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| when you get fucked over by two different vending machines in the span of about 15 seconds. Seriously. First one eats my change, which is fine. I have a lot of change. Next one gives me a bottle with a pin-sized hole in the bottom. How does that even fucking happen? It looks like someone literally just took a pin and poked the thing. Fuck you, Turkey Hill vending machine guy.
Then I find out I have to fire someone, or act as the proxy as he comes to the realization that he's going to get fired. I liked the guy which made it worse. He's in his 30s and had a sales job before he lost it a few years ago due to the economy. Why he's working under me and not using his degree to do something besides scanning packages is stunning.
Anyway, the moron scans every package in a big project yesterday a class higher than they were supposed to be sent out costing the company $25,000 in one day. Yes, that will get you fired. My boss (who I rarely see) stops at my desk as I am pouring the remainder of my gouged iced tea into a mug:
"I'm going to fire Josh today. I want you to talk to him before I do it."
"What? What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to make sure he did what we thought (*tells me the story*), then tell him "Kirk wants to talk to you, it's grounds for termination."
"So you want me to tell the guy he's going to get fired, then march him to your office to get fired."
"Yes."
I don't know what the point of this was, nor did I ask because I was in the process of formulating what I was going to say to the guy. "Fuck you, you cost us $25K" wasn't an option. Being apologetic wasn't an option because a guy 10 years older than me is just going to take that as condescension. Luckily, when I told him what he did, he didn't need explained to him what was happening.
It still wasn't easy. The guy as three kids and an ex-wife. He's already talked to me about how one year at the place had made him absolutely miserable but he had no choice- it's the best benefits he can get for his kids, and he's been looking for the entire year he's been employed. Now he's screwed. He didn't say anything to me or anybody else after he left Kirk's office. He just grabbed his coat and left.
I'll probably never forget seeing him walk out of the plant; I could only imagine what was going through his head. Yes, he probably deserved to be fired. But he didn't deserve to be working there in the first place. He has a master's degree and he was scanning packages for a living. All he did was push the wrong button at some point during the day and it cost him his job.
This is why I can't be a boss. I can't take my general emotion out of things and just do what needs to be done. The only reason I did what I did is because my boss pretty much forced it on me. If it were up to me, I wouldn't have fired him because I know it was a simple screw up. I barely was able to fire a guy who had lied about being in jail (twice). Someone would probably have to physically injure me to have me fire them without feeling bad.
I finally discovered this summer why I am such a pushover in general (and with women for that matter): my dad is the same way. It's genetic. My step-mom has his balls in a cage and shoved the key up his ass, yet he walks around with an exasperated look on his face and just takes it. He's had to put up with 20 years of it and he still keeps his mouth shut. It's an impressive feat, but it hit home with me because it's exactly how I am, especially with people I care about. I can't be mean or confrontational.
I wish I knew how to change it, but I think it's just how I am, period. Not sure how much longer I'll be able to deal with firing people. When I transfer, I'll probably be working more independently because Torrance has a smaller plant. Thank God. Please get here, holiday vacation.
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| I made a decision two weeks ago to stop dating, or even looking to date, until I move to LA. This was not an easy decision on multiple levels, one of which is that I haven't gone more than two months without dating somebody since high school (which is a long fucking time ago, sadly). The other is that I still get "Where is that pretty girl you brought to fourth of July?" from my little cousins, and if I don't bring another pretty girl for the family to see very soon they are probably going to question my general desirability.
But I think this was a smart decision and it will start a new line of thinking for me: the "Get over yourself, Joe" frame-of-mind (the irony of talking about myself in the third-person abounds). My most recent girlfriend (tough to give it that title when you see the person six times total in three months) met her demise because I didn't appreciate the "I don't want to meet your family, let's go to a dance club even though I know you hate them" I got during her most recent visit. I made the decision pretty fucking quickly: you act like a bitch about meeting the family, you get shit-canned. The end.
However, this relationship was dead from the start and I knew it. First of all, I met her while she was singing at a bar. A Travis Tritt song in the making. Second of all, she lived over an hour away. Long distance is bullshit. Third of all, she had a kid, as in, she is responsible for another life. I can barely be held responsible for my cell phone. Eventually it was going to creep out that I am not exactly father material, at least not on-the-fly father material. Give me nine months to read those how-to books, buy a bunch of shit, I'll be ready to go. But drop me in the kid's life mid-potty training and I'm going to have no fucking idea what to do.
