I'm not quite sure where to begin this one. I received some disturbing news about a friend who is being hospitalized for a suicide attempt. She emailed me a couple of days prior and while the email clearly showed that she was struggling, I had no idea things were to that point. I couldn't tell it was that bad but of course in retrospect you can pick apart everything and the reference to an "accidental fiery crash" takes on way more signifigance. I mean I think I responded that it would not be a good thing but who knows if my response ever got through.

I am hoping that she is well and that she gets the kind of help that she needs. It's hard to confront your own crap. I spent several years on the couch and paid a lot of fucking money and I think it helped. I still have problems (just read the blog fer chrissakes) but I feel like I can deal with them more appropriately (for the most part.) And when I'm not dealing with them appropriately I know that I'm not. ANd then I make a decision to either correct the behavior or let it go. BUt before I was therapied, I couldn't tell what caused me to be irrational. I couldn't identify my emotions besides depressed.

ooof.

Things are much better these days. Every year certain things get harder and certain things get easier. It's harder to make friends but easier to make the effort to keep them once you have them. It's harder to face aging but it's easier to save for retirement. (HA!) It's easier to deal with emotional crap, easier to live more calmly, easier to identify priorities. Harder to break habits. Easier to have patience.

I could probably go on but it's starting to sound like platitudes.

Here are some good things: yay!

I am definitely going to graduate from NYU in June of 2006. HOLY SHIT! I was thinking about it and I was envisioning commencement while I was in the shower this morning and I pratically started crying. WOO FUCKING HOO!

I figured out some really hard things at work and now I will come in a week early on my August 1st deadline (that is if I quit blogging and emailing and get crackin')

I had a good calm week with moderate behavior. very responsible living.

OHHH! One of the Johns from last year has been having a relationship with my voice mail for about six months now. I don't even listen to the messages; usually I just delete them. (I'll tell you why I haven't just answered the phone or called him and told him not to contact me -- because he's the kind of freak who would take any kind of contact and turn it in to something weird. . .some kind of opening.) I stopped taking his calls in February but he's been leaving me messages as recently as this weekend. I checked my vm on sat and there were two from him. The first one was an apology for an argument he had with my vm in an earlier message. Apprently he was pissed at my vm for not returning his calls and went off. So he called vm back to say he was sorry and that he hoped they could be friends.

BUT then he called VM and said that he was moving (if vm really cared) and that there would be certain friends he kept in touch with and certain friends he wouldn't. . .and that vm shouldn't take it the wrong way but that vm would probably get dropped from the list. (finally!) Then he went on to say that he thought vm had an inferiority complex and that he hoped that vm worked out its problems because vm deserved to be happy.

I'm not sure what he bases his judgements of vm on since all conversations with vm were one-sided. VM doesn't really offer up too much conversationally. So the attack on vm is coming out of something in this crazy guys brain.

Holy smokes. . .well, anyway, thanks to vm for acting as my personal body guard. I owe vm a drink.

so anyway, I've been fighting a battle all week to stay at home and not drink. Which I did. And everyday I had a little skirmish with myself. And everyday my brain won. And everyday, I felt a little better.

So I went out on Friday. BUT, let me just say that it was a very controlled night. I stayed out late but not too late. I did not put myself in jeopardy and I got up this morning and had a productive day. Maybe I am fooling myself but I think I am stronger. I know my mom was. She just quit one day out of the blue and never went back.

I think that I can do that too.

My friend asked me on Friday how I was doing on a scale of 1 to 10. I said "I've been fluctuating between a 2 and an 8 so I guess that means I'm manic depressive."

maybe I'm suffering career burnout. This article from the experts at MSN would have me believe that I am.

Here's the gist of it. . .

So how do you know if you, a loved one, or someone who reports to you is suffering from burnout? Here are the early-warning signs.

1. chronic fatigue - exhaustion, tiredness, a sense of being physically run down
2. anger at those making demands
3. self-criticism for putting up with the demands
4. cynicism, negativity, and irritability
5. a sense of being besieged
6. exploding easily at seemingly inconsequential things
7. frequent headaches and gastrointestinal disturbances
8. weight loss or gain
9. sleeplessness and depression
10. shortness of breath
11. suspiciousness
12. feelings of helplessness
13. increased degree of risk taking

Other than that, I had a slightly erotic dream about this dude I'm friends with. A long time ago it was more of a crush, but now I'm happy just to be friends. Could it be that I have suppressed my true feelings? Could it be that one day I'll express these feelings and be blown out of the water as usual?

Better keep suppressing.

So true to form on Friday I went out and drank like a fish until I was falling asleep on the bar. That's fucking great. I did nothing on Saturday. I couldn't do anything. I'm afraid that I can't be a social drinker anymore. I've had a good 10 years of fairly sustained binge drinking and now it is turning into a habit.

Fuck.

I'm losing the war.

I'm not sure what to do about it.

I really don't want to go to AA. I really wish I could hang where I hang and NOT drink but I don't think that's possible. And if I quit, I effectively eliminate myself from the only circle of friends that I have here. And where do you find people to hang with. I have things in common with these people besides drinking but the bar is the highest common denominator. If I can't go there, then I am alone.

sigh. I feel like I need to meet someone who can help me out of this. Somebody else I can focus on. This is so fucked up. Classic textbook psychology tells me that I'm co-dependent or some shit like that. I just can't seem to fix myself. And it's getting easier and easier not to.

