I want to be happy.  I think everyone does.  If I'm wrong that everyone wants to be happy, I've made a mistake somewhere.  Philosophically, I think that happiness is the highest good--it's the only thing we want for itself.  Everything else that we want we want because it, either directly or indirectly, makes us happy.  Granted, we're often wrong about what we think will make us happy, but we desire the things we do because we think that they will make us happy in some way or another.  Often we sacrifice future happiness for happiness now, and vice versa.  I feel like I'm getting off of the point I was trying to make here.

The question I often ask myself is, "what would it be like to be completely happy?"  If I were happy, would I know it?  Happiness seems to be a completely subjective feeling.  If I could feel everything that the happiest person in the world feels, would that make me happy?  How can I know if right now I have more happiness in my life than the average person?  Conversely, how can I know if I'm miserable compared to everyone else?  In a lot of ways, I don't think it's the sort of thing I can know.  Happiness is a subjective, personal feeling; it probably can't and shouldn't be compared across people.  That doesn't make it less interesting though.

I think the final point I'm trying to get it is this: if I had all of my desires satisfied, would I be happy?  If I fell in love with a beautiful girl, and we got married and spent forever together; if I had my dream job of playing professional soccer; if I had enough money to have every material desire satisfied; if I had the emotional and intellectual connections I crave from the people around me; if I learned all there is to know about philosophy and history and science and every other subject; if I had everything I could possibly want, would I be happy?  Or is there more to happiness than that?  How do you know when you have enough?  Can you ever have enough?

I hate talking about Christmas this early in the year.  It's not even Thanksgiving yet.  I just had my birthday last week.  My parents asked me what I wanted, and I said "nothing."  They got me stuff anyway.  There are all sorts of reasons why I don't want anything for Christmas either.  For one, I don't need any more stuff.  I already have more stuff than I know what to do with.  Besides that, I don't even like the idea that having more things could make me happier.  I may not know a lot, but I know that's not how happiness works.  Also, Christmas is a religious holiday.  As an atheist, it seems wrong for me ask people to give me stuff to celebrate the birth of someone I don't believe ever existed.  And lasty, my parents have done enough for me already.  They've already given me so much in my life, they don't need to prove that they care about me by buying me toys for Christmas.  Despite all of that, I'm going to make the list of things I want, since I know they'll insist of getting me gifts.  If I'm going to get gifts, they might as well be things that I want.  So, without further ado, here's my list of things I want for Christmas this year:

1.  Nice enough weather to play soccer every day I'm off of school

2.  A kiss from a pretty girl

3.  My mom not stressing out about spending time with our relatives

4.  A party with everyone who's my friend and nobody who isn't

5.  World peace

6.  Hugs from everyone I love

7.  A day without anyone in my family fighting

8.  Happiness

9.  Health for my family for the rest of the year

10.  To get to sleep in as late as I want

know.  You're probably asking yourself right now, "What the fuck does a 21-year-old kid from middle America know about life?"  If you answered "not very much," then you're right.  I don't know a whole lot about life because I haven't lived a whole lot of life.

I've read a lot of Aristotle, Descartes, Nietzsche, and other great thinkers.  One thing they all had in common is that none of them a damn clue what life is all about either.  They all just had enough balls to stand up and say "Hey, traditional thinking, you've got it all backwards."  And, honestly, that's usually enough to get you heard if you say it loud and often.

When it comes to things that life isn't about, however, I know a bit about that.  Life isn't about money.  It's tempting for us in America to want it to be since, for now, we've got more of it than anyone else.  We've also got more depression and suicide than the poorest countries in the world, so fuck money.  A lot of petroleum engineering majors like to tell me that they'll be making six figures there first year out of college.  As a philosophy major, I like to tell them that I'll be happy my first year out of college.

Will I actually be happy my first year out of school?  Fuck if I know.  But I won't be rich; at least I've got that going for me.  Honestly though, I think happiness might be overrated.  When you're happy, the only place you can go is down.  When you've hit rock bottom, you can do whatever the hell you want.  There's something liberating about being able to say, "No matter what I do, I can't make this shit any worse."  Think of what you could do if you had nothing left to lose.  I don't think eternall happiness is what life is all about, because wouldn't that get boring?

