I see your eyes are open

I am seeing again a thing about working for an employer that I disliked, a thing about existing and desiring to continue exist in a specific professional environment that directly conflicts with my natural desires. I keep wanting to post about things and stopping myself, out of discretion.

The same thing applies to making posts, even posts with the details changed and names removed, that are about people I know read the site, and who I see regularly. And it drives me batty.

Not because I feel like I can’t post, but because I keep finding myself not posting. I mean, all these things I think of to post and then censor out of discretion seem reasonable to me to not post, but the result, the lack of posts, does not.

I want to post. I want there to BE posts.

. . .

Now, there are other things I’m not posting. . . Things that have no such thing as a “reasonable” explanation or discretion regarding why they ought not be posted. Mostly things about love, lonliness, hope, attraction, emotion, loss, and an examination of whether a particular thing is regret or something else in me. Oh, and depression. It seems I’m not feeling well, again, but you don’t really know the extent of it.

Such as the first thoughts of suicide (beyond purely technical or external) since … well, I suppuse since 1998. That was a tough year. The first year into a drought can be the toughest, I suppose – before one becomes acclimated to perpetual thirst under clear blue skies.

Such as the first serious thoughts of cutting myself, ever. Ever. Well, not counting times I was cutting myself with the intention of taking my own life; I don’t think that counts, since I was trying to get rid of the pain, disprove the life, rather than … well … the sort of things I find my mind drifting to of late. And the parts of my mind that want to keep me seeming almost-normal in the eyes of the world and the future are already working out elaborate ways to excuse it. Discovering places on my body where any scarring could be hidden, explained away lightly. Determining how best to do it to prevent scarring in general, what sort of immediate and longer-term techniques will result in the smallest, lightest visible scarring. Working out plans to bleed and bleed and bleed and create works of art with the blood collected, so that worst-case when someone sees what I’ve done to myself I have some sort of . . . artist’s hand forced by his art story to point to, and works to go with the marks. I think it was that time I accidentally cut open my foot and all the blood pooled and puddled on my bathroom floor, two years or so ago, that opened this door. I’d always been so careful not to let myself bleed, not to let myself see a lot of blood outside of clinical conditions, and now the door is open and … and it’s giving me an excellent excuse to mutilate myself. sort of

Such as drinking. On multiple occassions. And plans to do more. And plans to cut going to bars out altogether and just sit around at home and drink by myself. Because it’s cheaper and less likely to cause . . . repurcussions.

Such as overeating, and wanting to overeat. The diet is not going as well as I’d like, in a couple of ways. First, it costs too much money, too much time, to eat well. I’ve just changed my meal plans around for a combination of lowest possible difficulty and lowest possible grocery cost, which as a result means my meals will have the least possible interest. With my current schedule, with getting home around 8 or later from work and having to get up the next morning at 5 or 6, there isn’t a lot of time for cooking. In fact, I’m pretty sure that eating as lat as I have been has been part of the problem. Perhaps I should just train my body to sleep … 5 hours or less? Perhaps 4, like benjamin franklin or 3, like thomas jefferson. I should be sleeping now. Whatever. The idea being that I keep having to eat at strange times, keep skipping meals or eating extra stuff… there is weight coming off, but it’s … not steady, and I’m not sure it’s healthy.

And I haven’t yet got started on the Bowflex. Not sure where I’ll fit that in. Somewhere between working all the time, cooking the rest of the time I’m not sleeping, and masturbating for hours.

I decided recently (and am just beginning to implement with any regularity) to turn my masturbatory sessions back into the “workouts” they were in my “youth”. That is, instead of just masturbating for pleasure/endorphins, I shall be training my sexual responses to specific ends. I recall in my youth I had as many as three or four separate agendas, including associating intense ball-busting pain with a release of endorphins and an otherwise pleasurable sensation, ejaculating for the greatest possible distance, maintaining an erection for the greatest period of time possible, and associating orgasm with specific imagery and fantasies so that under normal circumstances I would not orgasm except by specifically choosing to imagine the desired imagery/fantasies. All of these went reasonably well, actually.

Right now I’m just working on maintaining the associative image I’ve spent the last four years or so drilling into my brain as a trigger to orgasm and the new thing is to work again on endurance. Back in the day I could go hours before my first orgasm, but in the last year the average has been a lot closer to 17 minutes, and 2 minutes is an achievable goal. Now, I realize that the average male in my age group (25 to 49) actually climaxes, on average, 17 minutes after ‘sex’ has been initiated, and that the average woman in the same age group averages 19 minutes (though due to the visual nature of men’s sexuality, the beginning of sex for men is often sooner than for women), but I sure would like to be … above average? So I’m working on only masturbating when I have at least an hour to devote to it, and not orgasming until around an hour has passed, and not losing my erection the entire time.

