One of the reasons it’s been so difficult for me to find dates is because I don’t have a very active social life (which is to say, I have no social life whatsoever to speak of.) I used to have a close knit group of friends that carried me through high school and beyond college for a while, but eventually we began to drift apart for various reasons, until one day I found myself living the life of a loner again.

I was never one for attending social gatherings though so I could maybe gain some new friends, mainly because there were, well, people there. And I hated people.

Ok, I wouldn’t go so far as to say I hated them, maybe that I just didn’t get along…no I hated them.

Unfortunately, if I was ever gonna meet girls then I was gonna have to go where people were, sooner or later. With a mindset like this, it’s a small wonder why I was always holding out hope that I would meet someone at my job instead. After all, I’m forced to be here, and there were people here too, soooo….

For the longest time I used to entertain fantasies of meeting the girl of my dreams at work, so much that it started taking on a life of its own. I even nailed down what she would look like too: deeply tanned skin, big brown eyes, and luscious brown hair. She would be as sweet as an angel, maybe assigned somewhere close to me so we’d run into each other on a regular basis. Things would be strictly platonic at first, but before I knew it she would eventually warm up to me… and love would blossom out of nothing at all.

Out of nothing at allllll….. Out of nothing at… *ahem* but anyways, that’s how I imagined it. From that we would eventually become engaged, get married, and live happily ever after. Oh how I prayed and begged God that this would all happen for real. My fantasies here were so vivid that I could have weaved a cheap romance novel out of it. Probably could have made some cash from selling it too.

I had been churning over this latest fantasy of mine for a few months, when something weird happened: we got a new coworker assigned near us who had… deeply tanned skin, big brown eyes, and luscious brown hair. I swear you couldn’t make this stuff up. Our department doesn’t attract a lot of young workers to begin with, so just getting another coworker around my age would have been odd unto itself. She was a year older than me, but single and beautiful, and had a mellow, pleasant personality about her. In her previous job she worked with kids who suffered from various disabilities too. It was perfect! My dream was actually coming to life!

Except she hated me.

Well, she didn’t really hate me. She just had no interest in me whatsoever. I tried everything I could think of to woo her too, all in the futile hope that eventually, sooner or later, she would warm up to me in very much the same way her alter ego did in my fantasies. I kept her company when things got quiet during our late shifts. I helped her out whenever she needed to learn something about the job. I helped her find her keys when she had lost them and was freaking out over it, and at her request I burned dozens of her CDs into MP3s so she could use an MP3 player she bought for the gym (even though she didn’t have a computer). I changed my hairstyles, clothing, and yes, I’m ashamed to admit it, during my low points I even tried using TAG body spray (I’m suing those bastards for false advertising by the way.)

Yet despite all my efforts, when it came to asking her out to lunch, or even just coffee, she had no interest at all. The more she blew me off, the more I pined for her love. After a couple of months of this I eventually gave up. I decided I would continue being a nice guy as always, but I resigned myself to the fact that she would never be interested in me. I was just a pathetic loser who could never be good enough for her. My fantasy was not to be.

And that might have been the end of it, except that shortly afterwards she fell madly in love with another coworker, and within a few months they were engaged to be married.

My fantasies were coming to life after all… but for somebody else. Honestly, mere words could not convey the state of my emotions as I watched some little bastard boy enjoy what I previously could only experience in my dreams. Every day I had to come in to work and see those two nuzzling noses or holding hands at a picnic table (just as I envisioned it), and it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming at the top of my lungs and stepping on the gas at a nearby red light hoping an 18 wheeler would plow into me.

The best though was when the wedding itself was soon coming up, and she asked me if I had any suggestions for wedding songs she could use. I ended up making a CD of what I considered to be my most favorite love songs, songs I probably would have picked for my own wedding too. From what I heard my CD turned out to be a big hit, though I wouldn’t know, since I wasn’t invited.

I’m not one for bitterness though, so here’s a toast to their new life together. May their imminent divorce be appallingly messy and violently ugly.

