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7/28/2004 – Robert Once again, I can’t sleep. It’s past 1 AM, my heart is pounding, my brain is racing. Unable to just let go of these thoughts. As I seem to do from time to time, I’m slipping into a depressive phase. I don’t know if it’ll be bad enough for me to consider something to level me out. It happens, and usually I can cover it up to some degree, but this is driving me insane. Why is finding some degree of happiness so difficult
in life? I’m assuming some
people can find it easily, or just numb themselves to the pain for X hours
a day and end up happy with the latest reality TV show and a bucket of
their favorite fast food. My
brain won’t let me work that way. It’s
constantly picking away at my life, trying to find reasons for me not to
be happy. This has all been stuff I’ve been struggling with
for a long time. I don’t
really have the answers, but I know there’s a great deal missing from my
life. I’m nearly 25, am feeling terribly lonely at the
moment, and am unsure about my life right now.
Now, more so than ever, I find myself wishing a whole five days of
my week away. I want to zone
out and somehow make it the weekend all the time.
It’s a pathetic way to live, but I’ve had my hopes and
ambitions to make my job / company a fulfilling opportunity squashed over
the past year and a half. I
make suggestions that’ll improve the way things are done all the time,
but most of them seem to fall on deaf ears.
Yeah, I take some of the blame for losing hope in things, but
it’s time to cut the cord and try something new.
I have to; I can’t stand this constant dread for much longer.
I give up. I’m not quite ready to change careers yet.
Still got a car and credit cards to pay off, but it’s about time
I stop playing around and get serious about setting a path in my life.
I like parts of the database admin / developer lifestyle, but I’m
tired of sitting in front of a computer for 8 hours a day, pounding out
code that nobody cares about in the long run.
Yes, I have some glaring examples of why I feel like this is
futile. My first real job no
longer uses any of my code. My
second job stopped using my code because of corporate politics bullshit.
The company I worked for after that went bankrupt.
I slaved over accounting code for about two years for the next
company, only to have them decide they weren’t going to use our software
anymore: they, too, closed up
shop. My current job has had
mixed success, but they are looking to buy software that’ll replace a
lot of the code I’ve helped with. So,
we’re looking at a total waste of a career since 1997.
How can that thought not depress someone? I curse myself; I’ve become accustomed to this
lifestyle. Something I’ve
decided to try to wean myself out of.
There are many people that can survive on much less, so I should be
able to do so as well… just not in one swoop.
If I could turn back the clock and change things, I would, but
that’s never an option. Just
gotta set my milestones and reach my goals. In the meantime… back to the loneliness aspect of
things. Matt and I had a
pretty deep discussion today while having a couple smokes and enjoying a
quiet view of the city. (No,
I’m not an addict; I just enjoy the occasional cigar, clove, or vanilla
pipe tobacco cigarette) As
sappy as it sounds, some of us humans just cannot be truly happy without a
significant other of sorts in their lives.
Maybe we aren’t meant to be whole without the boost that an
intimate companion brings. I
know, some people will dispute me on this, but you can’t tell me that
making sweet love, having deep conversations into the night, and having
someone around that digs you through the bad and the good doesn’t add
something to your life. I’m
not suggesting codependency, it’s more like two people mutually bringing
a little more happiness / stability into each other’s lives. I miss romance.
Yeah, perhaps there’s a hopeless romantic inside wanting to just
find that right person… to love unconditionally, instead of worrying
about what issues the next dating experience will bring into my life.
I miss that feeling in high school, where that special girl would
cause my heart to skip a beat when she walked into the room.
Where it felt like a Romeo and Juliet intensity love story was
possible. Well, maybe we can
do without the Capulets and the Montagues, and perhaps the double
suicides. Besides that,
it’d all be pretty neat, right? But,
we all obtain our issues, scars, and baggage over time and it ruins
things. We all have our petty
games and our emotional bullshit, don’t we?
I’m sure it’s all sounding pretty grim by now. Back to the bigger picture:
I’ve given this Utah thing a shot since 1992 (exclude a year for
when I was stuck in rural Virginia).
That’s more than enough time to call it quits, isn’t it? Whenever I mention that I want to get out of here and try
something new, I get a question like “what’s wrong with Utah?”
To tell you the truth, I am. I’m
going to drag my problems with me no matter where I go, but it’s about
time I start somewhere new and give something else a shot.
I really could list a lot of things that irritate me like the local
dominant religion dominating things, the stupid liquor / club laws, the
inability for strippers to give lap dances, UDOT, etc., but it doesn’t
matter anymore. I’ve just
reached the end of what I’m willing to put up with.
I have far too much history here, too much that’s familiar, too
many bridges, too many memories that I’d like to bury. Yes, a lot of this will be taken as whining, and yes,
everyone’s entitled to his or her own opinion, but I’m just not happy
here anymore. End of story.
The hardest thing about starting over is giving up my friends, who
I love and adore. They’ve
all been with me through thick and thin, some longer than others, and a
handful of them know me much better than my family ever will.
I wish I could take everyone with me on this new journey, but this
is something I have to do, be it alone or with a couple of companions. I’m finally taking action and laying the groundwork. I’m scoping out jobs in Portland, but the pickings appear to be slim, so I’m semi-seriously looking at Seattle and Boston as well. Sadly, the economy is still in the shitter and ye old job market for a guy with my skill set isn’t as large as it used to be. This’ll probably be a long, tough search, but I will find something. Matt, Mike, and I will be taking a trip out to Portland in a couple of weeks to scope the area out and enjoy an escape from the land within the Zion Curtain. The thought of doing this is a nerve-racking one.
It just has to be done, trust me.
To those of you that’ll miss me, enjoy the time that I have left
here. There’s no set date
for fleeing, it’s just whenever I land something.
The people that know me best know I go through these cycles from
time to time… if anything, I’ve addressed why I feel this way.
I know, I’ve had one foot out the door for a long time, it’s
about time I stepped through that door and find out what life has to
offer. And yes, I’ve said it all before. It’s a repeat of the last thing that I jotted down, but
I’ve fleshed things out, and I now have a plan of attack. It’s now 2:15 AM, and I feel like I can drift off into sleep, finally.
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