Harry Potter... for the last time.

I am sad. I'm not going to lie. I love reading books, stand alone, trilogy, or series. I love getting lost into character, letting my overactive(and hyperactive) imagination get lost and blurring the line of reality to the point where I begin to believe it may be real. I'm good at it, I've been doing it since I was little, it's why I'm so extreme about everything, I make my whole life about a single thing and become a fanatic. Like my secret desires to kidnap George Lucas and have him tell me Star Wars bedtime stories forever... that kind of thing. I just don't want the world that I've immersed myself into, the world that I feel like I've become a part of... to end.

And there begins my sadness. As I was telling Whatafreak over the phone not 2 hours ago, I feel like I have no direction now, for the last decade of my life, half of my life, there has been a new Harry Potter book shelled out every year and a half to two years. No more. Never again. Never again will Harry be a friend to comfort me. I can reread his pages, but his story doesn't go on. I always have a hard time imagining past the last page of a book, I feel it's a crime, it's stealing, to run away with someone else's story. So basically it is as if Harry has died. There were a lot of times growing up when I felt alone like Harry did in the book, like I was just me against everything else, and it gave me something to believe in, it gave me an example of courage and strength and similarity. It let me know that I wasn't alone, there were others like me, geeky, outcast, abnormal, and they too had their own world to belong to, their own adventures.

I really do feel as if I just spent the last 10 years with a person, really knowing a person, fictional or not, and now he's gone, it's like loosing an amazing friend. Whoever reads this can laugh if they want, they can call me a retard, idiot, pansy, what have you. But I'm not joking, I'm not trying to make you smile or chuckle or be a clown. I just have a hard time letting go. And it hurts to let go. And it sucks knowing that every book I read and every movie I watch, will end. And I know that every time I read a book or what a movie, I will get attached to the characters, feel their pains, be frustrated at their struggles, laugh with them, cry with them... it's a difficult thing for a child to endure for his entire life, all of the attachments and the endings and feeling that every time the book closing or the credits roll, he just lost a friend he trusted and believed in. And I must say, it puts in me the thought of never reading another book, never watching another movie, never getting involved with people because even in the real world, the one I seek to avoid by submerging myself in that wonderful world of fantasy and fiction, everyone I know, trust, believe in, and love... they will all go too someday.

Do I dare attach myself and set myself up for the eventual breakdown of my existence? Or do I distance myself from everyone and everything that I love and take pride in? It's a difficult question.

I often feel that I'm missing something, I feel like a hero that lost his villain, I don't understand my purpose but I feel like I'm missing something, some integral clue or plot point that should be pointing me down the correct path... I want power, the power to change people, to help people, to fight for something I believe in. I want to be a hero, but it seems that in this day and age, there's so much gray area that a true black villain no longer exists, there's good and bad. An evil businessman may employ an honest man... shutting down the businessman ends the honest man's ability to support his family... there are no evil men surrounded by other evil men, there is good and bad to everything it seems.

I wish that life were easier, simpler, more black and white. I wish that I was more realistic or cold. I wish that emotions didn't grab a hold of me so easily. I wish that I wasn't so weak willed.

I want badly to be a writer, though writing is my weakest skill, funny how life goes. But I don't want to write for profit or fame, I wish to write to finally complete one of the ideas that is clanking around in my ill-shaped head. My thoughts are so chaotic and in some cases tainted with other ideas I've heard or read, that organizing them and writing them down is the most ridiculously daunting task. I don't have the mental fortitude to complete a task such as that. And I would much prefer a collaboration on a work, create something with a friend, but my friends are never around when the desire strikes, nor would I care to waste the precious time I had with them on a pursuit such as that.

Maybe it's just due to my age. Maybe that's the empty feeling is just that so much of my life has yet to be lived, yet to be completed. Maybe my life is like when I was watching Windows XP install on the computer I built for the first time, it's sitting at 22% and I'm just sitting waiting for the bars to fill up so I can boot it up for the first time, maybe I'll get the same rush of pride I felt then, maybe I'll feel it complete and know that my life is over... that would be an odd sensation.

My life has drastically changed in just a few short years. I went from this pudgy young kid, knowing he was different from other people, that he didn't belong, that he wasn't normal, to a teenager who preferred to spend more time with books and computers than with people, to finding two of the most amazing friends in Whatafreak and Nicklaus, to going to a university on a whim because my brother went there and I didn't feel like filling out other applications, to meeting the most beautiful, dark-haired girl, to falling in love, and slowly start watching my past slowly crumble away, Whatafreak and Nicklaus move away, not feeling at home at home anymore, and uncertainty about my own future, and then this void was created... this huge terrible empty feeling... I once thought of myself as a smart person. My entire life people told me I was gifted, talented, not living up to my potential. And I was afraid to try... I didn't want to try my hardest and then realize that I wasn't as smart as I was made out to be. I am certain that I am glad I got away from here, else I'd end like Koda is now, struggling to make ends without any kind of a future in site...

I just don't know to go frankly. I want to get my next semester's books so I can begin studying, I want to try. I want to figure all of this out. I want to see what that last 4/5 of my life is going to be like...

There's so much that is riding around on my shoulders these days, so many thoughts haven't finished thinking themselves out, so many beginnings without endings... So many endings that I miss dearly. So many things that have come and gone and left me alone. What is left of me?

Block Off Plate

It's finally on. I was going to change the oil today but went with my brother to Boise to help his girlfriend with her car (which we weren't able to do anything about after all), so I haven't gotten around to it yet.

So yeah... that's about it for today...

I hope you're feeling better this afternoon, Sarah.

Captain's Log Stardate 070718.539

So, my brother built my block off plate... out of 1/4 inch steel. It's thicker than my engine block sidewalls. I bought gasket paper and cut out a gasket for it and now I just have to go back to the shop tonight and bolt it into place, drain the oil/gas it has sitting in it right now, and refill with the thicker 20W Pennzoil that's sitting next to it, and then I am going to replace the gaskets that are also sitting on the bench next to it.

Sarah, I hope you feel better honey, I love you so much. I miss you sweetie.

Append to Previous

• Unfortunately do to some unfortunate sizing issues and the unwillingness of companies to produce products for Toyota's read headed stepchild that is the 4A-C engine, my older brother is fabricating me a fuel block of plate.
• I'm still waiting for that paycheck and it's grown some.
• I got to spend all of 4th of July and even most of the week following with Sarah.
• She loved her surprise.
• Still deciding on the Electric Fuel Pump and Electric Fan I want to purchase.
• Still waiting to get the block off plate on so I can drain the oil and run the heavier weight stuff through.
• Haven't called the transportation department. (Want it to be running before I proceed.)
• And I still need to check on getting some upholstery work done on it.
  

I am also working on getting a few of my dad's trucks painted.

And it's been really hot and crappy lately, but anyways, talk to you all later.

Just a few things.

• My fuel pump block off plate is due in at V & M tomorrow.
  
• I have a paycheck coming soon.
  
• I get to spend most of the 4th of July with Sarah.
• Been working on a surprise for her, hopefully I get it planned and finished in time
• I need to get the electric fuel pump ($42) and the F.A.L. Electric Fan ordered ($75-$100).
• After I get the block off plate put on I need to drain the oil, replace the oil filter and give it heavier 20W oil to see if it'll smooth it out at all.
• I need to call the Transportation Department about the title.
• I need to check with some upholstery guys about getting the seats redone, and then I'm going to start scouring junk yards in Portland for similar cars for some parts.

That's about it. I need to figure out where I'm sleeping in Portland in the next few days as well... dangit...