It's 11:30 on a Sunday morning. I'm getting ready to take my dogs for a little walk. It's the only thing I know to do to get the pain in my back to diminish. I need someone to watch over me. I need a person to encourage me. Someone who cares enough about helping me get better that they would be willing to invest their time and effort into making it happen. I have always hoped I would find that in someone I knew, but that never happened. So, like everything else in my life, this has become a matter of money.

I will be 35 by the time I'm able to begin setting my life straight. That's just odd to me. To wait that long just so I can start learning how to live a better lifestyle seems ridiculous, but if I could have done it on my own, I would have done it by now. The most important aspect of my life now is to make good on my responsibilities and keep grinding it out until things improve. I keep reminding myself of this fact so I don't deviate from the course. However, I am starting to lose it. I don't want to lose my job, but at the same time I'm not doing a very good job of keeping it either. Put another way, if I was at a different job, I would have been reprimanded or fired by now.

This Tuesday, Mass Effect 2 comes out and I'll be buying it. I'm pretty much done with MW2 as we can't keep a clan together and that's really the only way to have fun. The week after that, Bioshock 2 comes out and I'll be buying that too. Those two games will keep me occupied for a while until March when Final Fantasy XIII comes out, and yes, I will be buying that game too. I don't know how long each game will keep me occupied for, but it should be a couple of months at least. That's really all I'm looking for anyway.

I talked to Payne Friday night. He's been talking with Summer and making plans to move in with her. He told me that she needs the help, but he doesn't have any job waiting for him, no real prospects and no money. I told him not to do it and explained to him that he she is in no position to handle him when she can barely handle her own situation as-is. He didn't like that, but what else am I supposed to say? He's thinking of himself.

Okay, back is hurting too much now.
Gotta go!


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It looks like Summer is on-board. I have to send her a camera and some SD cards, but I should probably make a trip down there and show her how to use the camera so she'll feel comfortable with it. It's just a small camcorder so it's not like there's a lot to learn. I'm debating on whether or not I am going to buy a tripod. It would help so she didn't have to hold the camera the whole time, but hand held footage is a lot more alive than footage shot on a tripod. I'll have to think about that some more.

The end of January is rapidly approaching and I still haven't gotten anything ready for NAB in April. I'm going to jump right on that as soon as I get a few things off my plate here at work. The thought crept into my mind that I am going to procrastinate booking everything for the NAB trip and end up not being able to go. It's not like I'm purposely doing it because I really want to go. The problem is that I'm afraid to set anything up. I'm afraid that I'm going to mess something up and make the trip more of a hassle than something to look forward to. There's also the fear that the company is going to double back on their offer after I've gone and try to make me pay for everything out of pocket. That's no good!

I need to talk to Payne again and find out what he's planning on doing. From recent posts on his Facebook page is looks like he's planning to move back to Illinois, but then again he always says he's going to move back then ends up staying. I'd have to admit that if he moved back to Illinois, I most likely wouldn't be as interested in keeping in contact with him. I know he'll fall right back into his old habits, in which case it would be more of a pain in the ass to talk to him than it already is. I don't know. A part of me feels like even though I stay in contact with him and we talk quite a lot, the only reason he does this is because he's not around all his other friends. I'm sure when he moves back to Illinois (if that is his plan) he'll have little use for me anymore.

It's the third week of January and I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to last the remainder of 2010 at Cass. I don't see how I have a choice anymore since I really don't have a shot at getting another job in my field; especially one that pays as well as what I'm making now. I've looked for other jobs outside of video production and have found nothing. When it comes right down to it, if I leave this job I will forced back into the rigorous schedule of regular shit jobs that I have always despised. I've never been one to shy away from admitting that this job is the pinnacle of jobs I could ever hope to attain around here, but it's never been a comfort to me to know that.

I've got to finish cleaning this office!

[ 2 comments ] ( 11 views )   |  permalink  |   ( 3.2 / 21 )

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Below is a laundry list of an explanation someone posted on their website for what it's like to have Asperger's Syndrome.


