2003-06-17 - 1:38 a.m.

WHEN SUDDENLY

You know, I vaguely recall going through this emotional transformation a couple times in the past -- it's where I swing from negative to positive and have concrete reasons for doing so that persist from day to day and generally maintain my mood. Which is one of the reasons I took E for the third time back when: it got me a second perspective on my life to look at it from a completely carefree standpoint, however irrational and completely chemically based that viewpoint might have been. You need to change viewpoints periodically or you forget that the other ones exist while still remembering, "Yeah, I sure am openminded," despite not actually seeing things multiple ways anymore.

In this instance, work got interesting at the same time I started talking to the first new interesting person I've had around in well over a year now.

First, work. A manager fifty miles to the north is quitting, I discovered while dropping off paperwork for the end of the sales period. She will have departed our company in a week at earliest, three weeks at the latest, and then another store will open up, and they will scramble to offer it to me.

If I want to come out of this looking at all good, I am going to have to do some serious skirting and dodging and dancing to stay out of the way. They will offer me the store and I have to find a way of saying no that makes them love me or at a minimum doesn't piss them off.

It's a challenge, and God knows I have few enough of those to keep me thinking and interested in what's going on around me.

Spoke with the guy they hired to be my boss the other day. He called in the middle of rush from a caller-ID blocked number without identifying himself and got snippy with me when I wouldn't give him someone else's scheduling information over the phone. He's batting a thousand for being completely dislikable, so far, and this will do wonders for his longetivity I'm sure.

I have to remind myself that I need to not mouth off to this gentleman however idiotic or uninformed he may be, because he technically still has the ability to dismiss me from my position if he doesn't like me. The double-edged sword of managerial discretion. He'd have hell to pay for it, and he'd never go anywhere higher than the position he's stepping into if he fired me, but I'd still be out of a job, which is to be avoided.

Second, a random femme from Something Awful recently AIMed me out of the blue, thinking I was also female, and we have had some lovely conversation for several late-night hours for the past couple of nights.

It is rare that I have to actually think when I talk to people, and equally rare that I have the chance to talk about anything serious with them. I [i]love[/i] picking apart theories and figuring out life with other people, and it's so damn infrequent that I actually get to that I just try not to think about it as much as possible.

Additionally, I have discovered by contrasting the aforementioned person and Simone to my current real-world people-company another thing that I really appreciate in people. These two are the only people I know that not only have fully-formed opinions, but that state them unapologetically before they know your opinion.

I like that a lot.

I used to spend inordinate amounts of time worrying about the effects that the things I would say would have on how other people would think. Like I was going to control them without meaning to, oooh spooooky powers. I still worry about that on some level, I guess, now that I've mocked it.

One way or another, I still vastly prefer solid people to the flimsy, bendy kind where intellectual discussion is concerned. And the ones that think above believing, too -- those are neat and good to find.

Unfortunately for the diaryland world, we have the usual result of my being in a good mood -- lack of updates because I'm busy living and thinking and being interested in life instead of sitting at my computer and staring at the wall as I'm wont to do the last three years.

Good lord. It's been three years. I can't even imagine doing this waiting for life to begin crap for another year, let alone three more.

One of my favorite among the myriad of Harlan Ellison stories that I like was called [i]Opium[/i]. In short summary, the story opens with a woman attempting suicide, slitting her arm open from hand to elbow with a razor, then looking up and noticing that the Seven Dwarves are planting a bonsai tree in her front yard. She is saved, somehow, despite passing out from blood loss on her front lawn, and it only gets stranger from there.

Dogfights between a Sopwith Camel and a pterodactyl. King Kong on the office buildings. Tropical islands outside Manhattan filled with all the interesting people you always knew [i]must[/i] be out there somewhere.

Life's apology, he said, for being such a dull bitch all those years.

The depression I'm used to living with, it seems, is at least half composed of having manifested the symptoms of depression and then moved back into the actual condition.

Listlessness, lack of interest in surroundings and events. Lack of stimulation. Failure to maintain social contact with others of species.

