Clarity, MySpacers, Balls, End Game, Kenosha, Davis Improvements

A Moment of Clarity…

So I’m bitching up a storm to Meredith sometime last week I think, and pissed off as hell about someone else.  I’m headed for the door, cursing, and she says “WHOA!  What are you doing?!”  I tell her I’m gonna tell the person to go fuck off, giver her back her key, and tell her to get the hell outta my life.  (Which, btw, what yet another attempt by fear to assert it’s self.  Didn’t really realize that till later that night when I got a chance to think a bit.)  

Meredith tells me no, don’t do that, and gives me all sorts of good valid, logical reasons why not to.  Which of course pisses me off even further, but I reverse course and head for my room, fuming the whole way.  I’m in there probably a minute, when I storm out of my room yelling “Why the hell do *I* have to be the good guy?!!!”

Her answer was pretty simple:  “You don’t have to be the good guy.”

Whoa… I kinda lost sight of that concept.  See, I tend to like to do Good Things.  If someone needs a hand, I give it to ’em.  If there’s a choice between being a complete prick and a nice guy, I’ll be a nice guy (as long as it isn’t a business thing.  Different territory there.)  I do it because I WANT to do it.  Somehow, I lost sight of that for a bit, and I’m not sure why.  But that reminder that I can do whatever I damned well please, well, that goes a long way – so I suddenly felt better about doing the right thing.

Which ended up resulting in me hopping in the car, and taking a nice long drive to nowhere (basically just wandering) and thinking.  I finally made some decisions I had to make.  Pretty much the rest of the week was perfect after that – I made peace with my fears, and picked a path.

More MySpacers!

Thanks to another friend who’s gotten into the MySpace thing (Cassie), I have even more old friends slowly showing up in my friends list on here.  One I dated for a whopping two weeks, and one I partied with.  Cool!

I’m starting to like MySpace more and more – originally I was using it more as a LiveJournal sort of thing, but, finding more people that I know from the past is pretty cool 🙂

She’s Got Big Balls…

A friend emailed me and told me she’s changing her life.   Like, SERIOUSLY changing it.  Starting with checking into ReHab.  Holy crap!  Changing your life is hard to start with – usually most people get drug along in life kicking and screaming, no matter how bad it is.  Chaning things takes energy and balls. (Actually, it takes motivation.  Heather tought me a bit about the Psychology of Motivation when she was getting her Psy degree, mainly for use in video game stuff, but it’s amazing how you can see things a little different when you know the rules of the brain.)  

She’s got a long road ahead of her, of course – anytime something starts with checking into Rehab, you know it’s not gonna be dead simple.  One thing I know about radical change in your life – it’s always much better if you’ve got someone to help, even if it’s only to be a cheering section.

So I pulled out my armor and got it all shined up nice and pretty, saddled up the horse and brushed him down, and sharpened my swords.  I’m ready to rescue someone I care about, if they need it.  I’m the good guy, the knight in shining armor, not because I have to be, but because that’s what I like to be.  Kinda funny, considering about three days before she emailed me about her life changes, I was all wound up about feeling like I HAD to do the Good Thing all the time. LOL

Who knows if she actually NEEDS my help – but it’s there.  Hell, sometimes just knowing someone is willing and able to help is a help in it’s self.  You know you have a fall back then.

End Game

R & S is now down to the end of construction.  The list of to do’s is getting VERY short.  Though oddly enough, now that I’m at the end of the job, I have 3 people there to help get the sucker built.  Go fig.  Tomorrow while I’m away from the job site, they are going to finish fixing the ceiling, painting some equipment, etc.  

I’m dyin’ for them to get open now.  I’m damned proud of the work I’ve done there – it’s taken forever, and most of it has been done by a construction team of ONE.  Just me.  And the fact that I own part of it now helps too – but that’s really more of a bonus to the situation, rather than the primary reason I wanna show it off.

Kenosha, Wi, Here I Come!

Good thing R & S is almost over with.  Because Sunday I leave for Kenosha, WI to go do my automation work up there.  Nice, big profitable job.  I’ll definitely be happy to be up there – working in Kenosha is more like a vacation for me than most of the time when I’m working.  It’s mostly low stress work, the hours are easy, and the people are great.  I’m even scheduled with lots of extra time up there to make sure there aren’t any last minute problems, etc.

