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| Well, once again I find myself sitting in front of a glowing computer screen and wanting to say something profound: something that will capture my mood and convey it back to me at a later date.
I don't remember where I heard it, but someone once said that an emotion can only exist when it happens. I'm sure that's vague enough to suit all. The general idea, at least as I understood it, was that we might come to a point where we feel some deep emotional response like love, joy or peace and, in that moment, we really experience it. The first time your significant other says, "I love you"... at that moment, you feel love. If I recall the feeling right, you feel a rather large amount of it, actually. But, if you ever find yourself sitting in front of a computer trying to recall that emotion... to feel the joy of it... to feel swept up in how deeply you've been dunked into that river... well, all you can ever feel is the shell of it. You may remember how your heart very literally skipped a beat... how your mind, for the first time ever, stopped in a moment and couldn't kick back into gear. You might see the whole scene in your head as perfectly as if it were recorded in high definition and playing in slow motion over and over...
But, if you're not in that moment then all of those feelings and emotions amount to... something less. The moment was lived, the form filled... but now the plaster has dried and you have a statue that doesn't move, doesn't breathe and doesn't grow. It only chips away, collects dirt, dulls in features and crumbles to dust. These emotions... these feelings... you can't live on them. To continue the statue metaphor, it's like spending all of your time in a garden of statues that are breaking apart instead of walking in a crowd of living, breathing, loving friends. Certainly, the statues capture the beauty of the form... they capture the face of the emotions... they perfectly recall the look of life. They're only recollections though... shadows and fakes.
This is how I feel about my love... this is how I feel about my joy. There are precious few things that I have in my life that are vivid and real and living... and the rest of my life is a dusty, decrepit garden of hollow statues of feelings I had once and never bothered to visit again. The feeling of hard-sought victory... the feeling of just hanging out with friends... the feeling of the first time I said, "I love you".
Soon I am going to have to leave a lot of my "precious things" behind. That's the direction of my path... I've no control over it, it seems. How... dull and miserable it seems to me to think that I will find myself living somewhere with nothing but hollow remembrances of feelings and the occasional phone call from the world of the living! We were made to live for so much more.
Anyway, the sermon about feelings had a point about God... and God is always the best place to go when you have a journal like this. =c) The point was, if you ever find yourself praising God with your whole heart... where you no longer care and when you just lay it all at His feet... that is a wonderful, free and joyful feeling. But the second you start focusing on that feeling... on the gift God gives us for truly worshiping him as he deserves... the feeling becomes hollow. The only time your worship is real and the only time the received joy or peace is real is when it is simply you... and God... and no one else. When it's simply all of you focused on him and none of you focused on how you feel or how you want to remember this moment of worship for a later date so that you can "feel" it again.
Don't store moments of emotion to live again... live moments of emotion again and again. Don't sit and remember when you were in love... BE in love!! Don't remember how it felt to be fit and in shape... work for it and get there!
*sigh* And, at the end of the day... what am I doing by writing here? I'm tucking away one more moment of movie-induced emotion into a flowery journal about how my life is so full of dull, meaningless shells of remembered emotions... just... like... this. I believe that's my cue to come to a close.
In lieu of a brilliant closing line or a thought-provoking statement of truth or a pithy statement I'll just say this... good night. | | |
| "The company has decided to consolidate all of the remote applications engineers into two offices. You all are a hand-picked group for this particular position: isn't that exciting?!"
Excuse me while I'm downright rude... but that was such a load of crap. Thursday, me and most of the other people with my position were sat down in a video conference with my boss's boss and an HR lady to discuss "the company's decision to consolidate". The basic idea is that everyone who is rooted where they are (Billy in Georgia, Asis in Georgia, Paul in California, Tunde in California, Andrew in Texas... etc.) are being told that they can either move to NJ or, in a matter of months, be phased out (a.k.a. laid off). In one gut-wrenching meeting spanning no more than half an hour I went from being happily employed with a company that I was proud of and supported whole-heartedly to being a pawn that the president could move or sacrifice without batting an eye. My respect for the company bottomed out.
So, here's my position. I'm being asked to move to NJ and assume a position where I do nothing but answer phones. This is much like my current position... except it gets rid of all the things that make it worth it. I would no longer teach, I would no longer edit web pages, I would no longer write lessons and I would no longer do small projects. I would become the next best thing to a telemarketer. And yet, they want me to move to a different state (one which, I'm sorry, but I despise that state) for a dead-end position.
Let's raise the bar, shall we? I just bought a car out of necessity. Granted, I spoiled myself a bit and bought a nice one, but I could definitely afford it. WRONG!! No, we want you to move to a considerably more expensive state, get a new apartment and work doing something you don't want to do. However, I can't say no because I'm already in debt for $30 thousand for my new vehicle... I can't go unemployed right now.
Not good enough? Let me gripe more then!! From my many conversations in the aftermath of the announcement I've found out that, more likely than not, NJ will be closing its doors in roughly 4 years. So that means, after I finally DO get settled into NJ, I will either be fired or told to move AGAIN! Pardon me if my motivation is lacking.
So... in summary (for those keeping track) they want me to move to a state I hate for a job that sucks and may not be around for more than 4 years before getting force to move again or get canned. Oh, and it's not a choice... I don't have any money in the bank so I have to follow the paycheck. My only tenuous, tiny hope is that I find a new job before September when I will be required to move. I have to find a new position that I am able to take up before leaving the company to bail out of a sinking ship.
