It's raining pretty good out there. Big heavy drops.

I sat out on the front steps for a while and watched it. It's a nice night and I'm a sucker for things that make the town seem kinda pretty.

Does make me wish I'd opted for a balcony though. Or at least had the foresight to get a place that isn't right next to the frighteningly loud drainpipe. Ah well.

My online dating actually turned up a decent result today, which was sort of neat, but then I remembered that I really, really suck at relating to other people or any kind of small talk. Still, she seemed smart and clever and very nice, and is my kind of pretty, so it was kind of an instant, quick little crush and that felt pretty good. I don't think that one will go anywhere, but still encouraging to meet someone who seems to want the same things out of life as I do.

I don't really know what I expect out of a relationship though. Someone to co-exist with would probably be good enough. I think anything else is almost a little too idealized, ya know?

I guess in a perfect world. You know that way you felt about someone as a kid or in highschool or whenever that first whazzam moment kinda found you? Something like that. But leave it at the whazzam and forget about everyone proceeding to act like a bunch of kids or highschoolers or whatever. That kinda feeling. I don't know that I'm too worried about the rest of the details - I know how I'd like them to look, but it's honestly kinda secondary.

I don't know. I might just give up on that should this one fall through and revist it when I'm an old man and everyone is on the same page about things. Who knows.

In the meantime, I kinda gave up my plan of exercising and finding a hobby and stuff. I did complete (mostly) my get the fuck out of all this debt plan, so that's good. But I don't know. The only reason I can think of to really want or need interests is to find other people with the same interests. I'm not sure I care about that much anymore, because I don't know if I've ever actually met one of these other people and likely will not in the immediate area. I know a lot of people who fake interests just to have a social group, but I just don't know if that's quite for me at the moment.

So instead, I'm doing some fun and interesting experiments with myself.

Today marks my second week of not eating. Well, it's just about 1 AM and I plan to eat tomorrow, so it's more marking the first day I'm gonna eat after two weeks of not eating. After the third day, I just stopped being hungry. Obviously, starving yourself to death is pretty fucking dangerous, but it was interesting to see how long I could run with it before I gave in. I'm now pretty sure I could go the full three weeks and presumably die, but I'm not all that curious.

I should back it up. I didn't really just spontaneously decide not to eat. I also decided, quite foolishly, to take last Tuesday off so I could try some nutmeg out starting Monday evening. In case you didn't know, if you consume enough nutmeg, you trip fucking BALLS. It's supposed to last a day or two, but it turns out if you consume more than enough, you'll trip for a little over a week, and it is both somewhat debilitating and totally fucking awful. You'd come totally down and feel normal, then out of the blue, you'd light a smoke or turn a page or whatever - I found noise was a big thing for me - and then you'd just be fucking blitzed.

So needless to say, I really didn't wanna cook or go anywhere to get food. For a few days I'm fairly sure I didn't actually even leave my room. Then I just ran with it.

Both were an experience.

I've had wicked insomnia for the last couple months too. I'm pretty sure it's got to be tied to the divorice, but I'm not sure how. I don't feel stressed and literally giggle with happiness when I snuggle up in my bed to try to sleep pretty much every night (fuck off, I really like my bed), but for whatever reason it just doesn't happen. I'm averaging about two hours a day, which, it turns out, is survivable, though I look like shit. After a while of that, I don't really feel tired anymore either. Might be that I don't remember what not tired feels like.

I get this sounds horribly self destructive, but would point out two things:

1. I actually feel pretty neat. I found out I can totally exist for at least limited amounts of time with no sleep or food. I can't really put it all down to willpower, but it's kinda cool to know that the limit to what I'm capable of taking in that sense is pretty high for the most part. I also got to try a drug I've been wanting to try for like years (would you believe I haven't had a week or even a few days completely alone in over a decade?), and while it sucked, I still got to try it and have a bit of fun with it.

2. The last time I was in a really shitty place, and didn't feel like I had anyone to turn to, it didn't turn out good. Seriously, I did the "smart, responsible thing", cleaned myself up, started being kinda normal, less of a dick, tried to make amends where I could, etc. etc., and you know what happened? I got married! To an obviously unstable person!

It's hard to explain, but if I'm not involved in something that's at least a little fucked up, the universe eventually seems to notice that something isn't right, and instigates some bizarre turn of events to fix itself. Usually it overcompensates a bit. So I'd rather maintain that balance myself, ideally in a way that doesn't really affect anyone besides myself. Starving myself because why not is one of those kinds of things that's a just fucked up enough way to kill time to keep the great karmic voodoo balance in order while not actually risking some disaster I'm completely unprepared for.

