random title based on randomly chosen tunes. I’m making myself stay up to write a little, some excuse like listening to the dryer, which can totally wait, but whatever.

I like that I’m old enough now that when I talk about ex-girlfriends, people can’t tell who I’m talking about unless they have specific experience. Many today don’t know the early girlfriends, and those from the past don’t know the more recent ones. Somehow I feel like that’s indicative of some kind of change, even though it probably really isn’t.

stop treating me like a girl and treat me like a person.

I’ve had a few drinks tonight, as a caveat, but that was a while ago and among other things I’ve had breakfast in between. I sat earlier staring at the light the city produced combine with the sky and the trees from the arboretum and thought about all of this, combined with text messaging my mother a bit about it for advice. She is of course biased as she likes me and thinks of me as some kind of catch, but she’s always there for me and has much of what I consider valuable life experience (wisdom).

I have had conversations as of late about being the “black sheep” of the family, and most have centered around going out and doing ones own thing, but none have focused quite so much on how emotional I am and having a really tough time finding people that a) I like, b) get my state and appreciate it  it’s raw honesty. Often, oddly enough, that makes me feel more lonely than anything else. I suppose it’s a risk of _feeling_, that such feelings may be spent for naught but I have a difficult time convincing myself that I should have it any other way.

Perhaps it’s because I simply don’t know how, as my emotions are a strong force of their own and shouldn’t be taken lightly. It’s been expressed to me more than once, however mostly indirectly, that people have felt my emotions have been the catalyst for a feeling of things moving too fast. When confronted in the past I’ve expressed such things as “Well, we’re not getting married or anything, right?” but it is common enough at this point to characterize myself as an ugly duckling.

Alright, closing that book. Maybe I’ll get out of town and go snowboarding tomorrow or something, and see if I can get my mind off girls.

Living with Ken and Tori is sometimes reminiscent of living in the loft, except you know, with dishes getting done and rent getting paid. I mostly say that because Ken and I are hanging out in the basement watching Fear and Loathing right now and it reminds me of the same activity but four years ago.

Aside from a short nap, tonights silent theme, filling my brain like a smoke filled cabin: reality. Rereading the non-religious portions of The Road Less Traveled reminds of me of picking the book up in different periods of my life like a flashback drawn on the corners of a pad of paper. I’ve always felt like I had little place telling people the way things are, but simultaneously wondering how the fuck so many people seem so sure about the way things are.

Tori and I had a conversation last night at Squid and Ink where I professed my insight that people don’t get me because they make assumptions about me and how that’s frustrating because I feel like I’m a much more open person that I come off as; this blog aside. This is a long standing idea of mine that I’m sure I’ve spoken of on many occasions where I assume that folks and friends alike judge me and then act according to those judgments. On an intermediary point, it makes sense and I don’t see why the wouldn’t. It’s only natural and I should be feeling shorted by it especially since I can’t come up with anything that I’m missing out on really. The only affected bits are their ideas about me, and that’s not really the point of kicking around this rock, is it? I suppose I could be worried that I’d be described as less reasonable or something than I feel I am, but that just leads into intermediary point number two, which I think I’ll postpone actually. I suppose it comes from wanting to be, or identifying as a “quiet, handy, wise” type or so. We want others to see ourselves and we want them too, why not?

Part of picking up this book again was being reminded of it by the drama of the last couple months, which has come along with the sidekick of projecting fault. Most everyone seems so caught up in how tough others make their lives, which is odd to me as I’ve always been the type to blame myself. As the winter comes to a close and the clouds clear, I’ve been picking up the pieces and remembering the end of high school eight years ago (holy crap, that was higher than I expected) and feeling that I haven’t had such a tough period since. It feels like so very much has happened, life has completely changed since moving to Seattle; which is partly ironic as I recall forcing myself out for a walk in the sun and lunch at a new pub today under the premise that every day of my shouldn’t be the same, even if I’m going to work most of them. I hadn’t really thought about blaming myself before but I suppose I realize now that I more resent myself than blame myself, in a way that’s subconscious enough that it’s been such an invisible burden in the past. Fancy word is neurosis, I don’t know if I feel alright using it.

