The weather and my demeanour fairly match today: gloomy, precipitous, yet cleansing. I've had a fairly bad day. After waiting a week, I found out today that the dream job of blood bank courier stays just that, a dream. The hiring manager was effervescent with praise on the passionate and clean interview (one I still do consider the best of my life,) but the job could not be obtained on moxie alone, and went to another candidate, who "fulfilled the factors necessary for the position;" i.e. he or she had a vehicle and experience in some driving position. There is an outside chance I will wear the ugly suit again for security, but due to the HR having expanded information on my last termination, this stands as a long shot. I can do the shuttle job, but for once I agree with my father, who sees fiasco written over this one. Least I could make a week's training wages and then do a very short stint after that and learn the lesson of my last job, get out with your head still attached.
Oddly, instead of the usual depressive lethargy that marks great disappointment, I shut down the emotional repercussions rather solidly. (Okay, yes, I did do somewhat of a fetal cry, but it was alot shorter than usual.) I'm in a physically level and mentally deeper place than I'd expect. I had a talk with two of my finest online friends, both whom I trust to hear me without total bafflement, and some of what I said was the most sensible and responsible things I've said in a long time. Although profound, I've been cautious not to delve too deep, for there the Balrog stirs, the demon of overanalysis, whose intellectual flames burn away any true meaning from my thoughts. (Yeah, that is about the corniest metaphor I've done in a while, but I need to get them out of my system now and again.) I'm chalking it up to some kind of internal battle-weariness in the face of an uncaring exterior enemy, who is simply fulfilling its role, and doesn't act as if under serious siege by me. The interview for the ages prove that I can sustain an open line of communication, and get my words honestly across to others whom have something I need, even if that message doesn't turn into the desired results. It is a hopeful thing.
Actually, what began this introspective mood was the ride returning from dropping a purse forgotten by my housemate, T, she who floats gaily through life. It called for a busride downtown to do so, but I did it without reservation. I was thinking about how I had forgotten again to put on the cheap chain from which hangs the promise ring given to me by my one and only real love, FF, who has now vanished into the aether and I haven't had contact for three or four years. The relationship was an odd online affair, where FF loved me unrequitedly, and I spurned that for two years, until I annoyingly found that I wanted to return that love. We met only a few times, being a bi-coastal affair, on the last of which he gave me the promise ring. It's a tiny thing, of cheap gold and diamond flecks, but he saved for months to purchase it for me. Unfortunately, that same trip, it was readily apparent, we were not ready for each other, no matter how ecstatic our love for each other. He was not even a he at the time, although probably is by now, and I could not deal with that within our small and rare visits to each other, as my love was much more asexual than his. He had desires to join friends in Canada, and I wanted to stay in San Francisco. Afterward, I kept the ring, and put it on a cheap steel chain thing I found somewhere, and I go through these sparadic periods where I wear it around my neck. I always thought I did so when good luck was needed, but this made little sense as my luck was no better than any other time. Like the love we had for each other, I had little idea what to make of the promise carried in the ring, I think. But the promise ring carried something more than the memory of a time when I undeniably felt something within, that didn't come from my illusion factory of my head, but the promise that broke a belief long-held before our time together; that love was denied to me for another man. I believed that misbegotten curse with the wholeness of myself, and had even convinced myself that I had made some peace with it. I had something special with another on a level I still fail to understand, it ended well, but that did little to assuage my heart, and the ring stayed in a little chest. Then I started wearing it again, and it didn't remind me of the end of my love, but the time before that when it was still present and possible. I didn't know why I wore it, really, but I liked it. And there has been none after FF, but the ring reminds me, that it can be had, if I just hold on, and believe it will come again, this time maybe when it will come together into something even longer, even if that relationship itself is not a life-bond. I think I'm going to wear the ring around my neck alot more.
That's why I am guessing I am holding onto the interview, as part of the shot at a meaningful job, without the impact of a percieved failure to have what it took to gain it, rational or not. It is the promise that next time, maybe I'll do better, and things will change until I can gain work that is rewarding to me beyond the monetary gains that back my independance. When I was fresh from program, I still held onto some older beliefs, such as that faith in the hope that things would change, had kept me alive. Later on, I lost that in the shredding of past to make a functional present, and recently tend to chalk my survival up to my conceited pragmatism and cowardice over the mystery of death. And recently, I've not asked much of myself about this, trying to find a compromise position between all factors that could really be made. Now, I think I was probably right in the first place, that the way of hope, no matter what means polluted it, was what sustained me, and with it, I crossed over to now, still striving to be better, and go further. I don't consider it an ego-trip to acknowledge that others haven't been able to walk the corridor of knives that leads to the unending sky. Their pain might have really been greater than mine, but the pain I carry is as great as anyone else's in the rending. I still enjoy my birthdays, even uncelebrated, because the amazement I keep adding years onto the prophecy of my impending death before reaching adulthood.