So, there’s that.

How did I get there?

I don’t recall, and I don’t feel like scrolling up, and my back hurts and I’m not tired, so I think I’ll take some pills and keep typing for a while.

. . .

Have I mentioned that I’m a sort of obsessive cleaner? Not … not obsessive about living or keeping a clean house, or a clean room or … any of that. Not maintaining clean, not being neat, or a “neat freak”. Just … when I clean, I want to do it right, and as completely as possible. So when I worked on the kitchen on Friday, I worked from one end to the other and didn’t stop until I got there. Now, I didn’t leave the counter and get to the floor or turn around and clean the other side of the room, but …. I haven’t had a kitchen of “my own” for a long time, so I’m just ramping up. This week on my days off, I’ll probably re-do that part of the kitchen, move to include the rest of the kitchen, and perhaps go as far as one of the bathrooms.

But I’ve missed part of the point. I know I mentioned it in my other post; when I was cleaning, there was no clean kitchen sponge and none of the cleaners that I could locate in the house were disinfectant. Cleaners the cut grease, cleaners that don’t streak on glass, cleaners made with “real” “orange power”, but nothing that disinfects (save straight bleach). Who knows what isn’t in the bathrooms? I suppose I’ll discover that when I get there, and have to go to the store and pick up some cleaning supplies. Like I did this last “weekend”. So now I have disinfectant cleanser and sponges. And I use them all the time. And I made Angela buy the 12-pack of paper towels instead of the 6-pack or the 1-pack, not just because it’s a better deal, but because this house is a fucking mess and I know I’m going to clean it, and I know I’m not just going to wipe bacteria all over the place by using the same dirty rags and sponges all over the place. Paper towels are excellent. Once you’ve filled one with e.coli, just throw it away. Trees and forests be damned. If the wood and paper manufacturers and the loggers don’t figure out that wood is a renewable resource only if they themselves renew it, the world as we know it will change in ways that go way beyond paper towels. The major players in the oil industry are only putting money into developing alternative, renewable fuel sources fast enough that a solution will be available as the last drop of oil is burned and no sooner, but at least they’re working on it. Anyway, yeah. Paper towels, I go through them like crazy.

Not obsessive-compulsive crazy. I’m not washing every surface 10 or 70 times a day. But when I do get around to cleaning, things get clean.

If, when it gets to be that time, I can’t locate a mop and pail, I’ll get down on my hands and knees with a rag and clean the floor by hand, little by little. And fuck dad for tiling practically the entire house, it’s a pain in the ass to clean. He says he doesn’t like carpet because dirt gets under it, but fuck if I don’t live my life above the carpet. Does he like to crawl around under it from time to time, just to get dirty? Shit.

I went grocery shopping at Sam’s Club with my sisster tonight. Got almost everything I needed. Ran into a friend of a … of someone I haven’t talked to in over five months … ran into someone I met once and didn’t recognise at first, but talked to anyway. Need to go grocery shopping tomorrow night to get the rest of everything on the grocery list, plus a few items that are not exactly groceries. Which reminds me we didn’t remember to buy gum at Sam’s Club. Perhaps we shall return there.

What’s left on the list… Shoe polish, because I can’t find mine. Some sort of fibre supliment. Some lotion. Oh, and the ~3 frozen meals and the 1/2 gallon of frozen yogurt or sorbet from the grocery list. There was something else. What was it?

Ah, now I’m beginning to be tired.

Must be that getting up early in the morning and working all day thing. I hear rumor that I’ll get a paycheck on Friday which will reimburse me for all the work I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks. I can only hope. Sure would make things like keeping my bills paid a bit easier. Oh, and buying groceries. And alcohol. And maybe if I can afford to keep myself distracted enough I won’t kill myself or mutilate myself too badly. Ah, well.

I’m off to bed, now it seems. Couldn’t quite stay up late enough to hear back from … someone who was online a while ago and promised to be back. Later.

Square Wave

Middle of a three-day weekend. Actually my schedule at work gives me a three-day weekend every week, which is pretty sweet. Having to get up and around at quarter-to-too-early O’clock to get on the bus on a Sunday morning isn’t something I’m looking forward to, but I do get Thursday, Friday, and Saturdays off every week. And today’s Friday.

