Straight Edge Life

It’s good to get my hands on some code again. Not that it’s been a long time or anything, I’ve only been on “vacation” for 4 days… but things are chaotic right now and code is good for eliminating chaos. There’s nothing like an environment that demands creativity but asks for it within a certain framework to give me a warm fuzzy feeling. I can break out of the framework of course, I have to actually… but it’s nice to know from where I am starting. Right now, in life outside of code, I’m not sure where I’m starting. Sometimes I feel very much like have no foundation. Family spread out around the globe, modest job, no girlfriend, no kids, no money in the bank, no creative success… respect, sure… but not success. I’m not sure which is more annoying, not knowing where I’ll be in a year or knowing exactly where I’ll be in 20. 

I’m restless like I haven’t been since college and I’m wondering where in the hell it’s going to take me.

I’ve perfected one more nuance of the art of contradiction. At the same time I want both to be surrounded by people and totally alone. It seems that the more I want one, the more I want the other. I want to be on the dance floor dancing close embrace with a stranger, couples swirling around us. Want to lose myself in someone else’s arms, surrounded by friends. Warm, smooth, and perfect. Equally as attractive would be a long road-trip through the mountains as the first storm of the season slams into the cascades. Just me, my GTI and a few cameras in the back. No destination, no goal, gas cheaper than it’s been for years. 

I’ve met a girl. A fantastic, lovely woman who seems to be both emotionally available and genuinely interested in me. So far we have taken things very, very slowly. It’s foreign, going slowly. It goes completely against my normal pattern of rushing furiously into heartbreak. It’s hard to get in too deep if you take your time. For one thing you actually get to enjoy the process of getting to know someone… learning to swim together. Something I didn’t know could be so damn fun. It’s nice to set up a pretense of enjoying the moment rather and rushing towards some ultimate goal, neglecting to build a friendship along the way.

This time of year is always a deeply reflective time for me. In winter the brain needs something to do. With less access to physical vocation it can go nuts, spinning out of control on useless mental pursuits, just to burn energy. I try to set it up so that I have the space to focus that energy into self-reflection. This year has been surprisingly good. I got out of a very draining relationship. It was extremely hard emotionally to do it, but the energy I gained in return has more than paid it’s way. I found a fantastic counselor. I had a gallery show. I shot a hell of a lot of photos. I did a year-long project that had me shooting every, single, day. I got to see my father and my sister. I went to Finland and took my first ferry ride between Helsinki and Stockholm. I managed to keep my job in a shitty economy and I finally voted for the guy that won the election. 

As for next year… well, I think everything is going to be incremental. I’ve proved that I am capable of making forward progress in my life. Ok. Confidence. Confidence is good. So I’m going to set the goals a little bit higher. It feels like 2008 was a year of tests to see what was and wasn’t realistic, and what does and doesn’t work in terms of techniques for change. I think the biggest thing is accountability. If I make myself accountable I’m much, much more likely to follow-through with my goals. I’m actually going to take the rest of this month to prepare myself for even more accountability. Databases, baselines, goals, penalties. Fun stuff. Anyways… sleep calls. More later…

I am sad. Not quite sure why. Lonely I guess. Every day I see things, beautiful things, ugly things, strange and wonderful things. Alone I see these things and most of the memories fade before I get a chance to tell anyone about any of it. I don’t want to spend my life alone, don’t want to forget all these amazing things. More importantly, I don’t want to stop seeing them just because I know I have no one to share them with. Shit, listen to me, I’m not even talking about spending time with someone, only about having someone to talk to about the time I spend alone. Ergh.

I want to feel the bite of winter. I want to be cornered. I want to feel the pinch, the squeeze. I want to know I have no option but to make a choice. A choice that matters, desperately. I want to streamline, I want to simplify. I want to feel free to move. I want the soma purged from my system and the bare edge of the knife pressed hard against my flesh. I want the brush of a feather on my skin as I lay blindfolded in a field. I want clarity and freedom from distraction. I want to stop numbing myself. 

