Wow. Okay, I gotta admit, technology is pretty cool. I am posting this post from my PHONE. How awesome is that? :)

Work sucks

Have I mentioned how much I utterly hate my job?

I think it's at least arguable that my job contributes to my ongoing, crippling depression. I work a whole hell of a lot, and I almost never get any holidays. I don't get paid very much. My schedule involves weird hours. I don't feel that my superiors care about the work I do or value me at all.

Besides shredding any chance I might have at a social life, it's also probable that my schedule has a negative impact on my health. My circadian rhythms are probably shot all to hell. I'm sorry, but I think that there really is something fundamentally unhealthy and depressing about not getting exposed to enough sunlight. The happiest job I ever had was one summer in college when I worked as a grounds maintenance person on a golf course. It was terrific. I spent hours doing hard, backbreaking work in the hot sun, and I always felt wonderful when I went home every day.

Now I sit in an office all day. It's not even a private office. Thanks to geniuses like this asshole, I work in a cubicle. Only the cubicle I work in has degraded to an even lower level than the "classic" Dilbert cube. I work in a "pod," which is a cubicle designed to hold more than one person and thus provide even less privacy. It's amazing how dehumanizing this is. The only way I can ever manage to escape is to go sit in my car.

Still, it wouldn't be so bad, if I got paid more or got to work a more normal schedule. Due to the nature of my business, a normal schedule really isn't an option, unfortunately. And pay — heh. Over the past several years, I have become progressively more cynical about the American economy. More and more, I see the whole edifice as a gigantic scam. The question is, did the people in charge always know it was a huge scam, or did it really sneak up on them just like it did everybody else?

I know that when I talk like that I sound like a commie or a socialist or something, but I'm really not. I actually am a believer in free enterprise. But — here's what a lot of people don't understand — there's a huge difference between being pro-free-market and pro-business. Because being pro-free-market, being sincerely pro-free-market, means being just a little bit anti-business. Because, here's the thing: No business wants to operate in a truly free market. Businesses actually LIKE socialism. What a lot of businesses call "free enterprise" is actually just socialism geared to benefit BUSINESSES, instead of workers.

Truly free enterprise isn't pro-business, or pro-worker. It's not pro-anything, except fair profits all around — and I would like to stress the "all around" part. As I see it, it's the best possible way to guarantee that every person gets exactly what he or she deserves, neither more nor less. In a way it's almost like the theoretical ideal of communism, except you don't shoot anybody or throw them in gulags, because everything is done on the basis of free association, instead of compulsion.

How the hell did I get sidetracked onto this tangent? Hell if I know. What I do know is that my work screws me over, and I don't really have any choice in the matter. I really resent them for it.

What's worse is that it wasn't always this way. When I first started working at my job, I genuinely liked it. My bosses were nice and accommodating, and they seemed to actually care about my well-being. I used to say that if I won the lottery, I wouldn't stop working, because I enjoyed my job and I needed the structure it gave me.

Not anymore. Today, if I won the lottery, I'd quit in a heartbeat. I no longer feel like a valued employee. I feel like a cog in a wheel, and I feel like if they could, they would squeeze me and squeeze me and squeeze me until I'd given every last drop of my blood, and then they'd throw me on the garbage heap. I don't think they care at all what happens to me. If I had the chance to escape, I would.

I've actually been looking for a new job for — shit, pretty much two years now, if not longer. But the whole damn economy is in the toilet, and doesn't look like it's going to get any better.

It would be easy to blame the political leadership for this state of affairs — Democrats blame it on Bush, Republicans blame it on Obama. Honestly, I think there's more than enough blame to go around. Despite the fact that I lean to the right, I had high hopes for Obama initially. He's disappointed me, though. If you want a succinct reason why, check out this howler from Rachel Maddow:

Fucking seriously, Rachel? Hoover Dam? HOOVER FUCKING DAM?

