I was talking to my sister about Sad Salvation and writing. I told her the name and I had to explain it to her. I had to give her the disclaimer that web log is a lot more depressing then my actual life. For some reason I seem only to write about depressing things. Depressing writing seems to be what I excel at.
My sister thinks this is a bad sign. She was asking me why I cannot write about my happiness. This is a hard thing to explain. I seem to be able to deconstruct my unhappiness. I can pick it apart and look at each of the peices. I cannot do that with things that make me happy.
It was pointed out to me tonight that I might have hurt someone's feelings. I know that the person how pointed it out might be right. I feel bad now. I feel like I need to fix it. The question is will I get the chance. The worst thing is that I might not get the chance to make it right.
The last company that I worked for before I left the Philadelphia area was Ficomp, Inc. In many ways working at that job helped me figure out that I wanted to leave town. I was an accounts receivable clerk there. It was really a futureless job. I could have stayed in the same position for 30 years and no one would have noticed.
I went back there today to have lunch with a friend who is still working there. The company has grown and there are some new faces there. What surprises me are the things that have not changed. A lot of the people I worked with are still there. Most of them are still working in the same jobs. Some of those people are having the same conversations they had three years ago.
When I go back to that building I am so happy that I left for the west coast. I have no doubt if I was still at Ficomp I would be more unhappy that I can even think about right now. I think about the idea of working for this company again and it makes me want to gag. I know if I hit hard times and I was back in the Philadelphia area, I would have to think about asking for a job there. This is an idea that scares me.
I think I am done visiting Ficomp when I come home to visit my family. I will still try to visit my friend who works there, but I do not want to keep on visiting the office. I think I have it out of my system now. I do not think I need to network with these people any more. It is time for me to break with this part of my pass.
In the airport yesterday I was sitting near a family with two small children. One child was young enough to still believe in Santa Claus. The other must have been told there is no Santa. They younger of the two kinds was worried that Santa was not going to be able to find them this year since they were not going to be at home. The older son was about to speak up when his mother gave him that, "if you say something to spoil your brother's Christmas, I will think up something really bad to do to you" look. The mother assured her younger son that Santa has been doing this for a long time and he would be able to find them.
When I found out that I might have been lied to about Santa Claus I was a little broken up. I knew it had to be true, but I was still sad. My father took me aside then. I have never thought of my father as a sentimental man. There are a lot of things in this world he has no time for. At that time my father told me something I still think about to this day.
My father told me of course Santa Claus is real. If Santa Claus was not real, why would people break their back working overtime to buy good gifts for their families? If Santa Claus was not real, why would people go buy gifts for kids they do not even know? If Santa Claus was not real, why would so many people give to charity? If Santa Claus was not real, why would people put so much effort into parties for their friends? If Santa Claus was not real, why would people travel all the way a cross the country just to spend a few days with people they love? He told me the Santa Claus is in people's hearts not on the North Pole. I think about this just about every Christmas.
was in line at the airport when a man about my age who looks Indian was told he was selected for a random bag check. I looked at the guy and I did not believe that it was totally random.
This started me thinking about my own profile. I realized there are things that work for me and against me if you were trying to profile me as a terrorist. Here are the things you would see when you look at me on paper.
Risk Factors
Single Male Age 24-34 Lives Alone Traveling Alone
Positive Factors
Purchased Ticket more then 120 days in advance Purchased with credit card in my name White
I do not think I would ever be profiled as a terrorist. I think that a lot of people put stock only in that last tidbit. I do not I would think the next terrorist attack will come from people who we do not expect. It is just something to think about.
Right now I am waiting for the cab to take me to the airport. The worst part of traveling is the waiting. I miss having the time to drive on every vacation. I felt more in control when I could drive.
I had lunch with my friend Stephen today. I have worked with Stephen for 27 months and we have never had lunch together before. For a long time I would tease Stephen how busy he is at work. He is the kind of person you find sitting on the floor typing around on his laptop. I have always respected how much he does and how well he does it. Those two years do not sound like a long time, but they seem like forever in Silicon Valley time.
