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January 29, 2009 - 2008 retrospective

It's my once-a-year post! Instead of a lame cop-out like I did last year though, I think I'll actually talk about the year that's just passed, mostly because it was quite the doozy. My memory is far from perfect, but I hope to at least hit the big events, in roughly chronological order. Be warned, it's long, and the first two-thirds might be kind of boring. I ask that at the very least, you skip to the big break and read everything below that. That last big section is important.

Here we go:

For the winter of 07-08, some friends and I got together and decided that we should learn to snowboard. So we got season passes up to Snoqualmie, reserved season rentals, took some lessons, and spent the rest of the winter weekends scraping our way down the hills very slowly and cursing profusely. By the end of the season (which wasn't until May!) our swearing had subsided a little bit, and we were moving a little faster and a little more gracefully on our boards. I prefer skiing, but that's mostly because I'm better at it. Snowboarding was certainly fun, and something that I'll gladly do again in the future.

In February, a couple of us from the old ISU Scuba Club went on a ski trip out to Winter Park in Colorado. Myself, Kristi, and Megan were the Scuba Club folks, and we were joined by Kristi's friend Jeremiah. We had a blast skiing all over the place for four straight days, although I did have an incident that finally convinced me to buy a helmet. Skiing through the trees at the end of the day, I tried to turn right... Unfortunately my left ski turned, my right ski didn't, and I plowed right into a tree. No serious damage done, but since I can definitely see myself doing that again, I figured that grabbing a helmet would be the prudent thing to do.

Also in February, I went back out to Iowa State to help represent Microsoft at their career fair. This is something that I've done before, and I always enjoy it. It's fun to talk with everyone, and it's especially interesting to delve into their motivation for looking for a job with Microsoft. I took some time out to meet one-on-one with some grad students studying under my favorite senior-year prof, and those were especially interesting. The biggest downside of the trip was the minus-35 wind chill. That reminded me of why I don't miss the midwest, but at least my rental car had remote start and heated seats.

Sometime in March, I took a bad spill on that snowboard that I mentioned earlier. I can't pinpoint exactly when it happened, but there was one day of boarding that was particularly rough for me. A couple days after that, I noticed that my entire left leg, from the top of my thigh to the bottom of my calf, was a giant bruise. After a little bit of freaking out and a quickly-scheduled doctor's appointment, we figured that I had torn my hamstring. So I got to experience the joys of physical therapy, ultrasound massage, and electric stim, all focused on an area that basically counts as my ass. Weird sensations for sure, but after about six weeks of that, I was good as new and was able to get back on the board for the last few weeks of the season.

While this physical therapy was going on, since I wasn't allowed to be boarding anyway, I got Lasik surgery! The preliminary appointments were very easy and everyone was very nice. The actual procedure was a little strange, and it's not for the easily spooked. Having your vision just kind of slowly vanish along with a feeling of inconsistent pressure on your eyeball, all while you're laying underneath a huge machine equipped with multiple tissue-burning lasers, surrounded by four people, and knowing that you're one of about twenty people in an assembly line for that day... Well, that's a weird experience. But the procedure was good, the results are spectacular, and I can see again! Not having to lug around glasses or fiddle with contacts is amazing. I can't recommend the procedure enough. If you've ever even thought about having it done, you should definitely pursue it. It may very well be the best decision I've ever made.

The March-April timeframe was busy for me. Another thing that I did during that time was take a bartending class, on a whim and alongside Jill and Pat. So I'm now a licensed bartender in the state of Washington. Everyone who hears that says "great, so you can make me a (whatever their favorite drink is)!" Well, unfortunately, I probably can't. See, they don't actually teach you the drink recipes in the class; the thought is that you'll either learn them on the job or you can read a book on your own time and memorize them. The class is more focused on techniques (how to pour shots, shake drinks, etc), "social management" (dealing with drunk people), and regulations. That makes it sound really boring, but it was quite a lot of fun, actually.

During that same busy timeframe, the relationship that I'd been having during the previous few months with Amy ended. I wouldn't say it ended well, but I wouldn't say it ended horribly, either. It had been awhile since I'd dated anyone, and we had a lot of fun. I find it difficult to summarize beyond that, so I don't think I'll try.

Fast forward a month or two, when suddenly things started getting crazy again. My second-biggest news of the past year is that in May, I switched jobs! I still work for Microsoft, but I moved from the Dynamics business (large, enterprise-scale business software) over to Xbox. I'm part of Xbox Live Primetime now, and I switched from being a developer to being a tester. The new group is a much better fit to my interests and my general disposition. The people are generally younger and more similar to me in terms of hobbies and personality. There was quite a learning curve for a little while, and it's still very challenging. It's been a fantastic move for me though, and I'm very happy that I took the opportunity.

