You're job isn't there anymore. Since they aren't going to make a new schedule, you're essentially unemployed since yesterday morning. You're not terribly worried, though you know you probably should be. But again, worrying doesn't change the situation and it's really OK not to be worried as long as you take what steps you need to to make sure you'll land on your feet. Complete apathy that causes you to not help yourself out of a problem is bad. You're not apathetic, you're going to land on your feet. Sure the economy is crap right now, but you'll find something surely.

Campbell Oil ended up selling the property to a local store chain that is going to close the store, tear it down, and rebuild a larger store. They aren't guaranteeing anyone their job will be there once the new store opens. You were given an application to turn in for the new chain. It's all done and will be faxed in the morning. They own another nearby station that you could potentially start training at while the old store gets rebuilt, maybe moving back into it once it's opened. Something tells you you shouldn't count on that being what happens, though.

At worst you could just do some freelance computer help. Interestingly you'd never think that that would be a way to pay the bills, but you've been approached by plenty of people about fixing their computers. Usually this comes with tales of how the Geek Squad charged gobs of money only to leave the computer broken. You're sure it's not entirely the individual Geeks, there's probably some corporate crap with Best Buy that doesn't let them go past certain boundaries that probably need crossed to fix the problems these people are having with their machines. That reason alone makes you avoid even considering applying for a position on a Geek Squad. If you aren't going to be able to fix a computer, you'd rather not waste your own time and a customer's time and money doing nothing. You couldn't live with yourself if you did that for a living.

You're ahead on one of your loan's payments, so you're not terribly worried about not baing able to pay that one right away. The other loan you're more worried about, as well as living expenses. Anything soon would be good.

Browns won. It was a great fourth quarter. You did read a magazine during the third quarter when it got too slow, but whatever. You wish they'd be on top of their game every game. Maybe they should tell Anderson that any game could be the one he's pulled out. He seems to play best when under that kind of pressure.

Your boss was told to get gone, from what you've been told. They were only leasing the store, and they weren't responsible for the rest of the property. The company that owns the property and who is responsible for all of that, Campbell Oil, decided that your boss wasn't going to renew his lease. You've heard of a couple reasons which do have merit. First, Goodyear is developing land nearby which means potentially more business for the station. Second, your boss really was half-assing their management of the store. The air-conditioner and heater hasn't worked for weeks. The lock on the side door hasn't worked for over a year. The public restroom hasn't had a floor for years and the plumbing in there needs worked on.

Whether your job is in jeopardy you don't know, but you doubt it. You've been told the employees are going to be able to keep their jobs under new management. At least you know you won't be getting a pay cut should you be able to stay, since you're already at minimum.

That reminds you about the possibility of an internship in Cleveland doing network crap with old classmates from ITT. The pay would be higher, though not much after factoring in commute costs. Should you actually get hired-in and relocate to Cleveland, though, it would be a big upgrade in pay, but you'd be living too far from most of your close friends and likely only see them a few times a year. From talking with those friends you'd be working with you'd not have much free time left for anything, especially if you get hired-in.

Your free time is what makes you who you are. Alot of people say that you are what you do, and by that they mean what you do to pay the bills. You disagree. To you, who a person really is is shown by what they choose to do with their free time, when they don't have to jump hoops anymore to pay the bills. Who you are is best shown in what you do when you don't have to do it.

But anyway, to stop the rambling, you don't think you'd enjoy going back to that sort of working environment again. You thought it was what you wanted out of school, but it wasn't at all what you thought it would be. You're not cut out for office politics, multiple bosses all wondering what you're doing and when, etc. You like what you're doing now. Not huge pay, not a glorious position, no ladder to climb for better pay. But you enjoy yourself, you enjoy your co-workers, you (mostly) like the customers. But on top of that you're paying all of your bills. You also have gobs of free time with which to define yourself.You don't know what to do with yourself most of the time because you just never have anything that you need to do.