I have know Stephen the whole time I have worked at TiVo. He has always been someone I have liked, but we have never been closer the meeting friends. (Rich Thomas work dictionary, Meeting Friends: People who you make jokes with before or after meetings. They are higher then 'hi, who are you friends' but not as high as 'cubical friends') We had lunch because Stephen made my old web log a few weeks ago. Stephen suggested that we have lunch.
I learned some things about Stephen. I learned that he is an frustrated writer much like I am. He is an old comic book fan like myself. He faces the same kind of issues in his life being taken over by work. We talked about all these things. I got a kick out of the my big lie idea. I am going to have to start writing a novel next year. He told me he needs to publish a novel before he turns 40.
It was a great lunch. We had the right combination of talking about personal stuff, work past, and work future. He gave me some good insights. I feel that I can trust him from a work level. He has nothing to gain by misleading me. There are a lot of things I know now that make me feel a little bit better.
I have to keep on having these lunches with Stephen. I think it is a friendship that has a lot of potential. It is good to know the way other people view the world I live in everyday.
I just closed IE in the middle of typing an entry. I hate this. Maybe I should use a different tool to write these things and just cut and paste when I am done. Has this happened to anyone else?
Tomorrow, maybe today by the time I am done writing this post, I will be traveling back to my hometown Warminster, Pennsylvania. I have been looking forward to this trip for a long time. I have not seen my family at all this year. This is my only chance to see them for a while. I am not person that needs to be close to my family all the time, but I miss them now. There are a lot of things I feel left out on since I live on the other side of the country. There are a lot of things I wish I could be home for.
This year I have had a couple bouts of homesickness. There are times when I have missed my family, Philadelphia, and the East Coast. Either one of two things will happen. The first thing that could happen, what happened Christmas 1999, I can be reminded why I moved away in the first place. There is an old saying that nothing cures a bout of homesickness like a trip home. When you are homesick you forget all those little things you do not like about the area. You can only see the sweet things.
The second thing that could happen is that I might go home and decide I really want to move back. This idea really scares me. I do not feel that I am ready to move back yet. I do not feel that I am finished at my job yet. If I feel that moving back is a good idea, I do not know what I am going to do with my job. It is a scary idea because I would have to another leap. I am not sure my life is in the right place to take this kind of leap.
It will be good to get away from my job for a few days. It will also be good to get away from San Jose. The best thing about going home is that I have few responsibilities. I can go chill, slug, and hang. Everyone else will take care of everything. People do not care about what work I have to do for them. I do not have to put up with the job. It is going to be a good thing. Right now I only wish I would be home for more days.
Tomorrow I am leaving to go home for Christmas. Today I am just filled with energy. I cannot focus on anything. I just want to go, go, go. It is a hard way to be at work.
My friend Aaron sent me an e-mail message. I felt that I had to post part of the message here. It says something that I have been trying to get out. I wish that I could have said some of these things. I really understand the underlying idea that Aaron is writing about. I hope you enjoy his message:
I have some senseless banter of my own. I have come to the realization that I'm almost 30 and I still don't know dick about anything important. I generally know some mindless information about sports, but not enough to get into a history of sports conversation. I know some things about computers, but not enough to enable me to pass my stupid A+ OS test. I know some things about women, but not enough to be able to avoid draining relationships with nice girls that are the wrong fit for me. The sad thing is, I don't even have a strong grasp on what I like or dislike, I just find out at the last moment when things in life reach critical mass, "hey, I hate this...what the hell am I doing this for?" At that point, it's usually too late to get out of something without looking like a complete ass anyway.
I know enough about people to manipulate them if I feel that they are of weaker character than I am. I am not of strong enough character to avoid or repress the people out there who build their lives out of manipulating people. I'm not even a good liar. You once told me that I am an angry young man, but I'm not in an important enough position in life that anybody would really care. Like, "why is HE angry, Oh well, who cares. He's not important anyway" I thought that observation was funny.
It was not very cold in San Jose. It does not get very cold either. No one I know can remember the last time it Snowed in San Jose. I cannot see it ever being cold enough to get snow here.
I was walking around downtown San Jose this evening. They had these machines on one of the walkways. Every few minutes the machines would start up and they would spray things that look like snow flakes. It was strange for me to see these machines. It was odd to see this artificial snow flying around. After a few minutes I realized that the machines where actually shooting soap suds around. At times it actually looked like it was snowing.
The fake snow does not make it feel any more like Christmas. I think it will not feel like Christmas until I am in the actual cold weather of Philadelphia. Even if my shopping is almost done, it does not feel like Christmas yet.
Today I heard that the writer of the song "Funky Chicken" had passed away. When I first heard this I thought there was some ketch to this story. Then the more I found out about Rufus Thomas, the more impressed I was by the man's life. This man made a mark on the creation of Teen-Age Culture. He should be remembered as a great man.
I do not know these people Drew Barrymore or Tom Green personally, but I cannot figure out how Drew can be the less desirable personal in this relationship. I do not know what Tom Green is thinking. You would have to take me out of there kicking and screaming.
I went to a Christmas party over the weekend. It is the first Christmas party I have gone to this year. One of the guys from work was throwing it. I have been bugging him for months about when he was going to invite me to his house. He purchased the house about 8 months ago. I kept on telling him that he should have a get together with some people from work. I wonder if he invited me because I kept on bothering him.
I had a good time at the party. I have noticed that I have lost some of the social skills that I used to have. It has been a while since I have been at a party where I did not know anyone. I used to be good at injecting myself into conversations. I did not do this on Saturday. I spent most of my time listening to other people and watching them. My friend is a Stanford Grad. A lot of the people at the party were from Stanford. My mind seemed to glaze over when people started to talk about Stanford.
I was the only person from work who showed up. This surprised me a little bit. I thought that there would be more people from work there. My friend is a wellx liked person around the office. I would think that more people would want to come to his party. There is something very Silicon Valley about this. I think people what some level of distance from the people they work with.
Toward the end of the night my friend broke out his X-Box. We played Fuzion Frenzy, Halo, and Dead or Alive 3. The X-Box is a pretty good game system. There were a few of us left. We hung around and played video games for a long time. It was 4 AM before we left. I had a really good time playing the video games. It was easy to socialize with the people then. Since we had the game to connect with, it was easier to joke with each other.
I am happy that I went to this party. I usually do not get out enough. It was worth my time to get out of my apartment. Too often I build these partied up in my head before I go to them. I am usually disappointed. I did not build this up in my head and I was not disappointed. I seemed to be more in the moment when I went to this party. I think that helped me enjoy it.
There is nothing worst then drawing a blank. I look at my computer screen and I cannot think about anything to write. There are a whole bunch of ideas that I can think about when I am not sitting in front of my computer. I have a couple of ideas that are just out of my reach. It is bad when you have a weblog and nothing to write about.
Just in case you are wondering, www.drawablank.com is web site and it is strange.
I am spending my time this evening playing with the Blogger template I am using. I will admit that I do not know all that much about HTML. I know just enough to make a sorry looking web site. It is just enough to know what bad code looks like, but not good code.
Now I am trying to muck around with the template. There is all this code that I am not sure what it does. I am just trying to nip and tuck to make some small change. I am not worried that I will make any large screw-ups. I just hate it when I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong. I am typing something and it will not show up on the page.
For some reason it is hard for me to start using this new site. I feel that there are a lot of things that I need to do. The worst thing is that none of those things are coming to mind right now. I am not sure what I need to do so people look at Sad Salvation. I am not sure how many people have been looking at it to begin with.
Sad Salvation is moving to its own domain. I have purchased the Domain www.sadsalvation.com. That will be my homepage and this web log will be moving to its own section of that site. I will not move any of these pages right now. I will just link back to them from the new site.
I am going to try to use Blogger for my new web log. It gives me different options that Blog 5.0 does not give me. I think that going to Blogger is a step up. I hope you enjoy what you read as sad salvation moves to its next step.
When I thought about writing this entry I thought I would be have a lot to write about how big of a step this is. I thought I would have words about they way these change occur and how my web log will be different now. Now that I am sitting here, I do not seem to have any words for those things. I am not even sure that any of those ideas are worth writing about.
