So this is the new year.

So, its 2009. Another year's gone, and here comes the new one. This one promises a lot in the grand scale, whether it can live up to its hype or not is another question, but we can always hope. This year the theme seems to be shaping up to be "Change." (Thanks, Obama!) On a world level I hope that's possible, and on a personal level I hope so as well. 2008 started out shaky but ended up being a pretty good year for me all things considered, I moved forward in life, I now have a wonderful girlfriend who makes my life a lot better and easier and loves me honestly, as well as getting a pretty sweet gig with Freebirds. I'm hoping to keep the trend of good things happening to me rolling onward this year. Here are my New Years Resolutions. I fully intend on following them, and I take these very seriously.

1. Write more. Be it blog posts, be it story ideas, be it actual written pieces, I haven't written too much since roughly 2006, and I'd like to change that, I miss it.
2. Draw every day. I love to draw, and I need to refine my process, which means daily practice would definitely be a good thing. Drawing is a good way to relax, and it makes me happy, so, I should do it more often.
3. Save Money. I indulge my vices quite a bit monetarily, and that's good and all, but it'd be nice to have some "reserve money". Especially considering I intend on getting a place of my own within the coming year, which brings me to 4.
4. Get an apartment. My current living situation is good, but it doesn't afford me a sense of ownership over the area around me. No matter how you slice it, I'm a guest in this house and as such I don't have complete freedom nor complete control over what and who surrounds me. I'd like to be able to have a place of my own sometime this year. Be it with Madelaine, Bilal, Craig, Batman, or just by myself.
5. Start my tattoos. I fully intend on using tattoos to claim my body and make it a vessel I am fully comfortable travelling in. I believe there is a power in taking control of your body through marking, piercing, and stretching. And as someone who has never fully been comfortable with his appearance, having complete control over it, is empowering.
   
6. Spiritual and philosophical growth. Not in the traditional "Find Jesus" regards, but more in the realm of expanding my understanding of the world, the human mind, the human condition, good, evil, death, love, hate, passion, fear, and so forth.
   
7. Get more accomplished. Wake up earlier, go to bed earlier, have more time for the people in my life, see my friends more often, be more prolific, and just generally, do more than work.
   
8. Take a vacation. I haven't travelled in a few years, and I'd love to go somewhere just for the fun of it, and to just be able to relax and take a load off. Hopefully this year, I'll be able to make that happen, due to my increased cash flow.
9. Eat healthier. I have a tendancy to avoid "healthy" things, because in general, things that are worse for me, seem to taste better, but I'm going to attempt to eat a healthier diet. Less starchy unhealthy foods, more fruits, vegetables, and organic products. I could stand to lose some weight, and I know I'd just feel better in general.
10. Make 2009 the best possible year it can be. This sounds a little cliche, but I have a bad habit of making my world rather unpleasant. I tend to push my friends away and then feel bad that I don't have friends, I tend to not go do things with anyone for a laundry list of stupid reasons, I tend to ignore phone calls, and so forth. I just need to make sure that I allow myself to be open to the possibilities around me. That's going to make 2009 a better year I think. I also need to get my stupid foot checked out, and uhm, get a haircut. I'd also like to be less down on myself, and respect myself and my talents more. No more talking bad about myself and feeling ugly and useless. Basically, I just want 2009 to be pleasant. Which it should be, considering I have a fantastic girlfriend, wonderful friends, and a loving family. I just need to open up to all of the above, and things should stay good, and get better in the New Year.

I'd also like to find some magical portal to break into the comic book industry. But thats unlikely.

Twitter feed: What are you doing?

follow me on Twitter

December Weather.

Its December now. I haven't written in this journal since before Halloween. Which is kindof funny seeing as I've actually WRITTEN some story outlines and stuff like that, but I havent been able to find the time to write here.

Hell, I haven't been able to find the time to do just about anything.

