(Phaysis)

First week of the new year. 51 more until the next.

Sitting at Epoch having some much-needed caffeine. Yeah, you heard me…I am at Epoch. I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s something about every coffee shop that just bugs the shit out of me, and over time, it all evens out. Every place sucks. So much so that I bought a french press, but even though my apartment has fucking awesome wireless, great seating, killer music, and absolutely no problem with parking, it’s practically empty. There’s nobody there. So over the holiday break, I got epically bored out of my mind and decided to break my personal ban on Epoch. Now it’s just another humdrum option out of a handful of other humdrum options.

So anyway, I’m having coffee. I think it’s starting to kick in. Usually some time around 5 o’clock my head just caves in and I feel like all my sugar and will and concentration and vision just goes away like wet ashes. And that’s when I need coffee. Usually, by the time I leave work an hour or so later, I’m at wits end trying to concentrate on the road home.

I’ve got a big project at work, and it finally started after three days of false starts. A coworker has spent the past year writing on a suite of tools to allow the automation of some of our hardware data collection efforts. We finally had a reason to apply his software to our setup, and after several fits and starts while trying to fit the hammer to the nail, it’s finally up and working.

Right now, it’s banging away in the lab and doing nicely. We got it running at 5:30, and I decided that instead of letting it run for part of its cycle before killing it when I leave for the weekend, I would go ahead and let it finish its full run since the data is so important to those who deem it so. I would’ve done that regardless except the actual testbed setup needs to be shut down afterwards. There are parts of the equipment that don’t need to be running idle all weekend, so my plan is to return to work tonight at 10 and shut it down when it’s done.

Which is why I’m here having coffee and a slice of pizza. I got time to kill, and a need to fill. Sucks that I have to go back to work on a friday night, but I’ll be there for, what, half an hour.

Speaking of work and billable time, I got an extension on my contract. My manager has been pressing Human Resources to get me converted to permanent for the past few months, and now that the company’s on hard times, the economy’s in the dumps, blah blah blah, HR has frozen all open requisitions company-wide. So I can’t get converted, at least not this quarter. So instead of hiring me permanently, they extended my contract another six months…which puts me over the company-standard 24-month limit on contracts. So, if anything happens in May (the 24th month), it happens. Elsewise, I finish the contract extension and see what happens at the next end.

I’m glad that my manager was able to impress upon HR how important my position is. I just hope that I can live up to that.

So yeah, I’m sick. Thanks.

My year, 2007, was punctuated by eleven days off; holiday work closure encompassing seven working days and two weekends. I planned to use this time for loafing, for projects, for doing what the hell pops into my mind; then my mother called to tell me she was coming down for a visit, to which I agreed. It was nice having family come visit me for a holiday for once; enough of going to visit them every year. I love that woman to death – I mean, c’mon, she’s my mom. But I don’t know how to tell her to not stay so long. Seven days. I asked around trying to divine what kind of protocol there is for telling family that they are welcome but only for a certain time. The answer comes back, resoundingly, that nobody knows how to do it. There is no protocol.

She says she’s a homebody; she’ll be fine just sitting and watching TV and that I can go out and do whatever. I can come and go as I please because it’s my house. I say bullshit to that. If I were to have done just that, I would’ve heard no end of it. “I come to visit, and you hang out elsewhere.” It won’t work. When I have a guest, my sole duty is to entertain the guest. I’m always on set. Little down time. People don’t understand that about me. If you’re in my house, I am your host. What I have going on has to be suspended. Maybe that’s an immature way to look at it. Maybe I’m taking the role of servitude. I don’t know. But that’s how it happens.

I learned an apt phrase a decade ago. “The hardest thing for a man to do is to disguise his feelings as he puts a load of relatives on the train for home.”

So she left friday morning, travelled safely, and got back home. I rested. That evening, I sat at Epoch and had coffee. Tried to get some work done; tried to pick back up where I had left off a week prior, and had no luck. I couldn’t think clearly, got a little angsty. I left there around 10 and started driving because I clearly didn’t want to be in the four walls of my own apartment. I drove around town, ended up on Highway 290W, and drove out to Oak Hill. I kept driving.

Seventy minutes later I was in Fredericksburg, Texas. I had no suitcase, no toiletries, no change of clothes, but I rented a room and spent the night. It was really nice to get away. To punctuate the stressful week with my own diversion. Complete seat-of-the-pants. I didn’t care. That’s the kind of shit I wanted to do the entire break; completely live without schedule, without demands, and finally I was able to do it, but damn did I do it big.

I got up that morning and did the tourist thing. The downtown area was kinda neat, but in a 1960′s crafts fair kind of way. Tons of middle-class white people dropping money everywhere. I had a nice wurst sandwich, got a taste of the local German culture, walked around and took pictures. Sort of went around as a floating eye and soaked it in. I left after it all got too white and made it back to Austin at 3pm.

