Yeah, I know I said Sunday. Isn't it still Sunday?

No?

Hmm.

With work and life so many days just blur together, I'm never sure whether I'm coming or going. And I think my gas tank is starting to run a little dry.

I rarely take time to recharge myself... you know, just get into the quiet zone where you're doing your own thing and you just kind of coast for a bit?

Of course, with the corporate merger and my sudden work in software development and internet and automation coding (go history degree!), I'm just trying to stay afloat for now.

Of course, when I get free time, I always end up filling it at the behest of others. Saturday, I went out to celebrate the dual birthday of two friends. Everyone brought gifts, etc.

Every year, on this particular weekend (first weekend in May), it's a carnival of base humanity... It's like a yearly Bacchanal full of drinking and bad choices.

So, after a swell dinner of the finest sausage available at an out of the way german restaraunt (along with requisite liters of imported brews), we headed to an 80s night party at a bar just outside the main Twin Cities, complete with 80s rock cover band and 80c drink specials between 8-9.

For some reason, however, my buddies decided it would be fun to try to get me drunk. So they ordered me shots. I ordered all of them shots to match. Each time they would order one... I'd order 3 more. Of course, it being Shawn and Dave's birthday, that was ok enough I suppose. Considering that my birthday is 10 days before theirs and there's nary a mention of that.

So the evening wears on, everyone is singing along to Journey, and Ratt, and Poison cover tunes (among dozens of others), the bar is packed, etc. Kent (Dave's cousin) is getting hit on, Shawn is getting his ass grabbed by some pretty little girl and drug out on the dancefloor to bust his best move, and Dave is getting ground up against by this other girl, even when he's standing next to his wife!

Someday I think I'd like to be like everyone else. Or at least feel like I was just like everyone else.

I feel more and more isolated from the world at large, more and more out of step. And when I am singled out, it's never for a good reason.

The world seems to intrude on me when it wants something from me. And when it doesn't, it's like when I walk out to my car in the parking lot after work.

Invariably I end up walking behind others (hard not to when you leave at 4:30ish from a building with 10,000 people in it), and they get so uncomfortable in your presence they hasten their steps, they look uncomfortably behind them... like they're going to get mugged or raped.

Being tall is cool for reaching things on high shelves, no so much with the being unthreatening.

More and more I feel very alone.

And it's not because I don't see people. I just don't seem to be one of them.

When my brother died, I remember vividly holding on to the fact that Def Leppard was releasing a new album that summer... and all I had to do was last at least that long. I had been a fan so long, and there last album, Slang, while probably their best, was widely overlooked because it took a radical departure from their "sound". Since then, the band has been in something of a morass... the public wants something from them, their management want something else, and their record company wanted yet something else... And it showed in two albums that, while having some good music, were fairly devoid of honesty and passion.

From the title, you can see they stopped giving a toss what anyone thought of what they were doing. They all sat in a room together and worked on tunes they liked. It's about the emptiness of ambition, and how you have to be confident in yourself and do your thing and if people want on the bandwagon, great, if not... at least you're being true to yourself, and that, in itself, is it's own reward.

This is the album I've waited for from them for over a decade. I apologize because you probably won't like it (if you have sensitive hearing, give it a pass). I'm just trying to do my part as a fan to spread the word that they're back, to someone randomly searching.

Maybe as way of thanks for dropping a bright spot in my life every time I need it.

I'll make a real update on Sunday. No comments on this one because it's just for me to click on at work.





This is a truth that just
Has to be told and must
Be spread amongst us
So the world can hear it

We gotta get it right
This time if we just fight
Innocence dies tonight
If we can't heal it

We look to our leaders
But the lies they try to feed us
Like a knife they try to bleed us
And they cut us real slow

So go
Just go
Just go
You hide behind your mask of desperation
Go
Just go
Just go
I won't surrender to the next temptation

You have no dignity
I have no sympathy
You are my enemy
But I can't see you

No matter where you run
Thy kingdom will be done
A rocket to the sun
Is where I see you

When the senses get ecstatic
Overflow is automatic
Feel the need to feel erratic
Don't deny and let it all

Go
Just go
Just go
You hide behind your mask of desperation
Go
Just go
Just go
I won't surrender to this fake salvation

I thought my mom was calling to wish me a happy birthday.

Turns out my cousin's husband committed suicide. Shot himself in the head. Alcohol and anti-depressants, the great combo platter that it is.

