So I talked about this last night in a drunken stupor, so I think it deserves some intelligent or at least coherent analysis. What few people know about me is that several times when I was younger, I seriously considered becoming a priest. Now, when I say seriously considered, I mean as seriously as a 9 or 10 year old can consider things. It was sort of on the same level as wanting to be an astronaut. Now the reason why this pops up now is because of all the thinking I have been doing about the Catholic Church, with it in the news so much lately. I even wondered a few nights ago, if my life would have been happier had I attempted to follow that path.

Now, of course, the priesthood would be out of the question. If for nothing else, there would be way too many awkward moments at cocktail parties where a random guy would say “Hey! Didn’t I hook up with you at party X in college?” And being a good priest, I would have to respond: “Why, yes. Yes, that did happen.”

But seriously, I wonder if the things I think give me happiness actually do give me happiness. I always thought that sex and a relationship with another human being would be the real sticking point. Ever since the middle of high school, I always really wanted someone else who I loved and who loved me back in my life. However, it has proved impossible since then to actually find that. The pursuit has been fun at times, but it’s mostly been awkward and kind of sad. I’m now wondering if it’s not really for me, and if the whole thing is more misery than it deserves. I’ve wasted so much of my life pining after certain people who I could never have.

Also, I’ve gradually found that a lot of material things: food, alcohol, clothes etc. don’t really bring me much in the way of joy. That’s a little cliché and obvious, but it’s worth saying.

Finally, there’s really no purpose to my life. I’ve slowly lost passion in a lot of things. There’s no cause I truly believe in anymore, nothing I feel so sure about anymore.

I feel like if I had taken up an alternate path, there would’ve been something to believe in and something to give purpose and order to my life. Unfortunately the Catholic Church is really just terrible in so many ways such that it would be impossible for me to be a part of it. I would have to renounce and deny who I am, and preach against others like me. It would be too much of a betrayal.

So, we left off with P-ton, either overconfident or afraid of our craziness. They ran a case about the draft, and we won it in a toss up. This lead to our semis round, which was about education taxation, which we lost in a toss up.

When it was all over we were the 8th place team, not half bad. After we watched Blenkinpov win Nats in a case about Harvard, and then we recieved our awards. To be honest I hadn't felt such a sense of accomplishment in many years. Debate was something that was difficult for me to do, yet I fought to get better and became part of one of the best teams in the country. All of the friends I had cried to in frustration over my debate career were now congratulating me for some genuine success by any standard. It was an indescribable feeling......

In recent days I've been a little sad. I'm starting to wonder what my emotional maturity level is and what I actually want out of the relationships I have with people. I'm in dire need of more genunine connection in my life. But I'm also faced with the fact that, in general, I don't seek out that connection actively. In many ways I'm afraid and very scared, I don't know how to approach people without seeming very awkward.

I saw myself in a debate round a few days ago, and I finally realized why so many people react to me the way they do. My mannerisms were very odd and confused, at times my eyes wandered and darted crazily about, sometimes moving without explanation or reason. For many of you that know me, your reaction is probably "Duh!", but for me the tape revealed a lot of things about the way people veiw me that I never knew before. It made me understand how different I was from normal people in the way I talked and moved and made eye contact. I wondered if that was the reason why I so often made a bad first impression with a lot of people, and have trouble integrating in a lot of groups.

I also sometimes wonder now if I'm ready for any sort of significant relationship. Ijust feel sometimes that I'm too odd for a lot of people. Many just don't understand me, and end up not feeling very deeply, or I can't convey my feelings without going overboard. I also am constantly in second place to someone else. But what else is new? I hate to repeat themes that run throughout this blog, but they keep coming up. I find someone I like, we see each other for a week or two and invariably we eventually stop talking. Why? Well either nothing was there, or there was someone else who they felt was more worthy pursuing. Something's wrong. I might be too cold and aloof at times, I also might be too weird, I could also just be too awkward when I first meet people.

Whatever it is, I find myself with very little genuine sources of joy in my life anymore. My relationship with my family has turned into a cold one, they seem to have lots of advice, and I'd like to live up to their expections, but I'm not really there yet, and I feel I'll never be. At school I really find myself to be all alone for far too much time. I don't think people dislike me, I just think I never reached out enough, or if I did, nobody noticed. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one walking alone. I walk by, and nobody seems to notice, my cellphone rarely rings, and I don't know who to run to when I need to cry....so here I am.

So, it's been a while, but I finally am back to update the old blog again. It's just very hard to get back into the habit once you get out of it for a while. So, I'll summarize what's gone on since our last meeting.

First, I lost the presidency of APDA to Robbie Pratt. Sadness.

