Shameless and Gameless

Ok, so today I went out to grab some lunch but somehow ended up at my phone / internet provider's store to search for a way to get DSL access ASAP. The sales lady asked me why it is so urgent and I told her I use the DSL for work (true statement.) I was impressed that she was so understanding. She asked if I would like to borrow an air card to tide me over.

This air card could very possibly cause allot of lag time for Halo so I lied and insinuated that I am developing and testing an application for (a prominent client we have) that requires me to run the connection through my XBox. At that point, she began to work on getting my DSL access earlier. She'll let me know tomorrow.

As soon I walked out of the shop, I realized the shamefulness of my actions. When had I ever stooped so low before? I'm sure I must have at some point. Do I need to attend a twelve-step group?

The irony is the hypocrisy of it all. Earlier in the day I had been thinking about my time working in social services. I refused to work with substance abusers because they lie so much. They get into such a habit of lying to cover up their addictions that they don't even realize when they are lying and that drove me crazy. There were other staff members more suited to dealing with addictions and I had other specialties but wow ... how odd.

I know that this will come back to bite me. I'd bet that next month I get billed for two services and two installations and it will take six months to straighten out. Maybe I'll cancel the second request?

NO MORE XBOX LIVE FOR ME

Seriously, I laid down to get some sleep then I realized that I am going to be out of DSL for a little over a week. I tell myself "Ok, I say, Ok, I'll make it.." But then it hit and hit hard -- NO MORE XBOX LIVE FOR ME. NO MORE HALO JUST AFTER GETTING THE HAYABUSA ARMOR. That is when I could not fall asleep and have been up pacing and doing mindless tasks.

FOR THE LOVE OF SANITY I DO NOT KNOW HOW I WILL SURVIVE.

Why the loss? I am moving. I am moving about 20 minutes away and they can't get my g**&&^%$$ service back up. I'm going to have to take XBOX to people's houses to ride off their DSL. I'm appalled at my reaction and it is clear that my addiction has far surpassed any I had expected. I JUST CAN'T STAND THE STRESS I TELL YOU. I NEED TO GET A GRIP BUT FOR THE LOVE OF ALL SANITY HOW IS THAT EVEN POSSIBLE? ALL THE STRESS I HAVE AND MY ONE ONE ONE ONE AND ONLY VICE IS GOING TO BE TAKEN AWAY.

Campaign mode? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Still haven't played Cock of Doody 4? WHO CARES?!?!? I HAVE THE HAYABUSA ARMOR AND A NEW VIDEO CAPTURE DEVICE COMING IN TO HELP ME WITH MY NEXT MONTAGE TO CELEBRATE THE ARMOR!!!

HERE IT COMES:

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Here I was feeling bad for the Appalachia peoples and I can't live with out XBOX Live. SHAMEFUL! DISGRACE! PANIC! I AM SO LOST!

Fright Night Friday's Gets Better

Yesterday I uploaded a post I wrote last Friday, 2/13/09. I had unknowingly replaced Fright Night Friday with with reality tv and decided that I must no longer watch these shows because, for the most part, they are ... um ... some rich executive's attempt to make money off people in turmoil. So how did I do?

Last night I successfully avoided Wife-Swap. There have been times when the show was tastefully done and entertaining and it appeared as if some good had come out of it but the last two episodes only displayed malformed egos ranting and raving at one another. If I wanted to witness that then I'd go find someone in my own family so that I could at least slap someone (that is a saying of mine which has never come to real.)

Next up was SuperNanny. This episode was not as good as the last few but I did fall right into it. I have decided that this show is not tasteless and educational. Plus, Jo-Jo Frost is just too cute! (I rarely use the phrase "too cute!")

20/20 came on next and had an update to the previous week's show on "Hidden In America: Children of the Mountains." It appears that after airing last week's show, many people have come forward to help these unfortunate people. I had been touched by last week's show enough to get a plan together as to what could I do to help. I had not yet acted on it and most likely will not do so anytime soon but by seeing the giving of others, I felt a hope for people in general that I had not felt for a long time.

