NOSTALGIA IS A WEAPON

11:38 pm. Still awake. Don’t have the earliest of days tomorrow, but I’ll still be up before dawn. I can’t sleep, thoughts darting wildly about, uncertainties rearing their collective head.

I accepted a job promotion today. Same company, different location within the same city-area. I’ve been at my current post for two and a half years, made a home for myself within these walls, with these people. In the last few months I’ve often hated going to work, but that doesn’t make things any easier right now. I’ll admit it: I’m scared. I’m shaking up my foundation, leaving a place of comfort for one with an unknown future. Most of my local friends work at the place I’m leaving; will I find new friends where I’m going? Will I be able to establish a good authority, be able to make decisions to better the environment I’m moving to? Will I be able to make a strong life for myself outside of work with an unstable schedule?

Not that there aren’t great reasons to have taken this job: a fairly substantial raise, the opportunity to show myself capable of additional duties, adding some hearty credits to my resume. And maybe, just maybe, the force of change tossing me out of the funk I’ve managed to find myself in once again. This last bit is as much a plea, a prayer, as it is blind optimism.

Done talking about work now. There’s so much more to say about other things, but the need for sleep gets more urgent by the minute. Another post soon.

… it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Maybe I should, I dunno, write something. Though I wonder if there’s still anyone around to read.

The writing is coming back, bit by bit. I still don’t have anything whole to share yet, but there are dozens of fragments floating around, and new ones arriving with a greater frequency than before. As an experiment, I thought I’d open up the folder where all these pieces sit (separate documents for each attempt) and see if anything therein would spark inspiration, or perhaps give me a jumping-off point to continue an unfinished thought. Well. I hadn’t realized the sheer enormity of the aborted efforts. I provide a screenshot of what happens when all text files are opened at once, within the viewpoint of the “all windows” function of Mac OSX’s Exposé:

Um. Yeah. I have some work to do.

As with any neglected skill, my complete lack of writing these past few months has left me rusty and incapable of spitting out anything lucid, it seems. I was never very good at it anyway, but this is just frustrating.

This is just a post to say that I’m at least trying to update again, and to apologize for once again being a bad blogger. Not that I suspect anyone checks here regularly anymore; this place lacks only boarded-up windows and a “for rent” sign on the front porch. I’m still here, despite appearances otherwise. Hopefully I’ll actually have something to share soon.

And thanks to all for the hugs and well-wishes on the last post. I didn’t mean to leave you unacknowledged. You words and thoughts help more than I can tell you.

It’s weird how quickly time gets away from me. It’s been another month-plus since the last time I posted, and now there’s so much to say that I have no idea where to begin.

I’ve tried writing a lot lately, which has resulted in a new folder on my desktop that contains more than a dozen partially-composed entries. I’ve begun to think of these attempts as mid-term miscarriages. I start out with something promising, begin to develop something on the page, and then suddenly and without warning it aborts itself, unwilling to progress any further or develop into something whole. It’s endlessly frustrating.

Life is interesting these days. I’m going through cycles of highs and lows like I haven’t experienced in years. Yet it’s not the dangerous, uncontrollable kind; this is a result of experiencing, feeling. I’m realizing what it’s like to be alive again. I’d forgotten how much being alive could fucking hurt. But boy, those moments when you’ve bared your soul in the depth of conversation and had it accepted with a smile and a hug… those moments make all the suffering worthwhile. It’s what Enji said once when she was my age: “Everything is part of the journey. Frustration, peace, depression, ecstasy, loneliness, everything. Note that true happiness is impossible without suffering — there is no light without dark. Contrast, my dear, contrast.” This time tomorrow I might be singing a different tune. But I’ll take any moment of enlightenment, no matter how small or brief.

Sorry for the absence. I’ll try and return soon, hopefully with something a little more substantial and expository.

