Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Timid, but shouldn't be

The recent sell off has me tempted to shift my savings into my trading account, but part of me is reluctant to. I get the feeling that now is a good time. Illogically though part of me wants to wait till I have more money in front of me, so that I can buy in a preplanned spreadsheet specified fashion with a minimum of transactions. Though commissions are low enough that it'll probably cost me more to wait, unless the market takes a more serious tumble.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Shorter Work Week

Well, 24 days down so far. Another three this week. Two more weeks and then I'll be 20% through the year. Maybe I should count all the work days ahead just for fun. I have mixed feelings about that. I suppose it is about half way through Q1. I had two big things right now. I lost a receipt today, it was for my phone card so I'm out $10.50. Trying to shrug it off. Went a little nuts searching everywhere for it, but I'm trying to just accept it and get another one.
The other big one, back on the TV rotting your brain thing. I had an epiphany. A large chunk of my childhood misery can be attributed to someone along the lines somewhere assuming that I was autistic and ignoring any evidence to the contrary. It came to me while I was watching House and how they were treating an autistic patient. Autism might be going a bit far, but treated like there was something wrong with me. It explains the intensive work I had to go through on the basics while I was mastering much more advanced concepts at school. I also say this with many memories of being checked out by various psychiatrists and their conversations with my parents.
It explains things, however it doesn't excuse them. Personally, I wonder if it'll help me forgive. This doesn't change anything going on in the family at the moment. I suppose this changes nothing.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Life so dull

Four days off, and it really brings light how bare my life has become. I hardly know what to do, spend a lot of time sitting around wishing that I were still tired so that I could at least sleep through the dullness. Instead, I find myself sitting here wondering how far I should go to try to be happy. It's often used more as an excuse to just let go. Living fast and loose is often a very destructive process. I'm afraid some day I'll wish I didn't take so much time now or cross some point of no return.
Also, one of my worst limitations right now is that I seem reluctant to establish connections and go out and do things. Should probably do something about that.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Not My Finances But...

Today was a bad day at work. We had some material with a defect on the end. Instead of cutting just the bad part, 2 inches, some of it was cut as much as 17 inches. It was quite a mess. There were enough bad pieces that the supervisor decided we'd cut them all so that they looked kind of even. We had a meeting about it. The saw was set up. Someone got frustrated with it and set it up to cut the other end, the good end. The saw was set up again. Anyway, much time and material wasted. Boss says that we lost about 3.5-4.5K because people can't follow instructions.

Monday, February 9, 2009

TV rots the brain?

I was looking back at a few old blog posts and came to two realizations, 1) TV shows have gotten me thinking about a couple of very interesting things, and 2) I don't post as much as I used to. So, a brief list of tv shows that have gotten me thinking:
1) Intervention - The name pretty much describes it. The show is a reality tv series on interventions. I think it appeals to me because I worry about appearing detached from reality.
2) Wife Swap - It's hard to get a feel for what a good family setting is in my absence of one. This almost doesn't help with that, but at least it gives me a feel for how bad things can get. I guess I'm not alone in a lot of ways. Also gives me some basis for comparison when trying to figure out how bad things are for me.
3) House - He's insightful and often way out there with his thinking. It's also nice to see someone who doesn't pretend to be nice when being a jerk for a change. There's so many interesting observations about people and society in there.

So, yeah, small goal for the moment, post more frequently.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

About to start another week

I feel strange. Life is an awkward cycle of days where I'm too busy to do anything followed by days that I don't know what to do. I wonder how long I'll be able to last. I've worked 20 days now, that's roughly a 10th of the year. I can't help wondering if I'll really be able to keep this up as long as I need to. Anyway, gotta gather food. Need more breakfast cereal. I like granola. Also going to prepare hot chicken curry.

Saturday, February 7, 2009

More Questions than Answers

This week I find myself asking a lot of questions. One of them being why I suddenly and mysteriously have more energy than I used to. Unexplained sudden change worries me. It's a good thing that I feel more awake now, but what is causing it?
Also regarding my health, there's another spot on my back that I have no idea about. Part of me worries that it might be something serious. My dad started getting all sorts of spots when his schleroderma flared up. There's also the positive ana, and cold extremities.
I'm also starting to get a grasp of just how destructive a search for personal happiness can be. I'm sure there are many drug addicts that started off because they simply wanted to be happy and that was the quickest way. Bad things happen when we ignore consequences. I'm making a lot of big decisions and while I can recognize that there are no right answers here, there certainly are a lot of bad answers.
Later on though, I was reminded of Terry Fox. He had something that he felt would make him happy and it turned out to be something beautiful. Of course, one could also argue that he was in a position where there really weren't any more long term consequences to his life so he could do anything without regret.
I'm also reminded that most people say that you regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did. Anyway, I wonder what I could do better right now as I'm sure many of us do.