Day 4

so last night i began to drift off into sleep as i was finishing up my day 3 blog post. so i forgot to post it, but i did finish it. so i'm counting it towards my streak. now it's day four and more. work was weird today. had more than a handful of customers be rude and condescending. i've dealt with many people like that in my past, but today struck me odd because it's the first time i've encountered this many people where i made a mental note of it. maybe it's the cold weather wave that's been moving through the mountain? who knows. i've heard people say the weather makes animals act differently. and by differently they usually mean a bit more asshole-ish. same thing with full moons. and i've thought about this, and it seems there's some logic to it.

our bodies are made up of mostly water according to science. the moon phases actually change the flow of tides. cold weather makes animals seek warm shelter. at least it does for humans. bears hibernate in the winter. i wonder if the cold changes how human beings interact with each other? there was a study done on participants where they were asked to rate how they felt about a stranger whom they chatted with. the scientists gave one group a warm cup of drank to hold. others got a cold one. i'm probably butchering the exact details because my memory is hazy, but the general idea is solid.

guess what happened? the people who held the warm drink rated the stranger as friendlier versus the group who didn't, even though the stranger was part of the research team and they treated everyone the same.

the mere presence of the warm drink in the participants hands changed their interpretations of a stranger's interaction with them. if something that small could change one's perception of another human being, can't weather do the same? maybe. maybe that's why i seemed to interpret my exchanges with customers as them being more asshole than friendly. but i was also handling warm drinks most of the time, so who knows?

my girl and i started shooting our first of hopefully many videos for her youtube channel. she's been wanting to do more creative projects, and videography and art have been one of her passions for a while. so it feels good to help her start her endeavor. honestly, it's a blash simply experimenting with her on the different aspects of shooting these videos. mostly she's going for a lifestyle kinda channel, but her interests, and her range of knowledge, seem infinite, so it'll probably be a healthy combination of her passions with maybe a bit of my own, considering we live together in the mountains. as much as we seem to think ourselves islands separated from the ocean of other human consciousness out there, we are easily influenced and swayed by the individuals around us. sometimes it's not obvious, but with enough time, the islands will connect and form bridges.

life has been good out here. one of her friends visited. we played good hosts, and we're trying to show everyone of our friends and family that visit a good time. we try to explain some of the biggest differences between los angeles city life and little mountain town living. probably the biggest (and most welcomed) change we've noticed is how friendly and kind people are up here. we think it's because it's such a small town where most people here either know each other, or of each other, that reputation and character take more of a consideration up here. it's hard to be rude and a piece of shit to someone when you know you'll see each other again. in los angeles, it's rare that you'll keep running into the same people over and over again, so it's easier to be shitty to someone especially knowing you'll never see them again. at least that's our theory. we could be completely wrong.

also, because we are a not of the majority here in terms of race and skin color, we stand out from the locals. people look at us and definitely know we are not from the mountain. but so are many of the people that i meet here. a good portion of them came up here and fell in love. so far, not one person has said anything negative about living here. but like always, i am remaining skeptical but curious about life here. i am trying to observe as much as i can and learn twice as much about the culture here. i think part of what i've always loved about traveling and living in completely unfamiliar environments are the slow, incremental changes in one's way of being. sometimes they are positive, sometimes negative, but always something. and if we're anything like other animal species, the environment will imprint itself into the physical being of an entity, whether it's a bear, tree, or human being. if the cold wasn't brutal, would bears even hibernate and develop such thick and furry bodies?
would trees high up in alpine areas develop thin pine-like needles?
would humans be as warm and friendly?

i have a theory about human beings and their environments. and i think that the more difficult, extreme, and hazardous the environment, the more potential for the human being to develop mental and physical strength. of course, there are always exceptions. but a general rule of thumb would be to welcome the cold and the heat. a human being that stays within comfortable bounds will never find out their true limits, and ultimately, it is those limits that control our potential behaviors and thoughts. the biggest factor are not the thoughts and actions that we can do and think, but the ones we can't even conceive of and lie just outside the reach of our conscious awareness and hence, our potential behaviors and actions.

so i wonder why, out of all the potentials today, i interpreted the actions of a few, as rude. maybe it was the weather. maybe they were rude. or maybe it's my own version of events that made it seem like they were. anyways i'm ranting about this enough. i was hoping to burn out this stream of thought but instead it consumed most of this page. oh well. like in all disciplines, we don't learn by succeeding. we learn by mistakes, and failing. this writing may not have met my expectations or surprised me but at least i got it done. time to go write some poetry.