My desires have become more clear, what I like about people, what kind of people I want around me and what I want to do with my time. I’m unsure how much that shows, although granted the people around me on any regular basis have only known me for a couple of years so it would be hard for them to tell. I’m definitely more sure of myself, perhaps because of all of that. I’m uncertain also how clear that is to people that haven’t known me, in comparison to others. I wonder how people take me when I say something.

Is my sarcasm clear? I don’t think so. I’ve seen a couple situations at work recently when I’ve put my foot down about something and a couple of days later people took me much more stern and serious that I feel like I’m putting out. I suppose it’s a product of the times, my times that is. I value my time more and more. I turned down helping a coworker with computer problems today (friend of a friend sort of thing), which was a bit surprising to me when I thought about how naturally it came about after.

I suppose the explanation for creation of neurosis is so that we don’t have to deal with something that we don’t have to, at least immediately.  Back to the point, as I’m thinking tonight I realize I’ve been talking about wanting people to ask me, to engage me more, because I’m open to it. And I realize that puts the pressure on them, where as I should be just as capable of taking the step forward and asking myself. One can try to excuse oneself over a lack of opportunity, but I guess I feel like there are only so many days the sun will rise right now, and there’s little growth to be found in waiting for things to happen for you.

I forget what word Tori used to describe Saturday, but it was the most average day we’ve had in a while. That is, after meeting some friends at Squid and Ink for breakfast, we went bowling at AMF Imperial Lanes for the Bowl for Kids Sake fund-raiser we’ve been participating in, then had a bunch of friends over for a barbecue. Granted this was all followed by a couple bars and Ken and I out at Uncle Mo’s/Planet Georgetown until last call caught up in the Karaoke, but otherwise it was all very suburban for us.

It wasn’t really planned that way, which was sort of funny. Saturday started out being just bowling, and a complex plot to hang out with a girl; which somehow transformed into a dozen people coming over, including one of the neighbors kids who was very interested in our cats and video games and made himself at home. None of us were entirely sure how to respond to this kid we didn’t know hanging out alone in our house… eventually I asked him his name; Ishmael of all things.

Friday’s regularly scheduled BSG viewing at the Awful Shark was followed by an irregular viewing of Ken and David “Stair Sledding”. They called me in advance to borrow a bicycle helmet to play it safe. I’m not sure the helmet + the whiskey shots did anything more than cancel out the safety value, but they came out of it sans broken bones.

Sunday was filled with more suburban activities as Tori and I continue to acquire furniture and there was lawn mowing and house cleaning to be done; which all went swell. Tori and I had a late dinner at Squid and Ink, which I think is the first time we had gone there that late. It’s nice having such an awesome place open to get grub and hang out.

I think this weekend was Linux Fest Northwest. I didn’t go, as I find I want to spend most of my off time not at a computer these days. It’s probably the nice weather making me want to be out, even if it’s just walking the alleys of Georgetown with a beer and a camera. It’s definitely the seasons, as I recall having this feeling last year, before this terrible long and turmoil filled winter.

I logged in to okc briefly tonight for the first time in weeks. Where has the time gone? It wasn’t moving, although that made the first couple weeks of the month pretty busy. I suppose my mind has been elsewhere the last couple of weeks. That interview with Peck I linked to earlier was interesting. There was a paragraph where he talked about being happy about “losing [his] libido”. For some reason I have this memory stuck in my head of my mom talking about how she didn’t understand what people saw in porn. Personally, I’d be happy to be able to turn off my sexual needs most of the time, especially when I’m not seeing anyone.