Like everything else in life, this I will have to do myself. I will have to be the thing that I want. Nobody will bring it to me. I wouldn’t recognize it if they did.

None of this is new. I’ve been here before. Been here before and when I’ve managed to get out of it with any sense of success, or more importantly, grace, I did the same thing, again and again. When I want something, many things, any thing, I almost always get rid of something else. There’s only so much room in my life and sometimes things need to be shuffled around a bit. 

Man, I want to go on a road trip right now. Want to experience something unusual, interesting. Something new. Want to drive through the night until I can’t drive anymore. Want to sleep on the side of the road with the sunroof open. Want to have an experience that money doesn’t buy. Want to see things at times of the day when most people don’t. Want to walk in to a Milonga in Las Vegas and dance with a stranger. 

Starting January 1, 2009 I’m giving up TV for a year. Maybe movies as well. Perhaps all passive visual entertainment entirely. I’m tired of being entertained. I’m tired of being pacified, tired of sitting and watching. I’m also going to average biking or walking to work 2 times a week at a minimum. I’m going to chart it, document it. I’m going to continue my food project for another year.

Man, I don’t know what the hell is going on right now. I’m feeling beyond unsettled. A wicked hybrid somewhere between cabin fever and fuck-it-all-itis is consuming more and more of me every day. For a couple of months now my mind has been feeling trapped, pinned, lost, cornered. The odd thing is that I don’t feel out of balance. In fact, quite the opposite. I feel very balanced, balanced on the edge of two gigantic crevasses maybe, but balanced nonetheless. It’s like I have a very important decision to make but I don’t know what it is. I know it’s important, I know it’s imminent, I know it’s almost impossibly critical, but I have no idea what it is. Perhaps there’s a clinical description for this almost overwhelming feeling of being unsettled. Generally I know how to tackle large personal decisions. I weigh the options, or I don’t, and I make my jump. This is different.

It could be about the house. Keep or sell? Rent or find housemates or live in it alone and work around the clock? I suppose this unsettledness could be about my romantic life. Start things up with the ex, who is open to the idea of giving things another shot, stay single and date, become monk, or just not worry about it? I will admit that I miss having a best friend around and I almost dread the process of attempting to build a history with someone new. It’s odd how much energy goes in to building friendships and how much it sucks more and more with time if they fail. Honestly I’m not all that in to dating. I don’t really like dating. I prefer friendships that become relationships… Of course, all my friendships are with my photographic subjects and they aren’t going to evolve into a relationship and I don’t date co-workers either. Dating websites are like roulette. So, I definitely know that I have some questions about my love life, but it doesn’t really feel like this one area of my life is enough to cause this amount of uncertainty. 

Lately I have been trying not to build up too much hope or too many expectations. Up to the point that I started trying to throttle expectations I think I pretty much lived on hope, dreams and expectations. They drove me. By limiting these things I could simply be experiencing transitional weirdness. Like I don’t know what to do with myself if I’m not living on my dreams. What, exactly, do I do with today if today isn’t about what I want tomorrow? Is the puritan work ethic that embedded in me? Have I really forgotten how to enjoy what today has to offer? 

So yeah, I’ve got some shit to figure out.

The first cut is always the hardest. I hesitate, I scratch the surface, I knick the first few layers feeling the sting in my eyes as they start to water. This feeling is only a hint of what’s truly coming next. Soon enough it will flow. Maybe this time it won’t stop. Maybe my prayer for absence will be answered and my heart will stop what my brain can’t. 

This place is all that remains of an entire life. Figuratively and literally as her ashes sit on the top shelf, waiting to be joined by those of my living father when he dies. I am the caretaker, I am the one. The job has been left in my capable hands. This is her room, this is the place she took her last breath. The last place her voice echoed out into the world. The last place her crappy eyes strained to read Science and Health. The last place my father held her hand. The last place I gave her a hug. The last place my sister had a long conversation with my mom. 

