everything is fine

So I went to work today. It was okay. I snuck in twenty minutes late and sat down at my desk. "Gabe, do this report like last time." The stack of papers said. Last time was over a week ago. I had no idea what to do. So I winged it. I'm 75% sure the report was already done when I started on it. I checked everything off and set it aside. Job well done, I told myself. You could use a break. I sat down in my favorite stall after coating the toilet seat gratuitously with toilet paper. I was enjoying my bathroom time when another person came in, taking the far stall. This did not bother me. I did not make any noise, since I didn't need to. After a few minutes of silence he broke into song. Opera, I think. Bathrooms do have nice acoustics, I thought. I guess. He sang out for about 45 long seconds. He stopped abruptly with a sound that I'd heard before. Swish. Click. A butterfly knife. I froze on my toilet. "Hey cock sucker, come one step cl...

"I'm embarrassed to ask this," he started. I knew what he was going to ask. Ah, I thought. I should've told him already. "Definitely, man." I told him. "I'll help however I can. Don't worry about it." And it was true. I don't mind helping him. Helping a friend in need is always a good idea. Helping anyone, in fact, is a good idea. What do you have to lose by helping? Money? I do not care much for money. Money is a terrible object that brings out the worst in people. Money is useful only in trade for useless things you do not need. That's okay though. People need something to covet, I guess. Sometimes I wish more people would realize that it is okay to set aside your own wants. It is okay to help other people sometimes. I enjoy helping people. Feels good man. I've noticed this a lot more lately. People are only interested in helping themselves. There are very few exceptions to that. They might say they wa...

"It's almost October." He said. I paused for a second while that settled in my mind. Shit , I thought. He's right . "Shit." I said. "You're right." We continued what we were doing. A few months ago I was telling people how quickly Halloween would be here. "It'll be here before you realize it," I told them. Even I was caught off guard. That felt like it was a couple of days ago. It seems like the days get shorter as each year goes by. You blink and a week passes. Already? I think. In the end I have nothing to show for the time. I haven't finished anything. I haven't started anything new. I haven't completed any objectives. I haven't even set any objectives for me to complete. I'm stagnating. I'm sitting here, stuck and unable to move myself forward. Why? I can feel the panic rising inside. Run. It's all I can think. It won't matter what I'm doing just as long as I'...

I pretend I don't understand it. Their sudden religious revival, I mean. "What's the deal with that?" I ask them. We've never been the church going type of family. We've never really been overtly religious. "There's an exhibit at the museum," I said. "About evolution. You can sign the guestbook, but it's full of creationists going on about how stupid evolution is. It's ridiculous. I mean, creationists: what's the deal?" The car was quiet for a while. "Um." I added. "Are you guys creationists?" "Yes." My parents said. "Oh." I replied. "Why don't you understand?" She asked me. It's not that I don't understand. I do understand. I can see why it's happening. He was already over there for a year. They need something to hold onto. Something higher that they can lean on when they need it. When they need the help. When you start staring down an...

As I sat there staring deeply into the pathetic attempt at pizza eating on my plate I realized something. Something important, I think. I am not very good at conversations. My mind started to drift to increasingly non-pertinent topics such as the time my friend and I found a deserted town and the time we went through the cave at Enchanted Rock. I struggled to snap myself back into the conversation at hand. "I really like fruit." She said. "What is your favorite kind of fruit?" I asked. Facepalm. Shouldn't I be getting past questions like that? I feel like I should actually be talking, not asking MySpace profile questions. I was hungry but my stomach was so twisted up I stopped being hungry. That was not really that great. I ended up not eating that much. That's okay. Plenty of opportunities to eat food. Not enough opportunities to talk. That is okay too. I guess talking to people just takes practice. Or maybe it's something that comes nat...

It's not that I enjoy being sick. Nobody enjoys being sick. That would be silly. I just don't have a problem with being sick. I'm not averse to it. I mean, I don't want to be sick and I'll avoid it as best I can but I don't have a problem with being sick. I always feel really happy when I'm sick. I do not know what the deal is with that. I don't really like being sick all that much. It is kind of inconvenient. It does give you an excuse to act silly, though. I do not need an excuse to be silly. It's bad though. We shouldn't pretend to be who we aren't. I do this. I can't help it. I have a hard time being myself. I bounce around between people and become who they want me to be. They become friends with a fragment, and I forget how to be myself. It is not that great. I try not to do it, but it happens. I can't control it. I'll remember someday. Oh well. I think that is the reason that old friends and new friends...

One of the things I enjoy about life is cereal. My favorite cereal is probably Rice Chex. I like it so much, in fact, that one summer I attempted to eat nothing but Rice Chex for as long as I could. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner merged into a never ending bowl of cereal. After about a month I got extremely pale and weak. Then I stopped. I thought it was pretty okay. Nobody seems to agree with me. This is funny, I think. When we like something a lot we tend to indulge in excess. When we find a favorite song we listen to it on repeat. When we find a favorite movie we watch it multiple times in a short time span. When we find a favorite book we read it again and again. When girls find a new favorite male actor they plaster their walls with his likeness and obsess over him day and night, making everyone else uncomfortable. These things are okay. What is not okay, interestingly, is when you eat a lot of your favorite cereal. This is actually disgusting. Who knew? Eating a lot...