So impotence was almost a blessing? “I went to my doctor and told him I’d lost most of my libido and I said: ‘Don’t you dare do anything about it. It feels much more like a healing to me than a disease.’ It was a monkey off my back. I have a distrustful attitude toward the gonads, as you can tell.”

My dad used to say when I was growing up that we have two heads to think with; and one of them makes terrible decisions. I think it’s true, and my distrust of my sexual desires manipulating me is a major factor in choices I make. I would go so far as to think I’m responsible enough that I’m thinking about specific consequences like kids, disease, hurting peoples feelings or anything, I’m just generally of the opinion that the nethers are never up to any good.

You know what I like more? Liking girls. I feel giddy like I’m still a teenager sometimes; maybe I’m just getting around to being giddy like a teenager, since when I was a teenager I spent so much time listening to people patronize me with stories of how life will be different for me when I’m older. Of course it’ll be different, bah. But crushes always blur my ability to figure out what people are thinking, I think, and I develop a neurosis that I’m overbearing, albeit not in a forceful way, but mostly giving too much attention. And even now that I’m “older”, folk generally don’t seem to know how to do deal with and communicate with me.

I’ve always assumed that people are making too many assumptions about me. Like the dude at the fancy thai place today that wanted to know which construction site I was working at today (likely the hoodie and unkempt facial hair I suppose), but on an emotional/communication level, that they just can’t talk to me because I’m to thick and woodsy to get it. Is it learned reaction? A generation of guys not getting it has taught a habit of not trying anymore? I think right now it’s more likely that most the people I know just don’t actually communicate that much on that level. But I go back and forth, from assuming people judge me not as someone as emotional as am, as caught up in feel good cuteness, snuggling in late and crying to sweet movie scenes, to that people think all of that is something not to be cherished, that it’s some kind of sign that I’m not a reliable provider (of cave and fire).

As I spend more nights of my life thinking, my conclusions about myself have been accumulating. While my patience and acceptance seem to have remained stable, if not grown from recognizing more of my own short comings, the things that I expect from people have been coming to the forefront. It’s odd to think that I have expectations of people, because I’m rarely asking anything of anyone, but it seems lately I have been, only with the actual asking part. I wonder if that is fair, but I don’t feel concerned about it at the moment. I roll through a few situations in my mind over the last six months where people have given me shit and ponder how much of it I’m responsible for.

We’re coming up on two years since I burned out on life and rerolled, three years since I started life anew on another coast. I’ve had many conversations about how moving doesn’t fix any personal problems, but the changes have really helped make evident the patterns that I put myself in. Most commonly the cause of suffering in the last three years has been not having the vision to how much the situations I am in are affecting me emotionally and lacking the will to put my foot down and do something about it.

Too often have I trusted others to do what’s best for me because they’ve expressed that they are putting me first. I’m very weary of that sort of statement now. I’m not smart enough to attribute such things to a character disorder on their part, but I’m keen to believe that all the same. I’ve had a sort of rule of thumb in the back of my mind most my life but it’s been one of those sayings that is easier to know than to really understand in an “actions speak louder than words” sort of way. The idea is that you shouldn’t be doing things that you unspoken expectations of some return on. That is, don’t do someone’s dishes expecting them to do yours without agreement, as you’re only going to become resentful and there’s few paths out of that place. Recent readings have suggested that finding yourself in that place is entirely your own fault and responsibility because it’s how you feel and expect, not what is being done to you that is the problem. I’m inclined to agree as I hear a lot of folks these days spend most of their time talking about how hard their lives are. Quite obviously these are the more dramatic people I know, and I’m finding myself more and more attracted to those people who are generally lacking concern with such hassles.

And they’re out there too, so there isn’t a whole lot of reason to put up with burden of people who are trying convince me of their own burdens. Anyhow, it’s getting late and that’s a good place to stop.