I also managed to make it out to Iowa to attend Kristi's wedding. It was a fun trip, and I got to spend a couple extra days with Emily in Omaha, hanging out, going to the zoo, and shopping for all the things I forgot to pack. The only problem is that this was happening right alongside the epic flooding of last summer. Cedar Rapids, where the wedding was, was particularly hard-hit. The weather didn't affect the actual ceremony, but it kept lots of people from being there and caused lots of other headaches for folks as well. Fortunately for them, Kristi, her new husband, and both their families escaped from the weather relatively unharmed.

Forward again, this time to July. My dad managed to grab some time off of work and fly out to Seattle for the now-annual tradition of taking a big backpacking trip into the mountains. We spent a day or two in preparation, then packed our bags (and Shadow's pack) and headed up. Last year we got rained out and had to cut the trip short; fortunately, this year our luck with the weather was much better. But of course, every upside comes with a downside; in this case, it was the windstorm and massive rain that the area had been hit by a few weeks before. The road to our trailhead was blocked by a huge avalanche, a dozen or more downed trees, and a few large sections of washed-out road. That added about three very steep miles each way to our already ambitious hike. So we didn't get to go as far back in the woods as we would have liked, but we spent a couple good days up by an alpine lake and never saw another person. It was fantastic.

Remember how I mentioned that my job switch was the second-biggest news of the year? That was pretty major, but I have something that can top that. On July 12th, I closed on and moved into my house! I spent a couple months learning about the various nearby areas, determining what I could afford, and looking around at houses. It's an overwhelming experience for a first-time buyer like myself. I looked at over two dozen houses in person and way more than that online. By the end, I felt like I had a pretty good idea of what I liked and what I didn't, and at least some vague knowledge of what I wanted. I wanted to get away from the idea of the cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood where each house has the same lawn, the same perfectly trimmed trees, and one of the three available ridiculously-named floorplans. I chose an area of Woodinville that's a little older, and has custom-built houses and lots of old, large trees. It's got a very Northwest feel to it, which I like a lot. My actual house is pretty large, with four bedrooms, 2.75 bathrooms, and a fully fenced back yard for Shadow. I've got one roommate and I'm actively looking for a second one. I really enjoy the place; it's fun to be able to do things to the house, and living with people again has been good for me as well. Packing, moving and unpacking were less pleasant, but with any luck, I won't be doing that again for quite a long time.

Just a few weeks after the craziness of moving in to my new place, our family cruise happened. For their anniversary, my grandparents decided that they would like to bring the family with them on a week-long cruise to Alaska in the summertime. In the end, there were twenty-two of us on this cruise, which left from Seattle and made several port stops up in the southern part of Alaska. It was awesome to see many of the family members for the first time in eight years, and the cruise itself and the shore excursions were a blast as well. It was my first cruise, and I went in not knowing exactly what to expect. The cruise was a very interesting experience; it's half Disneyland, half country club. It was very, very nice, and I can definitely see why people like taking cruises. I think that I personally prefer vacations that are a little more "do-it-yourself" and a little less "cater to your every whim". But the net result of the trip was a ton of fun, some phenomenal pictures of some very gorgeous parts of Alaska, and...

Because the cruise left from Seattle, it gave my parents a convenient excuse to stay in town an extra week or so after we got back and check out my house. We spent several days hanging around town, showing off the house, and tracking down some of the new essentials for it. As always, it was good to hang out with the folks for awhile. And as an added bonus, they were in town during some of the best weather we'd had all summer.

Then Labor Day weekend came around, and it was time for PAX again. I repeated last year's duties as an Enforcer, and worked about 50 hours in three days helping the attendees have a good time. And this year, I recruited Drew to work alongside me. PAX is very difficult to summarize, and the Enforcers are even more so. It's a very unique convention, and an awesome group of people. After this year, I think I understood why some of the Enforcers were such a tightly-knit group, and I made some new friends among their ranks as well. PAX is among my very favorite things each year, and I'm very glad that I'm able to continue working with it.

One last fast-forward, this time to December. I was lucky enough to be selected to volunteer at the Child's Play dinner, which is a fundraiser put on by the charity arm of Penny Arcade. This was a new experience for me, as I'm not the kind of guy who regularly goes to swanky dinners and socializes with people in tuxedos. As with all things Penny Arcade-related, it ended up being a huge amount of fun, and something that I'm very glad I was involved with.

