Friday 23 August 2002 // 1620 EDT

Seeing: A changing home

Hearing: Mur - Hope

Touching: A copy of Learn Dreamweaver MX in 24 Hours

Tasting: Southwest Turkey and Bacon from Subway

Thinking:

I have no clue. I just don't know.

Don't even bother to ask me why-I wish I knew, but I don't, and I'm not really going to try and find out. I was telling Rob a while ago that I have too much going on for me and around me to be brought down by anything, but to be honest, it's hard sometimes. And why do people do the things they do? What makes some of these people make the decisions they make? Hell if I know-I'll never really find out, and like I said before, I don't really want to know or expound the effort required to find out what lapse in judgement caused such things. Don't get me wrong at all-I don't want to point fingers, but I know a lot of people who are doing some wonderful things with their lives and doing the things that make them happy, but I know a lot of people who are doing things that simply don't make any sense-they come and they go.

But the important thing to remember is to leave people to their own devices, not judge them based on what I think is right or wrong, a good or bad idea, and to just stride on...I have enough of my own life to worry about to get bogged down in someone else's pain or life-it just can't happen. My parents reminded me, I have a new job, I have a new place to live, I have a new life that I have to take care of...I'm starting to walk out of the teetering period where I need someone else's help all the time, where I need to doublecheck my movements and look for assistance whenever something really matters-it's time for me to watch my own movements, do my own thing, and go where I want to go...I keep telling myself every day that this is the life I've been so determined to live, and now that I have it, it's almost frightening to the point whre I'm afraid that I won't make the right decisions and do the right things. I have to have faith in myself that I'm doing the right thing. In the end, I have to know I will.

Partially the reasons why I know I'll be okay in the end is because of my mother and father-if there's anything I have faith in, it's that they raised me to be a good person, a smart person, a loving person, someone with heart and someone with drive and goals and ambition...someone who can take care of himself. It's my time to build the life to prove that I'm all of those things.

I remember a long time ago I said that I was going to come out of college less fucked up than I went in, I was going to leave college with a sense of destiny. And when I woke up on May 23rd, with graduation in mind and a timeframe to meet, and I rolled over and woke up Katie, who was sleeping next to me, I stumbled into the bathroom and unwrapped my bandage, and I realized that I had made it-I was a god damned astrophysicist. I had my degrees in Physics and Astronomy, and I was damned proud of them. I managed to get a job at Absolute Quality, which was nice and I met wonderful people, and now I'm back at the OIT Helpdesk, making a decent salary for someone fresh out of college, at the top of the paygrade that Salary.com says I should be making for my industry, and I'm doing well. I have my health, my happiness, benefits to take care of me when I'm sick or need medical attention, I have a working car(with air conditioning, thank god-although I still haven't ponied up the money to put a CD player in it...), I have so very much...friends who love me and a family that's always there and loves me unconditionally, and even a cat who loves me too-a cat that's probably more loyal than half of my girlfriends-but in the end, I have to remember that I have so much. And I have to cherish it.

It's like opening my eyes.

So aside from not punishing myself for other people's pain, and not questioning when other people do things silly or even things that involve me, I have to remember to keep on walkin and not to worry about it-to remember that I am who I am, and it'd be a shame if I were anyone else. I suppose a lot of this is just a personal peptalk, but if you can follow my example, you very much should...as for me? Let's see if I can manage to take my own advice.

Anyways, in other, not-so-personal news, I'm probably going to get around to working on the EDMC site this weekend, and maybe start working on Novawerks.net also. In the end, I'm going to see about getting Novawerks it's own hosting, it's own server, and set it up all by itself, but we'll have to see about that...why pay for hosting when I can set up a gateway in my own house and run it off a machine I'm not using? I'll have to investigate.

Any way you look at it, this weekend is going to be quite amusing, in more ways than one. I might catch a movie, I might grab dinner with a good friend, I might road trip, and I might rearrange the house...I might move Novawerks, I might buy hosting, I might buy a MegaTokyo graphic novel, I might do a ton of things...but while Subway has become one of my favorite places to grab lunch(mmmmsouthwestturkeybacon...), I've had a hankerin for a good cold beer and some wings from Rocky Run Tap and Grill. I still promised Lisa that we'd get Sushi over at Sushi Sono now that she's living in Columbia, but that might have to wait until I have a little more money in my pocket...after I get my first check from UMD.

Hey, you know what? Give me a call sometime-I'd love to hear from you. I don't mind having more people to hang out with. You're a nice person, and if you're over 21, I just might buy you a beer.