This is the probably the most artistic thing I’ve ever done, and simultaneously probably the most passive aggressive. Oh well. My intentions are fair, more expression is progress.

Got a text from mom today.

Mom: Being angry is ok too. All feelings are valid and real. What matters is how we act on them. Loss is hollowness that will be filled differently. love you
Me: Just sad.

I got thinking about loss, and the internet lead me to grief, thinking about the “stages”. It calls is simplistic bullshit, which is reasonable enough.

I’m trying to decide what to do with this sadness. It’s changing so many parts of me from the inside out. Skimming the page, I saw a reference to grief counseling and thought about finding someone to talk to.

After I left Strategy I started meeting a counselor, Angel Bowman, once a week and continued for a year. She even came to the house after my accident when I couldn’t really get around. It was an incredibly therapeutic process where I finally came to level ground regarding my needs and boundaries. This was the forerunner into dating again, which has been it’s own process of moving past my needs and into my desire and the future. I’m torn between writing more about this because it’s distracting, and getting to the point.

Searching on the Internet, I found out that she died a year ago. I couldn’t handle this, today. The final gates of composure have broken. This basement has never felt so huge, everyone so distant.

Rereading the last email from L, the things that matter seem upside down. Why am I always feeling like I’m the only one that feels this way? Did achieving my career goals at a young age put me on the porch already, on the outside looking in, or out of the rat race? Do I let my heart steer me more than most? When did this happen? Has it always been that way? Jesus I need a hug.

too sick to do much, yet have to do something or my mind wanders. I’m such a fucker.

I’m pretty broken up over this whole relationship business. I’m feeling bothered by not feeling like there’s a good reason for it. I think that’s some shallow anger though. I know it’s all just trying to rationalize the sense of loss.

Of course the cost of a night with friends trying to make the things that mattered not anymore is waking up in no condition to do anything distracting. Plan A is to go downstairs and hide from everything on the couch for a while.

Nope. Turns out it is bright down here too. Sunnier. Why can’t it be rainy today? At least I have a bucket now.

Most of my life I had my father pegged as this stoic person. Life was full of things that needed to be done, because they needed to be done. Because someone had to do them. And while he was never particularly happy about them, although supposedly he once was, at that point they were hoops. Life was hoops most of the time, and I vowed to not live that way myself. When we’d go to camp, things I always figured made him happy, he wasn’t particularly happy about it. I can’t remember him ever happy about it. I can remember many times when he was angry. And I have forever etched in my mind the memory of watching him hug my mother through the window of my grandparents house after she told him the house had burned down, and feeling sad.

I’d have to guess it was mostly the way he grew up. His family isn’t particularly communicative about their feelings. They always look at me sort of awkwardly, unsure how to respond, when I’m frank with them about my own thoughts and feelings.

As time has passed, I’ve seen bits of the man he was through other people’s stories and photos, occasionally some shocking remarks of his own. When I was growing up, he was always seeming disinterested in my feelings, even to the point where he’d tell me that he didn’t want to hear about certain things because he’d worry too much. They all worry too much.

I’m made of many of the same parts. And I grew up around all of this, so I sort off get it. But I have to wonder, or rather, I just don’t get it… independence to what end?

I suppose we’re all looking for something different. We’re lacking different things, or at least believe that we’re lacking them. Myself, challenge, adventure, amazing people in my life. I want connection. Inside me, there’s this part of me that wants to be shared and valued.

And so Dad’s alone. In a big house, in the woods. He’s got lots of channels on the television though. It’s not what he ever thought it would be, it wasn’t what all that independence was fighting for. Was it worth it? I’m sure it wasn’t. I think he has regrets now. Which, is something. Being the incredibly emotional person that I am, I think I can fathom the vulnerability that he was afraid of. Still is afraid of. I’m still embracing those feelings. Can’t help it, don’t know any other way to be. Perhaps my cynicism won’t be so funny some day, and I’ll end up jaded like him. Today would be the day to believe it. I don’t though. It just feels tragic.

I take care of myself well enough. Folks tend to assume that there isn’t anything that they can do for me, because I don’t really need any help. The point is missed though. It isn’t important that I can do something for myself, it’s that someone values me in their life enough to do something for me. There’s much in that gesture that makes life worthwhile… meaningful.