And lastly, the big year-end event was affectionately referred to in Seattle as Snowpocalypse. This is a region that shuts down when it gets an inch of snow, which generally happens once a year or so. So imagine the reaction when the city got about a foot of snow, along with a new inch or so every day. Streets were blocked off, businesses shut down, schools were closed... At one point a couple buses even slid down some icy streets and nearly fell onto the freeway. All things considered, it wasn't a catastrophe, as there were very few deaths or injuries for the magnitude of the storm. But it sure made things messy, especially up in my little corner of Woodinville. At one point, I measured 19 inches of snow on the ground, and that wasn't even the peak of it. I was snowed in for a total of seven days, although they weren't continuous. I was even forced to shovel part of my roof. If you believe all the locals, this was a once-in-a-hundred-years event. Crazy.

 

 

Busy year, am I right? And while the biggest news of the year was the house, and the second-biggest news of the year was the job, I'm afraid that neither of those was the most interesting. The most interesting is something that I'm a little reluctant to discuss, as I tend to stick to myself and be pretty reserved and private about some things, so this is weird for me. Some of you might think less of me for posting this, but I don't really care. Hopefully the majority of you will realize that this is difficult for me to write about, and respect that I'm sharing it.

The most interesting thing about this last year is that it's the year where I started to get over my depression.

Yeah, I thought depression was an excuse too. I thought it was one of those overdiagnosed quote-unquote-"conditions" that didn't have a basis in reality. Maybe it's still used that way, or maybe that's exactly what it is and I'm just weak or something. But in any event, it's been quite a journey the last couple years navigating through this. Probably compounded by the part where I never really told anyone about it; that goes back to that whole sticking-to-myself thing.

The background for me goes something like this: In November of 2006, I went to see my doctor because I was tired all the time. Not in the way that you're tired when you need an extra hour of sleep; more like when getting off the couch and cooking yourself dinner is an impossibly large amount of effort. More like when you spend hours just sitting there, zoning out, because you can't summon the energy to do anything at all. More like when you can't concentrate for five minutes on an important job-related conversation because it's too much mental work. You get the idea; hopefully the point gets through here that this was not just normal tiredness. This was seriously impairing me at work, at home, and everywhere else, and it had been happening for quite awhile now. The doctor said there are three possibilities here, and all of them are equally likely. One, there's nothing wrong, or we'll never find out what it is. Two, there's something physically wrong with you. Or three, you've got depression in the chemical-imbalance sense of the word.

We did blood tests, sleep tests, a physical, and all manner of things to try and find something physically wrong. No luck. This may be the only time in my life when it was unfortunate to get test results back that indicate there's nothing wrong.

So I was recommended to a therapist. Sorry, "counselor" is the right term these days. Boy, did I feel ridiculous. Here's a guy who, when you look at the whole of it, has pretty much everything going for him. I had a good job in my chosen field of study; I had good living arrangements that I had chosen. I had friends, I had family, I had Shadow. Nothing traumatic had happened recently. So here I marched into the therapist, whose office should be reserved for people with *actual* problems, not whatever petty little complaints I had.

We started meeting once a week. A few weeks in, I described how I felt at work on some days. I remember telling him that I felt like a caged animal. I didn't have any place to go and I didn't have any immediate threast to me; matter of fact, work is where I was supposed to be. And yet I felt suffocated, trapped, like I didn't have an out, and at times I would actually get up and pace in my office. He suggested that I would benefit from some of the standard antidepressant/anti-anxiety medications. Again, I thought, come on. Those are for people who have legitimate problems, who are described as "troubled", who can't function without them. Therapy is one thing; I'm not too proud to go in and start some therapy. But medication? That's a whole new level. But in the end, after fighting it for a couple weeks, I agreed to it.

The meds did me a lot of good, once we found one that worked for me. It was a slow, gradual transition, but I found that I had more energy and was more willing to do things. I was able to summon up the energy to move across town, thinking that a change of scenery might help. And the counseling was helping too, albeit not as much. We identified a few of the causes of my mental state: I was unhappy in my job without being miserable, I was detached from my friends while still being friendly, I was shy but not antisocial, I was reeling from the school-to-work transition, I lacked confidence in pretty much every area of my life. I read some books and focused on trying to repair some of these things. We scaled the counseling back to once every other week, and continued it for another several months.