This house was hers. My father may have thought he had an influence on the way things were, but it was easy enough to see that this was not the case. His influence was limited. Paul’s hands picked up shells and interestingly balanced stones from the beach. They rested on window sills around the house, on bookshelves and on banisters here and there. They rested there because my mom knew he enjoyed the ocean as much as she did, enjoyed their time together at the edge of any given continent. The stones and shells are gone, have been for years. 

Physical reminders of their love, no matter how insignificant filled this house. I was always aware of that. We never had anything very expensive in this house, but everything meant something to someone. 

It’s getting harder to remember the way our house was laid out. Filled with so much foreign clutter for so long after she died, after a couple of years I started to have trouble untangling the images in my head. Things started changing when my sister and I moved out for college. New curtains here and there, a few new dishes. Not a lot, not really much at all. My room was still my room. Naomi’s was still Naomi’s room. The cupboards were still filled in exactly the same order. Teas over the sink, cereal in the first door on the right. Microwave on the white cabinet in front of the horrible oven. 

I will never fully appreciate how good my mom’s cooking was. Now that I have a full understanding of just how bad the oven is, I understand a bit better… I feel the pain of that oven but I have lost my taste memory. I remember watching people try my mother’s food, her baking especially, and seeing their faces light up. Critics, fools, people who aren’t in to food.. they all lit up. How she made dishes that built her reputation as a baker and cook using that unpredictable and moody beast of an oven is beyond me. Perhaps the ovens she used growing up were even worse. She complained about it from time to time, but she managed. She did more than manage, she kicked ass with that thing. I can’t remember how anything but her turkey tasted. I remember the pies we made together, but they don’t sell the berries we used in Oregon so I can’t remind myself of how the crust tasted with the juices very easily. Her turkey I know how to make, I know the secrets. I should have paid more attention though, to everything else. The magic of linzer square tortes and pepper cookies may be forever lost now that she’s gone. I have the recipe cards but no memory of which direction to stir things or exactly when to add the egg. 

The big hanging cabinetry that hung over the island and breakfast bar, obscuring light and views, blocking communication between kitchen and dining room, is gone. You can now stand in the kitchen and both see the dining room and feel the morning light sneak in through the front windows. People can stand or sit in different places and still talk. If we wanted to talk we had to be all in the tiny kitchen at once. When we made pies together we were always close. Very close. I remember the way it felt bouncing into each other as we pivoted around looking for egg beaters, measuring cups and spatulas. I got rid of hundreds of dishes from 3 generations of my family to make that change.

The dishes never meant much to me. Given that no family claimed them tells me that nobody else cared for them either. I wouldn’t mind a soft hand on top of my head as I mix batter though. That I miss. Or her arms around my shoulders and she showed me the proper way to kneed a given kind of dough. 

Nobody claimed much of anything to be honest. Small things, here and there, but nothing much. It was me who ended up with a house full of objects and memories. Whether I wanted them or not. 

I sometimes wonder if my dad knew that I would be able to handle this, that I would turn this whole experience into strength. That I would take my time and let it take me, embracing every change it brought, no matter how difficult it may turn out to be. He said he wanted to keep the house in the family, but he did not himself want anything to do with it. In fact, he found comfort thousands of miles away. Not that I blame him, but I feel I was last person on earth who was ready for a house. 

Back to the room…

This is the last place in the house I haven’t changed in any way. The room was always a mystery to me. I’d go in there from time to time to snag handkerchiefs from my dad’s dresser. I always had a stuffy nose as a kid. Asthma too, but I didn’t know about that until just a few years ago. Explains a lot. But I digress.. their room was always a little scary to me. Off limits without really being defined that way. It was grown up stuff in there, stuff that both bored and intrigued me at the same time. Books, strange clothes with buttons up the front and things were not only clean, they were organized. It was dark too. North facing with tiny windows. Nice in the summer but a bit scary in winter.