You can force people to bend, you can drag them along somewhere, but it’s they open their heart that life has importance.

Sometimes I think people value me for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I sit in my chair in the office, trying to solve some complex technical problem, and I focus in at a pixel on the screen and revel in how complicated life is, to what end? This is a “stop and smell the flowers” feeling, where I remember that while I like all of these things, and I’m interested in how they work, this isn’t my life. Yet so much of my life that isn’t the important part seems to get the time and energy.

There’s some value in maintaining an intentional state of innocence. I’m reluctant to try to make sense of people at times, and instead focus on trying to build empathy for their humanity. Problems at work are challenging, and they’re interesting. Other human beings finding a place for you in their heart is magnificent. Which is to say, I can’t make people like me, but I can be willing to let it happen. Because when you leave that door open, and someone walks through on their own accord, that’s love, and that’s what I’m getting at. It only matters when they choose it. This doesn’t make it any less devastating when they don’t choose it. That’s the cost.

The alternative? A gerbil wheel to some end until you’re just watching basketball on satellite alone in the woods?

No, I’m not going to end up like my father. I love. Nobody seems to know what to do with this. It’s been difficult living with that. It’s a burden on people. They don’t want to admit it. They profusely chant that it isn’t a burden. I’ve heard it before. I’ll likely hear it again. As time goes on, I’m less and less ashamed of it. I feel like my heart is a star alone in a dark sky, a bit of brightness surrounded by darkness. For so long I’ve felt alienated by this contrast. Folks want my heart to fit into their understanding of the world. It doesn’t. It won’t. That’s fine.

Where was I? Mom said to hold on to the good things. Sure. I still have many people I value in my life. The trouble is putting so much hope in your hands, and holding them fully outstretched, knowing someone could knock them down at any moment, but knowing what you want to build is worth so much more than that risk. That vulnerability, opening up and choosing to allow someone into your life, knowing that they could decide that they don’t value you that much, that your presence isn’t that important, and still doing it. That’s worth it.

You can keep stoic Dad, I like my heart.

too many things remind me of L. It’s tough seeing the trains roll through the hood, thinking about biking over to the Duwamish, or looking at the Suburban and thinking about driving out of town.

I did my best to stay distracted tonight. Props to Tori for standing by me, and Jason for coming out. I searched for so many people to carry me tonight, and only found those two that I could count on. But squid turned out to have bingo night, and a bunch of local kids were there. Later at 9lb Jarrod and Cinder played board games with Tori and I. It felt like family, which totally carried me through the night of feeling distraught from losing something so close to my heart.

I blew it on school this week for so many reasons, but I feel like if I take care of myself well enough for the next half hour I’ll be able to go back to work tomorrow without feeling completely sick to my stomach.

Mother reminds me to “hang on to what’s good”. When questioned about what’s good, her list is valid, but it’s not what’s important to me. My priorities are normally relatively rational and automatic. I rarely value something as irreplaceable. I lost something irreplaceable today. I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but there are parts of you inside that die when you give up on dreams.

I’m cutting off as many reminders as I can, but it won’t be complete or effective. Time….

bailed on school and work, came home. about halfway home I stopped wanting to puke and was just sad. stopped at squid and friends there were looking for a weed whacker so I came home to loan them mom’s new one. It was awesome to see friends that were full of happiness. I’m going out to prove to foursquare that tonight really is a bender. come out and drink!

bad week, out for a couple days dealing with skin infections of various kinds.

bad day at work, layoffs, economy whatever. annoying. meetings and whatnot.

I’ve been struggling with a relationship, fighting to keep it and just got an email expressing that it’s not going to work out. My heart is in my gut, and my stomach wants to puke to make up for it.

It’s, so destructive losing meaning. Making yourself so vulnerable knowing the risks, having been there before, and losing your soul to it for words that, are just words. Some day, I’ll understand? Someday never comes.

Remember talking about not looking for pats on the back? I’m getting really fucking tired of condolences about how great of a person I am. Next person that says that gets kicked in their pee hole.