I work. All the time. Not even a lot of hours anymore really, just...everyday. And I'm in near constant pain while doing so. My ankle is debilitating at this point and it gets worse with each passing day. I suppose I need to go see a doctor about that in the near future, but I keep putting it off because I haven't had a single week-day off since probably September.

Everything is a bit of a blur now. Life is moving so quickly, the days are just flowing away, and there is never enough time to do anything, get anything accomplished, or do anything but work. Its about to be Christmas, and I havent bought anyone anything yet, I suppose thats okay because I've got 20 some odd days to get that accomplished, but, still. December used to feel so long, waiting and enjoying every day, moving towards Christmas, and now it just feels like Christmas is going to be just another day, albeit one I probably won't have to work.

Growing up kindof sucks. Hard.

I'm going to start looking for apartments and I intend to get one in early March, I think.

Thats going to be interesting. Bills.

Ew.

Lately I've been feeling a little down. Well occasionally...VERY down. I just kindof feel like I'm squandering my supposed gifts by not doing a damned thing with them. I also feel the societal pressure to go back to school even though I don't honestly have a drop of desire to do so. I'd love to learn a bit more, but I really don't want to spend all my money going to school and then have a degree in something that I don't really love. I suppose I could do both by going to school for art, but those are the kindof degrees that are completely and utterly useless in the real world, but if you want to own a comic shop and do graphic design, I suppose those are the kindof degrees you'd need. Perhaps a rudimentary business degree? I just feel like I've let myself, and everyone around me down by not going to school. When I tell people I'm working, they just usually make "Ah" noises and then trail off and ask when I'm going to go to school. I don't know.

I just don't know what I want to do right now. Grumble.

I'm going to totter off and read some comic books, as I always do when I intend to write about my feelings or state of being.

Next time you see me, give me a big hug, eh?

Twitter feed: What are you doing?

follow me on Twitter

The Man With No Arm.

Today I made a burrito for a man with no arm.

That might sound funny.

But its not.

He was such a nice man, he was really generous. He had a huge smile on his face the entire time I was making his burrito. His wife helped him with his wallet, and when they were eating, she helped him and made sure he could eat it.


I was struck with an overwhelming feeling of sadness at the fact that such a nice man was struck with something so devastating, but then I realized that though he had a disability, he also had a lot of love in his life. His wife was there for him and she loved him.

Also, he had a bitchin' burrito.


Twitter feed: What are you doing?

follow me on Twitter

Dreamy weather.

My body hurts.

I stay up too late, and I wake up too early. My shoes don't fit right. Work is hard.

I love rolling burritos, and the customer service interaction that goes along with it. The grill, I am not so crazy about. Scrubbing, de-greasing, scrubbing some more, de-greasing some more, then getting tasked around like crazy, not a huge fan of. But, it comes with the territory I guess, lets just hope I don't work the grill too often, at least not at night. Allow me to specify, CLOSING the grill, I do not enjoy, cooking the meat, I do. But, still. I've worked about 30 hours this week thus far. Working quite a few more tomorrow. I like work, and I like hard work. But, work is very very tiring.

I'm pretty exhausted, but I've got a good support structure, and I'm really really thankful for Maddie, someone that cares that much, pushing me and making sure I do my best.

Bleh. this blog post was more or less pointless, but tweeting at this hour is kindof inappropriate.




Twitter feed: What are you doing?

follow me on Twitter

September.

Its officially September and it has been for a few days. For the unenlightened about my life, this officially means that I'm a grown up. High school is completely over, and the last summer of that period of my life has come and passed. Everyone is back in school, High School, University, etc. And ... I'm not.

