Category: Life

…for a bit. Accepting a job there now. It’s not with the website, where I worked from 1998-2007, but with one of their IT folks. It’s not full time but I will be around some of my old colleagues.

• A leopard doesn’t change its spots
• Bad people who do good things are still bad people
• People can and do change temporarily, but the core person remains and will resurface

 

I’ve come to expect less and less from people these days. Friendly greetings are ignored and compliments are shrugged aside. People I once knew and considered friends moved on, and haven’t a moment of time to be a decent person to someone they once considered a friend. People frequently use the excuse that they are too busy to answer an e-mail but I know this to be an awful lie. E-mail and Facebook were supposed to bring us all closer together, but I’ve learned that people just want the ability, but not to actually do it.

Seems to me the answer is just to accept it. If people don’t want to be in touch, or have clearly moved on to be with different people and do different things, that’s where it ends. Not even a friendly greeting should be exchanged after that.

This is a cruel, heartless world and my faith is gone.

In the past week, twice I was invited to speak to people about what I do.

On Thursday, I was invited by a former coworker to speak to his University of Maryland Online Journalism class. So, I got to return to my old stomping grounds and got to see the brand new journalism building, which is amazing. The students all had Macs, which also impressed me. They were all required to get web hosting and get their own domain, which is already a step up from what other ‘established’ bloggers do. If you have a blog about a certain topic or sport, and you are established on the blogosphere, not having your own hosting and/or domain is pathetic, particularly now that journalism students get it themselves.

Anyway, I told the students some things about my sites and showed them how I use WordPress, the same publishing system they’ll be using. I even told them how Twitter can actually be useful, as well as other things about blogging.

The next gig came before the Capitals game on Saturday. Me, the folks from OnFrozenBlog.com and RussianMachineNeverBreaks.com were invited to the Capitals Fan Club’s blogger panel. They asked us questions and engaged us in discussion, and I had a great time. It was certainly the highlight of the day, considering the Capitals lost 4-1.

My grandmother was actually more impressed that I was invited to speak at these places than I was, but I must admit that I had a good time. Perhaps blogging is a true profession, after all.

Very rarely do I look back on a year and give myself credit for a job well done, and 2010 won’t be any different as I’m still far from accomplishing my lifelong goals. However, relative to most other years in the past decade or so, this year wasn’t so bad, but it was extremely different.

I started off with perhaps one of the most important meetings I had with Phil at Gunaxin, when he spent a day teaching me some significantly useful web skills. Had it not been for that, I wouldn’t have been able to get the wheels moving on several projects and I would’ve been further frustrated as I struggled to get answers on how to do some of this stuff.

Then I hit a snag when I lost my job at the end of January. At the time it was  traumatic, but it shouldn’t have been. I hated that place and the people who worked there, and desperately wanted gone. I also needed a long break from the B.S. of everyday life that I’d been living for the previous 12 years.

I caught a break with a few things that made it much easier to be unemployed. Also, I still had plenty to do with my time, such as playing hockey, going to karate, attending Caps games in the press box, selling stuff on Amazon and the main thing: Working on my websites.

A few weeks later, I was offered a job. It was too perfect and too typical at the same time. The quick offer made me feel great for obvious reasons, but it was also a chance to jump right back into the misery of long, awful commutes, long hours of sitting in an office, and virtually no time to enjoy the money I would be making or to spend time on my actual passions.

I almost took it, I almost went, but I knew in my heart it was the wrong decision. I couldn’t keep doing what I knew would make me miserable, though turning the job down didn’t feel good, either. It was the worst I’d felt in two years. But why, really?

You see, during this time, I had confirmed that someone who I thought was a friend had indeed abandoned me for selfish and heartless reasons. That person inched away the moment I expressed emotion over losing my job. It was utterly disgusting what that person did, and as much as I wish I could’ve put it behind me, it just doesn’t work that way sometimes. Now, I finally had something to really be upset about.

I took a long vacation. I went to Phoenix to visit my aunt and uncle, to Seattle to visit my uncle and his friends, and to Nashville to visit a friend. I finally got to go to the Grand Canyon and enjoyed a plane ride, helicopter ride and boat tour. In Phoenix I went to the best Renaissance Festival I’ve ever seen. I saw Kurt Cobain’s memorial park in Seattle, which I found oddly interesting.

When I got back, my hockey team won the championship and I was doing well with Gunaxin. I started score-keeping at the hockey rink which gave me something to do, with little time commitment and no stress.

My father and I drove down to South Carolina to visit my brother and his wife the weekend of my birthday. When I got back, I had a blank slate in front of me, but I knew I couldn’t move on without first closing a door to my past.

I did something I’m not proud of, but calculated and thought out at the same time. It was nothing illegal, nothing harmful, but something that I knew would make it known to this person how I felt. It earned a reaction, and a conversation, one that made me lose sleep and even get sick. I had exposed myself to some of the worst emotional pain I could possibly get. Had I made the mistake worse? Maybe, but at least now I knew I had confronted my problem and made my feelings known. I took the reaction like a shot to the heart, clenched up and tried to tear out the bullet, tried to accept things as they were. But there was no satisfaction, no closure, no win.

I said one last thing, pulled an Ace out of my sleeve, left it on the table and walked away. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was just a last-minute revelation, but I got two final messages from this person, one stating that she had one more thing she wanted to say. I puzzled over it and figured out what it was. I was right.

It was an apology.

Absolute sincere apologies are the most anyone can ask for after suffering great pain at the hands of someone else. It’s not what I originally expected but it’s what I got and it’s what I knew I deserved. I can’t say it’s what I really wanted, but if not that, then what else? It didn’t fully heal me and it’ll still take years for me to fully recover, but I had gotten the closure with this person that I needed. I could finally move on.

Almost immediately after this revelation, I got a job offer, and it was perfect for me. The 4-H Club needed help to relaunch its website. The commute was fine, it allowed me time to relax, it paid well, and didn’t stress me out. I spent the summer working there, and had plenty of time to enjoy the pool and play both ice and roller hockey.

In the fall, when the 4-H job came to an end, I went back to working full time on my websites, on my Amazon sales, and on score-keeping. I took a quick, fun trip to Chicago, and resumed going to Capitals games. The last few months of 2010 passed by quickly.

Considering I made significantly less money in 2010 than in previous years, I still managed to turn a profit, therefore justifying my decision not to take that full time job from a financial standpoint. From a mental health standpoint, I knew immediately it was the right decision.

Now, 2011 is on its way and initial projections tell me I ought to start worrying about a few things ahead of me. But strangely, I’m not worrying. Considering what I’ve been through the last few years, then I can face the challenges that are to come.