No seriously, I do hope they’ll be happy together, I guess. I don’t begrudge anyone getting married, but for the love of kindness, did it really have to F*&%ING play out EXACTLY like I imagined it???

When I saw that, I guess I went through something of a system shock. My feelings went numb and I succumbed to a state of deep depression. In a way, I had given up on life. I no longer took care of myself, no longer went out as much as I used to. My clothes would get worn and start showing holes, but I didn’t care. I started suffering from health problems, but still I didn’t care. It wasn’t uncommon for me to sleep for 12-15 hours a night, and even then I just had no energy to get out of bed at all. I used to be punctual and on time for work, but I became so lethargic that if I ended up being only 10 minutes late, it was a miracle. It was becoming a regular tradition for me to hit the supermarket the night before my days off from work, stock up on groceries and DVDs from Redbox, then head home and hole up in my bedroom with my tub of popcorn, TV and laptop, where I would stay unmoved in my jammies until it was time to go back to work again.

I became utterly convinced that God hated me. After all, He wasn’t going to simply ignore my prayers here. Nope, He was going to twist and twist and twist the knife in so deep that it would all but ensure my psyche would never recover from this. It was almost like He recorded my fantasies and decided to orchestrate it in real life so that someone else would become the beneficiary of it, right before my very eyes. I mean really, what were the odds of something like that happening, down to even using the same collection of songs I dreamed would be used at my own wedding? (Which I say at the risk of sounding like a weenie girlie boy.) About a billion to one??

Why? Why did I have to endure that? Why did God have to hurt me like this? I know I can be a wiseass and all who deserves to get smacked around every now and then, but this was bafflingly cruel. It’s part of why I’m so slow to get out of bed every day, because I absolutely dread what new punishment He might have in store for me. My pathetic life must be a source of constant amusement for Him.

But… and before you Christian dweebs start berating me here, let me be quick to note that I don’t really believe this now. I know there’s a purpose to everything, and I’ve seen enough to know that for whatever reason God is keeping me safe from a lot of the evil that’s in this world. I guess that goes to show what a foregone conclusion I must be, that in spite of the complete embarrassment I experienced, I still believe God c
ares for me and has only my best interests in mind. Maybe it’s Stockholm syndrome?

Still, this one really got to me in a bad way, and even now I’m still nursing the wounds. Just when I think I’ve put it behind me, every now and then somebody will stick a finger in the wound, like when I run into her and she talks about her “husband” (just hearing her say that makes me cringe.) Ironically enough, the most recent jab came from my mother, of all places. My Mom never knew I had a thing for this girl, even though she met her a few times at work. One time we had a conversation afterwards and Mom said, “She is SUCH a sweetheart, Linc! How come you can’t meet somebody nice like her? She would have been PERFECT for you!!”

Poor Mom. She had no idea why I ran out after hearing that and started ripping and chewing on the grass on the front lawn.

Ah well. I guess the only thing that will make the pain go away for good is when I finally do meet someone for real. It’s hard to imagine even after all that how I could still retain hope that somehow, somewhere, she’s out there waiting for me, but I do. I guess I’ll always be a romantic at heart, no matter how loopy I get.

I still fantasize about meeting her though. But trust me, I have learned my lesson. Now I imagine meeting her in scenarios that are so outlandish that they cannot POSSIBLY happen to me in real life, much less to anyone else. Currently I fantasize about meeting her as part of an undercover operation I’m doing for the CIA. Oh, and I have superpowers. And the girl of my dreams is an alien from another planet who gets captured by the U.S. government. We fall in love and I spring her loose, then steal the USS Enterprise starship and together we make our way to the Alpha Centauri system, where we spend many steamy, romantic evenings on the paradise planet of Gimmegoomajamjam.

Let’s see y’all beeotches try to turn THAT one into reality, yo!