I, too, grew up in extreme poverty for the longest time. Eventually, both my parents managed jobs so that food and clothing and a warmer house was available. Though we still had to get our dental needs met on a bus. Despite the hardships, it was nothing like the Appalachia people.

I'm going to make a plan and hopefully follow through with it.

Fright Night Friday's Gets Worse

Last Friday I wrote this blog entry:

When I was married, my husband worked most Fridays. Since he did not share my appreciation for horror flicks, I often rushed to Blockbuster after work to snag something monstrous to take advantage of my free night. He would always know when I'd scored an especially heinous rental because the door to the basement would be locked and all lights on when he came home. I think I blogged about this in the past.

Since the divorce, I do not have so many Fright Fridays. Since my company moved one-to-two-hour commute away, Friday nights have turned into sitting-on-the-sofa-staring-at-whatever channel was on the I clicked the remote.

It was last Friday that I realized what exactly it was that I had been watching for the past couple of months. If you knew me you would not believe my new line-up: Wife Swap, SuperNanny, and 20/20.

Fright Night Fridays had turned into emotional-roller-coaster up-and-down Fridays. Last night alone, I rode the coaster with two completely different families fighting then uniting (leaving me in happy and sad tears), then another family with horrific marital woes and crazed kids managing to supposedly find peace (leaving me in happy and sad tears), then a cover story on all of those heart-breaking Appalachian families that America neglects (leaving me in happy and sad tears).

Because people take medicine for the types of emotional mood-swings I've been having every Friday for the past couple of months, I'm swearing off the wife-swapping-supernanny shows; though, I am going to do some research on the Appalachian-tragedies. We'll see how it goes.

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I do not know how to change it. My shoulder started hurting in kindergarten when i wrote on the chalkboard. I tried very hard not to cry.

She always got so angry. I never knew when or why. A jerk here or a tug there. Why was I so weird? Why was I so "backwards"? Why couldn't I be like everyone else? Why can't I stand up straight? Am I a hunchback?

Finally, she started taking me to doctors who had no answer for her.

The physical therapist gives me the green rubber band to work with and small cartoon sample pictures to imitate. I hung one by my desk at work. Fibromyalgia, pinched nerve ... whatever it is they are calling it this month. The one thing they all say consistently is that I need to improve my posture. Otherwise, no one really wants to deal with it. I know it is up to me.

I do not know how to change it. I've tried dealing with the source of it all but she just won't leave. I catch myself throughout the day. I imagine I must look like a turtle or like Star Wars' Hammerhead or like Halo's Arbiter. Perhaps, I don't look very odd at all. I have never been able to tell. I try to pull my shoulders back and my chin in.

I do want to change. I know that now is the time to start making things right and to break old patterns. Allot of people would like to see me do allot of things ... as would I. When I think I am doing them then I find out that I am not and am disappointed.

My Diploma vs. My Wallet

A while back, 20/20 aired a story discussing the mis-perception that people must go to college to get a good job with good pay. Since I have had the same thoughts, I was interested to hear the report. After all, this is a package that I paid (and am still paying) for.

Within my first year out of graduate school, I began to wonder if there would ever be a financial payoff for my higher education. My intent was to complete a PhD in social services -- if I could ever pay off what student loan debt I had already accumulated. However, I was barely able to pay rent on a one-bedroom apartment. Not long after, I learned that my nephews were making more than I by migrating straight from high school to jobs in a local factory.

I tried to rationalize that sitting in a nice office doing good for humanity was the better way to go but it was a year later that the bottom line fell and I started night classes at a local technical college. A year later, I had doubled my salary by taking a job in information technology.

Each month I grimace when the student bill is due. Recently, when I realized that though I have been paying on my student loan for ten years and still have another ten to go, I pondered defaulting on the loan.