About a year after it started, I felt like the counseling had hit a dead end, so we tapered that off. I stuck with the meds, since by this time I was doing pretty much okay and didn't want to rock the boat too much. That holding pattern continued until March or so of 2008, when several things reached a point where they combined to convince me that I could start bringing myself off the meds. I had become good friends with a couple other groups of people besides my original ones; this let me do more activities, hang out with more people, and socialize quite a bit more. Remember Amy from my bullet points above? She and I had started dating, which gave me a confidence and a general "good feeling" that I'd been without for awhile. I started looking into other jobs, and had a very good discussion with my manager about my desire to switch and how he could help me out with that.

So I went back to the doc and basically asked for permission to wean myself off of the pills. That went well too, so in April or thereabouts, I started skipping one pill a week, then two, then every other day. Things went pretty well, and to be honest, by the time I was completely off of the meds I didn't really notice a huge difference. A couple months later, I was off the meds completely and haven't been back since.

I don't think I can say that I'm 100% yet. Back in high school, I had unbounded energy, did activities all the time, had social events five nights a week, and generally went full-speed for about sixteen hours a day, every day. I'm not nearly back to that yet, although I may never be. I still decline more events than I attend, simply because I don't feel like going. I still spend too much time "wiped out" and worthless. That said, I'm happy with where I am, and I hope that I can continue to improve, as slowly as I need to.

It's been a long couple of years. I apologize to everyone whose events I've bailed on, or who I haven't picked up the phone for. It's been rough, and I haven't been honest with people about why I've been the way I have. That's going to change. It might not change completely overnight, but it'll change. I promise.

And lastly, I'd like to offer myself up to all of my friends. If you've got anything you need to talk about, anything bothering you, any feelings like I talked about here, or anything at all, I'm making myself available to you. I've been through a little bit, and I'd like to do anything I possibly can to help if you need it.

Thanks for reading, and happy 2009!

December 31, 2006 - Year in review

Looking back, you can see a time when I was much better about updating this. There were no multi-month lapses, no POTD's running out. So what happened? Meh, it's a combination of things. I got a job, so school stopped happening. In turn, that means that club meetings, classes, projects, and the general excitement and buzz that surrounds college (and yes, there is some buzz even in Ames) are no longer happening. Instead, I have work, which ... is insanely boring to talk about. Also, no one would really understand most of it, even fewer people would really care, and even then, I probably can't actually talk about it anyways! Oh yeah, and I moved eighteen hundred miles, which implies a new set of friends and more, all of which takes time to adjust to. In short, I simply have fewer interesting things to write about. And after I come home from work, where I sit in front of a monitor for eight, ten, twelve hours, the last thing I want to do is sit down and type up something, when that feels an awful lot like work itself. So, in short, you shouldn't expect much from the site; not that you ever should have in the first place. This may be the point where it has long since jumped the shark. I have no plans to get rid of it or anything, but ... yeah.

With that said, let's take a recap of some of the things that happened this year!

• I was the lucky recipient of several visitors! Among them were Kristi, Pete, James, Meredith, and Emily... Always a good time!
• I left Shadow out of his crate a couple times. Chalk that up to a "learning experience".
• I came to some revelations about myself. I still haven't worked my way completely through them, but I'm working on it.
• I had a(nother) mishap involving reverse gear. Another learning experience.
• There was a major shift at work. I was re-org'ed into another team, doing different things, under a different manager.
• Unrelated to that (at least mostly), I found myself in a general dissatisfaction with my job. I'm not sure why or how to fix it yet.
• I took trips to Colorado, Cayman, Florida, Florida again, Ames, and Chicago. Most of those were vacation, and they were all very, very good trips.
• Parts of America finally came to their collective senses and voted a change of power into our government. God knows it couldn't have gotten any worse, so maybe the new Congress will actually do some good things.
• Related to that, I discovered a very deep-seated apathy within myself. This was triggered by the extreme political polarization of absolutely everything, and the general media onslaught that pervades our daily lives.
• Seattle, and most of western Washington state, lost power for about four days in the week before Christmas. In some places it was as much as a week, though I was lucky and got my power back within 24 hours.

March 6, 2006 - A smidge more introspection

Sorry for the long delay, but this one's been a while in the works. Warning: Boring, selfish introspection ahead.

There have been a handful of things that have happened since I got out to Washington that have led me to a conclusion about myself. This Halloween, there was a party in Seattle that I went to along with Stephanie and her friend. A couple weeks ago, there was a dinner out, followed by the bars. A month or so ago, we went down to Seattle for Steph's birthday. And just last week, we had a beer social at work. What might all of these things have led me to? (Get ready, because this is a real shocker. Or not.)