So my new supervisor has been here a few days, and so far I’m thinking he won’t be too much of a problem. He knows enough to stay out of our way, and he’s already carved out an cubicle igloo for himself, leaving me to keep what is now formerly the supervisor’s desk, so I’m happy.

But there are little ripples here and there that might indicate the new guy could be, well… insane.

You know how when you meet some people things just click, and the conversation easily flows and ebbs? This wouldn’t be one of those times.

Not that he doesn’t mean well, it’s just that our conversations are so awkward they end up becoming something akin to watching a train wreck in slow motion. Weird. When he’s more mellow it’s a bit easier to engage in dialogue, yet the way his face involuntarily twitches makes me think I won’t be trading cooking recipes with him anytime soon.

His 3-4 hours of absence a day where the man is positively nowhere to be found makes me wonder about things though. Like maybe he’s running a drug operation, or hitting the local brothel for a few hours of hoochie coochies, or maybe at the OTB putting a few Gs down on Who’s-Your-Daddy to win it down the stretch.

His work ethic would also seem a bit… lacking. Just yesterday, as he walked out of his cubicle igloo he dropped his coffee. He picked up his cup and threw it not in our trash bin mind you, but in our shredding bin (what we use to dump “sensitive” documents that need to be shredded). After studying the pool of coffee that was now on the floor for a few seconds, he then pulled the shredding bin over it to hide the spill.

Self employment is starting to look better and better to me every day.

I’ve been tagged YET AGAIN for another meme, but since the tagger is a real hottie, all is forgiven. The rules for this one’s actually a little more interesting than usual:

• Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more.
• Find Page 123.
• Find the first 5 sentences.
• Post the next 3 sentences.
• Tag 5 people.

The book turned out to be a collection of poems from one of my favorite English writers, William Blake. The poem that ran through page 123 is titled Auguries of Innocence, and after locating the first five sentences, the last three sentences also happened to be the last few verses of the poem:

Some are Born to sweet delight,
Some are Born to Endless Night.

We are led to Believe a Lie
When we see not Thro’ the Eye
Which was Born in a Night, to perish in a Night,
When the Soul Slept in Beams of Light.

God Appears, & God is Light
To those poor Souls who dwell in Night,
But does a Human Form Display
To those who Dwell in Realms of Day.

This reminds me of Job’s response to God after the conclusion of his awful trials:

I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. - Job 42:5

Blake reminds me that it’s one thing to acknowledge God and recognize His divinity, but it’s quite another to experience who He is as a Person. Unless we see “thro’ the eye,” God is merely something we hear about and read about, but not Someone who is truly real to us. As righteous as Job was, his trials served a purpose in that it made him recognize his own helplessness in the face of life’s brutal storms. Yet it is in that period of despair that God’s power is revealed for us to see, and His glory is manifested in our weaknesses. When we witness God succeeding on our behalf where we would otherwise miserably fail, that’s when we begin to truly see Him.

This is the LORD’S doing; it [is] marvellous in our eyes. - Psalms 118:23

As for tagging, I won’t bother with that, but feel free to continue this meme on your blog if you want.

Ever gone to work without your pants?

When I first started my job we were all supposed to get new uniforms, but unfortunately there was a severe pants shortage at the time, so some of us had to place them on backorder. My pants finally did arrive though… 9 months later. And they were ladies’ pants too, though the tailor assured me there was no notable difference between the two. Sure. I still had to wait to get them hemmed, which inexplicably took over a month to do, but once they were done I was FINALLY donned in proper uniform, this after already being a year on the job.

There were a few problems though: one, the pants were light threaded and were designed for spring/summer wear. Try wearing this baby in say, February, during a full-on blizzard. There was more than one occasion where I would be screaming at the top of my lungs cursing the tailors and my department while I was hauling my frostbitten legs indoors.

Then one day I happened to be standing next to a cute coworker, who was shuffling a few things in her hands when she dropped a few papers.

“Oh don’t worry I got it,” I said, as I quickly bent over to grab the papers.

*RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP*

Oh no. No, no, no….