I love a paid vacation 😉

This also means when I get back and get my check from the job, I’ll be picking up my camera equiptment.  Which means the script starts to become relevant again.  AHHHHhhhhh – finally 🙂

I have to admit – I didn’t used to be patient enough to do something like this.  If I wanted to buy something, I either did it NOW, or dropped the whole plan.  But I’ve been planning this for a couple o’ months now on how to pull it off, get the equipment together, etc.   I’ve not gotten pissed off because I couldn’t have it RIGHT FUCKING NOW once.  Hm.  Maybie I’m either mellowing a bit, or I’ve learned some nice little lessons about how to make longer term plans work 🙂

R & S, BTW, isn’t the only thing that’s going to be done before I head for Kenosha.  Tomorrow I drop into Spirit and install another automation project I’ve been working on, which is why I won’t be at R & S for a portion of the day.  More money – though this time the money is going to set in my pocket.  I’m going to need about a two week buffer in my pocket intil the check shows up from the Kenosha job and clears the bank.

And when I get back, I’ve already got another project to do with them – modifying the project that I install today to include a larger scale data collection system.  It’s actually a pretty small job.

All of this ends up culminating in completion of goal #1 for this year (not Goal #1 because of priority level, that’s actually achieving zero debt, but because it’s the first one I had put on my list mentally):  making a movie.  Even if it ends up being a cheasy first attempt indie film sort of ordeal, it’s another thing that I’ll have done that I’ve been really really interested in doing.  

Davis Improvements

In a lot of ways, I haven’t been doing nearly as well at my physical self improvement as I should.  I’ve lost weight though – I was 225 (one week average – I don’t count just one day to figure out what I weight, I 

calculate it over a week), and I’m now 118.  Not a huge improvement, but my jeans fit good, I feel good physically in general, and while I still have a gut hangin’ over my belt (er, well, actually, it no longer overlaps my belt), it takes a lot less effort to suck it all in when a cute girl walks by ;-)  

Actually, as a joke I sent a friend a picture the other day, with my shirt off and my gut sucked in.

I was fucking SHOCKED.  There’s abs there when I tightened up.  I mean, like, ones you can see.  I actually looked good.  Holy fuckamolie!  Needless to say, that’s rather encouraging (‘specially if I’m going to be doing that other goal getting the movie done – no one likes a fat ass leading man).  Doing construction for a year may have really been the right choice.  Plus, well, feeling a lot less stressed probably helps too.

I’ve got a long way to go before I get to where I really want to be.  But it’s a great step to see something so positive!

But the whole Davis Improvement doesn’t really stop with my physical well being.  The mental part is important too.  I’ve been buying some brain fodder books from time to time to read for entertainment – Terry Prattchett has been most of my reading.  Just enough meat to be thought provoking, but no risk of it coming out badly.

Simply put – I want something to lift me up and make me feel better.  An escape into a happier world for a while.

I finally decided I could handle something that’s been waiting for me to feel better for a while now:  the last two books in The Dark Tower series. The Dark Tower books are depressing in a lot of ways – these people walk through the valley of death non stop for years it seems.  And, I don’t really forsee the books ending well – it’s the end of the world (actually the end of an uncountable number of universes) in the books, and I don’t really see them stopping it, or even if they do, it’s going to cost them everything to do it.  No easy happy ending.

I avoided it because, well, I didn’t want to read something that I felt was gonna drag me down mentally, and depress me (Stephen King is a good enough writer these days that his writing can actually affect my mood.  A far cry from where he was when things like Pet Semetary were published, IMO.) 

I’ve been enjoying the shit out of them.  Ok, I think I’m definitely more at peace with myself now than I was a couple of months ago (and WAY more at peace than I was a six months or a year ago!)  I have to admit he has done an amazing job, including a whole section where he successfully pulled off something I never imagined any writer could do without it being completely cheezy!  (And then turning it into a completely jaw dropping even later, just to make it more interesting!)

I’m definitely me again, and I think I’m getting close to stable again.  Whatever “stable” is 🙂

No, There Will Be No Kids

I came to terms with something this year – I’m probably not going to ever have kids.  I just cant forsee myself at 35 having kids with anyone.  It’s too late for me now, basically, is my opinion.  

That doesn’t stop my dad from poking and proding about it from time to time.  We had a phone conversation today where he told me I needed to have kids one of these days (what the fuck am I gonna to?  Reproduce asexually?  I think step one would be getting married!  No, nix that – step one would be finding someone! :-)  I’ve got some scars and wounds from this whole life collapse thing that really keeps me from wanting to do it now.  I may regret that decision someday – but I just… I don’t feel like it’s something that’s gonna happen.  I told dad that, but, he seems pretty unimpressed by my opinion on the subject! 🙂