Urk.

Since I’ve been working nights, my diet has been pretty steadily composed of cereal in the morning, and a brown-bagged sandwich of some sort at night, with an occasional cookie thrown in for taste.  That’s fine and all, and it will actually help keep my diet consistent, but sometimes I miss foods that I truly love.  Case in point:  Delicious pizza.  I decided that since I was off on Monday, I would order up a delicious pizza and consume it with glee, before relegating myself to the blandness of sandwiches for the rest of the week.

I had a coupon for Pizza Hut.  Now, I know that Pizza Hut is almost the bottom rung on the pizza ladder, but frankly, it’s not as horrible as say, Little Caesar’s or Noble Roman’s.  It’s not as bad as the $5 pizza place either, or some of the other places around.  I actually prefer it to the Pie here in Salt Lake, even though I know that opinion will probably get me a few comments.  At any rate, it’s certainly not the best pizza by far, nor is it the worst.  And I had a coupon.  A shiny, wonderful little coupon delivered conveniently via junk mail insert that entitled me to a medium-sized hand-tossed pizza for only $8.  Can’t beat that, so I went for it.

It wasn’t bad either.  I ate it, and although I felt a little bloated, it was nothing unexpected.  I haven’t had The Hut for a good long time, so it truly wasn’t awful.  That was yesterday though.

Today I’m feeling terrible.  That pizza is tearing me up, like it’s trying to chew its way through to the outside.  Ugh… what I wouldn’t give for some Alka-Seltzer right now.  Luckily my job is quiet and requires no real movement on my part, because that would certainly be a bad thing.  Remind me to never do that again.  Coupon be damned!

Speaking of my job, I had a nice chat with my boss today.  He asked me what my future plans were, and if I enjoyed working here.  He also told me that I was to get some access to the system for training and informative purposes, and that I was doing a great job.  This made me happy, and helps me to feel like my chances may be getting better.  We shall see.

In the meantime, I’m just gonna sit here feeling all queasy nauseous for the rest of my shift.  I feel betrayed by the delicious pizza.

Today marked the completion to some goals that I’ve had for a while.  There were two major ones:  Get a job, and get a new place to live.  Having started my new job on Monday, and having signed a lease to a new apartment late this afternoon, those two important goals have been accomplished.

Allow me to be introspective for a minute.  It’s been a tough year so far, and the toughness isn’t over yet.  In sports terms, this year is a “rebuilding” year for me.  Lots of basic changes and adjustments to my life and my lifestyle.  Gone is the $50K per year job that I used to have.  Gone is the freedom and laziness of unemployment.  Gone is a lot of money that I used to possess, and gone is the sense of optimism I used to have for myself and my endeavors.  These things have been replaced with a low-paying job, daily commitment, a tiny bit of income, and a very unsure feeling about how to continue.  My, how the mighty have fallen.

Not that I was every really all that mighty, mind you.  It’s just that I was used to a certain standard of living, and that standard must be lowered if I’m to survive with my sanity intact. 

I never thought this is where I’d be at my age.  When you’re young, and you picture yourself as older, you tend to picture things as being wonderful.  Good job, nice house, cool car, maybe a hot wife and even a couple of kids.  You don’t think that as you approach 40, you’d be scraping by on an unsteady income without a sense of direction or purpose for your life.  It’s difficult to see it even when you’re inside of it  It’s almost like a bad joke, and you just can’t believe it.  I feel like I’m having a bad dream, and I’m ready to wake up any time now.  Yet the dream continues.

It’s not all bad, so don’t get me wrong.  I have a job, I have money, and I have a place to live and food to eat.  That’s more than a LOT of people have, and I’m grateful.  I am thankful for the things that I have, but I used to have more.  Now I have less.  Sometimes change is hard.

I know I’m whining.  I apologize, but reality has bitch-slapped me into submission, and I just need to vent.  I need to get it out of my system so I can wake up tomorrow and embrace my new future, work as hard as I can, and hopefully turn things around.  I need to find that purpose again.  I need to re-find myself, for I sometimes fear that I am truly lost.

Well, here we are sweeping away the last few crumbs of 2008.  This has been a pretty routine year for me, because quite frankly, I haven’t accomplished much.  There were a few high points, only a couple of low points, and lots of middle ground.  Here’s a quick review of 2008’s greatest hits, sovknight style.

