Since 1986
17 years. I just heard that this guy has been in love and single for 17 years. I know I’m being hard on myself expecting to get over S in two and a half months, but thats only on a one month long relationship.
I wonder if I tried to kill myself because of S.. It defiantly was a dream that I had that wasn’t fulfilled, but its not exclusive to S, he just happened to fit, and fit well.
I just don’t want to be alone right now and not in that obvious sense. I don’t want to be lacking an intimate relationship.
My most intimate relationship with Jenni feels less intimate all the time. She’s a good friend and always will be. She or I or both of us have just grown out of that spot we once held for each other. I don’t fault her or me, it just happened. she is the only person that I know of right now that I’d pre-meditatively kill someone else to protect her. Sure, there’s lots of people who I’d jump in front of a bus to push out of the way or shoot a man pointing a gun at them, but I would kill to protect her even given lots of time to think about it and knowledge that I’d end up in jail afterwards.
I expect so much of myself. I cannot let myself off the hook in so many ways.
I’m drained of words plus I’ve got to eat. There is more to say on this though.
Idiots Online
I have someone who is reading my eJournal and posting comments with a fake Hotmail address.
So I’ll have to respond publicly here.
The first comment:
A new comment has been posted on your blog Nick’s eJournal, on entry #107
(Pissed/Oppressed)
http://www.panix.com/~nickb/ejournal/archives/000107.html
IP Address: 142.154.214.157
Name: 5M0K3
Email Address: 559320htowsasst@hotmail.com
URL:
Comments:
Yeah we’re all pissed… But you… Your gay man. AND yes society
does not like that, but you are threat to the masses of sheep pussy
fuckers out there.. Ok gay isn’t excepted, GET OVER IT! Write about
something MORE IMPORTANT!
My response:
To: 559320htowsasst@hotmail.com
From: Nicholas Barnard <nickb@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [Nick’s eJournal] New Comment Posted to ‘Pissed/Oppressed’
Cc:
Bcc:
X-Attachments:
Two things:
1. Who are you?
2. Who are you to say what I consider important and what I don’t consider important?
Nick
The Second comment:
A new comment has been posted on your blog Nick’s eJournal, on entry #108
(Offended).
http://www.panix.com/~nickb/ejournal/archives/000108.html
IP Address: 142.154.214.157
Name: 5M0K3
Email Address: 559320htowsasst@hotmail.com
URL:
Comments:
OK… Wtf is this site about anyway. Just a bunch of lamers posting their thoughts on our fucked up world… Yeah I think that’s what it is. Good for you guys! Cheers yah bastards!
My response:
I will spare your stupidity. Its my eJournal (i.e. Electronic Journal) and your the one wasting time reading it.
Nick
I’m probably wasting my time on a prepubescent teenager but, oh well, there I gave him a platform, if you enjoy hacking go after that IP.
Nine months isn’t enough
Okay I’m gitty — Maybe its the dang cats walking me up thus I have a lack of sleep… This is a trial run for kids.
Oh the cats are girls, albeit I think they’re lesbians, well I can dream can’t I? (Wait, that’s a straight man’s fantasy! Dang those heterosexuals are infecting me, they’re gonna turn me straight!)
Okay, seriously, I’ve been debating exploring my identity trying to figure out who I am — well not as much who I am, but who I want to be.
I’m stuck on something I said my freshman year of college (okay I’m narcissistic, what do you want?) I was at the college’s GLBT group, we were having a discussion and somehow we started discussing why Madonna was so attractive to the GLBT community. I hacked a documentary, and said something like “Maybe why Madonna is so admired by the gay community is that she is constantly reinventing her identity and coming out is rediscovering your identity.” Okay I didn’t think it was profound at the time and I am still a bit shocked by that people found it profound, but oh well.
I’ve been pondering who I should be? (I guess its a different version of “What should I do with my life?”) I think I’ve got a pretty good handle on who I am, (Well as well as anyone.) but I’m trying to think about who I should be.
There is visual appearance, which at the moment is pliable. I’ve got turquoise hair at the moment. (Turquoise is a blue, but I’ll be specific to appease anal retentive Spanish S2S CA’s who’ve recently had dental work…. Those who don’t understand, don’t ask.)
I’ve got a new hair idea already in mind so I’m just going to play with it from here. I have to research the Cheshire cat though. (dang theatre habits)
But, back to the point… I want to be someone who is an intellectual in an intellectual community, works to build a community and isn’t dicked over (re: Lambda) in doing it, and I’m able to do some good around me.
More of that is not who I want to be but who I want to be around to do what I want to do. I enjoy non-profit/student organization work, but I don’t want to feel like I’m fighting a battle in the org to get things done then a battle in the community.
(Perhaps I shouldn’t use the battle metaphor in thinking about this but it does seem correct.)
I want to be with people who will dream the status quo should never be good enough.
