#196 - Post-Otakon Depression

"It's Sort Of Like Breaking An Internet Addiction."

Otakon was a really good con this year. Though I did not spend a lot of time with the group I went with as a whole, the experience itself was once again that of greatness, making me wish that I went to more conventions. This could be easily rectified if I learn to relax even more on my Dealer's Room spendings - Graham has mentioned that there will be one in Florida sometime, and I also know that New York should have one approaching relatively soon. Perhaps the Justice Crew will rock that? Who knows.

The Justice Crew was in attendance for Otakon though, and I'm glad we threw down the money for the hotel room once again. It makes life so much easier to be able to walk back to the Hyatt everyone once in awhile to get things, or to snack or rest or sleep without really having to drive anywhere. Dave was in attendance, along with Joe, Sean, and Vince, and many pictures were taken. Of course, they can be found at Great Justice, among many other pictures.

I really don't want to write too much about Otakon itself, as I plan on spending time tomorrow and Thursday writing various things about it for the website. But post-Otakon depression has sat in.

I guess it could have another name, too. Whenever you do something so incredibly entertaining that suddenly everything after it is a complete bore? That's post-Otakon depression. Going to a con with tons of people into anime and basically just having an awesome time is great...until you come back to the world where most people still think anime is nothing but tentacle monsters and giant robots and they give you a general look of disdain when you mention it's name.

That's always the hardest part. For three days, I woke up ready and raring to go, knowing there was plenty of entertaining stuff to do, and the days passed so quickly that you barely knew they were there. And then suddenly you have to go back to a slow moving workday with people who don't understand you at all, and you find yourself wishing there were many more Otakons during the year.

If there were, of course, they wouldn't be as cool.

But back to reality, I realize that I have some problems that I need to attend to, and I can sort of feel a creeping stress once again. And the numbness of reality has set back in too. But I guess that's to be expected.

Still worth it for that weekend, though.

~Don

#195 - War

"When the world outside is silent, it becomes impossible to quiet the world inside."

As much as I loathe working, I find myself lately wishing I worked more. Perhaps all the time. Weekday days off are like that; no one's around, and there's really nothing to do. Still, as of late, I'm finding it somewhat difficult to do so much as crack a smile when I'm here alone.

I can't quite discern what it is that is making me feel this way so much lately. The obvious answer is having too much time on my hands, but I worry anyway -- being busy would not strike at the heart of the matter, it would only work to tire me more. At first, my hands moved to type loneliness, and I'm sure that's part of it, but I don't know if that's the word best suited to describe it.

Perhaps numbness is a better word.

A few hours ago I found myself walking quietly out of my room into a dark house. I moved myself to the dining room and crawled under the table, and I think I laid there for a good twenty minutes. There was a sudden need to not be where I was, but a dull urge to not go any further than I have.

I had spent the day awaiting the return of breathing people to the house, only to find that their presence aggravated me.

Under that table, I can quote my own mind as saying: "I don't want to die. But I don't really feel like living, either."

It's these sorts of things that crowd my mind all the time; these endless bickering thoughts, one always equaling the other, voiding it of all value. And so I sit, numb, because no side of my inside seems to be able to take hold of my physical body long enough to move it any further than down the stairs. There are plenty of things I could do sitting in this chair; hell, plenty of things I need to be working more on.

I can't bring myself to do them. But I can't bring myself to ignore them, either.

I'm entirely too strong now to simply fade away and die, but entirely too weak to take hold of the ideas and motives that would change my life for the better. My life feels, sometimes, that it's become an endless string of...I want to use the term failure, but something is telling me not to. And I suppose that's true, because it's not as if I've failed so much as I've not succeeded.

The emptiness is something I've certainly become accustomed to over so many years, but it never gets any easier to bear. I'm reaching for someone; I'm not sure who she is, but I can feel it so far inside of me, tugging at me, urging me to reach harder. Who is she, I wonder? I haven't had a real crush on anyone in a long time. Maybe that's what I'm missing, because I've never had a girlfriend.

Maybe to exist, I need someone to love again, whether she returns it or not? Maybe I cannot function without having that person to impress; that person who invariably makes you more than the base of your looks and your physical prowess; that person who makes your heart beat with renewed passion. It's been a long time since I've felt that. It's the only feeling of love I've really ever known, loving from afar, but of the times that it's happened, I can honestly recall pushing myself then. Pushing for change.