Anyone who has read much of my blog knows I spend a lot of time worrying about my lack of sexual experience.  Nothing has really changed for me in that regard.  Despite what everyone on here tells me about it being unimportant, I do feel like I am really missing out on something.  Obviously with how saturated our culture is with sex, it seems like it's what a guy my age is supposed to be doing.  "Real" men sleep with someone every night.  All the cool kids are doing it.  From the looks of this website, every high schooler is getting laid on a regular basis, making me look like some kind of pathetic loser.

I think if I were sleeping with more women it would help me feel better about myself.  I know I shouldn't have my self-esteem tied into who I sleep with, but I would feel more socially successful if I slept with more women.  When I'm hanging out with the guys on the soccer team driving to a game, they often spend a lot of time talking about the crazy parties they went to all the girls they hooked up with.  I feel bad that I can't contribute anything to these conversations.  I feel like an outsider on a team that I am supposed to be a part of.  Likewise, I think if I got to have more sex, I would feel better about the way I look and act.  If I'm good looking, and I'm a smart/funny/nice/cool person, girls should want to have sex with me.  Since most of them don't (since they're not having sex with me), that must mean I'm not any of those things, right?

Even when I do end up having sex with a girl, I wonder how my lack of experience will effect us.  I always am afraid that my lack of experience will lead to a bad performance in bed.  Nobody I have slept with has told me that I'm a bad lay, but that still doesn't stop me from worrying.  Whenever I'm with a girl who has more experience than me, I feel intimidated.  I feel like they are somehow better than me for being more successful in that aspect of their life.  Even if I'm not bad, I doubt that I'm good.  I want to be good at sex.  I actually want to be good at everything I do, and that includes sex.  All of the women I have slept with have made me feel great, I want to know that I can make them feel the same way.  What if I fall for someone who is more experienced than I am in bed (which seems to be everyone), and she breaks up with me for not being good at sex?

A lot of what I love about sex isn't actually sex, it's just the physical relationship associated with it.  There's no better feeling in the world than waking up next to a beautiful girl, especially if it's someone you love.  I like having someone to cuddle up next to when I'm falling asleep.  I like having someone to hold hands with, someone to kiss.  I like knowing that someone cares about me enough to be there.

I just realized today that I have almost no positive physical contact in my life. I'll occasionally get a high five from one of my friends, but that's about it. I get a fair amount of negative contact playing soccer. I spend a lot of time getting kicked and pushed around, although I give as good as I get on the soccer field. That's about the extent of my physical contact with otehr people though. When I'm at home over the summer, I at least have my parents around who will give me a hug when I'm feeling bad. All of my physical contact seems to drain me of energy, there's nothing positive that builds my energy level. I wish I had someone at school who would be there to give me a hug on days like this. Having someone who I could hold hands with and kiss and fall asleep with would make me feel so much better.

I always find that the things we write for ourselves are better than the things we write for others. If you know someone else is going to read your work, it inherently changes what you write. That goes double if you know specifically who you are writing for. I think that is one reason why I was attracted to writing online: the anonymity. Not only am I anonymous, so is everyone else. Once you know your audience, you start playing of their fears and prejudices, their desires and interest, trying to evoke a reaction in them. When you write for yourself, your thought don't need to be organized, coherent even. You know what you mean regardless of whether or not anyone else would be able to decipher your work. For me, staying true to yourself is the hardest part about writing. You have to be able to write without the fear of someone else disliking your writing, or worse, disliking you because of it. Still, as hard as you try, I don't think you can write without being influenced by your audience. And if you change the way you write, you change part of yourself. Before long, you stop owning the things you write and they can begin to own you.

I'm a 21-year-old college student and National Merit Scholar at OU. My scholarship gives me all sorts of shit I don't deserve. I got a check for $625 the other day, even though I have a 2.8 gpa in a shitty major. I have used my scholarship to get out of speeding tickets, to get free food, to get early enrollment for classes. Basically, it gives me everything a college student could ask for-- except for sex. Ever since my girlfriend and I broke up last spring, I haven't gotten any, so now I'm fucking horny.

So, any ladies up for making my scholarship even more valuable? I think OU will be able to attract any student they want out of high school if they can vouch for the fact that their scholarship gets the guys free pussy.

Let me know if you're interested in having a good time with me. And if you want more than just sex, I know stuff, so we could have a conversation or something too.