Yeah, Hoover Dam is awesome. Don't get me wrong. It was a great project that provided terrific jobs to thousands of people during the Depression, when those jobs were really needed. TOO FUCKING BAD YOU COULDN'T BUILD SOMETHING LIKE THAT TODAY.

Seriously? You'd need to spend like 20 years going through five thousand damn environmental reviews to do a project like this today. And then there's the thousands of do-gooder lawsuits the government would have to fight off. It would probably go before the Supreme Court no less than three times. It would cost a billion dollars before you could even lay the first section of concrete.

Of course, a really bold, aggressive chief executive might be able to swiftly overcome these problems. That would take a tough, focused president who's not about to let Ivory Tower liberal crybabies stop the more honest liberals from actually, you know, doing shit to create jobs — because, hell, even massive socialist public-works boondoggles are a hell of a lot better than the unemployment line, for Chrissakes.

But instead of Hoover Dam, our esteemed president seems to think he can do the job with ... fucking windmills and solar panels. Hydroelectric dams were a proven technology in the 1930s, and even today Hoover Dam provides electric power to millions of people. I don't think there is a single windmill or solar panel that is even on the drawing board that will be putting out juice for twisty-bulbs seventy years from now.

I don't care if President Obama is a socialist. I'm just frustrated that he's so damn bad at it.

Sigh. Another tangent. Well, this is a blog, so this stuff is sort of freeform. It's not like I'm composing tight little essays here. It's just my random thoughts. And today all I can think of is how much I hate my job, and how much I want another one...

A super-deep depression day...

I didn't work out today. I felt far too depressed. On the flip side, though, I stepped on the scale, and it turns out I don't weigh as much as I'd feared. So that's a relief.

I didn't do any work on my novel, though, which kind of makes me feel like shit.

I am very depressed right now, because I am now 36 years old and can see nothing worthwhile in front of me for the rest of my life. All the worthwhile stuff has already happened.

I have very, very simple needs. I want a decent, long-term job. I want a decent house that I can afford, in a decent area. I want kids. And I want a wife that makes me say to myself every morning, "damn, I can't believe I was lucky enough to marry HER." I can't see any possibility for any of those things in my future.

Instead, here's what I see: Bouncing around for several decades from one shitty, low-paying job to another, never able to save up a comfortable little nest egg, always a couple of paychecks away from living on the street. Years of renting, never accumulating enough money to settle down. One or maybe two kids, if I'm lucky. Marriage doesn't seem like it's in the cards for me right now (my little brother feels the same way about his own life, so hell, maybe it's genetic). But if I finally do take the plunge, odds are that I'll grab some mildly cute girl that I don't feel any strong love for, just so I can have kids. And then I'll probably spend the rest of my life being a nice gentleman to her while secretly hating her guts and wishing she would die, or just leave me, and leave the kids with me... :(

I understand that life is all about compromises, and that sometimes you just have to accept that you can't have everything you'd like. Well, hey, I can live with that. But there are compromises, and then there are compromises, and while I don't expect total perfection from any woman I meet, I expect her to be pretty enough to hold my attention for the next several decades while I sleep beside her every night.

Basically, I feel like even the modest, realistic dreams I have always had  for myself are beyond my grasp, and that makes me very angry and very sad.

Ergo: Why should I go on? Every morning when I wake up, I look at my worthless face in the bathroom mirror, and I try to remind myself that this could be the day when it all changes. THIS DAY could be the day when, for whatever reason, the path that I should travel next to finally deliver me to the dull middle-class life I crave will finally open. But it never happens, never comes close to happening. I am still miserable.