I cannot rely on that, however. I have to learn to exist without it. Searching for that path puts me in the position of being a sort of slave, one who can only exist for someone else. While the idea may have a certain romantic novelty, it's a fool's errand. That's not how we're meant to live, you know? Even if I do function better that way, it's a crutch that I cannot afford to lean upon any longer.

Two paragraphs, both so very true, both on opposite sides of the same subject. I shouldn't be surprised my mind pushed it out in that fashion.

Life isn't so black and white, is it? It's not as easy to comprehend as I would convince myself, maybe. Anyway, this has gone on entirely too long.

Don't comment. I have no idea how to remove the comment feature from this post and this post alone, so I'm requesting instead. Please don't comment. I don't need well-wishes or people telling me that "going out more will make it better." What I needed was what I just did, and that was getting it out of my system.

So it has been typed, so it has been done.

~Don

#194 - Pre-Otakon

"Once A Year, The Chosen Ones Flock To A Temporary Mecca Where Only They Are Welcome."

So begins what can be called both a "Week of Great Justice" and a "Week of Great Stress." It's not that the week is particularly busy with me only working two days ( really not liking my boss ) so much as it's a week of mounting enthusiasm about the weekend to come. Weekends are usually exciting, but once a year, a very large amount of people flock to Baltimore for the Japanese Animation Convention known as Otakon.

It's a weekend that promises a great many things. For one, it's a weekend that will be full of meeting and talking to all sorts of new people that will be there. Anime is becoming a bigger thing each year but it's still something that the general masses either ignore, or loathe because of their own ignorance (a lot of people don't like to watch 'porno cartoons,' which is quite not what we're getting together for, although such things do exist.), so Otakon is a nice gathering place because we can all sort of...be ourselves here, and talk about anime with other anime fans, and generally just have a good time.

Hey, everyone there is at least as weird as you are.

It's a time of festivity, because there will be partys and good times with friends you already know in your hotel room, and you might even invite some strangers in to enjoy it too. People get together, watch anime or just chat, maybe drink a bit.

For me, this is a difficult week because I know I'm going to spend a lot of money, and I know I'm going to be excited the entire week. Everything else seems so much more boring to me when Otakon is less than two weeks away, and last year I noticed things were really boring a week later. You just want to be back at Otakon. You want to be back with the people who watch the stuff with you, celebrating the whole subculture behind it, and you want to be back in a hotel room with your friends. It's nice to be somewhere that you can almost completely forget the outside world for three days...until you get back with heavy sleep rings under your eyes and much poorer, and you have to go to work the next morning.

It's all worth it though. I don't really know what else I can say to describe the week. I'll be thinking about it alot -- not just the convention itself, but the days leading to it. I've got to get stuff together and iron out plans, buy food, clean out the car, and make sure I get Joe and Vince and such.

But it will all be worth it. It's only three days, but last year it was the best three days I had throughout 2001, and I didn't even know half the people I went with. This year should be even better.

It could end up not being so, but I'm just going to relax and have a good time. This is what I've been looking forward to for so long.

I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures, too.

In other news, I wish good trip to Roger and company...they're heading up to Latrobe for a concert this weekend. Have fun, guys. You should totally hang out with us the next time we get together to go clubbing or something. Or whatever.

Bands for Benefit is on the horizon too. Click the link and remind yourself of the dates and times, and to bring money to donate. Good times, good music, good cause.

~Don

#193 - Forgotten

Memories Move Just Like The River Of Time. Only Time Moves Faster, But Memories Still Follow Suit."

I'm beginning to think it's time to relinquish any hope of ever talking to Gina again. I honestly do not know what the woman's problem is. I know she is a very busy lady with work, school, and her child, but I see her online all the time. I even open up the Yahoo Messenger and occasionally send her Instant Messages. I never get a response.

I know her AIM name is often shared by her mother and her sister, but the Yahoo name? I doubt it. I even sent her an email awhile back and got no response. Ever. I believe, because I'm a foolish person who gives people entirely too many chances, that I will send her one last email to see how she is, and if I get nothing back from her within a fair amount of time...I suppose I'll just delete the screen name from my buddy list, and probably delete Yahoo Messenger all together. I only downloaded the thing back to talk to her at work.

It's not as if we've had the opportunity to piss the other off. We haven't seen each other face-to-face since probably fall, and I hardly get ahold of her as it is, and things were going well on the conversation front. And then suddenly I just couldn't get a hold of her anymore, and it irks me. I imagine this is mostly because I can't help but wonder why the sudden silence has fallen -- I certainly don't object to being boxed out when I've done something to deserve it, but to just up and leave me hanging with no reason whatsoever is highly irritating.

