A Quick Update

Looking over the blog, it appears that I haven't posted anything for an entire week. That's terrible.

I have a pretty good explanation, though:

1. Last weekend, I received word that my part of Florida had the power restored, so I made plans to return home. 
2. Monday, the person I thought I was going to get to visit on the way home had to beg off on account of sick kids, so that changed my schedule and meant that I was probably leaving too late in the day to make it home in one trip. 
3. Fortunately, a lovely friend in Columbia, SC offered his guest room to me and I spent the night. So that's why there was no Monday post. 
4. Damn near the rest of Tuesday was spent driving, and by the time I arrive home I was flat-out brain-fried and only wanted to rest. So, no Tuesday post. 
5. Wednesday was spent unpacking. No, really. It seems to take me twice as long to unpack as it does to pack, because putting things where they belong (ordering them) takes a lot longer than putting them into suitcases (a mild form of disordering them) -- fighting entropy always takes effort. Plus I had to wash dirty clothes, remove the wrinkles from clean clothes that got mashed in the suitcase, etc. 
6. Thursday was a headache in the morning and then recording the podcast in the afternoon, so I did actually accomplish something visible that day... you just don't get to see the fruit of that effort until tonight, when the podcast drops. Then my internet went out until morning. 
7. Friday was just an utter cluster of everything that could go wrong actually going wrong. Most notable was when my keyboard stopped working for no apparent reason, and trying to get it fixed took up most of my time. Then I had to go shopping for a new one, and I didn't find one I liked, so I ended up ordering a new one on Amazon. 
8. Yesterday was Salem Saturday. 

And the sad irony of the situation is that next week I will have to start packing all over again, because Friday-Sunday is the Gun Rights Policy Conference in Dallas. I'm so freaking tired of travelling, y'all, and I'm going to do it again on Thursday.

Plus I have to finish my speech.

And I've been invited to model for a Concealed Carry Fashion Show at GRPC, which is 50% flattering and 50% terrifying.

So basically... I'm fine, my family is fine, my dogs are fine, my house is fine, but I'm probably going to be an Amazing Stress Bitch this next week, so please don't hold it against me if you don't hear back from me until October 2.

And many thanks for being my readers despite my flakiness. Much love to you all!

The Literary Equivalent of Throwing a Bottle at the Wall.

     So this was originally going to be some light-hearted piece about how the new Call of Duty came out, and how I hate playing competitive multiplayer and would much prefer something like a cooperative campaign or horde mode, but then I saw that latest Simon Pegg film, The World's End, and got a little depressed for a few minutes. I'm a bit Gary King, see, and I don't want to explain it for fear of spoiling the film for anyone that wants to see it.

     So instead, I'm going to get a little bit introspective, a little gazing of the navel. I'm going to look into the abyss for a bit, and other such pretentious ways of looking at it. See, I've got this problem with socializing.

     Wait, wait, it's not the usual problem. I'm not claiming Asperger's or saying I'm a wallflower with no social skills. Quite the opposite. I've got a ready smile and charm with a smooth voice and a healthy ego (obviously, right?) and a self-deprecating sense of humor. I just really. Really. Really. Hate socializing. I've taken those Meyers-Briggs test multiple times, and come out INTJ 9 times out of 10. I watched House for 7 years before realizing that House wasn't the character I was supposed to be identifying with.

     For my school years I found myself in a situation where I was forced to socialize. And so I did. Despite the goth kid persona, I spoke to pretty much anyone. Talked my way out of being bullied and learned to stare down the ones too slow to follow my evasive logic.

     After high school, I was a complete social animal. I had at least three different scenes that I frequented, and fell in and out of love with a frightening rapidity. Then I went off to university and discovered high-speed internet.

     In retrospect, that might have been one of the things that caused me to leave school, adding up with mental and social exhaustion, a sleeping disorder rearing its ugly, inconvenient head, and being an intellectual at a 100% football school. So I withdrew for a bit.

     Then I moved to Mobile, following a woman and working a shite job, living a very small life. That job didn't last, and I was nearly broke and unemployed and alone, having observed how unstable things had gotten with the woman I'd followed. So I was forced out into the big, scary world again, and threw myself into it. I was a bouncer at a strip club, got ordained in a church, cleansed people's homes and persons of evil spirits, and was social royalty for a while in the larger beach town of Pensacola. Good times, Bianca. I still think of you now and then.

     Then I snapped back again. Didn't leave my apartment for six months for longer than it would take to visit the nice Bahranian gent who ran the corner store a block away in the dead of night. Then my lease was up, and the call of a woman beckoned me to Texas. I went.

     That, though, is a period of my life that you and I, well, we just don't know each other well enough to talk about just quite yet.

     After that ended, though, I was life of the party again. I drank more than I thought possible, dallied with many a lovely woman, and realized just how broken I was when I disappointed one woman in particular that deserved better than I could give her.

     Some health problems coupled with a change in my job (our site shut down, and a few dozen of us got to work from home) contributed to the longest, if not most intense, period of social withdrawal yet. I haven't regularly gone anywhere and done anything since sometime in 2009.

     Anyone worried about me may be relieved to know that I have actually been regularly leaving my apartment here in Albuquerque, where I relocated to six months ago. My health has, more or less, stabilized and while I may not have any friends in the area, I am at least re-training myself in socializing. I don't put my hood up as often, and will often speak to people while I'm out. The only thing is... I'm not sure if I want to. I kind of like the solitude, and I'm having some very real internal conflict about whether I want to rejoin the real world again or not.

But that's enough about me and my problems. Geek culture resumes next week.

Frustration, or Ideas flow as the Whiskey goes.

In Media Res: I am jealous of Jenna Marbles.

Several years ago, in the era which could best be described as fallout from the end of my marriage, I had two goals. To search for something (jesus, answers, absolution, etc) at the bottom of every bottle I could get my hands on, and weaseling out of as much actual work as I could at my job. Eventually, I did myself a damage to my prostate from sitting cross-legged on the floor and draining whiskey bottles for hours every day. I've since had to stop, and for various reasons have not felt up to getting hammered on a regular basis since.

The work thing turned out pretty well. I've managed to move from one semi-supervisory position to the next with a great deal of responsibility and very little effort required. High-risk, high reward. That reward being, currently, the ability to sit on my arse and play video games while I'm clocked in.... I mean, regularly review training materials in my downtime between helping other agents.

Back to the alcohol: I was one of those proper drunken writers. I could down a few glasses of whiskey and then hammer angrily and miserably at the keyboard for an hour and turn out something actually quite good that I didn't even remember thinking of.

Smash cut to the present: Jenna Marbles's latest video is her hammered and slurring into the camera as she's doing her hair. It's really quite genius, in that it's been up only a few hours and she's already gotten 35,000+ views. I remember doing this, in blog form, only without an audience. Or much of one, at least.

It's kind of frustrating, having one or two ideas every now and then sort of half-materialize only to fizzle out. As it is, I think I just wrote a few paragraphs about how I can't write anything. The irony is not lost on me. And I'll have a proper subject next week, I'm sure.