Chapter the Fourth: The Ides of May

Musings.

Stardate, 11:51 PM

I will keep this short, for once again I have verged upon the witching hour.

Short, being a completely relative term.

In ten minutes it will be Tuesday, May the 22nd. A whole bunch of stuff has happened on May 22nd for the last 6 Billion years (Earth’s day starts with rotation of earth, not the beginning of the universe). Odds are exceptionally high that May 22nd will keep happening for as long as I live, and for as long as Human Beings are able to keep and record time.

Or venerate it in any meaningful fashion

There are a whole lot of things I am not doing with my life. There are a whole lot of things that are going on that I claim are preventing me from accomplishing what I want to do.

I’m not going to make any sort of pronouncement that I’m going to start doing, or stop doing, those things anytime in the near future.

But I will put forth that my life sucks because I let it. Which means on some level, I want it to.

Clearly, I am an idiot.

I don’t know what karma I’m paying off that I chose this path to walk. I don’t particularly care. I’ve spent a significant portion of the last 30 or so years hating myself, aspects of myself, or my actions.

For the record, this is not a suicide note. I don’t feel that way anymore, and haven’t for a good number of years.

Much.

I’ve died twice. Then I was alive. It could be said that I die a little each day, or that each day I live adds more and more life to a span that could have ended in a dusty paddock in the middle of Utah, or face down on a bathroom floor after a particularly self-destructive evening. Those events are hopefully far enough back that they lose relevance with each passing day.

Look, I’ve begun another one.

How much will I hate myself today? How much time will I spend on “wasted” efforts? How many times can I allow life to kick me in the balls before I decide I’ve had enough? How many times will I be the one doing the kicking?

I have no idea whatsoever. But it really has to stop.

Let’s throw this one out there. There are times when I don’t like my job. I enjoy my paycheck, with the fiction that I “need” the money. I perpetuate the notion that I am needed, wanted, and vital to the proper functioning of my business. I further perpetuate the case that “only I can do what I do.”

Ask 10 randomly selected people outside my office that are connected with the business of the hobby gaming industry who I am, I’d be very surprised if three of them could answer you with any certainty. Ask 10 customers, and I’d be even more surprised if but one of them did so without an internet search.

And yet, I show up in the morning, and give everything I have. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I literally work twice as hard as most people in my position have to, or would otherwise.. This job has been the direct cause of 5 failed relationships over the last 2 1/2 years. The other three are most likely because I am a self-righteous, arrogant prick.

Or because I was fat.

It has also ruined my health, helped repair my credit, caused me to lose sleep, caused me to have health insurance that made me healthy, introduced me to new friends, placed me into forced contact with people I cannot stand to look at, and in general, both improved and devolved the quality of my life.

As I sit here tonight, my main footprint on the world either lives 400 miles away from me, or exists as 1’s and 0’s here on teh intarwebs.

Yahoo search has my last main page entry as the number 1 hit. A collection of quotes from broadcaster Stuart Scott regarding a minor league baseball player named Brandon Magner is number 2, and an essay I wrote for Jonathan Tweet’s website in 2002 is #3.

(P.S. That really was me in 2002. Both of those drinks were mine, and they were not the first two of the evening. They most certainly were not the last. And the events related in that essay led directly to death #2 above)

Google search has the same post above, a zoominfo.com post about some other Scott Magner, a customer’s angry response to something I wrote for business last week, and a funny bit of off the cuff humor written in 2000 as part of a shared experiment that actually hit the national press.

MSN search has my post of May 2 in which I relate my forced exodus from my current residence, a keyword matchup from a lawfirm in Maryland, and then keyword matchups from Magner.org (It turns out that Scott, James, and Magner are all very common Irish names. Yay Clark County, NV for making me Irish a few months before death #1)

None of those things related above that relate to me personally have affected positive change in the world.

I can point to countless examples of negative impact. A younger me would be drinking constantly to avoid thinking about this situation.

May 22nd me no longer participates in that manner of self deception. Instead, I get pissed off and occasionally lash out at people who love and care for me. I wallow in soul-crushing self-pity, and continue to do so when those selfsame people try to lift me up.

Only one thing has changed appreciably in the last 12 months for me. My general level of physical fitness. And these days, I really can’t feel good about that either.

I’m numb. I’d say I have nothing left, but I know that’s just another lie. Tonight, I met new people. I visualized a desired future state that would involve some of those people. I considered how my life would be in that future ten days from now, ten weeks from now, and ten months from now.

I also visualized what it would be like without that future state.

Or, at least I tried to. I got nothing.

Sometimes, (or more accurately most times) I feel like I’m drowning. Like I can’t break the surface, but somehow can sustain myself underwater on the amount of air I’ve become used to breathing in. And as long as I keep at my current level of mad exertion, I’ll stay alive.

I mentioned to someone dear to me a couple months ago that I just don’t feel connected. I used to. But I also didn’t feel a lot of other things, since I was drinking constantly to avoid thinking about the situation.

For the record, I am not an alcoholic. I could have been, but chose not to be. And that seems to be the only choice I am capable of making a lot of times.

What not to do.

Pity party over. It’s May 22nd now.

The first day of the rest of my life. Here’s hoping I like the person I look at in the mirror later today.

Or at least feel like I do.

End trans.