I wasted my “gifts” (read: abilities) in high school. I feel absolutely horrible looking back at my high school career. I wasted away in laziness and boredom instead of going the extra mile to do the work that was well within my grasp to do well on. I feel like I’ve really shot myself in the foot when it comes to college. That, was a huge mistake on my part. I just kind of laugh it off and just jovially scoff about the fact that I’m “taking a semester off”, but in truth, I messed up, bad, during my junior and senior year by not registering to take a simple test like the SAT and therefore wasn’t ABLE to apply to colleges. My grades are decent enough to get into a tolerable school to do undergraduate work, but in truth, I know I should already be in college, and already working towards my goals. Not wasting away reading comic books and watching old cartoons I have on VHS. But its too late at this point to change the wrong I’ve done. I’ve just got to focus on getting what I need to get accomplished, accomplished. I do however feel that the awareness that the mistakes I made were just that, is a step forward into maturity, albeit one I really wish I had taken a while back. But, onward and forward. No use in lamenting about the past, right?

Realizing that it doesn't help to think negatively about your current situation doesn't make it any easier to stop it. I'm still hopelessly unemployed, with the one job prospect I had going for me apparently completely dashed away because I failed the god-damned screener test because I "over-thought" it. I have a great social life, but that doesn't really cut the mustard when it comes to a life, does it? I love the people around me, and what I spend my time doing, but I have a void.

I have a void in my life, with nothing to fill my days but malaise and self-loathing at a failed high school career, coupled with my failed art ambitions, and my failed, everything.

Spending all day sleeping and waiting till the high schoolers get out of class so I'll have something to do, has really gotten me in a tremendously bad funk, and I think I've begun to hate myself.

Which is horrible, because I'm fantastic.

Sigh.

I really need to get back out there and hit the ground running on a renewed job search, because otherwise, I'm going to lose my mind before January.

If you have any help to offer in finding a job, it's much appreciated, though I doubt much good will come from blogging about my problems at 4 in the morning.

Twitter feed: What are you doing?

follow me on Twitter

Quake and Twitter.

Its like 3:30 in the morning and I'm wasting my awareness on Twitter and the Quake soundtrack Trent Reznor produced.

This week is going to be a busy one. And yes, I can pretend week's start on Wednesday.

Wednesday will be filled with....well...something, I'm going to fill it with something. Shopping maybe?

Thursday is Madelaine's grandparents vow renewal. So I'll be her escort to that. And then that night she's staying over so that she can take my mother in to her Doctor's appointment on Friday morning. So. Yeah.

Friday will be the busiest day though, because we've got to be in Dallas by like 9am, and then I have to be at the Motorhead / Judas Priest / Heaven or Hell concert by like 5:30pm. That wouldn't in theory be difficult to do, but the way my life works, heh, I'm going to be cutting in close.

In other non-scheduling related news, my fucking laptop is dead.

By that I mean somehow its not accepting the power source from the wall, the battery works fine, but you know, you have to chaaaaarge that battery from the wall. So I'm laptop-less. I called Toshiba's tech support today, and the man on the other end (His name was "Andrew".) was surprisingly helpful and not degrading. Which is strange because you know, its tech support. So I've got a new laptop cord being shipped to me in the near future, and if its not the laptop cord, then I'm going to have to ship my actual laptop into Toshiba and have them repair the other possible cause of it, that being a potential crack in the solder connecting the DC-IN to the motherboard, and therefore causing an interruption in power flow that would render the laptop more or less useless. The scary thing is that that problem isn't an uncommon one with Toshiba Satellite laptops, which is sad, because its a helluva little computer and I love it to death.

I'm sweating like a pig. Its hotter inside than it is outside, and that pisses me off.

Not that I've managed to wrangle any readers on this blog, but I've really missed just opining about the crap thats happened during the day in an easy to archive, visually sensitive manner. For me blogging isn't really about getting my thoughts out where they're visible to the masses, its a way of chronicling my life in a way that I can look back on and be able to legibly read. Haha. And plus its nice to know that anyone cares enough to read my ramblings, even though its only a select few. I'm going to begin to crosspost a few of the posts on http://nathansteinmetz.blogspot.com to my myspace blog as well, with a link at the bottom so that people can follow over to the better, more versatile big brother blog of the reeeeeeal Noblesoul.

For now though, I'm going to try and have a few good dreams before I wake up and start again.

Goodnight.

Twitter feed: What are you doing?

follow me on Twitter