RedJen's Rearview Mirror

Things are coming into focus and all signs point to getting everything on track. The second half of last year was categorized by a lot of pressure without any clear direction at work. Which translates into lots of stress and very little outlet. I'm actually looking to change divisions at work. The company I work for acquired a company that makes tools that are along the same lines of what I've been doing for the last 5 years in an area that they are currently lacking expertise and are looking to expand into. Granted things have to settle down as they become acclimated to the new corporate culture, but once things settle I'm hoping to make that switch within the next 6 months. It's nice to have a goal that I know I can be successful at for my next career step. It beats the heck out of trying to figure out what I want to do next and wondering if I could even pull it off. As a person who thrives on positive reinforcement, last year was hell. I couldn't get any answers and as a result I kept second guessing myself, which was not good for my confidence.

I was talking to a friend last night. It was a bit of an eye opener. I knew that other people had been struggling with things last year, but I had realized just how broad it went. I also realized that I really curled up into a social fetal position. I knew that one of our other friends had considered moving closer to their family and I had assumed correctly that would be disturbing to people. When I said that I had seriously considered moving back to Ohio, my friend was visibly shaken. Of course if I had been more open about that when it was happening, I could have gotten the positive reinforcement that I was important enough for him to care that I'm here... Hindsight...

I was chatting with my youngest sister the other night over chat. The younger of our two brothers is in the Marine Reserves. The longer the war in Iraq goes on, the more likely it becomes that he will be activated. The thought of him going to war is disturbing to me, but to I can only imagine what it is like to be barely a teenager and have to deal with the thought that one of your family may be put directly in the middle of a war that I'm not even sure she really understands. Hell, I'm not sure anyone fully understands this war. With what I have been able to deduce, I agree at least some of the goals behind this war: free the people of Iraq and depose Saddam Hussein.

Its nice to be able to label things good or bad. It makes things easy to reward, explain, prove, rationalize, compartmentalize and dehumanize, but nothing is that simple. War can't be that easy. Life isn't that easy. People are dying to further their goals or the goals of people they trust. Regardless of the situation, I'm sure that every side is certain they are in the right.

I'm not sure how I ended up on this train of thought, but here I am. Labels, are they the root of all evil? Maybe... Label me and suddenly I cease to be an individual who should be judged on my own merits. Now I'm an synonymous with a larger entity with a history over which I have no control over, but is attributed to me simply because I have been labeled as a part of it. Are we all just a bunch of labels? What happens if the labels have conflicting messages? Are we assumed to be the worse in any given situation? Do we run around with a rolodex of labels for the people we meet to label us from? Or is it the other way around? Do we run around with a rolodex of labels that we use to put the people we meet into easy slots? If we rely on labels, don't we risk missing out on what people really are? If I assume your history based on a label, how much of a chance do I have of being right? What do I miss out on? Do I even have a chance to get to know you?

Is there a difference between labels and different aspects of the same person? We have a different relationship with each person we interact with. Is each person's perception of me simply a view from a different angle? In that case, do you need to get a view of that person from everyone's individual interpretation, before you can know the whole person? What happens when the person we show the world is a mask over our true feelings? Who are we seeing? Who are we then?

Its not even Friday yet and there I go asking questions... A few more than five, (laugh) I think I'll refrain from sending them to the Friday Five. These would probably be best pondered over a good bottle of wine, shared with a table of friends.

Its been a long week. It was a long week on Tuesday... I woke up and was certain that it was Wednesday morning. No such luck. I've decided to take tomorrow off as a mental health day. Officially, I'll be on vacation, but I plan to spend the day doing nothing to do with work. That may not seem like a big thing, but once I decided to take the day off, I realized that I'll probably be doing some reading or coding over the weekend for work anyway. Why do I feel like I have to take a day off during the week in order to take a break? Its almost like I have to justify not working on the weekends. Any more unless I take both Friday and Monday as vacation days, I'll find myself working at least once over the weekend. I need to find another hobby. Maybe then I'll be better able to leave my work at work.

The rambling continues. That's quite enough for one night. Goodnight. I may sleep in tomorrow. I don't have to go to work...

Warning a tired brain is a dangerous thing. What is home?

Is it a physical place? When asked where am I from, I know the answer to the question. I am from the place where I was born. That is the same place I lived and was raised. I don't think of the physical place as home.

When asked where I live, I have an address. A place where more often than not I "hang my hat". My pets and things reside there, this is where I can hide and lock things outside. I'm not sure if this is home either.

So is home the people who surround you? I was never so homesick, as when my baby sister went back our parent's house after spending a month with me. It was like my heart was breaking to be cut off. My sisters feel like home. My brothers do as well, but in a different way. Maybe because they are male and "wired" slightly differently. Maybe my sisters fell so familiar because we come from the same place and have been raised with the same/similar influences. Maybe that's not home, but rather someone who is like me.

I don't yearn to visit the place my parents call home, but I do miss the people. It may seem weird, but after my parents sold the house I grew up in and moved to another house, I've never felt really comfortable there. I know I'm welcome, but I don't know which boards creak on the stairs. I don't have memories as far back as I can remember of the places around the house, the yard, the neighborhood. Maybe I need that solid physical presence, maybe I need to know it will be there 2 years from now. Living in an apartment isn't conducive to painting the walls and developing your personalities in lasting ways on your surroundings. Maybe I need to make my surrounding more reflective of me and less neutral. To be able to make permanent changes in color beyond what can be hung on the walls, that may be why I don't "feel" home.

I guess for now home is the people I have in my life who make me feel free to just be me.

I find myself thinking about things in general and what I want out of people in my life. I recently took a chance and wrote to someone that I haven't had contact with in four or five years, but has never been far from my thoughts. I never knew why we fell out of touch, I always assumed it was me. I've never been good at keeping up with people who move away (or when I relocate). The exception to that pattern is my closest friends. What didn't seem right about the time was that no one moved away, it was like she needed to go through something and I couldn't be a part of it. Sensing that I couldn't be there, I felt like I had to let her go, silently wish her well and pray that wind would lift her to the heights which I knew she was destined to ascend.

It may seem weird that this person should refuse to leave my thoughts, but I've always been drawn to her strength and the honesty with which she approaches the things in her life. It may be that part of what drew me to her is that I have never felt that I needed to be anything other than myself to be accepted when we were together. A (slightly) obsessive compulsive person with an over developed sense of personal responsibility is not someone who lets their guard down easily. Am I well prepared? Yes. Am I completely relaxed on a normal basis? Not on your life. It is a rare experience for me to feel free to let down all the barriers and just exist without fear of judgment and criticism. So when I find with whom I feel that at ease with almost immediately, that person is someone that I will feel extremely comfortable being around. Couple that with the fact that I've rarely seen such a completely honest person and that may explain why I felt a connection.

I had been hoping to be able to reconnect with her, but feared rejection. My assumption remained that something caused her to need to move on with her life, so for a long time I simply kept those feelings of acceptance in a special place to pull out when I needed them.

She wrote back and we've exchanged a few emails. I am hopeful and looking forward to reconnecting. If the time is right, maybe we will be able to reconnect. If it isn't then I have no regrets about reaching out to her. It was something I needed to do for myself. I've missed her and I needed to tell her that. No regrets, just hope...

I spoke to my Mom on Easter. It wasn’t the conversation that I was expecting to have. I found myself telling her that not only had I been seeing a counselor to help treat my depression, but also that I’d agreed to start taking medication for it as well. I’ve known since before I was 10 that her mother was bipolar (manic-depressive). I have very vivid memories of my grandmother when I was young. I remember her coming to stay live with us for a while. I remember visiting her in various hospitals around Ohio. I knew that depression can be hereditary, but I didn’t realize just how far back into my family history it went. From our talk, I learned that my grandmother remembers her grandmother going through unexplained spells of what was depression or bipolar episodes. That is five generations. That is a lot to fight alone.

Odd duck may be an accurate description of my relations. I’ve always felt that way with my extended family, especially my mother’s side, but at the same time I envy some of their closeness and the ease with which they seem to bond with other people. I’ve never been able to do that. I want to know what type of a person I am getting involved with before I devote a bunch of energy to a relationship. I want to know if they are the kind of person I will be able to relate to and trust before I open up. I wonder if this reluctance to open up is tied into my intense fear of failure. Am I so scared of failing at relationships that I analyze them to death before I’m willing to try one out? It may be that I am scared of being judged as lacking and therefore spend a lot of time observing the other person’s behavior to see how they act and react with others before allowing them to have that kind of sway over my feelings.

Dragonfly will find this post similar to an email I just sent. Hopefully they can forgive my reuse. : )
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Where there is mutual love, to regret its existence would be tragic. I would hope that where such a positive emotion exists in our lives, it would leave us enriched, even when it is a part of something that is (as a friend of mine has said) a chapter in the story that is our lives.

I don’t regret the time I was with my former fianc�. I learned a lot about myself during that time and I’m thankful that I was able to take that knowledge away with me. About a year after we split, he moved in with some people on the very fringe of people I see and we were completely out of contact for some time. From what I can tell, he finally had the “college-like” experience that he felt he had missed out on and has since moved on with his life. When I saw him last fall, he was so much more the person I always suspected he could be. The only way I can describe it is to say that he seemed comfortable in his own skin. He wasn’t playing a part any longer. The person he was projecting matched the person inside.

We’ve talked a few times since then. The strong bond that we once had doesn’t exist. When things happened, I needed to cut my ties with him; he needed to be forced toward more independence. I miss the connection we had, but the person he has grown into is more complete. There are definitely some things that I could have done without, but I think even those things were necessary.

It seems in life that we pay more attention to the negative things that happen and as a result, we learn faster from those things than from the positives. While the memory of physical pain remains with us, time will blunt the intense pain that we felt at the time into a memory of being in pain. Letting us remember the event, even being in pain, without reliving the actual agony itself. It doesn’t seem fair that our memories are less kind when it comes to our emotions.

When I think about volleyball, I remember that I’ve seriously injured my ankle multiple times and broken my hand. I remember the length of time they took to heal and rehab, but I also feel the rush of remembered competition and joy in pushing my body toward its limits. Intellectually I know that I’ve experienced intense pain, but my emotions aren’t keyed on the pain, they are keyed to the positive things I’ve experienced while playing.

Conversely, when I consider inviting people into my personal life, I don’t immediately seize on the positive memories of past experiences. Instead, I am drawn into all the negative reactions I’ve ever encountered. With such a deluge of negatives beating into my head, it’s not much of a wonder that I am wary of putting myself forward for people to see. There are very few people that I allow to see me without makeup: real or metaphorical. I’ve managed to build strong defenses against people who would cause me hurt, whether intentional or not, but I’ve never been able to “toughen my hide” where a personal barb hurts any less. I’ve gotten good at masking any external reaction to the hurt, but that doesn’t make it go away, it just puts it into a place where I have to deal with it when the audience is no longer watching.

Enough of the rambling…

And thus begins another chapter…

How can you forget what the real, internal you feels like? Over time does it slowly slip away? What happens if you aren�t careful? Does it happen that you are you just doing things? Are you at that point doing, just to do? Is it a habit to continue rather than turning around to face not knowing what to do next? Did I somehow convince myself that by letting myself become so tired and drained that I wouldn�t have the energy to worry about other things? If that is the case, it didn�t work. It may be I only managed to tire myself out to the point where I stopped doing the things that make me feel whole.

I can count on one hand the number of times I went to the beach last summer. On reflection, that is shameful. The beach is good for me; it is calming, refreshing and full of renewal. The minute I smell the ocean air or hear the water against the shore, it is like a cool shower flows over my body. My breathing deepens, my heart rate slows, and I feel lighter and more carefree. Why did I refuse myself something that is so healing? Part of it is that I would have felt guilty for going alone, but even going with others is healing for me.

Does everyone go through the seemingly crazy self-doubt that I feel plagued with? In their own minds, do they constantly second guess themselves? Does it just feel like it is a constant occurrence, when it is really much less frequent than that?

When dealing with people, I often just know if there is something they need. It can be a word of encouragement, a touch, a bit of acknowledgement or praise, even time apart. Sometimes in my life when faced with a decision, I get a flash of insight that a certain option would lead to a negative result. Whenever I�ve ignored that insight, the negative result has happened. This isn�t something that has happened once, it happens on a regular basis. It doesn�t have to be anything big. For example, this really happened:
Decision: Turn left or go straight and take a later turn, where both directions are relatively equal in distance and drive time.
Insight: Go left and I�ll probably end up arriving late.
Thought: That�s crazy, I like the scenery along the road if I go left.
Action: Take the left turn.
Result: There is a 3-car accident about � a mile down the road, which blocks the entire road. There is no way to turn around to double back or go around. I�m late, just like I was warned.

I�ve never been one to sleep in a silent room. When I was growing up, if I listened closely, I could always hear my dad�s radio playing in my parents� room. In the summer, we either had fans running in the windows or the windows open and I could hear either crickets or trains rumbling across the tracks on the other side of the alley and field behind our house. If I was very quiet and still, I could feel my heart beating. Sometimes it seemed like I could hear my heart beating if it was quiet enough. I could tell you who was walking up the stairs by the sounds they made as they moved. I wanted to stuff cotton in my ears when my one brother started grinding his teeth in his sleep.

When I went to college, I always had a small fan running or a radio playing softly when I went to sleep.

Now that I�ve moved away from Ohio, I find I sleep most deeply at the beach. There is something soothing about the sounds of the surf and the tide.

When at home, I don�t sleep in a silent room. I have some incredible CDs of tonal sounds that I play when I sleep during the weekends, when I don�t have to be awake at any specific time. They are very basic and I sleep very deeply when I play them. I�m not sure if they are music, but they are relaxing and soothing. During the week, I have continued to use a fan or soft music. When I replaced my alarm clock (the last one was too easy to turn off the alarm in the morning), the new one came programmed to play four different sounds (wind, brook, surf and rain). I like the wind sound for a while now, but it sounds exactly like the white noise that is now being pumped into the open landscape area I am now working in. Not a good mix, my sleeping sounds in the same place I�m trying to work. I�m going to have to find something else to sleep to, because the fan noise doesn�t work either. It has the same problem, too much like the white noise.

