You Have A Choice

You know, I have relatives in New Jersey, and every winter they complain about the snow, the crummy conditions, the poor job market... and I tell them: move.

That's all. If you don't like it where you are, just... move. You have a choice. You don't have to stay where you are, you can just get up, put one foot in front of the other... and walk away.

But they don't want to hear that. They come up with one excuse or another, and they stay there, and they stay unhappy. Because admitting that they can choose otherwise means either doing something about it, or facing their own inability to act, and they can't handle it. But I believe you can.

The quote is from J.Michael Straczynski's "Midnight Nation." A high-school counselor advising a teen to relinquish his gang life before it's too late. Different circumstances, same principle. You have a choice. More on this another time.

Period or semicolon?

I have a question that I would really like to ask my friends and coworkers but can't or haven't:

Is this what you want with your life? What you do (work-wise), where you are - are you happy? Do you plan on doing it, staying here indefinitely?

And the one that will likely remain unasked: Is it enough for you?

I look at the people around me and sometimes think these questions. Some of my coworkers have families - a wife and x kids. They seem happy and I bet they are. For them, I'm pretty sure the answers are relatively easy, or at least easier.

But for others whose motivations are less apparent, I'm honestly curious. -- I keep having to delete what I write here, re-type to remain honest. I am asking with expectations and I am hoping/expecting some to feel unsettled, as I feel. I am fishing for answers, for distrust in their complacency, a sign that they, too, haven't accepted this as a period.

I guess that's always one of my fears - that I'm alone in my dis-ease. Alone in my casting about. Alone in my self-made cage. I know I'm not and I know others feel this way or have felt this way, but it's different when you get that confirmation verbally and honestly.

I know this isn't my period. And I'm looking for my next whatever, even if only in spirit and not literally. This isn't enough for me and I know that.

But why don't I do anything about it?

What Do I Want?

I'm in a pensive mood, FFXIII and PS3 notwithstanding. What do I want? Someone asked me that recently. I have lots of abstract answers, tons of those. Goals more than answers and very few of them personal. In the abstract, I think I know myself or at least know about myself. But do I know what I actually want? I don't know.

Part of me is intrigued by the question and my lack of a concrete answer. I know what I am doing, what I have and where I am, but not where I want to go. I don't think I've ever known that. Even now, the best answer I can give is "not here" and "not where I am" -- hardly of any help at all.

What do I want?

The abstract is easy. The fantasy, the illusions, the daydreaming I can do without a second glance. The real leaves me confounded as ever. My mind is waylaid by the associate interrogatories - How do I get there? Is that my destination? What's wrong with here? Why can't I accept it? What's wrong? I focus on everything but the question at hand.

My mind runs in circles, round and round with no seeming end. I want to find my way. I want to find an answer. I want to find my place. And yet none of these is an answer.

Maybe part of my problem is that I never came up with a good idea of what I want and so I cannot find or move towards that which has no destination. Hmmm.

Double hmmm.

That's a show-stopper right there.

I shall have to think more on this.

Envy

(Not a discussion of the seven deadly sins, thought it was fun to read about them at the link.)

I am probably one of the more envious people I know. I don't harbor the customary ill will that is perennially associated with envy, but I enjoy its excess on an almost daily basis.

I am envious of those who have picked a direction and followed through on it.

I am envious of those who have a complete life and are content with it.

I am envious of those in healthy relationships, those getting married, friends in happy relationships and friends getting married.

I am envious of those who are clearly not plagued by the questions and doubts that haunt me every day.

I am envious of those who like what they do and do what they like.

I am envious of those --

Wow. That.. that's.. that's a lot of self-pity right there, isn't it? It's part of my cycle. I don't want to deprive those of whom I am envious, I simply want what they have for myself. I don't begrudge these "other people" and I am, in fact, happy for them and their success. I begrudge myself my lack of success.

It's a Friday night in merry olde Connecticut. I am home with the dog, typing this at approximately 11pm, wondering.