I am a Boring Person™.

I know, I know, I'm the last one on the block to realize this, but that's okay. I've figured out that I am, by all accounts and in one word, lame. I don't like my cars fast, my music loud, or my SUV's big. When someone mentions a road trip, the first thing I think of is whether I'll have enough vacation time. I don't sing, I don't dance; heck, most of the time I barely make polite conversation. I can't count how many times I've heard "You've never seen that movie?" or "I can't believe you don't know that band!". Pretty much everything that my generation enjoys, follows, or participates in -- I don't. This makes me Boring. Call it what you want: I'm "mature", I'm "fun in my own way", I'm "responsible", I "just have different tastes". My idea of a great Friday night is curling up with my dog and my 360. I'm Boring.

Those things I mentioned? Let's see... The Halloween party. Very low-key, kinda dark, not very crowded, quiet enough that you could sit and talk with your friends. We left that because it wasn't cool enough for my friends, and ended up at the now-infamous gay bar slash dance club, where I basically stood around pretty uncomfortable until it was time to go. The dinner out? Yeah, I decided not to even go to the bars. No good reason, I would just rather not have. So instead I came home, played some games, and went to bed early. Steph's birthday? Eight of us went to a cowgirl-themed bar, complete with girls dancing on the bar. Honestly, I hated it. Between the ridculously loud music (picture you and your friends having to read lips to communicate) and the crowdedness, I was already ready to leave. Then when the girls started dancing on the bar, I was supposed to drop my jaw and enjoy the show; instead I started thinking about how and why they got there, and the sociology behind the entire scene, which made me want to leave even more. Oh, and that beer social? Turns out I've worked eight months near some people my own age, with common grounds (one wants a dog, one's from Chicago), even had several of these beer socials together, and never knew it because I don't go up and talk to people. Tough pattern to figure out, I know ... it all points to Boring.

Now, it's important to note that I don't think being Boring is a bad thing. I generally assume the role of behind-the-scenes-leader, doing all those things that need doing. Organizing people and schedules, planning itineraries, et cetera. Whenever we go anywhere, I generally drive, because I'd rather do that than party. It's not that I dislike doing this, or feel like I'm forced to; I'm just too Boring to be in the thick of things. I'm not the life of the party, and I don't want to be. It actually works out surprisingly well.

So what's the big deal? The trouble with all this is that it makes it extremely hard to connect to people. Take Brad and Steph, for example. They're awesome people, and I'm very glad that I found them as friends, but I don't share much in common with them. Steph follows the music scene and likes to go to bars, Brad loves cars. It's hard to talk about any subject when one person's completely clueless, since there's no common ground to start from or draw analogies off of. It's not that I'm not interested in how a car works, it's just that you have a PhD trying to teach an elementary school classroom. It's not going to go very well. Similarly, when I meet a random someone for the first time, I automatically assume that they're not interested in my work or my hobbies, since they're not mainstream or terribly interesting. If I start talking about my work, you're going to have a tough time with the ramp-up unless you work on it too. There's so much that's product-specific, and the general public generally doesn't know or care much about computer programming, so that's an even bigger obstacle. For me to have a meaningful conversation with you about my work is going to take about two weeks' worth of background information, and no one cares enough, nor do I expect them to.

So there you have it. Something that pretty much everyone has known for years, and I just recently realized it. I need to stress that I don't think this is a bad thing, it's just a point of interest. The trouble is that all the people like me are similarly holed up in front of their computers. Not being forced to interact through school or clubs just makes it that much more difficult. Again, this is not bad; like I said, I'm perfectly happy with the way things are.

Introverts unite!

October 31, 2005 - Too long between updates. Again.

