I remember a dream from last night. This happens only rarely as I typically don't remember my dreams at all, but when I do I always try to figure out the source of what was in the dream. First of all, the setting was the Old West. That's an easy one -- my father watches Westerns a lot. Yesterday when I walked by his room on my way to take a shower, there was a Western on his TV. Now, in addition to me, there were 3 other people in the dream. One of them was my grandfather, and I don't know who the other 2 were. I've thought about my grandfather pretty recently, so it's no surprise he showed up in one of my dreams.

I'm not sure the meaning of what happened in the dream, however. All I can remember is that the 2 people I didn't know disguised themselves as my grandfather and me, and vice versa. Then, those two guys disguised as us were killed. I seem to think it was a shootout between them and the two of us, but I can't be sure. After the shootout (if it was such a thing), my grandfather and I looked at each other, not sure who we were, and then we both took off our disguises at the same time. Then we smiled at each other, and that's when I woke up.

This would be my reaction as well.

I don't like family gatherings. This is not an uncommon statement by any means, but my reasons for not liking them are probably a bit different when compared to that of the common man. I'm sure most people dread such events because there's always that family member that no one can stand, but who is inevitably invited to every family gathering out of necessity. That person is family, and therefore must be included even if everyone hates them.

There's a twinge of irony in that, for me.

For myself, I don't like family gatherings because my family really doesn't know or understand me. I will be the first person to admit that mostly, the reason for that is my own fault. There is obviously no reason why I couldn't let them know who I really am, aside from my own unwillingness and fear of doing so. That fear being the fear of becoming the person that I mentioned up in paragraph one. That would be the irony I was talking about.

Do I know for sure that it would happen? No, of course not. But that doesn't stop the anxiety when I think about it. Typically, it didn't much bother me that my family doesn't really know who I am. Not until recently. And this is the part of the whole thing that has be intrigued, and has had me analyzing it. Why does it sort of bother me now?

It's probably a combination of things. It could be that as I'm getting older, I'm desiring more and more to act like myself. It could be that after years of typically not saying more than 5 words to my family members, I would like to be able to carry on conversations with them if they would accept me. It could be that after being brutally honest with a few other friends in my life, that I would like to continue the trend with everyone else.

While all of those are probably true in a way, I think there's one other reason. And, I think it is the main reason.

I lost a friend, recently, and I lost this friend because I wasn't honest with them. There were other contributing factors, but I firmly believe the lack of honesty was the main reason for the destruction of the relationship. The reason I was not honest with them is because I believed everything would be much better if I wasn't. And for the longest time, that was true. But then they started to make incorrect assumptions. They started to (and probably still do) believe that I was just naturally a liar and two-faced. And, no matter how much effort I put forth, and no matter how honest I was with them after they started believing that, it didn't matter.

I also understand, however, that if this person would have had any shred of maturity, or even any bit of understanding of my situation, things would not have concluded the way they did. But it doesn't make it any easier, and it doesn't stop me from wondering what I'm supposed to do.

My feelings are mixed. In one sense, this whole situation has given me a desire to be more open and honest. In another sense, it has made me want to construct even larger barriers. And in the end, I'll probably end up in the middle where I've been my entire life -- putting everyone on a need to know basis. And most people don't need to know.

I feel better now though, because writing about something always helps me.

This is quite possibly the greatest news article in the history of national media.

http://www.thespec.com/News/BreakingNews/article/421948

I really have nothing to talk about, but I just finished training and I have 15 minutes left before I can leave. So, I'm certainly not going to do any work with only that much time left.

The training went well. I was a little nervous because I was pretty much ad-libbing the entire time. We had a rough outline of things we wanted to cover today, but that was all. But it went really well.

The two people here for training are from Argentina, so there is a bit of a language barrier. But, I expected to have more trouble understanding them than I actually did. It was funny, because a lot of the times I would have no idea what they were saying when they started asking their questions, but then I would get right when they finished speaking. It just sometimes took a few seconds, but I handled it well.

It was even funnier when they would talk to themselves, though, because that's when they didn't speak English at all. I'm sure they were talking about me, that goes without saying.

Tomorrow is the last day of training.

Ahahaha, so true: