Category Archives: Life

I can’t sleep

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Insomnia’s a bitch, ain’t it? I’m here at four in the morning, desiring nothing more than to fall asleep, but instead I’m making use of this time to update my blog. It’s infuriating! Oh well, I need to type up a post because I haven’t done so in almost a week.

My book is going nowhere fast. It’s not for lack of ideas, it’s due to lack of taking the time to sit down and write it out. I’m to blame, well partly. I’ve been working late the past few weeks, getting off most days at midnight, then after the hour drive home, I’m not really in the mood to write.

Then there’s the fact that I’ve been talking to somebody. A human somebody. A female somebody. Yeah, I know I said I would never talk to a female somebody again, but I made myself a liar and proved everyone else right. Damn it! The new feeling won’t last, so I’ll get back to writings soon.

The female somebody, who made me promise never to write about her on my blog (sorry, but at least I’m not using your name) has given me a few ideas on my book. Gotta love creative people who can point out flaws in your logic. I think I’m on the right track as it relates to my plot, but I have to sit my butt down and actually write the freaking thing.

I’m working on creating my two main characters, who have not met yet. They have separate lives, one a priest, the other an escort, but whose lives will intersect at some point, and of course they will hit it off. I just need to make it seem real.

What holds me back is motivation. Why do they meet? Why does Giada seek Israel out? And why do they create and maintain a lasting relationship, one that threatens their lives, and his career in the church?

I have an idea to be sure, but it’s always difficult to translate the picture in my head into words that make sense. I’ll need to try, and then I’ll need to go back and edit it. What I need to do is set aside time to do it. Haven’t I made that observation before?

It’s probably due to exhaustion. It’s too early (late?) for me to be writing. I think I’ll shut my computer down and try to sleep. Fortunately for me, I go to work at three in the afternoon, so there’s no pressure to fall asleep right now, but I’ll try anyway. Maybe when I wake up, I’ll be able to write something that makes actual sense.

Turning away from the past

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Joe Hinojosa

All my old posts have been successfully mothballed. I created a private blog and moved them so I would still have easy access to them, but no one else would, unless I give them access. I don’t see a reason why I would, but you never know.

Before I continue, Happy New Year! I know it’s a day late, but I worked all day yesterday, and coupled with only four hours of sleep, it made me a very tired and grumpy person. I’m better today, although I didn’t get much sleep. But I’m off today so I’ll get plenty of rest. Probably.

Now to the reason I’m writing today. I was asked on my Facebook page why I made all my old posts private. I didn’t have an answer then, but I do now. I want to take some time to address it one last time. I created this blog as a way to deal with a very painful chapter in my life. My marriage fell apart, I got a divorce, got into a new relationship, and then that relationship fell apart. Emotionally, I was a falling apart.

Psychologically, I feel that I wasn’t well. I was depressed, angry, and hating myself and life in general. I left a horrible job but ended up unemployed for a year. In a matter of about two years, I lost everything I had in my life, everything I had worked so hard to gain. Through it all, this blog helped keep me sane. So from 2011 through today, almost three years I’ve recorded my life on this site, my pain accessible to anyone who cared to visit it, not that I had many visitors.

For the past few months, a thought has been growing in my mind that I needed to prune the bad from the good, and that maybe the time had come to focus this blog solely on my writing. I came to the conclusion that the new year would be the time to do so.

This year, I’m moving forward with my life by leaving all my baggage behind. My intention was to leave everything I had ever published accessible forever, but now I decided otherwise. Moving on has come to mean leaving the pain behind. I’m not repressing it, I’m not burying it, but I am wrapping up that part of my life. I don’t want to look back on it any more. I want to focus my attention on what’s ahead.

As such, I’m dedicating this blog to reading and writing. I’ll continue to do my book reviews as long as people are willing to let me do them. I still plan to post on a regular basis, I haven’t decided what that schedule will be. The only decision I’ve made regarding that is I will no longer publish three times a week. At least for the foreseeable future.

We look at the new year as a time of renewal, a time of new beginnings, so I’m taking advantage of this belief. I’m saying goodbye to the painful memories and embracing the possibilities that await me in the future. I’ve carried 2011 with me for far too long. I’m ready to live in the present and I’m determined to make 2014 the best year of my life to date.

 

Piece of the wrong puzzle

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Puzzled

puzzle perspective

puzzle perspective (Photo credit: jugbo)

It’s hard to describe what my life is at the moment. It’s a jumble, a fragmented picture that I’m trying to piece together without a clear understanding of what the picture is supposed to be. Do you understand how frustrating it is?

Where does this piece go?

Here?

No.

Screw it. I’ll set it over here for the moment and deal with it later.

Playing the “What If” Game

I’m finishing up the last of my college. I have spoken about his often, probably because this is something I have wanted for a long time. I’ve often wondered where I would be today had I done the intelligent thing and finished over a decade ago. If I hadn’t stopped in 1999, presumably I could have graduated by 2000. Would my life have been better? Worse?

What if? I know you’ve played that game before. What if I had gone out with this person instead? What if I had taken that job? What if..?  What if…?  What if…?