Is it really to much to ask that I be able to dream (practically) and want to see those fulfilled, or at least attempted?
In thinking about everything in the past five months dreaming is a constant thread.
[I stopped writing at this point and wrote the previous entry.]
I attempted to kill myself because dreaming had become painful.
I believe thats why I attempted suicide was because my core was attacked. My core is dreaming. My interest in so many things come out of my ability to dream. (Philosophy is the conundrum here, but it seems as if it is a tool toward the dream of understanding and having a meaningful life.)
I’m so utterly scared of ending up in the same spot I found myself on January 31st 03. No scared is too pussyfooted a word. I am terrified (that word has lost meaning since 91101) of repeating this path. Its a struggle of not being too terrified that I’m paralyzed but I’m worried about misstepping.
January 31st is the day I set fire to my old self and burned the forest of my life to the bare minimum. I hopped back into the womb of low stress and simplicity to incubate again. January 31st is my day of being reconceived. I have a perceived birth date of Fall 2004, but that can be moved.
Its time to enjoy the womb, but I also need to think about what I’m going to do here, I don’t have DNA or a umbilical cord and mother’s hormones to guide me.
I’ve got me to depend on.
Suicide Meditations
Why am I embarrassed that I attempted to kill myself?
In someways I think its a weakness. There is a limit upon after it is crossed life is no longer desirable.
Suicide per the textbook is the realization that one’s coping skills are insufficient to deal with one’s life.
I know I reached that point where I found where my limit was.
Ironically I responded not by going back to what I had done and doing it again, but by deliberately and methodically slashing, burning, and killing parts of myself that I found counterproductive, or unfulfilling. I responded to my complete suicide attempt by doing a targeted precision guided suicide mission.
i am determined to burn those bridges to my past and work on living again and rebuilding things in a manner that I hope I won’t ever have such a great disjunct between my pain and my coping skills.
I did kill my old self so that an important core of me could live, so that I could go on.
I’m trying to be careful so I don’t ever feel a need to do that again.
I’m a DAD!
Okay, not of a human baby, but I’ve got two kittens now. I probably have an ethical obligation to put kitten found posters up, because of the way I acquired them.
I was by the bike path and was just getting done bike riding and I said hi to the kitties, and started petting them, then they got in my car. I debated it for a bit, and well decided I’ve wanted kitties, and well these seemed to fall into my lap.
They were pretty good on the car ride home, and well it all seems good. I’ve still gotta get em food and a litter box, but I’ll take care of those tonight.
Blue
This just in! I’ve got blue hair! A little bit different shade that I wanted, but still awesome!
I’ll get pictures up soon..
and its not even from American Express!
Truth
I’ve started reading The Structure of Scientific Revolutions again. Its been almost exactly four years since I’ve read it.
In the second chapter Kuhn expounds upon Paradigm shifts. In that while “science” as we know it is characterized by agreement on most issues by scientists, (Yes there are arguments but the vast amount of scientific knowledge is mutually agreed upon by scientists.) it previously before the adaptation of paradigms was characterized by competing schools of thought that have since died out.
I think that this view could also apply to “desire management schools of thought” (i.e. Religions, and certain strains of philosophy.) While religions cover more area than just desire management. christian Science covers health and well being, Judaism covers dietary matters, Islam covers dietary and social relations, Buddhism covers lots of desires, Hinduism gets as detailed as to describing the proper way to take a crap, Unitarian Universlism has a very limited doctrine focusing on self-determined beliefs.
But are these all just compelling schools of thought that will eventually be replaced by a universal and bullet proof paradigm?
What I find frustrating about all of these is they are not fully explanatory or even attempt to be.
Ask a scientist to explain how Christian Scientist faith healing works and they’ll either be dumbfounded or claim it is a hoax.
Ask a devout creationist to explain the dinosaurs and why all animals share DNA and fossils in general, they’ll provide theories that place man and dinosaurs walking side by side which would’ve resulted in oral history.
(A side note if you accept as an Axiom that god exists and is an omnipresent and omniscient being the logic behind “god told me” or “because god made it that way” is impeccable.)
Ultimately Religion, Philosophy, and Science are all about finding the truth. None of them are the truth fully, but they all contain parts of the truth. Until we stop or at least drastically slow down the nasty war of beliefs that are being fought all over, it will be hard to get all these people together to find the truth.
This is why Contact is one of my favorite books/movies, is that it deals with this religion/science divide. Perhaps though as Carl Sagan hints at, they shouldn’t be divided.
Multiple Creativity Disorder
I watched one of my coworkers get pissed about one of our deaf customers because the deaf person “was an impatient SOB.”
Funny thing is, is that I had the same person in the same mood the night before and I was calm and laughed at her.
Low and behold the same person just got the customer again and she and the same frustrated attitude.
