I did something to hurt my shoulder. It really hurts like hell. I have been taking Vicodin and other stuff and it still hurts. I can't wait until this passes. I was up all last night, unable to sleep. I started my class in environmental portraiture. I think it is very interesting but I need to secure people to pose for me and that is always very difficult for me since I don't know too many people and the one or two that I do know hate being in front of the camera. I put an ad in CL and even put an ad in the on-line newsletter at work so I hope I hear something.

I stayed home today because my shoulder was in such pain that I took rather a lot of Vicodin last night and I basically couldn't wake up this morning. When I did wake, it was late in the morning, way too bright out and everything felt odd. I definitely wasn't in a very good state of mind for operating a motor vehicle: "Hmm, is that a pedestrian? No, it's a troll trying to cast a spell on me! I'll hit him with my car! Ha Ha Ha!"

My shoulder still hurts a great deal but I am hoping that good ol' Ibuprofen will get me by tomorrow. I did have to drive tonight, all the way to Rancho Santa Margarita to see a tax specialist. Wow, what an out of the way place. When I was waiting at the tax guy's office, I was speaking with the secretary:

Me: This place is kind of out there. It's kind of....

Rec: Stepford Wife-ish! Yeah, you ought to see it in the day.

Me: Why, it must be kind of dead while everyone is off to work in OC or LA.

Rec: Oh no! It's filled with soccer moms in minivans going to Starbucks and Target.

Oh well, the upshot is that I will be getting a rather hefty refund this year. So, I suppose that made the drive worthwhile.

----
I couldn't find any models for this week's homework so I did all of my shots using myself. I hope they turn out and my slides do not just consist of 36 images of my head cut off. I really need to find some people. It's tough. Everyone hates to have their picture taken.

I haven’t felt much like writing. I guess I sort of wanted to step away from the environment especially after ending things with Heather. Anyway, it was good to connect with a friend for lunch this week as I have been a tad isolated outside of work and it made me think that perhaps I pen my experiences and conclusions.

Anyhow, I suppose I should write a bit about how I feel regarding that whole situation and why it ended and other related thoughts. It is a bit difficult to know where to start. I suppose part of the problem stems from me and my many neuroses. The other part of the problem is just the usual stuff relating to compatibility, I guess. So, I suppose I will just explore these issues in the next few paragraphs.

My Role As The Male
It is hard for me to explain but I am just not very good at telling someone what to do and being “the man”. I don’t mean that I have no ability to make a decision or make plans. I do that all day at work. I just enjoy women who are more of the boss, in control and push me to do things I may never have thought of doing or ever felt capable of doing and I think I end up a better person for all the bossing around. I also feel this hard to describe feeling of being safe. I suppose it is similar to what women often say about being around a strong man but it has less to do with feeling physically safe than this sense of security in a psychological sense like this person will somehow hold the psychological demons at bay. It is a rare feeling for me to feel calm and safe and is generally only achievable for me after ingesting a great many tranquilizers.

Nuts of a feather belong together
It sounds weird but I think it is tough to go out with someone who has not had any psychological problems. I think Heather had a real difficulty understanding my periods of depression and my lapses into silence and deep thought. I can’t really help that these episodes take place. They hit me and I am lucky that I can get through work and function in a practical sort of way. I think Heather saw it more as just being sad or my being a “gloomy gus”. If only it were that simple. Not feeling happy and seeing Heather kind of unhappy and confused around me often made me feel guilty and even sadder like I was letting her down and not playing my role properly. I could tell that my periods of aloofness were bothering her but she would never say anything directly. Perhaps that was part of the problem; we were both very passive, submissive people and there was no one to kick the other in the butt and take a stand. I tried to play the traditional male role but it was very difficult and really drained me. I guess I realized that playing that role is not just something you can do for an hour or two once in a while, it is something that becomes expected of you all the time. I couldn’t really do it.

Why Stay?
I found myself continuing the relationship for several reasons, none of which were perhaps the best reasons. First, I figured that I was very new to relationships in general and so I should try to stick it out and see how things transpired over time. Second, I found myself questioning whether it was better to be alone or to settle for someone even if I didn’t actually feel “in love” with that person. There are a lot of nice things that can come from having a companion but I don’t know if it is right to just settle for companionship knowing that you aren’t in love with the person. It kind of generates a degree of guilt in me and makes me wonder if I am hurting that person without being aware of it.

Tell me about your mother
The act of just settling for a companion also brings to mind thoughts of my parent’s relationship and how loveless they were with one another. Sure, I had a standard mom and dad household but as I grew older it became apparent that my folks had no real interest in one another and being that they were two rather passive and repressed individuals, they just sort of lived out their lives with what always seemed like a cloud of regret hanging over their heads, my mom was always depressed and my dad was always either at work or lost in a television show. I never wanted to end up like that and I would just assume stay alone forever rather than repeat the mistakes that they both made. With the quiet, passive way that Heather and I interacted, it almost felt like I might be heading in that direction and that frightened me a bit.

