this URL may or may not age very poorly (maxwell's blog)

     When people ask me what I did over the weekend, sometimes I respond with 'nothing.'       "I did nothing over the weekend"---aside from breathing, eating, and sleeping. And aside from watching YouTube, calling my friends, and playing video games. A generic, but also quite pleasant weekend. T here's a word to describe all those actions, to describe fun and relaxation: nothing. How does that make sense, describing action with inaction?     Part of it is that there's a quite selective vision of what 'doing something' actually means. Often, it's not actually every activity we do, but only every action we consider useful. College essays and homework equals activity, games and calls and naps equals inactivity.  In an effort to set apart one group of activities from another, we downgrade some actions to nothingness, and use "doing nothing" figuratively as a language tool to emphasize the usefulness of certain things over others.  ...

    If you want to really mess up my day for some reason, there's one reliable, quick, and simple method: refer to me with 'he.' It's not like you'll stick out of the crowd or anything by doing it, since basically everyone else uses those words on me almost instinctually. I guess people just assume it's the right thing to do---because I'm presumably a guy, so presumably  'he' is the way to go. I kinda get it. We rely on assumptions all the time to make our lives easier, to fill in our knowledge gaps. But I'm not a guy. And while sometimes, getting assumptions wrong is fine, for me, this one can seriously hurt.     It happens way too often for me to count, and always brings a sort of miserable feeling you don't really get anywhere else---spacing out, being pulled away from whatever's happening then and there to replay that moment in your head. That brutal reminder that even if you think one way, people will still see you as a boy. Perfect...

    Privacy---when I think about my parents for any amount of time, usually this concept is at the forefront of my mind. Almost everything I do falls under this 'private' category, at least in the context of my parents. School clubs, activities, the names of my friends, it doesn't matter. Even these essays which I write are under wraps. If they don't have to know, they won't know. So, given how fanatically I value privacy, how would I feel if I got to see what they knew and thought of me? Or even worse, share my precious information with the world? What if (in a completely self-directed thought experiment), they were to do what I'm doing right now, and write a blog on me?     Most likely, I'd be up in arms. Perhaps it's an unnecessarily hostile reaction, but I have some rationale behind this.       What gives them a reason to think that they can just take things I'm already loath to share with them, and then spew it to everyone else, after all? Th...

    Unlike the real ones, this bee spans nearly 3 feet in length, cannot fly (or move), and is entirely stuffed with cotton. With large deadpan eyes and an uncannily humanoid smile on its round, flat face, this animal is a beloved artifact from my semester in China, and a priceless symbol of my experience there.          When my school held an English spelling competition midway through the semester, I, as one of the only native English speakers, had an overwhelming advantage. But despite being pre-disposed to win, I was too disillusioned with the school to care about anything they did. I only really took part because it would've been inconvenient to drop the competition.     But in the final showdown, when I saw the bee on the auditorium's stand, offered up as a material reward for all my minimal efforts, that cynicism was side-lined by an unswerving compulsion to win     After securing the bee, I carried it around school for a wee...

      Happy memories. Dozens, hundreds of them, some from mere days or weeks ago, some from years past. Aren't they so nice and rosy? Especially compared to how sucky life feels right now?     When those memories pop into my brain, usually the first thing I do is crack a smile as I relive and replay them, the events of years ago bringing me joy as they did back then. And then the smile breaks, dissolved by a caustic sadness that rips me back to the present. Because nostalgia isn't just happiness, but envy too, directed at my past self, so reprehensibly capable of joy that handily outshines my present self's capabilities. I envy that mental hologram of a person, living blissfully in the past. Sometimes, I wish I could become him again.      What if I actually could, though?     The most recent memory which fit the bill of "constantly wishing I were back there" came from my semester in China, spending time with a friend who I'd met in mode...