Category Archives: what’s up

No, I’m Still Not Dating Anyone, Thanks For Asking

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It will be two years come the end of this October since I have officially belonged to anyone. You’d think from the way people talk to me about it I’m supposed to be sad or upset about it or something. Well, then, here’s a big news flash.

I don’t care. Or, rather, it’s even something to celebrate.

Really, finding someone to date just is not that important to me. I have too many things that should take a bigger precedence in my life than to go out seeking something that will likely turn life topsy turvey anyways. It’s especially silly when I know it will find
me eventually anyways.

People grow concerned. They think it’s a lack of self esteem on my part, which is especially funny considering that it’s opposite. I feel like I don’t need someone else in my life. When I was dating (from two years ago until I started SOLID pretty much) it was partially from fear of being alone. It was partially feeling I needed someone to help me stand on my own two feet.

If anything, I’m a bit sad that people don’t support me in this. They don’t high-five me and say ‘good for you!’ like I think they should. Instead they worry that something is wrong with me.

It’s so funny when it’s the opposite. I’m doing better than I probably ever have been, and people worry because I’m doing it without someone pulling me on their lap or buying me dinner. If anything, maybe someone should have worried when I put too much stock into someone else.

I am not saying that I might not end up dating someone as soon as tomorrow, but I am saying I’m not looking. That’s kind of how I know it will find me.

The more whole I become, the more likely I am to attract the notice of someone else equally as whole and maybe have a healthy relationship for a change.

Should I envy the people who are with other people and are happy? There are things I miss, things that would be nice, but then for every one thing I can think of there is so much more I might be giving up if I jump into something just for the sake of jumping.

People talk about being single is being alone, and I think I felt more lonely in a lot of my relationships. There are games guys can play to keep you from your friends and being just disinterested enough to make you want them more. I’m all set. I will fight tooth and nail to stay out of that situation this time.

So maybe I’m just waiting for the right time, the time for things to be different, the improvement upon an improvement. There’s nothing wrong we being cautious. I’m not desperate, so why should I act like I am?

I’m fine being single. I’m happy to be patient as things continue to come together. Be happy for me.

Whole Myth

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I’m still learning what owning a vehicle in the state of MA means since I haven’t even had it for a a year yet. I got the truck last September and it’s about the time where you get another insurance quote I guess. I asked my dad about what I need to do when September rolls around (things with stickers and whatever) and he asked me how long I’ve had the truck.

“Two years?”

“No, a year in September.”

I was about to write it off as a “You’re getting old, Dad.” moment when it occurred to me that a lot has happened since September, when I got the truck, and the end of November when I returned to Massachusetts from Virgina. I’m not sure how much more my life could have turned around.

And it’s not done turning, even now things are spinning. There is control in this rotation, but a constant honing is happening as I try to round out my life in all its ways.

My recent undertaking is completely cliche- more so than the career switch job search thing. I’m working in an office I drive to and I need to find a way to stay healthy.

For the company meeting we went to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. This was a couple weekends ago and a ton of fun. While there me and my guest took on a portion of the Appalachian trail. We didn’t have hiking shoes, never mind any other gear, but why not? We’re young and able.

That’s how I know I’ve moved from the category of young and able to young and out of shape.

Just last summer I had calves of steel. I walked probably about ten to twenty miles a day for my job and then I had no car to boot. My body and I were friends, even if I wore a less than flattering L. L. Bean polo to make it so.

Now I spend so much time using mental and social skills, and becoming tired doing so, that I forget about the rest of me. I’ve very satisfied with the challenges and the days go by fast, but where is the time and motivation when that ends to excise the rest of me?

I recently purchased a Wii and have a Wii Fit to boot. I figure if I can trick myself into thinking it’s a video game, I’ll exercise. Truth be told, it is working, but I’m starting to think it’s not enough. It can’t replace all of those miles I used to walk by a long shot.

