Thoughts from Over Here

What's it worth? All this, what we would call life. Just so you know, I have no idea where I am going with this. Just letting out a random thought to see where it goes.

Here I sit; in a chair at a desk. This desk is inside a building, which is inside a city. This city, it is within a province and this province is part of a country. This great country is but a part of a continent which forms a world we call Earth. Earth, the seemingly large mother of all known life, is all but a tiny speck against the backdrop of this solar system.

The earth is a looming 13,000 km wide, a lot it seems. The Sun is 1.4 million kilometers wide and roughly 100 times the size of our little Earth. The distance from the Sun to the Earth is 150 million kilometers or over 100 times the width of the Sun. This only accounts for 1/40th of the distance from the Sun to the outermost planet of Pluto which is almost 6 trillion kilometers.

To put this all into scale; if the earth were 1.5 millimeters wide, or roughly the size of a grain of sand, the sun would be 16.5 cm wide, the size of a mini-basketball, and they would be 18 meters(60 feet) apart. Therefore Pluto, being about the size of a speck of dust, would be 700 meters(2300 feet) from the Sun.

But let's not stop here, let's look for the next closest star. Using the same scale as before, the next closest star would be slightly greater than the distance from Los Angeles to the state of Maine(4.3 lightyears or 40 trillion kilometers).

Our seemingly huge solar system is part of the Milky Way galaxy which contains 200 billion stars like our Sun and is 100,000 lightyears across. In the same scale as before, where the earth was 1.5 millimeters across, the width of the Milky Way is 112 million kilometers or 75% of the real distance from the earth to the sun.

Are we getting big yet? Let's reduce the scale even further. Our entire galaxy, the one that was just 112 million km wide compared the 1.5 mm Earth, is now the size of a softball. The nearest large galaxy to the Milky Way is the Andromeda Galaxy, which would be about the size of a volleyball, and 4.8 meters(16 feet) away.

The Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies belong to what is called the Local Group of 30 galaxies, which is a galaxy cluster. The next closest galaxy cluster in the Virgo cluster which in our current scale is 50 meters(160 feet) distant. The Local Group and Virgo cluster belong to what is called the Local SuperCluster which is 190 meters(625 feet) across and the entire observable universe is about 49.5 kilometers in diameter(260 times the diameter of the Local SuperCluster).

There are estimated to be 50 billion galaxies in the observable universe, and as much as 200 billion galaxies in the entire universe. What exists beyond this, nobody truly knows.

Now, do you think any of your problems really matter?

Revelation

It's probably healthy to have someplace to ramble, here under the unjudging eyes of the odd stranger. Plus it helps sharpen my underused writing skills. You have to admit, they are still pretty sexy.

We had a good talk today, my GF and I. As I may or may not have mentioned, she has an uncanny ability to know exactly how I feel, regardless of whether I would like her to or not. I was hoping to quietly work through my little issue and not bother her with it. Only problem is, she knew what was going on as well as I. She has an odd sort of thought pattern in where she tends to blame a lot of problems on herself when they are not her problems. If I am not happy then it is all her fault and she can't make me happy, when the truth is almost exactly opposite.

I am unhappy because I want to be together with her but can't. This is not something with an easy solution and must be dealt with until such a time that we can be together. She tends to see it as me not being happy and that she is destroying my life through this. Then she feels very badly and nobody is happy. The only good solution would be for us to be together, but as we already know, easier said than done.

What is also scaring her is the similarity of this situation that lead to us breaking us last year. I can see her point as it does look similar from her point of view. From mine however, it is completely different. Things have gone so well recently, I care for her so much more than last year and would never want to hurt her is anyway if any solution was possible.

I think it's getting better but I still have to better deal with being apart. Stress puts a major strain on all parts of my life including her and makes my job hell. While I could deal with that for a while, eventually I would go fucking crazy. The answers are always there, it's finding them that's the hard part. Until next time...

Something

There is something on my mind and I don't know what it is. It's in there somewhere, pushing on all sides. I can't ignore it anymore so I am here to find out what it is.

If I write out my thoughts it always helps. I feel stressed out and it's never a good thing. Something is bothering me and it no doubt has to do with my girlfriend. The foremost thing that comes to mind is that she is so far away. Maybe that's part of it but it's not the whole thing.

I know how much she loves me but recently it became very clear how much I mean to her. It is a really great thing but a lot of responsibility I think, having someone that cares that much. In that the price of failure is great and you could possibly destroy someone's life with the wrong decision. It is also a great thing, that with the right decisions you can make someone's life. I know I can and do make her very happy.

We're not in the best situation right now. We're finding out more all the time how hard it is to be countries apart. There are several ways to be together and the easiest is also the biggest responsibility, that being marriage. There are work visas and study visas and a few other ways that are quite hard to arrange, but if it doesn't work out then not so much is lost. Trying to be together while being apart is not such as easy thing.

It could be my own personal time that I feel I lack, or the lack of together time I crave. I wish I knew. Now you would think that I would have a lot of personal time being apart but it feels as if my day is dictated by her need for attention. I can understand the need for attention as I know I need it myself but I also need the freedom to do as I wish sometimes without worrying about hurt feelings.

I can only hope to stay the course and to do so I must be able to resolve any problems that come my way. We all hope to know ourselves better than any of us actually do. There are things inside that don't always do what we would consciously wish of them.

No one ever said life was easy and I know I have yet to see anything close to the hard parts. I do feel that I am close to the start of that journey and I can only hope for enough strength and foresight to meet these challenges in the years to come.

This is New

Never been at a point like this in my life...

And that's a good thing. Everything is great and I can't wait to see what the future has in store.

I am baaaaaaack

Well I had a great time and I am totally sad that I am back at home.

We fit together perfectly and I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome. Now I just have to wait to see her again! She should be visiting me around Christmas time and I'll be visiting her again in March. In the meantime she is searching for a job here so we can be together all the time.

I am really happy that everything went so well and we had a great time but I am also sad that I won't see her much until she moves here for good. The next year should be interesting as I'll probably end up moving somewhere else within Canada wherever she gets a job. Never lived with anyone before so that will be a new experience...

Wish me luck!