Questions

I just finished watching Choke, a weird indie movie starring Sam Rockwell. It's one of those movies that asks more questions than it answers, but at least this one has a nice bow on it. It's intriguing and bizarre in so many ways that I was enthralled, gripped by its insanity and the calm, cool way the outlandish was accepted as is, as normal.

I ask myself many questions all the time. What am I doing here? Where do I belong? Why do I do these things to myself? When will I break free from this cycle? Maybe I'm asking the wrong questions. As yet, it's pretty clear I have no answers for these questions. No shining light or discovery or epiphany has managed to rock me from this state, move me. In many ways I feel trapped, whether it be by my modest success or my many inabilities to find escape velocity.

But maybe I've been approaching this all wrong. That's not to say I know the right way or have any single notion of what a right way might be, but I know that my current "way" isn't it.

Sometimes I wonder - is this it? Is this what life is like for everyone? You find some niche, carve it out for yourself and settle in? Get married, have some kids, work to put food on the table and provide for your family and, in the meantime, that's life? Has everyone around me bought into this? (And secretly I ask myself: Why can't I? Why can't I be settled and follow this path? What's wrong with me?)

And there it is. The questions I can never answer and the one I always ask. I stay up until late hours of the night. I am frozen in inaction when I should not. I am lost, at sea as it were, even when surrounded by things that entertained me not hours earlier. And I combat these feelings by inaction, by waiting for them to pass and Monday to come and work to resume and the boredom to take hold again when I am otherwise not paying attention.

I think a part of me rejects the underpinnings. I don't know why or how to battle it or whether to fully give in - I just know what it feels like and that I feel helpless when I know I am not.

Perhaps this is too much truth, too much honesty in a place where I strive to be as guarded as ever, but I'll let it stay, to be reread and rehashed and rethought. Maybe the question isn't how to break out of my current cycle, but how to start a new one. How do I start a new life?

2009: Looking Back On A Year

2009. The Ignoble Year? The Year That Wasn't? What Did I Do Again?

What are titles that I tossed out for this post? Correct! You have control of the board.

I tried to recall what happened in 2009. What did I do? Where did I go? Years from now, if someone asked me what happened in my life in 2009 how would I answer? Truthfully, and I will speak the truth from time to time, not much. Not much at all.

I did very little. Of note, I went to NY ComiCon. I went to WBC in Lancaster, PA. I played board games, I bought board games and DVDs and Blu-rays and CDs and a Tauntaun sleeping bag (MR. Tauntaun to you!) and things I didn't need and things I enjoyed. I played computer games, I played World of Warcraft (WoW), I didn't play WoW, I spoke to some friends, I ignored others, I went to work, I watched other people lose their jobs and I was afraid to lose mine. I learned about the dark side of our dog groomer, I learned to trust people and old friends who I once trusted. I learned things and forgot things and remembered things and dreamed things. I found a dream and I never pursued it. I complained incessantly about my odious job and my inability to do anything but complain and I totally failed to find my way.

And that's what I regret most. I never even tried to dig myself out from under this cloud. I didn't even try to pick myself up. I don't know, maybe part of me is waiting for the life-altering incident that will never come. Or maybe part of me thinks myself incapable of extraditing myself. Or maybe, and this one's the really scary one, part of me doesn't *want* to pull myself up. I don't know and I never even tried to figure it out.

I look at my posts for 2009 and see fear, hope and then.. nothing. Maybe 2010 is "the year"? Maybe then? I don't know. I wish I did, I really do, but I just don't know. I hope it is, though. I still hope.

2009: A Year Of Regrets (And Hope).

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays! Here's wishing you the very best and a pleasant and safe holiday season!

To All Those Friends I've Ignored

I'm sorry. It's nothing you said. I'm not angry with you. Really, there's nothing bad between us. I'm sorry I haven't called and I'm sorry it's been so long.

See, there's this thing where I hide in my shell and don't reach out to my friends. Nothing happened, nothing caused it, there's no real reason. It's what I do, it's what happens. There are good friends of mine that I haven't spoken with in years. Years. I'll speak with them again, I just haven't lately.

