Path to Enlightened Insanity

I had a crappy day at work today. It was just long annoying and tiring. I ended up getting bitchy.

I had to go to Kinkos to make some copies, between work and there my mood changed incredibly.

What did I do? No, I didn’t get road head (Not that I would’ve minded but, I’m not dating and i do my best hold only monogamous relationships.)

Nope, its music. I threw in my musical CD number one and started singing to “The Baseball Game”, “Green Green Dress”, “The Games I Play”, and “What You Own.” What is really amazing is how fast my bitchiness went out the window.

I’m sticking by my guns on this one, but I’m being continually fraught with feelings of loneliness. This is soon going to be the start of my fifth month alone in this apartment. Mike has said he is going to move in, and hopefully that’ll happen.

I guess all in all it is. Hmm.. If I were green Kermit’s song would fit, or maybe it does already. Its not easy being me…

I often wonder who reads this. I point people to it every once in a while because well, it contains my thoughts, and why repeat myself continuously?

I just found out tonight from a friend that someone who I have an intense dislike for (if you have questions about who, read January’s archives) reads this in an office compulsively. Why? Because I’m told he’s paranoid about it.

Jesus, some people need a life, honestly, if your reading this just to see if I say something about you your a fucking narcissist. To that person, you don’t matter to me, grow up and move on. If you haven’t noticed I’ven’t said anything about you since the end of January, and I’ve only mentioned the organization that we were both part of a few times.

Some people seem to think that they’re the center of the world. Now, I comically say that I’m the center of the world (well because I am! ;-) but I honestly don’t believe it. I went to the Human Race today to see Proof , and there was this old fart of a woman behind me who wouldn’t shut up as the lights went down, I had to turn around and shh her then ask her to be quiet, now I’m the youngin (in this theatre at least) so I should be the one being asked to be quiet, not the other way around.

In other news, I got accused of spreading a rumor in an earlier entry just today. Now what about timeliness. If that person had asked me to take their name off at that time, I would’ve, and I just did today without being asked. It does raise an interesting ethical question, what is fair game to be mentioned in here and what is not?

I’m not quite sure where to draw the line. There are definitely things that I don’t just tell everyone, but I’m on the very open side about things. The Private eJournal only has seven entries in two months of use, and a few of those are only in there because I didn’t want to incur someone else’s wrath. (To the previously mentioned “that person”, no your not mentioned in the Private eJournal) Those are really things that I wouldn’t want an employer to see. (I mean really, look at the last entry, if I took that much time writing about defecating, don’t you think anything could go in here?)

In general anything goes in here, I leave sex out because well thats private, it needs to stay in the bedroom, and while my laptop does get in my bedroom, its off when THAT happens.

So the morals of my rants are:

1. I am the center of the world, tough shit if you think otherwise, if you think you matter to me you might not.
2. Shut the fuck up in the theatre, even if your older that 55 it doesn’t give you carte blanche to speak.
3. There are limits for the eJournal
4. My iBook has either been protected or deprived from threesomes, take your pick.

The body is an amazingly finicky machine. its amazing with all the quarks it has that we’re able to get through a day without having some major malfunction that puts us out of commission.

I was competing in the College Marathon then sleeping on Saturday. I went to bed at the perfectly normal (for third shift) time of noon and woke up at 3 AM sunday morning. (Missed all the partying! Damn!)

Finding nothing better to do I moseyed over to my desk and got on the Internet. this woke up not only my eyes, hands, and brain, but also my often neglected but oh so important (and often extremely pleasurable) colon. so I told the friend I was chatting with that I would be back in a bit, and made the journey to the sacred porcelain throne.

At first I graced the throne with my presence, but none of my pork remnant would allow themselves to be divested from my organ village.

During the past fifteen hours the first two pigs gave up their search for straw and sticks as they could find none in either the large or small Norad Ink Testing Centers. (You know the place where they test pens and printers for the officers to use in a biological attack.) As a result they joined in with their older brother Che Micali (I ate Middle Eastern food the night before.) With all the labor and the dehydratory nature of the Ink Testing Center they made a water reduced time and heat hardened carbon based structure, that was designed to withstand a massive contraction of Cheyenne Mountain.

