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 |   The only blog that will put hair on your chest... |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Turning from the Dark Side ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** < This is where I'll insert a cool new blog description. Someday. > |
| I didn't get sloshed. In fact, I didn't even drink. Why do I always have to be so damned responsible? Next week I've given up my planned week off because I need to be trained to take on the load of the departing analysts. I could have stuck to taking the week off, but then I would have come back to a slew of daily processes that I have no idea how to perform. I'll say it again: why do I always have to be so damned responsible? I know the answer to that of course: I hate to disappoint people and I take pride in what I do. How come what should be redeeming qualities often result in stress and misery? |
| Monday the first business analyst announced his resignation. Today the other business analyst did the same. That leaves us with no business analysts and two programmer analysts. The translates into me taking on at least the jobs of two people. You may as well change my job description, because the programming I live for is now the least important part of my job. And I'm going to need to be trained in all the things the business analysts do on a daily basis. That probably means no more vacation next week afterall. In fact it probably means no vacation until the positions are filled, which could take several months. I'll be shocked if I can get a single day off now. So let's see... I've had this job for about 1.5 years, I absolutely loved my work, I loved all the people I worked with, and I made a silly amount of money relative to the difficulty of the work. Now, my work won't be anything remotely like what I enjoy, the best people are leaving (and the other programmer is looking too), I'm going to make the same 41.2K to do the work of 2-3 people, and I likely won't see a vacation day this year. So tonight, if I can find a driver, I'm going to get totally sloshed for the first time in my life. I'm going to get so drunk I can't move in the morning. And Tuesday morning I'll finally wake up and go to work and come to a revelation. I'll realize that life as I know has been completely been turned on its head. I'll wonder if maybe everything has been going this way for a reason. I'll wonder if maybe, just maybe, forces beyond my control are telling me it's time to uproot and make a major life change. Either that or I'll just decide that life sucks. The fact is I'll probably chicken out on getting drunk. One thing is certain though: I'm going to pay a visit to monster.com and careerbuilder.com this weekend. Maybe I'll get lucky and find something fairly rural somewhere in New England. Cross your fingers for me. |
I miss my... Well, I'm not going to finish that thought.  I'll let my readership wonder. In fact, let's make a game of it...What do I miss? GPs go to the following:  The most creative answer as to what I'm missing. In other words make me laugh or simply wow me. The answer that is closest to the single word that would have finished the sentence "I miss my... "All righty then. It's a one day challenge only, so fire away. |
| So now I've spoken on the phone with a couple Writing.com pals. Clearly that's no big deal for those of you who have attended the convention, but for lil ol' me with a phone phobia it's huge! Apparently I was the first Writing.com person that she didn't actually know in person to get mood indigo  's phone number and call her. *points and laughts at all of mood's W.com friends* I know what shannon sounds like, I know what shannon sounds like!  I may be persuaded to tell you what she sounds like... for a price. Although she might bribe me not to for that matter. Anyway, hearing someone's voice for the first time is pretty cool. It's been partly surprising and partly exactly as I expected. In either case it's refreshing to be reminded that these faceless avatars are actual people. I think it just convinced me to attend the convention. |
| People are commenting on how sappy I've been lately. Happiness will do that to you. Anyway, just so you know I'm as problematic as ever, here's a little anecdote from lunch with a coworker yesterday: We were having Chinese food and just got our little dish of Duck Sauce refilled. Mike said "Now how do you suppose they get that sauce out of the duck?" (Yeah, Mike is nearly as problematic as I am.) I replied with "I don't know, but if it tastes this good, just tell me which part of the duck to suck on." After getting over the gag reflex, Mike realized he may have to use that line in the future.  |
I was working on "Invalid Item"  and found that I could not adequately express myself. The interesting thing about the emotiblog is you have to get creative sometimes. You have to combine emoticons in not so obvious combinations to convey an emotion, reaction, or string of emotions. However, there is a couple emotions I can't figure out how to represent yet, and I'm open to suggestions. Contentment. Now you can almost express contentment with a simple  or maybe a  . But is that how you really express contentment? In reality you may close your eyes, take a very deep breath, and sigh softly. You might finish with a trace of a grin and slow, shallow breathing and a twinkle in your eye if it's not closed. So how do you make an emoticon out of that? Euphoria. Euphoria can take different forms so  or or even  may represent a piece of euphoria. However, euphoria is usually all-encompassing. Every bit of us, mental, physical, and emotional, all achieve the greatest level of contentment and/or happiness. It's a time when we see things with blinding clarity. Yes, that's a paradox, but it's also a tautology. We become blinded to masks that normally prevent us from seeing an object with utter clarity. We blind ourselves to the bad things that keep us at bay, and we witness the beauty beneath, the beauty in all things. So how do we stick that in a single emoticon? Or even a small string of emoticons?To answer the next obvious question: yes, I'm experiencing these things. Yesterday evening and early this morning I experienced the greatest feelings of me life to date. I've experienced both contentment and euphoria before in various forms, but this was unique and unmatched. I was involved in something so utterly simple and yet so utterly satisfying. I felt completion as a human being and wished for nothing more than to make those moments last forever. And for those of you with your head in the gutter, no, I did not have sex. I'm talking about something that in my opinion transcends sexual pleasure. Something people dream and wish for. But back to the emoticons... the problem is most of our emotions and feelings cannot solely be expressed by a facial epxression. They're too ambiguous, and people can use them to wear a mask. Stringing them together to reach a desired effect can be very misleading and downright confusing. Then again, euphoria is a bit confusing. |