I’ve been experiencing some strange physical issues lately. Complete exhaustion despite a full night’s rest, a substantially reduced appetite (and therefore loss of weight- nearly ten pounds in two weeks), an occasional “buzzing” feeling in my head, increased heart rate during periods of no physical exertion, etc. It’s been going on steadily for a few weeks now, so in a moment of caution I dropped by the walk-in clinic the other day and had them do a quick blood test. No mono, thank god. Physically I checked out okay. “Probably just a bug,” they said. “Drink lots of fluid and get some sleep.” Both of which I was doing in excess anyway.

But then I was talking to my mother this evening, and she brought up a very interesting point:
“You know better than most that emotional stress can display itself physically. Even if you don’t think there’s something going on, there might be something going on.”

Um, well, yeah. There *has* been something going on (though she’s fairly unaware of it, at my discretion), so this makes a lot of sense. Since it’s been situationally-based turmoil rather than a meaningless depression I haven’t thought of doing anything about it. She suggested I pay my therapist, who I haven’t talked to since September, a visit. The woman worked pretty closely with me for well over a year, after all.

Yeah, I think I’ll do that.

Of course, today is Saturday. Office isn’t open till Monday. Drat.

(Completely unrelated: I’m more than mildly embarrassed by the last entry. It worked in my head, but the way it came out is not at all how I intended. I’ll end up doing a massive rewrite on it at some point. It’s a good thing I’m not a professional writer; that entry, like many others, was published before it was finished. I’ve become so infrequent with my updates that I’ve now put self-enforced time constraints on the writing process. The result is entries that I know aren’t ready to be released, and ones that I’m extremely unsatisfied with/mortified by the next day. Sorry for subjecting you guys to crap.)

I’ve gone another month without posting. How the hell did that happen? More importantly, where the hell did my thirty days go?

Lots of actual “stuff” has happened/is happening, so I’m working on a real entry now. Hopefully it’ll be up within the next 24 hours. It’ll most assuredly be private, so apologies to those who read from RSS feeds. I think you’ve all got actual accounts here, but if you’re reading and don’t (and want to know what’s been up), you know where to find me.

Also a quick apology for the theme change (again). I discovered the last one had some imbedded porn-related crap in it. Google my online pseudonym and go about five pages in- I can promise I had nothing to do with an older lesbian sex party, nor the preteen sex (ew). I actually like this theme better anyway. Anyone know how to rid myself of those search results?

A year ago today I vowed to give up smoking, another attempt to add to the dozens over the past few years. Well, this one actually stuck. Besides the handful (maybe five) of cigarettes I’ve bummed from people (usually while heavily inebriated), I haven’t touched them since.

It’s actually weird to look back and think of myself as a smoker. It seems so foreign now- “Really? A cigarette? Why on earth would you want to do that?”.

My world smells a little cleaner these days, and I’m in better health and spirits than I’ve been in years. Not sure how much of that is related, but what it boils down to is: I don’t miss it one bit.

Had my first piano lesson this afternoon. It was quickly noticed that I have a horrible tendency to use the pads of my fingers to depress keys rather than the tips. As a result I’ve spent a good chunk of this evening running the C major scale back and forth on both hands in an effort to rid myself of a nasty fifteen-plus year habit. It’s nice to have someone point out what I’ve been doing wrong all this time, and to deliver such information so nicely and politely. Between working on that and counting my rhythm I’ve got a healthy dose of homework for the next week. Lesson number two is next Monday. Time to put in some good hard work so I can impress.

I’m suddenly overcome with excitement at being a student again. *grin*

Oh dear god, that was a lot of work, but I think I may have this site in a place where I can be happy with it for the time being. Plugin working: check. New layout (which I can’t take credit for, except for having to completely rework the header and do a little hit-or-miss php editing to get rid of unwanted crap): check.  Another day lost to this damn thing: check. There’s still another theme I’m looking into, but I think that one will have to wait till I can have someone else take a look at it (I may just take you up on your offer, Enji). Anyway, I’m relieved to have come to a good stopping point.

Once again, though, I spent so much time screwing around with this that it’s now past time for me to be in bed. I have no idea when the hell I’ll actually write anything substantial. Hopefully by this weekend’s end. Right now, it’s sleepy-time.