Another Thanksgiving draws near, and once again it’s time to reflect on what I should be thankful for.

… well I got nothing.

No seriously, I do have a lot to be thankful for, especially this year. This was after all the year I finally became debt free, after having paid off my credit card, car and my college loan. It was the year my earnings from this blog reached inconceivable heights, making it possible for me to travel more frequently now and enjoy life in a way I never could before. For this I have you, my readers to thank. I still can’t quit my job just yet, but the extra income coupled with a debt free existence has made it possible now for me to go out and experience new and different things, and better yet, write about it too.

My health has also gotten much better as well. I thought I would be too tired, too sick to take on exhausting road trips and weekend getaways to God only knows where, but instead it’s become the exact opposite. The more I moved around, the better I felt and the more energy I had. In a way it broke my depression and lifted me out of this mental prison that I’ve built for myself for so long.

I’m thankful for finding a new hobby in geocaching too, to keep things interesting on my trips and find new places to explore that never would have occurred to me otherwise.

I’m thankful for my parents, who are all that I have left of a once huge family that had been lost through hate, estrangement and betrayal.

I am thankful for my beautiful and reliable SUV, which continues to guzzle gas and proudly leave it’s wide load of a carbon footprint for all to see.

I am thankful for Yankee Candles, pizza and cupcakes. And occasionally brownies too.

And of course, I am thankful to God my Father and my savior Jesus Christ, who has made all of the above things possible.

And I am thankful for the new year to come, the endless possibilities it might bright, and a hope that refuses to die, the hope that I will someday soon meet my dream girl.

Tags: christ, college loan, debt, depression, dream girl, energy, family, geocaching, God, health, income, Jesus, life, new year, parents, pizza, readers, road trip, thankful, thanks, Thanksgiving, travel, yankee candles
Categories: Gone Mobile
 
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Feeling pretty sucky this week.

You know, I hate getting wrapped up in situations where I think I might be able to do some good, and then all that ends up happening is that my suckishness just comes oozing forth, and once again I start suspecting that God must have been sleeping the day I was born.

That kind of suckishness can really suck you know.

I hate being down like this, but sometimes it just feels like I’m not making a monkey’s spit of a difference no matter what I set my mind to do.  Whether it’s trying to be a friend to someone or working on my blog or doing my job or whatnot, the end result can all be summed up in two words:  I SUCK.

Is this really my lot in life?  To drift through the years having virtually no impact on anything or anyone?  Ugh.

I dunno, maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow after I’ve had some hot cocoa and a good night’s sleep.

Tags: depression, despair, feeling, life, suck
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I lead a charmed life.

So I’m just minding my own business and checking my email, when I get this alert from a Christian pastor I know.  He feels a great calamity is about to occur soon, causing massive fires in New York City that will spread out even to New Jersey and Connecticut, along with lootings and riotings in major cities worldwide.

If it had been anyone else I would have immediately dismissed him as a quack and merrily gone on my way.  But he had warned about the real estate crash and about the financial crisis we’re experiencing now since the early 90s and was right on both counts.  The fires he feels will happen soon is something he had been warning about for several years.  God’s judgment.

Whether you believe this or not, the email left me sinking into a pit of despair, even though it was meant to be sent as an encouragement to believers with the knowledge that God is still in control and will provide even in times of major distress.

But if there’s one thing that could define just why I feel so out of place in this world, that email sums it up.  It’s not something I can share around the water cooler at work with non-believers, lest they think I was dropping acid.  I try talk to other Christians about it but their heads are so far up the hairy flesh balls of Rick Warren that I might as well be speaking Klingon.

I could just say screw it, nothing’s gonna happen, we’re all right as rain here, but in my heart I know it isn’t true.  We’re in for some very hard times ahead, and there is virtually no one out there with whom I can confide in and share my feelings with about this without coming across as a cracknut to them.  And who knows, maybe nothing will happen, and in His mercy God will grant us a reprieve.  But can I not even have a conversation about this with others without getting strange looks or being laughed at?

