The Vent Thread

[Kimberly]

Have pink eye

[Moonlight Soldier]

Not really a vent but a apparently a 10 minute delay for maintenance paperwork can becoke.the pilot saying in no way will the plane fly. So currently still in Calgary waiting on a departure for.tomorrow. But at least I get free hotep and vouhers for yummy food.

[Jadecavy]

Not really a vent but a apparently a 10 minute delay for maintenance paperwork can becoke.the pilot saying in no way will the plane fly. So currently still in Calgary waiting on a departure for.tomorrow. But at least I get free hotep and vouhers for yummy food.

Did you get free booze?

[Moonlight Soldier]

Not really a vent but a apparently a 10 minute delay for maintenance paperwork can becoke.the pilot saying in no way will the plane fly. So currently still in Calgary waiting on a departure for.tomorrow. But at least I get free hotep and vouhers for yummy food.

Did you get free booze?

The booze wasn't included, but considering the $40 meal I got was comped, booze was cheap

[dj_ultima_the_great]

So I got pulled over by the sheriff on my way to work yesterday.

Turns out my mother never renewed the registration on the car. I had never looked closely at the license plate to even realize that it still said July. Now, you're probably thinking right now that I should have seen it myself and called attention to it, but I do not own a car, and haven't owned one yet, so unless there's a flashing, beeping light telling me something is wrong, I don't see those kinds of things. I've had my license for about ten years now and I didn't start driving regularly until about four months ago, after the eviction. So you'll have to excuse my inattentiveness.

I got a citation (for how much, I don't know; he said his printer was broken and he'd mail it), but I just know that this is a bill that I will end up paying, even though it isn't mine to pay. Mom insisted that she did get it renewed, but that it must have been sent to the old address. When I mentioned that to my co-workers, they all said the same thing - that if that were true, the sheriff would have seen it when he looked it up on his computer. So she lied through her teeth again, and again, I'm going to end up paying for her mistake. Not only the citation, but the registration, too. The cable bill also comes out of this check, as well as another $100 that I promised to set aside for replacing the tires on the car (although it's moot at this point; Mom has already extorted $360 of the $500 that I was planning to set aside). And that's pretty much going to be my entire paycheck.

I'm thinking that I'll just use the $140 leftover for the tires on the citation/registration, plus however much more it ends up being. I plan to be out of here before I have to drive on snow/ice too much anyway, and after I'm gone, fuck Mom. She can drive that deathtrap and get into an accident for all I care. It's her fault that I couldn't replace the tires, and she deserves whatever is coming to her as a result of that. I held up my promise to save $500. My obligation is over. That was the last nice thing I was going to do for her before I moved out, but she's not worth it anymore. Not after the last year and a half of misery that she has put me through.

[Pwolf]

Same thing happened to me a while back. Was working for my mother and she had me run errands using her car. Turned out the registration was renewed and I got pulled over. The citation only cost me $120 but when you don't have $120 to spare, it's a bit much. Your mom might have renewed the registration but it's possible there could be something holding it back, like a smog check. I don't know how strict other states are when it comes to those.

[Radical_Yue]

Jen, there is actually a chance that she might not be lying. I work for a car insurance company and I get calls pretty regularly with customers begging and pleading for the officer standing by their car to talk to me and verify their insurance. More than once I've been looking at a completely active policy but they say "If it ain't in my 'puter, it ain't valid." State reporting can be a broken, bitchy system and I hear miserable stories daily from customers that have had all kinds of issues with it.

As for me...

1) It's a year to the day that my dog had to be put down. I still have a hard time with it now and then. Yes it was just a dog, but fuck you. That little guy will stick with me for the rest of my life.
2) Matt has to go to some town 3+ hours away and stay there for the next 2 1/2 days due to work. That means not only will I be all alone and depressed, but I also get to walk to and from work (7:30am and 7:15pm) so boo. I've gotten used to not being alone and I'm having a hard time dealing with it again, even if it is only for a few days.

I can't even enjoy my 1 year anniversary at work today because of what it coincides with -_-

EDIT: Awesome. Now I also have a very depressed cat who is sitting in 'his spot' waiting for Matt to get home.

[meleechampion]

I'm drunk but fuck it.

I don't get it. "If we let go of our dreams, are we even alive?"

To keep going, to trod through every day, then faced with the problems that arise from the inability to make oneself happy. Where is the salvation? Is there none? What keeps us pushing forward day by day?

