Sleep or Write?

I’ve been having problems sleeping lately.  I’ve been laying awake and my brain has been racing.  It’s like, as soon as I go to bed my creative side turns on.  I can’t find that side during that day of course.  I’ve been tempted several nights to get up and go write.  Maybe getting it out of my system will help, but then I have to get up at way-too-early-o-clock for work, so I don’t.  Of course, when I wake up the next day, I can’t remember even half of what I was going to write, so it’s all lost.  Very frustrating.  Le sigh.  Maybe if I’m still feeling this way over the weekend I’ll get up and work on it then.  In the meantime I’ll have to rely on sleep aids and hope they don’t completely wipe me out the next morning (like they did Monday morning).

 

As an aside, have another sad song:
Sad Song by We The Kings ft Elena Coats

This Digital Life

Some days it seems like too much of my life is intangible.  I work online, I play largely online, most of my familial communication is online.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that I can fix things millions of miles away from my desk; I enjoy getting to play games with people from around the world; it’s wonderful that it is so easy to keep up with my family half way across the country.  Some days I miss the physical, though.  So much of what I do is abstract; at work for instance, I know that these people out there somewhere are unable to help their patients.  I know this because this box on my tool went from green to red.  So I push a couple of buttons and the box turns green again and the people are happy.  On the one hand, I know that I just helped sick people get the medications they need.  On the other, I’ve not seen or interacted with any of the people involved.  No matter how much the person on the phone tells me how much good I’ve done, I’ve not experienced any of it. Too much of my life feels that way.

I’ve been craving the physical experiences a lot lately.  Maybe it’s cabin fever, but I don’t get out a lot to start with so it’s not likely.  I feel like unplugging for a while, but I know I won’t.  Classes start up again this week, so that will be something, but I don’t think it’s really what I’m looking for.  I’m interviewing for a new job right now.  I like what I do, but opportunities are getting slim here because the company is leaving my state, so it’s time to keep my eyes open for new opportunities.  I’ve probably got another year to two years before my job actually goes away, but I’ve got nothing to strive for in the meantime.  To quote my boss, I’ll “run to a good job, but don’t run from this one.”  One of the perks of the job I’m looking at is that it is a lot of on-site support, so I’ll be getting hands on with issues and actually interacting with many of the people I help.  Maybe that will help.  If so, it’s still a ways off, though.  Fingers crossed.

Sad Songs; they say so much

I like sad songs.  Once could almost say I collect them.  They’re comfortable; they feel like a part of me.  The more primal and raw the emotion in the singers voice the better.  Tonight a collected a new favorite.  I’ll link it at the end of the post.

I sometimes think that my natural state is sad.  I take antidepressants and maintain a (mostly) cheerful attitude for those around me.  No one likes to deal with a sad man.  But when I can bury myself in a sad song, lose myself to it, it feels like home.

Do not misunderstand me, I have a great life.  I have a wonderful wife and child that both make me very happy.  I am surrounded by a loving family and amazing friends.  I don’t have to “act” happy around them; it comes naturally around them.  Even that honest happiness, though, is exhausting.  That joy doesn’t feel like my ground state, it requires excitation (if you’ll excuse the chemistry analogy).  “Normal”, if there is such a thing, is sad.

Some people think that sounds awful, I’m sure.  I don’t.  I’m okay with being sad.  Most people, my wife included I’m sure, don’t understand that.  I feel creative and alive when I’m sad.  As an example, since I started focusing on the people who make me happy, I’ve quit writing creatively.  I miss that part of me, but it was something I gave up in order to keep those I care about.

Some days I feel like my happy life is a fleeting thing that will be stripped from me.  Almost like some plot arch.  I wrote, I lost writing and gained family and friends and happiness, then I lose it all and go on to write some special thing that solves a plot dilemma or something.  I don’t know.  It’s a half formed thought.  I don’t know how to fully put it in to words.  Just that I feel that at some point I will lose it all.  Maybe that’s the sad songs speaking, though.

Anyways, as promised, my new favorite sad song:  Sound of Silence by Disturbed

the end

Well, I cancelled my Amazon Developer account today.  Just can’t afford their annual fee.  Once I finish off my next app, I’ll get an account on the Google Play store, they’re much more reasonably priced.  Have a month and a half or so now where I won’t have any programming assignments for school, so I should be able to get it done now.  Just can’t seem to work on any other apps during the semester when I’ve got homework programming to do.  Too distracting I guess.  So, AarDice will only be available for another few days, hurry and get it while you can!

My father is dying.

We’ve known it for a while now.  I may have even posted about it before now, though I don’t recall for sure and can’t be buggered to go back and check.  However, things are getting worse and I fear this may be his last holiday season.

I’m not extremely close to my father, like my wife was with her mother who passed several years ago.  I don’t know if that makes it easier or harder, honestly.  I suppose I won’t truly know until my mother passes.  On the one hand, it’s not as big of a direct impact, if that makes any sense.  I don’t speak with my father nearly as often or see him as frequently.  I don’t rely as much on his counsel.  However, there’s the guilt.  I spent a lot of time angry at my dad.  He was unfaithful to my mother for a long time and when I found out, it hurt a lot.  Seeing the pain in my mother made me hate him for years.  They reconciled and I eventually forgave him, but those are now lost years.  Years I’ll never be able to get back.

