See you on March 27, 2018...

Yesterday I made a commitment -- For one year, I'm going to try -- success or failure not the measure of anything. Just try.


"I tried, didn't I? Goddammit, at least I did that."

the things i need don't remind me of anything

If it hasn't become clear to anyone who has read this, I avoid things. When I get gifts, or when something becomes rarely used, I shove it in a corner somewhere. So much reminds me of something that hurts that I'd rather forget, or simply is clutter I can't muster strength to begin dealing with. To part with clutter means throwing some things out, and to part with something is to finalize a part in my life -- to admit that a part of me is irretrievably gone forever. It hurts so much to confront the fact that there are things I can't undo, can't redo, and can never claim back again. I hoard my past because my present is so empty. I bog down my future because my past so weighs me down.

Sometimes I think I should fill a box small enough to carry with the things I really need, and then leave the rest behind for freecyclers and bulk trash collectors. I know that no matter where I go, there I'll be, but maybe I can free myself from a little bit of what I've been. It's dead. It's gone. It's over.

Don't get me wrong; I don't want the dead to be forgotten, and I hope this blog lives forever. I just don't want to be the walking dead anymore while I still breathe life.

tilting at windmills

I know why Don Quixote tilted at the windmills. When there are no giants in the world, you have to invent them. When there are no epic adventures, you delude yourself there are out of desperate necessity.

I am so, so disappointed with life. When I was a child, there was an endless Earth and an endless number of kingdoms to save and damsels to rescue.

Next to it all, everything's next to nothing.

No God looks down on me, no princess cries out for me, no far away lands beckon me, and no great mysteries need to be solved. It's just tedium, the unpleasant, a declining body, and an ever closer face of death.

I just want to cry. Children are the only ones alive, and I died long ago.

unsettled by the unsettled

Time, that most powerful of dimensions, is sometimes swift but more typically subtle in its destruction. As I've had some days free from work to clear my head and apartment, unattended business has reoccurred to me to check up on. To my dismay, I'm discovering that much of it has been untouched for 3, 4, 5 years.

This blog notwithstanding, I'm letting them go. It's time to purge these gigabytes of data, both silicon and synapse.

I am still right here

"Whatever happens at all happens as it should."

- Marcus Aurelius

metamorphosis

I've been feeling the time has finally come to be the person whom I've wanted to be.


p.s. -- thanks so much to anyone who's stopped by here over the years and especially to those couple of you who've commented. it's amazing and comforting to know there are people who can relate to most all of this on some deeper level. i've never met anyone who's felt really close to how i feel before and just maybe i'm not completely alone.

So long, "Zeroes"...

You broke my heart.

at the heart of it all

Just thought I'd say hello to an old friend. I've been sad again, and I know that it will listen.

Sad as it is, the fundamental truth remains beneath everything else. For all the gleaming facades I build up over it, in my heart of hearts I believe: in the end, everything dies and none of us matter.

wish you were here

To check in with everyone and no one:

I'm still here, and probably a lot has happened. I'm living with a woman and things are pretty OK. I'm still bored and out of touch with the masses more often than I'd like, but my life is largely free of misery and that is more than I used to dare to dream to hope for.

gentle indifference

It seems a few people do stop by here from time to time so I suppose I shall update.

In a month I'll have my first roommate since my disastrous one semester at college. And it's a she -- my girlfriend of the past year.

She's plenty nice, and I'm fond of her. She certainly isn't what I dreamed a dreamgirl would be, but we're going to do this and see how it goes.

I'm still sober. My Dad isn't anymore. Neither is my ex-therapist.

I'm more or less sane.

Am I happy?

Not particularly so. I still find it hard to really love this world that is godless and pointless and so often cruel. But still, I do usually find myself caring about people and things. It might even be a beautiful world if it all meant something.

no, i guess it's reality...

I woke up Thursday to find a wound that won't heal for the rest of my days.

"I follow cheerfully; and, did I not, wicked and wretched, I must follow still. Whoever yields properly to Fate, is deemed wise among men,
and knows the laws of heaven."