In work news, things are much better! My boss, who's pretty much the coolest guy ever, took me out to lunch last week and asked for feedback about my experiences so far. I'm not sure if it was because I seem like I need it or what, but he seems actually interested in what I have to say. So I prepared about four pages worth of stuff to talk about, which I think really surprised him, but it was pretty honest and pretty complete, covering a lot of things. He has some good advice for me, and I think I just have to slowly (and sometimes painfully) fall into the role I've taken. Altering a couple of my habits and a couple of my mindsets has been good so far, and here's hoping it will continue to do wonders. And amidst all of this trying-to-be-professional stuff, I went and lost my badge sometime between Friday evening and this morning. Brilliant.
Let's see, what else? Ah, I went out with Stephanie and her friend Jamie on Saturday night for Halloween after finding a purple hat and matching cane at the very last minute. We started out at a party in Seattle, which was pretty cool but kind of ... not very social, I guess. The girls didn't much care for it, so we left and went to a bar called Neighbors. Now, this was a pretty cool bar, I must say, especially if you're into the dancing scene, which unfortunately I'm not. The most distinguishing feature of Neighbors, though, is that for the most part, it's a gay bar. Going on Halloween provided a lot of interesting characters, interesting costumes, and a most interesting experience. 'Interesting' was a word I used a lot that night. Anyhow, it was a good night and the few pictures I took will be coming on the POTD shortly.
Another update with no site work. I would love to start a 'Stupidity of the Day' section, but I fear it would go the way of the Quote of the Day: Start out strong, then slowly fade into oblivion in a painful way...
And since everyone always asks about him, Shadow's doing fine. We took a couple trips to the dog park on Saturday, so he was pretty tuckered out this weekend. It's starting to get rainy here though, so there might be less and less of that as the winter goes on. He got a bunch of new toys recently, and if I can convince him to stop eating it, he might even get a blanket back in his crate when I go to work. Obedience school is almost finished, and it's been good for him, I think, though he does much better at some things (sitting, staying) than others (coming when called, not eating blankets).
And before I run out of time to say it ... Happy Halloween!

October 20, 2005 - And back to normal

Sooo... Getting back to normal after that mini-breakdown thing I had. Which, by the way, was really quite nothing... The next day I took a couple deep breaths and had a short talk with my boss about some things, which helped a lot. I think that part of the problem is that "having a job" is just so ridiculously different than "being a student". Now, pretty much everything I do relates back in some way to the job, whereas in college, everything I did pretty much involved avoiding work. It's a huge difference between the two, and one that I think I've been having some trouble adjusting to. Or maybe just identifying or accepting the change -- whatever, regardless, I think it's getting better.
So then, what else has been going on now that all that business is settled? The hard drive in my laptop died, so Dell sent me a new one, in a pleasantly surprising bit of good customer service. I've also been on the sick side of things for the last couple days with seasonal head-cold-type stuff, which of course means that I've been sleeping poorly; Tuesday morning I woke up at 4:00 and couldn't get back to sleep, so at 4:30 AM I'm sitting in my living room swapping hard drives out of a laptop, sneezing. What a sight to see.
I'm hoping to make it back to work tomorrow; I've taken a couple days at home because of this illness thing, but hopefully will feel good enough tomorrow to head back. We shall see, I suppose.
Shadow is just fine, aside from being a little restless and bored, since I've been in no shape to take him on a long walk recently. But he's been a trooper too, taking it all in stride and happily chewing his toys. I've got myself a good little dog.
Oh, and I guess I did a site thing last weekend too. Scroll to the bottom of this entry, and see on the right there, there are now a couple new links. The one labeled "(number) comments" will show you what other people have to say about this entry, and the link labeled "post comment" will let you say something. Bear in mind that these will be publicly visible, so try not to make too big a fool out of yourself when you're using them :) But please, I'd love some feedback; perhaps it will help me feel like I'm keeping in touch with people.
That's about all the news I have here -- congratulations to Marie on her recent engagement!

October 10, 2005 - Introspection

Ahoy again from the I-Don't-Update-Until-Two-Weeks-Have-Gone-By place that I live in. I should really stop mentioning it, because it's very common. As usual, I'm a bad person.
But, to make up for it, I finally (two months after the fact) put up pictures from Marie and Mindy's visit! There are a few hundred, so be aware of that when viewing them, especially if you have a slow connection. Also notice that they haven't been pruned, so there may be some truly craptacular pictures in there. By all means let me know if you find something that should just be outright removed.
Things continue to continue, but I'm keeping the update short tonight, because I'm randomly feeling introspective, so I have a long piece written up. For the sake of boredom and personal ranting, you may want to ignore everything after this paragraph. See you in a couple weeks.