The good news is that the white noise at work, it is too loud to sleep to; it just sets my brain into neutral. People keep telling me that I�ll get used to the white noise and soon I won�t notice it. I�m not sure if that would be a good thing or a bad thing. It would be good/nice to leave work without a headache. To me the white noise sounds like a toilet with a leak between the tank and the bowl, so it is constantly running. That is a sounds that sets my teeth on edge, which may explain why I keep getting headaches.

It may be that I�m getting headaches in response to feeling isolated in the new working environment. We�ve been moved out of our offices, which we each shared with another person and into single almost Dilbert-like cubes. The thing about our work areas is that the layout pretty much forces us to face so that we have a wall to our left, right and directly in front of us. The entrance is behind me when I sit down. So I feel like I�m sitting in a box with an annoying humming sound drowning out any other sign of life from outside my box. Is it any wonder I feel trapped in there? Not to mention I HATE having people read over my shoulder when I don�t know they are there. (I already added a mirror to my desk.)

They call the new layout �Open Landscape�, but it doesn�t feel open to me. It feels confining. When we were in our offices, you could get up, walk down the hall and see if anyone else was restless without intruding on them if they were busy. Now it feels like you are spying on someone if you peek into their area to see if they are interruptible. I don�t like feeling like I�m in a cage. Heck, replace the 6-foot walls with bars and it would probably feel the same at this point, except that at least with bars I would be able to see out. I�ve been tempted to remove part of the �wall� that faces the hall I am on, just to be able to see human beings occasionally. I wonder how extroverts are handling the isolation. Maybe they don�t feel it the same way I do. Maybe being an introvert, I like the idea of having people around and just knowing they are there is enough to keep me going. By removing the evidence of the existence of other people, I feel more distracted than I did when sharing my office. I feel cut off. I think that�s the biggest issue I�m having right now. There are people all around me, but I can�t seem to get a sense that they are there and that disturbs me.

And thus Harry Potter was released upon the world for a fifth time on the Summer Solstice of 2003. Whether that is coincidence or not it seems appropriate. I wonder if it was done on purpose. I almost hope it was.

Are we always searching to be a part of a perfect spiritual connection? Is that even possible for two people to achieve when we are all imperfect beings? Are the rising number of failed marriages and the disintegration of the family unit partially a result of people moving away for placing importance on strong relations with a higher power? Is the move away from putting faith in an outside power leading to dissatisfaction with our relationships?

Can we only find a perfect relationship when it includes the Divine?

So if you have a mid-year evaluation and they tell you that you�ve been doing your job for the last 6 months, are you supposed to feel like that is a negative critique? That�s what happened today. I had my mid-year evaluation with my former manager (we still don�t have one of our own) and I was basically told that I needed to step it up and really excel. Now I know that the reason I was told this is that I usually excel at things. Hi, my name is RedJen and I am a perfectionist.

I have never been one to make friends easily (mostly because I am highly reserved) and the ones whom I can honestly say I love beyond simple affection are relatively few. It has taken the return of one of these rare people in my life to highlight just how special these people are.

I have always related more easily to men. I grew up in an all male neighborhood. I played team sports from the time I was 10. I understand how you can push yourself physically to get the last bit of effort and that it is all worth it when you win. When competing, I know the only way I can be satisfied is to know that I gave my all regardless of the outcome. When you are on a sports team, you have a goal and the way to achieve that goal is for each person on the team to play their part according to the direction of the coach. One vision, each person has a part to play, the result being that the team wins. Excelling above each other is a way to win respect. Being outstanding in a given field or task is a good thing, so long as you don�t try and falsely equate your superiority in one skill with superiority in another. All claims of grandeur shall be challenged. Successful defense of any claims will result in an increase of stature. Claims being proven false will ensure that your place in the group is only that which you�ve earned. This is where the phrase �all talk and no action� is applied. To make claims that you are not willing to have challenged is to be all talk. It is only bragging when the claim is false.

I�m on vacation and I don�t have any plans. That�s a new switch for me. At some point, I need to arrange to get my sister back to Ohio. I should work on that, my parents might like to know when to expect her. If the weather holds, we will be going to a water park with my friend and her younger sister next week.

I�ve been wanting to buy a house, but I�ve been reluctant to go in and talk to the bank about my chances for getting a mortgage. Caution: credit cards in college are bad. Too bad they weren�t so open about that when I was in school. Lets just say the hole I dug myself into wasn�t small and my credit report was quite ugly for a while. On the positive side, I have successfully paid off all my credit cards from school and automated draft is a wonderful thing for bills (like student loans) that are the same amount every month and are due on the same day. Anyway, I�ve been reluctant to consider if I could buy a house now, because I didn�t want to deal with the rejection. I�ve been watching my credit report and steadily paying things off, hoping to get my FICO score up to 700 and then I was going to go to the bank. See I was under the impression that you needed something that high before you could get a loan that large.

On a whim, I was looking at sites for first time home buyers and found a place that asked you rate your FICO as Excellent, Good, Average, Fair or Poor. I know the score itself, but I wasn�t sure which category it fell under. Luckily, this site had a FAQ that said if your score is from X � Y, then your score is Excellent, Good, Average, Fair or Poor. The picture I got from this was a lot brighter than what I was assuming.

So I figured what the heck, the site offered to send me information so I said okay. They also sent me the name of a Loan Consultant in my area that specialized in first time home purchasers. I�m meeting with her later today to look at my options. It�s kind of cool to think that I may be able to have my own house, stop dealing with renting, be able to paint the walls colors that I like and even manage to get a bit of a tax break from Uncle Sam. I know there are other costs associated with having a house, but I lived in the same house from the time I came home from the hospital, until I left for college. Knowing where the house is going to be next year is something that is very comforting to me.

So this next week, I�ll be sleeping, reading, going to Ohio at some point and maybe something else. I�m taking it easy. Maybe I�ll drag Rugrat around and look at some houses. I�ve suggested taking her up to Ohio a little early and then going to Cedar Point to check out the new roller coaster, but so far she hasn�t been real keen on the idea. She isn�t a roller coaster nut and I think she likes it down here. I like having her down here. As she gets a little older, I hope she still wants to come down during the summer. I�ll definitely miss her more if she doesn�t.

I�ve never claimed to go to church as often as I know I should. Part of that has to do with not quite being able to find the atmosphere that I associate with a congregation. I�m sure a lot of this has to do with my previous experiences being the church I grew up in, where my parents were married, I was baptized and have received all my sacraments to this point. Being a part of a church where you family is already established makes it easier on an introvert. Just being a part of my family gave me inclusion into things without too much fear of awkward situations. Okay, so they wouldn�t let me join the Boy Scouts, but that discussion never left the kitchen and since my dad was the Scout Master, I didn�t really need to join the troop to learn how to pitch a tent, tie a knot or build a fire.

There are some age milestones that you expect to have serious retrospection come into play. I thought that turning 30 last year was one of them. Boy was I wrong.

When I turned 25, I had a serious bout with the demon named �Where-am-I-going�. Growing up I never expected to be 500 miles away from home, recently broken up with my boyfriend of 6 years and going on a completely foreign path. Okay, so North Carolina isn�t another country or anything, but you try growing up in Ohio then transplanting to a place where strangers still call women �Darling�, it was definite culture shock. About 2 years later, I ran across information about what was becoming known as a Quarter Life Crisis, similar to a Mid-Life Crisis, but a newer occurrence seen most often in people associated with the ominous sounding Generation X. It seems that because we grew up being told we could do anything we wanted if we tried hard enough, around the age of 25, we started to doubt whether or not we had done enough, having serious doubts about our place in things and struggling with the definition of success. Of course I found this out about 2 years too late to do myself any good, but it was nice to find out I wasn�t crazy because of that.

The next big expected milestone was turning 30 last year. I don�t know if it was because work was so crazy, but the idea of 30 didn�t scare me. Trust me to be the one who turns 30 without much angst. So I wasn�t in my 20�s any longer, I was okay with that. In all honesty, turning 26 was harder than 30 for me. When I turned 26, I was no longer in my early 20�s. I have a Math degree and 2.6 rounds up to 3, so I had been dealing with the idea of being 30 for 4 years before it actually happened. I joked a little at going into a holding pattern at 29 and staying there, but it was just a joke.

I felt compelled to go outside tonight. Rather than turn on the porch light, I took a single candle out with me. I sat down on the floor and stared into the candle. As my mind cleared, I began to feel confined. I took my hair down and let it fall free in my face. It felt good to feel it soft against my face. As I took in the feeling, I felt a call forming in my heart.

Wings of Light
Waves of Love
Whispers of Wonder
Words of Wisdom

Enlightenment of Heart
Time of Rebirth
Songs of Surrender
Fires of Joy

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? Do you see eyes as blue as a clear sky? Do you see a smile that draws compliments? Do you see muscles that you�ve worked so hard to build? Do you see the positive results of changing diet habits and exercise? Do you see straight teeth that luckily never needed braces? Do you see hair that has natural curl and a rather unusual color? Do you see curves that mark you unmistakable as a woman?

Do you see or do you look? I�m finding that I don�t see when I peer in the mirror, I spend my time looking instead. I look for hairs that need to be plucked from my eyebrows. I look to determine how much my hair has started to frizz. I look for blemishes on my skin. I look for places where my body does not fit the image I�d like it to be. I look for imperfections in myself. I look at how my eyes are a little small and just a bit too close together. I look at how my chest has grown and no longer naturally rests as high as before.

I dread having my picture taken. Is it any wonder when pictures are permanent mirrors? Look at the imperfection they capture. There are very few pictures of myself that I like. I�ve been known to remove and hide the ones I find embarrassing. Granted it has been proven that when I wear the wrong foundation (makeup) and have my picture taken, you would swear someone else was in front of the camera. As an example, one time my roommate took my picture with a digital camera and proceeded to take about 4 more of the same shot, because the image captured by the camera was not the image she saw in front of her. As a side note, I have changed my foundation since that happened.

I�m beginning to wonder if I know the person in the mirror. We haven�t talked in quite a while. I�m not sure what I�d say to her. Perhaps if I focus on the big picture rather than the individual imperfections, I may find we have more in common that I thought. The new house has some huge mirrors. Perhaps it is time we were reintroduced.

I�m shaking with hurt right now. Last week I asked some friends if they would be free to help move some boxes to the new house. To be honest, if everyone said no, I would have been fine and gone on with my life. I�ve moved on my own before, I could do it again. I can handle honesty. The problem is that I just found out that two people who claim to be my friends basically lied to me. One told me they were going to be out of town and the other didn�t bother to tell me anything. I wouldn�t care, except both of them made a big show of saying how they would be happy to help me with my moving and then to not even bother to tell me the truth, that hurts.

There is another person who I�m guessing was with you that night. At least he told me he had other plans. I am perfectly fine with that honest answer. That one was a lie of omission and the other outright doesn�t matter at this point. I don�t take well to either case. If you can�t be an honest part of my life, please let me know and I won�t label you as such. To feel such disappointment toward those who are supposed to be my friends is far more painful than anger. If you wish to see me in pain, let me down with your lack of respect and disregard for our friendship. There are few that I let get close enough to cause pain, because my wounds do not heal easily.

How little you must think of me to lie about something so trivial.

(end of the original entry)

Update 8/27/03: In fairness and out of respect to the individuals in question, we have started to work through this issue. I am confident that we come through this stronger than ever.

For the record, I was never mad yesterday, just extremely disappointed and a bit hurt. For some reason I was mad this morning on the way to work, but for an entirely different reason that I�m not sure I�m ready to get into just yet.

(I wasn�t going to get into why I was upset this morning, but then I got writing and it all kind of spilled out. I really had a rather pleasant day at work. I woke up, went to the gym, played with the cats and watched birds on my deck this morning. If you don�t want to deal with emotional angst, you may want to skip the rest of this.)

Here I lounge on the couch. I have a cat across my abdomen and both my forearms. It�s a good thing I know how to touch type or I�d have to dislodge Omega to write this evening. She�s just laying here purring, it would be mean to make her move when she�s so comfortable.

I was checking in on a friend�s journal earlier and ran across this comment on his latest post: �I was going to vent some more about how I cannot shake this need to have someone, but I think everyone has gotten tired of it, and I know I am getting tired of being ranted at by those who want to tell me how wrong I am to feel that way.�

On feelings: I�m not sure why people have the need to tell others that their feelings are invalid. If I feel sad and you tell me I can�t be sad, what does that fix? I�m still sad and you�ve discounted my feelings. Until someone proves to me that they are either psychic or can read minds, there really isn�t any way for anyone other than me to know what my feelings are at any specific time. My feelings are mine alone and no one other than me has access to define them.

On journals: If you want to rant, then rant. If you want to muse on inner thoughts and feelings, do it. If you are going to be dealing with a topic you think some people may want to skip, then put that into the first couple of lines so they can choose whether or not to continue reading. Heck, you can�t force anyone to continue to read anything you post. If you need to vent, do it. If people decide they don�t want to read what you wrote, they can *drum roll please* close the browser or just stop reading. Crazy concept, but really, unless you feel free to use your journal to journal, what�s the point of having it in the first place. If someone doesn�t want to read as you delve into your personal needs, so what. It�s not like you are asking them to give your feelings a stamp of approval or to validate your emotions. Your emotions are yours and whether or not someone agrees with your emotions doesn�t make your emotions any more or less valid.

I guess what I�m trying to say is that if you don�t feel comfortable expressing what is going on within your journal, perhaps you need to reconsider how you use it. If you use a journal as a part of a community, perhaps you need more than one journal in order to have a place to put more personal thoughts. Heck, put it behind a password and pretend it is locked diary.

My point is that if part of the reason you journal is to work through things you are dealing with either alone or with other people, censoring yourself will not facilitate that kind of work. Find a forum that you can trust and use it.

Verb: To be absorbed in one's thoughts; engage in meditation.
Noun: A product of contemplation; a thought.

A friend of mine has hit upon why I called my site RedJen�s Musings. I started writing this as a comment on her site, but it has grown so long, that I�m going to spare her, post it here on my site and send her a link rather than my entire train of thought.