Spent the remaining days of 2007 just doing what felt right. Completely relaxed, turned off to necessity. Tried to regain myself and my own initiative. Took a right turn on my main website project and decided to backtrack and retool, but it’s still not so successful.

I should learn by now that I can’t get any work done at Epoch. It’s fucking impossible. I can sit down, open the laptop, and hunker down for work. And then someone will stop by the table, say hi. Someone will walk by and decide to chat, or join me. And out the door goes my attention. Programming is a tough task; takes focus. And there is no focus when someone visits; it’s broken and not so easily retrieved.

So last night, I got called out to a New Year’s Eve party at a friend’s place. I obliged. Took the remains of my rum bottle, a bottle of cola, and headed out the door. Had a great time at the party. It was quiet, mild. We had a ton of fireworks but because of the red flag warning we chose to stick to firecrackers and roman candles. Well, the roman candles were a bad, very bad idea. It took two stray flaming balls to prove to us what a tinderbox the tall grass next to the road actually was. No sooner did the balls land in the grass and start going out, the grass burst into flames. We were sober enough, luckily, to stomp it out and decide to not do roman candles again.

I didn’t get drunk; didn’t even get buzzed, but I got relaxed. That’s what counts, really. About 4 shots of rum, a lot of water, and a glass of champaign and I was still sober. Went to bed around 3. An alright night indeed.

But this morning; fucking hell. Now I’m reminded why I shouldn’t drink. The alcohol was just enough to kill off all the germs that were keeping the bad germs at bay. When I woke up, my throat was on fire. I’m all scratchy, phlegmatic, and getting stopped up in the head. Fucking hell. An ok end to the year leads me into the lair of the illness dragon to start the new year off in the worst of ways. And now I have to go back to work tomorrow morning. Damn.

Happy effing new year, dammit.

I had the highest hopes, as did we all, for this year. It started with promise, with a houseful of friends over for a black-eyed peas and cornbread dinner I hosted on New Year’s Day, 2006. The humble, earthy flavor of the peas remind us of prosperity through humility.

Springtime brought me a few brief amorous moments; winter thaw, spring hopes, nothing took root, but I didn’t mind. My dry season was over.

July, things went south. I got ill, spent all my time at home alone. One of the hottest, driest summers on record, and my life went cold. When the animal is sick, he seperates himself from the herd to heal. And I healed, physically.

The latter half of 2006 found me on my own, alone. Sure, I’m as much to blame, but there is no motion without desire, no comeradery without kinship, no confiding without confidence. So much I want to say, so much I carry, no one will hear of it. It’s my own weight to bear.

And now I am fully humbled — or humiliated by the demons of my own making — and my prosperity still is not forthcoming.

So on the end of 2006 and the eve of 2007, I stare at my screen, typing the same damned words everyone else says on each new year: may 2007 bring me health, prosperity, and kinship.

Well, here it goes: my requisite Happy New Years!!!11lololol journal entry. 2004 is dead and gone. Good fucking riddance.

2004 was unkind to me; was unkind to a lot of people. And it’s because of the events of this year that I am in a worse social and emotional state than on ’03. The year started out with its expected modicum of hope for the future. Things looked hopeful. I had just met a large group of people and was making progress towards growing a large family of friends. Also, my breathing difficulties, though they were getting worse with the winter season, later motivated me to finally, completely, once and for all quit smoking in February. Positive changes.

Well, to help myself on my goal of quitting, I had to go it alone. I had to stop hanging out in person, had to get away from the temptation to smoke; had to quit spending time with my smoking friends, sitting in a smoky crowd, knowing that the only thing keeping me from giving in is an angry cough, an unsteady resolve, and a thin nicotine patch. To help myself, I had to leave people behind.

Over a few weeks’ time, my resolve gained strength; the desire to smoke was waning. I felt it was suitable to let myself out of the house for some interaction again, to get out into the world. Well, nothing was the same with my groups of friends. For the most part, they smoked and I didn’t. I sat in the non-smoking area, away from my old group and near my new. The links between the friends I’ve had for years and I stretched thin; the chains were becoming unusable. And the links between my new friends were just as tenuous; there was no history. Just a laptop comeradery there at Mojo’s.

Well, during the late spring, Mojo’s was sold to a new owner who promised gentle, subtle changes. What was delivered once the ink was dry on the deal was a massive remodelling, a menu change, pricing increases, policy changes, and, eventually, the elimination of the entire old crew. All the thin threads that kept me going to Mojo’s had been snapped. As a final act of protest, I gave the figurative finger to Mojo’s and vowed to refuse my patronage. I closed off that part of my life forever. The Great Walking Away began.