April 13, 2005 - Chronic and crippling laziness

So I really kind of feel bad about the last ... week or so. I have, almost literally, done nothing. I've gone to about half my classes, done next to no homework - and what little I've done has been late - and made absolutely no progress on anything remotely productive. Basically, I've sucked for a solid week or so. I've had a couple fun nights, gatherings with people, rollerblading adventures, a broomball game tonight, and a heck of a lot of video game time ... and yet, I'm still worthless. About four of the last seven days I've crashed in the middle of the day for a nap, sometimes as long as four hours. It's not that I'm not getting enough sleep, it's that I'm lazy and worthless. I almost hate to say it, but I think I had a better time when I was slightly busier. This is the first time in all of college when I can honestly say that I've been bored. Weird.
On to things that suck less, though. It has come to my attention that I had been neglecting my POTD for some time. You can consider that fixed, and if you haven't yet, go and check out the past POTD's as well. Standard end-of-the-month archiving as well.
Exciting news: I've officially gotten plane tickets for a Scuba trip in May! I'm heading out to Key Largo, Florida, on Monday the 9th, right after graduation, packing, and moving (which is going to be a hell of a couple days, by the way). About six days of diving later, I'm renting a car, driving across the state, and spending about four days visiting my grandmother. Obviously, I'm quite excited about both of these things. Just makes me want this semester to be over with even sooner.
Surprisingly, for about two weeks worth of not updating, that's all I have. I told you I haven't been doing anything. Cheers to the next couple weeks!

September 12, 2004 - Ha! Less than a week!

Another Sunday night, and the prospect of another week starting. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, though - while last week was insanely busy, it was also strangely satisfying to be feeling so productive some of the time. Yeah, I know, strange - especially for one so lazy as I. And maybe it just seems that way because right about Friday, things just sort of stopped, and I was left wondering what to do for most of this weekend.
And another strange thing about this weekend: I felt highly antisocial for most of it. I don't really know why, or what happened; I'm only reminded of my (rather extended) period of self-discovery I had about two years ago. I wonder if this whole "What do I do with my life" episode is affecting me in the same way. I hope not; I'm certainly going to be making an effort to not be so damn irritable and antisocial for some time. Although, I have a very convenient excuse: The medicine(s) I got on Friday (Prednisone and Zyrtec, for a very severe allergic reaction to something; current theories include allegries to pollen, ragweed, and life) came with warning labels that they may affect one's mood. So hey, what can I say, I was doped up this weekend.
I spent a good portion of Saturday night watching old Family Guy episodes, which suited me just fine. What a great show; I was just about rolling at several points. Highly recommended if you like the Simpsons, you like random humor, and you're impossible to offend. Of course, in that case, you probably know about it already.
The big news for Saturday was the ISU-Iowa football game, which turned out to be much closer than expected. It was actually pretty decent to watch, and we only lost by one touchdown to the twenty-six-point favorites. Perhaps this emphasis on defense might actually pay off for us; we shall see this next weekend when Northern Illinois comes to town. It should be an interesting game, at least from my perspective - Adam and Kelsey have informed me that I am going out with them to the bars on Friday night, then getting up at 8AM on Saturday to start tailgating again. It might be a long Sunday.
Back to news of today, Lisa needed another guy for her co-rec Flag Football intramural team, and it was awesome to finally get outside and get some exercise, something I have been severely lacking for a week and change now. Incidentally, we pretty much whooped up on the other team, winning in a severe fashion.
And lastly, fantasy football has pretty much embedded itself into my brain. Something so silly is awfully addicting; I was much happier than I should have been tonight when Quentin Griffin, my recent acquisition, rushed for 150+ yards and three touchdowns. Praise be for football season!

September 1, 2004 - ...

So it's that time of the year again. Wait, no. It's that ... year ... again? No, that's not it either. Maybe we should just go with "It's that time."

What the hell am I talking about, you ask?

Good question. It started this morning when I had a meeting with my academic advisor. Well, no. It started yesterday in Senior Design when the person in charge of grad school for the College of Engineering came and spoke to us for an hour. This got me thinking, and I made an appointment for this morning. So I go and see my advisor today with some general, high-level questions about grad school - you know, timelines, locations, finances, benefits, and the like. Well, after close to an hour, I walk away a little more knowledgeable about grad school, and significantly more confused about my life.

See, here's the thing. I hate deciding things. I hate boxing myself in, and limiting my options. I like to be flexible in these things. To quote the old cliché, I'm afraid of commitment. (Example: I picked a major at the last possible minute, and only because the university made me.) And on top of that, I don't really have the attention span or the drive to be focused on any one thing for too long. I loved high school because I got to learn about a little bit of everything: all the sciences, programming, Spanish, even things like history and economics. And then at some point they stop letting you go to high school. I finally figured out that's the reason I came to college - not necessarily because I wanted to learn something, or because I wanted to advance my job prospects... No, no, simply because they stopped letting me go to high school. Next logical choice: college.