He had 4 kids.

I don't know whether to be shocked or pissed or sad.

Say something for me... for all the walls and hurdles, I haven't quit yet.

It's funny and sad at the same time. I can't even count how many times I've begun, erased, and restarted this post.

Given so much time to wrestle with it, I think the problem is that I hate whining. I hate feeling like the only things I have to say are negative.

Of course, at the very moment I'm writing this (I'm retyping this into the editor from a handwritten legal pad), I'm sitting alone in a bar buying myself a birthday dinner. In the end, you have to go with what you got.

You know what honestly bothers me more than anything else? It shouldn't have been this way. This wasn't the path I was on, and I don't know exactly where I got derailed.

On my 30th birthday, my mom gave me a plastic box with most of my childhood in it; my first teddy bear, my school records, my art projects, and all the other collected detritus of my youth. While spring cleaning a bunch of things the other day (and finding stuff I could get rid of), I came again across all the historical evidence of me.

Within it, there is a smaller cardboard box, full of trophies, plaques and awards: Future Leaders of America, Promising New Writer, National Merit Finalist, speech medals; a slew of wood, metal, plastic, all seemingly saying "this person has talent", and might be something special. Copies of newspaper articles I wrote in college intriguing enough to be noticed and have professors dedicate class time to discuss them.

It wasn't so much about being seen or rewarded… but living up to what I thought I knew I could accomplish… fulfilling my purpose.

I think that sometimes when I say something to friends about how I'm frustrated they earn more with less education, I'm somehow suggesting that they either don't deserve it, or that I'm better than they are. Nothing could be farther from the truth… I'm jealous because I wish I was as valued as they are.

Especially now that things at work have been weird because of a merger. So we didn't get our reviews until just recently for last year. I got the top rating possible, and the biggest merit pay increase possible. Of course, the year was so good for the company that someone who has been at work less than half the year so far (and consider that carefully because it's the end of April), and had most of her responsibilities taken away because she was unable to handle them got the same raise and rating I did.

Talk about disturbing revelations.

Obviously, if you actually get promoted, it's a different can of worms. Which my direct manager told me explicitly was a function of luck and opportunity… you have to be the right person at the right time and place.

Which I suppose explains how someone who's been there less than half as long as me was able to get promoted before me… She was the right person in the right place at the right time. I don't fault her for her promotion… she deserves it and is a stellar employee and even better person. I grow frustrated that no matter how skilled or (in the words of my manager) how I'm one of the most talented people she's met… that it will never matter. Talent helps you keep the role you get the opportunity to fulfill… it doesn't give you the opportunity itself.

Which really sounds backwards considering I've been thrust into the role of a head honcho for a division of the world's largest news and information company regarding the implementation of new office software. Not to mention being one of the only people in our location who can develop solutions for it. Directors and vice-presidents sit in my cube and ask questions.

And I'm the equivalent of any other employee with a high-school diploma.

The truth is I think I have the right to be jealous.

Because it's April, look at it another way.

The 11th would have been my brother's birthday. He would have been 25 and in Iraq. He wanted to join the Army because he didn't like school all that much. And my dad was in the Air Force and a former police officer, so that probably got transmitted in the DNA.

Maybe that's why I get so wound up about soldiers and Iraq. Maybe he would have died anyway, but at least he would have done it doing something he believed in… helping someone other than himself… giving anything of himself for someone to have a better life, no matter the cost to himself. That was his specialness as a person… how much he could do for others.

People I knew tried to throw me a birthday party the night before his funeral on the 23rd. No one talked to me. They arranged the party because they felt they needed to do it for themselves to feel like they were contributing. It had nothing to do with me. It was about them feeling better about themselves. Look what we did for the sad guy!

When other people go to funerals, they get to decide how they want to grieve. My parents, the people who are supposed to care about me unconditionally made me speak when I wanted to help carry my brother. It kills me every April I didn't get to say goodbye how I wanted. How I had to speak because someone from the family had to, and I was the only one who couldn't refuse.

I miss having a brother and a best friend.

Maybe that's why I hate my birthday so badly now. It's a day for everyone to remind themselves how awesome they are for stooping to care about me. It reminds me how much they know and I don't.

