Jobby Job Job

I've updated the look of my blog a bit. You'll notice that it has the look of either a 13 year old girls blog or that of a cult. I thought about adding in a pony to downplay that whole cult thing, but I think I'll leave it. Its nice, isn't it? So easy on the eyes. And I think it really accents the pessimistic, self-doubting, narcissistic, and hilariously funny (even if they are poorly written, what with all the massive grammar errors) things that I post here.

So after quite a few failed attempts to do something else with my life, right now I'm starting to think I just need to focus on something a bit more mundane and average for myself. I really just want to find some crappy office job and work my way up for a few years right now. Although I don't know if that is because I really want that or just because I'm craving some sort of stability and the idea of working a relatively simply job that doesn't involve serving food or wearing a security badge is starting to sound very good.

I used to think I would hate an office environment, but looking at all the other alternatives I think it would suit me the best. I doubt that I am going to make much of a career out of it, but I need a paycheck every week or two and I can't stand the idea of working blue collar jobs until I either get a graduate degree or start a business or do some other crazy scheme. Plus whatever scheme I go with could fall through, and I'd much rather be able to fall back on some job working on a computer and answering phones all day then just have to go back to working in a warehouse or something when I'm nearing forty. That would be decidedly un-fun.

My problem has always been my ego. I always think I am way to good at everything to be bothering with whatever job I have. That I can leave that job and move on and do something else that will make me have to try a little harder. I get too damn bored in jobs. I probably always will till I find something that really suits me. And I don't think it will be in blue collar work. Not that I have a problem with people who do work blue collar jobs, but I just can't stand it and I'll almost always find some reason to bail on those jobs before I've been there long enough to prove my worth to the company, not that it would likely make a difference if I did prove myself because I've never worked anywhere with any real future for myself. The best I could have hoped for was a job title barely above what I started at after ten years. It just always seemed like ultimately I was wasting my time.

Unfortunately I still am going to have to waste my time with those types of jobs because those are the ones that are actually calling me back right now. I just got a response from Renown saying they'd turned me down for a mail room clerk position. That was about as low in the office world as I could have found. It's an incredibly frustrating job market. There just isn't room for any one who doesn't already have an excess of experience in a field, unless the field is cleaning floors or moving boxes. I've been struggling with this for a long time, trying to make life work out the way I thought it was going to go and I haven't been able to get a hold of anything. It's only now that things are starting to look up as I've once again had to lower my standards. But I'm not going to give up on this more stable, white collar work I'm looking for. I'm trying to get a crappy temp job at a warehouse right now because I will have to go through a staffing agency to get it and in doing so I might be able to meet some people that will be able to get me the type of work I'm looking for. I guess I sort of have it coming. Like I said its my ego that gets in the way. But if I have to start at the very, very bottom just to get in there then that is what I have to do. I kept thinking that I could start a little higher up, and a couple years ago I probably could have if I had been looking to. I thought because I was smart and because I honestly am pretty goddamn good at a lot of different things that I would have no trouble getting work out of college, but it has not worked out that way. I forgot to calculate in the fact that I am just, and have always been, a weird guy. And people don't trust weird guys, at least not at first. I don't really fit into the mold of a hard working, salt of the earth type. But I also don't fit into any other type, so I'm stuck begging for scraps till I figure out exactly what it is I want and really set my mind to it.

So much of my time has been spent focusing on personal dreams and goals with really no idea of how to achieve them that I forgot that in the outside world I don't really count for anything. It has finally occurred to me that I am going to have to try a lot harder than most people if I want to succeed because I always let my own personal crap get in the way of anything.

You know, most of these posts that I make on this blog tend to be all about me figuring something out or looking at life through a slightly different set of eyes. You'd think that through all of these, through all my other writings, through all my thoughts and contemplations, that I would have had a much better hold on myself and on life in general right now. But I'm just as bad at everything as I ever have been and just as incapable of getting my shit together as I ever have been. Eventually I might figure it out, but until then I am just a bumbling idiot not really meant to live in this society.