I'm getting way off track. The point of all of this is that now, pretty soon, they're going to stop letting me go to college too. Obvious question: What then? Well, you go to job fairs, get dressed up, pretend to be someone you're not, get an eight-to-five job, and work for fifty years as a corporate tool. Now, I've had a couple of internships - not real work, I realize this, but close enough - and I have found that I much prefer college, for a myriad of reasons that aren't important to this. And I have increasingly come to reject the idea that one's accomplishments in life - and especially how happy one is - are measured by the size of your salary, house, and car. It becomes a slippery slope: okay, you have a big salary, so what? Well, I can have a big house. Okay, so what? Well, I can afford to have my yard taken care of and have my big house cleaned. Okay, so what?

I think you see where I am going with this. I just don't see the point of it all. I suppose if you continue down that slope, you come to the questions of 'What's the point of my life' and 'Why am I here' and 'What am I doing with my life' - questions that come dangerously close to religion, which is something I most certainly am not trying to get at with this.

I'm off track again. This last question - you know, the one about what I'm doing with my life - is the one that bit me today. I asked a couple questions about grad school and find out that it's all about research. Well, what the hell kind of research can you do in the (very general) fields that I am interested in? "Admittedly, not much..." Great. A little further into the conversation, my advisor stops me and goes, "Allright, what do you want to do?" ... ... ... ... And I don't have an answer for that. I don't have a passion, a dream, a lifelong goal of any kind; hell, I don't even have short-term goals. I feel like I am just cruising along, waiting for something to happen - and yet part of me thinks that I should be out there trying to make this happen, trying to find my spark. But being the way I am, I would much rather put these things off for as long as I can, future be damned.

Long story short, (boy, I bet you wish you'd read this paragraph first!) I have no idea where I'm going. I don't have a passion, I don't have a specific enough field that I want to pursue to even talk about grad school, and almost more than anything, I don't want to fall into the mold of the corporate eight-to-five worker. All of this was tripped by this grad school process.

I guess this next nine months is what it all comes down to. This is where you decide what you're going to be, what direction you're going to go. Mess this one up, and you could be really, really screwed. Sure, there have been 'defining points' before this - pick a school, pick classes, pick a major - but never anything that seems so very irreversible as this. I don't know what to do, I don't know how to figure it out, and I don't really like either of my options. I feel lost and cornered, and I don't like it.

That's pretty much the closing of this, so feel free to stop reading and take the above for what it's worth. The rest here is going to be some rambling thoughts I'm having at the moment.

I thought of an option today, though. Going through the too-small list of things that I know, I found: I like Ames a lot, I like 'computers' in a general sense, and I like the entire atmosphere and institution of the university. I guess these things could be combined if I was to be a professor here at ISU. And then I take a look at that option and realize that it's a pipe dream. I have no ambition to be a professor, God help my students if I become one, what the hell am I going to do for research, how am I going to get my credentials, and a million other points that just make such a thing impossible. And the funny thing is, I'm not even second-guessing a goal of mine. I'm second-guessing a random, fleeting thought that I stumbled on while trying to avoid the inevitable eight-to-five, corporate tool fate that 99% of people fall into.

So now the question becomes, why am I putting this up here? I don't know the answer to that. I tend to be a pretty private person, and I usually try to keep things like this to myself. I'm not expecting anyone to have any answers for me, and I'm not asking for help or anything. This whole thing probably sounds really depressed and defeatist - and the funny thing is, that's not even close to how I'm feeling in general. I guess I just felt like throwing this out there. Thanks for reading.

January 22, 2003 - Winter is definitely here

It's really frickin' cold here. Tonight's wind chills are supposed to be in the 30-below-zero range, and I, for one, believe it. I walked around campus just a little today, and it was incredibly cold. Spring can't get here fast enough.
Very little of interest is happening, other than a little bit of work here and there. My stint at the Daily should be getting into full swing soon, and I'm stoked, because I'm supposed to be doing some more Flash work for them. Ideally, I'll also have more hours and be doing more work, and consequently being paid more. The perfect situation. :)
I've determined that I'm at somewhat of a crossroads in my life... About now is the point where I should be figuring out who I am, how I want to live, what is important to me, where I want to go in life, et cetera. However, I have none of that figured out. I have no idea what I want to do for a job, where I want to live, what my 'purpose' is (assuming there is one in the first place, which I'm also not sure of), what I value, what I think, who I am ..... The list goes on. People tell me not to worry about it, that I'll figure it out, but it seems like I should at least have a starting point here. I'm making decisions that will affect the rest of my life without knowing where I want to end up, or how I want to get there. It just seems like I'm taking shots in the dark, and any one of them could ricochet back and hit me.
No site updates for now.