I finished High Fidelity recently and I’ve picked up The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck again. This is a book I grew up with; that is that a copy was in my house my whole life and I’ve read it a few times in different periods of my life. The copy I have now is the 25th anniversary addition. Theres an additional forward in this addition where Peck talks about the success of the book. In the original forward of the book he speaks about how it’s “not his book”. It’s left to the reader to decide who’s book it is: a generations, the readers, gods? But he speaks of a lecture he was giving and asking the audience to raise their hand if they’d been involved in professional therapy and over ninety percent of the room does. I feel like the underlying message of that forward is that it was a generation where talking about our problems started to become okay and mainstream even.

I found this interesting and connected to an earlier journal about how many find that my generation and younger are very open about ourselves online and give away a degree of privacy that they hold true. The piece that instigated that writing seems to hold that earlier folks aren’t so much concerned about privacy as they are afraid of what people will think. Peck notes that a friend’s mother spoke of him as the young man the speaks of things that people shouldn’t.

It’s an interesting thread. I find more recent news online, and ask my grandparents to print it for my father who liked Peck even before he found out he was an alcoholic.

Hrm.

“That’s the point of us. You have potential. I’m here to bring it out.”

“Potential as what?”

“As a human being. You have all the basic ingrediants. You’re really very likable, when you put your mind to it. You make people laugh, when you can be bothered, and you’re kind, and when you decide you like someone then that person feels as though she’s the center of the whole world, and that’s a very sexy feeling. It’s just that most of the time you can’t be bothered.”

“No,” is all I can think of to say.

“You just … you don’t do anything. You get lost in your head, and you sit around thinking instead of getting on with something, and most of the time you think rubbish. You always seem to miss what’s really happening.”

I caught a review of the movie recently that went into that deep nonsense about how Rob is every man, or every average man, or some psycho babble/hip jive that I consistently refer to as being above my level of conceptualization. I don’t know how average Rob Gordon is, but I identify with the script at times, chords are struck even.

Even before the scenes in the book talking about the fear of death of loved ones (which didn’t make the movie) I was thinking tonight about frailty. As part of my latest “I’m getting to old for this shit” round I’ve trying to settle with my more unhealthy emotions I’ve thought a bit more about what I want and I still feel a sort of “life is too short not to try” motivation.

I do tire of people martyring themselves to keep me from getting hurt. I really don’t have the fucking time for it and I’m quite happy with the games ending and them just buggering off already.

I don’t think before tonights musings that I’d describe myself as a particularly passionate person, but I’m actually pretty strongly believing that I am now. I suppose that the doubt would come from feeling like I’m an opinion-less person. Not that I am not unique but that I’m some how indifferent. It’s taken a lot of time to sort that out. There are a lot of things that I am indifferent to, or perhaps more importantly that I’m just uninterested in seeing much effort go in to; it is a sort of the ends don’t justify the means thing.

One of the topics of today has been breakups and I struggled to try to find a way to verbalize the problems that come along with them. Such that when you’re emotionally invested in someone and allow your self esteem to be tied into that relationship, with everything else aside it, break ups require a sort of rebirth. I gander that the most common way of dealing with this emotional trauma is by blame; either blaming ourselves or the other person. I’m weak, they’re an asshole, either or, although probably not so often both. It would seem that finding some sort of middle ground is a daunting task worth the effort. I don’t feel it is so much about being open minded as it is the ability to leave ourselves open, our hearts if you will. Open in such a way that they vulnerable, yet we’re able to recognize and cope with that trauma in a controlled, positive way.

In the past I feel like I’ve been told too often by people I cared about that I didn’t have enough opinions. Thinking about that is a reminder about how vulnerable I can allow my self esteem to be.

Yet I’ve been oft described and would agree that with the phrase that I “wear my heart on my sleeve”. I do have opinions, and some of them I feel very strongly about.