So now I have to figure something out. I could take up some fun outdoor activities I love. It’d be nice to play paint ball again. Most of the things I can come up with are group activities which I don’t have a group for. Adding a social aspect to it makes it even less appealing. Remember my attempts to start roleplaying again? I just wanted to roleplay, but people got in the way. I don’t want to leave this in the hands of other people, so that kind of rules out sports and other group exercise. I’m kind of back to square one with virtual fitness.

I’m sure I’ll figure this all out. As each part of my life falls into place, things have an adjustment period. Once they become easier, then you can add on something else to make your life more fulfilling until one day maybe things feel whole. I wonder and suppose that feeling completely whole might just be a myth. But they say it’s about the journey. It doesn’t stop me from pursuing and striving. And I’m happy, proud, and much more satisfied than I have been in a long time as a result.

Ring Around the Relationship

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Some people I know recently got engaged. Seriously, I’m happy for them. I like them both separately, and I like them together, which is rare enough.

Last weekend I learned all the details: the purchasing of the ring, the hiding of the ring, the nightmares and yearning for the ring, and yes, even the hunt for the ring. Apparently, waiting for such a thing is tortuous for women who care about that sort of thing. The gals gathered round looking at the ring and sympathizing with the torture of waiting, knowing the ring was somewhere in the house. I had a hard time pretending I ‘got it’. Having nightmares, wondering if he really cared or if it would ever happen seemed silly, even to a sometimes emotionally fragile woman like myself.

The guy stood by, trying not to be too unsympathetic, but you could tell was inwardly sighing. It gave me cause to be forthcoming.

“Look, maybe this is because I’m not very girly, but I don’t get why it was such torture. You know he bought it- you picked it out. You guys have been living with each other for how long? I mean, you know he cares. It’s just a material possession, it’s about what it symbolizes and what you already have.”

I got a “thank you” from the guy and a “you don’t get it” vibe from the gals. And maybe I don’t. It’s not to say I get men much either.

I had nightmares of my own that night, and not about rings. The whole subject threw something nasty into my subconcious maybe, or it’s just time for me to have nightmares again. I stopped giving serious cerdence to any theories concerning why I dream the way I do long ago. But, yes, some of the nightmares have been about my own past relationships.

The work week progressed and I found myself talking with someone who hadn’t heard of the engagement. It brought up the subject of people we know who are in or out of relationships. Some of the most awesome guys I know right are single, after all, and that’s sort of weird to me. We’re both single and I explained my own recent history and he his, though he gave no explanation circumstances of the last breakup- awhile ago. I didn’t want to press him either. At our age, it seems many of us have our own scars and reasons to be wary of letting people that close. I have my share, and though I’m not shy to share, you never know how fresh it might actually still be for some people.

I also know some of us don’t bear the same scars. This guy of this recently engaged couple admits this has been his first long term relationship ever.

Most people I know are well beyond that. I spoke to a long time friend on the subject of how we’d become so jaded. It used to be easy belief and naivety, and now it’s a blunt, “What’s this guy’s motivation?”. She is standing at a crossroads right now wondering whether to go down the path of possibly pursuing a perhaps impossible relationship with a guy in another country. She is having a hard time dealing with the logical worries that accompany that, and yet how jaded can we be if she is finding herself meandering down that path despite the odds?

I guess we have to try. We live to live.

I wondered why the guy in the engaged couple wasn’t so forthcoming with announcing his engagement. It seemed word had finally finished spreading today, and suddenly I understand with the barrage of shit he was given by guys he knows. All the guy questions on top of the shit given were as silly as the women’s discussion. A lot of guys at our age apparently don’t know how the modern U.S. Judeo-Christian tradition of engagement and marriage works. It was pretty amusing listening to said engaged friend try to field these questions and comments.