(In my defense, she was hot, and the fact that she didn't initially appear to have any shallow aspects to her personality made me so damn shocked that I just spent most of the time being caught up in the fact that she was a hot girl that lacked superficiality. Essentially, I felt like I was dating a four-leaf clover, or a unicorn or something. Anyway.)
This circled back (as every end-of-relationship does for me) to me having an uncanny ability to form relationships that are absolutely impossible to work long-term, or even medium-term. Let's run down the most significant:
-9th grade, first girlfriend: I just didn't like her. She was relatively unattractive and I was really looking to get in with some of her hotter friends. Obviously didn't last, but went on for nine fucking months.
-10th grade, third girlfriend: I date a chick from a rival school simply because my friends were doing it. The chick is as engaging as a tennis shoe, so I wait two weeks and we all break up with them together. Also got worse when it got out that I said she kissed like a fish. Oops.
-11th grade through Sophomore year of college, 8th or so girlfriend: The funny thing about this relationship was that it lined up as a possible-to-probable marriage sort of thing; However, I could not have been more of a dick through the whole process, up to and possibly culminating with never even thinking about marriage. I wasn't going to marry this chick; we stayed together totally out of comfort. The last half-year or so was just spent fighting, bitching, moaning etc. until I finally just said "Fuck it" and ended the torture. Marring a possibly poetic "I am so glad I spent some of the most important parts of my life with you for the past three years, I will always love you" sort of thing was the fact that I actually dumped her for...
Sophomore through Super Senior Year of college, 9th or so girlfriend: I'll go through life 100% certain that if love dictated all things, we'd be married now and probably married forever. It's upsetting at times, but again, it was dead from the beginning. We met online, point 1. Point 2, she lived in San Francisco, quite a walk from Lancaster PA. We never got a chance to try a regular everyday relationship and because we didn't, 1 and a half years of what I can only describe (loosely) as bliss led to 1 and a half years of argument, frustration and general disdain. It was doomed from the start partially by circumstances, but more so because I was nowhere mature enough to comprehend what it took to build the life we wanted. I was about as helpful in planning for the future as a beanbag chair. However, thank the Lord, she still talks to me.
The chicks since then (none significant) have been: sister of my best friend (DOA). Chick who was my employee (DOA). Hot indian chick who I didn't like as soon as I heard her voice (DO*screeeeech*A). And now singer I met at a bar who had a kid: as DOA as you can possibly be.
The pattern here isn't necessarily look for these situations: I just don't say no to them. And instead of continuing to blame it on just 'dumb luck,' or the general thought with my friends that "Joe just likes interesting chicks, the end," I think it's time to face up to the fact that I'm doing it to myself.
One of the main gripes I have with chicks is the Cycle 'o Drama most of them seem to go through frequently. It's half of the reason xanga exists, really. Here's the cycle:
Chick does something stupid to herself...she whines that "I can't believe this drama is happening to me!" Then, said chick pulls some more stupid shit and adds to the whine: "Why does this ALWAYS happen to me?" Sooner or later as the chick continues to ignore how she gets into these situations in the first place, she eventually becomes a full-out drama queen while not once admitting that the drama is brought on by her own actions. "Oh, I cheated on my boyfriend, why won't he just get OVER it and forgive me? Darn all this drama!"
Take Kate, in LOST (which it always comes back to). Starts the show being found out as a murderer on the run for blowing up her dad's house. She lies to Jack three times in the first 8 episodes, all of which are just total pointless lies that only infuriate Jack. Kisses Jack, then tells Sawyer she loves him in the same episode. Fucks Sawyer because she thinks he's going to be executed, then gets offended when he expects it to be a more than one time thing. Sleeps with Sawyer because Jack smiled at Juliet. Fucks Sawyer AGAIN, only to slap him in the morning when he finds out she's not pregnant and greets the news with positive vibes. She then abandons him. Speaking of abandon, Kate also steals a baby from a mother she knows is alive and then is just crushed when she has to give it back to the rightful family.
This bitch cries at least once an episode, and it's usually an incredulous cry- you know the type. Clenched teeth- "How could you say that, Jack? How Rude of you to bring up my self-inflicted problems. Woe is me." *sob*
To my horror, after this most recent chick debacle I realize that I share some similarities with Kate, at least in this respect: I keep getting into relationships that I have no chance in bringing to the finish line, know ahead of time, and yet still pursue it. I'd add up all the time I've wasted with chicks I knew there was no way in hell I'd ever be with forever and probably come up with something like 4-5 years. That's fucking ridiculous.
