The Update You've All Been Waiting For

Okay...

On the Car:

The car is fine. The insurance company did not total it out. However, the repairs are proceeding slower than I had anticipated. I was supposed to have the car back yesterday, but apparently I'm going to be waiting until Wednesday (probably) to get it back. Unfortunately, that means another three days of carpooling to work with my mother. And that woman can drive anyone insane. She actually managed to piss me off so badly on Tuesday that I never recovered and simply stayed angry all day.

On the Job:

Haven't heard a thing. At this point am not holding my breath, and it's probably a good thing. I don't think I could tie up all the loose ends at my current job quickly anough to start a new one. Also, if they ask me to take a certain test...I don't think I could pass at this point. Been having too much fun on the weekends...wink-wink.

On Life:

I'm having an absolutely fabulous night tonight with my dear pals, watching the last half of sixth season of Sex and the City. Just got to the part where Smith shaves his head in support of Samantha when her hair starts falling out from the chemo.

Me: Big Girl's Blouse. Cried like a little girl with a skinned knee. Of course, I did all of the crying on the inside because Erica's new boyfriend is here with us. And I don't know him well enough to show emotional weakness just yet.

So, It's been a good week. The apartment hunt starts next week, just as soon as I file my taxes and know just how much I'll get on my refund.

So...relax tomorrow, Sports Fans, and enjoy what's left of your weekend...

I'm one smooth Motha...

Had my interview today for what will hopefully be my new, higher paying job. If I get the offer, I will be leaving my current position with the state of Oklahoma to go to work for a hospital to do financial assistance for the uninsured.

My interview went very well, in my opinion. I said all the right things, and asked intelligent questions. They smiled at all the right places and even got a few chuckles at the correct moments.

In answer to the question "What's the most difficult thing you've had to deal with in a workplace situation?"

My answer: 13 year old girls...I then had to explain...it's back from my teaching days. When I was teaching seventh graders. Girls that age are horrible...

Anyways...back to the real world...today is negative action deadline, meaning I have to have all of my reviews and closures for February 1st done by the end of the day today.

Unfortunately, everyone in the state is trying to do the same thing this afternoon...and the mainframe is moving slower than ever...why do I do this every month? I let all my reviews stack up for weeks and then try to work all of them on the one afternoon of the month that the computer system's ability to handle the workload is comparable to it's 1972 counterpart?

One word: Procrastination. I have lived the life of a procrastinator and will die a procrastinator. In fact, I'll probably even put off dying until the last possible minute. (ha)

Later, Sports Fans!

I'm a little scared now...

I just got back from getting my initial estimate on the damage to my car from this morning's little kerfuffle.

So far, external body damage only totals $2200. Now, that's fine so far, but because of the angle of impact, my hood is smashed in and cannot be opened until they do the actual teardown when starting repairs. So if I fucked up ANYTHING under the hood, my insurance company will probably total my car. It's a '95, so it's not worth much more than $3100 according to the Kelley Blue Book. So, if there's much more damage, I'm scared shitless they're going to total my car and I'm going to be saddled with a car payment for the next five years.

Add to that, I don't WANT a new car. I love my car. I know everything about it and I know when somethings wrong. I do not want to have to learn a new car.

Although a CD player wouldn't bother me...

Anyway...I'm off to rest a bit on the couch and then watch "Lost" at 7:00...and such was my day...

It Fucking Figures...

So, I paid my car off last month. I owned it, free and clear. It's not the best car in the world, but it looks nice and it runs well, and gets pretty good mileage.

So this morning on my way to work I had to go and fucking rear-end someone on Broadway Extension. My hood is completely buckled up. It won't even open. The front end looks horrible and even though I can't call the insurance company about it for another 20 minutes, I know I'm going to have like a $500 deductible to get any of the damage fixed, and a hike in my rates. (The other guy's car was fine...one of those little pick-ups. But that doesn't mean that he won't claim some horrible physical injury.)

I am soooo pissed off at myself right now. Eleven years behind the wheel of a car and I get into a stupid fucking accident within a month of paying off my car.

I want to go back home and start the day over.

**************3:30 PM UPDATE****************

I talked to my insurance agent and I am taking the car into the body shop for an estimate at 4:30 today. My deductible is only $250, so I'll be able to get the car fixed and put this behind me this week. So, I'm thankful for that.