I have some kind of split personality, successful in school (Dean's list AGAIN!!), fairly successful at work. Miserable and drunk in my regular life.

Let me back up a bit. I'm not that miserable all the time. My mood is foul because I feel I let myself down. The cycle goes like this. I get really agitated and don't know how to calm down. I get really lonely and I don't know how to undo that. I crave distraction. . .the distraction of a buzz, the distraction of people. It's just that lately I haven't been able to just chill it after a couple of beers, which is putting my career and my safety in jeopardy.

Is it time for me to have an intervention with myself? I fucking don't know. I'm going to try to be cool this week, save money, and stay home (yawn.) We'll see how it goes.

ugh today is shaping up to be just as crappy as yesterday. The only thing good about yesterday was that I managed to stretch $10 out for a good three hours.

So I go and hang out after a cruddy day. And everyone was having a cruddy day. Horst was on fire too. And I found that he and I grumpy at the same time is not as funny as I would have expected. In fact it was downright miserable. And then the cherry on the top of yesterday's sh*tcake was that this guy that I . . .well, you know. . .the guy that works for Conan O'Brien, the really funny one that I said, "Well, it's too bad that I slept with him because he would have been a good guy to get to know. At least now I know what type of guy I'm looking for". . .Anyway, that guy showed up. I was already in a foul mood. And he comes in and pollutes my watering hole. For crying out loud. . .I've only seen the guy twice. Once I slept with him and then twice on the crappiest day I've had in a long time. Needless to say, we didn't speak to each other. Just like High school. effing great.

And on the subway, I felt sad. Like I wanted to cry. But then I couldn't I couldn't. I was just sad and numb and sad that I'm so discardable. By myself and by others. Very depressing.

I already took two advil today. I need to go to the beach or something.

It is so crazy here right now, I'm seeing shades of myself that I haven't seen since Upside when we worked on the redesign and the Upside 100. I just about bit Jeff's head off (our graphic designer. . who I love by the way.) He just laughed at me and told me to calm down.

A week until we launch the first new site and there is still too much to do. It's all in dot.net which is like learning a new programming language (kind of.) I'm not strong in Visual basic and that's what it's based in. We didn't build the core of the site. . .we had a company build it for us and they hand over the code in about 30 days after we sign off. If we touch the code before then we void our contract and they will no longer support the site in those 30 days. So basically, everyone has a mini version of the site loaded up on the own machines.

Oh, by the way, Yahoo has this cool thing called Launch Cast. You may have already seen it but it's basically internet radio. I actually subscribed to LaunchCast Plus so that I can choose from all their stations and have unlimited skipping ability. It's like having digital cable radio. It rules. There is so much to listen to. YAY!

okay gotta go maim some people now. (JUST KIDDING OF COURSE! sheesh.)

xoxox

Just bought the ticket to Seattle for the re-U. Aug 18 through 25. hoo boy.

I hate to get too paranoid and go all conspiracy theory but damn. You know a guy I went to high school with went to work for the NSA after he graduated from College. He worked as an electrical engineer and they put him through his masters at Johns Hopkins. He said he was working on designing chips. For what he couldn't tell us. He couldn't tell us anything about it except that the chips would be put to use dometically. Very Enemy of the State.

I have no doubt that the governemnt could make a lot of money selling our very personal information that they could accumulate in a database. Beside the fact that having a collection of that data would make it easy to weed out persons who have interests or pursue things that are in opposition or contrary to the current administration's views. I mean that's what databases are designed for.

I was online because I told Nancy that I was considering grad school in International Policy studies and she asked what I was interested in pursuing career-wise. I said anything where I could merge policy studies with technology. So I started looking around for stuff and you'd be amazed at all the white paper initiatives that are floating around the internet on "Streamlining the Information Flow" between government agencies. It's the first step to having an all powerfull database cataloguing our population that ANY government agency can tap into.

Gives new meaning to living off the grid.

I just found out that the person I share an office with is FOUR YEARS YOUNGER than I am. Crap. She is married with two kids and forgive me for saying this, acts OOOLLLDDD. You know, I would have pegged her for at least being my age. Maybe that's what having kids does to you. Makes you old before your time. I don't think so though. Michelle and my sister both have kids and they don't seem so grandma.

okay, gotta go.

entry courtesy of miz Michelle:

I'd like to contribute the crazy paired headlines from this morning's aol welcome page:

Militant Cleric Won't Give Up: Al-Sadr Vows to Keep Fighting

and

Hot Dog Eater Breaks Record

It's good to know that determination takes so many forms.

m

I have a FOUR DAY weekend this weekend. It's been great. On the second day of the weekend, I cleaned the house. This differs from normal weekends where I usually feel like I have a choice between playing and non-playing activities. After the house was cleaned, my roommate and I looked at each other and realized we still had the rest of Sat, Sunday and all day monday. It felt like we had gone on vacation and were hanging in a hotel. We enjoyed the house so much that we stayed up until three listening to illegally downloaded music and taking turns playing Zuma.

Today's song by the way, is More, More, More by Andrea True Connection.

Anyway, the weekend has been running it's course without much drama so I guess this will be a short blog.