Empathy

There are times that I really hate not being able to truly hate anyone.

It seems that I am incapable of truly hating a person, regardless of what they've done. I don't think its that I've never had any really terrible transgressions perpetuated against me, for I have. I've been screwed in the past and I expect to be screwed in the future; such is the nature of life. But I can't permanently hold it against anyone.

For example, there's a friend of my roommate's coincidentally also named Michelle. This woman can be one of the loudest and most obnoxious people I know - I can't stand obnoxious people. She's also very selfish and overbearing at times; one of those people who can't be interested in anything that doesn't directly involve her. There's a picture of her in a collage on top of the stereo here in the living room: she's sitting at a slot machine (big gambling freak) caught in what appears to be an unplanned picture as she's not smiling. When I look at that picture, where I should feel disgust or maybe anger I only feel sadness. She has a pretty good life, but she hasn't always - she had a very rough first marriage. Also, although she doesn't realize it, she and her husband have a very heavy addiction to gambling that I fear will be the ruination of the both of them. All in all, she's not a bad person...so I can't hate her.

Another example would be my roommate's kid, Elizabeth. Tonight we got into one hell of a screaming match over something or another (the reasons were stupid and immaterial - things just escalated into loudness) and I ended up hiding out in my room until she went to bed. This sort of thing has happened before and I'm sure it'll happen again, as she is a very spoiled and selfish only child that is unable to take anyone else's feelings or desires into consideration as well as deriving great joy from finding the right buttons to press to aggravate someone whenever she's bored. But yet here I am, only a couple of hours later and I can feel no malice towards her despite the fact that I know this will happen again. She's fifteen years old and still hasn't hit puberty - a late bloomer if I've ever seen one. She's overweight and not particularly attractive in the common sense of the word. This combined with her social issues are going to give her a hell of a time in the next few years...so I can feel nothing but sympathy for her, not to mention more than a little affection after being here for almost six years and seeing her grow up.

My roomate's boyfriend: Another loud and obnoxious one, this guy isn't the brightest of bulbs and has disrupted the comfortable environment I've been living in. Yet I know he's had a troubled past including some jail time and is doing his best to try to make it despite being an ex-con.

My brother-in-law: Dumber than hell, gives my nephew/godson short shrift in favor of his own entertainment. Very selfish and inconsiderate of my sister. But I know he's not a bad guy and it must be rough living in a house full of women, not to mention knowing that you're just not as intellectually sharp as those around you.

Even this guy from high school whose name I cannot remember anymore: He would constantly bully me around, me being this skinny little geekboy with a smartass sense of humor and him being the big pseudo-redneck with a large group of friends. When I made the mistake of making an offhand comment about him in front of his girlfriend's mother (a friend of my mother's), he sucker-punched me in the face in a bowling alley parking lot, leaving me feeling completely impotent and humiliated as he and his friends cackled like howler monkeys. Yet looking back, I'm sure he had his troubles too - as I remember it, he was never the best-dressed of kids, plus the whole high school mentality will fuck up anyone's sense of values. So I can't even hate him.

There have been so many times that I've wished I could just be like others and truly hate someone, hate them with a passion, despise them with vigor and a raging fire of pure unadulterated hatred. But the most I can muster up is perhaps a strong dislike. I can hate concepts, I can hate ideas, I can hate actions...but I can't hate people.

Could be worse, I suppose...I could hate everyone and be a polititian.

Beginnings

Well, here it is. A repository for my odd thoughts, ideas...hell, whatever bullshit comes into my mind. I've tried a couple of these over the years but always seem to run into the same roadblock - I run into a slow period, don't write anything in a long while, then come back and don't feel like writing a huge "why I didn't update in so long" update. With luck this won't happen this time around, but who the hell knows.

Let's start out with who the hell I am in the first place.

The story so far...
I'm a 35 year old (turn 36 in July...wonderful) geekboy, born in New York, now living in The Middle Of Fucking Nowhere, Florida. Actually the town's called Oviedo and its not a bad place to live if you like the semi-quiet life...which I do, I had enough noise growing up on (and moving back to) Long Island. Seems I've bounced between NY and FL all my life, though I think I feel like sticking around this time. I currently live with my roommate and good friend Michelle (gasp! a female roommate! and you're not fucking her? (no)) and her daughter Elizabeth who is 15 going on 8. I've been divorced for about ten years now; it was a very short marriage once I realized what a mistake it was, although it did leave me with an awesome 11 year old daughter named Rachel who lives in upstate NY with her mom, stepdad and numerous brothers and sisters and whom I don't talk to nearly as much as I'd like, even though she loves me to death. I also have a fat-assed orange cat named "Cat" or "Kitty" (hey, it's what he responds to) that is alternately my friend or my nemesis depending on mood. I'm very close with my family and a small circle of friends, but other than them I mainly stick to my own devices; I'm always either reading, screwing around with computers or playing computer/video games (which I feel is the entertainment medium that holds the most promise for the future).

I've had good times and I've had bad times but for the most part things are pretty uneventful - mostly by design.

Current Events
At the end of March I lost my job of almost three years with a startup Net-based home security company. This would normally be a horrible thing but the bonuses I received for sticking it out until the end afforded me a great opportunity: to try my hand at running my own business, home-based computer support and service. Not only has this allowed me to get out of a corporate environment that I've never truly been able to fit into (thanks to my Dad, I've got a blue-collar mindset with my white-collar talents) but it allows me to build off almost 20 years experience with messing about with these silly little boxes full of noisy bits. It's a huge step for me so I'm sure it'll come up now and again in my writings...especially considering how I have no idea what to expect. I'm very confident in my abilities to both fix anything that comes my way and deal with customers in a way that'll make them feel good about the experience though, so hopefully I won't have to retitle this thing to "Drek's Sinking Feelings".

The future...
Who the hell knows? I'll probably write about it here regardless.

Oh yeah, I figured out a way to throw comments on this thing. Feel free to advise, cheer and/or mock me as you see fit.

A new friend of mine, acting as my muse, has inadvertently convinced me to start writing again. So here goes.

(actual content IS forthcoming - I just wanted to get this thing started)