- We just can't accept criticism or correction.
- Yet when we offer criticism it invariably comes across as harsh and pedantic.
- We just don't get the unwritten social rules, subtext and the unspoken communication such as stance, posture and facial expressions.
- We often fail to distinguish between private and public personal care habits: e.g. nose picking, teeth picking, ear canal cleaning.
- We often have a naive trust in others.
- We're painfully shy.
- We have constant anxiety about performance and acceptance, despite frequent recognition and commendation.
- We're brutally honest.
- We're blunt in emotional expression.
- We have the infamous flat affect.
- We have either no apparent sense of humor or a bizarre sense of humor that stems from complex references that would be far too annoying to explain.
- We have great difficulty with reciprocal displays of pleasantries, greetings and small talk.
- We have a lot of problems expressing empathy, such as condolence or congratulations.
- We can't obscure real feelings, moods, and reactions. It's either nothing or overwhelming, there is no emotional middle ground.
- We will abruptly and strongly express our likes and dislikes.
- In an attempt to deal with all that small talk, empathy, jokes and the like we will adopt rigid adherence to rules and social conventions per Miss Manners. Ooops.
- We'll often fixate on and excessively talk about one, or a limited number of interests.
- We have a flash temper & occasional tantrums.
- We have incredible difficulty forming friendships and intimate relationships. Yet being desperate for emotional intimacy we have problems in distinguishing between acquaintance and friendship. We suffer from "one real friend at a time" syndrome, but can't really tell if the other person is reciprocating, and don't understand why they don't feel the same way.
- We're socially isolated and often have an intense concern for privacy, despite not being able to understand "personal space" all that well.
- We have limited clothing preference and will wear the same clothes for days at a time. We'll cut off all the tags on the inside of clothes and cannot wear certain fabrics.
- Which goes along with various sensory sensitivities. Certain sensations, such as particular sounds, colors, tastes, smells, will just set us off.
- We are the uberklutzen. We are clumsy. We have problems with balance and judging distances, height and depth. We have gross or fine motor coordination problems. And we frequently have an unusual gait, stance, and/or posture.
- We have great difficulty in recognizing others’ faces (prosopagnosia) and the emotional expressions that play across your faces.
- We have difficulty initiating or maintaining eye contact.
- During periods of stress and frustration we'll raise our voices all right. But it won't be yelling. Call it "yelling" and you'll hear yelling. Then you'll know the difference.
- We have some strong and unusual food preferences and aversions, and equally unusual and rigid eating behaviors.
- Our personal hygiene is sometimes odd or leaves much to be desired.
- We will just shutdown in response to conflicting demands or high stress.
- We have a low understanding of the reciprocal rules of conversation. From person-to-person, day-to-day or conversation-to-conversation you'll find us interrupting and dominating, or not participating at all. We often have difficulty with shifting topics and will keep trying to steer things back on subject. It's just painful that we don't know how or when to start or stop a conversation.
- We take literalism to new frontiers.
- Our rage, tantrum, shutdown, and self-isolating reactions may appear "out of nowhere" but they really do have meaningful triggers. First there's a lot of self-anger, anger towards others and the world in general, and basic resentment. But where normal people are picking up non-verbal cues, we're picking up precise meanings and shades of meanings of the words that were chosen and how they relate to what may have been said months or years ago. Some clever turn of phrase may carry a lot of personal meaning that you just couldn't possibly understand.
- We have extreme reaction to changes in routine, surroundings and people. This, like some of the others, is a general autistic trait. It's summed up by the autistic credo, "All change is bad."
- Our conversational style is pedantic, as if we learned to speak English from watching Masterpiece Theatre. Which, in a way, a lot of us did.
- Needless to say, we don't play well with others. To quote the Aspies' TV role model, Daria Morgendorfer, "The team is the last refuge of the mediocre individual."
- We're often perceived as "being in our own world."



If I were to go to a psychiatrist today and spell out at great length the problems I've had my whole life, it would read a lot like, if not exactly the same as what I posted above. Does that mean when I leave their office I'll be leaving with a diagnosis of Asperger's? It's quite possible. Still, what does that mean to me? For one, I find it hard to believe that without a single documented case of Autism in my family I'm going to somehow end up with a disorder so closely tied to Autism. Also, having been studied and probed by multiple psychiatrists throughout my early childhood, it's hard for me to imagine something like that getting overlooked.

