I had a really nice dream last night. It happens every now and then. It's always irritating, though. It puts me into a good mood (me of all people) and from there I have nowhere to go but down.

Down when I remember that it was just a dream. Down when I remember that dreams don't necessarily reflect reality, that all too often they represent other things. Hopes, wishes, expectations that in reality are long-gone.

Just keep beating that dead horse, Dave. Maybe it'll get back on its feet.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for this phase to end. Except I'm not really waiting. That's too strong a word. It implies too much effort, or maybe too little effort. Words are hard.

And it's not really a phase, I don't think. Nope, more and more often I find myself thinking that it's not a phase; sometime over the last couple of years, it's become a personality.

I prefer to think of this as a change rather than, say, an unveiling. That lessens the sting a little. Not a lot, but maybe enough. Maybe.

It bugs me when I feel like I'm doing this not-quite-waiting thing. There's really no point. Because I've changed, too, and my change might be permanent.

It would be pretty ironic if the tables ended up turning. Not funny, though, not at all. I think it would be incredibly sad.

I'd probably cave.

Spent some time tonight trying to figure out where I am. Or where I'm going. Both answers have eluded me. I can't even tell if I'm the one moving, or if it's the world that's moving past me. The former, I usually think, but maybe not so much this weekend.

This weekend, I've stood still. I've done nothing. I've rejected invitations and I've ignored phone calls. I've done nothing with my life except that thing which comes all too easily to me. I've wondered.

I remember a time, not too far in the past, when I always felt like I was moving toward something. It was, to be sure, a long and arduous journey, but there was a destination. Now, again, not so much. Maybe I'm still moving, but the world is flat, and only the edge awaits me. Or perhaps I'm a deer frozen by headlights. By fear. By uncertainty as to which way safety lies.

Perhaps there is no safety, and I'm only fooling myself when I let those silly thoughts claw their way to the front of my mind.

It bears down upon me, or I hurtle toward it, and I don't know what it is.

I'm really rambling now. I know that. My brain is at such odds with itself. Wonderful thoughts enter and are immediately rejected as horrible.

I forget too much, and I remember way too much.

I'm just so damn tired of it.

I remember reading something once. That a sign of a dying blog is when the blog becomes full of apologies and excuses for not having new content.

I think I'm just tired. Of everything. Writing. Pretending. Work. Love. Life.

There's no point.

There's no spark in me at all. Not even an ember that I can somehow fan back to life.

This mood shall pass.

Unless it doesn't.

So very tired.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

I don't believe in fate. What I believe in is timing. Sometimes, the latter can look an awful lot like the former.

Yesterday was our monthly maintenance day at work. I had a pretty light list of things to do. I got to work in time for the 1:00 start.

I had two hardware technicians show up. One, to replace a failed disk, and the other to look into an unrecognized system board. The disk replacement went quickly and without incident.

We had to wait about 25 minutes before we could look at the system board. The backups on that server were running long, and we needed to make sure they completed.

Once we got the go-ahead, the system board was fixed in about 30 minutes.

Next I had a few patches to install on a couple servers. This took about 45 minutes.

Then I spent about an hour waiting for our database administrator to start his stuff up and check everything out. He finished this around 3:50.

At 4:00, I spent a few minutes talking to my boss, and then I left.

Meanwhile, there was a young Army guy who was having a day of his own, I don't know any of the details of his day. Perhaps he was running late, and therefore speeding. Or maybe he was distracted by something. Maybe he had to pee. Maybe he was speeding just because he was young and that's what young people do. Whatever.

At 4:10, after my light turned green, I pulled from Bunsen Parkway onto Hurstborne, preparing to turn left. Also at 4:10, the Army kid was barreling down Hurstborne. He saw the light turn red in front of him, he saw several crossing cars in front of him, and he tried to stop.

He ended up stopping by plowing into the front of my Monte Carlo. Spun me about 30 degrees, I figure.

If any one of a dozen things that I did yesterday had taken just a few seconds more or less time, I wouldn't have been in that intersection at 4:10. If any one of an unknown number of things had happened differently for that kid yesterday, he wouldn't have been speeding toward that intersection at 4:10.

But things happened the way they happened, and they took as much time as they took, and so we were both there, in the same place, at the same time.

Crunch.

It's hard not to think about how many things had to play out just right for that accident to happen. I was the second car at my light. If I'd been the first, then the car behind me would have been hit. Or if the kid had started to slow down a half-second later, he'd have hit the car in front of me. He was definitely going to hit another car. There was no doubt of that. He was going too fast. There were too many cars in front of him.

If he'd started to slow down a half-second sooner, he'd have smacked into the door of my car, right where I was sitting.