I don’t know. I’m just feeling really hurt.

Nobody is a harsher critic of me, than myself.

I once picked up Time management for System Administrators. “Great!”, I thought, “a time management book from O’Reilly, must be relevant”. Yet, somehow, it was all obvious, but left out a lot of why’s. There were tips about staying off instant messaging clients and delegating tasks that are disruptive to your focus to others. It was all relatively obvious.

I took a job once, and stated up front that I didn’t want any time wasted with “pats on the back”, but was eager for useful criticism. Perhaps in hindsight it wasn’t the right place to ask for this. I got periodically micromanaged half the time, and ignored the other half when my boss was too busy to notice what I was up to.

It seems to me that the problem is with the bar that is set.

My bar is above average, yet I don’t recognize myself as being stellar. Just above average will do, thanks. This bar does not respond to situational influences. I want to do good in my Pre-Calculus class. It needs more time and attention. It doesn’t matter what else I’m dealing with in life. Other departments at work being a hassle? Skin infections taking up residence? These things do matter. Should they? I’m unsure. This definitely feels like an issue to find some compromise with. That is, without saying “fuck it” and taking off altogether.

I can feel the anxiety develop in my chest from all of it. Why? Because of my arbitrary standards of self-excellence.

I probably do think I’m well above average, but value humility and thus won’t admit it to myself. Which would make all of this effort part of maintaining the charade. “Sure, someone else shouldn’t stretch themselves so thin and enjoy life, but they’re not me!”

I realized today that it’s a terrible idea for me to take a CompSci and a Math class next quarter. Maybe some day I won’t be working full time and I’ll make up for that. The ball is still rolling though.

Yet I have a pile of projects in the garage that I wish I was working on, and I’m more apt to pick them up because they have no deadlines, so they’re more enjoyable than the things I’m doing because I have to or I’ll fail to meet an arbitrary goal built around degrees of aptitude that are presented by society as achievement, but are two dimensional.

Matt has ridden one thousand mile so for this year.

We’re finishing up week seventeen of the year, which means about eighty five work days. This means I’ve ridden about eight hundred and fifty miles so far this year in my commute alone. This doesn’t include the Point83 rides I go on every couple of weeks, weekend rides around the south Seattle neighborhoods and beyond, or anything special like the FHR. It’s just the short ride I make every day that I can easily count. I don’t have a bike computer to keep track of all of this, because it doesn’t fucking matter.

I’m glad it’s nice out and more people are getting back on their bikes. I’m seeing the one or two bikes in my office that refuse to use the bike rack in the garage because they cost more than my truck showing up again. I have to assume there’s more of this in the building, because all the bikes I see in the garage look like they do actually get ridden. All the same, there’s definitely an ideology clash here, that goes beyond if you think the amateurs are the squids or the posengers, (aka the other guys).

In trying to think of the best way to identify the root of this, I’m drawn to thinking about what kind of bike would elicit a “nice!” from someone. For me, it’s pretty hard for someone to buy a new bike that’s going to impress me. It’s not going to have personality. There’s not the love of building it yourself, let alone from parts that already have a history. The bike has no stories to tell other than that of your paycheck, which, perhaps is the story you want it to tell. A part being expensive doesn’t mean a whole lot to me, and I realize that’s deeply rooted in a personal belief that the value of something doesn’t come from it’s fiscal worth.

As it turns out, I’m in no condition to go anything productive except go to sleep for at least 30 minutes, so I’m going to call it a night and do that. But first! It’s thanksgiving in April today.

I’m glad my parents, my friends, and those dear to me are who they are. It doesn’t cross my mind to have them any other way. I’m thrilled that the stubbornest girl in my life also has a giant heart. It’s interesting that I find stubborn to be a positive personality trait. Probably more blue collar hard working ethic backwash. Today was almost terrible. That it wasn’t is simply great.

I’m full of wonderful feelings that materialize as a big grin.

On a side note, I have a super person story to tell that’s really private to tell. I’ve been holding it in out of insecurity and wondering if I’ll find the strength to share it, and how that will come out. Readers, how do you feel about writing publicly about something that makes you feel alienated?