So to any of those friends reading this, and you know who you are (and, unfortunately, there are a lot of you), I am really, truly, honestly sorry. We will talk again soon.

Family

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone. Family and dinner. My younger cousin bought a house. My older cousin is pregnant with her second. This year we had "Tom The Turkey," raised by my uncle. Excellent meal. My grandfather is degrading faster and faster. My grandmother, too. These get harder and harder.

We're not close. My family that is. My generation - we swore we would be different, we would keep in touch, stay together, be the glue. We're not. We're not friends. We're each crazy and messed up in our own right. We watch our parents and grandparents move in their patterns. We see each other on the holidays and mean well, but we didn't change a thing.

I know that every family has its problems - its flaws and blemishes, its skeletons and secrets. We are no different and I watch us tear apart for it. I don't know that the happy families exist. I don't know one. Not a one. When my grandparents are gone, the larger family will disintegrate into non-communication and fade away. Twenty years from now, one of us will say to their son or daughter or nephew or niece: "You have cousins in New Jersey/Texas/New York/Massachusetts. We haven't seen them since your great grandfather passed away."

It saddens me.

It's not even that I really want to keep up with these cousins. I don't need the family to persist as it has. It's a wild, growing element that will become what it is to be. I just don't want the next generation, the toddlers now and the ones soon to come, to have the same unresolved curiosity that I sometimes feel. We had family in Germany, in Europe, in Israel. Had.

What the...

Strolling around the grocery store this evening and what do I spot? A SIXTH HITCHHIKER'S BOOK?!???! Why was I not informed?! How did I not see this coming??!? FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS STILL GOOD IN THIS WORLD, WHY WAS I NOT TOLD??!?!!

Incidentally, the novel is titled And Another Thing... and is authored by one Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series of young adult books.

We apologise for the fault in the communication. Those responsible have
been sacked.

Languishing

Languish:

–verb (used without object)

1. to be or become weak or feeble; droop; fade.


2. to lose vigor and vitality.


3. to undergo neglect or experience prolonged inactivity; suffer hardship and distress: to languish in prison for ten years.


4. to be subjected to delay or disregard; be ignored: a petition that languished on the warden's desk for a year.


5. to pine with desire or longing.


6. to assume an expression of tender, sentimental melancholy.

–noun

7. the act or state of languishing.


8. a tender, melancholy look or expression.

I languish. Very little-to-no progress in any real way. I have a good idea, though. I think I'd like to get into publishing, preferably fiction or graphic novels or comics. Try some sort of radical career shift and see what happens. After all, it can only get better from here, right?

Right?

Well, that might be the case assuming I did something about it. In the absence of real progress, work at my current job continues unabatedly. I have good days and bad days, good weeks and bad weeks. No one yells at me or says anything anymore. I think we may have reached some sort of compromise, an unspoken understanding that I'm a colossal fuckup and that I do good work when I do work and little that my bosses say can or will affect this state. I'm sure I'll wear down their patience at some point, but obviously not yet. As long as I don't screw up in some huge manner, and as long as I'm still good for the bottom line, which I currently am, my bosses are nonconfrontational enough that things will continue and I will be employed and paid.

I keep thinking "we'll see how long that lasts" but it's already lasted longer than I thought it would so who knows. As someone recently put it to me, perhaps things haven't yet reached that threshold where I force myself to act. Is complacency so bad? Am I really (that) unhappy in my current position?

I don't know. All I do know is that I continue to languish in this self-made purgatory. During the week I internally scream and fight against my daily work, while on the weekend I sit around directionless and immobile. I took a nap this afternoon for 3.5 hours. I watch television. I watch movies that I've seen half a dozen times already. My head runs in circles and I don't know what to do with myself. If that's not languishing, I don't know what is.

I know I'll break this cycle some day. I also know that I've said and written that before to little effect. Ah well, more another time.

