Enter the wayback machine to go back to 1996, somewhere in my "I hate the world and everybody and everything in it" phase.

It was just recently that I started uttering the barely audible phrase, "I hate my life." It's actually a versatile thing to say. I wake up tired, I hate my life. My car is broken down again, I hate my life. My mother is screaming at me that if I can't "just get over it" then I "need to move the fuck out" because "she has problems too, damn it", I hate my life. The cat pukes a hairball into my shoe, I hate my life. My back itches where I can't reach it, I hate my life. It's a catch-all.

I'd say you know how it is, but I really hope you don't know how it is.

Another book I never read. But at least it looks good in among the other math books (many of which I've never read, either).

I was hating my life because in 1995 I had "pretended" to take a course in intro graph theory (i.e., signed up and showed for about four class meetings, and only stayed through two of those) so that I could get counseling at the unversity's Counseling and Testing Center. I spent the nine months from December semester break through August in therapy, only to have things unravel again in the next three months. I was really at my wit's end, and didn't know which way to turn. I was seriously thinking about a repeat performance of 1994's "French kiss my shotgun" scenario, only this time somewhere away from home where I wouldn't be discovered.

By this time I was pretty down and out. All the time I was in therapy, one of the things I talked about was finding a new job, just something to latch onto and do and do well and get away from everybody in my life. Just start over. The problem, was, of course, I had so little control over my mind and moods, most people wouldn't put up with me, and with good reason.

Also, a big problem I had then was that I had a severe lack of funds. I couldn't even afford $20 per month internet access and the university had recently changed their remote access from dialup DEC and Xyplex terminal servers for shell access with terminal emulation software to PPP-only dialup. Of course, I had an account on one of the clusters (which exists to this day, oddly enough, I log in most every day to check my mail, and it's good backup email), but I had no PPP account, and since I wasn't a student at the time I couldn't really go in, flash my ID (I'd show you the entertaining number of validation stickers on the back of my ID, but some time ago I finally took it out of my wallet when I realized I was probably never going back to college, and I have no idea where it's gone to) and get a PPP account, and apparently they took down the "secret" Xyplex terminal server that I used to connect on when the regular modem pools were down.

Thus, I was deprived of the 'net for around seven months. I was in total, utter shock. Fortunately, I finagled some email-only access during this downtime from a friend-of-a-friend who took pity on my poor technology-addicted soul.

Well, there were a lot of users of this system, most of them paying for access (I was using a "trial" account, but without a set expiration date), and for the sake of argument we'll call one of them Metal Death Music (MDM for short). MDM and I exchanged short emails at first, because of a misdirected email that went to me instead of somebody else on the system, and I replied to it, and pointed out a couple mistakes in his reasoning about something he was doing (he was a sysadmin at tech firm here). This started up an exchange of email that was actually intellectually stimulating, something I hadn't found in a long time.

Well, in time, MDM and I had started discussing some of my ideas, and some of his ideas, and seeing where we had some overlap in skills and expertise. What was scary is that while he didn't know a lot about some of the areas that I was into, he was getting into my head and was really good to bounce ideas off of and clarify concepts with. We discussed the idea of maybe doing some venture, because he had some business acumen from a side business he was already running and knew people to find some funding, but he was moving soon to go to work for another company on the West Coast, specifically a city that has a namesake in Maine.

Well, he moved, we still exchanged mail, and we were closing in on a number of concepts, especially a good starter one to build some seed capital: publishing a card game inspired by the "Magic: The Gathering" collectable card game, but instead revolving around conspiracy theories. (Yeah, you read that right. I still think it's an interesting niche market.) We'd take that money and try to parlay it into enough to work on something more technical, including a couple web ideas I have had and still haven't been implemented.

Well, he wanted to know more about what was going on in my head -- I think he was trying to get to know more about the things I thought about and designed in my mind's eye, and we had been talking for ages by that time, even though we'd never met face-to-face, since he left Houston not too long after we'd met on this system.

My solution to help him along in this? I'd send him a piece of my mind.

In the interim of all this personal turmoil I had started this really awful night job, and was spending my eight hours there, and spending the six or so I had at home collecting together books, photocopies of articles and tech reports on various technologies and research, diskettes of files, videotapes of television programs and documentaries, audiotapes of NPR spots I had captured on tape that related, copies of pages out of my journals... all relating to or formative in ideas I had drifting around my mind at the time. This was almost like a full-time job for three weeks, and once I was done it literally filled one of the boxes that photocopier paper comes in.

