Wednesday, December 28, 2005

A New Outlook On Life

The old outlook didn't work for the first 30 years of my life, so I am attempting from this point forward to enjoy myself more, do what I want to do, quit offering my heart and soul to women and begging them to love me, and do everything from now on with a sense of personal pride and purpose. We'll see how long this lasts, but the recent events of my dating life have made me realize that unless I commit myself to someone mentally and spiritually, a) she cannot hurt me with her actions, which are hers alone and cannot result in rage and disappointment from me because it's her life and I don't own her, and b) I am free to do what I want, whether that's be alone and doing something that I enjoy or pursuing companionship with someone else. And since I have been committing myself mentally and spiritually to women who either did not commit themselves to me or were lying, I clearly see that I have to stop doing that. I'm sure I've said this in many different ways verbally and on this blog, but this is it. I looked at myself in the mirror and spoke out loud to myself for an hour last Saturday before I left my apartment to spend Christmas with my family. I had never done that before. But after spending two hours with a friend earlier that day pouring out my emotions and feelings about my situation, I finally arrived at the point where I am sick and tired of pouring out my emotions and feelings to innocent bystanders. Basically all of my heartbreak in my life stems from my emptiness from not being loved and my desire to make someone love me. And it just has not worked out for me doing things my way. So, I'm doing things a different way. I will do what I feel is best for Dre from now on, and if that doesn't work for someone else, that's too bad. I spent the last 2 years doing what the woman or women in my life wanted me to do, hoping that they would see my sacrifices as a sign that they have to sacrifice and give all of themselves to me, and they simply were not ready or willing to do that. And that's fine. I am in control of my destiny. My great love may be a female executive ten years from now at whatever company I wind up working for once I earn my degree. But if not, oh well. I cannot keep missing out on happiness and enjoying life just because no one loves me. And I cannot keep committing myself to women before they commit to me. I've bitched and moaned about the women in my past not being fair to me. But by giving my love to them for no reason than I wanted to take their love to make myself feel better, I've been being unfair to myself, and of course to those women by expecting them to faint with joy when I treat them well.

I received some more perspective today. My football buddy, the guy who duels me in a $500 wager every season, didn't have his picks ready for me when I called him last Saturday, and he called me today to explain why--he was dealing with something just a tad more important. Last Thursday, on my birthday, December 22, he lost his youngest son to a rapid-spreading disease. So the little one never even had a chance to waste years of his life wallowing in self-pity. Just like with the football coach whose teenager killed himself apparently the morning of my birthday, it's like God placed these tragedies on the day that I turned 30 in order to give me a compass to follow...to allow me to take the last 30 years and the way I handled them and separate them from the way that I have to live from this point forward. Life means too much to bury myself in sadness for the way it has turned out so far, not to mention how it could have turned out worse. "Your birthday was December 22?" he said when I told him. "Boy, I'll never forget that day." I can't even imagine.

I have been cleaning my apartment all day, and I have a lot more to go. I read on the instructions of the video game "The Sims" that the player must keep his Sim's place clean, because a messy apartment is a sign of someone who doesn't care much about himself. And I read that months ago, before "Shelley" made a date to come here and hasn't been back since because the apartment is disgusting. But I'm sure not doing this for Shelley; I'm doing this because I'm wallowing in this mess of newspaper and plastic bags, and I don't like it. And soon, I will get up and prepare to go downtown and work a 3-day temp assignment in which I will be standing up and scanning documents for a law firm all night on 3rd shift from 11P-7A. I was offered this gig over a 2-day weekend a few weeks ago, and I turned it down because I thought it was beneath me. But I now see that no one is going to come along and offer me work, no one give a fuck that I will drain my bank account paying rent this month, and that I have to do what's best for Dre because no one else will, and taking this job is best for Dre because that's $200 in cash in my hand next Tuesday that I wouldn't have if I sat here and kept looking for specific data entry jobs that don't appear to have too many requirements or responsibilities. And that's the next step, to apply for jobs that I believe I can do regardless of the prerequisites. I've been so fucking afraid of being rejected that I have passed up applying for many jobs that I've never done because I assumed that my lack of education and experience in the field would result in me not getting the job. DUH--I won't get the job anyway if I don't apply for it. But if I do, I might get it. Such a simple equation. And yes, that applies to dating as well. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't approach women and ask them out because I look around at all of the eligible guys out there and I wonder why anyone would decide to date me. And I figured out why--because I'm strong, handsome, intelligent, and moving forward in life, and I have a nice smile. I discovered the smile while talking to myself in the mirror last Saturday. I still have to work on displaying it because I'm so used to not smiling, but at least I realized that I'm not ugly and unworthy of dating a good woman. So it's like I have a mental checklist now of how to handle myself around women. As Kool Moe Dee would say, "May not always work, but what the hell." I just have to remember that I'm allowed to show interest in a woman, I'm allowed to ask her out if we talk and I like what I hear, and I'm allowed to repeat the process if I come across another woman who interests me. What I am not allowed to do is serve up my heart, my baggage, and my soul on a platter for a woman to have to burden. It's not her life to straighten out. It's mine.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

30 Years Of Futility

God was trying to send me a message this morning. I fell asleep last night with my stereo on the all-sports station, so the very first thing I heard when I woke up this morning was that the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts was leaving his team to go to Florida because his 18-year-old son was found dead in a Tampa suburb. In other words, no matter how bad I feel about my plot in life, at least I still have life.