Notes to Self:

For the past 2.5 years, I've been living in fear, waiting for the axe to fall, waiting to be fired. I've been given numerous warnings from my bosses. I've told friends of mine that I would be surprised to make it another x months or that I would most likely be gone by x date. I've gone into work many days wondering if that day, today, would be my last.

But I'm still here at the same firm, in the same position, doing the same things, reacting the same way.

It's about time I choose to change.

And in view of something about how writing it down makes it even more true...

Unless they fire me first, by the end of this year I will quit my job.

Since I've just been given another warning that first clause may hit regardless, but let's see how things go -- I would prefer not to leave on bad terms if I can avoid it. There are a number of ancillary goals to work towards on the way, but I think the above is step one, goal one. A lot of my unhappiness comes back to my job so why do I cling so voraciously to it? Change.

I'm not going to set down everything here quite yet. I'm going to work on some of the more personal, initial steps first -- changing my attitude and behavior. The rest in due time, first steps first.

It's not that I can do this or that I will do this. I am doing it. Starting here, starting now. Change.

Food For Thought

From: Epiphanies on Weight Loss

Select quotations (blockquotes omitted for readability):


The more self-examination I did, the more I realized that being overweight wasn't my problem at all. Being overweight was a symptom of my real problem - apathy. I seemed to be content to allow the world to just pass me by without getting into it, or getting anything out of it.

I believed that not liking roller coasters was my preference - my own choice. In truth, other choices I had made were the ones that ultimately influenced my preferences.

I think if I choose to like different things, maybe I will like different things. Maybe I can have the life I choose to live instead of one where things sort of just happen.

Something about how writing it down makes it even more true.

1) If you don't choose to live your life a certain way, you will live it anyway, but not on your own terms.

I realized that I am a product of the choices I have made. I turned out exactly the way I was supposed to be. Eating isn't the thing that made me fat. My whole life was what made me fat. More importantly, I haven't been victimized by my choices. My life is simply cause and effect. If I want different output, I need different input. Plain and simple.

3) Don't wait for a certain set of circumstances to become the person that you want. Become who you want to be now, and let circumstances change afterward.

4) You can enjoy whatever you choose to enjoy.

So, if I can learn to love beer and cigarettes, surely I could learn to love walking/jogging/biking/etc. I can't really explain it other than saying, I just told myself to enjoy these activities, and somehow it worked. Now, I get up every morning before work and do a two mile walk or jog. In the evenings I do 10 miles on the bike, or another walk or jog. I can't explain why I enjoy it, other than this is what I have chosen.

5) Don't look find reasons to not be fat. Find reasons to be thin. Positive reinforcement is the only way to really achieve any personal goal.

I decided however, that I wanted my life to be very different from how it was in the past. I wanted to teach myself to enjoy new things. I wanted to be open to experiences I haven't had, and to enjoy things I didn't know I might enjoy. And this became my motivation.

6) Live the change you want to be.

This particular epiphany yielded a startling result. I no longer missed the things from my former life. Sure, I'd like to have a slice of pizza, but I don't miss it. I don't crave it. I remember having fun playing computer games like World of Warcraft, but it just holds no appeal for me anymore. These desires and interests leaving me didn't happen slowly like I expected. It was kind of sudden. I used to eat several thousand calories a day, now I don't. I used to spend 15 to 20 hours a week with computer games, and now it's pretty much zero. I'm not really better or worse for any of it either - just different. I don't think there's anything wrong with eating an entire large pizza, drinking a sixer of beer, and playing World of Warcraft until four in the morning, I just don't have the desire to do that anymore.

7) Weight loss isn't the problem, it is a symptom of a different problem.

So I started to wonder. What does weight loss have to do with making my bed every day? The answer is "nothing". So what is the bed making about then? I realized that the reason I was doing it is that I had cultivated a new sort of personal discipline. I wanted my life to be different, and it was. In fact, the weight loss isn't the thing that has opened things up for me. It's all of the other epiphanies. The weight loss is only one benefit of the lifestyle changes I have made. Self-discipline is another. All of the good things happening in my life are under a bigger umbrella than I even realized I had raised. The desire to be different hadn't just changed the things I expected it to change for the better. It had changed a lot of other things for the better, too.