Which means I slept through most of yesterday after getting pretty drunk the night before, and didn’t manage to get much done in the time I was awake. You know, recovering from long hard days stuffing envelopes in uncomfortable chairs… It sounds less painful than it is, since my back usually hurts in a way that I can only accurately describe as “intensely” within around 45 minutes of beginning work. Ibuprofin helps, but … between staring at a computer screen for 10+ hours and the repetitive mouse/keyboard/envelope motions, my back and eyes and wrists are never happy at the end of the day. But I am pretty fast. Faster than … most anyone who’s done the job, apparently. Did 305 tickets on Wednesday, which is a LOT. Trust me.

Anyway, didn’t get much done yesterday but laundry and learning the basics of Quidditch World Cup, recently acquired for the XBox here. But getting the laundry done is good. Now, if only I could find an iron and ironing board, I could go through all of my button-down shirts and all my slacks (and perhaps my handkerchiefs and a few of the most-wrinkled t-shirts) and take the wrinkles out and put some creases in. That will be fun. Or at least meditative.

Today, I’m trying to get things done. I’ve already unloaded/reloaded the dishwasher and cleaned most of the kitchen counter (which was 80% of the kitchen’s mess that can be cleaned without a remodeling crew), had breakfast, and harrassed Iain about getting an Apple laptop. (I’m thinking of adding harrassing Iain about buying an Apple computer to my list of things to do every day – it’s quite fun.)

Soon I’ll be cleaning this desk/table (the one with the computer on it, that is), going through and working out what it is dad decided to bring down from Pine to me this week and putting as much of it away as I can. Taking out the garbage and recycle. Cleaning up a bit more of the kitchen. Straightening out the living rooms a bit. Showering, and then perhaps taking a bath in the whirlpool bath my dad installed and no one ever uses.

And later I’d like to go see Anchorman. And the more I think about it the more I also want to see Spiderman 2 again. But my sister, Angela, does not want to watch either of those. And while I am content to go watch movies by myself (just as I am comfortable walking into a restaurant and asking for a table for one), I would be more than happy to have company if you were thinking of watching one of these. Iain, I hear you haven’t seen S2 yet – it’s playing at the CineCapri still, which is as good excuse as any to venture to this side of town. Anyone else, if you’re interested in joining me for a motion picture, let me know. No rush. Doesn’t have to be today. But if you don’t get in touch with me, I’ll probably go ahead and watch Anchorman by myself today.

OOH! One other movie I want to see that came to the valley this weekend; Before Sunset. Definitely want to see that if I can. Should probably re-watch Before Sunrise before going, though. It’s been a while.

That’s all I have on my list today… well, that and perhaps some more Quidditch, perhaps a walk to the store to get some frozen dinners and some disinfectant all-surface cleaner and some kitchen sponges.

***

Oh, and I keep trying to win at this. What an excellent little campaign that is. It’s got me to spend money on iTMS for the first time in a long, long time. But … I figure if I get the timing right, ten or twenty dollars is an excellent price for a 20Gb iPod. At about $11 so far. We’ll see how things go. Worst case, I end up purchasing some music I wanted at a reasonable price. Best case, I win an iPod, or an iPod, 17″ Powerbook, and 10,000 songs.

Anyway, I’m off to get some more counter cleaned.

sorry about no posts

been working and eating and sleeping and stuff, just trying to get used to my new schedule. Not quite there yet. Especially since it changes next week. Unless things change between now and then, it looks like I’ll be working Sundays through Wednesdays, 8AM to 7PM. Which is nice, because on M-W, I can ride in with Angela, and ride the bus hom, and on Sundays I can take the bus both ways. Which means no hour-long bike rides to work. Yay! It also means Thursday, Friday, and Saturday off in a row, every week. Which is a nice weekend, yes?

Allright. Well. I’m actually supposed to be getting ready for work right now. So. I go. But tonight I should be able to make a post before I pass out. Last night was a bit of an aberration, since I was asked to join my friends at the Tuesday night Midnight showing of Spiderman 2, which meant that I got 3 hours of sleep Tuesday night, which is why I was too tired to post last night after work. Ah! And Spiderman 2 was a good movie. You should watch it, purely for entertainment. It is also a good date movie, I think, if you do that sort of thing. As opposed to F9/11, which is a good movie that you should watch for political reasons, and a good movie to take someone you disagree with politically to.

And now, really, I go. Lunch has to be made.