Tomorrow the NCSU football team will be playing in Ohio State�s Horseshoe Stadium. I thought a lot about going up to Ohio for the game, but the whole house thing kind of put that thought aside. I know some people who are just going up and plan on getting tickets there. I�ve tried to tell them that they are going to have a hard time getting tickets, but so far no one has listened. Living down here in ACC country, many people don�t have any idea just how BIG football is in the smash mouth football conferences. There is a reason why they call it smash mouth and it�s the same reason why many of the best linemen in the NFL came out of the Big 10 and Big 12 conferences. Corn fed boys make huge men. Offensive linemen have a new stat called �Pancakes� that is kept thanks to Orlando Pace. A �Pancake� is when an offensive lineman flattens a defensive lineman to the point that he is lying on his back, looking at the sky and wondering how he got there.

It would appear that I�ve thrown a few people for a loop with my �Shall we dance?� post. In no specific order, the answers to the common questions are as follows:

• There wasn�t a guy involved.


• I was alone.


• My room is the third bedroom of my house, which I intend to turn into a place where I can go to shut out the world and allow my creative side to run free.

So with that being said and since a little time has passed, I may be able to better describe what happened and what I was feeling.

Have you ever had a moment when you just KNEW there was something more? Perhaps the stars were all aligned correctly. Maybe I was fortunate enough to reach a point of transcendence. All I know was that I was sitting in the living room thinking about a friend who I knew was having a time of spiritual connection. I was sitting, thinking of her and willing to her the love and joy I feel toward her. As I thought of her, I allowed my thoughts to wander and then I was thinking about connections. I was following connections between people, the feelings that bind us together and suddenly there it was.

I don�t know exactly what it was, but I could feel it from my head to my toes and beyond. I could feel that I was a part of something so large and so incredible that it couldn�t be measured. I was such a small piece, but connected to everything at the same time. I was a part of this massive whole, but at the same time I was entirely myself and unique. And there was something that was there holding it all together.

I felt the purest, deepest love and I was loved.

If there had ever been a time when I doubted the existence of a divine power, no doubts could possibly remain. Call it what you want, but there is something bigger, something more and on that night, it embraced me. And I reacted to the outpouring of love like a child who could not be contained. I danced and laughed and giggled. I spun around and around until I fell down dizzy and laughing to the floor. And when my energy was spent, I lay quietly on the floor and sighed a grateful �Thank you� because all was well in my world.

And I am loved.

ShaeSin has been "stealing" ideas from my site, so I'm stealing this list idea from her...

The five transitions of my life that taught me the most.

1. Leaving home and going off to college
   Lesson learned: I can define and redefine who I am to the people around me. People can try to put you in a box of their choosing, but you don�t have to go down without a fight.


2. College: loosing scholarships, failing classes and credit card debt, followed by working through it, graduating and paying off the credit cards
   Lesson learned: I can mess up by my own actions, take responsibility for them and still accomplish the end goal with enough perseverance. Staying out of holes is easier than digging you way back out of them. Credit card companies don�t care about you and whether or not you have enough money to eat. I could survive on a lot less money than I am currently making. It feels good to send off that last check to the credit card company and know that I dug myself out on my own.


3. Working as a Lifeguard in the inner city (rather than in a small town)
   Lesson learned: If you respect people as people, you can earn respect back in return. Everyone has an issue from their past and there is no way for you to look at a person and know whether or not they were emotionally abused last night. The only way to get to know a person is to interact with that person. Some kids are never told when they do well or expected to excel. People will tend to live up to higher expectations if you assume that they are capable of doing so and tell them.


4. Moving to North Carolina from Ohio
   Lesson learned: I am able to create a life of my own away from my family and thrive. I miss living within a manageable drive from my family. When I see my parents, I can recognize where I came by certain behaviors.


5. Deciding to break off my engagement
   Lesson learned: It is better for me to be true to myself than to go along with what other people think is best and �right� thing to do. If I invite someone to be a part of a large decision, I can�t respect someone who refuses to participate in the discussion. It may not be politically correct, but there are some people that I just don�t find physically attractive, regardless of how much I like them as an individual. I should trust my instincts, when I don�t, I tend to wish I had.

I�m not sure what types of planetary alignments are forming, but goodness gracious things are crazy all around. It�s like there�s something in the water, driving everyone nuts lately. Almost makes me wonder if people have been taking note lately of strong women and specifically targeting them for drama.

I probably should have mentioned this sooner, but it was just this week brought glaringly to the surface. Neither I, nor any of my close female friends are what could be considered a typical female. As such, we can�t always answer why women in general do certain things.

So Monday night I was asked what advice I would give to a younger male friend about how to attract a quality woman. As this is a topic ShaeSin and I have discussed at length in reference to our friends, I actually have a decent idea on this one. Regardless of everything else, if you want to be in a quality relationship, get yourself to a point where you can be a quality contributor yourself. The short form: have a job, be able to support yourself, be able to take care of yourself, take care of the important things and be real with yourself about who you are.

Shae�s convinced that we need to start looking at �older� men. Of course what she�s calling older, I�m calling just about right. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of single heterosexual men in their thirties who are also strong enough of character to take on any of us. I think we hit on the real issue the other day. We are looking at a very small selection on available men. In order for us to respect a man, he�s going to have to be strong in character, comfortable around strong women and self-sufficient. The down side for us is that the male pool that we are starting with is much smaller than the female pool that those same men have access to. While we would rarely consider the checkout guy at the grocery store as possible date material, our target male audience would probably not have the same reservations.

Times like this life would be easier if we were actually men. When we act aggressively, we are being bitches. When we act in a commanding manner, we are control freaks. Too bad our strengths get minimized and we get judged on things we can�t control. (grr)

And so the saga continues�

Where do we get these insane ideas? The most outwardly confidant woman that I know has admitted to feeling self-conscious. Will the insanity never end? This woman is probably one of if not the most naturally beautiful that I�ve met. I don�t think I�ve seen her with a hair out of place. When she grew her hair out, I didn�t see any of the awful middle stage that I�ve to deal with. Are we all brainwashed? One friend wears a size that is half the number I reach for, is cute as a button and thinks she�s fat. Another has hair to KILL for, friend is 2 inches taller than I am, wears smaller clothes that I do and thinks she�s fat. I work out at least 4 days a week, have dropped 7 sizes, but only 5 pounds since beginning to work out and I�m not content either.

It�s not like we have much of a chance of getting away from having a complex. According to the BMI principles, I�m obese. Of course the BMI rule doesn�t take into account anything that makes you unique. All it cares about is your height, age and weight. Let me tell you, I may have been borderline obese when I started working out, but I have a hard time believing that I still am. I�ve made too many changes to my body with exercise to think that I�m obese. Okay, so I�ve only lost a net of 5 pounds, but I�ve also lost over 10 inches on my waist and grown the size of my upper arms. Now if you want to say that I�m still a bit overweight, I�ll buy that, I�ll even agree with it. But on any chart at your doctor�s office, I�m obese. If I remember correctly, a healthy body fat percentage for a woman is between 18 and 28, according to that scale, I�m 4 or 5 percent over.

I�ve looked up the body fat percentage numbers for women: A top condition female athlete would be expected to be 10-12% body fat. A fit female would be expected to be 21-24% body fat. An �acceptable� level is listed as 25-31%. So I�m a hair above �acceptable� and the BMI wants to call me obese. Is it any wonder that I told a friend I was slightly dreading Halloween as the old fat one? Talk about a bad inner dialog, I realize that isn�t how people look at me, but that�s what all the measurements tell me I am. So maybe �old� isn�t real appropriate, but the truth is that I�m the oldest of the women I�ve been hanging around with (one is 28 and the other is 21). Oh the drama we endure. (laugh) By the way, the average woman has a BMI that says she is overweight.

Anyway, time to head for home and a healthy dinner.

In response to reading SOO BIG on the NJS Journal.

Have you even been awed by how the smallest of things can have the largest of impacts? You are following the threads and saying, �How small I am.� Have you ever followed them and said, �Look at all the lives I potentially touch?� Regardless of whether or not I am specifically remembered 100 years after I�m gone, the times I have interacted with other people have helped to shape who they are. Okay, so it may not be a big part of who they are, but I was still there.

I�m sure that there are people that I�ve known that don�t remember my name, but the first grader I helped learn how to read will always be able to read. He may not remember my name, but I remember his smile the day he read that first story all by himself. Joshua has a little piece of me with him whenever he reads something.

By showing him respect, I taught an inner city teenager that everything isn�t about black and white. The first time I met Jamal, he expected me to be hard on him and jump to conclusions because of his skin tone. I wasn�t raised that way and once Jamal saw that I wasn�t going to judge him on the color of his skin, but rather his actions, he became a great help to me in working with the other kids. I left a small part of myself in that neighborhood and I�d like to think that any time Jamal steps back to evaluate the situation he�s in, that I�m the one who first prompted him to do that.

A smile to the person at the grocery store can brighten their day. Picking up a piece of trash can prevent someone from tripping over it. Holding the door open for a frazzled Mom can earn a smile for her children. You never know how your actions ripple, but they do.

If you save one person 6 minutes, what can they do with that time? If you save 10 people the same amount of time each, you�ve given the world an hour. What could you do with an hour? What opportunities are lost because someone lacked an extra 5, 10 or 15 minutes?

It is the little things we miss when life goes haywire. Time to sit still and just be. Time to look up at the stars in wonder. Time to touch the world around us and experience what is there.

When people have left my life, it isn�t the big things I missed. I miss things like running up my grandparents� porch and hugging my grandfather. I miss seeing a certain smile. I miss smelling a familiar smell.

So go ahead and build your bridge, just make sure that you have time for the people around you. We know that the Egyptians built the Pyramids, but can you tell me the name of the man who placed the stone? Pompeii was an incredible city, but it was destroyed. Very few things are forever, but should Joshua pass on a love a reading to someone else, I continue on.

Little things are important, even in the grand scheme of things and it is the small things that are often the most cherished.

When I was a child, I could be such an obnoxious brat when someone tried to enforce on me something that I didn�t think was �fair�. I remember staging a protest on roller-skates across the driveway of our neighbors because they tried to tell me that I wasn�t allowed to use the sidewalk in front of their house as I roller-skated up and down the street. We�d just studied the Civil Rights movement in school that spring and we were told that public streets and sidewalks were officially the property of the city, but were the responsibility of the home owner to keep up (shovel the snow and break up the ice). So here�s a red-haired girl on roller-skates going back and forth in front of their house (during their annual blowout garage sale), chanting �Ci-ty Prop-er-ty, Ci-ty Prop-er-ty�. My mom had a hard time convincing me to stop that one. Unfortunately for her, she couldn�t argue that the area I was skating belonged solely to our neighbors who let us use it most of the time. I�m not sure exactly what she said to convince me to stop the protest, but I remember that as a result I started skating around the entire block (which was really 2 blocks without a break) and whispering �Ci-ty Prop-er-ty, Ci-ty Prop-er-ty� as I passed in front of the neighbor�s house.

It is hard to be strong when the strong people around you are not. Today was the funeral and burial Mass for my Aunt. Things started getting hard when they closed her casket. In typical Pat style, there were balloons decorating the chapel. The hardest thing about the day was watching the members of my family. Seeing the way my grandmother�s hands shook as she helped to drape the casket. Hearing the catch in my uncle�s voice as he read the reading Pat had picked for him to read. Watching the tears on my father�s face as he read the Gospel and fought the grief of losing his sister. Knowing that she has moved beyond the pain and to a better place, but aching to have her among us.

She chose the theme of �Life, Death, Life� for the day and started us out with a story of the rebirth of a dragonfly. She ended our stay in the chapel by giving us each a balloon and asking that we fill it up with our breath, our life and then do something creative with it.

I saw a stone in the cemetery at the Mother House. It read, �I fear not my sister Death.� Her order is very much aware of the cycles of life and she has been sent on to the next.

It was a day filled with many tears, but also a day for celebrating the end of a journey. It is time to be happy for her, while we greave that she is no longer among us.

The dragonfly had bright-blue sapphire wings and a long graceful body, which was made to fly. Wind to thy wings.

Original Title: Acknowledging my internal dialog
(Be warned, this is long.)

If any of this doesn�t make sense to you, don�t worry about it. This has nothing to do with you. I�m trying to challenge my internal dialog. The last time I talked with GK, there were times when he looked at me like as if he couldn�t believe what he was hearing. Talking to people about myself in such a way that shows me in a positive light makes me feel guilty. This journal is probably the lone exception to that general statement and I�m not sure that reading my journal would make anyone see me in a positive light.

This has absolutely NOTHING to do with anyone other than ME! Have you got that? This means that I am the only person who gets to take this personally! I am concentrating on ME and how this makes anyone else feel cannot matter right now! I do still care how others feel and I can�t help but care. The thing is I have to learn about ME and I can�t do that if I�m concentrating on everyone else, because when I do that, I do it to the exclusion of myself.

There are two things, which in relation to me will make me mad faster than anything else. Those two things are telling me what I think and telling me what I feel. I may not do a good job in deciding what I think or feel all the time, but by all that is Holy, those are mine and no one else�s. There is nothing in this list that I can�t feel. The truth is I do feel everything in this list; so telling me that it is impossible to feel something does no good for anyone. I may not have a firm grasp on expressing my emotions, but I guarantee I know what is going on in my head better than anyone else. I am not saying that I should agree with all the statements below. The thing is that until I acknowledge them, I cannot address them positively or negatively.

It is sometimes hard to remember making the transition from �child� to �adult� with my parents. When I went off to college, I starting being fairly separate from my parents. We�d talk on the phone and they�d come get me for the occasional weekend at home, but if a day went by without talking to my parents, no one freaked out. I remember one summer after being away at school for nine months, my dad trying to say that if I didn�t leave the house to go out before 9 pm, that I shouldn�t go out at all. That was extent of our sparing. For the record, I told him that regardless of when I left the house, I would get home at about the same time, so 9 pm or 10 pm didn�t really matter. While I lived at home, I respected their lifestyle and home. Living at home meant that either I went to church on Saturday evening or regardless of when I got home on Saturday night (err Sunday morning), I would be going to church Sunday morning.