********

I think people only need to realize this: You are whatever you have made yourself to be. If you're happy with the result, then don't go changing for anyone. But if you aren't, you are the only one who can change your life. May as well start right this second.

When I tell people about my weight loss, they always want to know what program I did, and I always tell them. But I'm now believing that the program I'm on matters very little. It is just one of many possible successful paths. It was the decision to change and the desire to put that plan in motion that was most important of all.

"Real Fact" #361

The pineapple is a very big berry.

So sayeth the Snapple cap. So say we all!

The Out-Side

"Legend tells of a realm known as the "Out-Side", a vast open space where a fearsome burning orb hangs overhead, casting a harsh light over the land. Some say that to venture Out-Side is like unto death, as many have forever forsaken their blogs and messageboards and parents' basements once they have tasted of this strange and eldritch plane. Still others claim that the mystical "Life" may be found in the Out-Side, and that endless adventure and fantastic experiences await those brave, or foolhardy, enough to abandon their keyboards and pass through the portal of Frontdoor." - oball on OotS boards

-- Signature of bubba0077, seen here.

Truer Words Ne'er Were Spoke

Over at Boing Boing Gadgets, Steven Leckart posted his enthusiastic first impressions regarding the recently released iPhone 3G S. This happens to be Mr. Leckart's first iPhone and he's been looking forward to it for some time. The first commenter had this to say:

It's awesome that you own up to being an irrational fanboy. You are a beacon of insanity in a far too sane world and I love you for it.

Sadly for you, I am not a nubile young starlet.

Sometimes, Some Ways

Sometimes I wish I'd made this blog (more) private and/or anonymous. One of the reasons posts have been so infrequent is that I can't write about the things that matter most to me. I cannot describe the things that are happening, the thoughts flitting through my mind, the fears and hopes and anxiety and happiness and sadness.

In some ways this is a good thing. One of the reasons not to draft such posts is that I know they can (and most likely will) come back to bite me. In these days of ubiquitous internet access and search engine savvy, less is more. Presence, yes, but tempered with self consciousness and self control. The younger netizens will and are learning this lesson, but too often only after it is injurious. Sometimes I like to think I know better.

In some ways this is a bad thing. No ranting and raving. No fists raised against the sky, shouting in the storm amidst the tempest. No solicitations or sharing. Just silence punctuated by the occasional sigh with no further explanation or context. There is a distinct absence of truth and soul and that I truly regret.

In some ways this is frustrating. Frustration on top of frustration. If I cannot write about that which is of primary importance to me, most other words seem pale and wan in comparison. Better to say nothing than something feeble and half-hearted?

Sometimes, someways, somewhere, somewhen.

Tidings For An Addled Time

It's been rough the past few months. January was good, but it's been downhill ever since. I've been fairly angsty of late. Where am I going? What will I do? How will I get there? (Not that I know where "there" is, of course.) How does one measure "success"? Time progresses and I do not.

Work suffers, WoW playing increases. About a month ago I took stock of my finances. Since then I've attempted to curtail expenses, though Memorial Day sales enticed me to pick up more clothes and, thus, my expenses haven't significantly diminished.

I sit at my computer and--

I'm not sure what to do, how to kick start the inevitable upswing. I measure my current status by my work barometer. This has strong correlations to income and perceived job security. Income to pay off accruing debt. Job security for a job I am unconvinced I want to retain. Circles and circles, but circles don't lead to new patterns. I'm still waiting for a light bulb of inspiration.

It's probably not so dark and dismal a painting, but too often it can feel that way, painted in shades of fear and uncertainty. Probably why diversion is such a central tenet for me. Movies, music, books, graphic novels, computer games and board games.

I know I will break free from this, I just don't know when or where. Not right now, not today, not here. (But soon?)