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My friends say I exaggerate things. Like when I tell them that 66 is the worst road in the United States. They're typical response is, "Really, Nate? Is it REALLY the WORST road in the US?" I usually respond that it is, which I truly believe. They in turn, roll their eyes and dismiss my opinions as exaggerations.

But life isn't funny without exaggerations. Take for instance, my life, which seems to be fodder for all my stories. (Despite what you may believe, I have a highly evolved sense of self deprecation and although I write about my life all the time, I do not think my life is interesting. I just have an interesting perspective on my life.) My life is essentially boring. I sleep. I eat. I drink, mostly diet coke. I shit. I watch tv. Occasionally, I'll exercise. Oh, and I write, when I feel motivated. I work. (By work I mean play FreeCell)

There. I summed up the entirety of my daily existence in twenty seven words. If this was a dustcover biography in my future-yet-to-be-published book, it would be followed by a lot of white space. I do despise white space (it intimidates me, click back and read a couple entries about blank pages).

Take my job year long job as a bouncer. You would think that I had so many interesting and funny stories to tell. After a person asked my about it, I pondered for a few seconds. All I could muster was a horrid story about a drunk guy that probably (I didn't see it) got arrested for a DUI. That was responded with a horrid look of fear and disgust. That is when I conveniently took a sip from my ever present pint of beer, to save me from speaking more.

I sat a lot as a bouncer. On really uncomfortable bar stools. It took me about two weeks to master the correct slouch in which I could sit without letting one of my ass cheeks fall asleep. I obsessively checked my cell phone to check the time, hoping that more than the two minutes I knew had passed, had really passed by. I read books, newspapers, anything really I could get my hands on. I found myself reading the back of the label once, because it was more interesting that looking at the stairs (exaggeration, not the stairs, the label). I tried practicing meditation once. It failed miserably, when I realized that I had nodded off to sleep for about five minutes. I drank copious amounts of diet coke and water (sadly, not an exaggeration). This served several purposes. First was to probably rehydrate myself. Although I sat a lot, sometimes I would find myself moving a lot in very crowded rooms with very little air conditioning. (People, when you go out, personal hygiene is not a luxury. Shower. Deodorant. Cologne or perfume if you have the chance. On another note, I know there are some naysayers that are reading this, yes I know, all three of you, that think that diet coke does not hydrate a person. You are wrong. Diet cokes is like the ambrosia that the Greek Gods drank upon the peak of Mount Olympus.) Secondly, to over caffeinate myself. A lot the time, I would be staring, doing the same action, repeated about five million times (another exaggeration). Working, I probably could have been fine only knowing a few key phrases of English; "Yes, I work here," "The bathroom is downstairs," "There's a line to get upstairs," "ID," and "Move." Please was an optional attachment to any of the aforementioned statements (sadly, not an exaggeration). Thus, caffeination was desperately needed considering that my shifts ranged for ten to twelve hours of the mind numbing repetition. Lastly, the reason I drank a lot was, believe it or not, to make myself urinate a lot. Before you click the nice little cross shaped icon on the top of your browser in disgust, hold out to read through my logic. Working as a bouncer, I rarely got a break. During the first couple of hours, the traffic was slow and I didn't really need a break. When things got busy, I couldn't really leave my position in order to just get a breather. However, relieving myself in the restroom was the only break I got sometimes. It was my solace from the helter skelter of the bar scene. It was the only time when people were asking for me in the radio where I could legitimately tell them to wait because I have my penis in my hand. (yes, exaggeration)

So, yes. There. I exaggerate. Life is boring otherwise. I love it when I go to the movies and critics describe a movie as a slice of life. No, really it isn't. Firstly, a slice of my life would last about five minutes of the silver screen. A little montage of a strapping Asian man typing away at the computer, followed by a scene of him playing video games at home. In those two scenes alone, you have described about ninety percent of my day. (exaggeration, actually only about sixty percent) A slice of life isn't entertaining. No one's life is really entertaining. Horrifying? Perhaps. Boring? Most definitely. When I dream about my daily life and I wake unsure if I had a dream or I was just remembering the day I had, I call those dreams nightmares.

Exaggeration is the color to the otherwise bland canvas that I look at every day. It's one of the white lies I tell every day just to make the bitter pill we call life a little easier to swallow. I would think of another analogy here, but I'm kind of getting a throbbing headache right now. Exaggeration is the grease on my chain I call my life? Yeah….