So I think it's time to set a goal for myself. In twelve short months, I will be 37 years old. I am announcing now, for all the open, bustling life of the Internet to know, that on that date, if I am not at least on my way to some semblance of lifelong happiness,  I will give up and end it all. I will go to the store and buy a gun and finally snuff out my worthless, worthless life. Until then, I intend to work very, very hard to achieve a level of success, but if I can't pull it off by my self-imposed deadline, I will just end the pain. I don't deserve to feel this way, and I refuse to put up with it for another several decades while awaiting some stupid, normal, mortal fate. If God won't help me, or won't unlock this prison by His own means, well — to paraphrase Socrates, I'll unlock the door to my private prison and run away by myself. Every slave holds within his own hands the power to cancel his own captivity.

Yes, I know that it is written, "thou shalt not test the Lord thy God." Well, I'm sorry: I feel far too lonely and empty right now to heed that. I am far too broken. If God loves me as one of His children, if it is not His desire that I should suffer, He will do something. He will do it within the next year. Because I can assure you that 52 more weeks of what I am feeling now will exceed the physical capabilities of my weak flesh to cope. If God exists, and if He cares, he'll reach out His hand and help me right now, in my time of need. If He just wants to remain arrogant and aloof behind the high walls of His Heaven, He will not see me debase myself before Him. He will not see me pay for a "privilege" that feels like a punishment.

I have drawn now my final line. I am deadly serious about it: May 27, 2012. I admit it — I'm frightened of eternal damnation. That is one of the things that keeps me from taking this next, awful step. But just as a torturer understands there is a certain point past which no human can endure — a point when they will scream out anything in order survive — I expect a loving God to understand that there is a point where the pain becomes so great that any abstract fear of an afterlife of punishment simply loses its power. The sufferer will do anything, anything, to make the pain stop — even spitting in the face of God Himself.

So, yeah: I'm "tempting" the Lord. I'm "testing" Him. I am not asking for every last one of my dreams to come true — I'm asking, praying for Him to provide me with the things I need to survive, nothing more. Surviving, for me, means not looking forward to a life of gray nothingness. A God who can't deliver that is either weak and worthless, or He simply doesn't hear the cries of His suffering children. In either case, I can't envision God having enough power or principle to consign His failed creations to an eternity of flames. And if that is the case, there is no reason to fear Him, and thus, no reason to obey Him. All that is left is the sterile mandate of the "pleasure principle." Right now, that principle commands me to end my life. And right now, I'm ignoring it, because I believe there is a God in Heaven who has greater things planned for me.

But I can't continue that forever, and if there is a God in Heaven, He knows it. And either He loves me and will rescue me, or He is weak and uncaring, and is content to throw my limp body to the wolves. I can fight wolves and defeat them — I have before, many times. But I can't spend my whole life fighting them. If that is Almighty God's plan for my life — to fight the wolves for all my life, without rest — then I will no longer participate. I will lie down, and present the beasts with my soft neck to rip out. If this great Lord God I have always followed doesn't stop me well short of that point, then He is worthless, and death is to be desired, even lusted after. It will be just like going to sleep, only with no more distressing dreams, and no more gnawing worries about tomorrow. Just cool, comfortable darkness — forever.

But for now, that's a year away. I will stay smiling, pleasant, diligent. I honestly believe in the idea that hard, consistent work is ultimately rewarded! And I'll keep working toward that.

But if it doesn't happen, even slightly, within the next year — well, I'll know the score. And the ultimate choice just won't be a choice at all. Like standing in a burning building with no accessible windows and only one working door, there will be only one solitary path to escape. And like any reasonable person, well ... I'll take that chance. Wouldn't you? :(

Explaining my blog title

It occurs to me suddenly: Ever wonder why I call this blog "The Bolide?"

Okay, I know I have absolutely zero readers out there, so this is pretty much a parody of a rhetorical question. For what it's worth, though: I have an answer.

The place I live is pretty far from any major urban centers. I wouldn't exactly describe it as "rural," but it is fairly isolated. At any rate, one of the things I immediately noticed when I first moved here was the amazing number of shooting stars I saw.

Most people in America today have rarely, if ever, seen a shooting star. That's due to the large amount of "light pollution" in major urban areas that effectively blots out the light of everything other than the brightest stars.