And you like it that way. You don't go out, you don't drink socially. How on earth are you ever going to meet somebody? You can't count on some long-shot geek's dream of meeting some gamer geek chick somewhere randomly, though you won't pass that up should the opportunity present itself.

But that makes you consider whether you'd be able to accept a gamer geek of either persuasion. You've known for many years that you could get turned on on by a huge variety of adult entertainment, although some genres really took some time to get over the creepiness of your attraction to such imagery. Not that any of it is illegal, it's not. It's just some of it is really not mainstream stuff. And it's nothing to do with pissing or shitting or puking. That stuff is definitely not a turn-on

You're still most definitely attracted to women, so you know you aren't gay. At most you'd be bi. Just saying that, even if you just said it to the wall, gives you an odd feeling. It's not relief, not uneasiness, definitely not surprise. You're anything but surprised. It's not a big revelation to you, like you'd think it would be.

You can't tell anyone, though. Not your friends even though you doubt they'd make a big deal of it. You're just not comfortable yet with them knowing. You definitely can't tell anyone in your family. A secret in your family is like, well, they just don't exist. You can't trust them not to tell anyone. It's really not even their business anyway, is it?

This truck stop is so slow on Sunday nights. :(

You don't like writing posts when you're at home. You haven't thought much about why. Maybe you're too prone to editing your thoughts when you're formulating them at the keyboard. Maybe you do it at work because it gives you something to do, when you have all that free time and time alone with your thoughts. Probably the latter more so than the former.

You're reading your books again, Crown of Stars. You're agitated because you know how sad the story gets in the next couple books for one of the main characters, and you know you're such a puss when it gets that sad. You're not looking forward to the sadness, but you do look forward to that part of the story for another reason. You're looking forward to feeling the emotions that that part brings out. It's the only story you've read that really gets you're emotions going. You really feel for that character and what he's going through; his desperation, his loneliness, his helplessness, and his never-ending desire to help people especially when he can't.

Something smells bad, but you can't figure out what. It's like week-old mop water. Best find out what it is.

You wonder if Deanna's simply forgotten that you are listed as an author for her blog. Likely so.

You can remember those many years when you had to walk to and from school. You had lots of time to think about things. The vast majority of those walks were alone. You thought about a lot of things, but looking back you see that this may have played a part in what happened in late '03.

Some trains of thought on those walks were harmless. You'd think up some math problem to solve in your head or would thinking of something like the relationship between the digits of a large number. What on earth compelled you to ponder such nonsense you'll probably never know. But those aren't the thoughts you had most of the time. Most of the time you were seeing yourself in the hospital in a coma, or paralyzed from the neck down, or sometimes you were dead at your own funeral. The focus of such thoughts was never you. The focus was on the people sitting by the bedside or in the funeral crowd or giving a tearful eulogy. You have lots of thoughts about why this was on your mind.

It was always worse near the end of the school year. You had few enough friends, and of those probably one at most would be seen during the summer. You'd see them online no doubt, but they wouldn't be online just to talk to you. They wouldn't be seeking your company when they logged on. The online communication you would have just wasn't the same. It felt fake, or like sympathy.

When you had those thoughts walking home, you didn't see those other people expressing sympathy. They were all showing remorse. It was thick remorse, too. Maybe the strength of their remorse was growing proportional to how much you were withdrawing from those same people.

Of course it was all unrealistic. You most likely will not die young. Your death almost certainly will not guilt anyone into feeling any remorse.

What was bothering you so much that mental scenarios like this haunted you for years? One idea comes to mind that has nagged at you, also for years. You thinking often about how you were the one initiating any conversation with most of the people you talked to. It may seem pretty trivial, but it sure as hell bugged you a lot. Actually it was all likely things like that that bothered you. Many little insignificant little things all together.

