YIR 2004 - First Quarter

Introduction

I still will never understand how anyone could find me attractive with glasses. That said, the first part of the year was me being me. I was opinionated on things that I found to be disturbing, showed very little patience with people, and was generally being an obnoxious pain in the ass if I didn't like you much.

However, that said, I think that a lot of people have liked me when I'm like that. You know where I stand, you know why I feel the way I do, and you know that while something may bother me, I'm just ranting and nothing more.

I'm at my best when something's bothering me and early in the year, several things clearly bothered me.

January 2004

It was very clear in the beginning of the year that I was peturbed by a lot of things. Maybe it was the time of the year, maybe it was something else, but I took issue with several things.

I took aim at white people dressing like they were black. This is something that's long bothered me, but has rarely been discussed. That along with girls who like "thug" guys. Two things that will always leave me shaking my head, especially the latter when it involves a girl that's otherwise very sweet.

I also appeared to have a bit of an ego trip going on. In the very first entry I wrote in the year, I wrote about young girls and crushes. I happen to realize that I missed very badly on just how serious the crushes were, how legit everything was.

I wrote about a girl named Ally on a couple of occasions. If there was ever a moment in my life that I regret, it's talking to this girl. Not only did she turn out to be a huge liar, but she managed to dupe me more than once. I am not particularly proud of this and it was because of her that I adopted the new standards towards women and the internet. I also wrote about Diana from work. At one time, she may have had a crush, but I don't think it was anywhere as big as I tried to make it out to be.

Early in the year, my relationship with my coworker Nichole was very much hot and cold. One minute she was my best friend, trying to sweet talk me, the next she was yelling at me for something stupid. It got to the point to where I no longer cared to listen to her and seriously was wondering how she still had her job.

In other words, the first part of the year was spent complaining.

The best entry I wrote however was the decision, which was written in story form. In its simplest form, it's a representation of how I would've liked things to work out between Megan, my ex-girlfriend, and me in a perfect world. It was also a representation of what anyone would want to have happen if someone they loved had to make a difficult decision. Read the explanation to find out more about that entry.

There were other memorable moments from January, most notably exposing Ally as a fake and the incident with the door. The former is something that I do not wish to discuss anymore since it's a very shameful part of my past now. The latter is just not right. We spent hours trying to put a door up that would actually shut. After several attempts and some serious rigging (can we say ghetto?), the door shut and I could go to bed.

The crowd went crazy, but I was fast asleep.

February

February opened with an entry that discussed the origin of the site, how it's evolved, and the introduction of a new design, the one that is currently in place now.

One thing I love doing is coming up with a new design that's easy to navigate and makes the site easier to read. I do a redesign about once a year at best depending on the ideas I have and what I think will work. There's always the chance that the site will change almost overnight as I implement new ideas.

Of course, after a wonderful entry on the site, I went back to bitching about everything and everyone. For someone who wasn't going to worry about anything and just take things as they came, I sure was unhappy with a lot of people a lot of the time.

Signs of irritation towards people online began creeping back into my writing in February as I became frustrated with people not writing back or talking to me.

In the midst of all the complaining, I wrote a few paragraphs on the state of healthcare in this country. If you aren't aware of how it is, then you need to become aware. Insurances and drug companies run the pharmacy part with an iron fist. It will only continue to get worse until people step up and demand a stop to it all, but that won't happen until the drug companies are reigned in. It's complicated, it'll give you a headache, but when you get older, it's going to be important to understand what's going on.

I also took on many of the activist groups in this country, bashing all of them senseless abandon. Can you tell I have little tolerance for any of them?

The last entry I wrote in the month was basically worthless. I only wrote because it was on February 29th and I couldn't resist. It was also the last time I'd write until the middle of June.

March

Much of the first part of spring was spent maintaining the status quo. Not too much exciting happened, so I'll take the chance to reflect on something I didn't write much about and still don't to this day, and that's about my nephew Evin.

At the time, I still had glasses. Evin was still a little ways away from walking. He was a big baby, but he was a good one. All of those things are tied together by a common bond, Evin and my glasses.

He loved them. He'd grab them off my face and try to chew on them, well, as well as a baby with no teeth to speak of can. He was a joy though to all of us, something to make us smile when there was often precious little to smile about. None of us ever showed it outside the house, but we were struggling. Money was tight, my mom was trying to finish school, and I was behind on a lot of things.

However, a highlight occurred when Megan came home for a weekend and I had the chance to see her again. We drove around, acted like idiots, and had a good old time. It would be the last time I'd see her for a long time and I enjoyed the time with her. She even claimed I looked different, but there was nothing different about me yet.

By the end of the month, I had contacts and the final part of the change in my appearance was complete.

Overall Analysis

The common theme of this part of the year was how much I complained about petty things. Yes, I use this journal to get things off my chest, but was anything I wrote that serious to where I needed to devote a lot of time and energy towards it? Maybe, maybe not.

Overall, I'd have to say I was fairly happy. Yes I had sleeping issues, yes there were issues with Nichole at work, but for the most part, I knew what I wanted to do and was satisfied with how I was going about things.

That would soon change.

To find the entries from this period of time, go to January/July 2004.