11
Feb 03

muddled

i stepped out of the shower and realized that i hadn’t used soap or shampoo. i stepped back in and 5 minutes later i realized i still hadn’t soaped or shampooed. i didn’t know where my mind was. i hadn’t felt this muddled since the whole j— situation. i missed her.

we haven’t spoken in several months. at first it was wonderful, then messy, then things got better but eventually our feelings for each other just made things all messy again. when we last spoke i was hurt and she was crying but i hung up the phone anyway. that was the last time i heard her voice, the last time i felt her love. since then we’ve walked on different paths and i often wonder how she is REALLY doing. i find it difficult to clean my desk at home because there’s so much shit on it that reminds me of her that i end up feeling sad and need to lie down, or i end up distracting myself with videogames or television. one of these days i just need to close my eyes and spill everything into a box, tape it up, and toss it into the basement. doesn’t fix anything, but it’ll be out of sight, out of mind.

i finished filing my taxes today. avoiding the april 15 rush is definitely a big benefit, getting the 1k+ is a bigger one. i don’t have the hate that a lot of people associate with taxes; for the most part it’s treated me well. i haven’t gotten in trouble and i’ve had a refund most of the time instead of having to owe, but i’m sure i did get in trouble, or had to pay a sizable amount, or went through an audit i’d change my mind. but here’s to good times, and i’ll enjoy them while it lasts. i just hope that it’ll last for a long time.


10
Feb 03

appreciate

i avoided writing the past couple of days not because i had a lack of things to say, but because i had too much in my thoughts. so much was on my mind and i wanted to let things sink in before i really let myself go and put something down in a pseudo-permanent type of way.

last saturday i told a— that i felt hurt that i had been brushed off. he looked at me puzzled while i explained that i understood what happened and that in no way did it get in the way of our friendship, but that it hurt and that it was eating away at me. i continued to speak even as his confusion melted away until i had finished my thoughts. wednesday… celebrate… drinks… h——… he apologized several times as he mixed what looked like tunafish and mayonnaise and spread it on multigrain bread. i said that everything was fine, because it was, but that i just needed to get it off my chest.

i have this fear of being under appreciated. i mean, it’s not like i do things in order to look for opportunities to be recognized – i would hate that. that would seem fake and vile and horrible to me, and those are adjectives that i don’t want to associate myself with (although there are times when i can’t really avoid that). i guess what i’m saying is that sometimes i feel like i’m being selfish when i say that things add up, but how can they not? when someone sticks up for you and is there for you and supports you and helps you out in anyway possible, can’t you say thank you? wouldn’t you want to do something special for them to pay you back if you could and had the chance? i mean, yeah, i guess that’s what i’m saying.

so that’s why i spent the past few days after the quarter century anniversary of my birth mulling over and wondering why some people who i considered friends would make me feel like i hadn’t done anything for them, like i hadn’t been the friend for them that i strived to be. that’s why i told a— how i felt and why i complained to my sister and avoided listening to her advice, despite it being good, and why i momentarily felt sorry for myself. i hated feeling that way but the feeling has since subsided; “that’s life”, i thought and everything was better.

most of my friends and loved ones did remember, and that’s what counts. i love them and will always remember.

friday night was especially nice. s——‘s room was warm and dark, and as candles flickered strange shadows on her ceiling we laughed and watched several numbing tv shows that were nonetheless entertaining, and played silly games (tetris included, although that is very much not a silly game). as we threw the covers over us, exhausted, she whispered something in my ear which i have since forgotten but i remembered that it was sweet and genuine and that even though my only response was to tickle her she knew i that i understood and wanted it that way.

we were eating pizza when a—‘s dad (this is a different a— by the way) asked me whether i did anything besides work and hang out with work associates. i was kind of taken back – knowing that i am somewhat close to a—‘s family i couldn’t figure out right then what might have been the motivation behind that type of questioning. i still don’t, to be honest, despite that this happened saturday evening. i retorted by saying that even though i believed i was a pretty social person, i admittedly wasn’t really social of late and then proceeded to fumble through several excuses why this was the case. in my head i was thinking “because i need to be a hermit sometimes in order to recharge” but my response really didn’t come out that way.

i’ve been working on my dream recall and have been exercising this through the use of a dream journal. i sometimes get jabbed because of this, but i’ve always been jealous of people who can describe all their dreams with lucidity and confidence. i remember my dreams from time to time but often forget through the morning rush and this is something that i want to change. an interesting observation though: in the past 2 weeks i’ve remembered 8 dreams. six of them have been about women.

i’ve decided that i cannot write when there is a movie going on in the background. it probably doesn’t help that it’s a movie that i absolutely adore, but i’ve decided to listen to music instead if i really want some type of white noise entertainment.


05
Feb 03

celebrate

last night i couldn’t take it. i knew a— was downstairs watching television and eating something that probably contained some form of sucrose, while above me in his room i could hear the fan he kept on at night buzzing against his hardwood floor, aka my ceiling. it was 2 in the morning. it’s not particularly hot in our house especially considering that it’s winter, but a— keeps a fan on so that he can fall asleep easier. i suppose having white noise in the background can help some people go to sleep with more ease, but i personally prefer silence; dead silence if i can help it.

anyhow, we had been bantering back and forth for a few months now (it was more like i’d subtly let him know that his fan would keep me up) but recently i had kind of let the issue fall by the wayside. but like i said, i couldn’t take it anymore – i rushed downstairs and pulled him up to my room and said “shhh… listen”.

he looked at me and mumbled, “well, it sounds a lot different from down here than it does upstairs.”

today was lazy. i woke up later than i really wanted to, but i didn’t think anyone would mind. most of my work was done and i had only a few minor maintenance things to deal with, so i spent a lot of the day receiving birthday greetings, surfing the net and working on my various design stuff.

i was going through a lot of the old bookmark files that i had been collecting for the past 7+ years and found that maybe around 80% of the websites i had were dead. a few had moved around which i found pretty neat: where there once was a geocities or xoom now stood a .com, .net or .org. a lot of the “fad” domains were missing too like .nu and the such, which is just a well since i secretly found them annoying. not that there was anything wrong with .nu domains especially since bookmarks solved that kind of issue for me but there was always something unsettling with a 2 letter domain suffix as opposed to a 3 letter one.

the coolest thing was seeing how some people had really progressed and grew with the web – to see that their talents had expanded and flourished was something that really got me excited. it was awesome to click a link that i had a very vague recollection of and then be suddenly surprised by something i totally didn’t expect that blew my socks off.

amidst all the surfing i tried looking for other people with websites that shared the same birthday as me (i thought hey, why not wish a complete stranger a happy birthday too!), but i didn’t have much luck. i found a lot of people that were close and quite a few february babies and even a few birthday greetings for today were mentioned on various blogs/journals, but in the end no dice – couldn’t find one february 5 birthday among all the cybersouls out there. maybe i wasn’t looking hard enough, but after an hour i decided that i had dedicated enough time to such a silly effort.

anyhow if you know anyone out there tell me and i’ll give them a “hello” and “congrats!”.

cell phone calls answered: 6

cell phone calls missed: 5

client calls received: 0

juicy sites re-found: deaddreamer, geekbee, dazed, suction, velvetsky, anaphase.

new juicy site found: tokyoplastic