I taped it up and went to the post office. This is where I learned, once and for all, that the post office in my town is remarkably incompetent. This is one of those "can't happen" conditions that actually slips through and crashes the system.

I'm shipping this box to this town on the West Coast. I tell them I need to send it two-day mail, and the shipping comes to $22.00 or so, which nearly made me choke at the time, $22.00 was a lot. They stamped something on it, gave me my change, and I turned and left, thinking, "well done."

MDM kept asking me where the package was. It didn't get there. And didn't get there. And didn't get there. I don't think he believed I sent it.

I was feeling a little silly. He was really waiting on this information. He stopped wanting to talk about ideas, because he thought I had "stood him up" in sending this information, so he withdrew from any discussion on the topic. I think it really slammed a wedge between us, and no amount of raising Hell with the post office did any good because I didn't send it registered or certified, and since it was all copies of stuff, except the books, I didn't insure it, either.

Finally, after a freakin' month, it arrived with forwarding slips plastered all over it. It'd been back and forth between the distribution center in Houston and other city in Maine twice. Uh, guys, what are zip codes for?

Anyway, he started going through the info in the box, and announced after another month that he'd be in Houston to visit some friends the next week, so he wanted to meet up to discuss matters in person. Fair enough, I thought. We set up a day to meet after I'd been to work -- I had started a new job at this hole-in-the-wall ISP. But my horror stories about working tech support are for another time.

We met, and apparently I exude this Extreme Suckage Field� or something, because MDM experienced fear. Actually, my mood was swinging like a baby's bassonnet riding the Texas Cyclone over at Astroworld, so I'm not surprised he experienced fear. It isn't much fun on this end, either.

So like so many others, MDM joined the list of people who had come to have confidence in me and in the end decided that I was just another failed geek (or much, much worse; I'm not Karnak, I can't read envelopes, much less minds). We haven't spoken since that day, other than a short email exchange before he ever left Houston, where he told me that he didn't think it would be best if we worked together, discussed ideas, anything.

I am afraid.

I have thought many times about striking out on my own, doing something new. In fact, that's the spirit in which I left my last job to start a business with Xander late last year. I didn't last very long.

Now I am thinking about it again, although not in the near term. I am thinking that if I can get better, heal, rebuild my skills, then maybe I can have a shot at doing some technology. I have talked to Geekgrrl about this, because it really is on my mind, and I keep hoping that maybe she has had it on her mind before, too. I hope she can be excited about such a possibility, too.

But I am deathly afraid of her experiencing the Extreme Suckage Field�.

I have a lot of myself tied up in this relationship we are cultivating. She seems to actually believe in me. I don't even know if I'll ever believe in myself again. And I am so afraid I will be this great disappointment to her, one way or another, or more likely, in every way imaginable. But when I express this, she gets upset, she tells me to stop.

I have nightmares about it.

I don't want to lose her over something like this. We've fought and we've had differences before, including some just recently, as evidenced by some earlier entries. We've overcome them. Things just work too well for us, it's natural, we click. If I destroy things between us, like I have managed to destroy almost every friendship and relationship I've ever had before, I don't know if I will forgive myself.

I try not to think about it. We talk about how if we think something will happen, it will come to pass, and so I shouldn't think about it. But telling me not to think about it is like telling me don't think about pink elephants -- the mere mention makes me start envisioning them. And it's hard not to envision me causing this to crater, because it's so ingrained in my past, and in my experience.

I can't tell her this, though. Confidence isn't my strong suit as it is. Any lapse makes her think that I am having second thoughts because of something about her, and it's never about her, except when trying to save her from what I am, what she can't see (or refuses to see, perhaps?). Anyway, lately I've been feeling stronger, more confident, experiencing more stability in my mood. Maybe I, too, am lifting out of this "fog" I have been in all these years.

Love conquers all, doesn't it?

restlessmind

Ancient history:

2013-03-01

"You'll be stone dead in a moment!"

2007-08-07

I covet fuck you money

2007-07-16

My own long, dark tea-time of the soul

2007-07-11

My internet experience is lacking

2007-07-10

Coincidence