I’ve been off the internet airwaves, video wise, for some time now. I make videos every summer when I have time off. I love making video journal entries and “vlogging.” I feel it helps my blog, enhances it, if it will. But in recent months, when planning my new season of videos, I have seen a major decline in YouTube. What declines am I talking about? I feel like it’s had it’s hey-day. When I started video blogging in 2008, YouTube was a much different place. It was made for users to to create videos, helping them make videos and get subscriptions, and God willing, get known and possibly viral. 

I never expected to get viral, but have a stable following. Every summer when I begin to film again, it’s invigorating to begin again. But this time it’s different, I feel the changes in layout and content have become so diluted and so convoluted it’s hard for someone like me to get noticed or even subscriptions. I fear the end of YouTube is coming, and has been for some time now. With trends like MySpace and Friendster, and the newly failed Google+, YouTube has changed from “user friendly” to “corporate friendly.”

Google has tarnished a site that was once a prosperous way for users to interact with other users and gain worldwide recognition for creative talent. The tides have changed, and I regret to say that this will be my last season on YouTube. I will film this summer, and the videos will be sent to my account, and directly linked to my blog here. This transition will help ease the process of my videos coming to this blog permanently. 

I love all of you that have stood by me throughout my whole creative process.

I’m going to hyperlink you to my channel and to a video that better explains the YouTube crisis:

• My Channel
• Onision Video

Thank you for standing by me,

ILY

Carl

I wanted to be a part of something greater. I had spent so many years in college, at San Antonio College, and was a part of nothing. Well, I was in the Honor’s Program, which was a scholastic endeavor, but not an extracurricular. After 2.5 years at SAC, graduating with my Associates Degree in Business Administration, I transferred to the University of the Incarnate Word. Spending just one semester there, I really didn’t have a chance to take in the whole university, and what it had to offer. I transferred to The University of Texas at San Antonio, and it quickly became evident to me that I made the better decision. I fit better here. But I still wasn’t a part of something greater.

UTSA being a much larger campus than UIW, I was engulfed in students, and student organizations. I was lost almost, like a new fish in a large ocean. My first semester was just myself getting used to the campus and all of it’s “nooks and crannies.” My second semester, the one I’m currently wrapping up, was slightly different. I ran into an old friend named Robin I had at SAC, she was in her last semester at UTSA. I was excited to have her for a Financing class. The first day of class I got there early, and walked in to find Robin chatting with another girl, named Kim. I hadn’t met Kim yet until that moment. But they worked together for this organization called “FTK.” I hadn’t really heard about it until Robin told me more about it. I was intrigued, I had never heard of a philanthropic organization, run by students, to raise money for children with cancer.

After that class, Kim was kind enough to drive me to my car, and she told me a little more about the group. Her words, and I quote “You know, if you’re new, joining an organization is a great way to meet new people.” That stuck in my head. It took me a couple months, but I brought the idea of me joining FTK to Kim, and she was stoked! Instantly I applied and before you knew it, by the beginning of March I was in. And I took off running! I had no idea I was joining the busiest season for the group, right before the Dance Marathon.

The Dance Marathon would be held in mid-April, and it was the culmination of all the efforts of FTK throughout the whole year in raising money.

The marathon was unifying, myself still being new, I had met all of these incredible new people, young leaders. All of us were striving to help these children, ill with cancer. I was so happy to be a part of this group, and to have met this new group I could call a family.

I’m so excited to be a part of this group in the next school year, which will mark my last. I’m a senior, graduating in May 2013, and plan to move on to graduate school there afterward. But I plan, now being an overall chairperson, to make the next year memorable and take the For The Kids Dance Marathon to the next level. Will you dance with us?

Text Messages—

Nameless. Words cannot describe the confusion going on through my head. 

You were one person I could see my self settle for, and somehow I thought the feeling was mutual. You went away for a little bit, and on the surface I knew that it would never really work. That the lifestyle you lead wouldn’t make me happy, it wouldn’t gratify me. I tried to move on, have my own little date nights in attempt to feel like “ok, this is ok.”

Little did I know that a part of me was still attached, for some unknown reason. Seeing that you were completely happy should have made me happy, but it tore me in two. And I’m still torn to this day on whether or not I was upset that you were with someone else, or that I wasn’t. That I couldn’t make myself happy. To be honest, I was willing to make you happy.

But like I said earlier, I knew it was a corrupt relationship from the get go. Another example would be my attraction to an old flame, one who has hurt me on more than one occasion since approximately 2006. I know they’re sorry, they feel horrible about how things have turned out throughout the years, and I want so bad to forgive, but it’s hard. 

You can’t always choose the situations you are dealt with, but you can sure choose how you handle them, or react to them. A wise person once told me that how you react to peril, is how you deal with conflict. And I usually just run from it. I can’t handle it. Well, it’s about time I man up and face it. I won’t get anywhere running from anything, it just follows you and grows bigger along the way. 

All of these thoughts, these memories stemmed from a single text message conversation I had recently. It’s funny how attached to people, or the thought of a person, and you may never know it until you actually see it for yourself. How I deal with this, will possibly define my character. And God only knows, I want to deal with this accordingly. 

I am strong. I am resilient. 