I went to a party this Saturday hosted by friends of mine from high school/early college. Haven't seen these guys in at least 3 years. It was a lot of fun, especially to see everyone again, but what stuck out to me was that of course it was fun: I had the SAME fun doing the SAME things from Junior year of High School on until it was time to get serious about some stuff. These guys are great guys, but they are never going to get serious. Certain people want to stay put, doing the same thing all the time in the same place all of their lives, and you can just tell who these people are. I love some of them to death, but being at this party made me realize just how much more I want to get the fuck out of here and do something different.
It's the same concept with every woman I've been with, without exception. I was with G8orso for three years of...comfort. We both did a lot to make sure we stayed together. She was so fucking obsessed with staying with me after the break-up that she told me she'd "Do anything or say anything" for it to go back to the way it was. Groveling. And I bought into it for way too long...during a time period when I knew I was just wasting my time because she wasn't going to be who I ended up with. Too much had happened and yet we still wanted that comfort, as much as we could squeeze out. Then once that was over, she squeezed (or stabbed) the air our of my tires. But the ending was inevitable when you're just doing something for comfort. It's a lot of fucking drama until one person decides they don't want to play anymore- and in that case, it ends worse than you could possibly imagine. I wish I could have kept her friendship, but I gave into the drama.
It also enforced something I hadn't previously tied together: I may be able to make ONE decision (move to LA) and stick to it, but it's multiple things that have to change for me to actually, dare I say, be 'practical.' My best ex always told me to be 'more practical,' and what do you know, this might be the first time I listen to a woman.
It would be wholly impractical to date a chick when I am peacing out next year, May at the earliest. It would be doomed from the start. So I'm not saying that I won't take interest in any chicks from now until then, but the relationship thing isn't happening. Waking up in another person's bed: maybe. Taking her out for dinner to a fancy restaurant: no fucking way. I've seen what Lancaster's had to offer, and I wholeheartedly pass.
However once I move, I'm going Vince Vaughn in Swingers on that fucking place.
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| So about three months ago I decided what I want to do with my life. It happened pretty much like I thought it would; I remember discussing career/life paths with my friend in the car on a long road trip maybe a year or two ago, talking about how some of our friends from high school got married and had kids already. A lot of the people I know have already tied themselves down with certain decisions and have barely been alive long enough to drink legally. I said that I had absolutely no motivation to do anything that would tie me down anywhere, and when I knew what I wanted to do with my life I would just know, and go after it without hesitation.
At the time that was a nice excuse for having no direction and/or goals, but the whole 'putting-it-off-until-you-have-an-epiphany' thing actually worked. Over the summer, I read various screenplays, scripts, etc. from both amateur and professional screenwriters and decided that that's what I wanted to do. Ann Richards once said that the only reason she kept running for governor of Texas was that she'd see the guy running for the other side and think "Good God, surely we can do better than this." That's kind of how I was with this at first; surely I could write better than a lot of the crap I was reading from amateurs who supposedly already had schooling. But when I started actually doing it, I just kind of knew it's what I want to do. I never really wrote fiction (save for some horseshit stories in high school), but after the first few pages of writing it just kind of came so naturally that I devised a life plan in about thirty minutes: go to LA, go to screenwriting school, etc. etc.
In the span of maybe three days I figured out what I have to do: get $15K into savings and move to LA. Living in D.C. was milking me of money and I was barely able to tread water let alone save- so I quit my job and moved back home. My cousin hooked me up with a decent paying job at a third-party mailing company that also has a plant in LA- after a year and a day, I can apply for a transfer within the company. I figured it would take a year and a day to amass $15K, so it worked out nicely. All of this came together in about a month. It was pretty stunning.
Two weeks ago, my boss (who I rarely see) comes to my desk and tells me to apply for a position that would be a big promotion. A promotion that would upgrade me in salary and make me eligible for transfer after 90 days. I interviewed for it and will find out before Christmas if I get it.
I kind of had an "Oh, shit" moment after the interview. If I actually get this position, I could be in position to transfer by the end of March. I would have the money and the company would allow it. Jesus Christ.
I've never committed myself to anything in my entire life. If possible, that is even an understatement. Every time I 'think' I want to do something, it fizzles out pretty quickly. So when this developed a few weeks back, one would think I'd have to reaffirm the goals I've set for myself now that everything could come to fruition 9 months before I thought it would be able to. And I did panic. For maybe a half second.