Euripides, Frag. 965

mired in mediocrity

They've been some crazy, crazy months. Endings, resumptions, pushing new boundaries.

But I'm not here to talk about that. I've just been feeling kind of down the past few days and I have no one to tell that to at the moment. This blog's still a friend that I know will listen.

My self-esteem has been built up in quite a few ways over the past 3 months or so but it's taken a beating over the past few days. It seems like nothing really comes easy to me in love, work, school, games, or anything else. I don't seem to have the natural talent to skate by in any facet and I don't have the discipline or direction to work hard at anything.

Back to the beginning?

Once again, life is starting to get interesting...

Change is coming, one way or the other.

the things i cannot change

I haven't been to an AA meeting in a couple years now, but today is one of those days where the phrase "I need a meeting!" keeps running through my head.

Serenity has been so ever elusive these past few weeks... the world I want to live in just isn't the one that's unfolding before my eyes.

... to be what i might have been

I'm still growing. It's wonderful. You're never too old to grow.

still staring down the sun

I came close -- very close -- to letting someone who knows my name and my face become aware of this blog's existence.

She was a girlfriend or she was a friend. I never figured it out and she would never clarify. I used to tell her things I've told no one else and in a lot of ways my letters to her were the precursor to this blog. About once a year we swap e-mails, and last weekend was this year's swap. All fine and well until I'm at my mother's house the other day and I unearthed a picture of her.

I stared at it for a minute or so... and then I wanted to jam my eyeballs out with a lead pencil. The feeling came back like blood rushing from a broken scab... the searing pain of unrequited love.

Whenever I looked into her eyes I had that feeling that I've heard about -- "this is the one!"

Except she wasn't. And I've never found that feeling elsewhere.

duck season

I'm why your eyes and ears are about to be bombarded with ads.

I'm that swing voter guy.

I vote for Republicans.

I vote for Democrats.

Sometimes, I even vote for Daffy Duck.

Sometimes, I don't even know who I'm voting for until I close my eyes in that booth and stare into my soul.

I did just that two years ago. And I saw that I couldn't vote for Bush again. Not after the disingenuous way that war was sold.

And I couldn't bring myeslf to vote for Kerry, either. He, in my eyes, like so many other Democrats, threw his support behind the war in large part out of political expediency.

That did not sit well with me.

I voted for Daffy.

And I just might vote for him again this fall.

So, to all of you non-water fowl candidates:

• "I'm not a Republican and I'm against Bush" is not strong enough of an argument to win my vote.

• If you're going to tell me you're going to "bring the troops home," you'd better damn well follow that up with an elucidation of what you expect the repercussions to be for the people of Iraq, the stability of the middle east, and our global reputation.

• Tell me why you're not working on anything substantive to fight global warming. Do you not care, or do you think you're a better scientist than scientists?

• If you're against raising taxes, tell me exactly why you're for passing the national debt onto me -- with interest. And if you say you're against that as well, tell me specifically what spending programs you are going to cut.

And if you can't do that, start quacking.

Or you just might be a lame duck.

father to the man

Father broke down finally and I had to check him into rehab. Being the grown up sucks.



Sometimes it's hard to believe that I used to really care about some things, that some things really made me happy. You used to make me happy, SJ. I so often wonder, if I were still to know you, would I even be happy then?

a man's search for meaning

Due to the fact that I never could get my old template to look right with Firefox and because it feels like time for a change, I've switched over to a more conventional template. Things here are going along as they have been; staying with the same job, finishing up my degree, still with my girlfriend.

The outcome of my sessions with my therapist has been a disappointment. I talk about things that I never thought I'd be able to talk about, but other than the liberation of getting that off my chest nothing else seems to come of it. I really have no direction, still. It seems the work required to get any of the things I'd like to have is too high of a price to pay for what they are.

And so once again, I don't know what to do.

more of the same

I guess I've acquired another addiction for my collection.
I have nothing new to say.
I feel as hollow as ever.