Anyway, I have also come up with something resembling a long term plan. At the end of the month, my kiddo moves. I don't really have any friends here anymore, and there's nothing really tying me down. I'm lazy and frankly not particularly confident in this plan turning out anything at all like I'm picturing it, but should things be pretty much the same as they are now in a year, when my lease is up, then I think I'll give it a go.

Perhaps some more details closer to the time.

I am lonely.

Beyond working hours, I exist in this sort of magical, special bubble of solitude, where my actions influence nothing and I am separate from the rest of humanity as a whole. To an objective, outside observer, from about 6 PM to about 9 AM, I simply cease to exist.

I truely think that if I were to just dissapear during this time, no one would really notice. My parents would eventually, but would assume I'm fine and just doing my thing. Eve and Lisa would, though I'm not sure Eve is really capable of understanding the nature of our relationship and it would be more a thing of note for Lisa than a noteworthy thing. Work would, obviously. I'm fairly sure they are the only ones who would really be concerned, at least until they figured out I don't actually do anything there and how all the automated stuff works.

I don't know how to fix this. I'm too old and weird for the bars. I'm too young to associate with people by dint of being a dying generation. How do you meet real people?

I'm giving up on finding more intimate companionship. I have no idea what I want - really, all I can do is pin down what I don't want. It's not a good way to design a criteria. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that any kind of successful interaction there is pretty much impossible. I don't even know who I am anymore. I mean. I can establish some things based on observation - I'm a blobbish thing that clicks buttons nine hours a day, and I'm pretty unambitious. But I don't know. What are my interests? Hobbies?

Bah. Fuck. Bah. I quit.

I'm pretty horribly depressed, I've decided.

I had a dream last night about boats, and now I'll likely never own one.

It was one of those dreams a guy can read into pretty heavily if he wants to, but I don't really plan to. There's better ways to spend my time. This font is kind of hard to read, isn't it?

Is that any better?

A bit I guess. Now it just looks like I'M YELLING EVERYTHING I SAY. Third time's the charm.

Better? Eh, a bit.

I'm playing with fonts because I'm at work. I'm supposed to be designing the website, but I'm just a little burned out on it. I came across all these cool fonts on the Google API, but good web design usually dictates the use of non-serif, fairly basic fonts, like the big one I used in the last blog.

I kinda get it, these are all harder to read, and if you look at the code for them, they're all horribly designed - if your browser can't display fonts from this API, this will likely end up looking like just a big, blank, empty screen. There's also quite a few layout differences between HTML5 blogspot and old shitty HTML3 wordpress, thus all the big empty spaces. The tags don't work right. Oh well.

Anyway, I wouldn't have ever know any of that if I hadn't been here writing about my dream about boats instead of doing my job, so I think my employer's getting what he's paying for. Yup.

So, the boats.

Yes, the boats!

Ok, geeze, you don't have to yell.

Anyway, the boats. I dream about boats and being on boats lots. I'm not sure why, really. I've always loved being on the ocean, but don't exactly live near it and haven't been there in what must be a little over two years now.

This dream started out as something else, but somehow ended with me being on a boat in a mild storm.

Steer into the waves! Sail through it! Look, the port, I'm safe!

So I pulled into the port, and was safe. The storm passed, and I went back out to sea. I'm pretty sure I was fishing for something, but it wasn't fish. I don't really know what.

Anyway, I cast my nets for a bit, without much luck, when suddenly the sky turned dark. It wasn't clouds, it was a tsunami!

You know, this dream isn't too interesting to write about. Basically, I run away from that, get to my house on shore, and hide with an alien pretending to be my dad (something to do with the first half of the dream, that I only vaguely remember), my little brother and sister (who i think are stand ins for my kids), and let the tsunami flood the house. We live, but then there's a bunch of tornadoes, and because I don't want to hide in the basement (tsunamis and all), but don't want to hide upstairs (tornadoes), we end up hiding under a giant popcorn bowl while both hit us at once. I'm pretty sure we were all about to drown (though in real life, I'm pretty sure the tornado would have just sucked us out of the water we were sitting in), then Sarah came home and woke me up.

I think the only reason I wanted to write about it was to ask this - where do you hide when you live near the beach, and there's both tsunamis and tornadoes going on?

This one is kind of cool, and looks like my printing.