Because the fact is, I know this is what I want to do. I just know. Couple that with the fact that I could not possibly want to move away from Lancaster County any more, and I wish this could happen tomorrow. If I try this and fail, at least I tried. But the hell if I'm going to waste any more time here wondering what it's like to actually make something of yourself.
So I'm going to LA to be a screenwriter. The end.
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| I have been toying with the idea of starting blogging again for a few months now while I'm out of school/work. My final decision: I'm doing it, but leaving Xanga to start with a clean slate. This site has a certain personality that just doesn't lend itself to me writing anything remotely serious in tone; I could delete all these entries and start fresh, but most of them took me an inordinate amount of time to finish and I'd actually weep if I did away with them. Plus, most of the close friends I made here have moved on to other things, whether it be other web communities or having actual lives. This site was a big part of my life, however, for many reasons, so I think it should stay here in its entirety.
My new blog will be completely different from this one, in that A) There will be (almost) no female-bashing, and B) There will be an almost singular focus: LOST. Yes, I am one of the hopeless souls who got addicted to this fucking show and now can't stop thinking about it, theorizing about it, or pining for it. I harass friends on a daily basis regarding new theories, and I'm pretty sure they're about to stage an intervention. I believe I can curb this problem by using writing as an outlet rather than pissing off friends of mine who do watch the show and yelling at the ones that don't. If they want to read it, they can: if not, I'll probably bitch at them until they do.
So for those of you who still read this blog, you all kick ass. I've enjoyed meeting you, enjoyed your feedback through the years, and would love if you'd bookmark this new site and continue reading- it won't all be LOST commentary, as I plan on doing movie/other TV show reviews as well. As usual, I will be right about pretty much everything I say, and therefore I deem it a 'must-read.'
As of right now, this link is essentially a barren page. It should be fully constructed, along with a few entries, by mid-week.
http://imtotallylost.wordpress.com/
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| I met a girl. A sane girl. We'll call her girl #1. Without warning or hesitation, we fell in love.
At the same time, I was falling out of love with another girl- girl #2. I contributed a lot to our relationship's demise, but a series of events led me to believe that girl #2 was crazy. Not certifiable, mind you, but crazy enough to scare the shit out of me.
I made a choice to go with girl #1. Regardless of that choice's outcome (spoiler alert: not ideal), it was probably the best decision I've ever made.
The 'choice,' in this case, isn't the important part. The importance lies in the assumptions I made based on that situation. See, up until that point in my life, Girl #1 was probably the sanest person with tits I've ever met. Probably still is. And, at that point, certain actions made by Girl #2 had led me to believe that she was probably the worst the female gender had to offer. Many cynical Xanga posts ensued.
I lived the last four and a half years of my life believing that the giant chasm between Girl #1 and Girl #2 was the 'Valley of Crazy,' if you will; that is, I believed that, while most girls are crazy, the depths of that craziness would always fall somewhere in between girls 1 & 2. Can't get worse than Girl #2.
What I'm about to say is tough for me, considering I'm right about things a staggering amount of the time: when it comes to the Valley of Crazy, I was 100% fucking wrong.
The women I have been introduced to in the past six-to-nine month span have absolutely shattered the Glass Ceiling of Crazy, so much so that I'm no longer sure that there is a limit. A few of them have exemplified the absolute worst in the human condition, save maybe the skanks on the Rock of Love Bus. Self-centered and manipulative doesn't even begin to describe these people.
Unfortunately, half of this revelation was my fault. Drawing an imaginary line in the sand with Girl #2 and assuming that the psychotic nature of women stops there allowed me to meet and befriend women who obviously had mental problems. Had I known how far the Valley of Crazy stretched, I would have rightly labeled these chicks as sluts unworthy of my attention or time and moved on.
If I still were on speaking terms with Girl #2, I would kindly apologize and tell her that, while we were all wrong for each other, I incorrectly labeled her as the worst women had to offer and treated her as such for an unnecessarily long amount of time. Turns out that the chasm between her and Girl #1 wasn't so large, after all. They might even be 1A and 1B at this point. Oh, and then I would politely ask her for a refund for the tires I had to replace when she slashed them.
So the life lesson for today: the gold medal of sanity goes to Girl #1, while tire-slashing Girl #2 somehow takes the silver. At this point, every other woman I've been with is disqualified. | | |
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