| The first one was last night: "You have a powerful urge and the ability for accomplishment." The first part is certainly true. Let's hope the second part is too. If so, I'm soon to become a very happy man. The second one came today when I took my departing co-worker out for lunch. I didn't save it so I don't know what it said exactly. The gist of it was "You are always an open and honest person." Well that one has me pegged.  |
Mariposa  refuses to say who she's engaged to. Fine then, I won't say who I am engaged to either. And before you say I'm just making it up, nope, I am engaged. I'm very resourceful. So how do you like them apples, Mari? |
| Okay, so I admit it, I'm starting to believe in God again. However, this title is more a bitter commentary on his "testing" of us. How come the greatest things in life are always the most complicated and hardest to attain? So is He testing us? Does He inflict pain and suffering upon us to make us stronger? To test our resolve? Does He hurtle roadblocks at us to see if we'll just swerve around, plow right on through, or pull over and wait for a towtruck? This boy is sick of parking the car. There's too many great things at my fingertips to let obstacles get in my way. I'm plowing right on through. The reward is worth all the setbacks, complications, risk, and fear. You want to test my resolve, God? You want to see just how much I mean it? Well, I'm taking your test, and I'm taking your red pen and giving myself a big "A" at the top, because I'm passing with flying colors. I don't care what the roadblocks and hurtles are. I'm going to get to the end of that road. True happiness is waiting for us there. So nyah to you, God. |
| In previous entries I stated the importance of having an Ernie IV. I want to clarify that now. Finding happiness and extinguishing this guilt does not hinge on having an Ernie IV. Happiness means comfortable living with the woman and children I love. Similarly, having a family would extinguish the guilt of letting my grandfather down. What the names of my children are isn't altogether important. Family and passing along the legacy are what's important. I may have only daughters or may have to adopt, but that's okay because at least I'd be able to pass along the things he passed to me without every quite knowing it. I didn't mean to imply I'm a failure for never having an Ernie IV. That would be a dream come true, but that's not the part that upsets me the most. More precisely I'm afraid I won't have any children, won't have any family, won't have any lifelong companion. I'm afraid I'll never live the life that all my family has lived. I'm most afraid I'll walk through life alone and never be able to pass along all the great things this family and especially my grandfather have given me. That would a failure to my family and its patriarch. |
| So here I am engaging in a relationship I've never quite experienced before. Here I am willingly preparing to take leaps I've always refused to take before. But for all the changes in my own life, the world is swirling by even faster. Today at lunchtime the coworker with who I am by far the closest gave his two week notice. He just got offered a dream job that allows him to work at home for a 20% pay increase. (The other programmer and I want a heads up when other jobs become available. ). It was rather depressing news. He's really the best friend I've made since college. Now I'm really only kind of close with the other programmer, and I know she's always on the lookout for a better job. I've only known him about a year, but I'll miss him. I think I'll join his Strat-o-matic baseball league afterall, to keep in touch if nothing else. I have no desire to lose one of the few friends I have that actually lives relatively close by.It's just one way that the world around me has been changing. I haven't figured out yet what I need to do to keep up. Am I ready for the next chapter of my life? I sure hope so, because lately it's been thrust upon me. A friend did a Tarot card reading for me a couple weeks back. I don't believe in those things, but with each day I wonder about the floundering, lost, swirling, helpless feelings that it predicted for my life six months from now. I've spent most of my life in shell, and the past year I've been pecking away at it and suddenly the whole shell is falling away at once. Am I ready for that? Hopefully there will be someone there to guide me through it. |
| Back in 2002 one of the guys that films for the original Law and Order was creating a documentary on my grandfather and trapping in general. He filmed my grandfather for hours upon hours from fall 2002 to spring 2003. Other things interferred and he never got to edit and produce the documentary. My grandfather passed away March 31, 2005. The documentary has been finished now, and we gathered as a family to watch it today. Thanks to a computer crash, we were limited to about 18 minutes of documentary. Eighteen precious minutes of seeing and hearing my only role model and patriarch of the Beckwith family. His essence was captured brilliantly, and the only thing outweighing the tears was the laughter. Amidst his killer wit and crude humor, the room roared during most of the monologue and sat in teary, subdued silence during the remainder. My family, the loud, often obnoxious bunch they can be, pissed me off royally. I was trying to hear all of his words, down to the last syllable, just to retain and remember everything I could, and they were loudly debating what location a certain scene was filmed at. At one point I yelled at my own father, "Who the fuck cares?" Thankfully they all shut up, and I heard most of the remainder in silence. Anyone who's read this blog knows how I feel about my grandfather, his death, and my contribution to his legacy. You know I blame myself for his death, and you know I agonize over my failure to bring an Ernie IV into this world. You probably know that right now as I type this I gasp for air between ragged sobs and frantically wipe the tears away lest someone see me crying. I've found the woman of my dreams, but nothing in life is guaranteed. Though I pray things work out, because I'll be the happiest man alive if they do, I know that they might not. And I can deal with the pain of being alone, the pain of not having a family. But I cannot deal with disappointing my grandfather and my father. For all my successes, I want nothing more than happiness and lifelong companionship for myself. More important than that, more important than my own wants and desires, is contributing to the Ernie Beckwith legacy. Will I die knowing I've failed my family? Will I go through life knowing that the sum total of my life was a materialistic and superficial? As I take my last breath will I know that the single most important dream and goal in my life went unfulfilled and ended a line of greatness that I was never worthy of carrying? |
| Now how long before he starts throwing lightning bolts with those massive paws? I'll post more photos as I get around to it. Here's the first two for your viewing pleasure.
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