Shyness is nice…
Passivity and shyness are my two greatest sins. They are truly the mill stone about my neck and it is only amplified when faced with being paired with another who is similarly burdened. Heather was most definitely inclined towards the same pattern of behavior. Now, in some respects, it made me like her because I could identify with her and also because it made her a thoughtful and introspective sort of person which is a cool thing. Still, it meant a constant stream of indecisiveness and reluctance on her part to tell me her preferences and, more importantly, her dislikes. I kind of think she was always afraid to say something that was not going to equate with what I wanted but I couldn’t get her to realize that I was completely open to her choices and it would have made me more comfortable if she had been more pushy and controlling. As it stands, I usually ended up having to make final decisions and that was not always a role that gave me comfort.

Philosophy in the Bedroom
When I mention bed I mean it in its purest sense, as a place to sleep. We tried sleeping together a few times but it didn’t turn out well. I sleep poorly and am prone to feeling anxious and worried during the night. I wake up, walk around, pace, or sometimes I stay in bed and toss and turn. Regardless, suffice it to say, my sleep is fitful at best. It also doesn’t help that I automatically wake up rather early. Heather wasn’t too happy with my fussing and fretting and took it as a slight. Of course, this lead to feeling guilty about it which, in turn, made me more anxious about sleeping with her. This problem also made it so I didn’t feel safe and warm with Heather. “Sigh!” I just want to sleep with someone who makes me feel kind of safe and accepted even though I realize I am kind of weird. I don’t know. Maybe that is really just too much to ask of anyone.

Conclusions
Since I was a teenager, I kind of figured on being alone the rest of my life and I think I have lived my life going under that assumption. I mean, it made sense for me to learn self-sufficiency, physically and psychologically because it didn’t seem like the circumstances were likely to change. As such, I suppose I can cope with being alone.I feel like the type of woman with whom I would be able to have a relationship is rare and the likelihood of meeting that person is about as likely as my winning the lottery. I guess that is why it is a good idea to keep practicing self-sufficiency, just in case I don’t win the lottery.

It has been a busy week and today was a long day, a 12 hour day, at the office. I was going along with my work and keeping busy, attending meetings and busily working away at my computer when, towards the late afternoon, I got hit with a deep depression. Suddenly, I began to get the usual sounds and tones playing in my head, almost seeming to come from outside of me. Everything became unfamiliar. That is to say, I intellectually recognized everything. I could identify and manipulate things. I knew my location but it was as if a part of me was uncertain. I felt lost, very lost. The feeling was one of being lost in fact even though a part of me knew this was a trick of perception. Sometimes it is difficult to argue with the senses even when you know they are wrong.Dark thoughts pulled me down and drew energy away from my work. I found myself crying at my desk, confused and uncertain. By this time, most everyone had left for home. When I finally got up to leave for home, I felt like I was in a fog. Outside, I began my walk down Olive. It felt a little like “Bladerunner” as I made my way past the people waiting for buses and the panhandlers vacillating between staying in their sheltered doorways and attempting to beg change from passersby. The sounds and sights were surreal to me. Soon, I was driving home and then at home and yet not feeling at home. I tried to relax but just sort of stared at the walls and the aquarium, crying for no particular reason, lost amidst the familiar.When I was a kid, I subscribed to Astronomy Magazine since that was my favorite of hobbies. I recall that in one issue, there were several artists’ renditions of planetary landscapes and other astronomical phenomena. There was one painting that has always stayed with me over the years. It was a painting depicting how sunrise would look to someone standing on the surface of Pluto. The landscape was of frozen methane seas. The sky was black, full of stars, including the Sun which was only a little brighter than Venus appears to us here on Earth. The entire scene was one of silence, cold, quiet and isolation. It always seemed to sing to my soul and that image often enters my mind especially on nights such as this one when I feel like I am so far from everything.In a few hours, I will need to get up for another day, pretending all is well and, with a little luck, I might even begin believing in the fiction I create for myself, at least for a little while.

My stomach is hurting. It feels like someone is down there putting their cigarette out in certain spots.

Anyway, I had an unusual, apocalyptic type dream last night.

"I was sitting at some sort of outdoor venue when my eyes spotted this large, semitranslucent orb up in the sky and way in the distance. At first,I thought it was the moon but as it arced past the moon, I realized it was something else. It slowly came back down and, for a moment, it disappeared behind the mountains in the distance. I ceased to pay attention to it but, as I began to get back into the activities taking place in front of me, there was this enormous explosion of black and white smoke and this shockwave that just rolled through the ground sending buildings and everything else shaking and, in some cases, tumbling down. I immediately thought of that white orb and kept wondering if it had been a nuclear blast.A group of us went wandering through the torn up streets and mass panic. I recall one person saying that we would probably have a mass tsunami like in Southeast Asia. I told him that was unlikely since it wasn't an earthquake and that we had a pretty deep underwater shelf that would absorb a good bit of a potential tsunami anyhow.