So where is this coming from? Well, I have friends who are going through this fledgling stage with their parents. Seeing them makes me grateful for the lack of drama I had to go through. When you are a parent, you are a parent for life, both yours and theirs. But there comes a time when you have to trust yourself enough to let your child go and let them sink or swim on their own. This doesn�t make you a bad parent and it can�t be an easy thing to do, but until you let your children be adults, they won�t grow into the people they can be. As the parent, you have about 18 years to make your mark and build the foundation of your child�s character. This doesn�t mean that after they turn 18 you stop being important or influential, but at that point the world in general will expect your child to be able to stand on their own two feet and answer for their actions. At that point the world stops writing notes saying, �Johnny isn�t paying attention in class. Please come in for a parent teacher conference.� Yes, you are the parent, but at that point you are not the one expected to take corrective action.

Ever since I started keeping this journal, you�ve been able to read about things that I am becoming aware of and addressing for myself. At times, I have been afraid to put things here that may be hard for you to read, because I was afraid that you would be hurt by what I had to say. I've still said them, but I hope in a way that hasn't seemed hurtful to you. I have worked very hard to be honest with myself, even when I�m afraid of the truth. The majority of what I�ve addressed about myself personally are things that I have identified as needing change. I have made a conscious decision to dig into my personality and get to know myself in order to better understand and relate to the world around me.

You�ve known me my entire life, so you know that I address projects in a manner that seems logical to me. It should come as no surprise that I decided to start at the beginning and work my way forward in a project of this size. The biggest source of confusion for me has been my emotions and self-image.

The thing that I have been lax in addressing is how much I love and admire you.

You created a nuclear family for your children. Few people are blessed to grow up in such an environment.

You live your beliefs. It is so easy say, �I believe� something, it is something else entirely to stop talking and just model what you believe for your children. There are a lot of values that have lost importance within society, that I learned are important from you.

Honesty
Integrity � the value of keeping your word and acting in a way that is in sync with your values
Responsibility � for every action we choose to take, there is a reaction that we are responsible for creating.
Gratitude � for the freedoms we live with.
Respect � my rights end where yours begin.
Honor � the right thing is still the right thing, even when it is hard or unpopular.
Humility � there are a lot of people on this world. Every individual has a unique set of gifts and there will always be someone who is better at something.
Awareness � that there are places in the world where people do no enjoy the freedoms and resources that are so easy for us to take for granted.

The core set of values that you live by, and model for us, are above and beyond what is socially acceptable. In a world where it is deemed okay to be self-centered and ignore the effect your actions have on other people, you have chosen to remain true to your values. The strength of character you show is incredible and I admire you for that.

I recently asked you who I am to you. To me, you are the foundation on which my character was built. I hope that if I am ever blessed with children of my own that I can be half the parent that either of you are to me.

I love you.

Your daughter,
Jen

The days are getting longer. The sun peeks out more often from behind the clouds. The air smells earthy. Green leaves push their way past the surface of the earth to greet the sun. Trees are blooming. The pastel colors of spring are all around.

I have always seen daffodils as being a sign of the arrival of spring. My mother had a small patch of daffodils near the base of our driveway that would bloom each spring. They were be a bright patch of yellow that drew your eye as you came around the house and became officially "home". They would not last late into the season, but always seemed able to hold onto the idea of growth and sunshine until the other flowers could awaken. It was almost as if the daffodil were the first to realize that it was time to get up and help the sun to chase off winter�s chill. With their bright yellow faces, each daffodil became a miniature sun set firm in the earth and holding back the chill of winter so the other less adventurous flowers could join them.

When the world is quiet and time stands still, are you content with the silence or do you reach out beyond yourself? Do you ask questions or are you content with what you already understand? Do you ask for riches, knowledge or understanding?

There is one prayer that I have always felt quite personal about and always comes from my heart. From the time I was child, I�ve always begged for the same things:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Lions and Orchids

Well it's Saturday and I just woke up from a wonderful nap. I'm not sure why, but I've gotten into the habit of waking up at the (ab)normal time of 7 am on the weekends to feed the critters, getting some breakfast, checking my email and then taking a nap where I usually sleep longer than I did before I woke up. I have no clue, but I suppose if I can't convince my body to just sleep in on the weekends, this will have to do.

I had two interesting conversations in the last few days on similar topics. Now that I've slept, they have me thinking.

I was in a meeting on Wednesday morning, where once we'd taken care of business, the four of us began chatting about things that need to be done around our houses. One of the people I work with just bought a new house and may be qualified to start a lawn care consulting firm if he ever gets bored with computers. I now know way too much about how to pamper and care for a new lawn, starting from dirt. A second (D) commented on how his neighbor would love to have the first for a neighbor. It turns out that D would be quite content with grass that his children can play upon, rather than the perfect manicured lawn his neighbor obsesses over.

(I'm just trying to let my lawn grow and get green before I start mowing it. That�s my story and I�m sticking to it.)

Once the lawn care seminar was over, D and I went back to my desk so that he could ask me some more specific questions about how to administer the data that was addressed in the meeting. This makes sense because I wrote the tool he'll be using for this task. D reflected that his family is the token white family in the neighborhood where they live. They live in a nice neighborhood of $250k + homes, where the families are well above the poverty line and are most likely composed of at least one successful professional and children. D expressed frustration that no matter how much effort he has put toward making friends with the people of his neighborhood, his family is kept at arms length and treated as questionable.

D's comments brought to mind the confusion I felt when I moved to Columbus and started college. I moved from a small midwestern town where we had about 3 African American families. While the population was primarily of Caucasian descent, there were also those of Asian, Middle-Eastern, Latino, Pacific Islander and African descent. If we had been required to meet certain percentages of people termed minorities, we would not have been able to comply for lack of people. What we did have was a common upbringing, where we were told from the beginning that regardless of skin color, everyone was equal. Billy was about 2 years ahead of me in school and he was the same as the other popular upperclassmen. He was on the football team, he hung out at Pizza Hut after the game on Friday night and he dated a cheerleader. The cheerleader was and still is Caucasian.

(Cover your eyes, shocking information to follow.)

I find myself in an odd place lately. I�ve tried to find ways to make things work, but nothing seems to help.

I feel invisible. Invisible at work, where even though I�ve been practically living in my office, I�ve been told to check out other opportunities. I�m invisible at home, with friends or alone. I feel like I�m fading.

I�ve spent the last seven and a half years putting effort into what I thought was an investment into my future and it looks like I was wrong. Maybe not completely wrong, but I was never bothered by the idea of working at one place for the rest of my career. Before I felt like I had value and that made all the difference. Now I feel like a nuisance and unwanted by the one who represents the company to me and me to the company. I can sense his frustration when he is forced to call on me for some information. He doesn�t want to, but sometimes I�m the only one with the answer.

Work-Life balance is supposedly still an important issue for the company. It says so on the Human Resources web pages, but it seems to be a practice that is repeated frowned upon in the day-to-day work culture. In place of actually respect and support, I�m seeing malice and conflicting direction. If I were worse with recollecting specific dates, I�m willing to bet that my counselor would have said I was being paranoid. Heck I worry that I�m being overly paranoid and I�m living this BS right now.

I�m looking at different job postings inside the company, but I�m finding it hard to get excited about making an internal change. I�m hoping to hear from a company I made contact with early last week. I�m scared of making the wrong choice, I�m concerned about who I�ll turn into if I don�t make a change. I�m scared of growing callous and I don�t want to go there. When my mind wanders, more often than not, it isn�t going to a pleasant place. The biting sarcasm is barely kept in check under the surface and I�m tired.

I�m tired of being in a situation where regardless of my action or the results, I am wrong. If I do what needs to be done, I am wrong for enabling the poor planning of another group. If I try to push back and make people use the process, I�m not being a team player. I�m asked to put aside things in my life to get things done at work and then I�m criticized for not being shiny and happy. I try to limit my contact with people who cannot deal with me when I�m stressed and that makes me unavailable. If I make myself available, I don�t have time to get the things they want done.

I have a person in my friend group who seems more interested in finding reasons why people should not interact with me than otherwise. And yet I can�t help but think of her when I see things I think she would enjoy. She and I are very different people and I want to be happy to see her in the lives of my friends, but I have a hard time being happy when I feel malice aimed in my direction. I really just want her to have a good life, with good people in it. She has some of my favorite people in her life, is it too much for her to want what is best for them as well? Is it too much to ask that she extend the courtesy she is given? Is it too much for her to act genuinely grateful to others when there is no audience? There are people who have given her their time, because she is dating their friend and living with another of their friends. These people don�t need to help her, but do so because it helps her and because she is important to people who are important to us, she becomes important to us by extension.

I�m tired and going back to sleep.

P.S. The photo album is back up.

Part of my job is that every year, everyone has to go to something related to diversity. It can be about how men and women communicate. (In general men like to identify a problem, kill it and move on. Women want to understand why it happened, the feelings it caused and the impact of those feelings on the world at large.) It can be on racial stereotypes and how when dealing with multicultural groups things you see as safe can be perceived otherwise. (I�d always heard the giant easels that hold big tablets of paper in the front of a room referred to as Flip Charts, because to turn the page, you flipped the piece of paper over the top of the easel. Imagine my surprise to learn that the term Phlip is a derogatory name for a person of Philippine descent.)

So this year, I went to a presentation on Generational Communication. Guess what, those of us lucky enough to be members of Generation X are not only a short span of years, but we are also pessimists surrounded by a bunch of optimists. So here we are, we have the Baby Boomers on one side and Gen UPG on the other side. Both of these groups like to be shiny happy people in general.

Generation X has been loosely defined as those of us born between 1968 and 1978. So my group is comprised of about a ten-year span where birth control (the pill) became available and our parents stood a decent chance of being Hippies, shiny happy people. What did we see growing up? In 1986, I got to see the space shuttle blow up while eating lunch at school. We saw the markets crash and economy fall in the early 80�s. While our parents and grandparents put their time in at a single company and in the end, the company paid them a pension and took care of their people. We saw companies making major cuts to their labor forces and cutting benefits to their loyal workers as they retired. The idea of blind loyalty to your employer went up in smoke before our eyes. It didn�t matter how long you had been loyal to the company. If you were expendable, then you were cut. Bu-Bye.

We were the first generation born where a pill could prevent conception and the term latchkey kids was coined while we were growing up. With the cutbacks our fathers saw in their jobs, more of our moms had little choice but to enter the work force to make ends meet. Finding someone to watch the kids became more than a requirement for a Saturday night out without the kids. Childcare became a daily occurrence. Very few families were able to have one parent stay at home with the kids while the other went to work.

Do you wonder if you are a part of Generation X?

1. Are you an optimist or pessimist?
   
2. Who were your heroes growing up?
   
3. What is better working longer in the office or getting better results?
   
4. Would you rather have a day off (where you didn't have to catch up for the day later) or an extra 8 hours in your paycheck?
   
5. Is respect earned, gained over time (regardless of action) or expected?

Certain people make me think way too much�

I'll admit very few people seem prepared to take on a commitment of next week. Unfortunately, it often seems like the concept of forever has been misplaced to them. I've always been told that "never is a mighty long time." It is sad when relationships that are traditionally meant to exist until death parts a couple have been reduced to the quality of a fast food meal.

I hate that I've grown somewhat more cynical. I often wonder whether or not a couple has realized the scope of what they are saying when they make vows of forever. Is it a case of saying, "Sure, I'll say that I'll love you until the end of our days, because it is romantic and it sounds good. I may even want to believe I'll love you for that long, but just in case I'm not blissfully happy, I can always just get a divorce." Having even one person in the relationship have that attitude before it begins does not bode well for the future strength of the mutual commitment.

Someone described being willing to take a chance on love as jumping off a cliff. The thing is that you expect to be jumping in tandem. If you jump and the other person hesitates, you are left freefalling alone and exposed. If your partner jumps and you hesitate, they are left in the vulnerable position. Even if you both jump, but you hesitate to see if your partner is really going to jump this time, you aren't jumping in tandem and unless you are willing to speed up your descent, trusting that they will embrace you when you are again at an even altitude, you can't be a pair until you are at the same place. Until you are both in the same place, someone is going to be hurt on impact with the ground, because the parachute only works when you activate it together. If you can't find the strength to be together, someone is going to hit the ground in a blaze of sudden deceleration trauma.

Personally, I'd rather be involved in a jump where both people put something on the line. I'm more likely to be the person who hesitates at the top of the cliff to make sure the other person is sure that they want to jump. That may be a test, I don't know, but until I can come up with a way to tether them so that if I jump they will either jump voluntarily or be drug off the side of the same cliff, I will probably retain some of my skepticism.

Do I believe in forever? Yes, I'd like to find someone who I could have that connection with. Someone who isn't afraid to contemplate the future before it happens and is willing to accept that because they are mortal there will come a time when it is time to move beyond the existence we currently experience.

Perhaps what we are seeing is an odd remake of courtly love. People know the words that they are supposed to say to make things sound right, but they never take the time to learn the melody. Rather than putting their heart into the words and taking what they are saying to heart, they recite the word by rout and pretend that is enough.

I want forever. I want to cry over the loss of a partner with whom I've built an entire lifetime of memories. I want a partner who would do the same if I were lost to them.

Until things get hard isn't good enough for me and I'm not willing to accept that.

You don�t get it. You don�t even get that you don�t get it. You think you have me figured out, but you have no idea what I want or who I am. You haven�t gotten the basics and since this is attempt number two, I have to say enough.

My time is valuable to me. I don�t have enough of it and when I give someone a block of time, I expect them to participate or if unable to meet, then call within a reasonable amount of time. Five hours after the fact is five hours wasted and not good enough. One way I show I care is by setting aside a specific block time. This isn�t me regulating people to appointments. This is me making sure that I can give someone my undivided attention. If something or someone isn�t worth my time, then I don�t waste the time.

Someone who respects me will respect that I put more emphasis on actions as opposed to words. I view saying something, but failing to follow through as the equivalent to lying. Pretty words may sound nice, but unless they are matched by actions, they leave a bitter taste and a feeling of disappointment.