So upon moving to this new, rural area with very little light pollution, I was immediately struck by how common shooting stars actually are. I rarely go more than a few weeks without seeing one.

Now, you know the old Disney tune, "When You Wish Upon A Star?" Well, okay, sue me: Although I never reveal it to the world, I'm secretly a hopeless, utterly hopeless romantic. Seriously, in my most secret heart of hearts, I sincerely believe in all that "true love" shit (more on that subject later). And every time I see a shooting star nowadays, I make sure to send up a wish. It is invariably the same wish, and it hasn't come true yet, not even close — but if it were something basically realistic, that would be denying the whole point of the exercise, would it not?

Anyway. One night I was out walking my dog, and the sky was lit up by this HUGE flash. At first I thought it might be lightning. It was so bright that it cast distinct shadows.

I turned just in time to see the longest, brightest shooting star I have ever seen in my life. If I hadn't known better, I might have thought it was a firework — but it wasn't. Trust me on this. It was too big, too bright, and too fast.

Needless to say, I made the biggest, boldest craziest wish of my life once I grasped what had happened. Will it come true? Who knows? It hasn't yet, I can tell you that.

I went back to my house and looked up information online about meteors. I discovered that there's a technical term for an extremely bright shooting star: It's called a bolide. Normally, the term "bolide" is only used to describe meteors that hit the earth, but the sources I consulted agreed that any extremely bright shooting star is, technically speaking, a bolide.

So that's where the title of this blog comes from. It's how I see myself, basically. I like to think that I am a breathtaking, dazzling display of heavenly light; I pin all my wishes and hopes for the future on that thought. At the same time, I recognize that the odds are very strong that I will just burn up in the atmosphere — a quick, easily forgotten little shot across the infinite night sky, never illuminating to others, never discovered, just glimpsed for one brief, sweet moment, and then forgotten, never to ruffle the stiff, scratchy, heavy cloak of others' memories ever again.

I guess what my blog title says is: I am a big, bright shining star. I am powerful, and I light the very heavens. Yet I believe nothing will come of it, just as nobody cares for the thousands of individual arrows that sailed through the air at the Battle of Hastings. The single arrow that is remembered is the one that struck King Harold II through the eye; all others are simply forgotten, decayed into dust.

I am an arrow, strong, tough, and true; yet I will putter away my final days as naught more than a speck of sand, to be swept off by the remorseless tides of time.

This blog is me, the me that shines, the me that will be remembered, if any of it is remembered at all. It is the bright, breathtaking shooting star: Whether I am felled by death or dissipation, I am, or I was, the dazzling face of heaven — even if just for a moment. I am the Bolide.

Life sucks on my birthday! :)

Haven't checked in for a couple of days. Been busy and depressed.

I didn't really work out Thursday. For Friday, my workout was:

16 minutes running — maybe it was the cake I ate earlier in the day, but at 16 minutes I just hit the "wall" and couldn't continue.

As penance, I did 35 minutes on the elliptical

Also, 50 x 2 crunches

Friday was my birthday. That was why I had eaten the cake — the folks at my work surprised me with it. Normally we're supposed to get our birthday off at my work but, well, these aren't normal times...

I am now approximately 1,135,296,000,000,000,000,000,000 femtoseconds in age. For those of you who aren't number-savvy, that's one septillion, one-hundred-thirty-five sextillion, two-hundred-ninety-six quintillion.

And you know what? I wish I was dead.

I hate my life.

Well, maybe there's hope. There's this, for instance.

Catching up, etc.

Yesterday's workout log —

50 X 2 crunches

20 X 2 push-ups

20 minutes of running

30 minutes on the elliptical.