1.  In January, my continuous employment of ten long years came to a very abrupt end.  I was terminated over the matter of a broken DVD case worth approximately $4.  This, after a decade of faithful service, running multi-million dollar departments and traveling the entire country for a corporate entity who cares little for it’s employees.  In the end though, this was a good thing.

2.  In May, I turned 36 years old.  There’s this sort of unspoken thing with men that says by the time you’re 35, your life should pretty much be on the path it’s destined for, and your career and love life and kids and education should be things you worried about in the past.  By 35, you should have achieved.  Well, I’m behind the curve.  Not only is my life pretty much a complete waste up until this point, but I don’t really have any prospects for the future.  There’s obviously something wrong with me.  This one is in the "bad thing" category.

3.  After seeing a video of a parade I marched in over the summer, I couldn’t help but stare in enraged astonishment at the bloated, disgustingly fat blob of flesh that I had let myself become.  Photographic evidence further supported this realization, and after thinking back on the tight, well-muscled frame I fought so many years to acquire in my late teens, I couldn’t help but feel sickened by my apathy towards my appearance.  To that end, I decided enough was enough.  I adjusted my diet and took up hiking as much as twice a week, and over the course of three months, I lost 25 pounds and gained a lot more energy and vitality.  I will never allow myself to become fat again.  This one is a good thing.

4.  I climbed a mountain!  If you’d have asked me ten years ago if I would ever physically climb a mountain, I’d have told you that it’s "on my list", but wouldn’t realistically expect it to happen.  Well, this past year my friend Sra and I accomplished what a surprising few people do.  We stood on the summit of a mountain, like gods, (it was Mount Olympus, after all) looking down on all that is below.  I am especially proud of this achievement, and I will take it as one of the highest points (pun intended) of the year.  Good thing.

5.  As a result of my unemployment, I decided to actually take time away from work and focus on myself for the first time ever.  I took the entire year off, and I will say, without reservation, that for the FIRST TIME EVER IN MY ENTIRE LIFE, I get enough sleep.  This is no small thing, I am being sincere.  Getting enough sleep on a consistent basis is something that everyone takes for granted, and you seriously don’t know what you’re missing.  This is a good thing.

6.  I finally declared Atheism.  There are those who might think this is sad, but it is not.  I’ve been on the fence for about a decade concerning my stance on religion and God.  I’ve been on one side or the other my entire life and the revelation I received finally, is that only by opening your eyes and your mind will you ever be at peace with your faith.  God is a construct.  It’s a way for people to explain things they can’t understand, and mankind will never reach it’s full potential unless we finally give up on superstition and naiveté and see what is real and true.  If there is such a thing as fate, then let me say that my undefined purpose for moving to Utah was to finally come to grips with faith and religion, and it took moving here and seeing the differences and perversions in what should be constants for me to finally realize it.  It’s all imaginary.  This is my decision, and I have no doubts that it is the correct one.  This is a good thing.

7.  I lost a lot of money this year.  A LOT.  This is because of my decision not to work, and my failures at starting a home-based business.  I went from making roughly $50K per year down to making $0 per year, and my bank accounts suffered for it.  Even so, it’s still only money.  I can always get more.  Sometimes you have to get humble and climb down a few pegs before going back up.  Losing thousands of dollars is a bad thing, but gaining humility and perspective is a good thing.  This one is a wash.

8.  I discovered a passion for photography.  It also appears that I’m fairly good at it, and getting better.  One of the best things about my decision not to work is that I had plenty of free time to discover my passions, and photography was the big one.  It also helps to live where I live.  I like taking pictures, and more than that, I like seeing people’s reactions to my pictures.  This is definitely a good thing about this past year.

9.  Depression kicked my ass this year.  I’ve "suffered" from depression (I hate that term) since I was a teenager, and this past year has been especially difficult.  I’m thankful for some supportive friends that have helped a little, but depression is a personal issue, and despite what you may want to believe, there is no cure.  Not having an income, failing at business opportunities, and failing to see future prospects really wears on the soul.  I’m hoping next year can turn this around, but I’m not betting on it.  We’ll see.  Category:  Bad.