Call me old-fashioned, but if I say I�ll do something or be somewhere, I will. I place a lot of personal value on not breaking promises. I view failing to follow through on commitments as breaking promises and I view making commitments that you have no intention of meeting as lying.

The truth can set you free and I have a high performance BS detector, also known as heightened intuition. If you can�t tell me the truth, at least don�t lie to me. You may think I believe you, but you�ll only succeed in showing me that you don�t value me.

In order for me to consider something a meaningful relationship, it has to have lasted for longer than two months. If the relationship is of a romantic nature and you don�t know anything personal about me, then it wasn�t meaningful. If you have to constantly question whether or not I�ll follow through with my word, you don�t know anything personal about me. If you cannot show minimal trust, you probably don�t expect people to trust you. If you don�t expect people to trust or rely on you, what motivates your actions to be worthy of trust?

Passive-aggressive pisses me off. Okay for your case this doesn�t apply, but I figure if I�m going to put out a list of the basics, I should include it. For the record, if you would like me to have to fight to keep from physically lashing out at something or yourself, this would be a good behavior to exhibit.

I believe that many things aren�t worth the energy it would take to be upset about them. If something isn�t important enough to be valuable to me, then it is definitely not important enough for me to be upset about. That being said, the people and things I view as important are definitely a finite list. These people have the power to cause me emotional pain, because I have let down my guard to them. If you would like to see what a vindictive and cold-hearted bitch I can be, do something hateful or harmful to one of those people. I tend to laugh when people try to piss me off. I get hard when people try to hurt those that I care about. If you would like me to hate you, then you have to earn my hate and it takes as much energy to earn my hate as it does to earn my love. That energy can be yours or someone else�s, but I refuse to hate things that have no bearing in my life.

So, I�m not mad, upset or sad. I�m disappointed that I gave you something (time) you didn�t value, but I gave it freely. I hope you find and recognize that which will make you happy. If I was on the list, I�m sorry, but no thanks.

RJ

Once upon a time, there was a group of friends. They were a small, tight knit group who shared a common bond. While not always apparent, to a one, they all thought too much. During the high times when the group was tightest, there was never any doubt where they could be found. Each could be found with the others and together the rest of the world wondered where such people came from.

Then strife arrived in small forms. Harsh words were spoken and friend attacked friend. Battle lines were drawn and sides were taken. Those once called friend became known as Evil and avoided by some. The friends able to bridge the chasm that separated the group would travel back and forth, but no one worked to close the gap. Some who initially tried to keep contact with both sides were quietly cut off and forced away from the far side.

Eventually, the group appeared to heal and go on, but under the surface, a disquiet lurked and began to fester. People who think too much without expressing themselves easily feel cut off from others. Invisible walls began to take shape and while easily seen through, the strength of the walls was deceptive. Once created, the walls began growing thicker until their transparency failed and looking through them showed a distorted vision. People once friends became unfamiliar and foreign. The warmth, once easily felt from one to the other could not melt the walls and there was grief for what had been lost.

Each tried to break down the walls, but could not find the strength to do so alone. The task required that all focus their strength on a single point together, but those who strived were never able to but aside their pain and hurt to work fully together at the same time. Unable to break down the barriers between them, grief turned to resentment and depression. Those once too strong to separate fell broken and bleeding.

Time passed and some wounds began to heal. A few defined new lives and started to live again. Some searched for ways to recreate that which had been lost. Some cried alone. And some cried feeling lonely and unable to reach the ones they cared so deeply about.

More time passed and new sparks arrived in the world. A fresh breeze that gave life to the group and rekindled flames that had long died into lonely embers. The breeze became a tornado and all in its wake were tossed about like discarded toys. The storm passed and together bonds began to re-forge.

Unknown to the rest, the breeze remembered the power of the storm and longed to return to that place. Focused on regaining the power of the storm, the breeze took from all gathered until only a single man remained who saw the gentle breeze behind the gale. Fearing the man would soon see past the breeze, the gale led him away from the others and fought off any who would come near. Away from the growing gale, others watched and yearned for the man to see beyond the storm filled air, but he was deaf to all cries and blinded by the wind.

And the storm moves on, carrying the slumbering man away from those who care for him and striking blindly out at any who would follow to try and awaken him. Those left battered by the storm fall exhausted from the task of surviving. They look from one to the other with tired eyes full of sorrow for the lost and gather their strength. Soon it will be time to survey the chaos left by the storm and those left must decide what is lost and what can be rebuilt. For now it is time to sleep, tomorrow will be soon enough to begin sorting through the pieces. Some pieces will be cherished, others cried over, but all will have to find a new place.

Now comes the rain to wash the raw burns of an unforgiving wind and lull the tired eyes into a healing sleep. And the tired sleep, dreaming of a gentle rain and as the sun rises, a ray of warmth creates a rainbow of hope.

No, I haven't seen this "movie" and I�m not planning on seeing it. I've heard from too many people I trust (and who are NOT GWB fans in the slightest) that while some of the numbers given are true, they are used completely out of context in order to alter their meaning.

In my opinion, Mr. Moore is a very intelligent and egotistical human being. He can also be extremely funny on the occasion that he gets down from his political soapbox and stops trying to beat the world into accepting his view of things as the 100% truth. I bought one of his books based on reading a hilarious excerpt and came very close to burning it in reaction to the extremist political opinion I was reading on page one. He continuously refers to GWB as the Commander in Thief, due to him winning the Electoral vote, but not the popular vote. To which my reaction is, "Congratulations, the President is not chosen by the popular vote, get elected to Congress and change the rules or get over it. I'm not exactly sure that someone who runs away moping and comes back looking like Grizzly Adams would have made a much better President anyway. Mr. Gore has been awarded the title of Diva-Hippy in my book, please extend any congratulations to him as you see fit."

Is GWB the best person for the job of President of the USA? No, he's a POLITICIAN. I guarantee the best person for the job isn't anywhere near the Oval Office and will probably never be on the ballot. I'm not sure what J Kerry believes, his platform seems to be "Vote for me, I�m not GWB." While this does coincide with Mr. Moore's message, I have a problem with change for the sake of change and I prefer a known enemy to an unknown one.

I don't know who I'll be voting for this fall, but I do know that Mr. Moore has the amazing ability to make me mad and want to break things. (If you missed it in previous posts, the best way to make me mad is to tell me what to think.) This also has the side effect of making me want to do exactly the opposite of what he wants me to do. So in fairness to J Kerry, I will be avoiding Mr. Moore's latest political commercial, mainly for two reasons. Reason One: I already pay for cable TV and I�m not paying another $7.25 to watch a political advertisement. Reason Two: I plan on making up my own mind about who I'll be voting for come November. Reason Two assumes that between now and November, J Kerry will slip and let people know what his beliefs are beyond "I can do a better job than this guy."

Anyone know a fairly fiscally conservative, socially liberal and viable candidate for President? I'd be interested in hearing about them. Of course, there is the whole thing about how the government is actually composed of three major pieces: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Yes, the Executive is the most visible and has a single target, err face, but the government is set up as a system of checks and balances for a reason. No branch is more important or overall more powerful than the other. It takes all three working to get things done. Congress can override the President AND has to power to remove the President. The Supreme Court can nullify any law made by Congress. The President controls who is nominated to the Supreme Court, but cannot remove the existing members.

I'm not saying GWB is another Abe Lincoln, quite the contrary, but history will be what tells the tale of our times. Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of our greatest Presidents ever, but he was hated to the point of assassination AND managed to kick off the bloodiest battle ever fought on American soil.

We can let the system balance itself (like it was designed to do) or we change the system (like it was designed).

And if you don't take part in the political process, stop your bitching. If you can, vote. If you don't take the opportunity to vote, then you don't have any say in what is happening. The popular vote may not elect the President, but it does choose the delegates to the Electoral College, Congressional representatives, state and local officials. If you can't vote, there are plenty of ways to get involved, so find one that you agree with and participate.

In other words, get involved or shut the hell up!

I had an incredible conversion last weekend with a friend. I�m not sure if it was useful to her, but it sparked a lot of thought from me.

Nearly everyone I know has a project they are working on. For a while, we even put together a local support group that we called Virgos Anonymous. That was great for a while, but then we discovered that people in romantic relationships are probably not good candidates to be in the same support group. We are all private people and these were things that we didn�t want to share with the world at large. So Virgos Anonymous fizzled out and I didn�t keep up my goals list very well. Last fall, hoping to resurrect the concept of Virgos Anonymous, I tried to get Delta Advocates off the ground, but it never really caught on.

I am a fix-it type of person. If something is wrong, identify why it is wrong, so it can be avoided in the future and fit it. I�ve had to learn how not to try and fix everything for people. If someone asks for advice or what they should do, I�ve gotten better at helping them explore the situation more and find their own solution. Trust me on this one, it takes energy for me to not hand the person a solution to whatever we are discussing, but for my friends, I�m willing to work harder.

So where is all this coming from? Recently people around me have been dealing with big/huge/giant sized issues. Ones that are described as being so big that you can�t get your arms around them are causing frustration. Sometimes you have to step back from an issue and try too look at it from another angle before you find a solution.

Problem - A box is in the wrong "place"

Question � Where are you in relation to the box? Are you inside the box or outside of it?

If you don�t know where you are in relations to the box, you haven�t taken in the current environment. The actions you would take from inside the box are most likely radically different from the ones you would take from outside the box. For example, if you are someone who tends to take on problems by charging full speed at them, if the box represents you, then charging the box won�t help. No matter how fast you run, you can�t get any closer to yourself.

Question � Where does the box need to be? What if the box cannot be moved? Will moving the box would break anything? Do you need to move the box or what is inside the box?

If you don�t know where the box is supposed to be, it is probably a waste of time to move it. You are more likely to move it in the wrong direction than the correct one. If you know what needs moved, you can tailor the solution to the end goal. If the goal is to move the contents of a box of rocks across the lake, then the box doesn�t necessarily have to cross the lake.

Question - Does it really have to move? Can the environment be altered to attain the goal without moving the box? What is it about the current "place" that is wrong? Why is the current "place" wrong?

If the box is getting wet and needs to be dry, find out how the box is getting wet. If the box sits in a swimming pool full of water, holding an umbrella over the box won�t prevent it from getting wet.

Question � How will the passage of time affect the box?

Time changes everything. Time is also something we can�t control. How does time figure into the situation?

Not one to be able to pass up a dare, I�m accepting ShaeSin�s challenge.
___________________________________________

From the Ranting Virgo:

"Post your completely honest opinion of me as a comment to this entry. Please post anonymously, and don't feel afraid to say whatever. I want you to be brutally and completely honest. Write as much or as little as you want, but if you're reading this, I want you to comment. Once you're done, put this in your own journal if you're not a big wussy.

Do it! You know you wanna ..."

Unless a person wishes to ignore the world going on around them, it would be hard to miss the commotion going on about the legal recognition same sex relationships. In 1996, the government passed a bill called the Defense of Marriage Act. I�d like to think that the original authors of the bill had done their homework before putting this before Congress. It is blatantly obvious to me that this bill premature. I�m not saying that I agree or disagree with it, but rather that there is a lot of stuff that needs to be addressed before someone tries to define marriage.

As of 2002, 47 of the 50 United States allow individuals who have sexual reassignment surgery to have their birth certificates altered to reflect their new sexual identity following surgery. So once John is legally Joanne, according to the laws of most states, Joanne should be able to able to marry any man she falls in love with, in any state where she falls in love, regardless of the new state�s view on transgender individuals. This is primarily because the courts have shown a historical commitment to the �Full Faith Credit Clause� of the U.S. Constitution. If John was born in Maine, later has surgery to become Joanne and has legally had her birth certificate updated to indicate her status as a female, then by the Full Faith Credit Clause, Joanne is a woman in every state of the Union. As such for all intents and purposes, Joanne is a woman.

This puts quite a twist on the Defense of Marriage Act. If you define marriage as between a man and a woman, Joanne would qualify as the female half of this couple, but unless her man was born female, the authors of the DoMA don�t think this works. So where does this leave the Defense of Marriage Act? From what I�ve been able to find, it leaves things in a complete mess. To define marriage as between a man and a woman is fine, until one of the individuals wasn�t born that way.

What makes this even murkier is that the courts have a commitment to the Full Faith Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Full Faith Credit Clause of Article IV of the Constitution holds that laws and other actions of one state shall be recognized in other states. So even in states that refuse to acknowledge same sex unions, unless they are willing to ignore the Full Faith Credit Clause of the Constitution, they are bound to honor the decisions made by other the states.

For the record, my aunt Doris is married to my uncle Helen. Legally Helen is male and is recognized as the husband and father in his family, but he does not live as a male. I�m sure this confuses more than a few people.

The Defense of Marriage Act is looking weak in the face of more recent events. I�m fairly certain there are worse things going on in society than the sexual identities of a part of the population. Some would argue that what makes a man or woman is the contribution they can make in the procreation of the species. If that is the case, where does that leave someone who is unable to contribute to this activity? A lack of the ability to procreate is not limited to those who undergo gender reassignment. Taken strictly, this would mean that any woman who has gone through a hysterectomy is no longer female and any man who has lost his testicles is not male. This would also mean that even without surgery, anyone who is medically sterile is neither man nor woman.

Would we have a third sex, which was neither male nor female? Until you can prove that you contribute to the gene pool, you cannot claim to be one or the other. If all that makes a man is the ability to �father� a child, what happens when someone engineers a child from the DNA of two women? Which one is the father and thus male?

Yeah, the world can be a messed up place. It seems ironic that the nation founded on the ideal of freedom from oppression jumps so quickly to deny that which it cannot understand. I don�t believe we are quite ready to join John Varley on his Steel Beach, but I�m not sure that ignoring the changes embraced by a subset of the culture is going to keep anyone safe from the reality.

I find it humorous that something referred to as Full Faith holds such problem for the religious right in this case.