I've been discontent for so long now, carrying that as a negative expression of my unwillingness to move as forward as I can, and I tried to make something more of that discontentment, that I ended projecting onto others. I don't understand how others can not keep going when the promise of change I see in them is not fulfilled. It is contradictory to my thinking to find some spot where anyone can believe themselves content and able to best answer the challenges of life. But still, they do. My life is in the end, a narrative whose theme is the promise of change, the faith that there is always something more to be reached. In other words, I am only content, when I am wholly discontent. This is my way, and I should not expect it will must be for everyone else. Growth is possible from an anchored place in one's life. But I need the promise that there is change toward which I must always strive even if without some "demonstrable" gains. That I will change, and love change. To appreciate it. And hopefully to wear around my neck as a reminder.
Oddly, instead of the usual depressive lethargy that marks great disappointment, I shut down the emotional repercussions rather solidly. (Okay, yes, I did do somewhat of a fetal cry, but it was alot shorter than usual.) I'm in a physically level and mentally deeper place than I'd expect. I had a talk with two of my finest online friends, both whom I trust to hear me without total bafflement, and some of what I said was the most sensible and responsible things I've said in a long time. Although profound, I've been cautious not to delve too deep, for there the Balrog stirs, the demon of overanalysis, whose intellectual flames burn away any true meaning from my thoughts. (Yeah, that is about the corniest metaphor I've done in a while, but I need to get them out of my system now and again.) I'm chalking it up to some kind of internal battle-weariness in the face of an uncaring exterior enemy, who is simply fulfilling its role, and doesn't act as if under serious siege by me. The interview for the ages prove that I can sustain an open line of communication, and get my words honestly across to others whom have something I need, even if that message doesn't turn into the desired results. It is a hopeful thing.
Actually, what began this introspective mood was the ride returning from dropping a purse forgotten by my housemate, T, she who floats gaily through life. It called for a busride downtown to do so, but I did it without reservation. I was thinking about how I had forgotten again to put on the cheap chain from which hangs the promise ring given to me by my one and only real love, FF, who has now vanished into the aether and I haven't had contact for three or four years. The relationship was an odd online affair, where FF loved me unrequitedly, and I spurned that for two years, until I annoyingly found that I wanted to return that love. We met only a few times, being a bi-coastal affair, on the last of which he gave me the promise ring. It's a tiny thing, of cheap gold and diamond flecks, but he saved for months to purchase it for me. Unfortunately, that same trip, it was readily apparent, we were not ready for each other, no matter how ecstatic our love for each other. He was not even a he at the time, although probably is by now, and I could not deal with that within our small and rare visits to each other, as my love was much more asexual than his. He had desires to join friends in Canada, and I wanted to stay in San Francisco. Afterward, I kept the ring, and put it on a cheap steel chain thing I found somewhere, and I go through these sparadic periods where I wear it around my neck. I always thought I did so when good luck was needed, but this made little sense as my luck was no better than any other time. Like the love we had for each other, I had little idea what to make of the promise carried in the ring, I think. But the promise ring carried something more than the memory of a time when I undeniably felt something within, that didn't come from my illusion factory of my head, but the promise that broke a belief long-held before our time together; that love was denied to me for another man. I believed that misbegotten curse with the wholeness of myself, and had even convinced myself that I had made some peace with it. I had something special with another on a level I still fail to understand, it ended well, but that did little to assuage my heart, and the ring stayed in a little chest. Then I started wearing it again, and it didn't remind me of the end of my love, but the time before that when it was still present and possible. I didn't know why I wore it, really, but I liked it. And there has been none after FF, but the ring reminds me, that it can be had, if I just hold on, and believe it will come again, this time maybe when it will come together into something even longer, even if that relationship itself is not a life-bond. I think I'm going to wear the ring around my neck alot more.
That's why I am guessing I am holding onto the interview, as part of the shot at a meaningful job, without the impact of a percieved failure to have what it took to gain it, rational or not. It is the promise that next time, maybe I'll do better, and things will change until I can gain work that is rewarding to me beyond the monetary gains that back my independance. When I was fresh from program, I still held onto some older beliefs, such as that faith in the hope that things would change, had kept me alive. Later on, I lost that in the shredding of past to make a functional present, and recently tend to chalk my survival up to my conceited pragmatism and cowardice over the mystery of death. And recently, I've not asked much of myself about this, trying to find a compromise position between all factors that could really be made. Now, I think I was probably right in the first place, that the way of hope, no matter what means polluted it, was what sustained me, and with it, I crossed over to now, still striving to be better, and go further. I don't consider it an ego-trip to acknowledge that others haven't been able to walk the corridor of knives that leads to the unending sky. Their pain might have really been greater than mine, but the pain I carry is as great as anyone else's in the rending. I still enjoy my birthdays, even uncelebrated, because the amazement I keep adding years onto the prophecy of my impending death before reaching adulthood.
I've been discontent for so long now, carrying that as a negative expression of my unwillingness to move as forward as I can, and I tried to make something more of that discontentment, that I ended projecting onto others. I don't understand how others can not keep going when the promise of change I see in them is not fulfilled. It is contradictory to my thinking to find some spot where anyone can believe themselves content and able to best answer the challenges of life. But still, they do. My life is in the end, a narrative whose theme is the promise of change, the faith that there is always something more to be reached. In other words, I am only content, when I am wholly discontent. This is my way, and I should not expect it will must be for everyone else. Growth is possible from an anchored place in one's life. But I need the promise that there is change toward which I must always strive even if without some "demonstrable" gains. That I will change, and love change. To appreciate it. And hopefully to wear around my neck as a reminder.
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