There’s also the guilt of not being closer to him.  He is my father, after all.  My male role model.  Sure we’ve had our bonding times.  We used to go up and cut wood every weekend.  Those day trips with just the two of us were good.  He helped me as a cub scout and was so proud when I got my Arrow of Light.  He was always there when I needed him most.  But as I got older, we grew apart and stopped doing much of anything together.  I suppose that happens with teens.  It’s just hard to deal with now.

In the past few years, especially since I’ve been married, we’ve connected more.  I still don’t have the knowledge to talk with him about cars and guns, and forget about politics, but we’ve found other things we can connect over.  TV and Movies, knives, the zompocalypse and family.  It’s great to see the way he looks at my son.  It’s horrible to think that they’ll never really get to know each other.  I only hope that I can honor my father’s memory and be there for him as well my dad was for me.

Manual Labor

I enjoy manual labor.  I know that’s nearly blasphemous for a geek to say, but it’s true.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’d hate to have a job that requires it or have to do it frequently, but as an occasional thing, it’s great.  I spent my Friday emptying and disassembling a steel shed in my back yard.  Now, it’s been a pretty good little shed.  It was there when my parents bought the house 25 years ago and has held up well until this last fall, when the weight of the leaves and branches and water on it collapsed the roof.  Having disassembled and emptied it, I feel really good.  I enjoyed the work while I was doing it; being able to get something done without putting a lot of thought in to it.  The feel of having accomplished it.  The sore muscles for a few days after are both bitter and sweet.  All around, good times.  Now, Tuesday I get to build the replacement shed.  Looking forward to it.

The Pit… of Despair!

Been feeling hopeless lately.  Kind of sucks.  Just feel surrounded by so much negativity and it’s been dragging me down.  House sucks, and has dropped in value so much that we are massively under water.  Going to school, but it’s going to take me 7 or 8 years to graduate since I’m working full time and only going to school part time.  Every time I do anything I enjoy, I feel guilty for spending money instead of being responsible with it and paying down bills.  Even my job, which I normally love is depressing of late, with several rounds of layoffs and bad financial reports.  more and more, but I already feel like I’m just whining.

I know I need to stop focusing on the negative and focus on the positive.  I have a house and a job and am able to go back to school, for instance.  My son is healthy and happy, as is my wife and dog.  I have great friends who are always there for me.  We may struggle a bit financially, but really our life is good and I have nothing major to complain about.   Unfortunately, depression doesn’t care about logic or the facts.  I’ll keep working on focusing on the positive, and try to find things to cheer me up.  Just gotta keep staying away from the edge of the pit until I turn things back around.

Not a Father’s Day post.

Though I do want to give a quick thank you to my father, my wife’s father, and all the other fathers out there doing their best to be the best dad they can be for their kids.

I realized that I never gave an update after the “date” this week.  We went and saw Avengers in 3D.  It was awesome as expected.   The movie loses nothing in the second viewing.  3D doesn’t add anything super amazing to the movie, though there are some gorgeous 3D shots in there and there isn’t the kind of motion blurring you get in a lot of 3D movies, so props to them for that.

The “date” went well.  We had fun, chatted a bit about work and houses and dogs and kids.  Nothing at all about moving beyond friends was brought up; like I said in prior posts, don’t want it to seem like I was going behind the wife’s back.  While I knew it was definitely the wrong time to bring it up, that didn’t make it any less tempting to do so.  Le sigh.  The list of things we want but can’t have is always long.

In unrelated news, I finally broke down and started watching Glee.  I entirely blame my brother-in-law.  He posted that amazing video from Glee for Smooth Criminal which prompted me to check out some other videos of musical performances from Glee, which prompted me to start watching the first season.  Man does it not make me miss high-school.  The DRAMA!  The music is awesome, though.

Under Construction

Alright, did some rearranging and gave the page a face lift.  Hopefully everyone else likes it, cause I think it looks much better.  I also added a section on the left, at the bottom for the story I’m about to start writing.  Gonna head over there now and start on that.  Huzzah!

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.

“I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done.”
-Steven Wright

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
-Earnest Hemingway

“Writing, to me, is simply thinking through my fingers.”
-Isaac Asimov

Ah, writing advice; I lave and hate thee.  I’ve got that urge to write, still, but I think I’m intimated by it.  It’s been so long since I’ve made a serious effort to write, that the very idea of it scares me.  Which I don’t like, cause I used to love writing.  I’m sure if I can just get going, I could get back in to it.  Starting has, unfortunately, always been the hardest part for me.

I’m horrible at first drafts.  I critique every sentence trying to get it right before I move on.  I really need to stop that.  I think the gentleman over at This Blog has it just right and I need to just let the first draft out so I can get started.  Going to make another attempt at that today.  Here’s to hoping for the best!