High Hopes

It's past midnight and I'm not quite sleepy enough to head off to bed just yet. I find that the best way to sort my thoughts and make myself tired is to sort the chaos in my mind and incessantly write everything that's going on in my mind.

There's only a few more days left until the move, and I've been working diligently on job stuffs. My resume is formatted, spell-checked and proofread. My cover letter is also all those things. I just need to head off to the library tomorrow to print and photocopy those bad boys.

I've been thinking a lot about this whole transition... I've got a rare opportunity presenting itself here - I've got a fresh start. I can right the wrongs I see in my life now. I can be the person I want to be. I realize that I could have always done these things in my life now, but what better chance than when everything else is going to be new as well? There's a few goals I want to see accomplished:

• Get a job. This is the most important thing that needs to get done ASAP. Mandy makes just enough money to help support us without getting us into any debt. For the sake of some peace of mind, I'd like to at least provide money for groceries and entertainment for the month.
  
• Go to school. Also very important. I don't want to just provide groceries and entertainment for the rest of my life. I want to take care of her so she doesn't have to work her ass off all the time. I want to make enough to take good care of my family and provide the advantages in life that I wasn't fortunate enough to have.
• Get over my fear of cities. I'm a country boy. I've lived in a small town for my entire life. The closest city to me has a population of barely over 200k people. I'm not scared of cities, per se. I just become uneasy when I'm there. I'm out of my element and it's just very different for me. You can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. Nothing like a little exposure therapy to do the trick.
• Make new friends. Not saying I'm abandoning my best friends from around here, but making new friends won't hurt. I can't see my best friends every weekend like I do now, so this will be good for me.
• Become more independent. As if moving out from my parents' house wasn't enough, right? I want to be able to take care of myself. Do things for myself. In the long run, this will be good for me and my family in the future.
  

That's pretty much it, I guess. I'm sure there are more things I could think of, if I really thought hard, but it's past midnight. Give me a break.

Nobody Home

Earlier today, in an attempt to impress potential employers, I spent a couple of hours polishing my resume. I'm pretty confident in my writing abilities, but when it comes to writing resumes or anything of that nature... be it cover letters or whatever, I'm completely hopeless, I think. But today was kind of different. When I was finished, I actually felt as though I had accomplished something and that I wasn't just spinning my tires.

I don't know what it was today, but I seriously had a fire lit under my ass because I just felt so motivated to get things done. I think it may have been the two coffees I chugged, but I'm not entirely sure...

Mandy and I spent the evening at the riverfront sitting on a blanket listening to a quintet band play a few songs. It was pretty enjoyable and definitely a nice way to spend an evening and relax. With the amount of work we've been doing in regards to the move, it was nice to sit back and just take in the sounds and scenery. She definitely deserves it. Aside from the crazy old man sitting twenty feet from us, talking and laughing to himself every ten seconds, it was a great evening.

With less than a week to go until the big move, I can honestly say I'm very confident in the change that's coming. I hope the motivation I felt today continues and carries on into the weeks and months to come and that it's not smothered by even more rejection from potential employers.

The picture to the left is the mound of stuff in our room that we've bought over the course of the last week. We're pretty much finished, we just need to get the big stuff, but we're going to wait til we actually get up there to get that stuff. Our bed is being delivered on Thursday.

Tomorrow will be spent at my best friend's house, having a barbecue with some of my closest friends. It will be hard to say goodbye to them, knowing it could be months until I see them again, but it will still be a great day, I'm sure.

The tough part comes later this week when I say goodbye to my mom and dad and my two cats. I can't take my cats to the new apartment because they are destructive offspring of Satan. It's going to be tough saying goodbye, again, knowing it could be a while before I see any of them again, but at the same time, I'm happy. And they're happy for me.

Life's Waiting Room

For the longest time, I had felt like I wasn't doing anything with my life. I started feeling that way pretty much as soon as I finished high school. Being in high school was comfortable; I had a goal, a purpose to see through. After I finished what I set out to do, it was like, "What now?"

I wasn't registered for college or university like my friends, so I looked for a job. I worked in a dead-end job for nearly two years, waiting for something to happen. I felt like I was in life's waiting room, listening for my number to be called out. I felt this way for nearly three years.

For the last couple of months, I finally don't feel that way anymore. I finally feel like I'm making progress and taking steps in the right direction. Next month, my girlfriend and I are moving into our own place. I've also finally decided on what I want to study next year. And hopefully living in a bigger city will help my odds of finding a job, which I'm sure it will.

I'm just excited to finally start a new chapter in my life. I'm looking forward with a very unfamiliar optimism.

Nostalgia

I did quite a bit of cleaning and rearranging this afternoon; I spent about six hours cleaning, with a few intermittent breaks here and there. Come July, we'll have lived here for six years, and in all that time, we still haven't properly unpacked.

We live in a three bedroom house, and one of the bedrooms is used as strictly a storage room. There are boxes everywhere. And then there are even more boxes down in the laundry room which is in the basement. Today, I spent time condensing the boxes and throwing away a lot of garbage and stuff that's been damaged and what not over the years.

During the day today, I found a lot of old stuff from my childhood that I've been searching for for quite some time. I finally found my old Gameboy and a few games. It was buried beneath a ton of junk at the bottom of a box that was also buried behind more boxes. No wonder I hadn't found it in so long.

