I'm totally back doing Flashback again and I'm having a really good time. It does make me wonder about how I should be defining my success or happiness in life. I'm totally a materialistic person. I am very much into buying expensive things, clothing, cars (unfortunately), food, and just stuff in general.

If I'm going to have something I want to have the best of that something. I suppose this is some incarnation of my need to be the best. Like if I'm driving on the freeway I don't like to be passed by another car if I can help it. I also always have to be right. Its really quite a bad personality trait. But its not like I have to be the best, its just that I have to classify everybody and everything as better or worse than something else. What is that? I have to compare everything to something else and decide which is better. This isn't so bad when I say something like Friday Night Lights is a better television show than Grey's Anatomy. But it gets me in trouble when in my mind I'm saying to myself "Girl A is prettier than Girl B" or "Girl A is too good for Boy A." And this manifests itself in weird ways too. Although I try to hide my thoughts from the world I'm pretty sure people can see it in my facial expressions or my tone of voice, despite my attempts to mask my unsavory thoughts.

So what does this have to do with my happiness and fulfillment in life? Well like many in our modern society, we've come to define our success in material ways. Like in Fight Club, and I'm only generally pulling from this, Ed Norton's character remarks about his now destroyed apartment that his IKEA-esque furniture portion of his life had been fulfilled and it was something he didn't have to worry about any more. Is that what its come to? I need a material good to define my success as a person? Do I need that pair of Diesel jeans? Yeah, I feel like I look better wearing them, but isn't that only because I think other people think I look better, like "oooh, Diesel jeans." But if I'm not defining my success and happiness through material means, by what means should someone define their life? I suppose my mom would say something about how I treated the world around me, in particular my friends, family and those I care about.

Are we merely just existing and are material possessions just another way for me to rank myself amongst my peers? Undoubtedly yes. But how do I break away from this? How do you define happiness when I've been bombarded by all of these media messages since my youth? Is it just about being happy in the moment you're in? But how do I know that I really am happy and I'm not just being influenced by what society has dictated should make me happy? It seems very paradoxical. Well I do know that I want to just shake about and bounce around my room when I hear this song from The Wombats and it makes me happy at least for now, and for now, that'll have to do... at least until I find a new pair of jeans.

The Wombats - Let's Dance to Joy Division

What the hell. I already messed up my new car. What a shitty careless driver I am. Breaking my passenger side rear view mirror casing. On the garage entrance no less. I hate having nice things. Dammit!