Let's keep in mind here that despite all the talking I'm doing, this is actually just a friend of mine that I happen to care very deeply for. I took my 'role' as her guardian very seriously, and although I don't really think I've guarded her from anything, I still feel the need to hold myself to that deal, at least to the extent that she could rely on me for anything she needed. I've finally gotten to a point where I'd be able to do more for her than I could when we were growing up, and now I can't even get a hold of her.

I suppose that's the way life moves, however. She was pretty much the last trace of friendship I have from that particular era in time. Most of them are people that I still run into from time to time, but they're people that I don't see often enough to even count as friends anymore. More like acquaintences.

We could also get into how Marin never gets in contact with me either, but that's old news. That one couldn't use a phone if it meant saving her life - and I see her screen name pop up fairly often too. No emails, no nothing.

It's sort of sad that life works out that way. I know deep down that I'm by no means forgotten, but in some people's minds now I'm just the acquaintence from an age they grew out of. I'm fortunate though to know some pretty good people that I still hang out with to this day - people I knew in high school, people I knew from my last job and my current job, and people that I've met just along the way.

People who will be coming to Otakon next week.

And people who know how to bring truly great justice, even.

Yeah, this was sure a hippy rant.

~Don

#192 - Notices

"Sometimes the eye is blind to the most obvious of things, and requires other senses to reveal what should be plainly seen."

For one, ever notice that no matter how much they say they will, some people never change? I think I'm getting to the point where I'll be giving up on some of them, finally. You know, I give myself enough to think about with ailing health concerns and such that I really don't need to be fighting battles just to earn the right to be around certain people. It grows tiresome quickly, particularly when you know you're not getting anything out of the situation besides a headache.

I've been neglecting the weight machine downstairs quite a bit, and I think my body is starting to remind me of the importance of that kind of exercise. I move around a lot at work, and foolishly I guess I believed that this would be enough exercise to make up for the rest periods I participate in afterwards. The aches and pains have to be coming from my lack of exercise. I'm obviously getting enough to keep myself in somewhat acceptable shape, because I'm not gaining weight and my bones don't seem to be breaking or anything of the like.

It's more...lethargy, I suppose. I noticed I was a lot more willing to do things during that span of time I used the machine, and now I come home and I sit. It's not that the sitting hasn't been mildly productive -- I've gotten some studying done and made progress in RPGs, managed to do some computer oriented things alongside the usual internet surfing and downloading and such. But I suppose I need to be doing more.

I've been toying with the idea of giving up Livejournal and quite possibly AIM like Louie and Dave. The latter proves to be fairly useful for getting in touch with people sometimes (especially with my mother's concerns over the phone bill, but thankfully 148 of the calls on that bill were made by Danny and friends, leaving the other three people roughly...I don't know, five percent of it.). And useless chatter is sort of nice once inawhile, and I still have some good internet friends to chat with.

Livejournal seems like a waste though. I barely spend any time on the entries, and nowadays I don't really even read my entries or anyone else's. It's kind of nice to have one to comment in places here and there, but I don't think I'll be bothering with it too often. I should spend more time writing with this anyway.

I don't like living so far out of the way, but otherwise things are fine. I wish I lived in Westminster so meeting up with people wasn't such a chore (hardly anyone ever wants to drive up here, and I get tired of driving in general. I've never been fond of cars.). Truthfully, I wish I lived between Westminster and Baltimore, since I go to Dave's so very often. It would be nice to not feel the need to leave early all the time, and certainly nice to not have to drive an hour or so after anything we do at his place. The drive down is never bad, but I always loathe coming home.

People like Vince can't come up here to visit without someone going to get them, and rare is the occasion where I feel the need to go down there to pick him or someone else up to bring them back. The real solution to that (besides non-drivers making themselves drivers, but that's not really my concern, so I won't address it) would be for them to meet me after work and crash at my place or something.

I guess what I really need is some friends that live nearby. That way I could still go out and such, but during the week when no one wants to come up here, there could be a few who'd be willing to stop by after their jobs...and this way they don't have very far to drive home. Or vice versa, if I happen to visit them.

I notice I'm giving things entirely too much thought, so I think I'm going to take off from this to listen to Kenshin music. Whee.

~Don