122208 Oh Naples How I Love Thee.

I'm just going to rant, so bare with me, because I do.  

I seem to have a tendency to blog so late at night or early morning as some marsupials look at it.  Tonight I went to naples for the 3rd time this week and walked the canals and took in the beautiful boats resting atop the water and envisioned myself in all the pretty little homes, as The Faint would put it. Although a lot of the festive lights were turned off since it was midnight, yet it was, and always is, a real relaxing experience to just walk and accept the fact that i'll never be as successful as the individuals in the art deco-esque homes are.  How inspiring and motivational Naples can be. But in all honesty, I do love the winter nights there.

Now, I have been doing a lot of thinking about friendships, relationships in general. How people come and go in our lives, some stay put, others diminish while we hold onto the memories that are still available to us. How some people can be in your life for what seems to be a lifetime yet it ends, and you realize in retrospect that it was not as long of a run as you thought. Each person we encounter and share a moment with for whatever reason, whether it'd be an acquaintance, an in depth discussion of friendships, an irrational case of non sequiturs, a salutation to a stranger, a 2 month friendship with somebody from somewhere, a 15 year friendship with somebody you grew up with, a 2 minute interaction with that one person who seems to be nobody. Sometimes they can last for our entire existence, some of it ends. Yet every single soul we have encountered has impacted us and affected us in some way whether it's beyond our comprehension or not. Our connections show us who we are and what we're about. We show one another what we're capable of through response and interaction. We provoke each other's thoughts. It changes the course of our lives. Every single person we have met has challenged us and vice versa, but it is up to us to acknowledge those challenges (as the challenger or the challenged) whether they seem existent to us our not; or how crucial or irrelevant they are. Those challenges can bring up inspiration and motivation but can also inhibit you from particular aspirations and even stifle your creativity and paralyze your motives. It is our foremost responsibility to drain one another of what is seemingly useful for our own lives for we are each others' resources. And that is what we do; use each other until we're worn out and need something new, something more, and something different. We look for new people, those of akin interests, those on the same level or even above because they set the learning curve. We are forever sponges. We soak up what we need, until we're useless to one another, yet we got what we needed. 

And I have recently dealt with such challenges and have, as of late, had the urge to refrain from certain individuals because I'm at the point in my life where they're just not needed as selfish as that sounds and is. But it were those exact challenges they have brought to my attention that triggered this state of selfishness. So who is to blame? Whether these persons recognize what they have introduced to the opposing or not, I'm looking out for ME first. I am not one for small talk (thought provoking or not, because we both know I'll forget about it tomorrow) nor irrelevant relationships that weigh me down and limit me from being. Some people just barely exist to me these days; some people just are not as real as they try to be.