Why even bother thinking about this now? Wasn't that all in the past? Yes it was. Was. You've been getting thoughts like this again and in increasing frequency. Why are they coming back? There has to be a reason. Maybe it's your financial situation. Going from paycheck to paycheck working minimum wage for a boss whom you hate and who doesn't give a crap for those he employs. It's tearing into your self-esteem. You don't have any willpower to better yourself, either. You'd rather relax and float the path others make for you than invest any effort and emotion into trying to give yourself a better life.

But all that emotion can't sit bottled up. You did before for years and that ended with you stuck in the psych ward for a week. You don't want to go back there again.

You should have slept before work. Fortunately the tiredness has worn away and now you're in that zombie-wakefulness. You've gotten more cleaning than usual done tonight, and you'll still do more. If you don't, you'll start feeling tired.

You need to stop beating yourself up over dreams you really can't control. You've got too much guilt over nothing. You need to just accept that you can't stop the dreams, that it's really not your fault. If you accept that then maybe you'll sleep better. Maybe you'll feel rested for once.

But are the dreams there because you spend so much time awake thinking about how you should stop thinking about it? You have too much free time alone for your own good. You need to find someone to spend your time and thought on. You just that that could become a nice short poem, but you know where poetry leads so you don't pursue it further. Now you're drawing a blank, so it's best to just stop scribbling before you start using filler.

Your neck is getting stiffer every day. You can barely look at your feet without pain. You can turn your head side to side mostly fine, but the up and down is stiff and painful. Maybe you'll go home today and just stand in a hot shower for an hour.

Sleep isn't happening either. Sleeping in your jeans and shirt doesn't help, but you're never in the mood to get undressed to sleep lately

You've just realized that you are your own biggest problem. Your problems are your own making, and you're usually the one to blame for your moods. You can't explain it really, but you have that undeniable feeling.

You wish you'd be diagnosed with inoperable malignant cancer. Bleak and a seemingly suicidal thought. But you've been thinking that at least you would feel better then. To be able to see the end around the corner, sure that it'll be here shortly. Life as it is now is so much worse. Debt, loneliness, no end to either anywhere in sight.

But then you remember that you do want to have kids someday. You want to give your parents grandchildren to spoil and fill with sugar and caffeine before you take them back home for the night. You suppose that's the final reward in parenthood, grandchildren to spoil and their parent who you raised into a capable, loving person. Knowing that you gave the world the best that you could and that that work will continue after you're gone. An odd kind of permanence in the world.

You supposed life is indeed worth living, with all the bad things only giving you something that you can fondly recall in your old age and laugh about. Yes you would love to raise children of your own.

Someday.

You always feel tired lately. Not the yawning kind of tired, you just don't feel like you have the energy for anything.

You've also had the pains again the stabbing stomach pains. You haven't taken advantage of your spare time to get out and do something like you've said you would. Actually you've given yourself more excuses to stay indoors on the computer.

This summer is nothing you had hoped it would be, and it's almost over already. The Fall Hiking Spree will start soon, but as little as you've hiked so far this year you doubt you'll even start the Spree at all this time.

Just thinking about all of this is making the pains worse. You're making it worse, but what else is there to do when you're at work waiting for the next shift to arrive early on a holiday morning?

You've tried to write something tonight, but it's not working. Nothing has any feeling in it. It's like it's fake. It's like you're just trying to make filler.

Well, filler sucks. Best to just wait until you have something genuine to say, or until there's something you need to vent about or get off your chest.

You're wondering what your friends are up to. You don't want to be the guy who always invites himself over, so you'll just keep waiting to hear from them.

You've got the next four nights off. Don't let these go to waste. Find something outside to do. Hell, weed the flowerbeds if you have to. Wash the truck, it could use one. Maybe the lawn needs to be mowed, check that when you go home.

You're humored that your tea started tasting like fruity pebbles. It doesn't make any sense, but less sense in complaining. You like the flavor and there's no one around to hear your complaints anyway.

