Deep Inside My Thoughts

I thought this was perhaps the funniest thing ever.  If you’re going to carve a Satanic star into yourself, at least do it right.

I used to update this quite often, I need to get back into this habit again.

This apartment is like a cell with no one else around.  I think it’s actually driving me crazy.  I keep thinking I see things moving out of the corner of my eye, and when I focus on whatever, I don’t see anything.  It makes me very uncomfortable.

I wouldn’t say its psychotic, or there’s not something actually being blown around or something, but damn it, this place does feel like a cell.  I’ve been getting out more than usual lately, but coming home to an empty house always feels like such a downer.

I miss waking up to someone next to me, I miss climbing over someone and scrambling to work.  I don’t know if I just kept Danyale around so long just to have someone else here.  There was love and attraction there, but then again, I stood by thru a lot that I shouldn’t have.  Did I put up with so much shit because of not wanting to be alone?

I really haven’t thought about her much lately.   She’s tried to contact me, and I’ve been pretty bitter and stand offish towards her.  Its not that I still don’t care for her, rather, I just can’t be with her the way she is now.  Maybe if she had a job for more than a fraction of the time we were together, things might have turned out different

I never thought of myself as the type to get into shooting a bow.  I always imagined it would be boring, repeative, and pointless.  Most of the guys at work though, are really into the damn thing, so after they kept asking me to go with them, I finally agreed to go.  I borrowed one of the guy’s wife’s bow, a top of the line model costing well over $1500, and was hooked at my first shot.  Sometimes my groupings were tight, sometimes they weren’t, but every shot seemed like it was fun, and I was concentrating more and more on hitting exactly dead center.  Two weeks after I first started shooting, I decided to get a bow myself.

Last night, I went up to Fairview,KS to an Archery Shop owned by one of my co-workers brother-in-law.  I’ve never really seen ‘downtown’ fairview, and it was damn depressing when I actually saw it.  I can’t imagine people being content and happy in small towns like these, but as far as bow shops go, the little quanit shop had me hooked.  Casey, the owner, gave me a sweet deal on a Mission bow, and I probably shot 200 shots in 4 hours while I was up there.

It wasn’t as accurate right off the back as the other bow I shot, and its a little more difficult for me to shoot, but I’m having fun with it.  For some reason, I tend to lurch when releasing, so my groups aren’t quite as tight, but as Casey showed me, it can put an arrow dead on target perfectly.  Once I learn how to shoot this specific bow, I should be having much more fun, and hope to eventually go to some of these 3D shoot I hear about at work.  My bow there would be bare minimum lowest, but I hardly think I would be too competative, and would be happy just to shoot for the fun of it.

Sleep.  That’s the defining aspect of this weekend.  All I’ve done is slept.

I screwed up my toe late Thursday, and took the day off because I was hobbling around.    I slept most of the day until I had to go to the doctors, then came home, and slept more.  I don’t know why I’m so tired of all sudden, there’s not too much stress at work, but I suppose I could be getting sick again.  I was really sick a few weeks ago, and spent the entire weekend in bed too.

But I doubt I’m getting too sick.  It probably just boils back to the discontentment I’m feeling with everything right now.  My food doesn’t taste as sweet, the sun not as bright; yet, I don’t think its full-blown depression.    I’ve always had this rather funny way of looking at things, a way that makes me view things different than another person.

Truth be told, I’m still not content with anything in my life.  I thought I’d be further than I really am, and have accomplished more.  Kansas has begun to bore me even more than usual, and almost every day I think about getting up and leaving.  But, I have no place to go.  I have no other purpose right now than to carry on with the motions of what I do now.

Work’s still interesting, but I really can’t wait for summer to come.  I can’t wait to actually do more work, and learn new things, and get out of the office more.  I’m getting tired and frustrated of trying to final out a job that everyone dropped the ball on years ago, and now we’ve decided to move our office around, and that diminishes what I can do as well.

I still have the same dreams I’ve had for years of just going away to some place more exciting.  Those very dreams that pushed me to Kansas, now call for me to get up again, and I know I can’t answer their call at the moment.

I enjoy just getting out of Topeka though, hoping in my car and just heading somewhere.  I feel more relaxed when I’m driving around aimlessly.   A few weeks ago, that nomadic spirit took me to Wichita, and then to Salina, and finally home.  I looked at Boeing, got lost in downtown Wichita, and had pancakes in Salina.  That was fun to me, and it helped a lot.

Maybe tomorrow will bring another adventure.  Maybe I’ll wake up and just get out of town.  Kansas City sounds about right to me, and I’d love to go to the Riverwalk where we ended up when my dad was out here.    I really haven’t been out to KC since then, and it’d be fun to go back.

Knowing my luck, I’ll sleep in far too long to make use of anything tomorrow.

This last week at work has been a string of classes for work, strung back to back.   They’re required for work, and I was kind of looking forward to a few of them.  However, in 40 hours worth of work, I think I found maybe 2 hours interesting enough.  The others I listened to, but just wasn’t very intent on it.