As a counterpoint to an article sent to a list I subscribe to, there are a few things I�d like to bring up. (Click here to read a copy of the article)

First of all, politically, I�m firmly entrenched among those labeled as Independents. While I am not fond of many of the decisions that have been made by our current president, I believe that he does hold the office and deserves a bit of respect because of that. This is not to say that he�s perfect, for no one is, only that he had to do something right to get to where he is. I have and continue to be a registered Republican, mainly because that way I get to vote in the primaries. If I could register as a Democrat at the same time, I�d do so in a heart beat. My views are primarily fiscally conservative and socially liberal. To me that means if money can be used to address a problem, then spend it, but make sure you are fixing the root problem, not just the surface scars. A quick fix that leads back to the same problem isn�t fixed. A free lunch may help in the short term, but unless the underlying problem that created the need for that lunch is fixed, the same situation will exist tomorrow. We need to treat the disease, not the symptoms.

Statistics are numbers and you can make them say anything you like. With the right spin anything can sound positive or negative.

If you were elected to an office and had to appoint people to positions that you would be working closely with on a daily basis, would you be more likely to choose from friends who you trusted? Telling me that Bush appointed 10 people from a secret society at Yale to important positions sounds like propaganda. The fact that the author names the secret society takes some of the credibility from the statement. It maybe true that they were members of the same group, it probably is, but why does it matter? If I were an elected official, I would make sure that people I trusted were the one closest to me. Does this mean that others shouldn�t be engaged or listened to? No, but it means that I want people I can speak freely with close to me. The President lives in a very public spotlight, to criticize him for including people he has known for years and trusts is unfair.

I know many of the people my parents know. If asked to recommend someone for a task/job/position, those people are more likely to fall on my list than complete strangers. It makes sense that many of the people the current president nominates are familiar from his father�s term in office. It is human nature to embrace the known, rather than seek out the unknown. When dealing with someone I know my parents trust, I am more likely to trust them as opposed to a complete stranger. It�s human nature.

As you can probably tell, this is my opinion and I claim the right to have it. My advice is to always ask where the numbers come from and who provided them, because given the right spin statistics can be truthful without telling the all of the truth.

If you don�t like where things are headed, then get involved, because silence is assumed to be assent. The point of a representative democracy is that the representatives convey the voices of the people who elect them. If you don�t use your voice, how will anyone hear you?

Unemployment
* March 11, 2000 � October 9, 2002 � the Dot-Com Crash
Many experts equate this event to too much growth too quickly. The �new� economy that was being built by the Dot-Com was being created based on grandiose ideas and very little real world structure. Dot-Com millionaires were called Paper millionaires for a reason. When pushed to show profits and compete in a shrinking tank of sharks which vied for venture capital funds, very few had the structure to withstand the competition. As these companies folded and the CEOs moved back into their parents� basements, people lost a lot of jobs. I have a hard time laying the blame for this upon President Bush. The train toward this crash started well before he ran for office.

*September 11, 2001
Thousands of lives and livelihoods were destroyed on this one day. Only nine months into his term, can we honestly say that President Bush caused these tragic events? Hind sight is 20/20 and we have all been changed because of this day in our history, the question is who were we on September 10th?

Halliburton oil
Government contracts are awarded based on a bidding process. In the case of Halliburton and the multi-billion dollar contracts awarded in Iraq and Afghanistan, this relationship was already in place prior to the contract being given to Halliburton. When oil wells are burning, there just isn�t enough time to go through an entirely new bidding process. The contract was awarded based on previous bids for government contracts.

Iraq
The United States had its fair share of growing pains in breaking away from Mother England. To expect less from such a deeply rooted culture would be na�ve. Will they be able to transition into a stable democracy? I don�t know, I hope that it will come to pass. I do not believe that Iraq should become a Muslim U.S. of A, but if they can learn to build on the strengths of their people, their contribution to the world will be immense.

Bottom Line: Speak up and get involved or be treated as the sheep you are!

I think the thing I miss most about being in a relationship is the freedom to play. I grew up in an environment where I learned how guys interact with each other. No matter how old they are, guys use physical interaction to communicate with each other. Friends will have mock tussles to show their strength and to test each other. New acquaintances will puff up their chests and display their colors as a part of introduction. It is extremely frustrating for me that I cannot get into this play without changing its dynamic. When we were ten, it was fine that I was in the middle of things, but along came puberty and with it came an awareness of the things that made us different. It was as if every guy I knew was given an apple from the Garden of Eden and suddenly they realized that our equipment wasn�t identical. Maybe I was the one that got the apple, but I heard from too many guys that it was impossible to just be friends with women without adding sex to things in their head. So I�ve become cautious about physical interaction with guys I�m not dating. Hugs are great, hugs are generally safe, but anything beyond that moves into a grey area that I�d rather avoid, instead of risk introducing another dynamic into things. Don�t get me wrong, I can give as good as I get, I just don�t instigate things.

Call me a chicken, but I try not to get people in trouble. In the case where the guy is dating someone, things can get really messy if she doesn�t trust both him and me. I can imagine trying to explain to someone�s girlfriend� Honey, I know your friend Sue saw me wrestling on the floor with Jen, but there�s nothing going on, it�s like I was wrestling with Joe. That goes over like a ton of bricks.

I miss the play. I miss the banter between buddies. Women don�t seem to have similar interactions. On Friday, I had a coworker notice that I was wearing a polo shirt with an Ohio State insignia on it. He�s a big NC State fan and the two teams played yesterday. He took a step back and jokingly said, �I didn�t realize you were the enemy.� I laughed and replied, �If I were your enemy, I wouldn�t have told you about the change in HR policy.� This banter went back and forth and ended when it was time to get back to work. His final comment was, �Too bad you won�t have a good weekend, with your team losing and all.� My reply was, �I hope Sunday gets better for you, I know that Saturday is going to suck when NC State loses.� There�s very little chance I could have had that conversation with another woman. Not only would another woman have been highly offended at the joking threats behind our banter, but most likely it would have been taken personally. Ohio State won, so I sent him an email offering my condolences and hoping his day improves. He�ll get a laugh out of it.

As of late I�ve felt much like an island in a storm tossed sea. So much is happening around me, emotions, changing relationships, perceptions, there is so much change going on that I have no idea what the landscape will look like when it all settles. My island is fairly calm, the occasional wave will crash up on the shore, but only in a way to let me know that it hasn�t forgotten me. The wind that batters the waves and turns them into spray blows gently by me, on its way to its next destination. A soft caress again to let me know I�m not forgotten.

It is not my time to battle alongside the sea or the sky, so here I sit on my island, watching, waiting and only able to offer to other what I see from here.

I�ve learned that�

A while ago someone said that if they ever discovered anything I couldn�t do relatively well, they�d never let me hear the end of it. Well there is something I�m pretty useless at.

At one time popular opinion was that you should strengthen your weaknesses in order to overcome them. More recently thought has changed to be aware of your weaknesses in order to avoid being taken by surprise by them and to maximize the potential of your strengths. Rather than spend time trying to bring weaknesses up to being competent, be excellent at what you are naturally gifted and avoid putting yourself in the position where your weaknesses can harm you.

To anyone who has known me very long, there is a chance that they already know of this weakness. I suck at confrontation, especially where I have a personal stake. I will look for every alternative before direct confrontation. I will look beyond reason for a solution that does not force confrontation. It took me four months to break off my engagement and when I finally managed to do so, it was in such a way that he thought it was a mutual decision. Exactly five years later (and with a little prodding), Eve has told me that she will be leaving my house. Had she not been able to make that decision on her own, I was going to have to ask her to do so anyway.

If you wonder where this comes from, you are not alone. Looking to astrology, it could be explained by the existence of Libra as my rising sign. The face I show the world wants things to be "nice". If I am the one who would benefit from confrontation, I have a hard time pressing myself to initiate conflict.

Perhaps there is something to be said for balancing gifts. When faced with two opposing sides, if there is a common ground to be found, I can find it. I can negotiate if there is any chance of cooperation, but I am not the one to send should the opposite be required. Peace and a fair solution I can create, but another�s surrender is not my forte.

Let�s just get this out in the open, about every other year, I feel completely anti-holiday. I�m currently contemplating not putting up the Christmas tree this year. The last time I was feeling like this, I had already invited people over to my apartment for a gift exchange, so I went ahead and decorated anyway. This year I won�t be having any Christmas parties here, so there isn�t anyone to decorate for. If I do decorate, it may be to prevent the start of rumors that I�m completely off my rocker. Heck, I may just decorate the front window and stop there.

Before anyone decides that I�m the reincarnation of Ebenezer Scrooge, I love finding someone the perfect gift. Having people in my home is something I really enjoy. I like creating a place where people can relax and laugh. This year circumstances prevent me from being able to bring people into my home like I usually would. Well, circumstances and a severe fracturing of my friend group make it seem like a bad idea.

I�m beginning to wonder if part of my melancholy is due to having romanticized the holiday season in my mind. I�d love to be able to curl up with someone in front of the fireplace. Heck, I�m beginning to think I need to expand my acquaintances, but my track record isn�t exactly stellar. I suppose it is to be expected that people will drift away into couples. Of course this is the time of year when I feel most in need of people, so being in such a place of limbo is hard.

This has been you friendly (really) neighborhood hermit, signing off for the evening.

I was tickled to read your email and I had every intention of writing you back. Unfortunately, I had a hard drive crash that took with it your name and email address. If you would care to write again, I�d love to talk with you.

RedJen

The days following Christmas haven?t been filled with good news the last two years. The two stray kittens that I adopted in 1997 passed on. Last year Brewster died from complications due to feline diabetes. This year Neko stretched out under the Christmas tree and went to sleep for the final time. Last year someone reminded me that Brewster?s life was much different with me than he would have had without being part of my family. When Brewster came to live with me, he barely weighed a pound, had a severe case of worms and was malnourished, living under a dumpster.

When I brought Neko home, I drastically changed her lifestyle. Neko was born in a mobile home park in northern Ohio. At birth, she was found to have a deformed rear leg. The deformity was such that the limb was stiff and within a few days, the paw of that leg fell off. This left her with a open sore that would not heal over because she continued to use the leg to the best she could. The day I met her, she was hobbling in the snow and leaving a trail of blood behind her from her leg.

My beautiful strays were affectionate and dearly loved each other. When Brewster died, Neko searched for him in the house for weeks. Now my sweet strays can be together again, as they should be. Brewster and Neko are a set in my heart. In a way when Brewster died, a piece of Neko went with him.

Sleep well my darlings

Brewster 1997-2003

Neko 1997-2004

Does this mean new building codes are coming?

For the first time in a while I felt inclined to discuss a topic this morning. Apparently, if your teenage son is stupid enough to try to leap from one 6 story parking deck to another, it is now the city�s fault for putting the structure there in the first place. That�s what one parent has decided to tell his family. When two teenage boys decided to be incredibly stupid and jump from one building to another, the first one managed the feat. The second teenager did not and fell six stories to the ground where upon impact suffered typical impact injuries, but was unfortunately not removed from the gene pool. His father has filled a lawsuit against the city which owns the one parking structure and the private company that owns the other. According to the father, the building owners should have prevented the teenagers from being almost terminally stupid and reckless. It is a good thing that the boys were not jumping from tree to tree, because I�m fairly certain that even the Pope is unable to respond to a subpoena addressed to God.

Perhaps I�m being too judgmental on this and jumping to conclusions. It is entirely possible that at the exact moment that the boy attempted his jump the building he was on (or the one he was jumping onto) suddenly suffered a structural failure and moved, thus causing the boy to be unable to hit his original target. It is possible, but somehow I doubt that�s what happened.

Is it any wonder we�ve got a generation of UnderPants Gnomes on our hands? I�m beginning to wonder if there are parents alive that still teach their children to be responsible for their own actions. I�ve seen a few genuine throwbacks that appear to be a softer, less cynical version of Gen-Xers, but those are few and I�m related to the majority of them so far.

Do we now need to change the building codes for parking structures so that teenage boys cannot hurt themselves? We�re treating them like infants and toddlers, is it any wonder they act like the world owes them whatever they want? The railings on stairways must be no more than 3 inches apart to avoid a child getting their head caught it in between them. Exactly how do you keep a teenager from being a teenager?

Can I get some more chlorine over here? The gene pool is getting scary!

Reading in my room and knowing my family is downstairs
Pick-up games of football and softball
Hugs, there should be a standard weekly required amount
Walking into a house and smelling dinner or cookies
Watching the chaos of family
Walking down the street to the library
Walking down to the river and skipping stones or catching tadpoles and minnows
Getting dirty, play clothes, jumping in mud puddles, cleaning up with the garden hose
Riding bikes on dirt trails
Walking up a hill just to roll back down
Frisbee, catch and croquet in the back yard
Skateboards down the sidewalk
Strap on roller-skates
Chalk art on the driveway
Watching night lilies bloom
Carrots straight out of the garden

Is there anything better of having someone ask your opinion because they really want your opinion? Through MentorNet, I've been conversing with a college student who is asking questions that really make me think about how things work. He's interested in real world experiences and that's a refreshing outlook to encounter.

His latest question asked my opinion on the waterfall versus extreme method of programming and what changes I'd make looking back to when I was primarily doing application development.

It seems crazy to me how much we treat people with kid gloves. I heard something on the way home from work last night. To paraphrase: we walk around with zippers on our mouths, in effect censoring ourselves far more effectively than any government ever could.

People are not afraid of repercussions from the government. If there is one thing that is pounded into every child�s head, it is than the First Amendment guaran-damn-tees our freedom of speech. I�m not sure that this freedom of speech is being evoked to express ideas, it seems to me that more often the First Amendment is used as a club as the reason why we are entitled to attack anyone who expresses a view counter to our own.

No it isn�t the direct hand of government, this is worse. When it is no longer safe to offer an honest opinion, how much do we lose? How can we have new ideas when no one speaks up for fear of being stoned in the streets? So much lip service is given to tolerance how everyone has the right to be unique (just like everyone else), but have you ever noticed that very few people are willing to respect the views of someone if their ideas do not match?

Tolerance is a farce and a poor final goal. I don�t have any interest in being tolerated. We tolerate things we don�t like, but cannot change and we resent being forced to do anything.

Until we learn to respect the differences between people and allow people to have ideas without trying to bully them into silence, there is no real freedom of speech. The art of communication is getting lost as people strive to avoid offending everyone all the time. It may be the meek that inherit the earth, but it will be the timid who silently give it away first.