I’m weeks into a project that should only have taken weekends. Part of it is my body not being able to handle all that time bent over blanks of bamboo with a nail gun, part of it is hesitation, procrastination and downright sadness. I’m almost done. I could cut bamboo and hammer planks enough to finish the place in a couple of days, but it’s still hard. The room is blue now, not white. The window trim is white rather than black. The ceiling is white rather than exposed fir. The ceiling is, in fact, due to be sliced open for skylights next summer. The room doesn’t feel the same. It’s not the same. And now I’m wondering if I still belong here.

If I make it to the dawn, will I be OK? Will my finger ease off this trigger? Will the tenifer steel and polycarbonate feel less solid in my grip? Will I find hope? Will I find forgiveness in my heart?

“When I imagined the Defcon network room, I thought of a steaming router, bumping like a broken clothes dryer, manned by uber-geeks in black T-shirts with huge horn-rimmed glasses, half-mad on Monster Energy drink, yellow with Cheetos, injecting Goatse and Lemonparty into unwitting browsers.” - Dave Bullock (from comments on a wired.com story on the Goons running the Defcon network room)

The transition has begun. I’ve finally put the work in to migrate my existing content over into the WordPress schema. As much as I love my old layout, the administration area was seriously lacking in functionality. With the WordPress system I can leave the development of the admin area to the WordPress community and focus on the content of my site. There’s a lot of work to be done as I need to restore images and finish building this theme, but I’m pretty happy that the process is showing some results. I am writing this entry in WordPress’s fantastic post editor. Good times.

I’m a photographer, right.. and a visual artist. So when I tell a story in my head it’s told in images. Tonight I am reminded of how I am not alone in the visual nature of my mind. Oddly enough the reminder comes from watching the tail end of a movie. The Ring. Like other horror thrillers it’s a story that can and is told mostly with images. As gruesome and twisted as the film may be, the experience is so complete that it really hits home with me. It speaks in a language so similar in style (if not in content) as my own mind that I can’t help but lose myself in it.

The Ring, The Cell, Akira Kurasawa’s Dreams, all of them, among many others, open me up and talk directly in my own language. It is not unlike being the last english speaking man on earth, living like that for decades and trying to learn other languages, only to one day find another who speaks your native tongue. You don’t care if they’re an ax murderer, you just want to get lost in the sound of the words as they leave your mouth and hit your ears.

…and then just like that, it was back. All the numbness gone, all the richness and love that life has to offer, back.

It’s been a long time my friends. Far too long. But here we are, together again. I can’t say for how long, or just where this may go. You know what though? That’s ok. I’m ok not knowing what may happen next. I think a life of unpredictable beauty and unexpected pain is better than a lifetime of knowing exactly what comes next.

I’m back to help articulate a massive change in my life. I’m back to try and express the overwhelming sense of joy that arrived with the subtlety of a tornado and planted itself in my veins like an affliction.

Maybe in trying to explain it with words I’ll find a bit of clarity. More importantly I hope to find even more ways to indulge in enjoying and feeling life again. Right now it’s so very overwhelming. I feel so much good, so much love I don’t feel like I have a clue how to express it all.

When I feel like an outsider is when I need it the most. When things are chaotic and barely in control that’s when I want it. I spent my entire education learning this, learning that art and photography are the only ways I know of making sense of chaos. In the last few years I seem to have forgotten this entirely and moved on to more controlled areas of interest. I don’t really want to think about that at the moment. This is a moment of chaos. This is a moment when I feel like an outsider.

One thing I’ve found in common with many of my friends who drink, which is all but one of my friends by the way, is that they put little or no thought into why they drink. I mean NO thought. It’s just something they do just “because”. I have trouble understanding this. It’s as frustrating as when my mom used to say “because” as an answer to any question she didn’t want to answer. She didn’t do that often, but you know what I’m saying. I guess I just wasn’t blessed with that level of casualness in my life. A lot of what I do has a very specific reason behind it. Everything I do has some reason behind it. At least a little. So I don’t get it. It is what it is, I’m not freaking out, it’s just a curiosity. It’s something I don’t know how to approach when I want to talk to people about drinking. It usually comes in the context of “oh wow, why don’t you drink?”. I give them a nice answer and they can’t respond in turn. Anyways. It’s weird to me.

