The life and times of me.

Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Clean Install

Ahhhhhhh...

I'm on my refreshed system.
I've got files transferring, Adobe CS3 installed, Office soon-to-be-installed, then it's the iTunes and a few other knicknacks and I'm in biddness.

I feel good today. I feel like everything is good.
I'm in some DEEP introspective due to a conversation I had with a very close friend. They said I'm fooling myself on some issues, so of course, I am looking deep to see if the cloud of self-deceipt has settled onto my shoulders. That's something I don't want to do, something I don't want to indulge in.

It's so easy to fool yourself. But you end up just BEING a fool. I'm still recovering from the divorce, still adapting to life as a single person, and I am trying the best way I know how to maintain sanity and peace of mind. I'm trying to do things because I want to do them, not because of someone else at all. That's how I've done everything to date, never for me. Never for me.

NEVER FOR ME!

I have so many issues that I didn't even recognize. I thought I had grown up in your better-than-average household, when it turned out we had some serious issues. I feel so frustrated that I'm finding this all out now, so late in life. I mean part of me says better now than never, but part of me says why bother?

I know that I want to be healthy in my interactions with the rest of you. I know that I don't even know what a healthy interaction with any of you is, yet. But I also know I am working towards becoming a whole and complete person.

I don't know... I'm a little frustrated this morning. A little because some advice I was recently given is making more and more sense. I believe I may be fooling myself to some degree... the question is, since the fooling myself feels so good right now, will I stop and take the instant pain that is waiting on the otherside of that decision? Or will I wait for the pain to be at someone elses timing and decision?

I'm gambling on finding a middle ground. If I can get some things in life started and moving forward, then I can let go of the thing that feels good without feeling ANY pain... but it's all about the timing.

Timing is everything in this case...

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Sunday, December 28, 2008

9" Nails

I'm getting ready for bed at 8:47pm. I'm trying to offset a 4:00am bedtime last night. If I get to bed now, I can get 8 hours of sleep in time for tomorrow. And that's what I'm shooting for. I have a week to look forward to.

This week I am making my rebirth event.
I'm turning Thursday into a day I will celebrate, and NOT because my brother was born on that day either... sorry Jesse.

Thursday is a new year.
My divorce may not be finalized by that day via the courts? But it's finished as far as my mind and body recognize it, so I am making Thursday my day. I'm recognizing the importance of reinventing myself, I'm grabbing ahold of what I want and making it real this year. Hell, by Thursday, I will have moved even further towards my new home, I might have my new computer and have re-started several key projects, and more.

It's time.

Meanwhile, I was stumbling around in some of my old posts, and I ran across this post on Richard Dawkins forum... from someone whom I admire for their wit.

Click Here To Get To Original Post



Look... you believe that a cosmic Jewish zombie, who is his own father, can make you live forever if you submit to a magical soul-douching ceremony (complete with magical water, incantations and waving of hands), symbolically eat his flesh (in the form of a cracker) and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was tricked by a malevolent entity (disguised a talking snake... with legs) into eating a piece of magical fruit from an enchanted tree... (etc.)... and that there is something horribly wrong with people who ARE NOT so stupid and gullible that they can be made to believe such outrageously ridiculous codswallop.


Ahhhhh... I love it when people sum up some things so beautifully.
Thank you DuckPhup...

Well, it's 9:20pm. My day was nice and relaxing. I feel so much better than I have in years. I'm starting to get used to these swings too. I will feel completely depressed for awhile, then I start to rediscover things I enjoy, then I start to have hope. Well, I'm at the hope phase right now and I will enjoy it. If I start to swing down, at least I can recognize it and it doesn't take control of me. It helps me to focus on what is wrong, and present solutions to fix it.

I'm shutting my soon-to-be-replaced system down... turning up the volume on my tunage... climbing under the covers... and finding nirvanna...

Tomorrow is a full day...
May yours be better than you ever thought it could be.

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One foot in front of the other

It's an uphill climb somedays, and somedays it's a slalom downhill on skis.

Today is a decent downhill slope.