So I sat down and not assuming the swine built superstructure I was expecting the usual post rest defecation process. I gave the usual squeeze but nothing moved, again I squeezed, but still nothing. Next I braced myself and gave it my full heave ho, still nothing.

I of course wasn’t prepared for such a monumental effort so borrowing some techniques from Olympic athletes, I moved into a metatative state and visualized the three swine’s structure leaving the Ink Testing Center. With this visual in mind, I gave it my best Olympic Winning/Guinness World Record/Emmy Award Winning/Tony Statuette Awarded/Stanley Cup Worthy/Emasculated Oscar Statuette winning effort and like a woman having a easy birth I bore down, gave it my best masculine sustained grunt and with all my force I pushed the carbon superstructure out of the Ink Testing Center.

But unfortunately the superstructure ended up rupturing the red transport liquid storage vesicles. Of course my only knowledge of this was an educated guess because the liquid was clinging to the superstructure as well as being on the white perforated cleansing material.

I spent a moment recovering from this record shattering event, then dethroned myself to examine the superstructure.

What I saw was a structure resembling the Great Wall of china, a majestic structure, but all together cobbled together incoherently and without care of beauty, but able to withstand the stresses of my Ink Testing Center and even perhaps the mighty communal branched networked waste disposal and processing network. But, unfortunately not even I have the Inktestinal fortitude to track shit through that system.

Tune in next entry where we explore the exploits of PEN15 and his trusty junior sidekick PEN1.5

Sometimes you make decisions that for short periods you regret making, but you know are for the best.

I’ve decided not to date. I made this decision about the same time I wrote The Shawn Standard, but its taking a lot of mental strength and techniques to keep this up.

There are a few guys at work who I’m deathly in lust of, two of them are in relationships and the other two are (maybe?) straight.

I’ve never really realized how much looking and obsessing over guys I do until I’ve attempted to identify and attempt to reduce the number of times I am looking at a guy severely or lusting. The best technique I’ve used is a Buddhist method about thinking about disgusting parts of their bodies to dislodge the pleasurable thought. It works generally except the lust pops back in, so I’m playing yo-yo with peggish thoughts. (Its derived from a metaphor; when repairing a rotten peg in a peg construction house you push another peg into it, so the building doesn’t collapse. Thus, the thoughts are pegs, and my brain the house.)

Of course now I am hoping that that guy just falls into my lap without effort on my part, but I’m not holding my breath.

Of course what I’ve done is replace one obsession namely lusting after physical guys, to lusting after mythical guys.

So now I’m stuck looking at every little possibility, although not as strongly. Okay so its strange always wishing that the next guy is dating material. At the moment I’ve developed a light crush on the guy on the phone right now…. So who’s next?

Now I’ve got the question of how far to suppress these desires.

You know its ironic. One of the things that I’ve spent a great deal of time developing is my homoattracted side, figuring out what it means to be gay and what social rules of the gay world are, etc, etc.

What a strange paradox, but honestly I feel good about telling part of myself to take a back seat, because I’ve got many other sides that should show through.

Can anyone blow up a wind to blow these lust clouds away?

I’ve had a pretty lazy day so far today, but I’ve learned a couple of things.

1. Building a Soda Bottle Bioreactor is a much easier task that the instructions make it out to be.
2. Vegetables left in a plastic bag in your kitchen cease to have any recognizable form after about four or five weeks.
3. Mold comes in several different colors.
4. Even evil men like Saddam Hussein are still human and have feelings.
5. People who want to go to war don’t give up.
6. America has had a track record of being pussyfooted with war’s recently, not finishing them to the end.
7. Stupid people can be elected to very high ranking positions (okay, i didn’t learn this today)
8. Don’t rely on friends who have admitted history of procrastination to save you from your own procrastination, this is like asking an alcoholic to get another alcoholic to stop drinking.
9. Living alone had its advantages. (namely at the moment writing an eJournal entry half naked in the living room.
10. Having a roommate probably has advantages as well, and its always great to help out a friend.
11. Never doubt the ability of someone between the age of 16 and 25 to consume mass amounts of time sleeping.
12. Computers never do what you ask them to do the first time, even if they are UNIX based.
13. Putting things in the past symbolically is an interesting way of dealing with it.
14. Lists are a poor man’s way to deal with things.