“So, where’s your ring?”
“What? The woman eventually gets two rings!?”
“Do you get two rings too?”
“Do they wear both rings? Or do they stop wearing the engagement one after marrying. That seems a waste if they do.”
“Which is more expensive, the wedding one or the engagement one?”
“So, wait, there’s two rings?”
“Do they wear them both on the same hand?”
“So, how long do you have until you have to get married now?”
“How can you get engaged without knowing when you’re getting married? Aren’t you supposed to know that beforehand?”
“Well, I guess ring buying is better than dowry.”
“Wait, doesn’t the woman’s dad give dowry to the man’s dad?”
“I think it’s different in different cultures?”
“How do you know which ring to get?”
“If she helped pick it out, what’s the point of proposing and giving the ring?”
“Yeah, why did she want it so bad?”
“So… wait, there are two rings?”
“Dude, where’s your ring? Why don’t you wear one yet?”
“Isn’t that something, a woman gets two rings? And they want equal rights too, but keep the perks.”
“So, who gets to keep the ring if you- I mean some other couple, not you- were to split up?”
“Dude, it better be the guy. That’s not fair.”

So, meanwhile, both the women and the men obsess about the ring. I am left to wonder about relationships, people, circumstances, trust, and chance. I have nightmares about past attempts and try not to obsess too much about the strength and fragility of our connections to those around us. Even so, it’s a subject I think about a lot, and I’m afraid it guides me too often when think of those around me, the chances, and the circumstances.

I guess we’re here to try. We’re here to live.

I Call it the iStore or lol Cats (to Follow the Naming Conventions of Apple)

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I had never been to an Apple Store before.

I had to pinch myself…

…to prevent myself from laughing so hard.

The little brother had a defunct 80 gig iPod Classic. We were greeted by a brightly t-shirted fellow whose sole job seemed to be a greeter. We were led to another brightly t-shirted fellow who plugged in the iPod and announced it worked fine. I told him to try unplugging it.


It shut off immediately.

“Oh.”

Pause.

“Well, let’s get you an appointment at the Genius Bar.”

Genius, as in super smart IQ, and bar, as in drinking alcohol? I thought I misheard. I followed him to a brightly t-shirted woman.

“Hi guys. Let’s get you set up with an appointment at the Genius bar!”

Pinch. I hadn’t misheard.

“Sure.”

“Can I have a name and email address?” I motioned to the little brother who had remained silent this whole time as I had instructed him to. I could tell he was pinching himself as well. He was trying really hard not to be a smart ass.

“victorcarmine@live.com”

“…”

The Apple woman looked perplexed.

“Did you say yahoo.com?”

“No. Live.com. It’s for my Xbox live account.”

“…”

“Are we going to a circle of Apple hell for having a Microsoft affiliated email address?” I asked forgetting to keep my smart ass in check.

“No,” she laughed, a bit nervously I thought. I checked my peripheral vision for Matrix-style agents or Steve Job’s face.

We were given an appointment for about a half hour later. We passed children sitting on large black balls playing on computers and exited to Gamestop.

A half hour later we took a seat at the bar (the regular one, not the genius one) to wait for our turn. Large screens gave us such fun facts as “Did you know that a Mac computer has the power of two computers combined?”.

My brother couldn’t help himself, “Yeah, two crappier computers.”

My brother may be eleven, but he is pretty smart. I saw his logic, “Technically, yeah, any computer could have the power of two computers with half of the hardware behind them. So technically, what they’re saying isn’t wrong…”

“Is stupid.”

“Correct,” I turned my attention away from the failed propaganda to the computer at the ‘bar’. Surprisingly, we could browse the web. After refraining from doing anything evil, we were called over to the more pretentious of the two bars. Yet another brightly colored t-shirted guy greeted us. This was starting to sound like a joke…

“A guy and a girl walk into a bar with and iPod.”

…with…

Q: “How many apple store geniuses does it take to troubleshoot and fix an iPod?”
A: “None. After plugging it in, holding down a few buttons, and trying to tell you it works fine, they just give you a new one.”

…which works for me. Two more brightly shirted people later we had a new iPod, a new case for it, and exited the Apple Store.

To those who missed the joke, lol cats is referring to the Mac operating system naming convention (ie: Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard). Can has werkin iPod, plz? Ktnxbye.

To those who see this as an opportunity to turn the comments into a Macs are better than PCs discussion, I am not interested in your fandom. I work with MacOSX, Windows, and various Linux distributions every day, and I do not have fandom attached to any OS or computer brand.
If you are personally offended by my poking fun, then you need to get a sense of humor. Ktnxbye.