Finding each step required for my forward momentum, and then actually TAKING that step, is very exciting. Making new friends, battling the social anxiety that is so NEW for me, making life altering decisions despite having incomplete information... hard, hard and scary.

I used to be the guy who made a new friend everyday almost. Now, I've learned how to live without, not happily, but definitely live. So it's hard for me to open up and let go of my locks without just flying the door wide open. I seem to have lost any stopper when sharing who I am. Those healthy boundaries as well as the unhealthy ones are just not there.

Being around large groups of people is also something I used to have no issues with. Now? I am quite uncomfortable around groups larger than 3. I used to be an announcer for a Roller Derby Team, I've coached Little League Roller Hockey, Soccer and worked in youth ministries (back in my theistic days). Now the thought of being around large groups of people makes me queasy.

I guess part of this all is because of where I am. I KNOW that working through the baggage from this marriage is going to take time, and it's going to be tough. Figuring out how to be a good friend without emotionally vomiting on people is something I've got to grasp and quick if I hope to maintain the friends I have (and the new friends I'm trying to have). Learning how to be inside of me, and allow my feelings and peace-of-mind to stay balanced, is something I've gotta learn as well since I would like to be around and involved with large groups of people as well. Hell, I think it would be awesome to someday have something worth saying, people interested in hearing it, and speaking in front of audiences.

It's all part and parcel of the package that is me.
(are you staring at my package?)

I'm striving for the change that is begun in my life but is not yet realized. I want to find the true me, the centered Brian. The randomblink. All the aspects that make up ME. I have friends and family that claim to know me, when they describe me I feel lost... confused... part of me recognizes who they are describing, but most of me just fuzzes up.

I'm impatient. I found out last night for sure. No granted, I've been told it was a good night, but I feel like I emotionally vomitted on a new friend. I feel so lost at how to be a good friend. I understand that friendship is a give and take, but how do you recover from a massive "take" on your first meet? I don't want to take the time it takes to make those friendships that last forever, I get impatient, I want to speed things up and get to the good times... the laughing at nothing, the all-nighter-movies and popcorn on a living room floor... video games till your head starts hurting.

I miss Farel. He was my best buddy growing up. We shared everything... and I mean every-fucking-thing. We used to sit and draw for hours, read our comics, play role-playing games, re-enact scenes from Star Wars, share our dreams... I remember feeling closer to him than I had ever felt to anybody. He was like a piece of me. Then life got in the way and we drifted apart. And I miss that friendship.

However, I did the things that separated us. I made decisions that hurt him, insulted him, and drove him away as a friend. I was a prick... a selfish prick. I guess this is what it means to deal with my issues. Walking through this emotional wasteland is painful, it doesn't all have to deal with my wife, and it's scary.

Finding my strengths and weaknesses... cataloging them all... finding my core.
The true solid me.

I'm in a weird mood. I feel lost but not lonely. I realized that after last night, I am capable of interacting with people and making new connections (hopefully ones that last), but the ability to communicate with others doesn't seem quite as scary as it was... chuckle. Now granted, I feel like I emotionally just vomited all over her, but I got the impression that she was ok with it. She listened, and shared her own stories. Feeling a connection of any kind was very nice and reassuring. You get so tied up in one person, so enmeshed, for so long, and you start to feel socially retarded.

I mean making new friends WITHOUT my wife involved? New, Scary, Uncertain.
But I feel like I can do it now.

Granted, I don't want to let that much of myself go with someone I just met ever again. But some people give you that feeling of knowing them already? I felt that, for better or worse, safe and trusted. So I guess I can only cross my fingers and hope my emotional freak out doesn't bite me in the ass. But I don't think it will. Some people just feel like home... *shrugs*

Anyway, I'm sitting in an empty house, and oddly enough today... I don't feel lonely. I feel alone, but not without. I feel like I had therapy last night, in a way that I haven't had before. But they say that that is what socializing is all about. You share who you are on one level or another, you have someone else share themselves with you on one level or another. And in the end you have a tenuous relationship. From there you grow what you want, both of you. New people can enter in on that thread, but it always starts with two. The first thread being the one you create with your mother (usually) and everything else bases on that.

