...and this is when it hits you...

I just found out that one of my classmates at Union Local, Philip DeLucas, died earlier today. He had been messing around with a gun and accidentally shot himself in the head. His sister had walked in the room just in time to see it happen and she made the call to 911. He died in the ambulance.

Things like this aren't supposed to happen to people you know. It's something not uncommon on the news, but it only happens to strangers, right? It can't happen to a friend or classmate, right? It's not supposed to! Something like this just... ...it just shouldn't happen...

...I didn't really know him... we went to school together for at least seven years... and he probably didn't even know my name... we never talked... we didn't have the same friends... didn't have any classes together... rarely even passed each other in the hall... and yet... hearing this news... it just really hits home... it's things like this that remind you this sort of thing can happen to anyone... you classmate... your co-worker... your friend... your brother... your sister... your parent... anyone.

...live for the moment...

Nothing Gold Can Stay

I cannot say that I wrote either of these poems. Instead, the great literary artist Robert Frost was given the honor of bringing these works to the world. But in them, I have found greater truth and beauty than can be found anywhere else.

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower,
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

times change, i suppose...

Tell me, why must things always change like this,
Even when promises are made saying
That they won't? Fears about change are dismissed,
Worries are laughed at. I stayed up praying
All night long that you would never forget
About me. Me, one of your closest friends.
Remember before, how we used to sit,
Talk 'bout anything for hours on end.
But, I guess you've forgotten about this, 
Like I said you would. It wouldn't be so
Bad, if you hadn't denied what I guessed
Would happen to us. But you did, you know.
And you've changed since you left, just like I knew
You would. But I haven't. I still love you.

quotes of the day

Where there is no struggle, there is no strength.

- Oprah Winfrey

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.

- Bill Cosby

The past is a ghost, the future a dream, and all we ever have is now.

- Bill Cosby

quote of the day

Success and failure. We think of them as opposites, but they’re really not. They’re companions - the hero and the sidekick.

-Lawrence Shames