Sigh... cathartic writing sometimes does little more than frustrate me further. Most of the time, if I'm honest. I need God... I need peace and I need wisdom. And, more than anything, I need strength to do what He would have me to do. If he would have me move to New Jersey... so be it. But give me the strength to face it.
Xanga has all but died for most of my friends. However, if you get this... pray for me. I could really use it right now. | | |
| There are many different sorts of people in the world. Considering that there's not a single person who is exactly the same as someone else, that means there's somewhere over 6 billion different sorts of people in the world, really. 6.5 last I heard. Anyway, this is just a really random post tonight. I've decided to, for the night only, label myself as one of the druggies. I seem to have an addiction to whatever chemicals it is that our bodies make that cause use to feel sad or happy. The alchemical magic that takes place in the brain causing us to become emotionally involved in things like movies, American Idol and even ice cream. Whenever I get the chance to put myself into a depressed funk over one thing or another, I take it. Not necessarily because my life is so bad... it's because there is an addictive quality to the feelings of sorrow. There's a certain buzz that causes words to flow... which is often what draws me back here again. I've written in colors before... did you know? Some people don't even know what that means... and why should they? Something in my mind keeps screaming that my doings and my rantings have some profound meaning that all should catch onto. Again, I find myself sitting here asking myself where I get off being so proud... so absolutely certain I am so much more worthwhile than anyone else. I'm not worth less either... but just because I am continuously subjected to experiencing my own emotions, my own failures and my own thoughts doesn't mean that my reality has an bearing on those around me. It's the condition of being fully emersed in an entire world that stops suddenly at the extent of your reach. My awareness... my soul... it's all I know. And I guess the thing that bugs me (yeah, I'm finally coming around to a point rather than looking for more words) is that my world... my existence, feelings, thoughts and actions... are going completely unnoticed by most of the world... most of the time. I don't have any outlet for living... I don't have anyone who can feel me. I wish it didn't always seem that open expression of your feelings looks like a sure sign of suicide. I always feel like I need a disclaimer for anyone who mistakenly reads my posts... or those who do it on purpose behind the scenes. I'm not depressed... I'm just addicted to feelings. And, tonight I felt like cutting my soul a bit to feel pain for a little longer... to live colors one more time before drifting off to sleep again and then going back to the routine again when the buzzer sounds at 5:30. And, maybe if I feel enough... maybe if I pull and tear in just the right way... maybe I'll be able to be a-okay for another week of my normal mind-numbing routine. I'll have had my fix and maybe I can live off of the high long enough to break out of the funk. Or, maybe I'll end up writing in Xanga again. Who knows... inspiration to write is never a bad thing. =c) G'night. | | |
| How do you bring yourself to feel... when you don't feel anything at all and you think you should? I mean, I can't bring anything up. Is my heart hardening like Pharos's? I English, am I getting to the point that I ignore the guilt and my conscience? Can I come back if I am? I desperately need an outlet. I live my life so alone that I wonder sometimes if I am still capable of close relationships anymore. I mean... I don't even like having people around most of the time. I don't know... am I just tired? Lots of questions... never any answers it seems. Mom has cancer... where is the pain that I'm supposed to feel from that? That's one of those things that anyone else who says it would feel despair... fear... sadness... they would want to hug their mom... they'd want to be comforted themselves. But me... am I so heartless? Am I just in shock? Am I living in a defense mechanism? God... prick my heart and make it bleed... anything to make me feel and show that I am not lost to you. I don't want to loose my Mom... but it's so much more important that I gain more of you. Yet I don't feel that either. Make me real, Jesus... make my mind and my thoughts bend to your will and desires and not mine... make me have your heart... make me alive. How do you bring yourself to feel... when you don't feel anything at all and you think you should? When you act like you do while there's nothing really inside. When you hang up the phone and realize that you're not human because you had to pretend to be downhearted. How do you make yourself feel... | | |
| Have you ever composed one of those e-mails that you knew, right after sending it, that it would probably cause pain, chaos, anger, confusion or some other unwanted emotion? Even to the point that you started composing the e-mail to apologize and counter the offending e-mail straight away in your mind? Would that we could avoid such... miscommunications or mistakes. Anyway, on a more random note, I had two driving "moments" today. The first was while I was going down the freeway at about 70mph. I noticed that a white SUV was quickly gaining on my car, so I shifted lanes to the center and allowed the woman to pass. And just as she was about to fly by me (obviously going about 80 to 90mph) her vehicle jerked and she was going exactly my speed. I didn't even have to look ahead to know there was a cop and she saw them. =c) It made me laugh out loud how this woman who gobbled at the road with her gasoline-guzzling SUV suddenly feigned the look of a mild-mannered motorist in the blink of an eye at the sight of the law parked on the side of the freeway. And, even more amusing was the fact that three or four miles down the road the EXACT SAME THING happened again... she tried to blaze by only to quickly brake upon seeing the state patrol parked in the illegal U-turn area. I felt like driving next to her and casually waving... even if she didn't understand why... just because I was so amused at how she had been cowed twice right next to me. Well, the second "moment" of my trip was much less... entertaining. There were several places where snow was falling as in a blizzard but without sticking to anything. The one exception was the white and yellow painted lines on the road which are always cooler than the black pavement since they are reflective. Now, the white line on the right was unaffected... white just doesn't change with snow on it. However, the yellow, at first glance, seemed to be a white line as well. It never occurred to me how much I expected there to be a white line on the right and a yellow line on the left. It just is. But, in this instance I was between two white lines and it... struck me. It was so indescribably odd and out of place that I had to mark it down as worth sharing... even if it really wasn't. Well, good night! | | |
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