The report went on to state that "the bachelor's degree is America's most overrated product" and that colleges purposely mislead students to believe that the only way to a higher salary is a higher education. Looking back at some of the millions of dollars my alma-mater has made in faculty housing and campus amenities (such as a gigantic water fountain which blocks access to the library), I can't help but compare it to a smaller-scale version of Citigroup intending to purchase a $50 million dollar jet with taxpayer funds. Thus, I concur, college degrees are mis-represented and we probably have another case of taxpayer-money-mismanagement.

That being said, if I had to make the decision again, then I would still have gotten my bachelor's degree. Graduate school in social services is another matter entirely, but my undergraduate degree was worth every penny - even in interest. Aquiring a wide range of knowledge broadened my small-town education exponentially. The social lessons alone, were priceless and the "book-learning" not far behind.

When I first started to work in a large corporation, I was completely amazed that senior management could not write a proper and effective e-mail because their writing skills were so poor. I can't say much good about their verbal communication skills either. I remember getting secret bonuses just to WRITE stuff that was outside my job description. But regardless, as mentioned in the episode, perhaps it is not so much the college diploma as much as it is the person that determines any student's success.

Either way, I 100% believe that what quality of life I manage to have now would be gone if I had not went to college. In fact, considering all the issues I have to deal with now, life itself probably would have ended for me by now.

In any event, purchase only as much as you need and the old adage "buyer-beware" still applies.

Somewhere around 9am I awoke lying in a fog again at the bottom of blackness. Momentarily disoriented, I had to look back up to see what had happened. There he sat at my desk, in disgust, dismantling my code as if it were a virus. "It's taken you 40 hours to do a 3-hour job, no - since it is you - a 6-hour job ... and it's STILL not done."

That was the point where slippage merged into this fall. I will not argue that it has indeed been a failure on my part. Mud and fog have blocked every neural path in my brain so that there is no way I can chug out even one decent block of code.

After physically removing myself from the facility, my eyes gutted themselves for about five hours straight as I worked to sort out this latest meltdown.

Looking back, the tension at work had been building for over a week and was inevitable but I did not see it. The blindness had overtaken me again to the point where I could not recall the last time I'd eaten or slept a whole night. Except for a half-quart of expired milk, a tablespoon of butter, and something resembling potatoes, there is nothing in the fridge and the cats have one can of food left as well. I can't imagine how I am going to drag myself out to not only buy but eat something.

Forty-three days after the divorce and I've got tanks shooting from places I did not know existed. This divorce I can deal with but these things are ruthless.

Keep What You Steal

Throughout the separation and divorce I banged my head against the wall in frustration wondering how could it be that two people who truly cared for each other so much could NOT work out their marriage. Today I found the answer and like many other twisted deceptions, it was glaring in plain sight all along.

It was the very sentence I uttered that held the truth -- "... TWO people who TRULY CARED for each other ..." He did not hate me but he instead felt nothing and I think that may be where I got lost and have been stumbling around for the past years. How would I have known anything else.

I think it had began to sink in a couple of months ago but just hit me today. Anyway, the worse part is that this is probably the sum of the majority of our marriage of 11 years, 4 months, and 28 days.

I should have known that if anyone were to steal my heart then of course it would be thrown it away. Thieves have no honor.

The Weight of Subconscious Expectations

It was the last day of 2008 when I learned that the papers had been signed, notarized, and the divorce complete. I did not feel sad or happy -- free or burdened -- angry or peaceful. I felt nothing but the same.

My marital status is divorced but my heart remains unchanged. I still easily refer to him as 'my husband' and do not know what to refer to the man who has played such an influential role in my heart. I can't bear the term 'EX-husband.' I think this will pass with time but other things I am not so sure.

On Fridays, I come home from work and suddenly am sad when I realize that he has not phoned and we have no plans for the evening. I was never aware that I had hoped or expected to have contact with him. Even more odd, the same thing also happens on Saturdays and Sundays. I go about my days then suddenly I am hit with a sadness when I realize that he is gone. This at least happens once during the work week as well.

It is not as if I am not trying to move on; likewise, it is not as if I do not ever phone him because I do.

The only idea I can surmise is that this must have been a pattern dating back for years. Though the dance looks different the steps are the same.