On an unrelated note to the whole job/economy business, I was thinking about my last post and about how I was feeling when I wrote it. I remember all those emotions and how I was reacting and thinking about the girl but its almost like they all just vanished since then. I can't remember when it happened exactly, but it was probably when I fell asleep that night. Not that they are "gone gone," persay, but they are aren't nearly as powerful. It reminded me of when I was in Fallon this summer and I'd have the house to myself and I'd go out and be thinking about the dogs constantly. Wondering if they were okay, thinking I needed to get back to them soon. But then when I am in Reno I hardly think of my doggy at all. I'm sure she is happy and fine back in Fallon and that is good enough. But the emotional proximity of seeing her everyday and worrying about every little thing that is going on with her, well, it's like that with this girl. Not to compare her to a dog, but because when I am around her I just get this rush of feelings and emotions and when I am away for a little while they just all go away. I guess that this is probably what happens to most people, but I honestly don't know for sure. Out of sight, out of mind. But I figure that most people out there are probably able to maintain their feelings towards one another past a day or two. For me they just seem to disappear, become unimportant. I've noticed lately that my memory is horrible, and maybe that is part of it. But I remember another girl that I had a crush on for a long time and I thought about her all the damn time. I probably was just obsessing, but still, the feelings stayed with me. Now its like I was saying in the last post about my brain just shutting everything out. It's already happening again. I guess, ultimately, it is for the best. I don't need to have those coveted happy memories. Yes I do. I realized that was a total contradiction, but that is sort of my gimmick. I really, really want to be happy. Lately I've been in this sort of inbetween state. I'm not really depressed but I'm not happy either. I'm somewhat comfortable with myself and I'm optimistic about my future. At the same time, my present situation isn't fantastic and I do get lonely in this big apartment all by myself. I realized recently that a big part of my obsession with television comes from the fact that I really don't like being by myself as much as I thought I did. I use TV to comfort me and make me feel like there are people around when I am by myself. Plus I have an unhealthy obsession with plot and story and character development, but mostly its about feeling comfortable and letting myself escape. I know, right, that is what its for. Escapism. I just wonder, though, why it is I need to escape so often. Why I avoid people so much of the time even though I know that I am lonely a lot of the time. Some days I'll have barely talked to anyone and a somewhat chatty clerk at a store will try to start saying something in the vein of small talk and I just have nothing to say. And even though sometimes I do just want to have an interaction with this person for a few seconds I usually don't. I get very serious, in my head its all about "I just need to get through this interaction." I don't know what that is.

I realize this last section is me just self-analyzing. I realize that it probably isn't all that interesting to read for anyone but myself, but this blog has always been about putting things I don't like or understand about myself up. A sort of display box of my personality. I don't know if it really helps me to become a better person or understand myself better, but some small part of me believes that by putting it up online it will be useful at some point. Maybe somewhere down the road someone will stumble on this blog and read it for a while and realize that they have some of the same hang ups about society and themselves as I have and just knowing that someone else is out there who is basically just a boring american but with the same sort of problems they have is going to be helpful. Or not, maybe I am just being self-indulgent. I could be going on about helping starving people in Africa or fixing the health care system, but anyone can give their opinions on stuff like that. Only I can relate what it is like to be living my life. And for better or for worse, for boring or entertaining, chunks of this life are going to keep showing up here.

I just realized I've been writing for over an hour so I guess I'll hang it up now.

Remind me to thank Apple

So it has been a long time since I've really posted on this blog. Sadly, I'm sure, for people who follow it compulsively. I'm going to try to get back in the habit of getting on here, which I probably will as my internet usage is starting to go back up now that I have an actual dedicated internet connection in my home. It took a few weeks before I really spent any time on my computer since getting the internet since I had gotten so used to not being on, but now old habits are starting to come back. As well as the habit to not sleep during the time of day designated as "night."

It's about 6:20am as I type this and I am sleepy, but I don't think I'll fall asleep. I laid in bed for a while but couldn't get anything going, so I am doing what I always do when I can't sleep, drinking diet coke and smoking cigarettes. Natures sleep remedy.

I've learned a few things about my brain in the past few months. I can't remember some of them, which is another thing I've learned (I have very limited memory space). The thing is that I apparently can't handle having a lot of memories all at once. Whenever a problem pops up it seems like I have just been blocking out everything related to it. So instead of dealing with things I just don't remember them, and I assume I've dealt with them. But what ends up happening with that system is that I forget a lot of the good stuff. I was at a friends house tonight, and that friend happens to be a girl, and I sort of tried to date her for a while. It ended up being more like a very G rated courtship. Anyway, I figured either I wasn't what she was looking for or nothing was ever going to happen so I pulled back and sort of vanished from her life. But now that I'm back in Reno and seeing her I'm starting to get memories back. Good memories, like a time when I spent over an hour standing against a wall in a bar discussing Superman with her. I just get this strange feeling when I'm around her. I think that its happiness, its hard to tell for sure since I'm not super familiar with that human emotion, but I assume that it was it feels like, based on descriptions I have read about it.

So she makes me happy to be around, and I enjoy talking to her and spending time with her and all that crap. But nothing ever happened with us and, realistically, I feel like nothing ever will. Of course I spend most of my time with fictional characters, and so by the logic of fiction something could still easily happen with us a ways down the road when were both ready for it to happen at the same time. But, again, I realize that is probably not what is really going to happen. Its that notion that makes me angry when I'm around her. Like I can't stand to be in the same room as her, despite her making me feel good, because she makes me angry and resentful at the same time. And all these happy memories that my brain is finally willing to dredge up are all of a sudden tainted with this petty jealousy and anger. I know this is a story repeated constantly through human history, and I probably don't have anything to add to it. But what really pisses me off is that she is now with some other guy and he just sets my douchebag sense off something fierce. And, yeah, its possibly just jealousy. But I usually have a pretty good sense of people. And I could provide circumstancal evidence to support my claims, but I won't because they are fairly flimsy, but its just a feeling I get. And I'm almost positive that she'll get sick of him and kick him to the curb sometime soon, but even if that happens tomorrow there is really no chance that she will be ready to actually start dating me for a long time to come anyway. First she'll be "just out of a relationship" then she'll be on a rebound, then she'll probably have one or two "it's complicated's" then, and only then, will it possibly be my time. And I'm not really in the mood to wait that long just to be with someone right now. I mean, judging by my history I probably will be waiting that long and longer to be in a relationship, but at the same time I don't want to sit around waiting for something to materialize. Especially if everything I think is between us is just all a figment of an overactive imagination on my part, which it likely is.

