and you’re my favourite thing

When thinking about my life right now, in this moment, I’m definitely “happy”. But that term isn’t quite what I’m looking for, because I’m “happy” when I open the fridge in the morning and realize I still have orange juice. Despite the obvious joy of breakfast nectar, this is way more than orangejuicehappy.

And when I consider the near future, I’m certainly “excited”. I’d say I’m “excited” about certain upcoming cultural events, but the anticipation I feel for the more significant aspects of the future is much… deeper than even obligatory speedboat explosions.

I also feel really, really “lucky”. But I don’t know if that’s necessarily the appropriate term either. It’s “lucky” when you’re almost late for the train and it’s also slightly delayed, allowing you to catch it anyway. Although aspects of random chance certainly factor into all events, my life is more than pure happenstance.

I’m also a little bit “nervous”. I don’t want to screw this up somehow. Ok, “nervous” is probably the exact right word.

on s’électrise

Oh sure, daily routines, weekly schedules, and five year plans often fool me into thinking that I have a pretty good handle on the ol’ life business. Easy to sit back and go yup, this is what I expected, what I planned for. It might not necessarily be the ideal situation, but at least it’s the one I anticipated.

But then, sometimes, things happen that I totally didn’t expect. Often amusing, frequently frustrating, other times tragic, occasionally awesome, and very, very rarely – superamazinglybeautiful.

It’s times like these you learn to live again.

your voice can take me there

Oy, my blog is being steadily engulfed by this Random/RealLife tag cloud at perhaps the exact same rate as my life. No doubt readability is suffering as a result. Like, seriously, who wants to read this drivel? Whatever. It’s past 2am on a Tuesday and I have nothing better to do.

So I was wrong about May, it ended even lower than it began. In fact, it was a solid contender for rolling 6 month low, or something like that. (It’s probably for the best that I don’t have actual data with which to determine such things…)

My emotional construct is perhaps exactly like Jenga. Everything is a bunch of blocks, all stacked up to make a solid structure, steadily Stackenblochen. But the blocks don’t stay that way, they get taken out, and the column of bricks starts to get weaker with ever-increasing fragility. Inevitably, that one fateful block, upon removal, causes the tower to topple over in absolute disintegration.

And taking out that last brick really doesn’t seem like it’s enough to cause that total destruction. I mean, you just took out a whole bunch of other blocks, so why should one more cause everything to fall apart? But that’s the thing, the entire sequence of removal caused the collapse – that last brick was just perfectly positioned to become, by the events preceding it, absolutely necessary to the continued integrity of the tower such that its absence resulted in chaos.

So ya, Jenga. My tower toppled over the weekend. It’s still in pieces on the floor. And I feel like an idiot because there’s no real reason, no single block is really that important, so why the hell did this happen? But I guess that’s the thing – it’s not just one brick, there’s a whole pile of them missing, and that last block was simply the culmination of a sequence that started who-knows-how-long-ago.

But whatever, I’ll rebuild my tower, even as blocks continue to disappear…

breathing fire doesn’t look good on a resume

I’d say I began the month fairly low on the ol’ hows-it-going-ometer, an internal situation which was not improved by converting my emotional distress potential into work energy, a quasi-thermodynamic ability that I’ve readily employed in the past, and continue to default towards. The idea being that the worse I feel about personal stuff, the more effort I devote to school/work.

I think I’m getting better, almost too good actually, at pulling all-nighters between days of full activity. It’s one thing to not sleep and then be really tired the next day, it’s another thing entirely to not sleep and still operate at like ~80% efficiency for another full cycle. Coffee and energy drinks do help, but aren’t necessarily required.

Sometimes, oftentimes in fact, I ponderously compare (my perception of) the internal emotional state of people around me with my own inner workings, and almost always come away with the conclusion that true interpersonal “normalcy” may be forever beyond my reach. I guess it’s the human condition, but I’d really, really like to know what’s going on inside other people, because generally what’s going on between my four walls scares the shit outta me. My emotions, suppressed and generally action-less though they may be, really don’t make sense, nor do they seem to align with what a “normal” person “should” feel.

I almost always feel like I’m faking social interaction, like it’s acting and I’m trying not to look at the camera. I truly wonder if everybody feels this way? I guess I’ll never really know.