Rambling apparently, I'm not making sense of what I'm writing, but it's kinda freeflow, just releasing the voices in my head and heart. I've got some weird (weird because they are so calm) emotions right now. They are steady and strong, not like my normal spasms of emotional drives. So I'm hoping this is me processing, dealing with who I am... dealing who I am becoming... dealing with my life.

Tomorrow I am getting some things done that have been long overdue. I have had some desires and drives that I didn't know HOW to get started, I finally found the names last Friday. So I am crossing my fingers. Money and Time. Those are the areas I am focusing on.

Friday I take my grandmother to an ORU basketball game, that'll be really nice. She loves ORU basketball, and since my grandfather passed away the same week my divorce started, it's weird and peaceful to interact with my grandmother... lol. But taking her will be lots of fun.

I just made some deals to possibly get myself a new computer sometime this week. So I am hoping to have a better system so I can do more on my free time with my dream projects. I can start developing a few of my first apps for the iPhone without having a Mac. And if I can start generating some cash of them? I could afford the Mac to start developing iPhone apps full time. So, we shall see... having a system that loads up all the way would be better than nice. So that's exciting...

What else...?
I guess that's it.

Today is a good day tater... live it full and strong.
Don't let life get in your way.
That's all I got.

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Saturday, December 20, 2008

The Zombie Perspective

So it's been a couple days.
I've had time to ponder over the events of the last few days of my life, last few months, and even (lo and behold) the last few years...

I have said, and now believe, that I have been given another chance to do my life right. I fought this divorce so hard. It's against who I am to allow a relationship to die without fighting for it. But it takes two to make it a fight... so here I am...

I felt like a failure when this thing fell over. But a very good (and completely imaginary) friend of mine said, that once you know the truth of the matter... why someone does something (or in my case did something) you can understand their motives, you know WHY they would make decisions that you weren't compelled to make, which allows you to forgive real (or even perceived) wrong doings on their part.

I understand...
I get it...
Finally...

Now I have to fight the apathy towards them. It's no longer a hatred, or anger, or fierce emotions... it's the uncaring sensation that says they made themselves obsolete in my circle of friends. But should I fight it? Should I try to be friends with someone who... it doesn't matter. It will all work itself out.

I am free...
So weird, so odd... these wings of freedom are finally mine... luckily, because I trusted they would come and so I jumped off the precipice before I ever received them. Now they can protect me from the looming ground of death, and the merciless pull of the gravity of time and emotion. I'm free to be me. And all the wonder and oddness that entails.

I'm really ready to start writing about memetics and memes again tho, to tell you the truth. I'm tired of being wrapped up in this little pain ball called divorce. Ready to be free, single, mine...

Who knows what tomorrow brings?
No one...
But I know that 7:45pm tonight holds a Zombie flick called Quarantine for ME!

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Thursday, December 11, 2008

An Eschatological Laundry List

A Partial Register of the 927 Eternal Truths
So I have found the most delightfully despairingly uplifting book I have ever thought I "could" stumble upon. This author took the most painful truths about life and spoke them plainly. They are the most destructive messages you will ever read, but until you embrace them, make them one within you, you are merely fooling yourself. Take what you want, leave the rest.

1. This is it!
All of it. Nothing else is there for us but what have. This is amazing. She starts out the list with the most basic of all truths. It really hits me at my core.

2. There are no hidden meanings.
Everything is plain, everything is obvious, everything is bare, open, raw. You get what you see... now enjoy.

3. You can't get there from here, and besides there is no place else to go.
There is here, here is there. There is nothing more than a new perspective on here anyway, and why do you crave that instead of this? LOL! I love the truth, I desire to live the truth, to know it, to make it mine and me.

4. We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
Not funny, but hilarious. You were born to death, death is fast approaching, your end is coming, and when it hits, it is permanent. It is all. So REVEL IN THE MOMENT! BECAUSE THIS IS ALL THERE IS!!! THIS! IS!