Now I know I’m not ugly

Although, in hindsight, it took me a long time to come to terms with that fact. I went to a high school full of very thin people, living in a country that was extremely image conscious. Being slightly "big boned," (on a side note, what the fuck does that mean. My pediatrician always avoided the term fat. I was fat. I had a gut. Saying I was "husky" or "big boned" was like giving me nutrasweet and telling me its sugar) I was always self conscious of my size. By big boned, I mean I was probably two of the girls in my class. While in the US, my size would have probably been celebrated by the fact that I was mildly athletic and probably could have been a decent football player. In Korea, I was, for lack of better words, a fat guy in a sea of skinny people.

To add to this, whenever my loving and wonderful mother calls me on her now (read previous blog called 'The Lies We Tell') weekly phone call, her first question is, "how is your weight control going?" Of course, I always lie and say it's going great.

Anyways, needless to say, it took me a little while to finally get over my issues with size. Eventually, I've learned to embrace what you have in life, or change it. Subsequently, I've lost give or take forty pounds in the past couple of months. I'm not as much sure as if I've been doing this for self image- I have lost a lot of weight in the past and gained it back, mostly out of self loathing- or the fact that the clothes that I had weren't fitting me anymore and I am subsequently too poor and embarrassed to buy an entirely new wardrobe.

Anyways, the only reason I divulge these terribly honest and frankly a little embarrassing facts, is…actually, I'm not sure if there was a reason. But their kind of funny, looking back at them.

I'm a big zero for three this summer when it comes to dating. Three different girls, three different types of rejections. Although it would be funny for me to dwell into the details of each rejection and explain the semantics of each situation…..actually it would be funny.

Girl number 1

I had known of girl number 1 since high school, which was promising, because we shared a similar background in a sense. Sometimes, I have a hard time relating to the typical high school experience in the US- I guess because my high school experience was so not typical. Anyways, since we had gone to the same high school, there was a commonality there which I thought would be a good basis for things.

She would be what I would term as a late bloomer. In fact, despite the size of my high school being barely under a massive four hundred (380 actually, I think. There were like 76 students in my graduating class) students, I hardly recall any interaction with Girl number 1. I believe the word that I am looking for is wall flower. Anyways, about a year ago, former wallflower Girl number 1 walks back into my world. And she has bloomed significantly since I last saw here. I would go into further detail, however I find that describing how big her boobs were now compared to then is distasteful.

Anyways, I got her number that night. Went out for dinner. It kind of fizzled after that. Stayed in contact, saw her once in a blue moon, and then a couple months ago, went out for ice cream, which turned into dinner and drinks and then sitting by the river just talking. I thought that was a go ahead to ask her to go out on another date. Unfortunately, she is leaving for law school at the end of the summer and cited that for the reason to not get involved with anyone.

I still insist I'm much more fun than law school.

Girl number 2

Now I've know girl number 2 for nearly four years now. We both were involved the literary magazine at my former university. She was an incoming freshman and I was, well, let's just say I was well along the road of my college career, a long winding road with many a side trails and pit stops. Anyways, we always watched movies together. I am somewhat artsy and I can appreciate good cinematography when I see it.

Needless to say, when I first met Girl number 2, she was significantly younger than me and because of that, didn't think it was necessarily appropriate to pursue a relationship with her.

Skip to four years later and now she is going into her senior year of college. Girl number 2 goes to Italy for the summer. She calls me from Italy. Twice. I really don't think much of the phone calls, but the thought still lingers in my head somewhat. I start to see Girl number 2 as maybe something more than just a movie companion. Eagerly, I await her return from Italy and I help her move into her new apartment. We go out for beers that night. Despite there being an obvious lack of chemistry between us and I still find it in my drunken self (this was after eight or nine beers and I was teetering on the dark side of the force) to ask her if she was attracted to me. She paused for a moment.

"I don't think I can see us being anything past friends. I hope this doesn't hurt you." I said it didn't. I lie. I lie a lot sometimes.

Girl number 3

I've known Girl number 3 for about the same amount of time that I've known Girl number 2. She's not nearly as young as Girl number 2, which is always a plus, but she was carrying a lot of emotional baggage (she has a kid and a psycho ex-boyfriend) and had her own issues (she told me that she was bipolar). Despite this, she was a redhead (which I have a thing for) and had a lot of freckles (which I find cute). We had just kind of got back in touch after a long period of prolonged not talking. Pregnancy and taking care of a kid kind of takes you out of the social world for a little while.