I removed it from the haphazard mess and examined it with beaming pride and nostalgia. I wiped a thick layer of dust from the screen that had collected over the years. Honestly, how the hell does dust find its way all the way to the bottom of a box?

Pokemon Red was still in the cartridge slot from whenever the hell I played it last. I flicked the on-switch hoping it would play, but it obviously did not. The batteries have long since failed.

The big kid in me put down the Gameboy and continued to rummage through the chaotic remnants from a time in my life I had long forgotten. I found several old report cards from grade school. I even found some old report cards from when my dad was in grade school. I made sure I saved all of those.

As I continued to dig, I came across an adapter to plug my Gameboy into the wall.

NO BATTERIES REQUIRED.

I eagerly turned on the Gameboy to hear the familiar *ding* of the Nintendo logo. I adjusted the old contrast wheel to get a picture, only to find that the logo was scrambled and the game had frozen.

ANGRY FACE!

I switched off the Gameboy and removed the cartridge and blew into the cartridge slot, only to have more dust cloud into my face!

Seriously... how the hell does dust find its way into such tight places?

After finally getting the game to work, I began playing the file I had abandoned so long ago. I wish there was a date on the save option so I could see the year. Memories came rushing back as I played through a few areas. I spent so much time as a kid playing that damn thing.

After about five minutes I become bored with it. Seriously, I don't understand how I was so captivated by that game as a child. By today's standards, I guess, it just hasn't aged well.

So here I am, typing this at exactly 11:11 PM, feeling all nostalgic and sneezing my head off from all the dust I breathed in today.

I may have looked to the past a lot today, but all my attention has yet again been focused on the future.

Nine more days...

Death's Waiting Room

For the last month or so, I've been having some tests done at the doctor's office. There's nothing wrong, but I just wanted to make sure of that. I'm somewhat of a hypochondriac, at times.

Last week when I went to see him, he took about six or seven vials of blood and he told me that if one of his nurses hadn't contacted me within two weeks, to call them and make an appointment to go over my results.

Easy enough.

A week and a half goes by, so I assumed everything was just fine. Not so much. I woke up this morning and my mom told me that the doctor's office had called, but didn't leave a message. "Terrific," I thought. So I called them back and they told me they needed me to come in and see the doctor and that they couldn't give me my results over the phone.

Immediately after hanging up, I started thinking about it. "Oh fuck, I've got cancer," I thought to myself. I went upstairs, got dressed and immediately headed out the door, because honestly, I didn't want to spend any more time convincing myself I had leukemia or some shit.

I waited in the waiting room with an old couple that looked like they were late for an appointment with the Grim Reaper and a really hyperactive little boy and his young - presumably single, presumably on welfare - single mother.

Hooray for me.

When I met with the doctor, he asked me how I was, to which I replied with, "That depends doc." He handed me a piece of paper that read as follows:

Vitamin D .............. 42 .............. 75 - 200

I looked at him confused, and said, "Vitamin D? Seriously?" And basically, he told me I lack vitamin by quite a bit. So, despite my preconceived, self-diagnosed non-cancer, I'm actually quite healthy, aside from being a paranoid hypochondriac and vitamin D-lacker.

But really, come on. They scared the shit out of me! You don't call somebody in for their blood test results because of a vitamin D deficiency. That's something I would've gladly waited another week to hear from him.

Oh well, I'm just glad I'm a healthy boy.

A Lesson in Hyperbole

Okay, so I finally got around to actually picking a layout I intend on keeping. I have a terrible habit of changing my layout a thousand times a week.

Hyperbole FTW!

I decided to choose this layout because it's minimalistic as all hell, and I like that. Plus, all the other pre-made templates I've seen are being used by tons of people, so I figured I'd just use a simple one and mod it to my own taste. For instance, the original code of this template had yellow everywhere... and I dislike yellow. Quite a bit, actually.

So yeah, kudos to Dante Araujo for making this template.

My last post is from two months ago, and I said I intended on updating here regularly.

FAIL.

But, I really do think I'll update this thing at least once a week from now on. Really. No, really!

I'm headed to Toronto in about two weeks, which I'm ecstatic about. Expect a picture update after I return in June. Mandy and I are planning on sightseeing the second day we're there. I haven't been to Toronto since my eighth grade field trip, which was about eight years ago.

I'm planning on scoring some tickets to see The Hour, a Canadian late-night talk show, akin to that of The Tonight Show, except it's funny. We'll probably also see the usual hotspots like the CN Tower, Air Canada Centre, hockey hall of fame and the Ontario Science Centre.

It's definitely going to be fun.

Caffeine Induced Superstition!

Is it bad luck to begin a new blog on Friday the 13th? Probably not. But to start one on the second consecutive Friday the 13th in a row... well, I'll find out. I'm pretty sure it's never been done before. I'm pretty revolutionary and all.

I deleted my old posts cuz I wanted a fresh start. I only posted in there intermittently and it was mostly pointless garbage.

Realistically speaking, that'll likely happen here, once again. But we'll see. I'm feeling motivated right now, but that's most likely due to the three cups of coffee I've just had.

That's enough for now. I'm gonna go find some black cats and walk under some ladders.

In your eye, Jason Voorhees. In your motherfrickin' eye.