Flying Saucer Dream

I had a dream last night. Aliens had invaded and people were completely overwhelmed. Every time a treaty was going to be signed, there was a betrayal. The scenes I remember are as follows. I was in a large museum type of building. Lots of political officials had surrounded the president (He was sort of non-descript looking, and certainly did not look like the man in office today.) They were panicking in a sort of half-controlled manner, pleading with him to do one thing or another. The only choice that seemed clear to them was that the president should retreat to his underground bunker, which was accessed through the fake presidential oval office, which was in the theatre auditorium. Me and a handful of other tourists, naturally couldn't follow.

Just as he and his men and officials disappeared behind some stage props, the aliens marched into building from every side. They were menacing in their troop formations but they did not attack. Escape seemed impossible. Speaking in an incomprehensible manner, they pointed this way and that, before laughing and leaving behind a small white safe on a dolly. A smarter man among us, a professor of some kind, with his glasses askew on his face, realized it was a bomb. He lay over the bomb, frantically working at the combination before it exploded. Even though he died in the resulting explosion, his heroic act saved at least half of the people in the museum, including myself.

I rushed outside, only to see the havoc of flying saucers everywhere shooting laser beams at a panicking crowd. A police officer, helping to get people out of the back of a station wagon, was caught in the beam and turned into ash. I rushed around him into the street. And then I woke up.

A Good Enough Day

Today, I was wakened by the sound of dad shooting water into a metal barrel for the chickens to drink. I was groggy, and took about half and hour to become fully awake. However, for a change, I was glad I was up. I needed to be in Salem for the service I had planned on attending. I am not sure if it happens to most men my age and circumstance, but I find I need this sort of thing as a hope life line that my life has not completely gone off of the rails. Even if I am judged to be unsuccessful in my public life, at least I can try to be a good person in my personal life: develop virtue and all of that.

I was the last person in the building after it was over, and was politely ushered out. I hadn't realized that I was keeping the gentleman who was tasked with locking the building away from the rest of his day. I had been in the library selecting a book that I thought might help me get my daily life in order.

At this point, I drove downtown and after depositing my check for two weeks work, went looking for a place to take lunch. The exercise from walking was sorely needed, but I didn't find a suitable place. The new place did not have the menu items I wanted to eat, and the prices were too high. I figured that my best course of action was to eat lunch in a coffee shop, where I had the most delicious bagel sandwich and a hibiscus iced tea. I should have had it lightly sweetened, but as it was, it was a much better meal than I had hoped for. I considered working on personal projects, like organizing healthy meals for the week, but instead I watched videos on my laptop and glanced occasionally at the youthful, energetic people coming and going trying not to feel too envious. It is, admittedly, a bigger struggle than I would like. I could write essays of regret, but I am choosing not to indulge in too many negative reinforcements on my attitude. Like I said, it's a stuggle.

I had planned on going to the shop and working on my video projects, but the combination of the sun, food, and poor sleep made me feel very tired, so I drove home for a three hour nap. I didn't necessarily want to sleep for that long, but I think I needed it. I am developing a problem with my breathing while I sleep. I suspect sleep apnea, which means that I really need to get my health in control before I suffer greater consequences. I am working on it.

Night brought a trip to walmart (an accomplishment for me) so I could purchase some much needed sheets. I also bought cat food for the cat, and contemplated buying more junk food, but talked myself out of it. I met my biological father there. He's nearly completely deaf, so I listened and pantomimed responses that I hoped were understood, but I suspect weren't. I think he could probably use a hearing aid, but I don't think his pride will let him. I do not know how to feel about him, since I do not really know him very well. What I do know of his beliefs and opinions, I likely disagree, but I give him respect and attention. It seems right to do so. I then spent the rest of the evening at the shop watching videos, and playing video games. The one bright spot of accomplishment came with some figure sketching that I did. I want to keep up on my art as best as I am able. I am hoping it will help.

Now, I must leave for a trip to the grocery store to buy some breakfast items, and then I will watch a little TV at home before returning to bed. I think I did okay for this day doing some of the things that needed doing. Perhaps I could have worked on more necessary items more, and not indulged in too much distractions, but I am not going to call this a bad day. It was a good day. A stepping stone on the path of doing better.

Restlessly Worrying

One of these days I going to change the layout of this blog. It is not abandoned as much as it is neglected. I hope to write more and communicate more of what I am thinking with this silly thing, but tonight is not the the night. It seems that I need to have an outlet, even if it is online for to everyone to scrutinize. We'll see what the future holds with this thing.

