If wishes were fishes ... I would be your koi.

I'm having a really bad week.

It'd be difficult to explain ... and maybe it's better if I don't ... Suffice it to say:

An important piece of my past came calling.

I didn't answer.

And I don't know if I hurt someone.

I don't know if I wanted that.

I can't ... I need ...

*sigh

Life can be difficult sometimes.

Learning hurts.

Trained to swill. That's oldspeak for 'hit the bottle'.

So I was at a 'New Employee Orientation' all week this week.

It was ... boring. Very, very boring. Basically, I sat and doodled on my fingers for 32 hours.

But at least today's 8 were more enjoyable!

Today was all about self-defense - defense against a developmentally-disabled client in a state of crisis. We learned about how to deal with being bitten, with having our hair pulled, how to deflect punches ...

Keep in mind that you aren't ever allowed to hurt - or use a hold on - a client to 'make them behave'.

So, the stuff I've learned couldn't have much application in a bar-room brawl.

Anyways, I hardly ever make contact with DD clients as an accountant. There's a nice kid in our office once or twice a week, but that's about it. I seriously doubt that I'll ever witness a 'behavioral event'. (Not that I'd want to.)

Still ... a very fun day, all in all.

But one out of five is terrible. This week was a wash.

Reading for pleasure puts creases in your thoughts. It's just good laundry.

So I've been reading a series about the romance between a vampire and a human girl. The Twilight series? Ever heard of it?

It's very good. I'm not 100% sure what it is about the book I love the most.

The characters are enticing. The language is delicious. And the stories are intriguing. :D

But, you know ...

I think my favorite thing about the books is probably the very same thing that I find so embarrassing about them: the drama (the tons and tons of teenage-style drama).

This drama ... it speaks to me! It speaks to my personal romantic history (or lack-thereof).

Yes, world, I am Jacob.

I am the Phantom of the Opera.

...

Anyways, very good stuff. I recommend it.

(Just do yourself a favor and push through those first 80 pages. It gets retroactively awesome, trust me.

And yeah ... the symbolism is usually pretty obvious ...

But that doesn't negate the awesome of an understood allusion.! :))

My credit history. My work history. But not my browser history.

So here I am, feeling one hundred percent better now that I've been paid.

I'm a little embarrassed ... but maybe all I really needed was a reward for the 3 and a half weeks. Here I had myself worked up into a major existential quandary, and I mean one for the record books. But all I needed? Deep down?

A little cash for my trouble.

It's actually pretty hilarious, come to think about it.

So, anyways ...

I paid off a credit card! All of it. And guess what?

Somehow I managed to maintain a decent payment history! I'd have sworn differently just two days ago. :)

That means drinks are on me!

...

Well ... uh, not really.

I'm thinking maybe I pay for gas with it and then pay off that total at the end of the month? To build some ... I dunno, self-restraint? Decent-ish credit? I guess I don't really don't really know how that stuff works.

Anyways, I've spent the last few days locked in my room with nothing but Excel, a notebook and a couple-three of my favorite free credit reports.

I've been hammering away at a little financial plannery:

I can be debt-free by the end of October.

Holding my breath for a better life has got me blue.

My latest misadventures have been especially painful. I've lost everything I liked about myself:

I am now 100% dependent on my mother for lodging.

I am deep in debt and farther from school than I've ever been.

I am miles from the people I love to be around.

Bleh ...

I have a job now that can bail me out of all that ... but I'm having a hard time accepting the possibility. :( I'm not sure on why that is.

I haven't been over-the-top excited.

All of my plans lately are closer to dreams than to maps.

And I think I'm just waiting for that proverbial 'other shoe' to fall. Am I really worried about ending up worse than I am somehow? There isn't a good reason to expect that - is there?

:S

Thinking about it now ... I'm a pretty environmental person. I soak up the people I'm with like a sponge - and slowly mutate my point of view to match theirs.

And this place! This place is oppressive. It's a clear reminder of my less-than-happy childhood.

But mostly it's just that there are times it feels like nothing's changed.

Maybe all I need then is a new outlook and a new environment ... except that this job can really only bail me out on schedule if I stay where I am.

Anyone up for a vacation?

How about matricide?

Oh bananas.

This is a new experience for me:

I'm actually so good at this job that I just might lose it ahead of schedule. :S

One of the tremendous projects my new boss had planned for my temporary butt only took a tenth of the time that she thought it would.

