Simple list...
(1) When cleaning up and moving, dust or wear a mask...
(2) Don't stay up for 45 hours straight, including at least 2 hours in-transit
(3) All meals are mandatory, even if you can't see straight, eat.
Failure to follow these simple steps... results in..
sickness.. ugh.
Things... Big events... Little events.. One liners, even.. Haunt me, weeks, months, even years later... Even if I wasn't wrong. and much more if I was.
I catch myself thinking about them, when I'm not doing anything else, or just laying down and thinking. I try to put them to rest, and let things go, but when it comes down to it, they don't go away. If I get angry or hurt or depressed they reappear.
Currently, i'm feeling pretty bitter. I don't know exactly why. I feel like I made a fair contribution back there, but get no credit whatsoever for it now. I was taught not to ask for credit and just expect it to be given if its deserved. Am I supposed to take it if I deserve it and not wait around for somebody else to do it? Because at the moment, two of my best accomplishments to date, which I won't name, (which I guess continues the cycle, doesn't it?), don't feel like I had anything at all to do with them, and I don't feel like anybody around me really wants to reach out and say anything. With one of them, this makes sense, its been taken over by other people, who've continued the growth I had a large part in starting. The other, its just been taken over, and ransacked like a town without a government.
I don't think I'm better than other people at all, I'm not more mature, I do have a different point of view and a very hard time reaching out and being social with other people, since I'm quite afraid of them. I'm not good at standing up for myself, except angrily. I just want people to see me as an individual who they want to talk to, to be with, and maybe even be friends with. :-/
Bah...
If you had the preceeding two songs in your dreams, would you worry? ;-) (Particularly, since the latter of the two, (but first since the blog reverses them...(aka Judas Priest) was really loud in an empty art studio...)
Why do people not look at themselves before throwing hatred at others?
Its easy to see your own problems in other people, harder to admit you have those issues yourself.
And particularly, easy to attack people who will, of course, believe your venom blindly because you know, they think little of themselves.
Must make you feel better about yourself to do that, or does it?
No long post about the right answer here. I've encountered two different answers and neither qualify as particularly nice or friendly. I don't think it really can be done and be nice about it.
(1) Just ignore them like they aren't there.
(2) Come up with a lame-sounding rationale, (it's X's house, not yours (even though you've lived there just as long, I guess the only way this one's defeated is to move out and then remind them how much it hurts by telling them to butt out of your business.)
The post that used to be in this space, was removed, because it made no sense to anybody but me.
Though, for what its worth, the post itself was based on feeling left out of a friend's visit, when that isn't the case. Communication issues suck.
Mood Music Post Follows...
Sometimes a needed action becomes very evident in front of you. That the words of others while nice and semi-warm and not hurtful, are actually, just safe. Safe words can be misleading words, they try to be nice and thoughtful of your feelings by avoiding hurting you. When in reality, they're not protecting you from anything, except the truth, or at least some subset of the whole truth that we actually are able to figure out at any one time, particularly when it comes to the interactions of people's relationships with each other, which get more and more complex with each complicating relationship between people we stack up. Its like adding features to an application, the more points to deal with, the greater the prospect of bugs.
In this particular case, it should've been obvious that the words and deeds weren't matching up a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't quite occur to me at the time. Words are pretty meaningless, actions count more, and when people say one thing, like they want you around for an event, or at least, did, before its scheduling and agenda changed, but then make no effort to keep you in the loop over these changes, and you start to get the underlying impression, its because you're not honestly wanted, except that you're important to somebody and that they, and you might get hurt if you're left out of it. Particularly, your hurt would hurt the other person, and in turn, that other person's hurt would bother/hurt person #3. So, at the end of the preventative hurt tunnel, here I am, not getting the whole truth, and being protected from the *possibility* of hurt, while actually being set up to be worse off, because I've been lied to.
Ultimately, its strangely not as hurtful as you'd expect, figuring out after 2 weeks that you're not involved or honestly/legitimately wanted (except for the hurt protection benefits) in an upcoming event. Its shocking, that people who want to protect you from hurt end up hurting you more this way, but maybe, it'll be 10+ days better spent, like a nice mental vacation from the people involved.
Serious title, isn't it? Its not meant to be dramtic though, only truthful. I spend alot of my time alone, now more than before. Alone has more meanings than you'd think on the surface. You can be alone in a room with somebody else. Its one of the hardest things to handle too. (but not The Hardest.) To realize you're in a room with that person and can't think of a single thing to say or even, at times, why you're there at all.