Your tutoring student knows more than she lets on. She shows it when the hour is almost over and you tell her that you'll only do a couple more problems then she's free. She'll blow right through those last problems in no time, without hesitation and with rarely a mistake. You wonder why she'd hide how much she knows, though you know little enough about why women do what they do, let alone a young teenager almost into high school. Is she trying to look stupid to be the cute dumb girl boys like to talk to? That doesn't make sense because she's the only kid there at your tutoring lessons. There's no one there for her to impress, so why try impressing anyone?

You worry that her parents might think you're wasting her time and their money. You wouldn't worry if they didn't pay you. You never asked for payment, and payment implies expectation of results. You understand the subject matter, sure, but knowing how to teach it to a kid is a completely different thing, as you found out last year when you started tutoring. Since last summer you've gained so much more respect for good teachers who are able to communicate things like this to a whole classroom many times a day, five days a week, and on many more subjects than just math basics. Now you understand how truly under-appreciated and underpaid they are. You also now get a feeling for what motivated them into the profession in the first place.

You couldn't be a teacher because you still aren't a fan of children. Not to say you don't want to have children of your own one day. You'd love to.

One day, once you've got someone to have and raise them with.

The stomach jabs are back, those annoying physical manifestations of depression. You have no idea why, but you wish they'd go away. They are nothing like five years ago, since back then it was constant. Right now they're just fleeting. Bearable for now, you fear they could be a foreshock of something worse to come.

More than just whether it'll get bad again, you starting thinking about the things causing these to return. It's not your finances, those are fine. Is it partly because you're unsure whether or not you're the person because of whom the "help wanted" sign is still up on the store door? Maybe. Granted you are only making minimum and you really could use some motivation to get you out there to find better employment.

Likely it also has something to do with you still stuck in that perpetually-single rut with a non-existent love life. You suppose a rut that lasts this long merits a different label than "rut". You're still flitting between caring and not caring, between being fine with it and hating it, between dwelling about it and being apathetic about it. Those are the best times, the apathetic. It's nice not feeling anything when the only thing there is to feel sucks. Sadly it's not possible to stay that way because something always knocks you hard out of it and again you long for someone to come into your life at just the right moment when you actually have the guts to take advantage of the opportunity.

There's another recent circumstance which you're sure is contributory. Being single isn't as bad when you have friends to talk to, to hang out with, to satisfy the desire for human interaction. Family gatherings don't count simply because those should be a given. You wonder often if it's you, if they're making a point of not initiating communication. It's been weeks since you've seen any of your friends, aside from one chance meeting at a store, unplanned, with the claim of recent attempted contact that, to you, rings hollow.

You dwell all the time on why your company is never sought, why you feel like you're being avoided by everyone. Well, you do never have anything new or interesting to talk about, and you have been letting your appearance go with the beard and all. Maybe they feel you're a drag to have around, a downer, a stick in the mud. You don't have a budding career to talk about and you don't go out to do stuff worth talking about, so why would anyone want you around? You can't really come up with an answer.

More jabbing. You need to find something to keep your mind off of all those things that make the jabs feel worse. Find something outside to do. You'd love to have some regular outdoor activity, something to get some color on your skin and maybe even build some muscle mass over time. You could try that rowing thing you were thinking about. It even comes with the added benefit of giving something to challenge yourself with and something to set goals for. You just need a boat. Wonder how much a good starter one would cost. You'll have to look into that.

Until then, you can only hope the jabs subside, or at least do not get worse.

P.S.- Starter boat can run up $1500 to $3000.

I'm like a small child right now! At first I was really anxious, but that was only when I had all the wires and parts sitting on my floor, with myself trapped in the middle with an empty case. Felt like a neanderthal for a while, just looking at everything.

But now it's all together and running. It runs better than I thought. Way better than my old lay-down case. I should also be getting double-digit frame rate regularly in games, too. Well, "game" since I really only play one...

For only $650 (even better than it sounds counting how much the US dollar has fallen, lolz), it's a huge upgrade.