On the other hand, what if I'm wrong and I actually do have Asperger's? Well, that means I'm shit out of luck on the anti-depressants helping me cope with daily social activities route. Educating myself about depression has taught me a few things: One, I exhibit many symptoms associated with depression. Two, these symptoms have nothing to do with my inability to function normally in society. In fact, the symptoms I have can be directly attributed to my social awkwardness. So by getting on anti-depressants, I basically remain socially isolated and awkward, but no longer feel shitty about it.

Hmmmm. I'm going to have to look into this more.

[ 1 comment ] ( 6 views )   |  permalink  |   ( 2.9 / 32 )

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It would be easy for me to assign the blame for my general mood nowadays; so easy that I've actually been doing it for years now. I haven't been wrong, but I haven't been right either. There's a very strong chance that even if I got on anti-depressants, I would still be miserable. The reason for this is because I'm in a miserable position. There really isn't any denying that my situation at work and at home is not a favorable one, but once you identify the fact that no matter what choice I make there is no getting away from it, you can start to understand my true dilemma.

I'm not hoping for an escape because I know there isn't one. What I'm hoping for is a little help in accepting the things I've always been passionately repulsed by. My problem has never been that I don't feel or don't care, it's that I feel and care too much and because of that I get hurt way too often. There was a time when I could manage things better. Sure, I would occasionally go to my "dark place", but I mostly considered that a method of torment my friends would perpetrate on me. When I would recede from social interaction back then, it wasn't to sulk. It was more about purging myself of a lot of bad emotions I had stored up over my time dealing with others.

It would seem that now I've taken up residence in my "dark place" and when I do experience social interaction, I'm bitter and tired. I know my job has a lot to do with this, if not everything to do with it. I hold on very tightly to the things I have even though every last ounce of this reality I've surrounding myself in is structurally unsound and falling apart all around me. I could perceive this as a sign that I need to just let go of it all, which could very well prove to be the best form of self-help I could ever engage in. On the flip side, there's a good chance I would just take up my old jobless habits while adding my newly found bitterness and isolationism to boot.

So what other choice do I have but to take the advice of others and seek professional help in dealing with my day to day world. I can think of a million and one reasons to chastise myself for doing this and even more ways to torture myself over my self-pitying ways, but none of these skills provide me with comfort or hope things will one day improve. The only thing I can do right now is try my best to not shut out everyone in my life and take as many positive steps toward emotional re-alignment as possible. If the day comes when I make the decision that my happiness is more important to me than any of the bullshit I fight so hard for/worry so much about, I want to be sure I've got a good argument in my favor.

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I've been listening to the display channel all day and am fully ready to shoot myself in the head. Light rock, contemporary covers of classic AM gold music and Madonna! WTF??

Everything is going to hell in a hand bag at work. I will never understand how Tom Allen continues to get away with H2. The slow roll out bullshit hasn't worked very well considering we've been plagued with problems since the start. Now there is the potential we will be buying an expensive hardware encoder just to process videos for H2. Never mind the fact that we can't schedule video clips back to back and even then are limited only to the top of and the half of every hour.

I'm deadly serious when I say that I don't think I can make it another year. I've lost all respect for Tom Allen and the people who make the decisions at Cass and truly feel I'm just wasting my time by staying here. The worst part is that I don't take anything away from the job anymore. At the very least I used to take pride in what I did, but even that doesn't matter to me anymore. The worst part is that I'm really starting to feel like I don't want to do anything with video anymore.

That's not such a great thing to say considering my future plans, but I can't help it. There is nothing satisfying about doing this shit anymore. I've been beaten down so much that I truly feel like I can't even enjoy working on my own things anymore. It's a horrible feeling and really makes me feel more hopeless than I already feel. The walls seem to be closing in all around me and there is no way to escape eventual collapse. Plans are failing and goals are taking too long to accomplish. I have absolutely no wiggle room in any of this.

I just wish H2 would go away. It wouldn't solve all of my problems, but it would help.