—

Carl

JPL (John Peace Library, UTSA)—

I don’t know why I love coming into the Quiet Room. I’m more alone in my thoughts than I could ever imagine…

I have “All I Have to Do is Dream” by The Everly Brothers stuck in my head…and I suddenly feel 9 years old again, on a car trip. We would always go on car trips as a kid, my family and I. And my dad would always pop in a cassette tape of someone from his generation…that’s how I grew up with The Everly Brothers, The Clovers, The Beatles, Leslie Gore, etc. A generation decades before my time, envelope my brain at age 9.

Clouds pass by…am I driving through the open highway into nowhere? Or am I sitting in the JPL, staring out the large windows toward the Main Building…either way, the clouds cascade across my vision with the pale blue sky, a sky that became the large emptiness I would come to equate to my dreams and goals. 

This is life. This is it, now. It’s happening.

I must have dozed off, into a sleep. My head hits my backpack, and the cool air condition vent coos me to sleep…I realize that this big blue sky is where my dreams lie…nap time has become so much more special now.

ILY,

Carl

I’ve often wondered what it must feel like for people who cannot exercise restraint. I, myself, can say that I am not immune to this. I have my areas where I can act as if I cannot stop. I know that this blog is vague, but it will get better in a minute, I promise.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t understand why people have to call out at me from across a room when they can just approach me. Or maybe, I’m not that guy that drove you home that night after a drunken binge, maybe you have me confused with someone else.

Ok, I can honestly say I have no idea where I’m going with this blog now, I apologize for the misleading idea that I do know what I’m doing, when in some cases I don’t. This blog entry is a good example of that. But I do know that I have a frustration today with people and their lack of tact when it comes to approaching me. 

—-

I sit and people watch while I’m in the John Peace Library on campus, and I notice that half of the people are actually studying, and the other half are just absorbing the wifi and using it to surf stupid YouTube videos and such. I mean look at me, I could be studying right now but I’m blogging to you fine people. Who the hell knows what’s going on through my mind right now, do I have a mind? Have I completely gone berserk? I think I have. I am in complete boredom with the original reason why I’ve come to the library, and that was to study for my financing test that is on Thursday. I have been here for several hours already studying and I’ve reached my maximum limit for equity and dividend equations for today. I’m sure Kim Kang thinks I’ve lost all hope for the class since she’s arrived here to study with me, I’ve been online and slacking off while she’s pulling her hair out in distress. I just look, and return to my screen. 

*Sigh*

What a pathetic blog. Am I right?

ILY,

Carl

2000 (Age 10)

It was a new millennium. I believed the future was vast and endless. Baseball was everything to me. God was everything to me. 

2001 (Age 11)

I began my descent into adolescence. I fell in love with alternative rock, and punk tones. I began to forge a love for the unknown, I wanted to know more about other religions. I began to question the validity of Christianity.

2002 (Age 12)

Thwarted into a new stage of being, I couldn’t understand myself. The ideals I upheld until recently have been in question. What if none of this is real? What if there’ no heaven? Is the present all we have? 

2003 (Age 13)

I’m in a new environment. For the first time in my life I’m in public school. I feel like I can be myself here, whatever that is. I love the people I’m meeting. Hello The Cure.

2004 (Age 14)

Again, thrust into a new environment, I’m living with the pangs of Texas. Lost in my angst and depression, I slip into a dark area. One of which I would not recover from until years later. I blamed my parents for everything that went wrong in my life. I declared myself atheist.

2005 (Age 15)

Still in a bleak depression, I held out hope that adulthood would bring me happiness and freedom. I wanted to learn more about the world and learn about other cultures. And get out of Texas.

2006 (Age 16)

I find happiness in my friends. Still wary of my surroundings, I don’t fully trust everyone. I want to fit in, and be normal but I feel like it may never happen. I surround myself with certain people, with artistic embrace and openness to the world.

2007 (Age 17)

I begin to find my place. I find that everyone is different, and going through their own awkward time. I accept myself, and when I do, I feel like everyone kind of mellows out. I’m scared of the future. What once was something I wanted to bad, was something I wanted to hold off. I want to take back the past 3 years and start over. I love my parents, God, my friends, and most importantly, myself.

2008 (Age 18)

The end of an era has come. And it seemed like it flew by because I didn’t open up my eyes until the end. The future is bright, and the world is my oyster.

2009 (Age 19)

Well, school is much harder than I expected. This workload is killing me, I don’t know if I’m cut out for this. 

2010 (Age 20)

I realize that true adulthood is not forging a path for yourself. It is taking life with a grain of salt, and with God’s help He can help me get back where I need to be.

2011 (Age 21)

I should be done by now with school, and starting my life. Why is it taking so long? Why am I stuck in this perpetual motion?

2012 (Age 22)

Maybe I should slow down. I wanted to speed up, but honestly, I don’t know if I’m ready for everything life has to offer. Check Please?

I don’t know what to write exactly today. I’ve been extremely busy lately. This is truth. I feel like writing short, choppy sentences today. 

Numb?

Who knows. I’m ok. I went out this past weekend with my friend to celebrate her 21st birthday…it was awesome. I had a genuine great time. 

AWKWARD MOMENT: I ran into my high school history teacher who I haven’t seen since I was 15…awkward turtle.

I think I saw a lot of couples out there this weekend, and it just threw a lot of bullshit in my face. Most of my choices are MY choices. I take full responsibility for the rejections I’ve put myself into, or the ones I put for on others. 

I have a drive. And I’ve said it before: I would love someone to join me on this journey in my life. But I’m on a high speed train going one way. You can either join me, or not. I’m going to keep going. 

ILY,

Carl