Second, Nick and myself did very well at Nationals. For posterity's sake, and for your (possible) entertainment. Here is a blow by blow account of my experience there:

Friday:
The drive down to Nationals was fairly uneventful. Everything went on without a hitch, including registration and other stuff. This was a welcome difference from Worlds this year where it took about 5 hours to get a hotel key. Soon we all settled in and first round pairings were announced. We hit the Liz Holmes ironwoman, and she ran a case that was somewhat interesting, but basically came down to diversity v. a good education for your child. We choose the right side (good education), and picked up a pretty good round.

In second round, we hit Tom Ross and his partner, who was known as "Tapper" and we ran one of our vague opp choice cases that collapses in PMR. Unfortunately, Arthur Traldi was our judge and was not a fan, we were dropped.

That night the party was very good. It one of the best times I've ever had on the circuit. It featured me drinking spiced rum, and everyone else getting absolutely wasted. As always, I did many impressions, and there was much embarrassing hitting on of straight guys (Michael Baer, you are such a good sport). One of the more entertaining parts was when I did my Pat Nichols impression to Pat Nichols, and we argued in our Pat Nichols voices for a minute or two. Oh, if we only had a video recording of such an event!

At some point Colleen cut me off from the booze, and I stumbled back to bed.

Saturday:

The day began with me retriving my shoe from the Brandeis room where I left it the night before. I put on my suit with my power pink tie. I had actually been debating whether to wear my best tie that day. I thought that if I got to outrounds, I would want the pink tie to debate in, and not some inferior shirt-tie combination. I then thought that that line of thinking was a little presumptuous, so I put on the pink tie, feeling that I'd need the luck to get there anyway.

I had breakfast, small talked with people etc and so on........

We got to GA and they announced pairings. We hit NYU A, which was Christian and Alex. I was not particularly thrilled with the pairings, because while I've had some nice times with both people, Christian and Alex are not the most pleasant people to hit in a round. There was much bitchiness on both sides. They ran an annoying case about the EU. I had a 12 minute MO. Just not a very good experience in general. Nick and myself left the room with a feeling that we had lost the round, and were not in the best of moods.

However, our anxieties about the last round were allieved when we saw the pairings for the next round. We were hitting W&M A (Inspector Pratt and his inquisitive assistant, Mr. Ford), which meant two things. First, we had definitely won the last round. W&M was most likely 3-0. However this also meant that we were the "pull-up" meaning that we were 2-1 but hitting a team in the 3-0 bracket. This was a little unlucky. The good news was that we had Adam Unikowsky as the judge. He is someone who would not be afraid to drop a good team to us if we won the round, which is untrue of many judges at a lot of tournaments.

We had a decent round about public defenders, and we came out of the round feeling good about our chances. About fifteen minutes later, we got the word from Robbie that we had won. This could accurately be described as the turning point of the tournament for us. Before that we were a midling team in the 2-1 bracket struggling to hold our own, now we were 3-1 and had just nocked off one of the best teams in the country. I ran around like a giddy school- girl, telling everyone I knew about my triumph.

The next round we hit Blenkinpov on gov and lost. We had run out of our tricky collapsable cases to run against them, so we knew it would be an uphill fight. But, so it goes.

In 6th round we hit Brown A and ran our undefeated opp choice case (both sides are right!!) against them. They chose the non collapsable side, and I was very happy. We won and finished 4-2.

That night at the banquet, we felt like we had had a good run, but that we would not have the requisite speaker points to break. There were too many shitty rounds, too many missteps early on to warrent a break at Nationals. However, as information trickled in things looked increasingly promising for us. First was Kat Arthur telling us she had picked us up with 26.5s, which was huge for us. Next, was the leak we got that 5 out of the 6 top 3-2s lost, also huge for us since those were the teams we needed to leap frog to break. Next was a piece of intangible evidence from Specian, who told us that while he couldn't get information on who was in the break from Unikowsky, he did detect a smirk on the debate savant's face, indicating a possible surprise outcome in our favor.

The break announcements came: Princeton A....(other schools)...Harvard BP....(others).....BU A

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

There was much celebration. It was a validation of what I had spent so much of my time on for three years. I had broken at the most important tournament of the year, and people finally had to respect me as a debater. People congratulated me on my sucess....it was wonderful.

That night, Nick, Specian, Jonathan, and myself set to work on a truly crazy case to shock and awe our unlucky opponent. We heard it was going to be Princeton A, so we crafted a case that they would melt on, and that we could collapse in PMR (of course).

The next morning we heard our pairings and it was confirmed that we were hitting Princeton. We flipped for sides and they won. For whatever reason, they chose gov. Some theorize it was because the feared whatever nonsense we were prepared to run against them, others say they were hit by hubris and felt they could beat us with any case they had........

(due to the time I will continue this later)