We live our lives with far too much seriousness. We’ve been taught by either the protestant worth ethic or capitalism to take almost everything with seriousness. I personally remembering spending lots of time planning vacations to ensure the maximum amount of fun and relaxation, and while they resulted in lots of personal growth and meditative times they were some of the most exhausting weeks I’ve ever had. In addition, who can’t remember at least one family vacation in which your mom or dad turned into the field trip teacher nazi from hell?

We need to live our lives with less sense of everything being deathly serious, and enjoy and look for the frivolous things in life. Why is too much trouble to act a little crazy while cooking or doing your laundry? Or singing strange songs to yourself about cleaning? or even, philosophic-ruler forbid while at work!

We spend so much being serious that stress is literally making us sick. The Holistic Online reports that the “American Medical Association stated that stress was the cause of 80 to 85 percent of all human illness and disease or at the very least had a detrimental effect on our health.” If stress is making us sick why don’t we do something about the stress? I don’t know.

Children know intuitively how to deal with the stresses in their lives. They play, they laugh, and nothing is serious. If an adult is being silly or frivolous someone will invariably interrupt their fun by stating “why don’t you just grow up?” Why must being serious being a synonymous part of growing up? Aren’t we allowed to still be frivolous and still grow up?

Many would argue that an adult is someone who has grown beyond frivolity and is now serious, and while I will not deny that growing up us making being serious a greater part of your life, we have a tendency to over do it, being always serious, all the time. Why not say if a child is serious 30 percent of the time and frivolous 70 percent of the time why as an adult should we be serious 95 percent of the time and frivolous only 5 percent of the time? Why not follow our children’s advice a little and be serious only 70 percent of the time and frivolous 30 percent of the time? Or even why not a 50/50 split?

Employers have acknowledged some of this by giving employees more flexibility in their schedules and tools like paid time off, but even in this your expected to be taking your paid time off for a serious purpose like an illness, dental appointment, or taking care of your sick children. Why can’t you just take time off because you feel like it?

Companies also know that frivolity can create great ideas. Innovative corporate cultures have relaxed atmospheres where people have fun together. Take a look at Google as an example. When people are relaxed they’re more productive. Smart companies know this, and create relaxing atmospheres, and they get results.

Life is to short to live seriously, so have fun, look for the frivolous and let yourself off the hook.

One of the major things the Internet taught us is that if you put a lot of smart people together and give them access to as much information as possible, really cool and amazing things happen.

Look at all the open source stuff out there, lots of it started with one or just a few people who knew each other then moved online and then made everything open and available to everyone. Its given us some of the most robust and reliable software.

Its also a good way to organize governments, if you think about it long ago it was the only way people got together and got things organized. Early Athenian government everyone had access to a similar level of information.

While at the moment I don’t think we have the most stingiest government with information they are nowhere near the most liberal.

Open information fosters innovation including “negative” innovation. Whatever your opinion on 9-11 is you’ve gotta admit it was damn innovative. Why build a bomb when they’re already in the air and just need to be steered? This information mind you isn’t new, the Japanese used it during WWII.

So what if terrorists are using sixty some year old techniques? The government sees the road to safety is planning as much as possible and seeking to prevent negative innovation.

But “Rigidly certain organizations die early. They collapse from the weight of the structures they’ve erected to hold themselves up.” (p. 86 A Simpler Way)

So overly rigid countries die. Yes, look at The Roman Empire, The USSR, The Ottoman Empire. So why hasn’t the US collapsed under all these structures? I would say a lot of it has to do with technology, but thats just a guess.

So what about the fact that rigid leaders and organizations are clearly moving in one direction?

One last quote:

Rigid identities give rise to rigid organizations. Initial clarity about direction becomes hard certainty about everything. such organizations feel unapproachable. They know the way the world works … They stand in their certainties, suppressing disturbances, shooting messengers.” (p. 86 A Simpler Way)

So eventually everything might collapse but then it is also possible that we might get a transformation, or a really good government out of a collapse.