I was going to write a long essay about all of the things I've learned in 30 years of futility, but the recent events have shown me that the one lesson that I need to learn before anything else is to learn to love myself so that I'm not looking for love in all the wrong places. And I have yet to learn that lesson. I fear that my life will continue to stall until I learn that lesson, but it's not easy, learning to love yourself after hating yourself for years and years. I'm having trouble even liking myself. So I'll just smile and thank those who send me best wishes, and I'll go out tonight with "Shelley" and try to enjoy myself and forget about the fact that absolutely nothing in my life is working out the way I want. But I'll try to have fun. After all, I only turn 30 once.

Thursday, December 15, 2005

The Following Disclaimer Should Not Be News

It shouldn't be a news item or a surprise to anyone why I have a blog, but apparently I have to break it down for those who are not aware...

SOMETIMES I AM FUCKING PSYCHO. Hello? Have I not already disclosed in this blog that I spent a week in a psych ward last year? Isn't nearly all of my posts discussing some woman that I'm seeing or hope to see or used to see? It must be easy for all of you "normal" people out there in Anonymousland to jump on me about the shit that I do, because it makes you feel good to rip me a new one, and because none of you have EVER done some dirt in your lives. But it's not like I set out to hurt people; just the opposite, every time a woman gives me the time of day, I want to make her my queen and the center of my universe, which hasn't turned out so well because it never gets reciprocated back to me. All of my experiences in my entire life come together to make up who I am, and those experiences dictate the way I act and the reactions I have to various situations in my life. Suffice to say, I don't deal with rejection very well.

So I started this blog last year in order to document all of the things that I do, and that are done to me, so that there is a clear record out there for anyone who wants to take a shot at analyzing why I am the way I am and why I do the things I do, because Lord knows I've been trying on my own and with the help of some professionals to figure it out, and I just can't do it. Again, it's easy for some of you to jump up and yell out, "Because you a dog!," and hi-five all the other chicks around you like you're auditioning for Springer. But it's not that simple, and if you think it is, then you're simpleminded and you don't want me to get to the bottom of my actions, you just want me to keep being a dog so you can lump me in that category and keep complaining about why men are pigs.

As far as people reading this blog that I wouldn't want to read it, I hereby declare, as if it wasn't clear enough by the fact that this is a public blog, that I don't give a shit who reads it. For God's sake, I put the link to this blog on both my Yahoo and my MSN profiles! I don't have other profiles that I use to get booty calls or sneak around, meaning that someday "Shelley," the woman I'm currently dating, will read it and dump me too. Anyone that meets me in cyberspace knows me by my Yahoo or MSN handle, and can therefore look for themselves at my profile, and my blog. And they can decide for themselves whether they want to take a chance on a guy who wants and needs to be loved by one monogamous woman (something that has yet to happen to me since I started dating again two years ago). And "Torrie" is not the only woman that I've dated that I sent a link to the blog. Despite what it seems like, I am all about openness and honesty. Absolutely anybody can read about the things I do. And I'm still waiting for someone to read about me--all of me, not just the juicy parts--and come up with some insight on how I can stop being paranoid and psycho when I feel hurt or rejected or abandoned, and how I can stop giving money and love to people who only want to use me, and how I can love myself so that I don't keep looking for every random woman to love me.

Anyone at all? Didn't think so.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Why I Will Always Be Alone

Below is an e-mail in its entirety that I just received from "Torrie."

"I absolutly can hardly believe your nerve. I am so mad at you. I have been sitting here all night trying to come up with the words to say how i feel and there just are not enough! I have two words for you and that should explain everytrhing. ..."BLOG" "TORRIE". I was cleaning out my PC, because I had a virus. And found the link you sent me around this time last year, when you wanted me to read about the Wisconsin chick. I cannot believe i fell for your sincerity, and your lies. So i am not even goiung to begin to tell you how pissed off and hurt I am. I think you have the basic skills to figure that out for yourself. So if you think even for a second that this weekend is going to happen. You are out of your damned mind!!!!!! You know someone commented on your blog about you and karen deserving each other, and after all of this i agree. You DO get what you DESERVE!!!! I am not going to waste another minute of my time on you, and just end this email now."