Over the summer, complications and drama arose within my new group of friends. Infighting, backstabbing, name calling; some people tried to put out fires, other people sought only to start them. What had been continuing and accumulating for months, the attitudes, the smugness, everything, came to a boiling point and I made a choice: my life is too short to waste on the bastards of the group. The world is bigger than they are. There was no longer any sense in subjecting myself to the stress any further. To save the tree I cut the branch; I still had a few friends in the group, but I gave up on the group as a whole. I closed off another part of my life.

In November, I lost faith in half of my fellow countrymen after the general elections. All I could do was sit there, with my jaw on the floor, and feel defeat, feel the despair of a decade of national social progress, open thinking, free commentary coming to a continuing and crushing halt under the weight of the Bush war machine. Of the people who voted for the incumbent president, 60 percent of them voted for him based on religious faith issues. Faith issues. Blind faith. And now I have lost my faith. I want to live in an open-minded America; the others can go to hell. But, living in the only Democratic holdout in the entire Red state of Texas, I am the one in hell.

I just can’t make any sense of it. Another time where I made the choice to turn away.

And The Walking Away continued into my workplace. My employer had installed security cameras around the exterior of the printshop to protect and monitor the place. It was a move that made sense. But when I noticed that the video switchbox had many more camera connections available, I knew it was a matter of time before my employer would install cameras in the working areas inside. In early December, my prediction became true; he had one camera installed in the pressroom to watch the presses and another installed in the bindery area, where I work, pointed directly at the areas we are most likely to work. I asked my boss what reason he had for installing them in the work areas, and he replied with only two words: “insurance purposes.”

Since it is a work environment, this kind of thing can’t be called an invasion of privacy. But what it can be called is a loud declaration of complete mistrust in us, his employees. The potential for abuse is astounding, and I can’t work and finish out a day without feeling like my boss is standing right behind me, looking over my shoulder all day. In the span of that one day, my motivation at the company went from interest and the desire to do a good job to little more than looking busy for the camera while hoping 5:30pm happens quickly. In one fell swoop, I was no longer a coworker; I was only an employee. And that’s where I stand to this day. I’m just there to make a paycheck and get my benefits.

Another part of my world seered away.

For the latter part of the year I’ve been mostly by myself. In the reduction of bullshit, chaos, and things going to hell, I cut off everything I had socially, pruned it all away, closed my eyes to what I don’t like, turned my back to what I had going. Outside of two, perhaps three friends, I am utterly alone. And it sucks. It completely sucks. If the year has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t trust anyone with anything; that I can’t expose my soft parts, elsewise some bastard will make a stab for it eventually. It’s a shitty way to think; it’s an even shittier way to live. And I don’t like it.

So now here I am, writing my journal entry, reflecting on the good times from the previous year. And here I am, trying what I can to express some kind of dim hope for the coming year, but failing to drum up anything. All my inspiration is gone, my Muses have turned their backs to me, and all I want to do is sleep. It should never feel so natural to just leave, to Walk Away. It should never feel like it’s always the right thing to do, to leave instead of working things out. But it does. It always has.

2003 is over. Good bye. Was good, but could’ve been better. Everything could’ve been better.

Well, actually, it was better than hoped. If memory serves me right, here were my resolutions for 2003:

• get a laptop
• finish my website
• finish my album
• get more financially stable

I guess one out of four ain’t bad. Eh? I’m nowhere near finishing the engine for my website, but I have written and put into use my journalling engine. I’m also learning a lot of standardized code practices, and I’m still working on my game, Chrontium, which promises to be pretty cool. I’m also nowhere near finishing my album, but I have a new respect for the creative process, I have some good input on the sound, and I have some new, fresh ideas for lyrics, melody, and so on. Things are gelling a little better. And the fourth one? Feh. That’s anyone’s guess. I did start my 401(k) this year, and I got a savings account. That’s a step forward, right?

I don’t have any resolutions made yet, but one thing that is important on my potential list is attaining better health. I’m not 23 anymore; I’m going on 32. Time to watch the waistline, mind the ticker, pay attention to things. Definitely. This is the only body I’ll get, ever. No remakes, no overhauls, no rebirth or reincarnation. This is it.

I didn’t have any plans for tonight, but luckily my new friends in the local tech community have pulled together something out of nothing, so I’m going over tonight to have something to drink, hang out, meet some more people. And that’s exactly what I need.

My life these days is picking up. More people, like early on when I first moved here. This making of new connections is a good thing; it’s shaking up my stale life in a way, and I’m happy about it. Forward motion, probably, but it’s motion nonetheless.

And that’s about as enigmatic as I’ll get. I’m trying to sort out what I want in my friends, what I need to bring to the table, what I like in women, what my “type” is, all that. The moment I have it nailed down, it’s gone again. That kind of knowledge isn’t meant to be held and examined, it’s meant to be chased, pursued. Relationships are fluid, and there’s no reason why knowing how to make one happen and survive should be static.

So, yeah, this year has been alright. I’m just glad another one is starting. It’s a convenient point to make things happen.

Until next time: see you next year. Har har.