5. Nothing lasts.
Nothing. So enjoy what you have, when you have it, for the reason you have it. If you don't, you merely lose out.

6. There is no way of getting all you want.
How liberating. The level of relief I have when I embrace this truth is amazing.

7. You can't have anything until you let go of it.
And even then you don't have it, you share it.

8. You only get to keep what you give away.
And even then you don't keep it, you share it.

9. There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
Each moment is not created by a single 'thing' but rather by a countless confusion of events, people, thoughts, ideas, things... the 'why' is the distancer.

10. The world is not necessarily just, being good often does not pay off and there is no compensation for misfortune.
Nuff said. Deal with it or spend your life in frustration.

11. You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
How true, yet so many people avoid this truth like it was a plague or a virus.

12. It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
RAmen.

13. You don't really control anything.
No matter how much you think you do.

14. You can't make anyone love you.
You can only make or allow yourself to love someone else.

15. No one is any stronger or weaker than anyone else.
We are who we are, no more and no less. Each of us has gifts, talents, skills, ideas, physicalities, disabilities, thoughts, dreams, beliefs, concepts, and more, than make us who we are. Strength is an illusion.

16. Everyone is, in their own way vulnerable.
Achilles had his heel, what do you have? Know it, know you, and you are more complete.

17. There are no great people.
Everyone is just a person, we all go to the bathroom, we all eat, we all were born, and we all will die.

18. If you have a hero, look again; You have diminished yourself in some way.
Be your own hero.

19. Everyone lies, cheats & pretends.
Everyone. Especially those you respect, especially you, and most especially me.

20. All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.
wow. I am humbled by this. To lose the concept of a just and ordered universe is enough of a kick in the groin. But to think that evil is nothing more than energy needing to be changed? I heard a friend once say, "Everyone does everything they do because they think it will make them happy." No one sets out to do evil, but to serve themselves.

21. All of you is worth something, if you will only own it.
Own it. Accept it. Recognize it first. But most importantly, own it.

22. Progress is an illusion.
Nothing moves forward, we merely move sideways. We aren't creating anything new, just utilizing tools that were available at the beginning of time in a different way than we have before.

23. Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
Every solution merely creates new problems. Remember that, when you think you just "figured it all out," that all you did was come to a conclusion that will generate new and unexpected problems for you.

24. Yet it is necessary to keep struggling toward solution.
Without working towards solutions, you merely mire yourself (and waste time wallowing) in the problem. Stagnation.

25. Childhood is a nightmare.
For everyone. Noone has parents that did it right. Everyone was damaged from their time as a child, on some level, by some person.

26. But it is very hard to be an on-your-own, take-care-of-yourself-cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown up.
Very hard. Very tough. Very vitally important tho.

27. Each of us is ultimately alone.
Forever, no matter the relationships you have. You are forever, and always alone.

28. The most important things, each person must do for themselves.
No one else will, nor can they.

29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
It helps alot... a lot, lot.

30. We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much, but that's all there is.
All there is.

31. How strange, that so often, it all seems worth it.
More often than I could ever have dreamed.

32. We must live with the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial power and partial knowledge.
And how frustrating is that?! It's enough to make you want to just give up.

33. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
You will never know enough to make the perfect decision.

34. Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
Everything we do, everyday we do it, for every reason we choose.

35. No excuses will be accepted.
None should even be offered.

36. You can run, but you can't hide.
And sometimes it's fun to run, and try to hide.

37. It is most important to run out of scapegoats.
Own you and all that you do.

38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
It is our greatest strength, our greatest weakness.

39. The only victory, lies in surrender to oneself.
So let go.

40. All of the significant battles are waged within yourself.
Surrender to you.

41. You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.
LOL! This one hurts me the most. But it's truth is the strongest.

42. What do you know……..for sure……….. anyway?
Nothing? Alot? Everything?

43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again.
Because... see Rule #1.



This is a book. I have set the link for the book at the top of this blog entry. I suggest you buy this book. It's amazing.

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