So… I got this motorola razr phone about a week ago. Actually, it may have been a month ago for all I know, I’ve been overwhelmingly busy lately… Anyways, got the razr when I dropped something heavy on my Treo. My Treo was al older 600 model and lacked the handy little feature of bluetooth. Well, the razr’s got bluetooth, and that means that with my t-mobile data plan I’ve got connectivity on my laptop wherever I can get a phone signal. This kicks some serious tail. I’m sitting, once again, in the lobby of the VW dealership, getting my trunk hinges replaced, once again. Without a will do do any actual work, I have decided to blog again. Might just be a momentary thing, but I like the idea of not being pinned to a hot-spot very much. I also like not being at home and writing.

Which reminds me… I’m selling my desktop computer in the next couple of days. Going 100% laptop for a few months. I’m doing this so that I may buy myself a nice little server upgrade. More later, perhaps, my car’s done.

A friend of mine decided some time ago to stop drinking. This made me very happy. She used to do something of a variety of drugs, drink and smoke. She didn’t jive all that well with the drugs, didn’t like being out of control. She quit doing dope and eventually quit smoking as well. Finally she decided that drinking wasn’t such a good idea either.

I was happy to see her making healthy choices, I was happy to finally have a friend in Eugene who didn’t drink. Her stated reasons for finally stopping drinking were fairly eloquent and I thought, sincere. Basically, there’s a fine line between moderate drinking and alcoholism, so why walk the line? Alcohol fucks people up. The benefits do not outweigh the risks.

Anyways. She started drinking again recently. “Moderately” or so she says. I can’t say that I wasn’t expecting it, and I haven’t lost respect for her, but I had hoped she would stick with what she said. But everyone drinks for the most part and there’s a lot of social pressure to join up. Plus, people like the way it makes them feel. Go figure. I don’t fault her for herding but I am somewhat bummed that I don’t have anyone in town to hang out with that doesn’t drink.

“Seasoned Unixen don’t routinely regard the mouse as any kind of shortcut, because it takes a hand away from the keyboard, which is where the Force resides.”

‘el bid’ on macosxhints.com

I hate working during the day. I’ve gotten more done in the last 3 hours than I could ever get done in 8 normal working hours. I don’t always care for the vampire schedule but I dig what I can get done. You see, I don’t like working all that much in general. It’s not that I don’t love what I do, because I do, but that I really do have a lot of other things I’d rather be doing that don’t always make money. So, being able to get a lot of stuff done in a short period of time is great. Anyways… just taking a momentary break to munch on a banana and check my email. Weee… Ok, back to work.

I used to write entries for this site as though they were simply being entered into a journal or diary. Over time it became this focused and sort of obsessive blog about being straight edge. I’m not sure that I could or would want to revert back to the journaling mindset while writing entries for this site… I’m not sure it would be possible or desirable to un-focus this site from what it’s become. It probably IS better for me to start up another site and let that be my new journal. But since I don’t have all that much free time at the moment I will indulge my desire to journal once again on straight edge life.

I had an amazing weekend in California just a few days ago. One of the very best birthdays I’ve had since the days of rocket-shaped carrot cake in Monterey with a dozen of my 6-year-old friends. In many ways it was the best birthday I’ve ever had. As time passes and life doesn’t really seam to get any easier I am more and more thankful for any and all time that I manage to make enjoyable. It takes effort to create enjoyment. When you’re younger it’s just there for the taking as school, and particularly summer, shove it in your face. Having three months off each year is really pretty damn nice. I hear the Europeans still take something like 2.5 months worth of government-sanctioned vacation each year. They’re on to something if you ask me. But yeah, it’s hard work trying to carve out a window of time and opportunity in which one can truly enjoy them self. When I get it I am happy to have it, and this weekend was exactly that. Both from my own efforts and with the help of loved ones.