“Umm, I have to take some lost time,” I announced, then promptly ran the @#$% out of there, the shredded remains of my pants flapping in the wind.

You know, I understand now why people who wear uniforms order from an outside commercial vendor, especially military uniforms, instead of getting it all in-house. When your righteous buttinski is getting shot at, you really don’t need to be worrying about the kind of nonsense I went through once I got my own “regulation” pants.

I oughta sue too. I might have had a legitimate shot at asking cute coworker out before the pants ripping thingie ruined my chances forever.

In all my years on this planet, I don’t think I’ve ever kept a single New Year’s resolution. Doesn’t stop me from making them though.

Still, there’s something about the coming year that makes me think I may be in for something different this time. The number 8 is said to symbolize new beginnings, and man, after this awful stretch I’ve been in since the turn of the millennium, a new beginning sounds just like what the doctor ordered.

Here’s what I hope I’ll be able to accomplish in 2008:

1. Clear up my health problems and get strong again (vith ripplin’ mosscles to impress de vooomen.)
2. Generate a stable income of at least $1250 a month via my blog.
3. Get out of my dead end job and find a new career, whether it’s with another agency or by becoming self employed.
4. Move somewhere else, either out of state, or to nowhere in particular, depending on how successful I am in earning a living off the Internet.
5. Meet the girl of my dreams.

As you can see, I have very modest ambitions.

Even though my basic goals of moving and finding a new job are the same, they may be realized in different ways. I might settle for simply finding another job (possibly with the feds) and moving to wherever that new job might be, but ultimately I would like to be self employed, and earn a living by blogging and perhaps doing affiliate marketing online. Doing so would allow me to fulfill what’s been a growing dream of mine: to travel and live from state to state as a working nomad, where the road would be my home. I’ve never felt at home here, and the thought of being tied down to one job in one location for x amount of years is about as appealing to me as doing time on Rikers Island.

Besides, I’ve always harbored the suspicion that my dream girl was never anybody local, and if I were to find her I needed the freedom of being able to travel and stay anywhere.

So, will 2008 be THE year? Time will tell, but it’s looking more and more like my fate will ultimate hang on 2008. As for 2007, I bid good riddance to that crapola of a year.

See you all on the other side!

I walked into the Chief’s office and sat down. The chief took his seat behind his desk and leaned back a little in a more relaxed position.

“So, tell me what the problem is…”

…three hours later I got a frantic call from my lieutenant asking me to call him back as soon as possible. I guess people were finally starting to take me seriously.

It wasn’t easy though. The chief wasn’t willing to concede anything in my meeting with him at first, and it was looking more and more like I was going to get slapped for insubordination too. But I held my ground and made it clear I wasn’t going to let this one go. They knew I had a case, and they also knew they couldn’t intimidate me either.

In the end the chief finally called the lieutenant, who probably about crapped his pants when he realized I had gone over his head and dealt with the bigwigs. After leaving me an urgent message I called him back and we chatted for a few minutes. Devil Woman was finally being moved, this time for real. For now, the battle had finally been won.

The next day I finally went back to work after almost a month’s hiatus, the whole place abuzz about what I had done.

I passed by one guy who quickly called me out:

“LINC, you are da MAN!!!”

I blinked. “Umm, thanks?”

“Holy cow, if I had done what you did, I would have been kshhhhhhhh…,” he said, making a slashing motion across his neck. “You are DA MAN!”

My coworkers greeted me with much fanfare, then quickly ushered me to the same desk that had once been occupied by Devil Woman and my supervisor, who was now my ex-supervisor. If that didn’t speak volumes about the victory I had been given here, nothing did. I was now using the supervisor’s desk, effectively seizing what had used to be someone else’s “throne.”

It didn’t come without sacrifice though. I lost a week of vacation time, and I’ve probably been branded as a troublemaker now by some of the people here. Too bad, really. If rattling cages is what needs to be done to get some justice around here, then the world could certainly use a few more troublemakers.