This summer, PayPal is going to be experiencing a little competition from this new site, GreenZap.

I remember signing up for PayPal back in the day and getting $5 to join. Well, GreenZap is giving everyone who preregisters $25 for signing up and no bank (or credit card) information is requested.

I figured it can't hurt, so why don't you go sign up too? After all, who can't use another $25?

Check out GreenZap

I�ve spent the last month feeling completely drained. I�ve been tired and unable to get enough sleep, even though I�ve been getting eight hours of sleep every night. I�m feeling dissatisfied with myself physically. My weight is the highest that it has ever been and right now the reason it bugs me is that I need to either drop some weight or go buy a new clothes. Being in a bit of a funk and trying to reduce my spending, I�m leaning toward losing the weight, because it is theoretically cheaper. Normally I enjoy shopping, but really have no desire to shop for anything beyond the absolute necessities.

I�ve got to wonder if this is a yearly cycle that I�m going through. Last May, I took a week off to do nothing and really did nothing. It may be that this is just a result of being stressed by people outside my department asking for impossible results that have no chance of being done when or how they want. My to-do list seems to have a life of its own. Friday, for the first time in a quite a while, when I rewrote my list to clean off the completed items, it was actually shorter than the original one copied it over from. I have to admit, being able to cross items off my list has kept me motivated on more than one occasion.

Oh well, I finally remembered that my doctor had prescribed some of my medication so that I could alter the dosage for short periods of time in the event that I needed a slight boost. I�m feeling more alert and given that I�ve been going to bed late this weekend, I think that may have been the right course of action.

I wonder what my biorhythmic chart would say about where I am now. On a scale of 0 to 100, I�d say Physical � 0 (low), Emotional � 0 (low), Mental � 25 (mid-low). I think my mental energy has been building slowly the last two weeks, I only hope it continues. I�m really hoping that my Physical and Emotional energies are ready to increase. I could use something to get out of this rut, especially before summer gets into full swing and I have to decide on whether to continue cutting costs or spend money on clothes that I will hopefully be giving to charity before the end of the year.

(or I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For)

Ever get to the point where you don�t know where to start and you get stuck on that question? Things that shouldn�t be urgent or critical suddenly become overblown and insane. That is definitely a case of been there/done that for me. When I get to that point, it is a sure sign that there is something bothering me or I�ve slipped into a depressive cycle. If I�m lucky, something will be bothering me and I can deal with it before I end up in a depressive cycle.

Don�t send in the guys with the white coats, I�m still feeling pretty okay. A friend of mine appears to be climbing out of one of these cycles. Before anyone starts to wonder, if you�re reading this, I can say with 99.99% confidence that it isn�t you.

(The rest of this gets long. This is your only warning...)

The skies are glorious, the weather a dream and I'm climbing out of a meltdown. How pathetic am I? I'm hiding out from my own vacation in a Barnes&Noble half an hour away. I've agreed to go back in time for dinner, but that's it. Of course that wouldn't even be necessary if the other car didn't have a flat tire. My angst probably hasn't registered at all to the one who pushed it over the edge. I don't know if it should even matter anymore. That's a lie, it shouldn't matter anymore. I'm just having trouble convincing myself of that.

I feel like a complete fraud trying to play the part of an adult and failing completely in the process. I don't know what else to do, but throw in the towel and surrender. I want to be able to say I'm done with this ride. I want to be able to say that this one opinion is not enough to bring my emotions crashing down into the dirt. Maybe this time I'll actually be able to make myself accept it. I know that there are people in this world that I'll never be able to please. No matter have hard I try or how well I do, I will never rate as a decent human being. I don't want to have to put this person on that list. It isn't fair! This is one of the few people that should never even be a candidate for that list.

Damn it, I deserve to be treated like a human being at the very least. I have a dry sense of humor that should be familiar. I deserve to be more than an afterthought. I try so freaking hard to make you happy, but I've come to the conclusion that I will never be able to do that for you. I keep setting myself up and it is the indifference that keeps knocking me down. I watch you be enthusiastic over a gift or thought from someone else when only months before I had given you the same only to be met with an indifferent "humph". I watch you try things proposed by someone else, but turn your back on my suggestions.

I've often said I'd rather be silent than ignored. I think I just found out where that came from. If I don't put myself in front of you, you can't ignore what doesn't exist. I guess it is time to put my money where my mouth is and let it go. If nothing is ever enough, then there is no point in me trying. According to the rules, I can't win this race. The outcome is fixed and there are no points for a good try. You can have my number back. I won't need it anymore. (I'd say not to expect me at the next race, but I'm convinced that you never look for me anyway.)

Well little one, I've tried my hardest to keep you with me, but it is time to start letting you go. You hold almost all of my idealistic dreams, but they seem to have turned into naive and wishful thinking. You were a good bedtime story to my inner child, but it is time for me to get a new book. I'm too tired to pick you up again when your dreams get dropped in the dust. Picking you up leaves my heart crushed. If I'm going to be responsible for my own happiness, I can't have you in the front lines being hurt. You are a fairy tale and belong in the land of make believe, so off to sleep little one, I hope your dreams are happy ones.

Let�s get this out in the open. I am a feminist. I don�t stand on street corners and shout about how my people are oppressed. I don�t hate men. I don�t think that men are out to keep me down. I don�t want to move to a paradise island and live with Wonder Woman�s cousins.

It pisses me off that I feel like I need to qualify what I am not to define what I am.

I believe that that men and women should be equal politically, economically and socially. That�s the basis of feminism. It�s clean and simple. It isn�t anti anyone or anything. It is a positive statement that is very similar to ones made in the Declaration of Independence. I believe that all men and all women are created equal. Equal does not mean identical. I don�t think that women are better than men, but I also don�t think that men are better than women. I believe that the cultures we are brought up in hold a lot of sway over how we view ourselves and each other.

For a long time I bought into the thought that feminism = feminazi and feminists hate men as a whole. I bought into the propaganda that things had pretty much gotten to a point where the feminist movement was outdated. What I didn�t realize was that my definition of feminism was wrong. No one had bothered to correct me, so I went along as a happy little Moderate Feminist for most of my life.

For any of my religion teachers, this should come as no surprise, I was asking them the big �Why� questions from the time I started school. I�ve even argued for the non-aggressive reformation of certain ideas. I�m thinking maybe someone was patting me on the head and nodding so I�d shut up, while hoping I�d grow out of such crazy ideas. Sorry, that didn�t happen, but you did manage to get me to be quiet for quite a while.

If you�re new to the definition of feminism as being �Feminism is theory that men and women should be equal politically, economically and socially.� This definition is also known as Core Feminism. There are a few other things you should know. There are multiple types of feminism, just like there are multiple types of Christian religions. They all have something in common, but it is the details that make the difference. Some of the different varieties are Amazon Feminism, Cultural Feminism, Ecofeminism, Feminazi, Individualist/Libertarian Feminism, Material Feminism, Moderate Feminism, Gender Feminism, Pop-Feminism, Radical Feminism and Separatists. I am definitely a Core Feminist and there are tenets of Amazon, Cultural and Ecofeminism that I also believe.

I�m learning this as I go along and as the devil is in the details, you either have to forgive me for not knowing everything at once or go on. This isn�t a sudden thing, but it isn�t small either.

THE DATE HAS BEEN CHANGED!

THE NEW DATE IS SATURDAY AUGUST 27TH!

LotS will supply the chips, you supply the people and we'll all have fun!

Contact me or leave me a comment for more information.

Hi, on Sunday October 9 I plan to join thousands of others who will participate in the 17th Annual Thad and Alice Eure Walk for Hope. The Walk for Hope is 10k walk that raises funds to promote scientific research into the causes, cures and to discover more effective treatment of mental illness.

Please consider making a contribution to help me reach my personal goal.

It is easy, just click on the link below and use my walker code of redjenosu.
http://www.walkforhope.com/walkforhope/donate.aspx?TheCode=redjenosu

Interested in being a part of the team? Contact me.

Best regards,
RedJen

Click Here and help me get an iPod Nano!

It is a complete pyramid set up. I sign up and do one offer, then if 5 people who reference me sign up and do an offer, I get a free iPod Nano. If you refer 5 people who sign up and do an offer, you get a free iPod Nano too.

The big thing to be careful on this type of promotion is to make sure that whichever offer you try, if you don’t really want it – CANCEL IT BEFORE THEY BILL YOUR CREDIT CARD! I’ve been told that in general, the last offer listed is the easiest, but I don’t have any personal experience with that to be able to say for sure.

If I get my five people done, I’ll start pointing people toward the first person who completes an offer under my registration. If they finish their free set, I’ll move to the next person and so on…

After taking the Rate My Life Quiz, I was asked to consider another question. The question took me to a place well beyond what I expected from a simple internet quiz that I took as a lark. Then again, given that I have a lot of confidence in the concept of actions & consequences or cause & effect maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.

My Quiz Results: From the Rate My Life Quiz

Their Request:
Your Spirit score is very high, much higher than the average. If you wouldn't mind, please take a little time to explain how you manage to succeed so well at this aspect of your life. Your words may be read by someone else who scored very low. Take a moment to give them some useful advice. Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

My Reply:
The universe is a very large place and the idea of where each of us fit can be overwhelming. To look at the universe and pinpoint the exact place where you belong is a nigh impossible task. Switch the question and turn in inward. If nothing else exists, what kind of person do I want to be? Do I want to be kind, fair, judging, thought provoking? When I am alone and no one is watching, who do I want to be? Taking away the external definitions and focusing on who you are to you is the first step of knowing where you belong in the world around you. Once you've reconciled who you are as an individual, you need to start looking at how the people and things around you affect you. Each has a positive, negative or neutral effect on you. The thing that makes it complicated is that each person in your life also has an effect on the other people in your life. Through you if through no other way, they are connected. Now you have to decide what stays and what goes. If a person has a slightly negative effect on you, but has a positive effect on others around you, to remove them from your sphere of influence may cause harm to the others, which would in turn cause greater harm to you than accepting their direct impact on you life.

The questions are not easy to ask or answer and when you get done, you have no room left to blame anyone else for any dissatisfaction you have with your internal person. But you will know who you are and what the world is to you. If you still want to find "your" place in the world, you are now looking for a very specific place rather than wandering aimlessly. When you examine a place as a possible "fit" you'll be able to look at the aspects of the place and know whether or not it is a match for you. Know yourself. Know your strengths and your weaknesses. When you can look honestly at who you are, you can approach the world around you to find the place where your strengths are needed, your weaknesses make you human and the community around you absorbs both your strengths and weaknesses. In your strength, you make the community stronger and in the strength of the community, your weaknesses are supported and your overall strength increased.

To be completely honest with ourselves is something that very few people can even imagine. Once there you have no excuses, but you also have no hidden crutches. The world is not going to suddenly shift where you find that do not know who you are, because you have defined yourself outside of your environment and have taken the power to shift your perception of who you are away from everything and everyone who is not you. There is internal strength in claiming this power to define you, but it comes with a price. At times the price is a gift and at others quite heavy. The price I have paid for this power is solitude. I cannot have shallow relations and pretend that they mean more than they do, because I can no longer lie to myself. Those relationships that I treasure have the power to bring me great joy and should they pass from this existence before me, I will feel great pain at the loss. For those are also the people who each hold a piece of what makes me human. They are my community and without them I am still me, but I am much less.

Why is it that whenever things are not exactly “right”, rather than look at what is wrong, people want to chuck the whole thing and start from the beginning? The whole world seems to have forgotten the adage, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.” This loosely paraphrased means, just because something is involved in your target mess, does not mean that it is waste.

Let’s look at my 3 favorite common sense lacking topics.

Immigration – The definition of an illegal alien has been on the books for many years now. The penalties for employing these people are not new. Funny thing is we only really see any action when someone is aspiring for a higher political office has employed an illegal alien in some form or fashion. If illegal aliens are not worried that by working within government circles they put themselves at higher risk of being discovered, punished and deported, then either the consequences of such action is laughable or the law is not being enforced.

I’m not saying all laws are good laws, but if the actual laws on the books were enforced, then we would see exactly what was ludicrous and what was not. Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies have been painted as villains to the point where they are viewed by large segments of the population as being out to get people. Guess what, in the case of the INS, they are supposed to be out to get people. You stand in line or you go to the back of the line. We learned this early in school. If everyone wants a drink of water and only one person can drink at time, get in line and wait your turn. If you try to jump to the head of the line you not only lose your place in line, but you get to go to the back of the line.

Hate Crime – The person who decided that we needed a special way to deal with hate crimes is not someone I want working in government. In my opinion, the concept of a hate crime is political correctness gone so far bad that it is time to let it go, label it as a failed attempt and get on with our lives. For every crime that can be also labeled as a hate crime, there is already an existing penalty and the penalty is pretty strict. A hate crime murder is still a murder. Why the hell do we need an extra set of parameters to determine whether or not the person who committed the murder was motivated by hate?

We have laws prohibiting discrimination, violent acts against others, theft and crossing intersections at night without the use of a lantern. All of these laws have a defined penalty. Either enforce the existing rules or get rid of them. The last things we need in our legal system are more loopholes. Every time our legislature attempts to add a fix on top of an existing set of fixes, the whole just gets more jumbled and less cohesive.

Legislation of Ideas – You cannot legislate what goes on inside people’s heads. When crimes involving hate start getting different penalties than those not labeled as hate crimes, people are saying that it is bad to kill someone, but worse to kill someone you hate. Would someone else like to invite in the psychopaths now? In order to have the Freedom of Speech, people must also have the Freedom of Thought. Freedom of expression is a two way street and until everyone is allowed on it, this is only a joke.

Until the day comes where all our thoughts are monitored, the only things that can be measured against our laws are the actions people take. It is not illegal to hate a group of people for being different from you, but it is generally seen as close-minded and not encouraged. If I want to have a violent fantasy in a daydream, but never act upon it, there shouldn’t be a penalty for that.