I didn’t work too hard this weekend. I tried something new (took a ballet class. loved it), met a few new folks and hung out in the company of friends. Shot a few photos and ate good food. Might not sound like a dream vacation, but compared to the nightmare of sickness, overwhelming responsibility and financial pressure of late; it was a dream-come-true.

It actually made me think pretty hard about whether I could live in the Bay Area. I’m smart enough to know that location didn’t have much to do with my experience. It’s more to do with being away from work and close to friends that made the difference. But the more I go down there to visit the more I associate that place with good memories and experiences. Too bad 1,200 square foot homes cost $750,000. Yeah, like I will EVER have $5,000 / month after taxes to spend on a mortgage. Good lord. Anyways. I’ve got a shitload to do tonight; going beta on a project in the morning, but I sort of needed to journal for a bit before I kicked into high gear for the evening. I’m in my new office (back in the basement after the January raw-sewage flooding incident at the Public Defender’s office), and it’s extraordinarily tidy. The perfect environment for getting a LOT done. Should be a good work night. Wish I could bring my hardware from home and put it down here, this office is just the right size and just quiet enough that I could get a lot done here on all my projects.

Righty-o. Catch you all later.

Google news has three articles this morning saying that of the 54 current studies on the health effects of varying levels of alcohol consumption, only 7 properly classified their user groups of “moderate”, “heavy” and “abstainers”. 47 of the 54 studies, the ones that showed that alcohol did provide health benefits, clumped recent quitters and people who quit drinking because of failing health into the “abstainers” group. Basically it put the sick and recent addicts into the “abstainers” group. The remaining 7 studies who only included life-long non-drinkers in their “abstainers” group showed that the abstainers had equal or better health than moderate drinkers.

“Too few studies have been done without the “abstainer error” to conclude that drinking has health benefits, the researchers said. “

“Our research suggests light drinking is a sign of good health, not necessarily its cause.”

“In the seven studies that counted only long-term teetotalers as abstainers, the results showed they were not more likely to die than moderate drinkers, according to researchers. “

“Specifically, 47 of the 54 studies included in the abstainer category not long-term teetotallers, but people who had recently cut down or stopped drinking. Since many people quit drinking because of declining health, disability, frailty or medication use, there’s a good chance these people were less healthy to begin with.”

“Initially it appeared the abstainers were at higher risk for heart disease because they refrained from drinking alcohol, and so did not get its protective benefit, when in fact Fillmore says those in the abstainer category were often already frail and predisposed to death.”

Med Page Today

The Globe and Mail

Forbes

News Medical.Net

This is the first thing I’ve written in a while. For any purpose. Soon I will be taking this site offline. Well, I’ll probably leave the site up but I will stop updating it, and when the domain expires it will go offline.

I’m done. Too many words and too few photos these last few years. Too much time behind a computer and to little time out in the world. Life, it seems, is passing me by and this site feels like it’s part of the problem. It’s an entity of it’s own, something that has a life and grows on it’s own, separate from me. And that’s not what I want.

I may start a new site somewhere that will, hopefully, feel a bit more connected to who I am. You see, I started straight edge life in the middle of my divorce. The identity of Straight Edge helped me find enormous strength when I had very little of my own. It helped me sort out my priorities and to find the resolve to take care of them properly. Unfortunately for this site those priorities do not include maintaining a large site or gluing myself to a label.

Straight Edge is part of who I am, it will always be, I’m not about to start drinking, have no fear. I’m as dedicated now to living totally substance free as I ever was, if not more so. But the label of it has put distance between me and a few people who I deeply care about. It’s just time for me to move on. You know, there’s a point where you spend so much time talking about life that you forget to actually live it. So… goodnight my friends. I’ll let you all know when I’ve got something worth reading or looking at, I promise.