I need to be interested, it seems, or I fall apart. I will remember this for the future, as well as remembering how remarkably effective a cure for depression finding someone genuinely interesting can be. It's definetly rewarding enough to justify effort, regardless of the outcome.

Predictable, I have a bunny bugging me for pictures of this new person I talk to, since not only is she a New Person, but her mother is Korean and this particular bunny has an obsession with Asian women. I've not asked for pictures and do not plan to, honestly.

I genuinely don't need much of a picture to have a conversation with someone. The way I see people doesn't revolve too much around their appearance if I've had a chance to have a mind-to-mind with them and get a sense of the shape of how their thoughts move around -- it's that movement I'm more concerned about for conversational partners and friends alike.

Ended up somewhat unwillingly spending some time with Alanna last night while I was dropping off paperwork at her store. Her store manager and I were discussing the future of the district when faced with the near-fatal understaffing of management in the state and Alanna yanked on my arm and said, "Come out and talk with me while I smoke, quick."

Assuming it was something important, I excused myself and went outside and waited. And waited.

It turned out she just wanted me to stop talking to Valerie and start paying attention to her.

I was not nearly as harsh as I wanted to be, and simply explained that no, I was actually talking about something, not being trapped in a corner and talked at like she thought. "That is why," I said, "we were comparing numbers on labor percentages and management staff and base salaries for the stores within a fifty mile radius while you were standing there. Because we are discussing our future."

"Oh," she said. "I wasn't listening."

"I know." I left it at that.

One of the reasons I react so strongly to people of what I've realized is Alanna's mental persuasion is because of my problems with memory and perspective -- if I spend all my time around people like her, I will eventually forget how to be any other way unless someone is kind enough to remind me. I genuinely fear that, and respond overly harshly as a result. She is what I could be again, and despite how unlikely it is for me to ever go anywhere near being who I used to be, I still fear and am repulsed by people who resemble .. yeah. That's a hell of a lot of goddamn pronouns in that paragraph.

I loathe people who are like I used to be because I am afraid of being that way again. I'm completely certain that I could live through having my world shattered around me again and realizing that everything I'd ever believed was completely fucking 100% in error -- but God, I really don't want to ever again. Once is so very, very much enough for me.

Alanna doesn't see the negative things in her life and her head as problems, but as facts. Facts don't have solutions, so no point in thinking about them -- facts just [i]are[/i].

It's only when I genuinely try to communicate something important to the people I talk with and work with that I feel at all alone, really. The people I worry about aren't the ones who sit there and take it and talk about how life is slowly beating them into the ground and wah wah wah. It's the ones who get up every time life knocks them down, drip some more blood, wipe it out of their eyes, take a deep breath, and say "SOCK ME ANOTHER ONE, DAMMIT, I'M STILL STANDING" before staggering forward again. I worry about those people because life doesn't bother with people it's already beaten -- where's the challenge in drowning a sponge?

In other minor news, I won a sonnet contest on SA, which surprised and delighted me. I am not in it for the prize, but I have never won anything before in that particular field of endeavors -- writing is something I just do, and then it stays on paper or on the webpage and periodically garners thoughtful commentary or flames or what have you. But .. yeah.

And it was a democratic system of voting, too -- meaning that not only did it have technical merit because I edited the living hell out of it before I submitted it, but (shocker coming up folks, please stand by with spare batteries for your pacemaker) .. [i]people liked it[/i]. I was shocked and made gleeful.

..yeah. It's just so amazing the massive effect that finding someone or something that is genuinely interesting can have on your life and emotional state. My pessimism, however all-pervasive it gets, drops away the minute I have something difficult to think about or someone to talk with about the rest of stuff.

Paxil will likely be arriving any day now, and like the dose of E I kept in my closet for eight or nine months, I will likely keep it around in case it is needed in the future -- but damn, all I was really hoping for was a break in which to reconsider things from a different perspective, and here it seems to be.

With my newly awakened motivation and desire to talk to people and go out and discover interesting people and see new things, I will now go play Fallout 2 and laugh myself sick at the animations for shooting someone point-blank in the head with a submachine gun set to burst fire.

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