I’m tired and a little sad right now. I’ve been told that I have a melancholy personality and right now the melan is very choly. Things are changing all around me and I don’t know where they will land. There are new babies and a wedding to celebrate, friendships to mend, work has slowed down a bit, but here I am left wondering where this goes next. I always get a little down after I send my sister back home in the summer, but this year has been harder than some. There’s too much quiet and the people I would have reached for to fill the quiet are not in a place to be able to do so right now. So I get a little sad, I spend more time thinking and running questions through my head. I also get more quiet than usual. I try not to have verbal conversations with myself, I consider this practice not freaking out people. But I keep coming back to the question: Where does it go from here?

There are days I think I missed my calling and that somewhere there is a mountain top that is missing its hermit.

There has to be some way or some point where reality comes into play in the relationship between parents and teenagers. It seems like teens are either overly sensitive or completely clueless when it comes to money.

Growing up, I was very sensitive to the idea that things cost real money and while the scale may have been off, I tended toward asking for as little as possible. If something was an extra, I just didn’t bother asking. We had 2 adults and 4 kids living on a single income. I was going to private school, but I spent almost an hour twice a day on the bus to & from home and lunch was free or reduced for most of the time I was there.

I’ve known people who wished for birthdays toward the end of Spring. They usually had their birthday too close to Christmas and felt cheated because they received combo birthday/Christmas gifts. When my birthday came around, that was the signal that the last tuition payment for school was due. It just seemed wrong to ask for stuff when I was watching my parent try to figure out how they were going to pay for my tuition, the mortgage, car payment and all the other bills that month. Did I want a real party? Of course I did, but I didn’t want to risk any of the other things that seemed more important.

I know that much of why I have a hard time asking for attention is tied to the interpretations of a child (me), but that doesn’t make them less real to me.

Hell, I’m making a career out of not needing extra attention. People come to me because I make things happen and once I take something, they don’t have to worry about it being done and done right. How’s that for a personal eureka moment? Nothing like realizing that you are repeating the behaviors you had as a child for a career. A lot of time my job seems to be all about finding ways to fix the messes other people create. While at the same time making sure the stuff that I’m already responsible for is taken care of and running smoothly. On the up side, I am being paid pretty well for what I do. On the down side, I’m not sure this is the direction I want to let things go in my life. I’m coming to realize that I need to either have a set of things that I keep running smoothly all the time – OR – I can fix messes other people find themselves in the middle. I don’t have the energy to do both at the same time and taken take care of the day to day things I need done outside of work.

I took a class a while back that dealt with dynamic systems. One of the more interesting topics was how systems affect each other. We talked about how resources are finite and even a renewable resource can be damaged if it is used at a rate that exceeds how fast it renews. The resource can be pushed to a point where it forgets how to renew.

Imagine a magic well on a cliff. The well is special because it will always refill to hold as much water as possible. As more people come to rely on the well, it makes sense to expand the size of the well and generate more water. The problem comes when people forget that there is only so far down they can dig without damaging the well. Once the last bit of rock is pierced, the well becomes a funnel and no amount of water will ever fill it again. The well no longer knows how to be a well. It can be one hell of a funnel, but there is no going back to being a well.

Who is responsible for breaking the well? Is it the ones who dug too deep or the well for always filling itself in the first place? I’m beginning to question where my limits really are. I’ve questioned what I require of other people as in what is the minimum I’m willing to accept. Now I’m asking how far I can push me. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I know that people can break in ways that are not physical and that damage is much harder to heal.

In the middle of December it will be 10 years since I graduated from college. It doesn't seem like it should be that long, but along with the round number comes a few other milestones.

• My student loans are about 6 months from being paid in full
• January will mark 10 years lived in NC
• January will mark 10 years working for the company that moved me from OH

Don't get me wrong. The towel is still in my hand, but if I consider the possibility that I may not have a family of my own, I have a whole different set of questions. My personal needs are not as far reaching as those required in planning for a second generation. I've done a lot of work to get myself to a point where I can be financially able to support a family. If there is no family, I've done a lot of work and I wonder when it is time to back off.

Nobody panic, I'm not ready to take up residence on a mountain top, commune or live out of my car. Mountains get cold, the idea of a commune is a little too socialist for me and I'd need a much bigger car. The holidays are coming and that always gets me a bit melancholy.

What if Atlas shrugged? Will the game stop if Ender refuses to play?

Are there any people in elected office that actually read the existing law BEFORE they try to write new ones? Every state in the United States of America has at least one law on the books that makes child abuse illegal. A proposed bill in California would make it illegal to spank a child under the age of 3 years old. The person who has authored the proposal says it will prevent child abuse. The governor has said that if made a law, it would be nearly impossible to enforce. If child abuse is illegal already, how will making spanking illegal make child abuse any more illegal? How many non-enforceable laws do one state need? California Dreaming

The Media Ownership Reform Act has been proposed to Congress by Maurice Hinchey. The work done to put this bill together must have been immense. Before you get too impressed, you should know that Hinchey has proposed this same act in 2004, 2005, 2006 and now 2007. A key feature of the bill is the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine by the FCC. The Fairness Doctrine was in affect from 1949 through 1987. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine saw the state of the conservative radio talk show. The Fairness Doctrine would require that any conservative viewpoint be countered by a divergent viewpoint. The reason behind the doctrine is that people should want to hear all sides of a issue before making up their own minds. This assumes that people are not able to seek out as many different opinions as they want to hear. Some say that the fact that liberal talk radio has not been successful is an indication that the doctrine is needed. Some have said that liberals media has grown blind to its own bias. Others have said that network television, cable and print media is unbiased it their reporting.

If people are treated like sheep, is it wonder when they act like sheep? Has the fact that certain things cannot be legislated continued to elude people? Morality and fairness can not be forced on people through laws and penalties.

Morality and fairness are concepts that are learned through experience or taught.

Keep you laws out of my bedroom and my morality.

If a question posed to multiple people has only one correct answer, then the question is invalid if it requests an answer in the form of an opinion.

Perhaps you’ve heard to phase “Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.” Unless you are inviting people to attack your personal opinions, leave theirs alone.

Just because something is of popular consensus, does not equate to it also being a fact. If you need a reference, go look up Galileo.

Your freedom of speech does not make me slave to your proselytism.

If you want to talk to a bunch of people who already agree with you, then start a cult and have fun. Don’t ask people for their opinion if you only looking for further validation. If you want validation, state your position and then ask if they agree with you. At least that way they have some warning before you go on a rampage against them.

If you think freedom of religion means freedom from religion, fine, but stop telling me that my cross offends your right to be religion free. If you were actually free from religion, then my cross is meaningless to you and thus can’t offend you.

Some of the greatest acts of destruction have been done by people trying to prove that their opinion is the only correct one. Genocide and wars have occurred in the effort to wipe out the people who held differing views.

If we’re going to learn anything from history, perhaps it is that you can’t forbid an idea. The very act of outlawing any specific idea ensures that it will not pass out of the current population. If ignorance of the law is no excuse, then anyone versed in the law is exposed to the very thing that has been outlawed.

My beliefs, morality, opinions, feelings, thoughts are my own. Yelling just makes me change the channel. You want to influence me to change any of them, try having a civil conversation. I’m willing to listen to reason, just make sure you are willing to listen to my reasons.

By the way, proselytism is the practice of attempting to convert people to another opinion.

I don't remember where I found this, but it strike a cord...

PERFECTION is not a value. Indeed, it is most often a trap, a temptation, and the worst kind at that. Because it's the kind of trap that feels virtuous, it can be a particularly difficult one to escape. And why would you want to escape? Unlike most other forms of escapism, so you can be free. Free is clearly what you are trying to be. Free is making itself known to you. Free is calling your name. Free is showing up in your life, your dreams, and rattling your planet.

Free has been showing up as very intense people who are setting an example, or summoning you personally, or perhaps offending you with what seems like their complete disregard for what anyone else thinks.

The opposite of free is perfect.

I have a super power. It isn’t one that stops bullets, bad guys or runaway trains. I am the embodiment of a classic muse. I’m actually there (or at least there is evidence that I am), but my presence is quiet. You won’t see me at work, that’s just how it goes. You probably won’t even notice me unless someone points me out. I’m the one chastised for not speaking up and sharing with the class, only to shake my head and bite my tongue. Where you’ll miss me is when I’m somewhere else and little things don’t get done.

The fair folk had fun when they put me together. Any idea I wish to voice is masked until it is a random thought of someone else. When they happen upon it less than 2 minutes later, it is a great and wondrous thing. I bite my tongue, because to do otherwise seems silly. Even if I could replay the previous exchange, they will not want to hear. If I get frustrated and demand to be heard, I can look forward to be challenged for not speaking up. Thus I am caught between the devil and the sea.

I’ve learned ways to get my ideas heard, but to do that I must give them up first. There are some who can hear me. If I quietly whisper my thoughts to them and use their voice instead of my own, then I can inject ideas, but never be given the notice as the originator.

I am the cobbler elf who works unseen.
I am the whisper of a muse too quiet for most to hear.
I am credited with little, but blamed for much.
I am dismissed as irrelevant until demonized for daring not to be.

Here is a not-so-secret secret: my methods to force people to notice me when all else fails are passive aggressive. When I’ve beating my head against walls until I’ve given myself a migraine, I’ll react like a petulant child. I will take my ball and go watch from the side. At that point my attitude is that I’ll let you slip on the ice, trip on the branch and generally figure things out on your own. If you refuse to listen, then I’m not wasting any more effort talking.

Invisible in any medium

There are days I’m convinced that I need to get into the legislature.

I don’t have anyone I want to save. I don’t really see the problem of big business as a concept. I like small independent business. I think everyone should prescribe to the American Dream. I think people who immigrate into the country should work to blend into the existing culture while celebrating their heritage. I believe in the law of cause and effect. I believe actions have repercussions. I believe that everyone has the personal responsibility to help the people around them. I do not agree with the systematic socialization of society by government programming. I believe that the importance of self-reliance, critical thinking, learning and motivation are being ignored out of existence. I believe that Socialistic programs can work as short term band aids, but ultimately lead to larger systemic break downs. I believe that value is derived from effort and results, not wishes and needs. I’m afraid that society is being dumbed down and fed a bunch of propaganda about what they deserve to have simply by them breathing.

Nothing is ever anyone’s fault. If you slip and fall on the ice, the person who owns the land where the ice lay is at fault. Forget that your shoes were completely impractical and you were running to see how far you could slide. You have no ownership on the cause of your fall.

So why do I say I need to go into the legislature? Someone has got to actually read the existing laws before new ones are added. I disagree completely with the concept of a “hate crime”. If a person commits murder, then try them for murder. Love and hate don’t have any bearing on whether or not murder happened. It either did or it didn’t. it drives me crazy to see new laws put on the books for specific nitpicky instances. Just apply the existing law. If the law needs to change, then change it. Don’t add to the already tangled mess that is the legal code. Unfortunately I’m not sure there is a platform that would actually let me run on these ideals. I’d be sure to scare people and no one wants to be scared.

Everyone wants the world to be easy. When I see people stating that they want popular opinion to be the final arbitrator of what is right, I get unsettled. Popular opinion is not the rule of law, it is the rule of the mob. Mobs only work when you have no identity and I’m a bit attached to mine.

Do I think that healthcare needs revised? Yes, but I’m not convinced that the government is the one to do it. They’ve made a pretty good mess of things by legislating damages against doctors to the point where I’m not sure any sane individual wants to go into private general practice. In my opinion, going into general medicine seems a lot like going into a teaching career. It isn’t something you go into for the money, because you are going to start way in debt and if you’re lucky you’ll manage to pay off the loans you used to put yourself through school before you retire.

Why don’t I trust the government to revise/enact socialized/universal healthcare? These people are reforming Social Security, but voted to put themselves on a separate retirement plan. If the Social Security System is going to be fixed, why aren’t they signed up for it? If they won’t eat their own cooking, why should I trust that it is good for me? As one executive put it "eat your own dog food before you sell it to me."

It isn’t only the insurance companies that are squeezing people, hospitals are too. My mother works in a hospital where the hospital’s staff doctor (the one under whom all procedures are performed) quit because she wasn’t willing to risk her medical license on the hospital’s level of care. Did you get that? It isn’t the insurance company taking short cuts; it is the hospital administration that is refusing to perform certain types of testing.

The idea that a noble man will want to take care of the less fortunate is as much of myth as the idea that morality can be legislated. We want to believe that good will and charity abound, but the proof of such has not materialized. The legislation of charity and morality does not work. Both are individual codes and governed by our personal thoughts. If I follow the law, it does not make me moral, it only makes me law abiding. In the same way, if I am forced to give money to those less fortunate, I am not being charitable; rather I am a part of a socialist system.

There are altruistic people and groups, but I believe that only a tiny fraction dwell without limitations in the “for profit” landscape. Individuals can be altruistic, but if they are fettered by a “for profit” infrastructure, their work will most likely be curtailed by the same infrastructure that funds their research. This is an issue lodged in the integrity of the system. When it came out that big tobacco funded research that led to the statement that cigarette smoking was not the only cause of lung cancer, the research results became questionable. This type of integrity is at the heart of the treatment versus cure debate. A treatment will cause an influx of money over the lifetime of the person. A cure will generate a one time payment. Whether we cure an illness or manage the symptoms, a “for profit” model will likely suppress the cure in favor of long term profits. If you want an example, look at panty hose. The technology for making panty hose that don’t run has existed for over 30 years, but noone will make them because there is no profit in making them. Why did the auto industry buy the patent for the first viable electric car battery, then refuse to manufacture it? They determined that making the technology available would lose them money.

Until healthcare is completely non-profit or completely free-market, I don’t see any of these problems going away. It is in trying to have both an entitled population and profits that leads to these problems.

Randy Pausch Almost all of us have childhood dreams: for example, being an astronaut, or making movies or video games for a living. Sadly, most people don't achieve theirs, and I think that's a shame. I had several specific childhood dreams, and I've actually achieved most of them. More importantly, I have found ways, in particular the creation (with Don Marinelli), of CMU's Entertainment Technology Center (etc.cmu.edu), of helping many young people actually *achieve* their childhood dreams. This talk will discuss how I achieved my childhood dreams (being in zero gravity, designing theme park rides for Disney, and a few others), and will contain realistic advice on how *you* can live your life so that you can make your childhood dreams come true, too.