should I do? Any feedback would be great. In the meanwhile, I think I'm going to go write a poem now. Or listen to Evanescence. I'll actually probably do both.                        
     
 
    This is not going to be a particularly happy blog entry.
    As you can tell from the title, I just lost Grandpa to wherever one's spirit goes on the other side. I knew that he was going soon. I mean, he had terminal prostate cancer. It was only a matter of months. I thought that I was prepared for what was going to happen.
    How stupid of me.
    It happened Tuesday morning at around 2:30 AM. He had just moved into the care home when he complained of chills to the hospice (the nursing home people) and then started freaking out because he couldn't breathe. The hospice came in to give him so medication and he didn't have a pulse. It all happened so suddenly. 
    It was honestly a matter fo 72 hours. 3 days ago, he was well enough to shop at Costco and use the cart as a walker. That day, he was so sick that he couldn't support his own weight. He spiraled downhill so fast that there was nothing to catch him but death. 
    I can't really explain how I feel right now. When I first heard, I started crying and then a few minutes late the tears turned to hysterical sobbing and screaming. Then, I calmed down. It was like an ice pack was thrown into my insides. I still feel that way. Numb and unresponsive to the event. I can't emotionally process what's going on right now, I guess. 
    How can one person be there one day and gone the next? How can I have so many years ahead of me and he only had a matter of weeks? How can that happen? How does the clock for someone just...stop? I can't imagine him gone. It's just not possible that the Grandfather who loved his cats, went fishing, and loved Costco could be gone to the sky.
    I don't want him to be up there, though. I want him to be down here with the family. That's where he belongs. With us. Life is so so precious. I know that it's supposed to end. It always ends. The clock of life never stops for anyone. It just feels so unfair, though. 
    We humans are so selfsih. Here I am, moaning about wanting Grandpa to be with me, when really I should be happy that he's in a better place. I should be happy that he's young and free and painless, and all I want is for him to come back. How awful of me. 
    Moving on.
    The funeral is next Friday. I'm a little terrified of funerals. I think of black and mourning and sobbing and frankly I want to keep that stuff out of my mind. I don't want to see the coffin that Grandpa will be in. I have never imagined him in a coffin. I don't want a thought that hasn't even treaded my nightmares to become horrifying reality. 
    I will have the opportunity to recite something at the funeral. At first I thought, "No way! Why the heck would i want to do that? I don't want to be affiliated with that dreaded funeral. Period." And then I got to thinking. This would be the chance for me to say all of the things that I didn't get a chance to say. 
    So I decided to write a poem.
    It's titled, "Grandfather, Grandfather". I can't really explain how I got to writing it. It just came out so...naturally. I am going to present this poem to the funeral, and hopefully it will briefly sum up everything that I feel. Here's the poem:

Grandfather, Grandfather

You're swimming in a starry sea 
No longer are you aged and ill
Your steps are filled iwth youthful glee
A place in our hearts you'll always fill

Grandfather, Grandfather
Watchng from up above
It is I, your grieving granddaughter
Please know that you're always loved

You're know to Rocky and I as Grandpa
A title you will alway skeep
You taught me to fight with a firmly set jaw
It is in my hopes I'll see you again in my sleep

Grandfather, Grandfather
Watching from up above
It is I, your grieving granddaughter
Please know that you're always loved

Oh, Grandpa, why did you have to go?
It hurts so much now that you're gone
Grandpa, know that I miss you so
But it's your undying love that keeps me marching on

Grandfather, Grandfather
Watching from up above
It is , your grieving Granddaughter
Please know that you're always loved.

    And there it is. The poem I am going to read at the funeral. I'll update you on how that goes....oh, God, why did this have to happen? It's the worst thing, this whole grief business. But I have to keep marching on. That's the one thing left to do is to keep marching on.                   

UPDATE: The funeral was sad. I cried. I couldn't read my poem. Apparently the funeral home is really booked and I would have backed the whole system up...


    
 
    It's a conspiracy, I swear. 
    I don't know what exactly I have done in my rather short lifetime to create this rocky relationship between technology and I, but something had clearly happened along the road to cause us to but heads. Well, okay. 
    Maybe I have a slight idea. 
    I didn't mean to drop that camera in the creek! And maybe blow drying it afterwards wasn't the smartest idea, but how was I supposed to know that the insides were going to melt? And I only lost it on that microwave because it wasn't working the way it should of. To be fair, I didn't know how to use the thing and it later turned out that the "piece of crap" I ended up throwing across the room was subject to user error. But still.
I don't deserve to be at war with technology. 
    For example. The server went down a few days ago, which wasn't much of a problem because my computer was the only one that didn't screw up. However, when I had to print out a very important piece of work, a la stupida computidora decided to call it a day and stop working for me. 
    And then when I tried to toast two pieces of bread so I could have a deliciously crunchy sandwich, the toaster decided to leave one piece untouched and to subject the other one to cremation. I mean, it could have at least had the decency to keep innocent pieces of bread out of it. Come on now.
And then when I want to email some photos to my friend, my very idiotic PC thought it'd be a smart trick to screw me up. After 15 desperate attempts, I finally got the photos sent. Of course, with my luck, they were upside down. 
    After my many failed attempts at technology, I have decided to throw a wildcard into the game. As far as I know, though I may be on the bad side of PC's, I still may have a chance with MacBooks. That's right. I'm going from Dell to Apple as soon as possible. 
    Of course, knowing my procrastinating, multitasking, broke self, that will probably take a matter of months or even years. Oh we'll. A girl can dream, right? For now, though, I must still face the unfortunate reality of my war with technology.
    And it doesn't look like its gonna end any time soon.