MY LIFE - MARCH

Social Experiment #309 - Friday, March 7, 2003

I finally set my webcam back up tonight. Amazingly, it's working like a charm for the first time ever. That scares me. Nothing ever works right the first time with us. The pictures are a bit fuzzy, but that can be fixed. It took my mom three hours just to get the sound working again. So I now I can't use that as an excuse for ignoring an instant message.

Ugh. This week has not been a good one. Next week won't be any better. I figure if I make it through next week, I may have to bump a vacation week up. I just don't know if I can take it. I'm thinking of switching them anyway, but I'm not sure what I want to do just yet. I just know that right now, I'm exhausted.

In other news, my mom came across this notebook that appeared to be a few years old. She assumed it was mine and handed it over to me. I opened it up and was surprised to find that it was a journal I had kept briefly (and I mean briefly) during my senior year of high school. The first entry is from September 14, 1998. That's how old it is.

I flipped through it, chuckling at some parts, surprised at other parts, appalled at the parts where I evidently thought I was going to be some sort of songwriter (and I WILL NOT get into detail on that fiasco), and completely baffled by others.

There are some sections where I don't remember what was going on. There's a name in one entry that I don't remember. There's a lot of shit in there that reminds me of just how anti-social I was back then.

There's a lot of swearing too. Evidently, I was at the point in time where swearing like crazy was pretty cool to do in a journal, even if it was something no one was going to see. I almost laughed at how much I swore and the way I wrote things at one point. Then I remembered, I was dead serious about all of it.

The relevance to this site is that I'm going to post all of these entries and try to provide some sort of insight as to what possessed me to write such gibberish. In some cases, I'll be speculating since there were things that I didn't remember, but for the most part, I should be able to analyze these things. It'll be mostly one entry per, uh, entry, but in some cases, the entries were really short so I'll put two or three in and try and go through them all, one at a time.

I'll try and make these as obvious as possible, using a different font color and blockquoting them as well, and my observations will appear directly underneath the entries. There are a lot of typos, so I'll put in brackets words that I may have missed in writing too fast.

September 14, 1998 - 11:25am
Realizing that I'm not the best at keeping journals, I'm not going to kid anyone by saying that this is going to be a daily thing cause it isn't going to be that [way]. I don't have enough time to sit and write and all that. I can't designate writing times because it just doesn't work. I need to be able to have notebook handy in case a thought suddenly comes to mind. Especially in down time when I do my most strenuous thinking. I need to be able to copy those ideas down rather than lose that train of thought.

This day has been long and tedious thus far, and it doesn't look to get any better soon. As soon as school lets out I have to to work, so there's a good chance I'm going to be tired in a day or two. I do it though because I feel the more I show CVS I'll work my ass off, the better it will look on my resume and future jobs. Bell's going to ring, time to go.

The first thing that I think about when reading this post was that I had a lot on my mind at the time. It was my senior year of high school, I was working like 32 hours a week or something, and I'm pretty sure I was more stressed than I should've been. The thing that continues to baffle me is why I felt that I needed to sign these entries. I even wrote in the inside of the front cover of the notebook "If it isn't signed, it isn't official."

As if someone else was going to write and pretend to be me.

In any case, I had a pretty bad attitude during those days. For the most part, I didn't want to be in school, I didn't want to work, and I'm sure I was worried about what my dad was going to do next. One of the strangest things though, aside from one entry, I really don't mention my dad in my journal at all.

I find that weird.

Oh, and how about the fact that I still have the same damn job??

September 15, 1998 - 11:00am
My co-worker Crystal made an interesting comment about how she wishes she could just start her life over in just about every regard. It really makes you think just what it could be like to start over and do those things you wish you would've done. I'm not going to lie; I thought just what would happen if my life would start over. But while some things haven't turned out too well for me, I feel the events in my life have shaped me into a person who is as unique in beliefs than anyone else.

I feel bad for Crystal because she's been through so much, and it probably isn't going to get any easier for her in the future at this point. She'd like a new boyfriend, but I don't think she can just drop someone that she's more or less dated for 5 years. Things like that aren't easy, and I understand that more so than most. At the same time I feel she needs to get out of that situation if she's not happy, otherwise tension will just continue to build until it overloads on her, and that won't be pretty.

Then again, all my emotions have been running rampant the last couple of months and it needs to stop. Maybe I need to get attached to a girl. Only problem is that the two girls I like the most are attached or hard for me to reach.

If there's one person I really miss, it's Crystal Haynik. I worked with that girl for a couple of years and we really became close as friends. I knew her problems, she knew mine, and if the situation had presented itself, I would've tried to go out with her. I regret losing touch with her more than anyone else I've ever known. She struggled through so much and as I had thought, it didn't get easier. Last I had heard, she was pregnant and back home again. That was early last year though.

I was a real mess emotionally at this time. I think it showed in the entries I wrote online, but even more so in the entries in the notebook. I didn't always know what to think and my resentment towards people in general didn't make things any easier.

I also find it strange that I could understand why she wouldn't just drop a guy when I had no dating experience whatsoever at the time I wrote this. I don't know, maybe I thought I knew what it would feel like. I do know that I ended up taking the advice I wanted to give her to heart myself later on down the line.

I swear I was going through some sort of raging hormone syndrome or something though. I was up and down all the time and it was wildly unpredictable. Add that with my general feeling of animosity towards people and you could just feel how cold I was towards other people. Back then, I didn't know why I couldn't get with a girl, but I can look back now and point to some obvious signs.

One, I didn't talk to girls. If a girl came up to me and said something, I didn't know what to do. I didn't say much back, if anything, and what I did say was very awkward and not good for inducing conversation. Second, I looked like I wanted to kill everyone. I know I had an unpleasant look to my face when I walked around. I didn't make eye contact, and when I did, I didn't know how to smile I guess.

It's just all really weird how those things can occur. Now, I'm still shy, still a little hard to reach, but for the most part, I smile, I talk, I enjoy dealing with people. I have such a tolerance it's unbelievable.

I must have been one pain in the ass back then.

I still don't know how I made it to this point in my life, but right now, I really had things fucked up back then. I know it's true and I can accept that I didn't take care of things the way I should've.

As a preview to the next entrie to be looked at, how about this for an opening line:

"I woke up late today so the day already sucks to no end."

Sometimes I just wish I could go back in time and slap the shit out of myself. Damn.