Eventually, we wound up at some apartment where a bunch of people were hanging out just to wait and see what was going to happen. We realized that it was probably not an atomic blast. Instead, for whatever reason, we surmised that they hit some huge oil reserves and that had created this huge explosion and that was why there was a continuing cloud of black smoke billowing out from the mountains and slowly enveloping the city.I waited at this apartment for a while. The dream ended on a somewhat funny note. I was listening to the radio for news of the disaster but, after listening for a while, the most important thing I heard and reported to everyone was that the Sparks had decided that they were going to go forward and have their game tonight."

It must be the paint fumes.

For some reason, perhaps on account of the rainfall, an odd story from my childhood came to mind. It happened, I believe, in the first grade, although, I can not be certain of this. My childhood memory recall always contains a variance of one to a few years. Because of the considerable amount of alternating current that was once run through my head, memories of the distant past are patchy and, rather than following a nice and tidy linear progression, often take on a tortuous path in my mind that somewhat resembles an Escher painting.

Anyway, the chief character of my story was Steven Peek. Steven was one of my classmates and, by all accounts, not a bad sort. On one particular day, though, Steven, my self and several others were all in the boy’s restroom doing the usual things that one does in the restroom which, for boys, means going to the bathroom followed by fucking around and making a mess. During the course of our general horseplay, some of the boys began to tease Steven.

It was nothing too alarming, nothing to induce a Columbine-like reaction just verbal comments which, for first graders, typically involves a great many words pertaining to excrement, lack of wit or cooties.Steven stayed rather quiet during the course of the continued ribbing and even sported a grin which suggested his acceptance of the remarks in the spirit of being nothing more than good-natured fun. Little did any of us know what dark thoughts were masked by that grin.

While we continued our merry making at Steven’s expense, Steven began to urinate in the stall. Suddenly, without warning, Steven turned towards all of us. The merry making of a minute ago turned to instant terror as all of us were suddenly faced with a stream of urine arcing into the air and falling inches from us. It was Steven’s turn to laugh and he did so hysterically as he used his fingers to adjust the aim of his weapon.

Every boy in the restroom mobbed the one door to escape from that lavatory and, as such, the door was temporarily impossible to open under the weight of all of the panic stricken boys. It was like a Hollywood movie of some great and terrible battle, the actors filmed falling to their deaths from their wounds in slow motion. Little by little, each of us squirmed our way out to safety as Steven wildly shot streams of urine towards the door. Sadly, some were wounded and had the embarrassment of having to spend the rest of the day in “pee-pee clothes”. I was most fortunate to have escaped unscathed by that wrathful torrent.

For the rest of the day, no one dared to taunt Steven.

Today was okay. It was slow in the morning but busier during the noon hour. The only problem is that my stomach bothered me in the morning and then, as the afternoon rolled around, I got a horrendous headache. Making it worse was listening to the Asperger’s Syndrome Lady. Sometimes her voice is just more annoying on certain days. She has this hideous whiny, monotone voice that is very much like fingernails on a chalkboard. It is a voice that carries much like disease on a fetid wind. Her voice is so annoying that several people have complained about her and have moved their desks away from her because of her voice. In fact, no one with history in the department would willingly sit across from her. Only new hires get stuck sitting at a desk directly across from her.

I spent another day painting...my house. A good portion is complete but there is still much to do. It will be nice to do away with barren white walls. I was okay today but except for later in the afternoon when, while working, I suddenly had this odd sense of dread or anxiety. It crept out of no where. It is not as if I have never felt this before but it just seems to come so unexpectedly. It is almost as if there is some sort of biologically automated warning system that goes off and I have no way to access it, reset it, turn it off, etc. As old as I am, I don't feel as if I have really developed any sense of control over these things. I just sort of go along and and hope that whatever comes up will not stop me in my tracks. I guess that is how things will always be. I just get tired of these cycles of anxiety and depression and no sense of there being an end to it.

Hmm, I may need to go see my doctor and, once again, have him refer me to a gastroenterologist. I have been supposed to consult with one for a long time now but I always put it off due to work and so forth. I know, it's crazy. I take time in order to get my car serviced but I kind of figure that, because I am self-healing and my car, unfortunately, is not, that I really do not need to fuss about doctors unless it is unavoidable. But, I do have a long history of stomach problems, ulcers and whatnot and, although I take Prevacid everyday, it is advisable for someone like me to get scoped every so often in order to truly know the state of affairs down there.

Lately, I have been having more bouts of pain, pain beyond the baseline pain that I normally have on a regular, day-to-day basis. The trouble is that I sometimes don't really want to know what is going on down there. I mean if there are a bunch of tumors and crazy nonsense then I will have doctors pestering me about treatments and I don't want to have to deal with that sort of thing. Although I do not know what I would do when faced with such a decision for real, I have often thought that I might forego any heavy duty treatment and just take drugs to fight symptoms. I mean, I sort of feel that I am too old to worry about trying to live a whole lot longer especially since I don't have kids or anything. I don't know. I have known people with cancer and who went through treatments and some died and others got better but the treatments are pretty hairy. Oh well, maybe I shouldn't worry about something that is probably unlikely to happen in the first place.