The week started out with Basic Inspection, and I damn near fell asleep in this class.  It seems like half a day of bullshit.  They started off going over the index for two hours.  I mean a freaking index for two hours?  Granted, contract administration isn’t glamorous stuff, but the guy they had teaching the class literally put people to sleep.  It was terrible, and beyond belief.  In fact, more people failed this basic class than any other one, probably due to the lack luster teaching.

Day two was Structures Inspection.  I really kind of enjoyed this class, learning about construction of bridges and various other structures.  Oddly enough, I picked up on most of it working on Valley Falls with Geary, so it wasn’t as much help as I would have thought, but I did pick up on a few things.  I actually enjoyed the teaching style of the two engineers that taught it, and it was laid back, casual, and serious at the same time.  Both of the engineers really seemed like they were passionate about their jobs, and it rubbed off on me.  And, I also learned a new term: gang vibrator.

Next on the agenda was Asphalt Pavement Inspection.  Once again, it was an awesome teacher.  He showed the class first off how an Asphalt Plant works, and I learned a few things I didn’t know before about that.  But in the long run, turns out my work on Asphalt pretty much covered the entire class, and despite learning a few things that we failed to do, I pretty much knew it all.  Easy mode.

The last class, and quickest of them all was Concrete Paving Inspection.  The damn thing was scheduled for 8 hours, but really only lasted 4 hours, spread across two days.  Once again it was pretty basic stuff.  Basically once you grasp the concept on concrete, there isn’t too much to learn about paving.  Essentially, check the slump, air, and make sure your base is moist.  Put it down, slip form, vibrate, and finish.  Then cure, make a few saw cuts, and then cut all the way through when it’s hardened.  Nothing too exciting here, but I did appreciate how quick it went.   Short classes are always the best, and the easiest to retain.

I only have two other classes scheduled: Aggregate Field Inspection, and a Statistics class.  Stat’s should be fairly easy, but Agg Field will be a little more difficult, simply because I’ve done some of the stuff with Ron, and we did it a way that’s not completely kosher.  I also have some sort of Erosion Control conference at the Kansas History Museum on Tuesday, but I don’t know entirely how in depth that will go.  Seems like most of us at work are going, so the breaks at least should be entertaining, if the lectures aren’t.

It’s hard to believe it’s 2009 already.  It’s hard to believe I’ve seen 3 New Years out in Kansas, and I’ve really not done a damn thing for any of them.  This year was no different, and I brought in the New Year relaxing at home with some good Whiskey.  I tried to watch the ball drop on Hulu, but it seems that they had some technical problems, and their streaming wasn’t working.  I would imagine that all the multitudes of people that don’t have cable TV, and only have cable internet, had the same thing in mind.  Maybe next year Hulu, invest in some fatter bandwidth pipes for your dynamic content.

I took most of the week off of work, and I’ve really just lounged at the apartment sick.  I’ve watched countless movies, played around with the new computer Geary traded me with, and even played around with Zen Cart, an E-store when my dad mentioned something about it.

I’ve probably watched 15 movies in the last five days.  Rapidshare comes in quite handy for this, and I can almost find anything I want.  Bittorent still has its uses, but for speed, Rapidshare will always win, especially when coupled with a download manager.  What takes an hour on Bittorent, I can get in 20 minutes, as long as I don’t need to do anything else on the Internet at the moment.   Anyhow, I can say that new Benjamin Button movie is quite frankly the best storytelling I’ve seen since the Dark Knight, and easily takes the place of the #2 movie of the year in my book.

That new computer I got certainly isn’t the best.  It’s only got a 1.6 GHz P4, 256MB of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive.   I installed Kubuntu and then finally Unbuntu on it, just to play around with.  The current line of thought is just to mirror this blog, automatically sync it to the Linux box, and propagate any changes to any machine within the hour.  So far, it isn’t working 100%, but I think there’s a limitation on the shared server on Dreamhost, so I don’t know if it will get working or not.   I suppose if I don’t get it working, I’ll just sell the damn thing.

I also spent a couple hours Saturday playing with Zen Cart, seeing how easy it would be to set up an online store.   My dad mentioned something about setting up an online store for his company, and I downloaded Zen Cart a few years ago, and I wanted to check out how easy it would be.  There’s a lot of data entry for products, but once that is done, there isn’t much left to do.  I thought about setting up my own E-store long ago, but the margins on most things I could drop ship were quite too low.  Still, I wonder if I should take a new look into it, and it might be a good way to make some money without too much work, beyond the initial investment.  It will be interesting to see how my dad does his E-store, if he just buys a turnkey solution or piece meals it.   Piece meal is cheaper by far, but turn key is easier, requiring only inventory entry.  But my thought is, if you’re going to go thru all the hassle of entering in inventory, why not go the extra mile, invest another hour or so, and save yourself $20 a month at least?

I ready to get back to work tomorrow, and try to get something done.  We haven’t been too productive lately, but I really want to get things done this week, and try to get a good chunk of Valley Falls off my desk.

So, I decided last night to update my blog, change it to a new theme, and basically give it a totally new look again.  Its tasks like these that entertain me.  For some reason, hours will fly by as I’m downloading something to play with, editing the code to my liking, and perfecting how I want it.  There’s so much unreasonable bloat with Wordpress themes, and what I really hate is the ‘free’ themes you find have links to gambling and such sites.

