Tuesday, September 23, 1997 -- Sea of Uncertainty
I'm skipping a few days to go ahead and write this. I'll fill in behind, later. I'd apologize, but I really need to write this now.		What do you do when you've stepped in over your head? When you haven't done your work as well as you can? For whatever reason... I miss the people that I chat with on IRC, but I can't afford that kind of time with them. I'm not disciplined enough to work with them there, and I've wasted too much time on this project. I should have told them I didn't want to work alone. I don't do a good job of it, and never have. Even when I didn't have a good distraction like IRC. But I didn't tell them that. Today, or soon, I'm going to have to own up to the fact, and deal with it. One of my questions is if I can afford another pitfall on my record. If I can succeed at the next thing...if I can at least learn something, to keep it from happening again. Or if I can go back into business for myself, this time with help, and actually succeed the way I want to. If Azura and I had more money in the bank, we'd do it now, I'm sure. And I think we'd succeed at it. I guess part of my fear is that I don't want to face the consequences of my actions. I am trying to phrase this as a weakness in my mind...and inability to work alone. But it doesn't fit in with my philosophy of me. I'm responsible for my actions. Was I really uncapable of working alone on this project? or did I decide not to? If I was incapable, I should have told my superiors that it was beyond my ability. If I decided not to, then I deserve my fate. At some level, then, I'm trying to accept the incapable description, because it exonerates me, at least a little bit. I don't really think what I did --am doing, for I am at work-- was right, or noble, or honest. Yet at the same time, I couldn't focus on it, and get it done. And I don't know why. I go through these crises every now and then, where the weight of the world is on my shoulders. Where I am ready to accept the brunt of the error, and just take the damage, when there is sometimes...no..always a simpler solution. The mountain is really a molehill, and to mix metaphors, the gordian knot of the problem can be solved by cutting a single thread. But the problem itself keeps me from seeing the solution. Occasionally, I have to sleep on it, or gear myself up to do the hard thing. I have never unsalvageably failed. I think the only way to do that is to die. As they say, "While there is life, there's hope." Dad has told me that without God at the center of my life, then my life will never have meaning. Well, that's not what he said. What he said was I needed a focus to my life, and God was that focus. He cannot see that there are other options. Nevertheless, I agree. My life does not have focus. Long ago, my life was an arrow aimed at a faraway target. Today, It is just lumbering mass, trying to get through to next week. I have intelligence, creativity, and imagination as primary skills. But I lost my vision somewhere along the way. I need to find that vision again, and perhaps, with Azura, with Moose and Squirrel, with Hawk and Informer, I will find that vision. This time I will not go alone. Damn, this page is a mess, blundering from thing to thing, with no explanation. I'm sure you have way to many questions. Why is it going alone relevant? What about me and my Dad? I want to tell you, but I'm going to wind up rambling....maybe I can edit this thing for intelligence. Going alone I'm trying to trace back when going alone became an obsession with me. I didn't feel that way in High School, or even my first year in college. I don't think it was a vital part of my ethic until my first semester back in school. See, I'd flunked out my first year of college. Well, I passed a few classes...like the ones I couldn't retake. I was on academic probation when Dad found my grades. I can still see him, standing in the doorway to my room looking at me with that mixed look of anger and disappointment. Mainly anger. That's when I found out that no-one, not Dad, not me, not Mom thought I should have been at school that year. I didn't have the backbone to say no, and Mom was scared I'd never go. So I went, and drowned in the sea of people that was NC State. I met friends, had a great time, and generally didn't do much. Dad told me that I would work the next year, and pay them back for that year of college by paying for my next. I would go to the local college, UNC-Greensboro--thus saving me room and board, and Mom would provide all the transportation. So I spent a year riding back and forth to Hardee's on my bike. At the end of it all, I had enough for a year of tuition and books. When I went back to school, I made straight A's. I worked my butt off, and I was happy, doing well. I realized how much more it meant because I was the one paying for it. From then on out, I've tried to do it myself, with varying degrees of success. I was really bad at taking my epilepsy medicine, for instance. I was even worse when someone told me to do it. Heather and I used to fight constantly about it. She wanted to help me, and I wanted to do it myself. And of course, there were things for which she wanted my help, and I wanted her to do it herself. Eventually, more than any other thing, this is what broke us up. Only now am I beginning to realize, that not only don't I wan't to do it myself, anymore, but that's such a lonely road to take. Self-sufficiency is nice, but sometimes it takes a partnership to make the 'self' that is sufficient. I saw an incredible example of this in Virginia this weekend, with Jasmine, Sara, and Fred. I know now, that I want what they have...Not the trailers, not the farm, not necessarily the lifestyle, but that wholeness-of-pieces which is their relationship. Generic Joe's A Typical Male