I had arranged a trip to Minnesota for this weekend to see Torrie again. I missed her. I realized that after I put my trust in women who didn't like me and only wanted to use me, I had ran off the one woman who never asked me for money, never tried to use me for anything, and I always enjoyed myself with her, and after everything else is factored in, the major reason anyone should spend time with anyone is because it is an enjoyable experience. The funny part is, the blog is public, and as she pointed out, I had sent her a link to it long ago, so I wasn't trying to hide anything. The plain truth is right there: This summer, after professing my love to Torrie and not receiving it back, I decided that other avenues would be better for me to pursue. And because I had no good reason to dump her, I decided to give her a cold shoulder until she got sick of it and dumped me. That's the story. There's an ugly aside to it--that I chose to pursue "Laurie" because I wanted to date a slim, blonde woman as a change of pace--but if I wasn't attracted to Torrie, I never would have agreed to come back up there to see her again. It was never about Torrie's attractiveness. She is very attractive, the most attractive woman I've ever dated in fact. I just flew off the handle once I gave her my love and didn't get it back, and I decided that I might have better luck going after this thin blonde telling me that she felt strongly for me. But that didn't work out, because Laurie and I still have never met, and even if we had, I don't know if I would have had nearly as much fun as I did seeing Torrie.

So after this summer, and after my adventures in dating recently, I contacted Torrie just as a friend, and we talked about how much we missed each other, and soon it was like I never stopped thinking about her, which, really, I haven't. She's all I've been thinking about this week, as I prepared to fly to Minneapolis Friday. I couldn't believe that I stopped seeing someone I cared about and liked being around simply because she wouldn't tell me she loved me the 3rd time she ever met me and because she wasn't slim. I was going to tell her all of that this weekend. I wasn't going to push things too fast and tell her I loved her again or anything like that, just that I really missed her and I wanted to see her again. But unless she has a major change of heart, that won't happen.

And now I'm sitting here wondering, what has happened to me? The thing is, I always grew up thinking that I would never cheat on any girlfriend I had, and let's face it, I was dumping Torrie because I wanted to cheat on her with Laurie. That would have been the 3rd time I cheated, after hooking up with "Sarah" while seeing Karen, and then spending a night with The Co-Worker Who Shall Remain Unnamed while seeing Sarah. I have absolutely no rationalizations for cheating that would make sense. With Karen, the sex was bad, but the solution to that is to talk about it with her, not to get better sex elsewhere. With Sarah, the sex wasn't bad, but she was fooling around with her regulars back home in Springfield, and my self-esteem was so low at the time, I felt that I had to take advantage of being with a slut because I couldn't get anything else. But the solution to that is to not screw anyone until I get my shit together mentally, not to just screw anything to make myself feel better. And with Torrie, the sex wasn't bad and I felt as good about myself as I had in a long time. I'm getting straight As in the college classes I'm taking, I can see a future for myself, I'm starting to stand up and be a man for the first time in my life. But it was so weird. When I told her I loved her and got nothing back, it was like all the old feelings started flooding back. I'm not good enough. No one understands me or gives a fuck about me. I will always be alone, which I should get tattooed on me somwhere as much as I say it. Laurie was an outlet for my frustration, but the point is, I shouldn't have been so frustrated. Yes, no one likes to spill their guts or put their cards on the table and get no response. But there's no excuse for me feeling like Torrie was abandoning me. I'm so afraid of being abandoned that when I feel the slightest chance of it happening, I either cling on helplessly (like when Torrie dumped me the first time in March) or I wander away looking to be consoled somewhere else. And that's why I will always be alone--because I still don't understand that no one can forget about everything else to make me feel loved, and when the moment comes where she has to hesitate before she gives me her love or has to tend to something else in her life, I start feeling abandoned. So I guess I'm not standing up and being a man like I thought I was. A man deals with the people in his life straight up, as they are, and accepts things as they are. I keep running around like a chicken with its head cut off, desperately searching for someone to love me. But if I loved myself, I wouldn't have to put that pressure on everyone else.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