How'd it get to this point? I used to be ok with being alone, and I'd be in a reasonably good mood and be doing my own thing that I enjoyed doing. Alot of times, it was just me and music, sometimes from mp3s, other times a CD or even (yes, gasp) the radio. I've gotten alot done alone. I've designed whole websites by just being up in the middle of the night and listening to something and just relaxing and coding away. I didn't constantly need other peoples feedback for every little thing then. My own opinion of what I was doing was the only one that mattered, and I trusted it. Usually cause its the most harsh, I'm very hard on myself, particularly when the mental image I have in my head isn't coming out on the screen or in life.
Now, I don't trust myself to do whats in my best interest. I don't admit to myself problems that exist until they're too late, if even then. So I turn to the feedback of others, which can be a scary place, particularly with people you hardly know. They're quick to give negative feedback, because what they see isn't what they want. Listening to the feedback from them too long, and you become a circus monkey, performing for the prevailing current at the time, and being no happier or better off for it. Just drained. So, obviously, the better move is to turn to friends and maybe, family, if you're fortunate enough to have them around for you, people whom you probably trust. They have their own self-interests too. Its more like dealing in politics, everybody lobbying for what they want and nobody besides you, really cares about what you want, and whats in your best interest, but since I can't trust myself, I'm dependent on these people, and constantly trying to get the right feedback from them, more times than not its just lacking completely rather than being intentionally wrong or different. Attention Whore. Is what this last behavior has gotten me branded, and its right. I have very few close friends, probably 1 or maybe 0, and maybe only 2-3 friends besides that that i might be able to talk about anything with, besides the weather. So I quietly need alot out of the close friends, since I don't provide it for myself. In this, is the problem. I don't trust myself, and there's nobody to reinforce that i'm right, or that they even care that i'm around at all. Yes, that last phrase there is a leap, from a logical standpoint, but not from an emotional one, if you're not there for me, you don't care about me, and since there's so few people who seem to really care about me, each time that happens, it hurts badly, and being hurt brings up the next layer of defensive tactics, and surely I must be doing something wrong to get hurt, and the best way to avoid hurt is to be alone...
There's my paradox. I just feel so empty and alone, and it hurts too much to not be. Repeat.
I never really thought about the Blogs and Friends section alone being symbolic of change. Though, now I've thought about it, as tonight, I remove a guy who I'd been kinda friends with for the past few months. Friendships don't work out too well when the "friend" is pretty much so self-centered and isolationist that the rest of the world outside his immediate area ceases to exist. Nor do they work out well when their idea of friendship includes completely disregarding the emotions and thoughts two other people are having that have nothing to do with him, and procedes to completely and totally act like they don't matter and that its just an annoyance to them.
So all in all, no big loss of a friend here.
"I don't know" isn't a good answer when you ask somebody for constructive criticism (or just praise) on a creation.
It doesn't help that I only really function with some sort of feedback and in the absense of it, I just want to quit. :-/
I have a hard time getting the ideas in my head, onto paper, or even better, actually done. I have unrealisitic goals, where I have this constant need to impress and if I don't feel like it reaches out and grabs then its absolute garbage. Its a very black and white view of things that are an art, and its because I rest their value on what other people think, and not how I feel about them. I'm never happy with anything I do. Its always, not good enough. Eventually, this is like a poison. It needs to die. Though, I really don't know how to kill it. How do you go from hating everything, to having a realistic self-image and being able to see not only what does suck, but also, and perhaps more importantly, what doesn't. Sure, everything can be improved upon, after awhile. That doesn't mean if it doesn't come out in its first revision as flawless it should be scrapped. It just means things change, skills improve, style changes, etc.
Maybe I'm just trying *too* hard and completely missing the point. I just don't know.
Ugh...
Ever noticed just how hard it is to actually reach a person? Even with all these gadgets and gizmos we carry around supposedly to make ourselves more reachable. So let's see now you can be unavialable via more ways..
E-Mail (if you're lucky, you get a reply, maybe within a week. You could write a letter and wait just as fast)
IM (Quick, simple, and you know within 5 minutes that the person has no intention of being at their desk)
Cell Phone (Yay, if the connection doesn't suck, they don't have it off, or muted, you might get a low-quality call. At least, till the next passer by makes them go "look at the kitty")
Voice Mail (Ooh, so they didn't answer. Which is all too common with these things. Leave a message. If they ever check it. You might get a reply. The winner is when you can't even do that. "The mailbox is full, Goodbye")
Text Message (Yeah, so they're going to see the phone when they didn't bother to answer it, yeah right.)