10.  It may seem anti-climatic to end with this one, but it’s a good one.  I found out something about myself this year.  I’m a writer.  Yes, that’s right.  I am damn good at writing.  Of course, there’s always room for improvement, but on the whole, writing, creating, imagining, articulating, and even things like spelling and grammar come incredibly easy to me.  And in truth, they always have.  I know this all sounds like a massive boast, but please forgive me this once.  I found something that I excel at and it makes me feel good.  It’s a single ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds of my psyche, and I intend to exploit it as best I can.  There are exciting things on the horizon in this matter.  I can hardly wait.

Another year down.  2008 was a curious one for me, and overall I can say it was a positive one.  There was good and bad, but there was balance, and that’s one more for the "good" side. 

See you next year.

I have a problem with laziness.  It’s not something I’m proud of either.  It’s just that I seem to be one of those people who takes the easiest route.  Why work hard when you can work smart?  And by smart, I mean hardly at all.

Today I finally decided I’d had enough.  There are two things that have been nagging me incessantly for a while now, and I wanted to do something about them.  They are:

• Get my Utah state driver’s license.
• Get a job

First the job thing.  As everyone knows by now, I was forced into early retirement by my previous employer over the matter of a plastic DVD case which ended up in hundreds of small pieces scattered about the carpet in the DVD isle.  Fair enough.  Since then, I’ve been lounging about my apartment, sleeping in until 10:30 every day, staying up until 3 AM, eating poorly, and writing.  I keep my high standard of living by subsisting on interest and dividends from my investments, all the while looking for that elusive "career" that allows me to work, yet do something I enjoy doing.  Because of insane gas prices and a major — shall we say "downturn" in the recent economy however; my investments aren’t going to see me through much more early retirement, so getting a job has moved up somewhat on the priority list. 

The other nagging issue is that of my driver’s license.  See, I’ve lived in Utah now for two-and-a-half years, while retaining my Ohio driver’s license.  This is well past the 30-day requirement for switching such things over, so this is also high on the list.  I know I should have done this earlier, say a couple years ago, but I just got my new license right before I left Ohio, and my picture is so pretty and… Well, you know how it is.  Things intervene. So I go to the web site for licensing in Utah.  For some unknown and completely unexplainable reason, getting your tags renewed and getting your license renewed are two separate and different agencies in Utah.  This is unlike every single other state, where everything is simply done at the DMV.  Anyway, here you have to jump through lots of hoops and run through tons of red tape while the state employees giggle furiously as you attempt to accomplish anything, so I wanted to be prepared for what I’d encounter in my attempt to become legal.  I found I’d have to re-do the written portion of the driver’s test.  Ok, annoying and unnecessary, but whatever.  I’ve been driving for 20 years, and can drive better than 85% of Utahans while blindfolded, and if you’ve ever driven in Utah, you know what I mean.  Still, taking the test won’t be so bad.  I also found the list of items necessary for proving my identity to the cheery and assuredly helpful government employees upon their request, and I set about gathering them together.

This is where the problem comes in.

• Old driver’s license. Check
• Birth certificate. Check
• Social Security card. Che… wait.

Where the hell is is my SS card? It’s been living in my wallet (succession of wallets) for thirty years. It’s always been there, always. I remember going to the office in Piqua Ohio with my mom and my brother when I was like 5 years old and getting it. I’ve had it ever since, and it’s never left my person as long as my wallet is with me. Where could it be?

It dawned on me then that not only could I not get my license renewed, I also couldn’t apply for a job, because a requirement for working in this country is proof of Social Security. I proceeded to tear my apartment apart to no avail; the damn thing simply grew legs and disappeared. What beautiful timing.

Let this be a lesson to all. Laziness is unbecoming. I should have done both of these things (get a job and renew my license) months, if not years, ago. I’m quite certain my Social Security card deliberately took advantage of my tendencies to teach me a lesson in humility, and now I must pay.

I went to the Social Security office today and filed for a new card. That in itself was pretty frustrating, but not as bad as it could have been. They gave me a giant sheet of paper that the guy said would suffice as a temporary card until my shiny new one arrives in the mail in “about two weeks.” He said it would work for employment purposes (I kinda doubt it though), but upon my questioning as to the usability of said paper to obtain my Utah license, the reply was negative:

“You may want to wait a little while. It’ll take a couple of weeks.”

Perfect.