End Of The CEDA Era

So much for my temp job going through January, which is what my agency, Smart Resources, told me when I was hired. The big boss, Casey Jones, had been making a big deal lately about people who consistently posted 75 files or less for a day's work on their retarded little tally sheets (yes, they started making everyone keep track of how many files they did in a day), going so far as to call a meeting almost every day last week only for those under the magic number the day before. You got it--20 to 30 minutes of no work for those not producing enough work so that Casey can tell us that we need to start producing more work. Is that not the most idiotic thing you've ever heard? Not only that, but I honestly don't think that these people had the collective intelligence to realize that some people were fudging their numbers and writing insane tallies on their sheets, and I would still be there if only I were dishonest. I will say this once and then I will stop whining--I am a perfectionist, I am a hardheaded son of a bitch, and I basically ignored all warning that Casey gave us in those retarded meetings that the low-tally people would be the first to be cut because to race through the files would mean that I would risk missing a detail and making a mistake, and I was not making any mistakes based on this moron's opinion that my work wasn't fast enough. This same guy bitched and moaned in previous rants about how important accuracy was, because if we make a mistake then that will prevent a file from being processed, then that family has to wait to get that mistake ironed out, and meanwhile they have no heat, so our jobs are very important, etc, etc...but in the last couple of weeks, all we heard about was the "rabbits" nailing 150 or more files a day, and why couldn't we be more like them? I bit my tongue so hard it nearly tore off. I held my professionalism and defeated the urge to tell him: "Because it's their fucking mistakes that I'm cleaning up the next day, and it takes time to remedy major-league fuck-ups like they make on a daily basis, you imbecile!" My counts were not way below his quota of 75. Gina, the main supervisor of the data entry department, always rolled her eyes when she tapped me on the shoulder to come to the meetings because my counts were always in the 65 to 70 range, and considering that I didn't run away from files with eight or nine people in it and put them back in the box like a lot of people did, and that I denied files with Social Security cards that were obvoiusly fake and wrote up denial sheets for every one of them and didn't ignore problems with a file and process it anyway like a lot of people did, you would think a rational person would excuse my count being low by a couple of files. Of course, I was dealing with Casey Jones, and nothing about him says "rational person," which is why I never mentioned any of this to him. Someone else tried to tell him that her count was low because her particular computer wasn't working right, and his response was, "No excuses." WTF?!? So yeah, it was a no-win situation. All that said, I will quit whining about it now because I realize that the bottom line is this: Not everyone was falsifying their numbers, not everyone looked at difficult files and put them back for someone else to do, and I knew what the daily quota was and I routinely failed to make it. Period.

It was a weird day yesterday. We didn't have overtime over the weekend because we had done our jobs so well that we didn't have extra files, so we all kinda knew the end was near. Then in the afternoon, the guy from Smart Resources who always brings the weekly checks for the Smart workers who are not part of direct deposit, as I am, gave a check to a woman, then pulled her aside and told her, and only her, that she was done at the end of the day. He then spoke to Gina privately for about 20 minutes and left. Meanwhile, the woman was in tears because the way he did it, it sure seemed like he was singling her out. But when Gina spoke to me later, she said that she heard that there was a list of people being let go by Casey, and that I was on the list, but I figured if I was going to be thrown out, either Casey or the guy from Smart would have told me something at the same time as the woman earlier was told. I told Gina that I'd be back the next day because no one had told me anything, but she hugged me goodbye just in case, so I think she knew. The funny part is that Smart had indeed called my cell phone while I was at work to tell me that my "assignment has ended," but I didn't know that I had a call until after I left work because sometimes my cell phone's vibrator doesn't work. I would have had to awkwardly endure the pain and embarrassment of working my last two hours knowing that I had been fired, just like that woman did. I have no idea why the guy from Smart told her separately that she was gone, except that she and I had become friends and I don't remember her ever taking out a cell phone, so perhaps she doesn't have a cell phone and face-to-face was the only way to tell her. In any event, I walked to school and checked my voice mail and found out the bad news, and I've been home all day just resting and trying to stay warm.

The immediate future is a complete question mark. I've already talked to Smart about a new "assignment," but the only gig they have right now is 3rd-shift and pays less. "Shelley" thinks that I should take it, but every outing we have is paid for by me, so of course she wants her meal ticket to find employment again ASAP. I really, really can't see myself doing retail, so the obvious solution, some cashier job in this holiday season, is out. Unemployment benefits are not an option because I would have had to be employed for six months to be eligible again. Cassandra assures me that she will have some money for me next week. But this may be the final event to push me towards moving out of this shitty apartment, like, now. My savings account is now under $1,000 for the first time in quite a while, so I only have a couple of months of living here with zero income, whether the people who owe me money come through or not. And I've been bitching about the rent and the $50 cable and the $50 DSL so long that I was speaking to "Ronnie" when I started bitching about it, and you know it had to be a long time ago if I was speaking to Ronnie. Plus, I'm dating now, and this place ain't no place to be hosting dates. So I'm leaning towards getting out of here by February, employment or no employment. Whatever happens, I am not going to ever forget my time at CEDA. What a perfect impetus to push me through school and urge me to keep going and make education a priority. Cause if I don't, I face a future of jobs in which my diligence and perfectionist nature cause me to be fired perpetually because I didn't produce enough mistake-filled, hurried work to satisfy the assholes in charge.