I distracted myself with some chores today. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night; after sobering up and having a late night breakfast, I drank a bunch of coffee before going to bed. So I had a headache most the day and didn’t have the stamina to go back to Toorcon for the talks today and instead did some chores. I went out and bought a lawnmower and took care of all of that, as well as picking up some house furniture with Tori. It’s difficult to remember that 24 hours ago was in fact, 24 hours ago. But I felt like I needed distracting, as such Tori and I made quite the effort towards finding a copy of High Fidelity and watching it. I am a sap when it comes to movies, and I feel not like repeating all of the thoughts that go along with that.

The point being that I am a very emotional person and I am passionate about a few things, sometimes to the degree that I feel like it’s going to overwhelm people. Certainly in the past my emotions have overwhelmed people and I’ve been disappointed by the lack of communication regarding as much.

I had a thought run through my mind today that I meant to note but can’t recall right now due to being tired, but it relates to this: I often feel like this lack of communication is one sided and that perhaps I’m too communicative. That’s the wrong word though, because communication is a two way process. I feel lost amongst all the accept societal and group mannerisms for when it’s ok to say what and tend to say what’s on my mind. That’s not totally the case because I do pick up on a number of social clues which are important enough that I group myself separately from people that I describe as “socially broken”. But it’s wrong to assume that I am the more communicative one, because perhaps I am just missing clues and more often than not it ISN’T communication, it’s just these silly clues and what have you.

I do have going for me that I’ve grown very accustomed to my feelings. If I like someone and it’s not reciprocated, while that hurts like any other rejection would, I have little shame or desire to hide those feelings. They are mine, and worth sharing.

I can’t remember my search keywords when I tried to figure this out, but it works like this.

I was in an accident at the end of 08/2007.

My company closed and my insurance ended at the end of 10/2007.

I got a new job in 11/2007 but my insurance didn’t start until 12/2007.

In 11/2007, when I was between insurance coverage I had a couple of follow up vists for the injuries from 08/2007. I explained this to someone at the WA state insurance hotline and they confirmed that that period is uncovered despite it in follow-up to a recent accident. The possible exception would be a single hospital stay that started in a coverage period and ended in a non-coverage period might be considered one stay and therefore covered because of the start date.

I was thinking about divorce on the bus; Tori and I have been talking about it recently and I’m sure I’ve made a post or two I just don’t have the time to link back to them.

In consideration it makes a lot of sense to not spend the rest of your life in a happy situation because “rest of your life” is such a finality. Always being the [cynical] optimist though, I somehow tend to think about how nice it would be to spend the rest of your life with someone you do like.

I wouldn’t call it loneliness, if we’re counting slivers probably more of them are a sense of purpose than any sense of destiny. I’m convinced the meaning of life is good wholesome happiness, and for humans that amounts to being around people you like and accomplishing some ‘progress’ be that whatever it may be.

It’s a form of communication that requires a person to be constantly aware that anything you say can and will be used against you, but somehow not to mind.

This is a really interesting ready, especially if you have interest in the changing tides of privacy. No, not the “is the NSA listening to my phone calls” privacy. But the rest of the world knowing what you’re up to privacy. You see, I’ve never card much about the former. “Why should you care?” I’ve always wondered. And the best I can figure is that you care about what those people think about you. On some level, I guess I do. I naturally want people to like me, but where the line really exists is when those people start to fuck with me. And that’s why I don’t trust the government to have access to all of my life. If Bill from South Dakota doesn’t like that I rape horses, that’s fine. We’re all entitled to you know, whatever. But if I’m going to be written up as a commie and hung from the rafters by some secret three letter agency, you know, I have a problem with that.

I hadn’t really considered the generational difference before, which is what I think I’ve found most interesting. Of course from my track record, I identify with transparency. I suppose people’s reasons are different though. After the whole mix of angles are considered, I still come out of the tubes with introverted goals. It’s not that I want any sort of fame, long or short, but rather that I want to know who I am, and I want the people closest to me to as well.

Because I still haven’t figured out, if not this, then why the hell are we alive? Kind of disturbingly cyclical I suppose.