[ 2 comments ] ( 9 views )   |  permalink  |   ( 3.1 / 32 )

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I've made a decision to try something this year. I'm going to see a psychiatrist and see about getting on anti-depressants. There's nothing more I can do for myself and have accepted the fact that at this point I'm just doing more damage than I am good. One of the main reasons I haven't done this yet is because I'm afraid that anti-depressants will have a negative effect on my creative ability. However, I'm too impotent with fear and self loathing to actually push forward on any of my ideas, then it's really not that good of a reason.

Today is the second day I've called into work for no good reason. I'm afraid that I'm going to end up quitting before I'm ready. More than that, I'm afraid that even after I have my debt situation taken care of plus have saved up several thousands of dollars for reserve funds, if I don't change who I am and what I do with my life, I'm sure I'll just end up wasting it all. It's time for change or at least another attempt at change. I'm not weak, I'm just tired of not being able to come up with the answer myself.

[ 2 comments ] ( 10 views )   |  permalink  |   ( 3 / 29 )

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Do you know what pain is?

There are so many people I meet in my life who think they know, but they can only gauge their pain upon their own pain experience. This leaves the majority of people who are truly suffering in the dark as the world around them ignores the plight they face. Even worse, they attempt to compare whatever burdens they've suffered against the burdens of others.

Aren't you supposed to know what to do once you reach your mid thirties?
Isn't everything supposed to be laid out before you? I can't answer that question because all I know at this point is that no matter how much you work toward what you think is the final resolve or the final answer, it's never enough. NEVER!

There is no ultimate comfort in life, nor there should be. Why be comfortable? Being comfortable means being to a point where you've reached the absolution of your being. You can no long strive to be better because you've become you've already achieved the pinnacle of your own personal growth. Is that something to strive for or something to avoid?

I'm tired of talking to myself about this.


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Is it the title of a 4 Pointed Sisters song or is it just the way things really are? The transition to the new year has been a strange one. I don't know what to think, but there is no denying it. In case you haven't been informed through other channels, Summer is pregnant.

With that bombshell already dropped, please don't inform anyone of the source if this is truly the first place you heard this from. I say this because I don't make a habit of putting my thoughts out there for just anyone to see. I'll have to stop posting my journal here if things get out of hand.

Anyhoo, that made for an interesting new years eve, as that is when we found out for sure. It's great for Summer because she thought for the longest time she couldn't get pregnant. However, she got knocked up by some chunk head she met online who is now moving far way from her. She really can't afford a child and the only support she's had for a while is Sariah and I, but we aren't doing that well on the financial side of things either.

Life is like a constant bombardment of bullshit you can't control or even manipulate to do what you want.

I make these snake mistakes.




Fuck it!

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It's Monday and I'm back to work copying 12 SD cards full of footage from a recent girls basketball tournament, which I believe is still going on at the moment. Once I finish dumping the footage I have to check the footage to make sure it's okay then erase the cards and get them back to WVIL for more taping. Fun, Fun, Fun!

If there's one thing the past 5 days has taught me, it's that I am losing interest in everything and everyone. Christmas is supposed to be a happy time full of joy and whatever, but I spent it asleep. Sure, I got up in the morning and helped get things ready for everyone's arrival then ate dinner, but after that I fell asleep and didn't wake up till around 10 at night. The next two days were spent in and out of sleep/watching old episodes of South Park and The Soup that I had stored on my Xbox. Big Fun!

Today I feel like shit and want to go home. That's right! I want to go home and do nothing yet again. It doesn't make any sense to me when I actually stop and think about it, but when I'm in the moment I simply don't care. You could say I'm plotting a course for total self-destruction and you wouldn't be too far from the truth. Believe me, I don't plan to do any of this. For some reason it just feels right to do it. Being alone doesn't give me any joy or comfort because I still miss doing things with people; I just don't miss it enough to actually go hang out with anyone. Lately I've been trying to go out and do things with others, but I soon realize that it's a lot more of a hassle than it used to be.

My options are limited and none of them seem all too appealing. Tim wants me to come up to Havana this week, which I will most likely do as I don't really have a lot going on here at work. That's just one thing though. Tom has asked me to come to his parties in the past and a few times I've gone, but they end up just being awkward experiences for me because I don't know anyone there and Tom always doing his own thing. Sariah and I try to do things sometimes, but things usually deteriorate into frustration as she always expects me to come up with the ideas of what we're going to do.