May is probably gonna turn out alright though. Just gotta stop and smell the roses…

I’m never alone, I’m alone all the time

*Hurl*

It dawned on me though (or I should say it crunched me – as “dawned” implies a warm blanket of epiphanic light, and this was more like being hit by a free-falling refrigerator) that there can be absolutely no doubt with regards to causality: the variables may change, but the only constant in all my failures is me.

But hey, it’s all good. Instantly solves one problem, and I can totally get another QC shirt. Yes, the only thing I like better than my good friend Irony is finding the silver lining in anything.

And besides, losing is a part of life. At least I don’t play for the Miami Heat.

after all is said and done

In retrospect, it was an irrationally stupid feeling. But then suddenly, unexpected emotional high follows! For a similar and almost-as-ridiculous reason, haha, but whatever. As much as I sometimes try, I really can’t control my feelings. Sure, I can control how I express them (somewhat), but when something causes me to feel a sudden pang of loss or spark of happiness, I might as well roll with it.

Even if it does make me a fool.

for the very first time with you

Supposedly nobody is to “blame” for this mistake, it’s just “one of those things”. Whatever. I blame the Cylons.

Oh ya, so I’ve spent most of my well-wasted, disconnected free time going through the first two seasons of BSG on DVD, in anticipation of the season 3 DVD release next week. Awesome show.

That is, when I haven’t been watching the Rockets continue their *20 game* winning streak. I think I’ve missed like maybe 2 or 3 Rockets games since I’ve been in Houston. Every other game I’ve either watched on TV or been to live. So since we haven’t had TV at home, we’ve headed out to the surprisingly-impressive “Fox Sports Grill” down at the Galleria (Albertans – think West Ed, but classier) several times in the past few weeks. By now, they pretty much recognize us by name. Hah, it’s just like Cheers :P

Haha, I have like a half-crush on the bookishly hot, late 20s manager lady who works there. In a parallel universe, a less AFC version of me actually had a conversation with her.

lightweights steppin’ aside when we come in

The “_”will be filled by a different letter for each post, for a total of 26. i.e. “The A Word”, etc.

Ostensibly, the cleverness comes from playing on the euphemisms for certain notable letters, like say “B” for example. I’m not actually going to write a post on the b word, but instead any other b word. It’s basically a self-invitation to write a set of short essays on random topics, and tie it all together with only an alphabetic pretense.

Doing this in the expected, sing-song order is too restricting of my already-limited creative output, so I’m just going to do this in whatever order and at whatever pace I feel like. I hope it turns out alright…

is it winter there?

The statement applies to myself. In each post, I’ll cover another profession, different than my own, and why I sometimes have delusions that maybe I *could* do that job, but also why in the end they’re still primarily delusions.

Well, actually, maybe I really could do these jobs. In fact, I think most people could do most jobs… if they really wanted to. Not without training and experience, of course, in some cases a lot of training and experience, but still. Motivation and effort are great equalizers in human achievement. If someone really, really wants to do/be something, they can overcome a lot of otherwise insurmountable obstacles.

For myself, I’m very fortunate in that a great many potential external disadvantages aren’t really an issue. Thus, if I wanted to do/be something other than what I’m actually doing/being, the primary limiting factor is probably my own desire to change. Thus, any other career that I sorta think I could do (but actually realize I “can’t”) is totally an internal issue. My upcoming admission of self-characteristics that prevent me from pursing these as-yet-unnamed* alternative careers is more a confession of my perceived inability to change myself rather than a protest of limiting factors imposed upon me from an outside source.

* – I haven’t mentioned them because I haven’t actually decided what the list is going to be yet…

Anyhow, ya, I don’t really know what the point of these posts will be. It doesn’t really seem like it’ll be enjoyable to read…

Well, whatever, that’s my new idea. Sometimes I really do have these random thoughts about other jobs, where I can kinda half-visualize myself doing it, but it usually involves me having a modified personality, skill set, etc. (Like a pragmatic version of a superpowers dream…)

Oh, and this doesn’t mean I don’t like my current job, haha. I do like my job! That’s why I spent the past several years striving to be basically exactly where I am now. I say “basically exactly” because my plan was only detailed to a certain extent – where I am now is definitely within measurement error of the best I realistically expected I could be. Which might sound negative, but I mean that in a very complimentary way (to my job).

in creeps the morning and another day’s lost