The problem with this is that it presumes that we have the ability to know what would have happened. In hindsight everything seems so painfully obvious, but the problem is that what we know is a result of our experience. Had we gone and taken that other path, that what if, we very well could be asking what if we had done the very thing you currently wish you could have avoided.

You only ask because maybe things would have been better the other way.

In flight

But what I’ve discovered is that I’m a man still in flight, fleeing a past that has probably been long forgotten by the other party. Is this normal? When something traumatic happens, is it only a trauma to one and not the other? Could something that is holding me back be a non-issue for the other?

I realized that I’m still running away from the ghosts of my past yesterday afternoon. I had to go to the bank inside a Walmart to take care of an outstanding issue that I should have dealt with ages ago. Took fifteen minutes and I was done. Typical.

Anyway I left the bank and I wandered around the store and I felt apprehension. Why? Because that’s where the forsaken she-devil works. I’ve avoided the department that she works in ever since we broke up. Forget the obvious that she works at a store 400 miles away, but I really have no idea if she still works there, at the store, in that department, or even in the company. I could easily find out, but why do that to myself?

So why avoid it? I’ve conditioned myself to avoid it. Being in the area brings back memories which makes me sad, fills me with pain and anger, and all I want to do is to escape. I leave. I feel better. I think that may constitute negative reinforcement.

I haven’t dealt with the underlying problem. I ran away from it, from her. At the time the pain was all-consuming, it encompassed my entire being. Those close to me are probably better able to describe how I was than I am. I shut down. I didn’t function really for a long time. I lost my job because of it and look at me now.

So walked in, half-expecting to see her, knowing that I was being an idiot. I walked around, trying to break the synaptic connections that make me associate that department to the girl who hurt me. She hurt me, and she works there so being there brings back the pain.

Walk around.

Look at bbq things.

She’s not here.

Cool patio set

I wish I could see her.

What would I say?

Nothing. I’d run away.

I’ll have to go back more often to free myself of that particular association. It’s silly, but is it really? I’ve decided that it isn’t. I’m entitled to my feelings and I’m entitled to dealing with them in my own time. Emotions are too complex to figure out.

Some of you might be judging me, you may say I’m weak, that I fell apart. What can I say to that? Fuck you. That’s what. You don’t know me. You don’t know the experiences that I’m gone through. What would it take for you to fall apart? You’re not as strong as you suppose. We all have a breaking point, and the trigger may be something you’d never see coming.

So what now?

I live my life, that’s what. I walked around and window shopped for a while, but I didn’t buy anything. I left and drove to the Barnes and Noble to escape into fantasy. I walked in, after being gone since 2000, I’m immediately flooded with memories from an even more distant past. A less painful past.

I walked around, glimpsing at the thousands of stories there were to be discovered. It was nice to be surrounded by books. The feel, the smell, the connection you get by the tactile immediacy of holding a book. It’s wonderful and joyous and marvelous and…

Oh shit.

Do I really expect to join all of these books, vying for shelf space, hoping to attract a readership? Am I good enough? Do I have a story to tell? Would anyone be willing to spend their time and money to read what I have to say?

Don’t know.

So I walked around, forgetting myself and my troubles, leaving my doubts and fears behind, and I shopped for a story, somebody else’s story. There are so many books to choose from, so what do I get? I looked for a book, and it took me several minutes to remember the name, but who was the author? Crap. Oh there it is, magically appearing before me on a display. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. This was a NaNoWriMo novel she wrote and got published. I had to get it.

I walked around some more, searching but not finding, wondering if it did so poorly that B&N decided to discreetly banish it from the store. An employee asked me what I wanted. “The Casual Vacancy,” I replied sheepishly. Why sheepishly? It’s my money, and I’ve been wanting to read it ever since I knew J K Rowling was going to publish a non-Harry Potter book. Screw reviews I’ve seen. I wanted it.

Books in hand, and almost $60 poorer, I left the bookstore, knowing that there were better things on which to spend the money, but nothing that would give me more pleasure. I got into my car, went to Kohl’s and bought me a shirt. Happy, I got into my car, went through the drive through of a McDonald’s, and headed home.

So? What the hell is the point?

That’s the puzzle, isn’t it? You live, you have an epiphany, and life goes on. Here soon I’ll have my degree in hand, and I’ll find a job and then what? Hopefully I’ll find someone to blur the edges of my bad memories and who will dull the hurt that I guess I’ll still have. I know I still harbor resentment. Will that ever go away?

Who knows, but I have two books to read, and a few stories percolating in my head. I have a quiz on Monday, an exam on Tuesday, and an essay to read on Wednesday. And you know, I should probably start working on my mental health project that’s due on the 25th.

Life goes on and you deal with things as they come. I’m slowly dealing with her, but you know what, she’s not as big a piece of my life and I once thought. And you know what? That puzzle piece I couldn’t figure out where it went? It doesn’t even belong to my picture and I can chuck it into the trash can.

And just like that, maybe I’ll be able to throw her away, just as she did me. She doesn’t belong in my picture so why keep her on the table, and life moves on.