Not bad, huh? Unfortunately, today was pretty bad. Workout log for today was:

50 X 1 crunches.

I got home late and was really tired, and my shin hurts from running yesterday. God, I hope it's not another damn shin splint. If it is, I will totally want to kill myself. I get extremely depressed when I can't workout — maybe it's withdrawal from the endorphin high? I don't know. Anyways, I felt really bad tonight and had several shots of vodka. Alcohol is the only thing that helps me endure the pain of my life. God, I hate myself so very, very much. 


I didn't do any work on the novel today, either. I'm too tired and stressed. God, I hope tomorrow is better. My life seems so empty right now. I am going to eat supper and go to bed... :(

Daily workout log

50 X 2 crunches

20 minutes of running

30 minutes on the elliptical machine

For breakfast: A bowl of grits. Lunch was a pack of baby carrots, a homemade chicken/spinach wrap, and a 100-calorie pack of chocolate dipped pretzels. That's pretty much my breakfast and lunch every single day. Of course I blew it by having mac and cheese and chicken fingers for supper. Sorry, it was a shitty day at work. Comfort food time.

Workday blues

Well I’m at work right now, and feeling suicidal. This will be a recurring theme on this blog, I’ll just warn you.

How serious am I when I say I’m suicidal? Hell if I know. I mean, I don’t know if I’d actually do anything. Occasionally, I’ll go online to look at guns, wondering which would be best for blowing my brains out. Actually, I know the answer to that: A 12-gauge shotgun. But that would be a bitch to use. Unless you’ve got a sawed-off snake charmer, you have to deal with the long barrel. That means you have to find a way to prop it against something while you place the barrel in your mouth, then figure out a way to reach the trigger — most people use their toes, from what I understand. It sounds so undignified.

So, a handgun, then. But what caliber? I know some people kill themselves with a .22, but I’d be worried that wouldn’t get the job done and I’d just end up a pathetic vegetable. So something bigger, then — a .45 ACP ought to do the trick, but I figure, to be on the safe side, I’d want to go with a .44 Magnum. Hollow-point bullet, I guess — I don’t know, would a jacketed round be better? I’d think a hollow-point would be more likely to do serious damage and thus kill you, but what do I know?

Of course nothing can guarantee you’ll be successful. People survive all sorts of horrific wounds. The last thing I want to do is become a helpless vegetable, or blow my face off or something. But I’ll do my damnedest to make sure I do it right.

Again, I don’t know how serious I am. I’ve never actually gotten close to going to the store and buying a gun. I’m actually scared to have guns around, even though I grew up with them, because I’m afraid if I had a gun handy I might do something rash during one of my lowest moments. So that probably indicates I’m not that serious.

Instead of thinking about killing myself, I spend most of my time wishing I could contract some awful terminal disease, one that would hopefully kill me in six months. We are all supposed to feel sorry for people who have terminal cancer and whatnot, but when I read or hear about them, all I can find myself feeling is envy.

I mean, I don’t have a wife or kids. Nobody really depends on me other than my dog, and she can always go live with my mom. I don’t feel like I’m a particularly valuable person in the larger scheme of things. I contribute nothing. My job is unimportant, and it’s unlikely to get better. In the strict Darwinian sense, I’m genetic garbage, a waste of resources.

Dying seems like it would come as a great relief. When I look ahead, all I can see in the coming years is hardship and misery. I might be able to endure that if I felt like I had some sort of worth, but I don’t. What in the hell do I add to the sum total of humanity? Being told “you’re going to die in six months” would make me happy beyond words. All the burdens would be lifted. I would not HAVE to worry about where my life will be a year from now, ten years from now, thirty years from now. I wouldn’t have to worry because I wouldn’t be around then. So who the hell cares?

I don’t know about the afterlife. Is there a Heaven or a Hell? And which one would I end up in? I guess a have a lingering fear of Hell and a lingering hope of Heaven, but I assume that dying will be a lot like just going to sleep. Sleep is, right now, the only escape I have that doesn’t involve alcohol. Going to sleep forever doesn’t sound that bad.

Good Lord...