Briefly, and with some specifics, I am up late. I do not sleep as well as I used to do. Thoughts about my youth tinged with melancholy occur more frequently than I would like. My future seems to be cramped because of my previous bad decisions combined with a growing awareness of my own limited opportunities. Part of me wishes I had made more of life by now, but another part of me sees I didn't have as much as a chance as I thought I did. I should have gotten my Master's Degree. One thing is excruciatingly true right now: it is 1:30 a.m., dark, and quiet. I need to go home and sleep, but feel anxious and restless. I'm avoiding doing it for some reason. I wish I had a clearer idea about what I wanted out of life, and where I want to take it from here, but all I know now is that, now, I need to stop writing. I will go home and sleep, but mostly because I don't know what else to do.

Coming to the point

There is an idea floating through our contemporary world, of which most who are not scientists don't fully understand, myself included. However, the idea posits (as near as I can grasp the current cultural zeitgeist of it) that time may not actually exist as we understand it. In brief, Time is an illusion of perspective. Of course, my personal experience (or perspective, if you will) of time is that I can accrete experience so that my experience grows and I become a slightly different person, either good or bad. In the objective sense, if I learn math or another language, I can use that learning at a later period.

However, the accumulation of experience and its ability to coalesce into learning, is something that I think about in the philosophical sense. Do I, or can I, become a better person by struggling with experiences that are difficult. Pain, as a physical mechanism, teaches us to avoid things that are harmful to us. However, pain also occurs when we have experienced damage to our systems. Is there a point in which damage has occurred, causes pain, and repair is no possible. Is there a difficult experience that damages us as people rather than teaches us how to become better by avoiding that damage in the first place? I am not sure.

It's been too long since I have written here. Seven months? I am no longer in the depths of despair about my being, but I do feel damaged in a way—like my difficult experiences of the recent past will have consequences that extend beyond my time to try and repair the damage, considering that repair may not even be possible. I have hope that I can be guided to a better path, but I feel a lot of regret for not managing my time better in the past. There were so many lost opportunities for something else that it is challenging for me to try and not dwell on them. Part of me feels like I have ignored some internal warnings much to my own peril.

From here on out, I think that what I will be trying to concentrate on is accumulating the virtues that I feel I should acquire, and trying to endure the experiences that are left to me, ones that I do not want, cannot avoid, but will be forced to face regardless of anything I could do to mitigate them. Yes, I will face difficult experiences ahead, but my focus is no longer on making all of the "right" moves to avoid those experiences, but on making the right changes in attitude and behavior to be able to withstand what I cannot avoid and to adapt to the things as best I can.

I have felt attached to someone specific for a very long period of time. Someone with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Someone with whom I wanted to build a future with. However, she does not really want to be with me, even with (or because of) our past together. We have been interacting with each other, with degrees of intensity, for over ten years. Recently (like a few days), I have come to feel that it never be possible to repair that relationship, and not because I haven't tried. I am a man of many faults, but now I fully understand some of our obstacles were not ones I placed in our path. I have tremendous sympathy for the challenges that we faced, and intellectually, I place blame with no-one. Emotionally, I feel burned by the differences in our beings that made reconciliation impossible. I have been sad, seeking a compromise along any route that would not require me to abandon my healthy sense of self. I may have been able to make it work for awhile longer if I forced myself to accept the notion that I was the center of all our problems, that I was focus of all the blame, that my choices alone forced us down this road. But, even after seriously searching long and hard for a way to accept all of the mistakes, I found I could not do it. I may experience bouts of low self-esteem, but at least intellectually, I know while I accept responsibility for my previous poor choices, I cannot accept blame for things that I did not cause, nor endure the misery of anger that I am not the source of. It is possible for someone to be unconsciously affected by tragedy, and for the effects of that to spill out into other areas of their lives without them recognizing that source. In essence, another person's actions have traveled through time to disrupt my attempts at closeness. The person I was seeking to make a life with is still echoing the earthquake of pain that another person caused.

Of course, to be truly honest, I believe that if she could heal from all of that, I might have a chance at building that life with her. The change this time is that I do not have much hope of that happening anymore. My cajoling, attempts to seek closeness, efforts at being sensitive and communicative were all rejected. I have done all I know how to do.

Now, I face a future that no longer includes her. I experience regret and remorse for that loss of a potential relationship. Perhaps I always will. But, I now know that I cannot be chained to a future that may not be. I have to move on and try and be a better person in the future.