Weak. Sadly weak. Harrison Ford is one of my favorites. No boy growing up in the Indiana Jones franchise can really say otherwise in all honesty. And I certainly don’t fault the weakness of Firewall on Harrison. It was just a limp and formulaic plot. I give it props for not trying to be more than it was. I also enjoyed that Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajsku) from 24 was in Firewall. She’s always fun. Don’t go into this movie expecting a lot. Certainly don’t go into it expecting that it will have anything to do with networking or any other aspect of geekdom. The server rooms are silent (viciously untrue of real server rooms) and the presentation of technology is very non-specific. It’s just not very compelling and fails to bring your concern for his kidnapped family to a level high enough to make anything that happens very interesting or important. It’s pretty obvious that someone in hollywood pulled the formula out and popped in the appropriate and inoffensive topic (networking), found some good actors and a crew. Harrison Ford does an excellent job of getting the crap kicked out of him and still winning the fight. How does he do that? Anyway… not much else to say. 4 out of 10.

Everybody gets pushed on by all sorts of forces. Some come from the outside and push straight in. Others come from the inside and push left, right, up, down or out. And then there are the ones that come from the outside and push straight through out on their way to something else. The ones that hit you like some helpless bystander caught in a drive-by shooting.

I don’t think I would go so far as to say that how someone handles these forces, external or internal, is a test of their character. It’s a test, sure. But of character? Not so sure about that. I think the better test of character is to see how well a person picks and chooses which forces to fight, which to submit to and which to watch from a distance.

A very good friend of mine told me of a dream she had about a huge wave coming straight at her. Recurring type of thing that haunted again and again. Eventually another friend told her to ride the wave, to body surf it.

Half the crap we deal with can usually be handled by simple knowing how to approach it. Is this something to tackle alone? Is this something to handle with the help of a professional? Is this something to ignore? Is this something to bear down and endure? Or will simply looking at it from a different angle show a completely different shape? Perhaps something more pleasant. Perhaps something even more frightening. You never really know until you take the time to have a look at it.

In this case my friend hasn’t been haunted by the dream since changing her perspective on it. Not after she looked at it in a different way.

I’m not particularly adept at recognizing the source of the forces pounding on me though. I’ve got a gift of strength, conviction and resolve but not necessarily of awareness. Few people do have the awareness gift in all honesty. And we all suffer from not seeking an outside opinion. Bouncing ideas off of other people is enormously important. Sometimes just imagining what your best friend would say is enough. “What would Mike do”, or some stuff like that. More often you need the real thing, the real response from the real person.

So yeah… seems that there are some forces pushing on me right now. Strong stuff. Forces from outside and definitely forces from inside. I’m on the verge of changing some pretty big bits of my life. Been thinking pretty hard about what to do for a living, where to do it, and with whom to spend my time. I’ll admit that I’ve made a few decisions in that regard. I’ll admit that I’m extraordinarily happy with those decisions as well. Just this weekend I committed to a decision that I hope to keep near to me for life. Feels damn good to know at least one thing definitively. But there are enough details to work out, enough other things… enough sources urging for other change that it’s a bit overwhelming. I want to unwrap them, untangle it, sort all of it out. And that leads me to the bigger question: How?

Optimistically I think there comes a time when your problems are solved simply by desiring something else so purely that you no longer feel the effects of original problem. Does that make sense? But not everything is totally clear cut and passionate. Not all decisions are made for you. Not all decisions are easy.

When you very much love what you do it’s definitely easier to exclude the things you don’t love. That makes decision making a bit easier. It’s definitely better than living in the sustained “lesser of two evils” state that most of us deal with on a daily basis. Constantly choosing between crap and crappier gets old fast. Passion, on the other hand, is a stunningly good leader; it loves having control. And so long as your passions are healthy, that’s totally cool. It’s safe and won’t often lead you wrong.

