It has come to my attention that the month is now March. March of 2003. What have I been doing lately?

I realize that I have allowed my situation in life to become miserably cozy. "Miserably" because I persist in spending time wishing things were not the way they are -- wishing I had a better job, wishing I weren't shacking and mooching off my parents, wishing I had this and that, and doing blah and bluh. "Cozy" because I have more or less passively allowed everything to become the way it has become, taking little in the way of decisive action to alter my reality.

It's time for me to fucking ACCEPT and DEAL.

Now. Not later.

I remember a time not long ago, just over 3 months in the past. Having run out of money and moved out of my apartment, I was glad to have found a job which provided me a little steady cash flow. It wasn't great money, and it was hard work, but I was relieved to have found something.

Though I wasn't thrilled with the idea of moving back in with the parents, it beat the alternative.

In January, having spent most of my weekend and evening time during the holiday season at work instead of with friends and family, as I would have liked, I decided I wanted to look for tech work. This, in and of itself, is not a bad idea, except...

Ever since that decision, it has caused me increasing discomfort at my current work. Almost every day, I find myself thinking, "Next week... next month... maybe in a couple months, I'll be out of here. I just have to get lucky, find the right want ad, get my resume in the right place at the right time, and bingo! How hard can it be, right?"

Again, nothing wrong with circulating the resume. Although at this point, I think I've spent far more CPU cycles thinking about how neat it would be to find the "perfect" situation than I have on actually making it happen. Meanwhile, my morale with regard to the current situation continues to nosedive, if only because I seem to have this subliminal idea that I'm almost entitled to something better. (cause I've got all those 1337 h4X0r sk1llz, right?)

Fuckit.

Eventually, as the chicken grease and petty customers get increasingly tiresome with each passing day, I start contemplating whether it might be a good idea to just abandon the whole deli job at some point down the road, regardless of whether I've found something else. Reason tells me to, "First get all the debt paid off, then start thinking about where to go from there."

#include <debt_is_evil_tangent.h>

This line of reason leaves me in a holding pattern. For now. Keep living with the parents for a few more months, while devoting the bulk of my meager paychecks to the cause of car bills, spending a little here and there on stuff to keep me mostly pacified through these bleak times -- games, DVDs, music.

Consciously or subconsciously, this is the pattern I have been following. Right now, it seems like a fairly reasonable course to follow. So I shall continue to follow it.

However, I'd like to make an addendum. Something to keep in mind, as a reminder to myself. Just because this is so should NOT mean that I stop living my life until things get "settled". NOW is the time to do great things, if great things are to be done. Now is the time to live. Now is the time to create. Every moment of life is precious. Don't throw that away.

[End pep talk to myself.]

Music recommendation for the evening: Ani DiFranco -- Self Evident. A little different than the typical fare I've been running lately. A hard-hitting piece focused the current political situation. Powerful stuff. She pulls no punches. Listen and read. Soak in the poetry.

That's all I have to say right now. Goodnight.