Anyways, a more recent wrinkle in a friendship was that we had started meeting up and having beers together. By recent, I mean that we had just done it two times before. I enjoyed her company and she enjoyed mine. Nothing really flirtatious, although over chat, over conversations were borderline flirtatious. I like hanging out with her because she was just as big of a lush as I was and she smoked. I am a part time smoker. I am not a full time smoker because I intend to quit. However, in a world full of non smokers, nothing makes you feel guiltier than lighting up a cigarette and getting the look like "you're killing me and yourself and I hate you for that" that non-smoker often give. That guilt is lifted when smoking around a smoker. And let me tell you, nothing goes better with throwing back beers than cancer sticks.

Most recently we went out. Had few too many beers. We were vibing and I felt like there was chemistry between us. Admitting, I got handsy- although I never really trying to cop a feel or let my hands wander somewhere inappropriate. Mostly like little backrubs and such. I think I might have pecked her shoulder at some point in the night. It gets hazy. Anyways, it was not like these actions were unwelcome by her or reciprocated at some way shape or form. Nothing happened, of course. I walked her back to her car and she drove home.

A few days afterwards, we talk. "I was very uncomfortable that night." I believe those were her exact words. I, being the nice person I usually am, said I was sorry.

I did forgot to ask her when she felt uncomfortable. Was it when she was telling me about how she was having sex with the portly older man that sweat on her that she met on match.com? Or when she declared that she was just a sexual person? Or just when I kissed her on the cheek good night.

So 0-3 this summer. I've come up with five logical explanations.

1. I am ugly.
   
2. The girls I meet are blind, deaf and stupid.
   
3. Law school really sucks
   
4. I need to stop asking out friends
   
5. I am attracted to the wrong type of girl.
   

As far as I know 1 and 2 are not true. 3 is most definitely true. 4 and 5 probably are true, but I'm not sure what I can really do about it.

But at least I know I'm not ugly. I think. Just big boned.

Rapid hope loss

Yeah I know, it's a title of a cheesy Dashboard Confessionals song.

But lately, I feel deflated. Like my tire, that gave out on the middle of 66 on my daily commute.

Sometimes I think that life is like fixing a leak. Every time you have one hole plugged in, another one breaks loose. And then you realize that you don't have any more fingers to plug the hole with. And I'm leaking a lot right now.

Let's cut to the chase. I'm failing at what I've been doing right now. I've been procrastinating, avoiding, hiding away from what I set out to do from the get go. I haven't been writing. I feel like I've put my eggs all in this one basket and put it aside, hoping one day it will magically sprout into something beautiful- without caring for it, tending it, sheltering it, or nurturing it. I have the paint and the canvas; I think I expect to see a masterpiece without touching a paintbrush.

Oh what a fool that I am sometimes.

Life is what you make of it. Brick walls are not obstacles in life; they merely show how much you really want something. Cliches are abundant for a person in my predicament.

I don't know. I don't know anymore. Answers are of plenty, but solutions, now that is a different a different bag. All I feel these days is a mixed assortment of feelings of apathy and frustration. I'm almost thirty and I look back at my life. Should I concentrate on the litany of failures that have amassed behind me or still hope for more in the future.

I hate doubting. Doubt is the delete button that I repeated press whenever I don't think anything I write is good enough. Wait. Had to stop myself from deleting right there.

I hate this innate frustration that I feel that I am not good enough. I cannot finish. People so much more talented than me have failed. What do I have that they didn't to succeed? Drive? Don't make me laugh.

I always thought if I put my mind to something, that I could achieve anything. It was my ace in the hole. I've failed because I never tried, not because I was never good enough. After writing that, I see that that's only an excuse in itself.

Maybe I am afraid to fail. In my mind, remaining ignorant and fantasizing about success is easier and much more fulfilling than actually trying and failing. And I will fail. Over and over again, before I succeed.

I am a writer. My professor wrote that in my journal once. I was taking a creative writing class in college. She asked us to keep a journal and hand it in weekly. She would sometimes respond. I think I had an entry- much like this one full of doubts and insecurities. Questioning my ability to write, to craft words in sequence in a manner that would be captivating and convincing and at the same time entertaining. But all she wrote was, "Nate, you are a writer. Never question that."

But it is one thing to be a writer and then another to write as a profession.

Breathe. In, and then out. Close your eyes, clear you head. Falling is not important. Getting up is.

Why do we fall, Master Wayne? So that we can learn to pick ourselves up.

You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Batman quotes. You got to love them.