I'm finding out more and more that my problem stems from not having the energy to do a lot of things. This has a great deal to do with me being completely out of shape, but it's more than that. Even back when I was in FCF and had a lot more energy than I do now, I would find myself yearning to get away from everyone and just go home. It's times like this when I start questioning my own motives and theories which is driving me bonkers. I just don't feel that close to anyone anymore. I guess that happens the less you see of people over time. The more I fall out of touch with my friends, the more I feel like I'm losing touch with myself, or at least the person I thought I was.

I'm teetering on the edge of myself, becoming more and more like my father with each step I take. The only things I have in my life that prevent this full transition from taking place are my job and Sariah. I have mixed feelings about both and I'm afraid I'm going to end up screwing the both of them up before two long. It's like I'm a passenger on a bullet train that is rapidly running out of track, but I'm also the engineer of the train as well. Even though I am in control of what is happening to me, I still feel like I'm mostly just along for the ride. It's difficult to put into words.

Our shoot for today has been canceled, so I think I'm going home after lunch. Listen to me! It's like I can't wait to be alone. I can't make sense of it.

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The video is done and online now. Tom is reveling in the praise of friends and family while dreaming of a bright future full of wonderful possibilities. He's on top of the world right now. I guess it's real easy to charge forward on ideas when you have the unconditional support of everyone you've ever met in your life. I guess that's what comes from being a socially accepted individual. Tom could very well go on to make Hollywood movies one day and it will all be based on how likable of a guy he is.

Much like after the Salt Creek County premier, Tom is back in the "let's finish Dream Season" way of things. I'm pretty comfortable in the fact that I won't be helping him with that. My job is something I do without thought or concern because I am no longer passionate about my work there, but it provides me money so I can live. I feel the same about working with Tom on his projects. I don't believe Tom has the ability to create something capable of moving me and I really need that if I'm going to donate my time to help him achieve his goals. I tried to explain this to him a couple days ago, but I don't think he understood what I was trying to say.

Tom has had a problem with my reluctance to "like" the video even though I helped him shape it into what it inevitably became. I explained to him that I am an extremely cold and analytical person who constantly strives for perfection. If I can't find a way to make it perfect, I don't even want to attempt it. I told him that this accounted for at least 70 percent of the reason I've never made a movie, outside of the shorts I did for fun. In a round-about way, I asked him to remove my name from the credits as I really felt the quality of the project wasn't up to the level I felt it could be, even though it wasn't my project. He assured me that my involvement in the video was going to be a positive thing.

How can this video be a positive thing for me? Assuming the idea that it springboards him into a more prolific role as a director, that really doesn't do me any good. I'm not a DP so if Tom were ever backed by a studio I certainly wouldn't be working with him on his project, nor would I accept the job even if he offered it. I'd be fine with relegating myself to technical work if I knew what I was doing. Lighting and photography are not things I have a great deal of experience with and I'd hate to end up in a situation where I'm cutting my teeth on an actual movie surrounded by people who are silently suffering my awkwardness and ignorance like it's special olympics day on the set.

I know I end up chasing my own tale when I play out hypothetical tangents like this, but it helps me deal with things I have problems coping with. Tom want's to move forward with his ghost hunter movie. Tom is going to want me to help him make it. If I decline, I doubt he'll ask me to work with him on anything else, which could be a good thing. If I accept, I end up working on another project full of short-sightedness, cut corners and all around poor direction. When all is said and done, I get a credit for something that I truly feel I wasn't allowed to do and quite frankly want to have removed. The video is not an accurate representation of my abilities and for that I can't throw on a big smile and promote it as though I it were. He can take that however he chooses.

It would be really easy for me to say that I would only agree to work on another project with Tom if he swore to me he wasn't going to cut corners; just as easy as for him to promise me that he wouldn't. When it comes down to it, Tom thinks the movies he's shot in the past looked great and as long as he feels that way, he will always have a plan for the photography of any project he pursues going forward. His compromises are reflections of his inability to learn and grow as a director. How can I work with someone who has no ambition to better themselves?


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