This is going to be one of those long, pointless, shitty blogs that only happens because I don't have anything else to do and haven't blogged in a while. Blargh.

It was my one year anniversary a few days ago. It was ok.

We didn't do a whole lot. (we're old an lazy says sarah)
Went to see my grandpa (who is dying)
And listened to him talk about the old days (orange groves, as far as the eye could see!)
And that was kind of nice (he's an interesting fellow.)
Went to montana's (which was disappointing)
And ate shitty, expensive, cold food (which is exacty what it sounds like)
Then went to Wendy's (which is where we should have gone to begin with)
And ordered too much food (we are fat now)
And went to the lookout point (which was where our first date was)
Then couldn't decide on which movie to go see (they all looked terrible)
So we went to walmart and pretended to be Russian tourists (that was kind of fun)
And I got a dirty look from some dude (when I said I was going to sell Sarah back to my cousin Vlad)
So I yelled at him about american capitalist idiots (life in soviet union was of much better)
And told Sarah that she'd better start teaching our 12 kids to pull the plow soon (because soon they'll be old enough to have their own kids, and we'll have to have more or pull the plow ourselves)
And then we left (we spent too long there anyway)

Yup.

I'm really bored, and have only been here for two hours. 7 more to kill. Here's a picture I made the other day. Blogspot doesn't use tags, which is weird. This is a

for some reason.

It occures to me that neither of those tags will show up, being that they're HTML. Lulz.

Anyway, putting that picture there with an tag causes it to not fit right, as you can see above. Oh well. The "div" tag did kill my pretty writing though. I'm glad we don't use shitty blogspot much.

How	Bored	Am	I	?
Very	I	When	Work	!

Turns out I can't get hovery, cleverly written tables to work on here. Shocker.

I wonder if...





C'mon, click the cute kitty.

Well, that kinda worked. I think I've now used more advanced coding in this one blog than I have anywhere on the website I'm actually being paid to build. lulz.

What else?

Look, nice friendly red writing. Is good writing. Writing is of nice and happy.

Well, that's ok. I could never get that working right anyway. I don't really use any of this Javascript stuff enough to remember how to make it work.

I'm bored of being bored. I think I'll spend the rest of the day shutting off Wayne's computer from my desk, and then "fixing" it for him.

Walking around drunk. How I've missed you.

Went to a friend's the other day
to work on his truck.
We did - it took quite a few hours
and ate most of the afternoon nicely.

We took everything apart
right
down
to
the
block

Then we got into some drinks,
and took those
right
down
to
the
bottom
and his lady came home,
and we all sat around and watched TV and got stoned.

bed for them, leaving for me.
I didn't feel great, or really tired,
so I thought I would walk around a bit.
This town is nice at night.

Walked up the hill.
At the top was an old duplex
with a for rent sign in one window
and incredibly loud music blasting out of the other.

Tom Petty, and
The Eagles, and
BTO, and
all the other good stuff
from my dad's day

I sat on the curb for a while
and smoked cigarettes
and listened to the tunes.

After a while, the music guy
(who really didn't want neighbors)
turned on some death metal
which wasn't quite as nice
to relax on the side of the street to
so I left.

Walked down the hill.
People in a backyard,
fighting.
Two girls and a guy,
talking loud enough for anyone on the block to listen.

So I sat on the curb for a while
and smoked cigarettes
and listened to them argue.

I don't know what it was about, but
"YOU COULD HAVE DIED" was yelled over and over.
So I'm thinking it was about someone
who did something stupid
and could have died.
But that
is just a guess.

After a while, that got old.

So, I walked towards 17th,
people around a campfire,
laughing.
I didn't really want to stop
and listen to them have fun
(because at 2 A.M., I've had enough fun,
and it's not the kind of loud I want)

But I was starting to sober up,
so I sat on the curb for a while,
and smoked cigarettes
and went over
and asked them if they wanted company.

We drank a bit,
and they talked,
and I smiled,
and mostly just listened,
because I didn't really have much
if anything
i felt like saying

and then
I was tired.

So, I walked towards home.
I missed the street, I guess
and ended up on reasbeck crescent.

On a porch, was this coffee can
plastic, and smoking like wet lumber
I didn't know if it was supposed to smoke like that
maybe
it was a decoration
or covering a dryer vent,
But I was kinda concerned, so

I sat on the curb for a while
and smoked cigarettes
and watched the can catch on fire.

So I walked over to the porch,
and picked up the can,
which was full of cigarette butts
and the bottom fell out and then
the porch was on fire.

Just a little bit.