People are often perplexed as to why I remain single, but this is a big reason why.  I see things that no one else does.  I believe things that no one else believes.  It isolates me from others, and I often have to keep people at arm’s length simply because once they knew the real me, they would either hate me dead or run away, or both.  And that’s fine.  I’m not looking to be the life of the party here.  A friend and a lover is all I’ve ever wanted.  While others need to be surrounded by people to the extent that they even use a ranking system for the best friends they have (BFF1 BFF2, etc. – WT*?!?), I would be more than happy having just one true friend.

We pride ourselves on our individuality, but the truth is most people are sheep, and would choose conformity over being unique so long as it meant not having to be alone.  That’s why most Christians today are merely nominal in their faith.  Their beliefs are so generic and ultimately meaningless that the only way I can get along with them is by completely leaving God out of the picture.  As long as we don’t talk about God or spiritual things, we’re a-ok.  God is somebody they treat as an equal, someone who is reduced to commercial slogans (Got Milk? becomes Got Jesus?) or a drug high, as if the experience of serving the Creator was tantamount to getting a heroin fix.   I’ve never understood this mentality, and yet every time I’ve challenged it, it’s resulted in near violence.  So I simply keep my beliefs to myself in order to maintain the peace.  People don’t want to hear it.

And now I have to deal with these new set of emotions brought on by this possible revelation of calamity that may soon come upon us, topped off with the fact that I’ve been feeling pretty lousy and fatigued for eons now, and facing a bleak future for which it would seem pointless to even hope of building a new life for myself, much less one that would include a special girl who can truly love me for who I am (who I REALLY am.)

I lead a charmed life.

Tags: best friend, calamity, christian, Christians, depression, despair, emotions, faith, feelings, financial, financial crisis, fires, friends, God, health, judgment, new york city, pastor, rick warren, violence
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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And that is without a doubt, because by next year I’ll not only be debt free, I’ll also have a nice little nest egg too, so I’ll be able to afford a hooker for V-Day 2010. 

What?  I’m not gonna do anything, I’m just looking for the company, that’s all. 

Hopefully though it won’t come to that.  Maybe sometime between now and next February, things will have changed enough that the doors to love will finally swing open, and young, single women everywhere will suddenly discover my inner hotness and wubs me for who I am, green warts and all.  It could happen right?

I want to believe it could happen, and indeed I was even given a sign that it would happen, but here’s the thing:  I suck.  I truly, unequivocally, unquestionably suck a moose’s dead cooties.

No decent girl on this earth who has lived a virtuous life full of kindness and charity should have to be punished by being saddled with a mooch guzzling hairy buttbag like me.  I really don’t deserve to have someone special in my life.  I don’t deserve to have a helpmate, a best friend, an equal partner in love.  I don’t deserve to be happy.

I’ve been a failure my whole life, and I will always be a failure.  That’s just how it is, and the kind of girl I’m looking for deserves nothing less than a winner.  Besides, it’s too late to meet someone anyway.  I’m already past my prime, I’m disabled, my hair is turning gray and I’ll probably be bald by Christmas, and God knows I’m already ugly enough as it is.  All I’ve ever wanted was to experience young love, and that opportunity has finally slipped away.  I’ll never know what it’s like to “rejoice with the wife of my youth.”  I’ll never know what it’s like to be in love with someone who’s in love with me.

I don’t even see the point of blogging any more.  All I’ve done was work myself like a dog for over two years to keep this site going and hoping some day to profit from it, and then I have to watch while others blog for merely a week and suddenly they get opportunities left and right without even breaking a sweat.  Why?  Because I suck.  Al Bundy has had more success than me.  At least he scored 4 touchdowns in a high school football game.  I was in the marching band, and I wasn’t even first string either.

Sigh.  I suck.

Tags: Al Bundy, blog, depression, failure, hooker, loneliness, love, sadness, single, success, Valentine
Categories: Romance and Relationships
 
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One of the things that really kill any incentive to pull myself together and get my life back on track is that there seems to be nothing worth fighting for.  I have no desire to fight for myself, because I’m kinda of a weenie and don’t like myself very much, so there’s no motivation there.  I can’t fight for my parents either, because they’d actually be better off if I were dead.  That way they could get my pension, my car and the rest of my possessions, which is enough to afford them a nice house somewhere without having to take out a mortgage.  Really, I’m holding them back just by being alive. 

