February 2003I realize that I am extremely erratic at blogging, and that because of this the tiny group of people who may occasionally grace me with their presence here, probably get tired of not having new content, and thus quit coming here at all. This entry probably won't help because it's just random ramblings. Well, hey, look at the title of this page. You can't say I didn't warn you. ;)
I feel like I am naturally a very distant person, I have decided. With this whole, WD, internet friends/community thing, etc., I feel very much like a distant observer. Take my wife for instance (well don't TAKE her, but you know...), I feel like people genuinely like her, miss her, want to see her, be friends with her, etc. I always feel like I'm kind of a fringe or periphery entity. Most people generally like me, or think I'm ok, or when I'm mentioned they think "Yeah, he's pretty cool", but I don't feel like most people have or desire a connection of any real depth with me. People don't generally "wish I was there" when I'm not. I basically feel like I'm slightly on the positive side of "neither here nor there" for the vast majority of people who are aware of my existence. Although I am very self conscious and worried that people think I'm creepy or make them uncomfortable sometimes, even though I'm usually pretty sure that's just my own mind being goofy.
I think part of this distance is self perpetuating, because since I always generally doubt that someone likes me (in all instances not just internet related ones), I kind of create my own distance too because I really don't want to bother people. I realized today that I'm much more comfortable with e-mail than with chat IM programs because when you send an e-mail, that person can reply at their leisure or not as they choose, while when I IM someone I always feel like I've put them on the spot.
This brings to me to a related tangent. I can't remember if I've bitched about it before in this medium, but never the less I'm going to bitch about it anyway. Many times throughout the years I have made many efforts to find old friends or people who used to be a part of my life in some way. Old high school friends and such. I get in touch with them, and there's the usual exchange of "Oh wow!"s and greetings, and then almost without fail that person makes no real effort to stay in touch. They'll respond to my emails (usually) but never really make any effort of their own, thus contributing to the ongoing neurosis my life, the "I always like people much more than they like me" syndrome. It's such a let down because I'm always so absolutely thrilled to be back in touch with these people. I'm someone who values my friendships dearly, and while I never really have tons of close friends (usually I have tons of acquaintances, with a handful of really close friends), I treasure my relationships dearly. Everyone I've ever met or known is at least partially responsible for shaping me into who I am today, and I'm always so thrilled to rekindle old friendships, but then it always leads to that inevitable crestfallen moment when you realize that apparently the other party must not have been nearly as thrilled as you were. Perhaps I'm just a nostalgic romantic dreamer at heart, (ok, well not perhaps, pretty definitely), but it never fails to leave me with that feeling that a little bit of the starry eyed magic of my youth has died. Like I've lost some of my kindred to the listless zombie like template of "growing up", while I remain one of the last champions of the child-at-heart, anything's-possible, keep-hope-alive, fairytale-dreamers faction. If anyone needs me I'll be staring off into the sky, soaking up the energy to combat the weariness and continue fighting for the cause and fending off the weight of the world. Hmm, reminds me of a song... "You can't take the sky from me..." heh heh. ;)
So yes, my wife and I are addicts. We're addicted to "Earth and Beyond", an online roleplaying game. We jet around the universe together in our ships, taking missions, running trade routes, fighting baddies. This is almost exclusively all we've done every waking hour for the last week. The evolving storyline is extremely intriguing, and the game is just plain fun. Even though you spend a large amount of time "warping" through space, it still holds my interest. We downloaded the 5 day free demo with the intention of playing it for 5 days just for something different to do. After a couple of days we were hooked and had upgraded to the full game and paid the monthly subscription fee. The downside is that we are definitely only playing until April 15 when Star Wars Galaxies comes out, and at that time it will be kind of a bummer to let go of our characters we've developed so far and just forget about this universe and the storyline. Oh well, I'm sure we'll very quickly become far more addicted to SWG than to this game. In fact, the review I read specifically said that this game was cool but loses interest after a couple of months, which made me think "perfect!". It's probably the only time that a trait like that could actually be positive. Anyway, we're actually restraining ourselves tonight to try and catch up on some watching of stuff. We have 3 DVD's from Netflix, 2 that we never got to from last week, and a new Buffy episode to watch, my country's five hundredth anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped.
*side note: I'm so anal retentive that I had to look up that princess bride reference to make sure I had it exactly right. I think this trait was instilled in me by all the even more anal retentive nerds who insist on correcting your quotes even when you are paraphrasing and perfectly aware that you're not quoting word for word.*
So I got my new guitar in last week. It's the Variax by Line 6. It has electronics within it that digitally model 28 different classic vintage guitars. Electrics, acoustics, 12-strings, banjo, sitar and more. It's absolutely phenomenal. Add that to the fact that I also use a Line 6 amplifier which digitally models tons of different guitar amps and effects, and you'll see that I now have the power to invade small planets. So now with one amp, and one guitar, it's as if I have a room full of amps and wall full of guitars, all of which are classic, very expensive, often rare, and very high end. I love technology. My bandmates were particularly tickled with my banjo playing this weekend.
Now for the pain. I had 2 gigs this weekend. My brand new guitar made it through a grand total of...1 of them before getting a ding in it. Sometime at our gig today I acquired a small little dent in the face of my brand new guitar. It hurt me. I hurt. I feel pain. I obsess. It totally soured my mood which was already not that great since we got 4 hours of sleep before having to go to this all 8-4 gig for the Bridal Show, where we pay them to set up a booth and ply our wares along with caterers, photographers, florists and such, trying to get all the future brides, who pay to get in, to hire us for their wedding reception. For the rest of the day my eyes were just magnetically attracted to that tiny ding in my guitar. On the slight upside, I was planning on having a sticker made up of my musical yin-yang logo to put on my guitar right over where the ding is. Still it stresses me. Silly, I know, but waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!