Many times when people work their way back into my life, they always tell me how much they miss me, which is odd since I don’t feel the same way most of the time. That’s when I began to ask myself, am I broken? I do miss certain aspects of different people, but to long for that connection again, I don’t have the fire within to try to repair the damage I did or rekindle that flame I let go out. I guess that’s more of my laziness coming out, but I let things go for a reason, they serve no purpose for me as I grow and mature, or so I like to tell myself that. While all this is going on, I want full and meaningful relationships with people, but at the same time I don’t want to put forth the effort to maintain them.

So maybe it’s a bit of selfishness as well, but I never claimed I was a perfect friend. Maybe I just want someone to come in and be there for me like I was there for so many before, but I haven’t really found that and so I just let those friendships dry up that don’t serve any purpose for myself benefit.

I think I am broken. I’m an awful friend. I lack empathy, emotions, caring, and all that stuff. I don’t know why people like being my friend and are gravitated towards what little I have to offer. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m a selfish, boring and broken man.

I wanted a good camera to document the new travels I wanted to accomplish. I wanted to take two major trips a year and up to six small short weekend trips. So far, I’ve taken zero trips. Technically, driving up at Blood Mountain was kind of a photography trip, although I screwed up most of those pictures. I’d really been fighting vacations for years and since venturing out on my own I’ve really only ever taken two total. That’s pretty sad since I haven’t lived at home since I was 23 and I’m now 29. I tried to correct that path, but I’ve failed miserably.

I’d hope photography would help me realign myself and find some sort of peace with everything that happened. I grabbed my antidepressants, my camera, and stared at online photos. My anxiety had essentially rendered me helpless on achieving my goals. The drugs for my General Anxiety Disorder didn’t seem to do much besides making me care less about the world. I even tried pot, and that still didn’t make me feel like accomplishing anything, although I’m sure that just made me more lazy and fatter.

So now I sit staring at the latest 7 days of interesting photos on Flickr and I want to drop kick my nice and expensive Nikon D300 off the top of a very tall building. Just looking at those amazing shots makes me wish I had never bought a camera in the first place, at least not one so expensive. And I know damn well that you can’t take a good photo without taking a ton of bad ones. That’s my problem, the GAD keeps me from going out. I’ve tried going out and I make excuses and stay at home and blame laziness. I mean, that’s part of it, but it’s a lot of my GAD. I’d lived with it for so long that I just assumed it was laziness, but it’s kept me down and away from many things I’ve wanted to try.

So, three years later, I’m still searching for my inspiration, my muse or even a kick in the ass to get me going and doing more. Alone I wish to remain in my cocoon where I have a false sense of safety instead of enjoying what little time I have on this hurtling rock.

Yeah, maybe.

Things falls into place so tightly you’d think an engineer was planning my life.

Just maybe.

Or maybe I’ll just pull the covers over my head and get that quick 15 minutes of sleep and quick dream before the alarm goes off again.

I’d rather just dream.

From the time the cold hits the ground to celebrating another year of hopes and dreams coming true, I watch Love Actually a few times, but that ritual has gone from a viewing a week 6 years ago to maybe one single viewing. It became my holiday movie years ago, due to numerous viewings and along with A Christmas Story, will always be watched, even if Love Actually is far more depressing as a whole.

It took me a couple of years to finally replace a copy that was taken from me and I’ve barely watched it. I ripped a copy for my XBMC machine and a copy for my iPhone.

Soon I’ll pass the first day in the trifecta of loneliness, and quickly the 2nd will pass. The third day takes over a month to finish, but once that’s over I’ll be in my new place. I’ll have started new and one of these days I’ll get back into the game but for now I’m just casually sitting on the sidelines. [I wrote while in the process of buying a new house, which I'm currently living in now.]

So what’s this post talking about? Nothing really, just that I get depressed this time of the year, and I watch a movie that makes me depressed. Oh well.

Since wrapping up High School and getting into the “real world,” I’ve taken a loss on many fronts, now I understand it’s all a part of life, but in 11 years, maybe a lot of losing friends has to do with myself. I’d like to say I’m easy to get along with, but looking over things, maybe I’m a bit critical on things I shouldn’t be. Ever since reading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff years ago, I thought I’d never let little things bother me, but in fact, they have. I might have shifted what small stuff I let go, but other things I just can’t seem to let go of on a daily basis. Maybe it’s just my crazy personality, but it bothers me, and in 11 years, I haven’t made much headway in changing things I don’t like about myself. I guess it’s come down to a love me or get out at this point, and I wish it wasn’t, because that philosophy has left me and more broken and empty shell of a person.

I’ve forgiven many people from my past and they’re included in my present, but others I can’t seem to just forgive. Maybe it’s because I’m so headstrong about certain things, and some people view that as a good characteristic of me, but sometimes I wonder why I stand my ground when it just leads me to be miserable. I can’t change so easily because then I feel like I’ve let myself down.

Let us now think of what frequently happens in relationships. So often it is only when people suddenly feel they are losing their partner that they realize that they love them. Then they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them, and the more fragile their relationship becomes.
So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: How can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it? How often attachment is mistaken for love! Even when the relationship is a good one, love is spoiled by attachment, with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the “souvenirs” of love, the scars of attachment.

Post season in hockey started to arrive and the Red Wings were looking to dominate the entire field. I watched all the rounds very intently and would make my plans around each of the games. As the games wore on, I was more and more invested, more than I ever had since becoming a Wings fan in the early 90s, and I mean right around where the Penguins last won before 09.

The finals come around and it’s a hell of a series, eventually going to 6 games with the Wings taking it all in Pittsburgh. In a year filled with lots of bad, something good happened. I awakened a fan in me that had been sleeping for a long time. I was glad they had won, marking their 11th all time Stanley Cup. I had only wished that I had made it to at least one playoff game during that run, but one day, I’ll make it to Hockeytown and party with my fellow Wingnuts, until then, I’ll be cheering every year from my recliner.

With guitars, I have a severe probably with my hands, my fingers are stubby. So playing normal chords are a chore, and I would pretty much have to resort to power chords, which less face it, don’t really work anymore since punk is long gone. And the other issue I have is addressed with drums.

With drums I can only play for 10-20 min before my tendonitis in my right elbow kicks in and I am in extreme pain. Now, I used to fight through it when I owned a set of drums, so I developed a strange playing style because of it. Now, I miss my drums more than anything that’s no longer in my life, but I struggle back and forth whether to buy another set to fill the void, but I have a feeling once again, my tendonitis will stop me.

It’s not just drumming, guitars or playing games that cause this to flair up. Lifting heavy objects close to my body and carrying them, cooking/chopping, and really any repetitive motion that causes the muscles and tendons to flex. I even went as far to go to physical therapy to see if I could get this resolved, but in ended up making my elbow hurt worse when it was relaxed, so I stopped going.

The only current treatment for this are things I’ve already tried: Rest/protect, Ice the area, Anti-Inflammatory drugs (don’t work), Cortisone (actually haven’t done this yet), PT (hurts more), breaks (Would work, but I’d like a solid hour of play time), protect tendons.

So, I guess what I’m saying is that I’m giving up on any hopes and dreams to actually play any instrument longer than 20 min before it kicks in again. That’s why I’m cursed. I can never learn something I love and make music organically, meaning, no computers creating the sounds.

*sigh*