Piss In Your Pool, Blow Your House Down

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brick house
I’ve finished my first month of work. I am almost at the official end of training. It has been an entire two years since I jumped into a self destructive relationship. I’m proud. I’ve had time to begin to get a handle on my own identity and spend time proving that I can build a life for myself by myself. I’ve got a good job. I’m done with my classes. Now that I’ve come so far and am fulfilling more parts of my life every day, I wonder if I’m ready to let some new people into my life and maybe even date.

Truthfully, the thought scares me to death. I don’t want to fuck it all up over some feeling over falling. I’m not afraid of the fall, I’m afraid of the brutal landing below. I’m still sick of picking up pieces of myself after losing people. So what do I do? I don’t let anyone new on the inside.

This obviously can’t continue if I’m for moving further foreward.

I’ve been meeting some great people. I don’t know if they’re at the highest of high bars, but I know enough that I respect them and even admire them. I’m feeling connections and they seem to feel that way as well. People are placing trust in me, so why can’t I do the same? When I fell silent Saturday night and just listened for hours, interjecting laughs and utterances, why was I the sudden introvert? Is it because I’m afraid that I’m sitting in a still fragile framework of my recent success of life, made of tissue paper, sitting with a match that might spark if I say too much?

I’m so honest that I have to fall silent to protect myself. I’m scared to shit at how close I can feel to people that I’m still just getting to know. It doesn’t matter if I get to know them if I block them from knowing me.

I’m not as confident as people think. These thoughts pool inside the space behind my eyes until the people I see make me too nervous to speak.

I’m proud to have come so far, but it’s a shame how far I have left to go before I fell wholly myself again. It takes so little time to break a person and forever to remake. I’m rebuilding one brick at a time so that when the time comes, it’ll be much harder to blow down.

Wednesday Night

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I was recently talking to one of my Portland friends. She told me about a failed attempt to hang out with someone who she thought wanted to be friends. It turns out the person all but dug away in the dirt to avoid the impoliteness of saying “Uh, not interested, weirdo”.

That leads me to Wednesday night and my continuing quest to understand people from a first person point of view. Sure, I was able to tell my friend before hand that I wasn’t sure about this girl. This girl has a bit of a judgmental streak, and for weirdos like us, we just can’t comply. In the case of all the people in my own life, I’m fairly clueless.

Wednesday night was my last IT class. We finished out WAN build lab after designing, subnetting, documenting, installing, group policying, pinging, and yes, even establishing a VPN connection.

Afterwards we were off to a bar where the night was on our instructor’s dollar. I figured I could:

A. Not drink since I have an hour drive or
B. Drink enough so that I wouldn’t mind sleeping in my truck.

On top of this theory, every thriftiness bone in my body wanted to get the most value out of the night. On top of that, before the night began I found myself offered:

A. A place down the street to stay and
B. A ride to that short distance.

I would have ordered drinks, sipped water in between, and stopped when I felt content but:

A. There was no water served complimentary (and I’m bad enough at getting the wait staff attention and deciding on a beverage)

B. Even after I was kind of done, shots kept being brought over on large round trays.
C. I started eating stuff but got distracted.

Before this night I had only thrown up two times in my life that I could remember. Now the count is up to three.

1. The first time I can remember, I was six years old and had the flu. I didn’t know I was going to throw up because I was not familiar with the process. I went into my parent’s bedroom and uttered, “Mom, Dad, I don’t feel so good.” before emphasizing the statement with the ultimate exclamation point. If I would have understood what was happening, my bedroom was right next to the bathroom.

2. I was hospitalized. No, not hospitalized for drinking, but for some malady that I was stuck with an IV and given anti-nausea medication with morphine and vicodin afterwards. I slept a lot on a couch in the kiln shed for days (as this was my tent days). The fact that mice and bugs were likely sleeping with me didn’t even phase me I was so sick.

3. Wednesday night.

Before I was sick, I observed both people getting wasted (with the full intention of driving home) and people who weren’t drinking (because they needed to drive home). I chatted up people with less and less clarity. Then, so and so hair washer from Communication Revolution: Quashed!, if you remember that post, wanders over.