I knocked on the door -
people were still up,
and I didn't feel too bad.

Dogs barked,
people got quiet.
A little window on the door opened and
"Uh.. hi, what do you want?"

"Hi," I replied, and held up the flaming,
crumbling,
coffee can. I shook it,
and more fire fell out.
"Do you have water?"

"Oh," came the reply,
"Shit. Yes."
So she went and got a coffee cup
full of water.
And I poured it in the can,
and it also came out the bottom
and now the porch was out
but was kind of gross.

"Thanks!" she said.
"I can't let you in," she said,
"or my dogs will bite you."

"Yeah, no problem." I said,
"I was just walking by and noticed.."
I shook the coffee can again,
and more crap fell out
"Oh, sorry."

"It's ok. Thank you again."

"Have a good night!"
And I put the can back down,
and I left.
After I got about half way home
I realized what I should have said

"Hey, since you smoke, can I have one? I'm all out."

But I didn't, so it was a waste of a night.

---

I had a dream about you the other night.

And it was pretty much like reality. I've been having lots of these lately - not about you, but dreams of people who's faces I don't really remember and who aren't part of life anymore. It's nice to see old friends and feel old things, especially when I don't have to think about it anymore when I wake up. I can't remember it all, because they all bleed together, but:

It was the evening. And there was this party, at a house I know is mine but haven't ever been to outside of real life. I don't know who most of the people were - I think your friends, and her friends, and so on, but everyone I knew back then is pretty much forgotten, and it seems like a lifetime ago, so it doesn't really matter.

She left. For work I think. I don't know. I don't remember the start, just the end. Anyway. It was cold out, and I gave you my coat, but then it was REALLY cold out, so I tried to find something for me to wear too.

All we could find was a very large, very old lace dress. So I put that on over my clothes, we giggled, and I felt warm.

We had a good night. A really good one. Everyone else left to go to a hockey game.

"Come on!" you said, "Let's go!"

Because it's a dream, we did go, but we didn't. I started to dream of us there, drunk and laughing and watching some local idiots chase a little rubber thing around on the ice, you in my jacket that was much too big, and me in an old lace dress that was also much to big, but then

POP!

Everything snapped back to the "real" dream.

"I can't go to the game," I said, "I'm in a dress!"

So you decided to go to the game, and I decided to clean up the place a bit, and you said you'd come back after and see if I was still awake.

So I cleaned, and before any time had passed, you were walking back down the alleyway.

"Dude, where's everyone else? You should be watching hockey. Cleaning's no fun, and I'm sober and tired, and there's nothing left to do or drink."

"That doesn't matter," you said "I just wanted to come be around you for a bit."

So we hung out, and cleaned, and were sober, and had alot of fun, and it was nice.

"I think I should spend the night."

"Well, if you'd like. There's lots of beds and couches and stuff."

"No," you said "I think I'd like to spend the night."

I got it. And I knew you wouldn't in the end. So I said "Yeah, ok. Let's do that",

And then I woke myself up - just like in real life, it's more fun to pretend and the suspense is the best part. I don't know why I dreampt this - I hadn't thought of you in years. I don't even remember what you look like, outside of a dream anyway. But after I woke up, I spent the morning feeling like I did all those years ago, and even though I don't miss it, it was nice to reminisce.

The rest of my dreams for the week after that were in the same house, but have nothing to do with this are stories for another day.

---

My fish don't work anymore. Booh.

Blllaaarrrggghhhhh

Yeah, so that shit didn't end up happening.

#43

43. What did you do for a career? Explain how you chose that career.

---

Right now, I'm a salesman/website developer for a gun store. I don't know if either of those job descriptions will be a life long career, but I've been there for a few years now, so it's the closest I have at the moment. I'd really like to be the captain of an interstellar spaceship, or a pulp-style private detective, but I was born in the wrong time for either of those things. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a priest, and for some reason, I have a feeling I'll end up spending my 30+ years as a teacher, all though I don't actually plan to. It's just a very strong feeling I have.

Anyway, I guess I should get to the question here.

I didn't really choose this particular line of work per se, it kind of choose me. I think it was either 2010 or 2011 that I moved back to Dawson Creek. I'd been living in Prince George with a girlfriend, and had spent my time there working at the casino. I was in surveillance, which was kind of neat - if you were curious, all that technology you see casinos having in the movies is real, even in a shitty little one like the Treasure Cove, but most of it doesn't work right. Still, it was kind of fun, and pretty straightforward work. However, even if the work was enjoyable, the politics and co-workers were not. I ended up getting fired with the rest of my shift because the supervisor was somehow a threat to the department manager. I don't know, politics.