I think so much of life is choosing your attitude. Just like I choose not to get pissed with bitchy callers, I can choose to have a good day. Even if that doesn’t quite work, I can still chose to have a “fucked up” day in a positive way.
I’ve been spending most of my free time on writing a computer program. (specifically a way to manage Spam), Watching TV (My TiVo’s been getting way ahead of me), Reading (unfortunately I’ven’t found good books. I’ve recently started and putting down two books for lack of good writing/interest), and crocheting.
We’ve been undergoing something of a crocheting fetish at work. Why? I don’t know.
Its sort of amazing but all crocheting is, is a bunch of loops of yawn looped inside of each other. This means you can undo it all by pulling on the unfinished one and it just keeps unraveling, pretty neat!
its the recursive function of sewing, it just keeps reusing and reusing the same method over and over again creating something larger. Ironically enough I wrote my first recursive function, specifically one that converts numbers to other bases.
Amazingly the crocheting is satisfying as well as the programming and writing. There are concrete visible products out of all of them. (Even if programming is just arranging bits in the right order.)
so far the programming has been easy. Maybe its because I’m being a little slower and more methodical. In someways its amazing to me any of this commercial software is workable with the stories I find at software companies with their 100 hour work weeks, all night programming sessions fueled by Mountain Dew and Pizza. I don’t see how anyone can write accurate logical rules under those conditions. (thats all software is, a series of logical rules.)
I used to attempt it, but I’d end up having to go to bed because I got so frustrated and couldn’t get it working properly. Invariably I’d end up having to go to bed, waking up and finding some stupid bug that I’d typoed in.
Another thing thats better about the programming is that I’ve really broken it down and made it modular and worked each piece down. Its strange but I’ve matured as a programmer. I’m no longer the slap dash throw it together kind of programmer I was. I think i’ve gotten better results out of it.
I’ven’t seen the same out of my writing. Well maybe, I have one project that is in the “philosophical stage.” I’m spending time exploring the issues behind it and what I want to say.
The thing I still don’t know is how to be true to my characters. I worry that they’re not true enough. I want to give them each a life of their own, but I’m too scared to try. I’ve given them my writer desired traits, actions and lines. They feel like puppets to me and not people. I think I need to worry about setting them free of me and see what they do. I need to act their life out to explore through it.
— God, writing can be so much work sometimes.
Conformity
Okay, I’ve still got brown hair. Bummer. I’ve just been sortta busy. Been spending some time with Mike getting caught up and getting things figured out with Mike, he’s moving in, and since we’ve been friends things should be good with him moving in the apartment.
I went to work wearing my goofy hat that I got from Disney World. I expected a bit more of a response to me doing something strange like that, but my co-workers didn’t do anything abnormal. Tells me something about a disjunct between how I perceive myself and how others perceive me.
Hmmmmmmm. I’m not sure how the blue hair will go over. I know my mom won’t like it, but thats to be expected.
What I’m doing is pushing an eccentricity and see what I come up with. I’ve been working on placing other’s opinions in their place, giving them the weight they deserve and none more. All this stuff that other people care about are less important to me. I neither want to conform or be an alternate boi because that is conforming. this is why goth and alternative movements are disturbing, people are still trying to conform, just to something different. Why not think for themselves is that too much to ask?
Furtive Relaxing
I’ve been just meandering the past two days.. I’ve been off work from 10:30pm Monday through today, Wednesday at 6pm. Its a nice time. I’ve done some programming, finally, finally, finally gotten the apartment clean, and I’ve helped Mike out with moving. I’ve gotten the stuff to dye my hair blue, and I’ve done a good deal of web browsing too.
I visited the White Ribbon Campaign, a site about gay teen suicide. I also read about Robbie Kirkland and Bill Clayton. Stories like this and knowing people like my Freshman Friend are the reason I’ve done the work I’ve done with PFlag Dayton and Lambda Union. Instead both of these organizations seemed bogged down by bureaucratic stifling and top down command structures.
I’ve been reading a lot of Margaret Wheatley‘s work. She has a much more organic view of organizations than the mechanistic view that is so prevalent today. I’d like to look at it more, but I think this is the reason ACT UP was so successful. There wasn’t a leader, everyone was equal more or less with only leaders by mutual consent. For that matter al Qaeda is successful for the same reason.
Okay a segue. I wish Star Trek: Deep Space Nine was still on the air, I think it gives a view of what being an underdog and a terrorist was like. I fundamentally have a hard time condemning terrorists out of hand like everyone else. To be brought to the need to kill people and cause destruction to get your point across you must have been ignored.
Okay and back. I need to find organizations that are more like the ones Wheatley describes. While I can and have navigated the dang mechanistic hierarchical system, and can set it up, I do not think I work well in them, I’m too much of an individualist and an independent thinker.
Well, thats it for today…
Oh, BTW, I started a WebLog, and if your wondering what the difference between a WebLog and an eJournal is look at Blog vs. eJournal.