If anything, I should be fighting for God, but I can never be convinced that He loves or cares about me, even when there are occasionally signs to the contrary.  It always seems like the people who have hurt me the most in my life end up getting ridiculously rewarded for their malice, and I’ve never understood why.  It’s like I’m a lucky charm for my worst enemies.    That’s why there are times I suspect that He cares more about my enemies than He does about me.  It’s really a battle to try to change that perception too, especially when on top of that everything else I do in life amounts to a complete failure.  Whatever I say or do has little to no impact on anything.  I can’t change lives for the better, help people get saved, or contribute anything of value to society or the church.  I am hated by all and loved by none, and it’s like I don’t even bother anymore because I know I’ll just fail as usual, so what’s the point?  (And before you start berating me for having this loser attitude, just remember it took years of perpetual failures and disappointments to develop this self-defeating mentality, so nyah.)

Then there’s the girl of my dreams factor.  One of the worst sins I could think of having committed is that I prolonged meeting her only because I’ve been such a weenie all these years.  But is she really out there at the end of the rainbow, waiting for me to get my act together and go get her?  Or am I just deluding myself into thinking she is, when the cold, hard truth of the matter is that she doesn’t exist after all, and I will live and die alone?

There were times though when I thought I had met her, and it was within those times that I found all the motivation I needed to get my life in order.  I stopped hiding in my own skin and started taking care of myself.  My clothes were new and fashionable.  My place was always clean.  I became more outgoing and personable.  My performance at work improved dramatically  I just did everything better.

And then it would all come crashing down when it became obvious that she wasn’t in fact the one, sometimes in the most cruelest way imaginable.  Afterwards it was all I could do to even get out of bed some days.  Sometimes I’d sleep for 12-15 hours straight, and even then I still couldn’t get up.  When I did get up though I had a devil may care attitude about life, purposely hurting myself and not giving a damn.  And then I would go back to sleep again for another 15 hours.

Things may calm down after a while, but I never do break out of this vicious cycle completely.  Yet… what if I could be convinced that there really was somebody out there for me after all?  Not just merely hope there was someone, but know it for a fact?  If that were the case, there’s no way I’d behave like this, because now my attitude is adversely affecting someone else’s life.  It would be wrong of me then not to pull my life together so I could be there for her.  I’d feel the same way if I had children too, because there is just no way I could excuse myself with living the way I do if it’s going to hurt my kids.  They deserve the best of me, 8 days of week, and they (as well as the girl of my dreams) would definitely be worth fighting for.

As the years go by though and I get older, these dreams and hopes begin to fade away, and with it my desire to live.

I guess I’m looking for something tangible now that will give me enough resolve to fight again, and I don’t mean mere wishy washy, hopey o’ change signs, but something truly rock solid.  If the girl of my dreams is out there, I will fight for her.  If a better future awaits me, I will fight for it.  But I have to believe it.  I have to know it to be true.

Show me the way, and I will walk in it.  Help me find what’s worth fighting for.

Tags: attitude, better future, church, depression, despair, disappointment, disappointments, dream, dreams, enemies, failure, fight, fighting, girl of my dreams, God, incentive, loser, motivation, parents, purpose
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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I only have one thing going for me right now: a steady plan to get myself completely out of debt by July 4th, 2009.  After that I’ll have a lot of wiggle room to move around and start searching for another job so I can move out of New York once and for all.

That is, if I can muster up the energy to do so, because right now it’s all I can do to even stay awake these days.  As much as I try to hope and believe a better future awaits me, I plunge so deeply in despair that I sometimes ask God to end my life.  I’m already past my prime and getting older, and with that there’s no prospect of finding a better career after having been in a dead end job for so many years.  Little to no chance of finding the girl of my dreams either, and healthwise I continue to get worse and worse.  I wonder if I don’t already have a cancer somewhere in my inwards that will soon put me out of my misery anyway.  Maybe that’s why I won’t see a doctor, so I can give it a chance to finish the job.  And of course with the coming economic holocaust and a government about to veer to the left of Stalin, it’s hard to find reasons to even stay alive anymore.

I can’t even blog because there is just nothing going on in my life right now, and the news just depresses me even more.  I guess I’m just in a really bad way right now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever get out of it.  Sigh.

Tags: career, debt, depression, despair, dream, dreams, future, God, job, life, misery
Categories: Lincoln's Personal Log
 
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