You see these people give away these themes for free, while at the same time promoting other sites.  If 1,000 sites install this theme, then when Google indexes them, they will see 1,000 links pointing at this page about, lets say, horse racing.  This inflates the page rank of the horse racing site, and it will rank up higher in search results.  Is it ethical?  Not too many things are anymore.

Anyhow, I hate stuff like that.  I don’t really want to promote things like that either.  So I take the time to edit that stuff out, get rid of a few boxes I don’t need, and tweak here and there.  Overall I think I’m satisfied with the new look, and think it better reflects me than that impressionist theme I had before.

I want to start blogging again, and keep it up.  I want to record my daily thoughts and fears, but quite frankly, I’m just not interesting enough anymore to do it as much as I used to.  I’ve been reduced to a corporate drone, work and sleep, and nothing more.   My professional and personal lives are spent behind a screen, or occasionally at work inspecting construction.  But jesus, the paper work there is the real job, not making sure someone installs an expansion joint right.

Here’s to bureaucracy .

Christmas has never been a very important day for me in a long, long while.  Of course when I was younger, I’d always look forward to it every year, like every child would, but as I grew up, it became less and less important.  The final straw was when my grandmother died, and Christmas just hasn’t been the same ever since.  The family was less inclined to be together, and it just didn’t feel as special as it had before.

I haven’t believed in God in quite awhile, yet I used to look forward to Christmas.  Christmas just isn’t a Christian holiday anymore—it’s a day of consumption, of overspending, and of giving gifts.  That transcends everything, and makes it a universal commercial holiday.  That’s how I justify Christmas, even though I don’t believe in Christ or God, I do believe in the tradition of commercialism.

My grandfather passed away this month too.  They were the set that even though they lived 5 minutes away, I barely saw them twice a year.  Birthdays, and Christmases, and the occasional dinner, that’s all I’ve seen of them.  I lived my entire life compartmented from them.  I love my grandfather, I wouldn’t say I knew him, but I loved him.  His loss was easier to take though simply because I didn’t spend every day around him, unlike my other grandmother who I saw every day.

The point I’m attempting to make here is family isn’t as important to me at Christmas as it once was.   We just send checks or gift cards anymore, and I haven’t seen them in two years since I moved out here.  I’ve seen my dad a few times, but that’s it.  I go on day-by-day, talking to family when I can, but always moving forward.  Even at Christmas time, I’m equally happy to be alone, lounging around on this day.  As a matter of personal tradition, I’ve had Chinese for dinner for something like the last 5 years or so.   That goes hand-in-hand with my thanksgiving dinner at Cracker Barrel.

I’m a lone wolf.  I’ll always be more comfortable alone than I will with large amounts of family.  I suppose it might change once I have children on my own, but for right now, solitude is peace for me.  That’s part of the reason I came out here was for solitude.  The other reason I thought was spiritual in a sense—to find myself, but that has failed miserably, and wasn’t probably a good idea to begin with.

Christmas time…just another day for me.

I can barely fall asleep at a reasonable time anymore.  When I do, I’m either out for a few hours, or all day.  How I can sleep three hours a night for a week, and sleep 16 one day is beyond me.  I’m tired all the time, worn out, mentally and physically exhausted.   I feel like there’s an immense pressure bearing down on me all the time, and I can’t just explain it.

I don’t feel like I get satisfaction out of anything anymore.  I don’t think anything I’ll do will be good enough, and things that should make me happy, just don’t.   I want to be alone most of the time, and most of the time I’m alone, I want to be with someone.  My mind is a paradox, ever wanting the opposite of what I have.

Could it be depression?  I suppose it could be.  I fit the criteria of the DSM IV for it.  So, I’m depressed, what now?  Talk about it?  Go take meds?  Is that supposed to fix me?  Make me feel better?  Talking won’t help and I have issues about being dependant on a pill to make me feel better.   People have survived thousands of years without taking pills, so why should we?  Is the idea of medication for everything really a good idea?

Look at Danyale for example.  She’s epileptic and depressed.  She takes two pills for her epilepsy,   Add another one in for her depression and mood swings, and another when she cant sleep.  That’s four medications a day, which works out to be like 12 pills.  Why would I want to do that?  She still has crazy wicked mood swings, even when she’s on them.  So again, what’s the point?  What do they fix?

With other people, maybe they do get better.  But they change too.  I might be damaged and might feel less than whole, but I’m myself.  Perhaps Depression is my defining characteristic, or just a fraction of me.  Time will be the judge of that.  All I’m concerned about right now is riding out this current storm, and getting to that light and the end of the tunnel.

This next week at work should keep me pretty occupied during the day, and I’ll be with coworkers for most of the night too.  I have to go to Salina to take a Soils Tester class for my CIT training, and three other people are going with me.   We all seem to get along for the most part, so it will be nice to network after these god damn classes.   Still, I’ll be down there for a week, so it will suck to live out of a hotel  until then, but I’m sure I’ll manage as always.