So my car broke down. Again. A couple of nights ago. I was driving home after class when, all of a sudden, everything started to not work. Ah, I thought. Damn. I pulled off into a bank parking lot and tried to start it up again. After a few minutes without success I walked over to the side of the road and tried to flag down passing drivers. Nobody responded to my frantic arm waving so I stepped it up. I took my shirt off and started swinging it around in the air. This, I think, actually discouraged people from stopping even more. After a while I gave up and started dancing in the street again. This time somebody stopped. Yes! I thought. The driver stopped in the middle of the road and stepped out. He was talking into something. Then he flipped his lights on. Because he was a cop. I put my shirt on and walked slowly to his car. "What are you doing." He said. It was not really a question. "Um." I replied. "My car broke down, can you give me...

So my car broke down last night. Again. As usual, I guess. It's been doing that for a few months now. I got onto Bee Caves and realized that my headlights were not on and the only light on, in fact, was the battery light. And then the service, check engine, and check oil lights. Then it died. Right before that I'd managed to pull it off into a random driveway. It was about 1 am. I tried to start it up a few times before giving up and walking away from it. I couldn't push it since it was on a hill and it was too far from anything I could get to for car help. Also my window was stuck rolled down and I didn't want to leave that. I thought about calling a few friends, but it was late. I didn't want to wake them up. So I called my mom. While she woke up and drove out trying to find me I tried to find ways to entertain myself. I tried to flag down drivers that came by, but they sped away. Then I sang through Dr. Horrible songs. Then I sang through Nightma...

So I went to church again. I slept through most of it but I woke up to hear this: "Oh Lord you are holy indeed. You are a fountain of holiness." Dang, I thought. That is pretty holy. I saw The Nightmare Before Christmas again recently. That is still one of my favorite movies. I never get tired of watching it for some reason. I remember the first time I saw it quite clearly. I was about 5 years old at the time, I think. My dad and I were in the Albertson's video store looking for something to watch as was our Friday night custom. I walked through the aisle, glossing over the scary movies as quickly as I could without looking like I was scared. My dad pulled me aside with a video in hand. "What do you think about this one?" He held up a cover with a skeleton on the cover and 'nightmare' in the title. "It doesn't look very good." I said nonchalantly. "It looks lame." I rolled my eyes and turned away, playing it cool....

I don't park there anymore for several reasons which I will not go into because most of them are silly. I park in random neighborhoods much closer to campus now. No more bad times with that, hopefully. As I went to lunch today I ran into a couple of old friends from high school. Then I ran into another one. And another one. And two more. And another one. It was okay. But mainly I was happy to run into the first one. He told me about how his life had been for the past couple of years and about all the mistakes he had made. Mine paled in comparison, but he had bounced back quite well. He had changed a lot since I'd last seen him in high school, and for the better. So that was nice. We ended up sitting on a bench and talking about philosophy, society, humanity, the past, the future, science, religion, and many other things I had never talked to him about before. It was very nice. One of the things we talked about was how we--as people--were intelligent to a fault. ...

There are a few things I enjoy. One of them is riding my bike. It's like dancing. Or I guess it's like dancing. I wouldn't really know because I don't dance. I assume it's like dancing. It's probably as close to dancing as I'll ever get. It's not really like dancing. But it's graceful if you do it. It's an art form. Riding your bike through a crowd of people, weaving and changing speeds like the wind. Like dancing. I've taken to parking my car at my friend's apartment lately. I don't think she approves because it creates the possibility that we meet up in person. I pretend that doesn't bother me. The ride from there to campus is about 20 blocks. As I rode back to my car tonight a couple of bicycle cops came up behind me and then passed me in the street. My bag was extremely heavy and cutting into my throat. It was difficult to breathe and also my arm was going numb from the lessened blood flow. Not really thinkin...

I went to church today. It's never really been my thing. My family is supposed to be Catholic but we've never been too big on going to church on a regular basis. All of a sudden, though, it has become important for us to do this now. We've done it once now. I've bounced around a few church services before; Methodists, Baptists, Catholic, non-denominational. They're okay. Organized religion just isn't really my thing, I guess. I can't get excited about the church attendance and routine prayer. About answering to a higher power. I'd rather answer to myself. I respect religion and the religious, though. Everything they try to teach is amazingly relevant. Morals. Trying to improve oneself. Helping others. Those are things I buy into. When I was younger my parents put me into a Catholic pre-school. We had uniforms and everything. We had assigned seating at lunch and I sat at the end of the table, away from everyone. Nobody spoke and the cafe...

I've done some things I regret. I'd expect that a lot of people also have a secret list of things they wish that they had never done. It's just how people work. One time I kicked a guy in the mouth and knocked a tooth out. But he had stepped on my hand first, so I guess I don't really feel that bad about it. Feeling guilty about things essentially lets us say, "Hey I feel bad about this thing that I did and didn't feel so bad about before but since I feel bad about it now and you can see that, I must be some kind of okay person." Guilt is supposed to reassure us that we won't make the same mistakes tomorrow that we did yesterday, even though we know it'll happen anyway. That's okay, I guess. It's kind of silly if you think about it. Most of the time we express guilt publicly as if we're telling people to give us a break because we already feel bad about whatever. It's a ploy we've developed to extract pity from others i...

So stuff sucks. I think that's a universally shared belief. A lot of people have miserable lives and many more are actually horrible people themselves who pretend that they are not horrible people. I am one of those people. Sometimes I wake up and hate everything. I guess that's pretty okay. Some people disagree with me on that point, but that's okay too. A couple of days ago I was at work. The bad thing about work, aside from being there, is that I work too quickly. The jobs are so repetitive that you can't help but get into an efficient routine and finish everything sooner than you want. To compensate, I spend a decent amount of time in the restroom. Sometimes I actually use it, sometimes I just sit there and think about things. This time there was a man at the end of the hall who apparently had just come around the corner or was waiting there already. As I stalked into the restroom he called out to me: "Hey, man. Can I suck on your dick?" It w...