No, what I’m really talking about here is when you’re dealing with too much passion. Or, worse, when the practical and the passionate confront one-another with butting heads. This is the worst situation of all. When a person is asked to give up or sacrifice their passions it is a horrible thing. Even if he’s being asked to sacrifice one passion for another it’s a terrible thing.

Well, I don’t know the answer to this question of How. I don’t know how to tackle my issue of awareness either. All of it seems a bit frustrating and I’m sort of sleepy. Really want to slow things down and enjoy my life. And perhaps that will be my saving grace… being sick and tired of being sick and tired. Am willing to do pretty much anything to get myself back to the point where I’m enjoying my life again, full-time.

Ok. So here’s my take on going to parties with alcohol when you’re straight edge. It can be alright. Most of the time it’s tollerable in my experience. But it definitely depends on your level of disgust with the effects of acholol on the people at the party. More specifically it depends on the effects of alcohol on the people you know at the party. Who cares what strangers do or how they act. Take for example the office party. The holiday office party where you get to see your bosses tanked. This is one of those times when I would prefer simply not to go. Or, as I did this year, simply make an appearance for a few minutes and then escape to the yummy Thai restaurant next door. Some of the last people on earth that I want to see drunk or tipsy are the people I work with. They are all generally interesting people and I enjoy talking to them on a day-to-day basis. I respect them. But seeing them all happy for no reason, maybe stumbling on their words or professing their love for one another… well it does very, very little to boost my confidence with them in the workplace. Yes, I have to keep it in perspective. People drink. Surprise.

Another funky situation is when you go out to drink with a significant other. Here’s where it gets tricky. Ok… don’t want to intrude on their lifestyle if they are a drinker. But, you definitely don’t want to see them tipsy either. Hell no, because as a straight edge guy I can guarantee that you didn’t become attracted to them when they were tipsy and they certainly aren’t going to get more attractive when they are tipsy. In fact they will be substantially less attractive. Massively so. And that feeling can last for a week. And then with friends… if someone needs alcohol to become interesting then they’re boring in the first place and it’s very pathetic. If they were interesting and then get drunk they don’t get more interesting.

I’m convinced that the whole trick to parties with alcohol is that NOBODY there should really be sober. Think of it like this… the next day, Monday or whatever, if people are standing around talking about how stupid they all got at the party it’s no big deal. But if there’s a straight edge guy stanting there too… and he says “yeah, you were a fucking idiot when you photocopied your ass cheek on the new minolta copier.” it carries a different kind of weight. And even if you, straight edger, don’t mean it in some kind of mean way, it doesn’t come accross nicely if you yourself weren’t drunk. Which explains why I lost entire groups of friends from time to time after parties in high school and college.

So yeah. I’m trying to level out my intensity when it comes to the reality and pervasiveness of alcohol. It’s here. The vast majority of people don’t think about it like I do. And if I stuck with the people who do think about it like I do I’d be a damn lonely man. But it doesn’t mean that I should go somewhere that I’m uncomfortable or be friends with or date people who do things I’m uncomfortable with. Fortunately I have a certain level of resigned comfort with alcohol. Those who take it in with a moderated or european perspective are easier for me to understand and be comfortable with. It takes work, it’s definitely effort, but it can be done. But then I know that it will take the people at my office to take time getting comfortable with me being sober at their parties. Even if the decide to keep photocopying their asses.

Ok… so here’s another project I probably won’t ever get around to doing. I’ve got something like 1000 entries on this site, all written at a pretty random distribution of times and days of the week. I was thinking that I would like to run some statisitics on how depressing my entries are compared to when they were entered. I’m pretty sure that my entries after 1:30 in the am are going to rank much more depressing than my entries after 10 am. I wonder how I would have to do it… rank the occurences of a set of depressing words over time I suppose. Hmmm. Maybe this wouldn’t be that hard to do. You know, in my free time.

“I can’t imagine dying before I find love again. I can’t imagine being able to die if I do.”

– Aran J. Denison