I constantly have to listen to cries of friends and family that I don't call them or visit them enough. None of them will even call me for my damn birthday tomorrow, and I'm the bad guy for not following them around like a dog and calling on their schedule? Why do I have to be the one to apologize when they're calling me a shitty excuse for a human being, while they have no need to treat me with a minimal level of respect? It must be because I don't deserve respect.

It takes a real man to go to a woman's parents to say "I'd like to marry your daughter" and have them say you're not good enough for her, and let her say no, and keep caring for her and loving her anyway. Probably because they had a good reason. If I was a better person, I should have just said at that point, "No? Ok. Then I'll try to find someone who will."

Serena tried to destroy all of my friendships because I had to gall to care about her when all she wanted to do was prove she could have anyone at any time she wanted. Of course, if I had any sense of self, I'd have never thought of myself as special enough to not be treated exactly the same as everyone else she's ever done that too (and there's a history there).

Fuck, go back and read it. Kim and Serena decided what was going to happen with me when I went to grad school without ever taking the time to let me in on the secret. It didn't matter what I wanted… I'd just learn to live with it.

We all get rejected. We all suffer. I, however, harp on it.

Every year at this time, I end up reading a lot about Steve Clark. No one knows this, but one of the reasons I got into Def Leppard back in 6th grade was the mention near my birthday that it was his as well (April 23). Of course, all the fan sites I frequent mention his birthday and I go read some older interview.

By all accounts he was a gentle soul. He wasn't the world's most technically proficient player; he concentrated on the adage of one great note trumping 20 notes played in the same span… mood, tempo, orchestration.

In his genius he found loneliness, though. Their producer used the other guitarist more and more because when you're playing each note and reassembling it in a studio, you need technical mastery over tone and flow. He felt more and more like an outsider.

And because the recording process was so laborious, he found he had more and more time to himself. And he drank more and more. It seemed like his mates didn't need him, even though they tried to tell him every day how important he was. Reality wasn't matching up to what he was being told.

All he wanted was to write music, hang out, and get a pat on the back from his dad, to know someone he cared about was proud of him, and believed in the choices he made. He notoriously would flinch when asked for autographs because he felt he didn't deserve attention.

He was trying to fulfill his promise. He was trying to matter to the people he cared for by answering the call of his heart. He was trying to answer the demons in his head. When he couldn't, he drank himself to death because he had nothing else to live for, nothing left to fill his time. He felt like his guitar was his only friend.

I won't go that path… but I feel a kinship. When you see his picture, you notice two things right away… he looks so tired, and there's an unexplainable sadness.

But it made me realize… you know what the real crux of the matter is? I'm a doormat.

I had an opportunity to go back to school and maybe get a security clearance despite my diagnosis. I let people convince me it was too much of a risk… that even if it panned out, I'd end up alone on the East Coast. No one else would have risked it, so why should I? I'm not worth risking anything for.

I let other people tell me when it's ok to fight. When it's ok to feel something. When I should do this, should do that. Instead of just taking their opinion, I allow it to affect what I should be doing for myself. Because I've been taught they're worth more than me; and had it reinforced time and again. I never stand up for myself because everyone believes that when I succeed it diminishes everyone.

There are people that argue with me because they want to prove that I can't be right all the time. It doesn't matter if I'm actually right or not; people will take the side against mine just to try to "put me in my place".

I don't know why reminding me I'm not special is such a fun pastime.

I know I'm not perfect. I'm as flawed a human being as has ever been made. Be that as it may, I should have proved to someone, somewhere, sometime that I have value.

Bipolars tend to analyze. Let me rephrase that. OVERanalyze. Hell, cognitive behavioral therapy teaches us to strip down what we're feeling into its component pieces so that we can determine what's causing it (if anything other than bad body chemistry), so we can objectively see it, and deal with it.

Sitting here, I finally figured it out. I'm searching for some chemical reason to be depressed… to feel hopeless. I really am unhappy. And no matter what I do, I can't change it.

When I was running my hands through the few things that were left that made me feel good about myself, I found I missed being valued.

Which is a hard lesson while buying yourself a birthday dinner.

If I knew where I went wrong, or who I mistreated, I would go back and fix it.

Which also reminds me; I was going to do something nice for myself, but then I realized I need to save my dollars for taking out my friends for their birthday next weekend. Maybe we can hit the strip club again and I can pay someone to pretend to like me.

If you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

I swear I'm working on an update...

It's just been really, really difficult this time around.