Let's say you're having a down day. Nothing is going right, and you're just outright depressed. What is the cure? How can you possibly recommend "keep your head down and keep grinding. Think of something that makes you happy. Go do something that makes you happy." What if nothing makes you happy? Objectively happy? What if you identify that your current set of hobbies/interests/etc doesn't fulfill you. As a person, as a soul, whatever. Then what? Place hope and optimism in the fact that you just haven't found it yet? Seriously, what if nothing on this earth can make you absolutely, in the moment, happy? Sure it might all be relative, that there is no true happiness. FUCK. Then what? You're seeking something beyond this mortal realm of existence? Or are you just settling for relative highs? Okay, acknowledging that where does that put you? Oh okay, make the most of it. Find the relative highs, seek to recreate them as often as possible. It's a math game now. If I work this job, if I acquire these things necessary to have a "good time" with these people then I win. I get it, life's not a game, doesn't keep me from trying to deconstruct it as one.

UGH. The apathy. It creeps in, doubt from every corner. If I'm to believe that people have inherent worth, that we're not just a sum of our past accomplishments/failures, that we transcend our past, believe in the potential of our future, then what are we currently? Jack shit, I say. What is supposed to make me happy about that? Working, the betterment of mankind, the future... such aspirations are noble and unapproachable? I call bullshit.

I wonder, to the people seeking the most out of life, to capitalize on the random happenstance that "you" exist, if you see the futility of it all, shove it aside, and take an ignorance is bliss approach to living... because the human condition, the "you are not even a speck on a galactic map" perspective puts any other worldly worries TO SHAME, some of our daily "problems" relative makes things so... so UNBEARABLY heavy that the only solution is to not even think like this. I guess. If existing to your potential is that important to you. I can't blame you either. If a society, even if a self, requires no.. it values productivity. Waste time thinking this way and become unproductive? Better to be a slave I guess. There. There is your self-worth. You are contributing! Haha! You are a member of this society. You belong. Doesn't that feel great? To be included? That's all you really wanted, after all. Ahh, if only. If only I could resign myself to that level of contribution, if only it provided satisfaction.

Then why my answer incorrect? Is it better to be weird or to be normal?

[Kitsuner]

Man, I hear that. I don't have any sort of answer, because I feel the same creeping dread most of the time too. So I guess this post is just to say "You're not alone in feeling alone."

Fuck, man.

[Otohiko]

I'm drunk but fuck it.

I don't get it. "If we let go of our dreams, are we even alive?"

To keep going, to trod through every day, then faced with the problems that arise from the inability to make oneself happy. Where is the salvation? Is there none?

Fatalism.

Sadly, I think most people misunderstand that word, and in fact it's something that can necessarily be learned or taught. For me it's something that came out of my cultural background on the one hand, and out of a 3-year personal crisis on the other - which was long enough ago now that I can reflect on and learn from it. At the time, it seemed like I clung to some sort of hope for hope. I raged and fumed at where my life was going. I desperately wanted to be happy, loved, needed, accepted and valued as I am. I still do. Nothing's changed and I continue trying, raging, hoping. But the difference is that I realized that, as my favourite musician would put it, "hope is unreasonable". Or to be more accurate, the quote goes: "In a strange and ever-changing world where points of orientation shift and small certainties of daily life appear to be threatened, reasonable people may feel hopeless, and despair. But hope is unreasonable. And love is greater than this." Again, not in the sense that most people would define "love" - more in a somewhat religious sense of it. A lot of things happened to me, especially during my 3-year crisis. The dread that I had for the worst things I could imagine happening to me in life had largely gone away, because a couple of the worst things I could imagine did happen. I realized that I have no defense against this. I found myself completely helpless to retain anything that I considered dear in life. I found myself coming to terms with the fact that what I actually want in life are things that I will never, ever get. And I found myself face to face with the fact that I am a lot closer to being dead than will ever be acceptable.

I gave up hoping. It has made me an incredibly happy person but, yet again, not in the way that most people would define "happy". I feel psychologically stronger, more mature, and more "normal" as a result. I've lost a lot of my fears and reduced my anxieties. Life still sucks, but I am okay with that, because it also doesn't. I've gained a lot of appreciation for life, and to where it inevitably leads. All thanks to embracing a positive, reflective, spiritual form of fatalism.

That's all I can add on this subject from personal experience. But hang in there!