Office/Home Phone.. (Well, you're pretty sure they're not at their desk, so that leaves out office. and of course, you might not be trying if its a busines call if they're at home. That still assumes they're not outside or ignoring the call there too. Besides, there you have family and TV and fun distractions like that.)
Wow. so, by the time you waste all of those options, you've spent more time that you probably had. and came back with 0. When all you really probably needed was 3 minutes to ask a question, "are you free for lunch?", "want to come over later?" that kind of thing.
So, where did I put those smoke signals?
Dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Katrina, The men and women of the military fighting overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to anyone suffering around the world. You're not alone.
Not much has been going on in my world, or so it feels.. but so much has gone on around me, that I want to say something about here. Let's see.. in my life, the biggest event relate to fun things like hardware death (in the server that runs this website.) First it was its power supply (the fan to be exact), which has been replaced, and now its the video card fan, doh. Nothing like waking up to the smell of hot electrics to make your morning. *sigh*
Katrina. Say the name and now you instantly visualize death and destruction. A week ago, you might have had no thought at all, (or perhaps, think of "Katrina and the Waves" the 80s band with the song "Walking on Sunshine", oh, the irony.) I'm not sure what I was shocked more at, the level of damage that the storm did, and the stories and pictures of the suffering of all those people. Or the outpouring of support on a personal-level from people. For me, the latter hit me before the former.
Following the storm monday morning, the Ace and TJ show, which airs on a local radio station here in Charlotte, and has several affliate stations around the southeast, stayed on the air in an effort to start collecting donations and goods to send down to those who were affected along the gulf coast. They started with a single semi-truck trailer, to fill with water and supplies, by the end of the first day, one, became two, and by the end of Wednesday, 15 loaded semi-trucks along with $250,000+ were sent off on their journey to those in need.
It was the stories that made listening to it so meaningful to me, and the way people just came out in support. Starting their own unrelated efforts, groups of people all over the area started working to collect goods to send, and the stations parking lot filled with supplies and trucks.
The most memorable stories from the people calling in and e-mailing were..
An e-mail from a solider in Iraq, who heard about what was going on from his mother, who donated his entire months pay of $6,000.
A mother calling in, after her and her two year old daughter saw footage on TV of somebodys house flooded and with a tree through it, and her daughter asks her, Can we give them a new house?
Countless stories of children giving money, from things like the tooth-fairy or a planned trip to disneyworld.
I blog these stories here, even though i'm not particularly good conveying the impact (or in some cases, remembering in enough detail to get the words right, etc.) because I believe that the good does outway the bad, and despite all the awful stories of whats going on down there, we will move forward and rebuld.
Don't lose sight of the people, for the politics. Its the people who need our help.
Sometimes, I think I get so caught up in the bs of life, that I forget the simple things in life, like looking up at the night sky, and just being amazed by it. A couple of weeks ago, I got a chance to play with a telescope in person for the first time in my life, which was fun. It was an Orion Spaceprobe 130mm, which a friend of mine just got that day. Though it was a full moon night, and too close to city lights to get a good look at much, though I hope to get a chance to use it again when its good and dark and just relax and explore what's up there.
Strangely enough, with a little luck, I managed to get a few good photos of the full Moon.
The first image I like the best, as it sits off-center and I think it looks really cool as a desktop wallpaper. The second one has the full impact that the Moon gives off though, frozen in time. I can't quite put into words the feeling I get when looking at it. I've always just stared at the moon, even when I was a kid, riding in the back of the car on a long trip, just looking out the window at it. Its calm and peaceful presence looking down at me, till I fell asleep.
I don't blog much, as a few people have noticed. In fact, the last post here was so old that it actually rolled off the frontpage and left it blank when somebody trackbacked it and it was refreshed, doh.
I tend to be a quiet person, part because I tend to keep alot of stuff about my life private, perhaps needlessly, and sometimes I don't blog because I feel like there's absolutely nothing going on in my life to warrant a blog post. Basically, when you feel like you do nothing most days that matters, why blog about it for the world to read?
So, I'll try to post more often, if I have something to say, but I make no promises about posting with any sense of regularity but we'll find out.