After that, I spent many months looking around for work in Prince George, which was tough - the economy there is completely dependent on lumber mills, one of which had recently exploded, and the rest of which were shut down. There was nothing there.

Lisa got to keep her job as a maid at the casino's hotel, so she got us by. We ended up moving out of our cheap, sketchy downtown apartment to a cheap, decrepit log cabin outside of town. It had collapsing floors, no insulation, and no heat besides a little electric job at each end of the building that cost a pile of money to keep running, and didn't do much to keep the place warm.

---

I don't have many pictures of this place apparently, but there's a quick shot of the outside corner, and the entryway. Note that it had no ceiling, but I had lots of scarves, so we made it work.

---

This had the downside of making the job hunt that much harder - Lisa would take my truck to town in the mornings, and it's not like I could really walk around and hand out resumes. I did some odd jobs for the landlord on the rare occasion - he ran a garage and specialized in fixing up crap and reselling it. Not work I knew much about, but it did mean I got to drive some very cool, if slightly defective rides that I'll likely never even sit in again - Jaguars, Lambos, and so on. Kinda cool.

Anyway, I got pretty depressed with all this (cool not being a substitute for actual work), so I pretty much gave up. I decided that there was one distinct advantage to living in the middle of nowhere, so I used a little bit of money I'd had tucked away to go down to the hydroponics shop and get some lights, timers, pots, and so on. I got some seeds online, and presto, I was ready to grow some pot.

Now, I don't mean to sound immodest, but I think I was pretty damn good at growing pot. Admittedly, my first crop went poorly because we returned to DC for christmas (driving through the worst snowstorm I'd ever seen on the way back, though that's a different story) and the person I left in charge of things apparently never stopped in, but my second crop produced pounds of fist sized buds on par with anything you'll ever see in a magazine. It got you messed up, too.

---

I also spent alot of time hanging out with my cat. I miss that cat.

---

The real problem I ran into was this: Have you ever seen Breaking Bad? You notice how the big problem through the whole series isn't actually producing top grade meth, but rather finding some way to sell it? Kinda the same issue here. I didn't actually have any way to get rid of it besides $20 at a time, which was pretty pointless. So, after we eventually gave up on trying PG, our "new" van (yet another different story) was basically stuffed to the brim with what was left of the second harvest. The third harvest was literally hung from the ceiling as I had to pull it early in order to move back, and wanted to try and salvage what I could by curing it properly. Yeah, it sounds stupid, but it's not like anyone would have missed the big jars of stank-ass bud piled in the back if we were pulled over, so I wasn't any more worried about leaving the drying sticks in plain sight.

Anyway, once we got back to Dawson, I figured I could make some money selling all this shit. Unfortunately, I ran into the other problem most aspiring drug dealers run into - all your friends think it's free.

What this all added up to was that I was pretty popular and always had a party to attend, was very demoralized about finding a real job, couldn't make anything real at my "other job", and was pretty much hooked to my top notch weed and didn't do much else.

I wasted at least a couple weeks doing this, but eventually it was obviously untenable as a way of spending the rest of my life. Fortunately, a coworker of my dad's, John Morrison had been buying the occasional bag off me, and he informed me that the local gunstore was hiring, and that he'd put in a word for me if I applied.

Now, I didn't actually have all that much interest in guns, nor in sales, but I did suffer from a pretty decent amount of social anxiety. I've never been great with talking to new people, so I figured that being paid and forced to would be a decent way to get over this, as well as being as painless as possible - everyone would be there to talk about one thing, which makes it easy to have something to talk about.

So, I interviewed, somehow I got the job, and there we go. I quickly found that it did help me get passed my social awkwardness, but was unfortunately not a very good place to work otherwise. Bad coworkers make for a bad workplace, and the gunstore is no exception. That said, the pay is better than I can get elsewhere, and right now, no one is hiring, let alone hiring someone with no driver's license or education. So, there I stay.

I mostly got into the website stuff because I was the only person who could change the background on a computer, which meant I must know everything about computers, right? In the end, I think I'm doing a much more efficient and generally better job than anyone else who has done this, so it does give me some sense of accomplishment in an otherwise morale-free workplace, and it's nice to know that even if I'm kind of stuck at my job, I can at least change it up a little bit.

I think that about covers it, in the usual rambly fashion, but with a bit more of a point this time. Cheers!