At this point, I do remember what happened, it’s more of the order of operations that gets vague- so anyone who might read who was there, I apologize for anything I mixed up.

He wandered over, started making some vague confessions about how he knows I wanted to be his lab partner along with some vague, drunken implications of how he’d miss me. I confess to the company around me, my lab partner (on my left) and someone who sat on the other side of me those six months (on my right) being stood up in February. I admit that I haven’t really talked or interacted with him since, and he with me. And now, suddenly, awkwardly, he was talking to me like we were old, close friends.

He comes back over, from behind, playing with my braids. He admits that he was sorry we didn’t hang out. I clarified that he stood me up, like he had to wash his hair or something. He clarified he stood me up because he was worried about what his girlfriend might think. I clarified that I just wanted to hang out and not hook up. He clarified that of course we were just going to hang out in a very unconvincing way.

I have to ask if what just happened actually happened. I was told that yes, yes it did. That this dick just admitted he stood me up to wash his girlfriend’s dog’s hair and that he was expecting to hook up with me.

The king of awkward wasn’t crowned yet as he hadn’t yet told me about my boobs. Now he admitted that wow, I had really nice ones. He said that the shirt I was wearing was very nice and that my boobs were very nice and they looked very nice in that shirt. I couldn’t tell you how many times he mentioned my chest. I was asked if I dressed up for the last class. I told him that most of my hot summer weather clothes were like this. This was an odd throw back to some things that were said when we were communicating via net send. He then implied that I looked good. That was flattering. Flattery like that, versus having your boobs talked to shifts the line over to Creepyville, population: this guy.

He told me he was sorry he’d stood me up and that we should hang out. He said I had his number and I should call him. I don’t think he was looking at me to answer. It was that good-looking, charismatic guy thing where he obviously thought that my boobs had answered for me, and of course we’d hang out some time.

Why do assholes like me?

This is about when I started feeling sick. One could argue that the reasons why this was were listed further up in the post. One might say that the more recent events broke the camel’s back. Some might even go as far as to point out that it was an appropriate reaction to what was said and done right before hand.

Still, it’s pretty embarrassing and not something I would like to take up on a regualar basis. I can say with some confidence it’s not something I’d ever really want to do again.

So, the guy sitting on my right, the guy who had been sitting at my right these past six months, helps me up and over to the ladies room where I proceeded to give the cleaning staff a challenging and fun filled evening. The sink was closer and I have bad knees. The sink also clogs faster.

When a someone stands by when you’re at your worst and doesn’t make you feel any more guilty about it afterwards, you know you’ve found a great person. So, Righty follows me into the restroom shortly after to check on me, having received permission to be in the sacred temple of Women’s Restroom. By now my time sense is completely gone, so I don’t know how long we were in there with me confessing how much of jackass I felt like and him confessing that he’s done crappy things in his life too, and he’s happy to help. I shouldn’t worry. That made the evil looks of the wait staff as they brought me ginger ale a little easier to take. I don’t blame them. I’d be giving me evil looks.

Wednesday: the best of people, the worst of people.

Someone who teaches for a living and does it well is still essentially doing their job, even if the people being taught are eternally greatfull for not getting someone who sucks. When one is graduated and is no longer in a teacher-student situation with a person, and you’re just people, there’s no real underlying motivation to go above and beyond. There especially is no clause saying you have to give that person a place to crash, your bed, clothes to sleep in, cab fare, and a juice box.

And once again, no additional guilt was given. It was: easy-day, being called a ‘little rock star’, and saying that we’ve all been there.

So, now that I’ve arrived there, I will admit that it’s still not something I get. I don’t expect to go there again any time soon.

I appreciate all the messages I got asking me if I was okay, and really, I am. Even more so since I was surrounded by good people, along with those who suck.

I don’t know what will happen with said people as I have experienced time and time again how hard it is to make long and lasting connections with people, especially when you give them such a positive, lasting impression. I do know that they’re likely not to offer me anything to drink.

Historical posts:
Communication Technology
Communication Revolution: Quashed!