I’ve got a strange job. On a daily basis “I’m” yelled at, sworn at, given credit card numbers and told “I love you” several times a day. Well not me really, I’m a Communications Assistant, I relay calls for deaf and hard of hearing people, but it does of course go through my hands and my ears.

There is this one couple and the guy is the voice user. He says “I love you” with so much care and sincerity. Even though I wish he was really saying it to me, it feels good to hear it.

I wish more people said “I love you” to me. I want to see that in others so I should do it more myself.

Hmm The Beatles should have written “All you need is I Love You”

Am I an American?

By every common definition of the word, yes I am. I was born here, have never taken residence outside the US, and only spent maybe a total of two weeks outside the country.

But in some ways I’ve never felt a sense of belonging to an “American” ideal. Don’t get me wrong, I vote, I participate in political discussions, my credit card bills conform that I have mastered American consumerism and borrowing habits, and I enjoy a good old fireworks show like anyone else.

But I still in someways feel like an outsider. It might be that I’m an outsidere to Ohio, and given this as my primary frame of reference during the past eleven years and four months or so. So it may just be that I’m an outsider to Ohio, but until I live all over the place, I don’t think I can know. So I’ll just assume that I feel like an outsider to all America and not just Ohio.

Of course, I might feel like an outsider because I’m gay, but I also feel like an outsider in the “gay community.”

But to the point that got me started on this. I’m reading Why do People Hate America? The statement that “[America] is a nation that has developed a tradition of being oblivious to self-reflection.”

So if being an American is being unable or unwilling to engage in self-reflection then I am not an American.

But then the question if by that definition I’m not an American, what am I?

I’m not sure.

Of course a better question is why do I feel a need to identify with a country? I feel much more comfortable and appropriate identifying myself as a citizen of planet Earth than any nation state. (Not that I wholly believe or disbelieve in aliens.) I believe that way is less divisive, and more productive.

There is precedent for the transition from nation-state citizenship to world citizenship. At one time people made the transition from being a North Carolinian to becoming an American. Europeans perhaps are undergoing a similar transition from being Frenchmen, German Citizens, or British Subjects to being known as a Citizen of the European Union.

You see the political problems of this is that if we’re world citizens its much harder to find ways and grounds on which to divide us. (not that this will totally stop divisiveness.)

I guess the unfortunate thing is there are no legal protections as a “world citizen” thus I’m stuck being an inside outsider.

I’ve gotten really good at moving on.

I had my last appointment with my counselor yesterday. Its not the last because we’re done, but its the last because I’m leaving WSU and she’s a student counselor; the center she works at is only for students. I’m not a student anymore so I can’t see her anymore.

Usually this isn’t a problem for me, leaving a counselor isn’t something to fret about. I’ve left so many, some because I was moving and some because I’d reached a point where they weren’t necessary by mutual agreement.

But a funny thing happened on the way to wherever the hell I’m going. (The forum is over rated.) Jo and I crossed that line from just counselor and client to somewhere between just a counselor and a full fledge friend. This is not to diminish the spot she has moved into, its just special and unique.

I dunno… I made a point when leaving while walking down that hall together to get a bit in front of her and not look back. I’d already said goodbye and I didn’t wanna look back.

When I left the only home I knew, Binghamton, NY, when I was 12 for Dayton, Ohio. I wanted to go back and I did.

While physically I went back to Binghamton, I never have actually bone back in the interpersonal sense. The people I used to hang out with have changed, I’ve changed, and things are just different. Whatever you want to go back to you can’t; its ethereal, its gone. So I’ve got one way to go: forward. Thats it. there are no redos in life, as much as we would like there to be.

Today I talked with Jo about where I’m going the path I’m going on. Well I’m scared shitless that I’ll end up nowhere, not in school, single, lonely and without purpose or direction. But Jo extended my nautical metaphor.

I’ve pulled up my anchors in the harbor of Dayton, Ohio, and while I’ve not left the storm barrier I’m wandering out to the open ocean to find another harbor, hopefully one in a Cuba, perhaps writer’s paradise.

Between here and there I’m expecting a few storms, lots of nice beautiful days, but above all it should be an interesting time. And hey, I might even get a TAN!