What the heck is the deal with people who keep trying to invent the unhealthiest imaginable culinary concoctions? Take a look at this thing. It's a casserole made from beer batter, McDonald's Chicken McNuggets, McDonald's French fries, bacon, and four types of cheese. I'm pretty sure you'd suffer a heart attack just from inhaling the aroma.

Daily workout log

20 X 4 pushups

40 X 2 crunches

30 minutes X 2 on the elliptical machine

I didn't run today because my calf was a little sore from yesterday. I'm hoping I'll be able to get another 20 minutes in tomorrow.

I had two donuts for breakfast, then pretty much nothing until dinner tonight, when I gulped down some chicken fingers and potato wedges. Not the healthiest meal in the world, I know. Hey, it's the weekend, I feel like shit, and I needed some comfort food.

Tomorrow will be my first day at work since starting this blog. Dare I post from work? I think I'll probably give it a shot. :) Wish me luck.

Oddly productive day...

I actually got a not-inconsiderable number of chores done today, even if I DID wake up a little late. Give me a break. It was Sunday.

I did some writing on this thing I'm working on...okay, it's a novel. Hell if I know if I'll finish it. I've started a zillion novels and never finished any of them, but I am really trying to give this one a shot. I'm currently at a little over 5,000 words, but that's just raw writing. Later I'll go back and rewrite a lot of it, cut out stuff, tighten things up. I want to get the basic story down on paper, then go back and polish it, or even change it significantly, if I feel like it needs it. But all in good time. I expect my 0 readers out there to hassle me about this and keep me on the ball! :)

That is, actually, one of the reasons I started this blog. I figured the daily routine of working on a blog would help me get in the groove of writing. We'll see.

Remind me tomorrow to tell you about my love life, such as it is. That and my miserable job are two of the things that occupy the greatest portion of my thoughts these days...

Daily workout log

30 min. X 2 on the elliptical.

20 minutes of running outside.

40 X 2 crunches.

As s far as what I ate: I nibbled sparsely all day, save for my weekly indulgence of one can of Regular Coke and a chocolate bar — 3Musketeers, to be exact. Then I blew it all by eating a giant, fat-laden dinner. But that was kind of the point. I worked to earn that dinner, and believe me, it tasted heavenly.

Eventually I'll probably start posting results from my weekly weigh-ins. But I haven't yet worked up enough courage to step on the scale. I'm not fat. I work out religiously and eat healthy. But once upon a time, I WAS big and gross and fat, and I suspect I'll be haunted for the rest of my life by the fear of slipping back into that pit of despair.

HELLO WORLD

I finally decided to start a blog.

Well, another one. I've had blogs before — some were anonymous, some were not. This one is anonymous. "Hobbes" is not my real name, of course: I chose it because it reflects my fairly dark view of human nature. Also, that tiger in the Calvin & Hobbes comic strip was always pretty cool.

In the past, having a blog has had a salutary effect on me. It spurred me to write more and helped me work through various issues. On some blogs I had regular readers. On others I think I was just shouting into the darkness. Having readers helps, of course. It motivates you. But I don't have any high hopes for this one. I'm not going to make any attempt to publicize it, even among my closest friends. I don't even know how one GETS readers. I don't know how to publicize myself — some would say that's one of my biggest flaws.

So part of my reasons for doing are the same self-absorbed reasons anybody does. I like the idea of putting my ideas and writings out there on the Internet, where anybody can access them. Maybe the right person will read my stuff and I'll become famous! Well, we can dream, can't we? If they can make a TV show from somebody's Twitter feed, why can't my blog be a stepping stone to greater things? :)

Yes, I know, keep dreaming. In addition to inchoate yearnings for success, I enjoy the weird cognitive dissonance of living life completely in the open yet somehow being just another, anonymous face in the crowd. And as I said before, maintaining a blog in the past has helped me personally and creatively, and I'm in a part of my life when I need that right now.