My Skin is a Canvas

I am going to get a tattoo.

There! I said it with certainty this time. Always before I have been hesitant. I have said "I was thinking about getting a tattoo when I'm eighteen" without any conviction. But now I will go through with it.
I don't know what yet, or where. I was thinking a tribal design on my upper arm. I'm thinking that I'll end up with the tribal piece on one upper arm, kanji on the other upper arm, and a pair of abstract wings on my shoulder blades along with my motto "contra mundum" (latin for against the world - portrays a sentiment of independence), all in black. I'm not one for colorful tattoos. Or colorful anything, for that matter, except hair and artwork. I so wish I had fine, white-blonde hair. But that's off topic. I was talking about tattoos.

I am fascinated by tattoos. There's just so much potential, for beauty, for symbolism, for meaning. I realize that many people have really tacky tattoos (or so it seems, sometimes), but I think there's a lot that can be done if you can find a good artist and work with your own anatomical structure. Tattoos are an art form. They can be amazing, but I think you have to be spatially aware and know where things look good.

My parents are very conventional. They disapprove of tattoos and tell me that I'm going to regret it. I disbelieve them. The rate of regret is 17% and the top reason for regretting a tattoo was that they had gotten a tattoo with someone's name and now were no longer in a relationship with them. There are plenty of people who live quite happily with their tattoos for their whole lives (and I'm not getting anyone's name tattooed on me anyway).

I've heard that you can get addicted to the needle. Once you get your first tattoo, you go back for another one, and then another, and so on. I hope I don't get addicted - but even if I did, I don't I'd go so far that I'd overdo it. I think I'd be too sensitive to that.

Failing Wishes

You know what's weird? I spend all my time improving myself, reaching for perfection, and I just realized that perfect things kind of creep me out. I realized this while I was pondering what I would do if I had three wishes. One of my first thoughts was that I'd wish I had a sexier body - not a perfect body, just one that was sexier than the one I have now. I thought, "why not a perfect body? By definition, there wouldn't be anything wrong with it." And I realized that perfect bodies kind of creep me out. I don't know why. I mean, I guess it's kind of like, if your body was perfect, what reason would you have for wearing clothes? What features would you pick on when you stared in the mirror? What would you complain about at girly sleepovers? It'd be like, everybody's saying how much they hate their bodies, and you'd just be sitting there all like, "I don't have anything to say, because my body's perfect."

Wait a minute. Whoa. I think I just discovered another key facet of life.

Imperfections give life meaning. If everything was perfect, why would you be around?

I will follow that thought further in a later post (and on a side note, I think one of my other wishes would be that my hair grow much, much faster. Then I could be changing it all the time).