Also, the guy I hit called me about 9:30 this morning. He just wanted to let me know that he was okay and since there was no damage to his car he wasn't even going to ask me for my insurance information. He then asked to make sure I was okay and if the damage to my car was any worse than cosmetic. He told me not to be too upset about it, the damage would be fixable...and then he said..."You never know...our little accident might have prevented one of us from being in an even worse accident further down the road."

Now, I'm not that much of an optimist yet, but I could hardly believe it. Here's this guy, who two hours ago I had slammed my car into...and he's trying to make me feel better about the accident. I'm glad He was the one in front of me and not some random asshole.

Mistakes of the old year

I've been doing this heavy duty introspection stuff for the last few months, in a way entirely seperate from therapy. I've been trying to figure some things out about what happened to me last year. I finally have at my disposal an entire years worth of my private journal. I can look at everything from October of 2003 when all of this started up to this December when we would have been together for a full year.

I've finally come to some conclusions.

I hurt you tremendously in June and July, and some more again in the next few months. And a part of me enjoyed it. The place I was in last summer was in some ways scarier than where I was in January and February when the panic attacks started. Last summer I came down off my meds and started dealing with everything from a very raw emotional place.

I was so fucking angry this summer. Every time I thought about your need to help me in April and May, your refusal to abide by my wishes that we not communicate and that you give me the emotional space that I needed, I was just overcome with rage. I could not understand how you could profess to love me and refuse to give me what I needed. All I craved back in the spring was some distance from you so that I could use the quiet to find out where I was and what I wanted.

Eventually I just had to shut you out entirely. But then you would send me an e-mail, a letter...something expressing you feelings about it. And I would become enraged. I would quickly fill an e-mail with as much anger and spite as I could and send it in your direction.

And I felt good doing it. I felt like I was justified. In my mind I told myself that you had made me feel like utter shit in the Spring and that made it okay to be as hurtful as I could to you. I was trying to hurt you. I was doing things very deliberately and systematically. I would time my responses to your emotional outpourings, hoping that you were on the edge of your seat waiting to hear back from me. I did it to hurt.

And from your responses, it seemed like I was being successful. So, I kept at it.

At some point, I grew tired of the game and pulled back out of the game. Let things settle down.

None of this was concious at the time, but I can see it in what I've written. I never thought I could hate someone I loved as much as I apparently did last summer. I am very clear in my journal. I still loved you, but I was paying you back in some fucked up way.

Looking back at it I find it hard to believe that was me. It doesn't seem like the me that was there last October. It certainly isn't who I am now. But for a period of about 6 months I became someone completely different.

And it wasn't just with you. I changed at work. I changed at home. I drank more than I can remember...spending my days so angry and then getting drunker than I've ever been to get to sleep at night. Trying as hard as I could at night to shut the anger off so I could rest up for another huge dose of anger the next day.

And none of that was your fault. You (I can see now) were simply trying to reach out to me in that time, trying to help. Yes, there was some arrogance in your attempts. There was a presumption in your insistence that you could "help" me in any way, because I felt (and still feel to a degree) that it was my own issue I was working on, something that was completely seperate from the relationship. And since you couldn't let it go, I had to let you go and hurt you as much as I could in the process.

For that and so much more, I'm sorry.

The timing was wrong, I said to myself in October of this year. It didn't work because we were in two different places.

No, I don't think it worked because for all our similarities we were really too fundamentally different to make it work between us. There were things you wanted and things you wanted to say that I didn't want and that I didn't want to hear and certainly didn't want to say as much as you could.

I'm not a guy who is ever going to be comfortable with a "lovey" romantic relationship. I'm the kind of guy that simply wants to be comfortable with another person. I just want to simply be...not try to be something that I'm not.

I tried to make it work. And you tried too hard to turn it into something very serious far too quickly for me. (Not an attack, just proof positive that we were too different).

I'm sorry for not recognizing it sooner. I'm sorry for dragging you down into the middle of my breakdown.

Well, that's the lesson I learned in 2004. Not exactly a heartwarming tale, but there it stands. The Truth.

I perhaps should not have posted this here, in such a public place, but this is my outlet. This is my place to share and this is a significant revelation for me.

Sprint PCS, Kiss my ass!!!

Attention Sprint: YOU HAVE THE WORST FUCKING CUSTOMER SERVICE IN THE WORLD!!!