It's just all so pathetic. And sad. I wish sometimes that I could just see how this ends and work backwards from there. Not that it will probably make too big of a difference, but it can, and has already, have an impact on my life. And not just how I feel and what I can do to make myself feel better about the situation, but also in the fact that she has at least one friend that I'm pretty sure is single that I sort of want to ask out but I'm worried that if I date the friend then I will be in a weird position down the road. I mean, it's one thing to just date some other random girl for a while, but someone that she is close to is going to complicate things further. Which also means that I can't ask the other girl out on one date, which right now is really all I want because she is something of a mystery to me and I haven't had a lot of chances to talk to her at length since I met her. She has something going on with her and I want to get to the bottom of it. Also she's really hot, and probably out of my league, so I could probably only have one date anyway, but it still gives me a sinking feeling in my stomach to think about.

I should just move on. I know that, I had my chance and I blew it and I had come to terms with that and would have been fine with it but for seeing her again. I want to avoid her but I keep ending up not avoiding her. And its going to make me go through all those sets of emotions I used to not be able to deal with about her all over again. It would be so much easier for me if I just blocked her completely out of my mind all over again right now and found something else to do with myself. But I don't want to, what with the need to block out some of the few happy memories I actually have left in my addled brain. For me to be able to look back on my life and conjure up something that leaves me with a smile on my face is such a rare jewel that no matter how bad things may get as a result of leaving myself open and vulnerable to these terrible feelings I have no choice but to suck it up.

Though I get that a lot of this makes me just sound like I'm bitching and moaning and overly sensitive and letting myself get sucked up into some crazy idea of happiness and possible love instead of being like an average single 25 year old just focusing on getting laid, but I also realize that I am not exactly an average 25 year old and I really don't give a fuck if I am letting myself get caught up in one person that doesn't really care about me because I'm tired of fighting myself and trying to be someone I'm not. I don't go outside my small social circles, I don't really care about having a lot of meaningless sex, and though I'm not certain that I am actually ready to settle down with someone I am not going to fight myself on the crazy feelings I get churned up about it. I know it sounds like I'm obsessing, but honestly this is the first time I've really thought about it in months and its all just coming out right now. So I think that I am at a fairly normal level. Seeing someone you were interested in apparently moving on and leaving you behind is supposed to make you feel like shit. And I also realize that this paragraph has been very defensive, and yes that is because I feel like maybe I'm obsessing or I am over thinking it or I am just going a little crazy about this, but I think I have sort of quelled my own suspicions of myself. Except for being this self-aware makes me think that I am probably in a deeper state of denile about some other aspect of this that I am not dealing with, which explains the obsession and the defensiveness and the thought that I am perfectly aware of everything, but then that makes me aware of something else that makes me more self aware and... well, you know, this has already lost all its logic and I'm tired and its probably light outside now and I really wouldn't mind getting some sleep.

It does feel good to be writing in this again. I was sort of keeping a journal while I haven't been writing on this blog, but I was writing it by hand which is slower and I usually did it while I was sitting at a coffee shop which meant that I usually felt like I had a time limit or a page limit because I didn't want to look like a completely crazy person writing in his journal for hours a day at a coffee shop, even though I was.

But I haven't typed a story in months. I wrote a few, but nothing that I felt that strongly about. But I feel a lot of stress going away. I forget how important writing is to me. And even though blog writing is possibly the lowest form of writing in the modern world, it is still something to get a part of me out there and available for others to see. Sort of scary thinking about the number of people that could actually read this blog, actually. In fact, the girl I was talking about earlier could read it. I doubt she will, but I think that she might have gotten a link to this blog from me at one point when I was thinking this was going to just become an entertainment blog. Really I don't know why the hell I ever tell anyone about this blog. I really don't like people knowing all that much about my personal life yet I type a lot of it up and put it online. Whatever, I suppose things could be worse than having people who know me know that I am thinking about them from time to time or that I have actual feelings about events and other people.

But, yeah, typing. Writing, not sleeping, pounding down caffinne in direct contradiction to what I should be doing when I can't sleep. This, too, brings back fond memories. Everyone needs a creative outlet, and I've been ignoring mine for far too long. I have realized that I am a boring, fairly average guy in most ways. But I am also a sensitive artist type, and lazy. I need to make sure that that artist side of me gets out to play more. Otherwise Dark Mor gets out to play, and he is not nearly as fun as he thinks he is (but don't worry, Dark Mor is actually fairly nice, he's just a complete fucking moron).