Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy? New Year

As 2012 comes to a close I, along with about 7 billion other people, start to analyse what I take away from this year.

It's been a very confusing year. A very long year. A very...well, it's been a lot of things.

I've met new people, made some friends, lost others, actually had my heart broken once (badly) back in March, put myself out there, taken myself back.

New jobs, new home (soon), frustration, joy, anger, elation, no rest....so many things.

What do I take away from all of this?  Well, I think Spike said it best in the musical episode of "Buffy", "Once More With Feeling"...

"Life's not a song. Life isn't bliss, life is just this. It's living."

But I think I can add something else to that...Life may not be bliss, but if you try, and don't stop trying, it can be bliss.

Happy New Year to all (no one reads this anyways)

My love to one

My joy to all

Friday, December 28, 2012

As disappointing as a crappy first date...

I went to a party last night and had a really good time.  Got a little drunk, danced a little stupidly, made a couple of new friends.  Really good time.

This morning I woke up with the requisite hangover, late for work of course, and headed into the office.

When I get to the office I find out that one of the new friends I made last night had his cell phone stolen at the party.

Pissed me off something fierce.

This guy bought his iPhone 5 just last month and spent a damn near pretty penny on it, and someone betrayed his trust like that.

Sometimes I just don't get people.....

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Sweating Buckets

The heat here is overwhelming...no, seriously, yesterday it was 43°C with the heat factor.

I felt like I was drippng away to nothingness.

It's an interesting image, don't you think?  To drip away into non-existence.  To fade from memory as if you never were, evaporating into the atmosphere only to float around with the trillions of other particles.

Stephen King, an amazing writer in my opinion, wrote in a preface of a collection of short stories "Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym."

That feeling of loneliness is like walking into a vast cavern and yelling at the top of your lungs...It can be an incredible short-term experience, but then you realize that all you're listening to is your own voice from a short while ago.

To make a connection, a reciprocal one obviously, can make you float on air.  Make you feel like you're on top of the world at all times, but sometimes that connection doesn't mean as much to them as it does to you.  Or vice-versa.

You're a support structure, you're a sounding board, you're a reservation for one at the best restaurant in town.  Granted, everyone needs that, but once again, you end up being alone...and there's that word again. That horrible word.

It resonates inside of you when you say it, but no one feels it the same way you do.  They don't feel it echoing in the recesses of your very being, until all it is is a voice, a tiny little voice, saying that things won't change.

Fucking little voice. Fucking little word. Fucking sensation.

A Post-Saturnalia Post

So a very good friend of mine recommended that I start writing in my blog again.  The stupid, inane things that I wrote down here years ago seemed to do me well....

Here I am, it's half past 3 in the morning on December 25th....and I have nothing to show for this 2012.

A little emptiness (ok, fine, a lot). I'm listening to an assortment of music, a lot of Michael Buble oddly enough.  Most of my "friends" are out with each other, living it up, getting sloshed, doing things that I'd rather be doing.

And here I am...worried about one friend who has gotten herself into a bit of a medical pickle by following an idiotic diet. And worried even moreso about another friend who seems to be missing someone greatly during this holiday season.

She hasn't wanted to talk about it, and I think it's because the wound is too fresh in her heart.  But at the same time I feel that she needs to talk about it.

Off on a tangent again...I stare at my fingers while I type and I marvel at how easily the words come out. I barely have to think them and there they are on the screen. No, it's not a wonderous thing...everyone thinks and writes and speaks, but not many do it coherently.

Am I writing coherently though? Or is this more stream-of-consciousness writing?

No clue.

Back to my friend...I like her, she knows it. I've laid it out for her in no uncertain terms, but as always with "El Gringo" (as they call me here), I'm not enough of a dick, so I end up as the greatest friend on the planet.

Yeah, the lonely man's life for me....there's a song in there somewhere, probably a Blues song.

It's an old story, probably the oldest one.

Either way I want to be there for this girl. Maybe she needs a friend more than she needs a boyfriend (at 37 is being a boyfriend even viable??)

She needs support more than she does romance. A caring ear, more than loving lips. I could go on and on.

My best and worst course of action is to just keep helping her, listening to her, being there.

Yes, I know, I'll continue to be a friend and nothing more...but maybe that's my destiny. To be the best friend around, even though I'm probably too damned lonely to be of any good to anyone.

I'm reminded of a phrase I read once in a book "Done bun can't be undone". I've chosen this path, it's my lot in life.

And I'm good at it.

Monday, May 05, 2008

Talk to me! Talk to you? Guess not...

I just received 3 text messages from a friend of mine. And I sent her responses to each of those messages.

Once I finished writing the last one out I got to thinking. Have we become so used to non-verbal communication (which inevitably takes up more time than verbal) that we avoid talking to each other?

How much more difficult is it to pick up the phone and call a friend on their birthday, instead of texting her/him?

Is it really that much easier to send an IM to a colleague who doesn't sit too far away, instead of strolling by?

I understand that sometimes due to work we have to stay at our desks/posts/latrines, or for any other reason, but have we really gone so far as to eliminate sociability?

This depresses me a bit, especially since I do exactly all these things that I'm complaining about.

Granted I do prefer to pick up the phone or get up and away from my desk to talk to someone. I just feel that there's a better dialogue when you can look someone in the face, or listen to their voice. But I'm still guilty.

Online Social systems inevitably promote this state of affairs a bit, since it's wholly virtual, but they do it on a much more social level, and across all of the globe.

I just hope that we don't lose all of our contact. There's just something nicer about talking than texting.