It could have been a lot worse.

I don't believe in fate. Fate is a silly concept. A way for cowards to shift blame, avoiding consequences for their own actions, and a way for weaklings to hide from their own responsibilities and potential.

I don't believe in it, but sometimes it seems pretty damn believable.

This dude at work got himself a new toy. A Macbook Pro. So we're all huddled around watching him play with it.

It seems really cool. I can almost see myself drinking the Apple Kool Aid before too long. I already took a sip when I bought my iPhone, I guess taking a gulp with a Macbook wouldn't kill me. Except financially.

CartGirl says I should definitely get one. I didn't tell her who already has one.

It's not like that, and it never was.

This has been one of the toughest obstacles to understanding that I've faced over the years. It comes up time after time after time, and it's always wrong, and I never seem to be able to find the words to explain the way it truly was. The way it truly is.

Expectations, assumptions, hopes, they never mattered, not enough to affect any of this. Those things still don't matter.

It just was. It just happened.

That girl is beautiful. That girl seems smart. That girl seems sweet. That girl doesn't seem like a slut. That girl seems friendly.

Nope, I never had any of those thoughts, not at first anyway. I didn't have time for those thoughts. I had two seconds, and that's all I needed. That was an eternity compared to what I needed.

That girl.

Period.

Everything was a bonus. There was no validation or authentication or demonstration or confirmation. There was no ideal, no pedestal, no fantasy, no anything except...

I had nothing but a simple fact, and nothing that's ever happened has changed that simple fact.

That girl.

Period.

---

Sometimes, I hear stories. I don't like them. I don't like hearing them. I wish people would stop telling them to me. They've never changed a thing except my mood.

Sometimes I write weird stuff and then let it ferment in my drafts folder for years:

---

The comet had no memory, no thoughts, no consciousness at all. It existed, and that was all that it did. It was a frozen ball of rock and ice orbiting with millions of other frozen balls of rock and ice.

Then, one day out of billions of otherwise identical days, something happened. Something different happened. The comet could not feel, but if it could have felt, it would have felt a pull. Just the slightest tug. It would have felt itself veer, ever so slightly, from the orbit it had known for so long.

And it began to fall, inward, toward the Sun.

---

A thousand years passed, but this meant nothing to the comet. It fell by the outer planets, and its trajectory was altered again, but not enough. By the time it passed Jupiter, the largest planet, its fate was sealed. This would be its first, and only, journey inward.

But it could not know this. It was, after all, a frozen ball of rock and ice.

---

As it continued to fall, the comet heated up, it began to spew violent streams of gas. It began to earn the names it had been given by humans. Hair of the Head. And later, Sword of the Sky.

It became beautiful.

---

Even as the fire tore it apart, it gave it life. For the first time in its existence, the comet felt something.

Beautiful pain.

Totally worth it.

I was looking through some old draft entries, and I ran across this gem. Everything you ever wanted to know about the first decade of my life:

1965: I was born. My hobbies included drooling and pooping.

1966: Late in the year I got a sister. Little did I know that it would take me another 20 years to come to grips with that fact.

1967: I learned how to call my grandmother on the phone, so I did that every 10 seconds or so.

1968: My hobbies included being a brat.

1969: Dad had us watch some dudes walking on the moon. I don't think anything else happened that year.

1970: I walked to kindergarten and back every day. My hobbies included running through sliding-glass doors, cutting the shit out of myself, and giving my mother gray hairs.

1971: We moved to a new house. I started first grade.

1972: I discovered that girls were good for other things besides throwing dirt at them. I forget what those other things are.

1973: Late in the year Mom brought home another sister. I hid in a tree because I'd wanted a brother.

1974: Tornadoes!!!!

1975: I turned 10, so I was officially a man.

This has been going on too long.

See, what I do is I write these entries in Outlook Express. Just like I'm writing an email. That way I can get it spell-checked before I copy and paste it into my blogging software. My blogging software doesn't check spelling. Weird, I know.

Anyway, what's been going on too long is that I've been sitting here with my fingers poised over the keyboard, my eyes staring at a blank email-composition window, for oh about a gazillion years now.

Waiting for inspiration, you know.

It's not coming, though. I give up. There must have been some misunderstanding, because I was sure that inspiration and I had an appointment for this morning.

I guess I'm feeling better now than I was Wednesday. I still feel a little subdued, though. Just a combination of a lot of things. Not really feeling very motivated to do anything because it would probably be a waste of time. I dunno, that's just how I feel nowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Weird, my keyboard just broke. Luckily I have a million keyboards lying around, so I was able to get working again.

Too bad I forgot what I was going to write about. It was gonna be brilliant, I bet.