I'm not Bright and Shiny, either.

The blog is an interesting medium. You read them online, and the authors share with you their struggles and their ordeals, and they probably don't even know you. Or, at the very least have never met you before. I've always avoided doing that, as anyone who reads my blog is probably aware. I do share my experiences, but typically they are humorous stories or something that's just interesting to talk about. Other times I'm sharing things I've created or seen, or showing off a new game I'm playing which is an outlet for wanting to talk about things that interest me.

But, I think the desire to blog about one's troubles is healthy in a way. I myself have found comfort in writing about what's bothering me. Somewhere on my computer's hard drive is a Word document. Anytime I would feel depressed, angry, upset, or had something troubling me, I would write about it in that document.

Every so often, I would open up this Word document and add to it. Then, I would scroll up to the beginning and read. And I would smile. I would smile because a lot of the time, the things that had me depressed, angry, upset, or troubled ending up resolving themselves and my life continued on. It was refreshing to remember those bad times and in turn remember how after it was all done, I was still okay. I was fine. I got through them.

I've been feeling depressed the last few days, and for the first time in my life I can't put my finger on the cause of it. I feel down. I feel like something is wrong. But I have no idea what it could be.

My job has been just fine these days, so I don't see how it could be work that has me like this. I get along great with my co-workers. My boss likes me and respects the work I do. I enjoy what I do.

My personal life is the same as it's always been. But perhaps *I'm* not the same. I don't have friends and I never have had any, really. At least, not in the traditional sense. I'm talking about people that call you up and ask you to come hang out, or go have a few drinks, or stop over, or to go to a movie. I'm talking about people that make you feel like they want to do stuff with you because you're you, and because they like that you. I don't have that, and I've never had that. I've never cared that I never had that. And it's my own fault that I've never had that. You can't spend your life in front of a computer and expect to have a normal social existence.

Perhaps I'm beginning to regret that. I refrain from coming right out and saying that I'm alone, because that just sounds pathetic. Especially coming from me. I'm not "dark and twisty" (yeah, I watch Grey's Anatomy). Besides, I do have friends. Just not in the traditional sense, as I've stated before...they are all friends that I either don't see every single day, or that I even never see. They are friends I've made through my cel collecting experiences, through my gaming experiences, through my anime experiences, and the various other interests I've embarked upon while sitting in front of my computer. So yeah, I do have friends. But I guess I can't help but ask myself if I have those friends in the cel community because of the quality of my collecting. Or that I have those friends in the gaming community because of my ability to play the games. Or that I have those friends in the anime community because I introduce them to new and interesting shows that they haven't heard about yet.

Or that even though I consider those people my friends, I still feel the way I'm feeling right now.

I read something once that explained the details of an Aries (that is my sign). The thing that stuck out to me the most was that an Aries needs to feel that people like him. That may be true, but I never try to *make* people like me. So maybe I'm feeling depressed because I'm trying to cancel myself out, in a way. Which goes along with the other characteristic of an Aries -- obstinate.

Well there, that was quite the EMO bit of rambling. Mark that down in the books, it's probably a first. Even so, I think that it's served it's purpose. Even though I still have no idea what my problem is, writing about it in an attempt to figure it out has me feeling at least a little better. So yeah, thanks for that.

I give you Rapture

I picked up Bioshock yesterday, and just played a little bit of it right now. Impressive. The story is, your plane crashed over the ocean, and you discover an elevator that takes you down to the bottom of the ocean where a huge city exists. And naturally, since this is a computer game, as soon as your elevator stops at the bottom, you witness some monster disemboweling someone through the foggy glass. And then the door opens, and you're on your own. Woot!

More to come later.

Lunch Visuals

Every once in a while, an opportunity so golden drops into your lap that you can't help but cash in on it.

Case in point: I got back from lunch today, and my voicemail light was blinking on my phone. It was on of my workers that works the evening shift, and she was calling off. In her words, "Something I ate didn't agree with me, and I'm constantly running to the bathroom."

So, I walk over to my boss' office to tell him that I will be unable to give him an update on this one item (because this person is working on that particular item, and obviously I can't get a status report with her not here). That's all I planned to say, until I saw that my boss was having his lunch right at that moment, and was taking his first bite out of a sandwich.

"Barbara called off, she's got the shits!" I exclaimed.

My boss looked at me. Then looked at his sandwich. Then replied, "Thank you. Thank you very much."


Ahhh. Golden.

Gaming Goodness Once Again

It looks like that time has nearly come.

For the last...oh, I'd say a year a least...there's been kind of a dry spell in awesome games. Thus my complete immersion in World of Warcraft. Other games have come out, but they haven't been good enough to pull me away from that.

However, I believe the games that promise to do that are actually starting to be released. Bioshock is out, and it's supposed to be fantastic. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 has been released, along with Portal and Team Fortress 2. Both games have been rated 94% by PC Gamer.

And these are only the start of them. It's good timing too, I think. The next WoW expansion has been announced, and as I feared, Blizzard doesn't care how much progression you made over these last several months. You're starting over, picking up greens from trash. No thanks. Been there, did that, didn't like it, was happy to be done with it. Not doing it again.

I'm going shopping tomorrow for both HL2 and Bioshock. I still have probably a year before the next WoW expansion is released upon the world, so my days there aren't finished just yet. But it's time to start playing other games as well.