06 July 2003 - 11:57 p.m.

Between this past Thursday and now, I've done the following things:

Drove for eight hours down to Knoxville by myself

Went to see my cousin who I spent a lot of time with growing up getting married

Drove for eight hours back up here by myself.

Needless to say, I've had a lot of time to contemplate. It's become rather astounding how much bullshit I've led myself to believe over the past.. I suppose over a year, probably longer. The last time I wrote something on here, I was mostly still in catharsis from having my eyes opened. The wedding was something of an extra punch. I mean, I didn't get depressed, which I most likely could have, but I just noticed that I was only socializing with other family, and I wasn't really involved with anyone else around there of my own age. The night before me and my brother went to meet my cousin and his friends at this bar for something of a pre wedding party. My brother was all hyped about presentations towards the women around.. needless to say I was confused. I had another one of those trains of thought where I'm like, "women? they could actually be interested in me? that's crazy man" and I realized how ridiculous that is. I thought about a lot of the ways I've been similar to that, and I mostly understood that I really would like to get over all of it, I just hadn't been focused enough to put forth some effort, and I mostly just didn't know how to start.

I've been trying to be invisible. At some point in my life, it was probably the culmination of a lot of depressing circumstances, but I decided I didn't want people to notice me around. At all. Whenever people would ask me to be involved in some form of social outing, I'd do a minimum to which you could still say I went and "had fun", but obviously the point hadn't been accomplished. I gradually let myself lose touch with the friends I had, and I had no interest in trying to make any money or some kind of a life for myself. I basically gave up on what it is people go through to get where they want to be in life. I didn't know what to do with my life, so I just ended up doing nothing. I can't really say I was depressed, although I suppose by definition I was. I didn't feel that way all the time, but I totally had no direction to follow. My impulses get something done were satisfied by, for example, finally finishing Final Fantasy 8. Fuck, that was some alliteration. Anyway.

Obviously something had to turn me around. There's always some circumstance that makes it go. Well, I did my requisite job hunting ideas the middle of this past week, and I actually got called back for a job interview. It's at a local ISP. They called me within a couple hours of sending my resume just to their HR people, with no specific job advertised. So that's the only downside, that I have no clue what they'll want me for. But I guess I'll find out... it's at 4pm tomorrow. Even if it doesn't work out, I got a message from the job developer who's been helping me that there's a company job fair doing mass interviews that I can go to on Wednesday. Pretty good prospects considering what my local circumstances have come up to lately.

I'm totally surprised at how ridiculous I was being... it took a painful revelation and some self reflecting to realize it. I had actually been liking being not involved with the rest of the world, and brushing off people who didn't like that about me. When really those people weren't using that as a reason to dislike me, as I thought, but really wanted me to be someone they could be around. It seems trivial now, but I really did think that the best solution was for me to stay away from everyone and deny their assertions that I should try to make something of myself. I can hardly afford to beat myself up over not having a girlfriend when I don't even really have any friends. And I can't really do much of anything if I don't have a job to support myself. I'd been leaning on the shoulders of my family for a long time, letting them decide my fate, and now they're really letting me know that I should stop doing that when I'm totally capable of doing things myself.

Blame? I'm not beating myself up anymore for being a nobody. I've only got to go with how things are. Being short sighted and not finding my own job and social life because there aren't any attractive jobs in the paper and I hate talking to strangers in bars. Superficial things like that would really get in my way. Any time an easy way around presented itself, I grabbed it. I would say that a handful of selfish people twisted my feelings and my self image a lot when I was a teenager and rather impressionable. But honestly, I've been timid and bashful ever since I was really small. And all the times after that when I could do something significant, I passed up because I only wanted to have something really great, instead of something at all.

I did think a lot about how difficult it's been for me to get involved with girls... obviously I haven't had sudden success there, but I understand that it's another contribution to the many bad assumptions I based my behavior around.

I've had enough. It's time to quit trying to be the invisible boy. Also time to quit being the invisible boy to the few people I know and feel comfortable around up here. I'm not going to have some huge drastic personality change, but I'm determined to figure out a place to start. It's one thing to be independent, and another to actually have something to look forward to.

Time to find out what the new routine's going to be. If you're reading this, and you think it's another part of my self defeating cycle, you could be right, but at least I could say at some point in my life I realized a good direction to be in. I don't know how likely any further self deprecation is going to be. I will keep you all posted.

I feel like I'm leaving a really big part of who I used to be behind, but it doesn't feel bad at all. It's pretty liberating.

Sign off

�

�

previous - next