I spent a lot of money on Christmas gifts this year. Knowing in advance how many people I was buying for, I called Sprint Customer Service and made a payment arrangement. I explained that I would like to pay my December bill in January. CS told me that that was fine and would NOT cause any problems with my service.

So...Friday is pay day and I had planned on paying my entire balance of like $100 then. So this morning I wake up and my phone service has been shut off.

I then spent the next hour and forty-five minutes on the phone...most of that on hold, waiting to speak to a billing supervisor. When I finally got her on the phone, I explained my situation to her.

She said, "Well, you have an overdue balance of $48.57. How will you be paying that today?"

I explained again, I had made payment arrangements with customer service and had been assured that it was not a problem to pay the way I wanted.

She then told me that I had gone over my "spending limit". I told her I thought that was odd since I have a limit on the phone of $275 and my total amount owed is barely over $100.

She said, "Oh you're right, you're not over your spending limit."

Okay then why did you shut off my service???

Because the people at Sprint are ignorant fuckwads who don't know their fucking jobs...that's why.

I ended the call with a very condescending rant about the need to train their customer service people to tell the ACTUAL TRUTH to customers. I they don't know about something, they shouldn't act like they do know...

Arrrrrgghhh.

Here's what should have happened. After I explained my situation and she had pulled up the note left on the system about it by the CS guy I talked to, she should have simply said, I'm sorry that your agreement wasn't honored, let me get your service restored.

To top it all off, it made me over an hour late for work, and just as I sat down at my desk, my newly restored phone rang...guess who it was?

That's right, Sprint PCS billing, letting me know that I had a past due balance of $48.57 and wanting to know if I would be paying today by check or by card.

I had to rip that girl a new asshole, and it wasn't even her fault.

btw: The supervisor I talked to was a total C yoU Next Tuesday!

Trying to Quit: Day One

So, This morning I woke up, did my reading, took a shower and dressed and then left the house before 7:15. Got to the office by 7:45 and sat in my car in the parking lot. Pretty early for a Monday morning.

But, what I didn't do this morning was smoke.

Now, I did have one half of a cigarette around lunch time, but the cold turkey method is far to taxing on my system while I'm at work.

So, now it's around 2:00...and I'm really fighting it. I'm chewing the gum in my mouth about as quickly as I can.

I've already consumed nearly 7 ozs of sunflower seeds.

I've bitten the heads off of two co-workers and nearly gone ballistic on one of my clients.

But...all in all it's been a good day so far, as long as I can keep away from the smokes...

The Resourcefulness of the Poor

You know, any other day of the year I can have 10 scheduled appointments and maybe 5 of them will bother to show up.

But give me a day like today, when it's been sleeting for the past three hours, the roads are literally coveredin inches thick ice...and every fucking appointment I made will make it in.

These people will do ANYTHING to get here on the one day that they should just stay in. I'm convinced someone built a giant sleigh and is offering a wintertime taxi service to welfare clients.

But any other day...they'd totally skip their appointment.

All I want to do is go home and read...

Another Year Spent...

...wasting my life away at DHS.

I've mapped out a plan for 2005. Well, it's not really a map...It's more of a generalized sense of direction. I'm going to be happier this year, damn it. I'm going to figure out what I want out of life. I'm going to grad school. I'm going to stop being frustrated and angry all the time. I'm going to find the joy in life once again.

2004 was not the best year for me. Some good things happened, but some terrible things happened and I had a few realizations about the person I've become. And I don't want to live my life as the guy I've become. I don't want to spend all of my time hating everything around me so much that I feel the need to medicate myself to bed at night.

In 2005, I'm going to go to sleep with good thoughts and not allow myself to be overburdened with anxiety and fear. I'm not going to have night terrors. I'm not going to wake up in the morning with dread in my stomach. I'm going to be positive.

I'm also going to give up a few things. Most notably, I'm going to stop smoking even if it kills me. I'm not going to waste my money on it anymore. I'm going to stick to it and force myself off the damn cigarettes. Perhaps this will be the time I manage to quit.

None of these are resolutions. I don't do resolutions because resolutions are made to be broken. Instead these are promises I'm making to myself. I'm not doing any of these things for anyone but myself so I alone will be disappointed if I break them.

I started today getting out of bed at 6:00 am when my alarm went off, and putting myself in a good mood by saying a prayer of thanks for the newness of the year and the chance to make right things that have been wrong for all too long.

I think 2005 will be a very good year.