That'd be great ... except that I was hired because the department is way, way behind.

If my mad ten-key skills get things caught up ... what, I won't be needed?

I don't know. It's silly; my boss LOVES that I'm computer-savvy. But...

Who knows what her boss thinks? ... She had to ask nice to hire me, you know.

(And everyone is joking about how I'm faster at their work than they are
- there are politics in this office -
how long before I make somebody nervous?)

The other half of Adam's conversation.

Visiting the Tri-Cities melts away more than just stress from this lazy body.

What's in the Tri-Cities, you ask?

Adam and his wife live there - and you see, Adam is damned good friend.

Mulling over our lives and our respective philosophies has turned into something of a tradition on these visits. And for no small reason, really.

It seems like we always come away from those chats with a different outlook - our paradigms get shifted. And that's a rush in addition to being useful. :)

This latest weekend I mentioned a string of dreams featuring an old crush of mine. These dreams would usually fly under the radar for me - I don't usually think of myself as all that romantic. But ... when I wake up, I feel my heart break. I get torn up and I can't manage a smile for hours. :S

I told him what I thought they meant, too. My life up until now has been a rather cold pursuit of the very specific things I want from life.

By cold I mean that I'm frequently distracted from this course - by complacency more than anything else. And that cold terrifies me. It means I may find myself stuck without what I'm looking for - and I can't stand the idea.

A month or so ago, I got another chance at college, you see. I grabbed it up and it's working - I start in the Fall.

I'm ecstatic, but ... suddenly I feel I have to put the axe to my already lackluster love life. I've had only one girlfriend, and that was something of an accident - and that was years ago. I broke up with her for the same reason I've avoided further romance:

Women are scary! Lol ... well, maybe that's one of the reasons, a little bit. But no, the chief reason is this: I believe that the presence or absence of true love can be masked by a temporary high that accompanies new love.

It's for this reason I worry about "accidental" marriage. :S

So here was my supposition to Adam: I'm dreaming of this woman (this woman that I believe has come to symbolize women in general for me) simply because I don't know if I can commit to another 4, 5 years (or whatever) of living a lonely, solitary life. But I feel I have to.

Adam was quick to voice his extrapolation of my romantic future:

I see you meeting a woman and falling madly in love with her, building on her dreams AND your own. You've talked about living in Japan f0r a couple years - the two of you can do that in your 40s, building a solid financial plan for that sort of lifestyle now, and embracing all the adventure you can in the mean time.

Well, something like that, anyways. I've played with the idea of finding a lover with similar dreams of travel before: but never in the distant future.

It's always been difficult for me to imagine a woman that would willingly abandon her life - and for one of my silly dreams.

But couples that have been married for years travel all the time! In fact, it seems like it would be fun to wait with someone I care about.

This may not seem like it changes much, but it takes away one of my biggest worries when it comes to this stuff. I means that once I've transferred to a city I can see myself living in for an indefinite number of years - I can LOVE. With abandon.

I trust myself to be fascinated only by those women I meet that dream the way I do:

Big.

My Fourth Post

So I had a great 4th of July weekend.

I have two black lab mixes, and I gave them a good walk - and then made my way to the Tri-Cities to meet with some friends.

We ate BBQ and went for a swim. We really made some waves! Er ... nevermind.

We picked up a randomly related child once it was dark (Pam's nephew?) and went out to Clover Island to watch the fireworks from way too far away. That was OK though, it was pretty comfy.

The dogs were tranq'ed against fireworks, but there was some sort of dosage problem, and one of them was up and about for almost 6 hours before she hit the floor! And wow, she hit it hard. I'm really glad I was able to leave them with my parents. They'd have freaked out ... and no, I'm not the guy that worries more about his furniture than his pets.

The next day was just as good for me. We ate lunch at IHOP - got some pizza for dinner - and managed to hit the pool again.

We also saw Jumper - good movie. Excellent number of Marvel Comics references. Plus Samuel L Jackson is a kick-ass kind of guy.

Strained Beginnings

Thought I'd try my hand at blogging again.

This isn't really a public sort of thing - I'm not trying to spread a message here. I'm not looking for random feedback from complete strangers. :)

My friends have blogs, but they also have a pregnancy to update about.

Nothing nearly so interesting to blog about here. :S Unless I fake something.

I might fake something.