When I was a kid - I'm talking elementary school, even junior high - being successful was a huge deal to me. I was the perfectionist, the kid who kicked himself because of a stupid mistake on a test that caused him to walk away with a 99 instead of a 100. The kid who would read chapters and chapters ahead of the rest of the class in his science textbook because he knew that the teacher wouldn't get that far before the school year was over. I studied hard, because I wanted to be wealthy and comfortable one day, and because I honestly enjoyed being good at the things I did.

I'm jobless, battling writer's block fiercely, and probably going to be getting braces sometime within the next few months. I've lost numerous people I really cared about in the past year, and my extended family seems to be getting steadily crazier and crazier. My best friend is too depressed to do much other than talk about how depressed he is, I'm finding I suck at meeting new people, and when it comes to the opposite sex, I may as well be dead. In general, I could probably spend half an hour rattling off things that are going wrong.

But I'm here again; strangely happy despite these things.

I blame mental illness XD.

I am very, very tired of being lonely.

I don't know how to remedy this - the ways I do know, and that keep getting suggested to me by other people - meeting girls through friends, through work, through dating services, and "just socializing in public" - aren't working, and generally have never worked.

They just aren't interested. They never are. So I guess there really is something about me I'm just not seeing. That, or it's my appearance, after all.

That's all I feel like writing for tonight.

So...today was kinda awesome XD. That's all, really.

So despite the events of late, I'm back onto LiveJournal again. Or, rather, I'm still here; it's not that I didn't think I would be, since I've decided I'm determined to keep my head above water, no matter what. Instead, let me just say that I'm in better shape than I would have imagined I'd be, mentally and psychologically. I haven't found myself bursting into tears, at least, which is definitely a good thing.

However...I'm not really sure how I do feel, beyond that. I haven't written a damn thing(besides something I'd rather not mention here) in weeks, now, and the past few days have seen my mood take a severe dip right before going to sleep, despite having a good bit of fun here and there. I'm not entirely sure what means; either I'm on the verge of getting happy again, and it's just my nagging pessimism, or I'm just managing to keep a bout of mild depression at bay by being obnoxiously cheerful as much as possible. It could be something else entirely, but I'm leaning more towards one of those.

It's doubtless, though, that the loneliness factor is playing heavily into that. All of my good friends are either matched up or in the process of becoming matched up, and I've done the stupid thing of noticing this again. Meanwhile, I still haven't figured out how and where to meet a girl who might spark some mutual interest; all of the usual channels recommended by people continue to be dry wells. I keep telling myself that my past experiences have made me a better person, but now the spectre of my one gigantic failure of a relationship is starting again to look less and less like a learning experience, and more and more like a severing of my Achilles tendon.

That's one reason behind my on-again, off-again desire to get this job at Epic in Wisconsin. It would be a chance to start over, to maybe not be so jaded by my prospects at finding someone. But, at the same time, there'd be no familiarity to start with; there's a good chance that the well would be as dry there as here, but with the added "bonus" of me not having any friends around. I don't want to say just how much that scares the living hell out of me.

I do better when I don't think about these things, and just go about my daily business. I do pretty well, actually. But my brain's too active to just ignore something this big in the periphery, no matter how many times I shove it there, and so once again here I find myself.

Oh well. I seem to write more stuff when I'm in an angsty mood like this one, so maybe this is all just my muse strolling back into town and beating me over the head with a baseball bat to announce her return.

So the funeral's over. Now I just have to get through the burial in the morning. Hopefully, the hard part's over and done with.

This week, I've had the usual Eberron game - complete with warforged hijinks, a heavy metal soundtrack, and more fodder for Drake's ever-expanding diary file - and the World's Largest Dungeon game - where we once again survived against the odds, and my half-celestial changeling cleric/sorcerer possibly decided on his next new form to adopt. I also managed to clear up a snafu on my insurance, am very close to completing my application for Epic, totally destroyed a song on Guitar Hero 2 that's always given me difficulty, and just left a fantastic Friday get-together with most of my old Transylvania crew. All-in-all, this week has been one of the better, more enjoyable ones I've had in a while.

And on Sunday, I get to say goodbye to the only grandfather I've ever known for the last time.

I've wondered about my reaction to this. Wednesday was much the same as when I lost my uncle in November - I couldn't find a reason to stumble out of bed until some god-awful hour in the middle of the day, and even then I couldn't make myself do anything worth a damn. So I just played games and whatnot, and lost myself in fantasy for a while. In a way, I've been riding that current ever since I found out.

It's not as if it was completely unexpected. This makes five people close in my family to me that have died in the past year - a great uncle, a great aunt, my only remaining biological grandfather, an uncle, and the only actual grandpa I've ever really spent any time with - three of which were due to cancer. I wasn't as close to all of them as I was my uncle and grandpa, but I still felt it. I don't think I'm becoming desensitized to it; it's just that, when doctors say they can't do anything for someone, no amount of faith/prayer healing what-have-you is going to make any difference. You hope, but you know that the odds are stacked against you - and you prepare yourself for the worst. Maybe it's just that I had prepared myself well. I know my dad took it hard, because his aunt and uncle were very close to him all of his life, and my uncle was his in-law, but he was like a brother to him.

I'm actually strangely okay with all of this. As in, I don't feel like my world's crashing down around my head. With my uncle, we found out he had cancer, and then something like two or three months later, he was just gone one morning, just a couple of days before Thanksgiving, of all times. My great aunt, who had been sick for a while, passed right after, and now this. Between all of that, and the people saying to my family "put it in God's hands, he'll take care of it," and various other things I can't really stand to hear anymore, I feel like I should be stark-raving mad, and at times I was such a storm of emotions inside that I can't believe I never really cried or said anything about it all.

But that isn't really the case. I suppose my own views on religion got a little more well-defined during all of this - if I needed any more convincing that God, whatever he/she/it is, leaves this world up to us to fix, that all did it. I'm not mad at God, because he didn't give my family cancer, and he didn't make them suffer. I believe in my heart that he could have saved them, but then I also believe that that's not how he operates. If God had any hand in all of this, I believe it was just the final release that took them to the next life, whatever that may be.

And I believe that way because otherwise, all of this wouldn't mean anything. If God were to just swoop in and cure people miraculously, what motivation would we have to beat these things ourselves? I really feel that people who just pray and do nothing else to save themselves are fools for this very reason. Polio wasn't cured because God deemed it would be and blessed people; it was cured because humans worked their asses off to find a cure. It's the sort of thing that makes us grow as beings, that makes us a little more than what we were yesterday. Humans prevailing in the face of overwhelming opposition, in the face of those who say "we can't do it, we have to ask God to do it for us," will always be more amazing to me than supposed miracles ever could be; in fact, those are the real miracles.

It's probably just my insane optimism speaking again, but I think it's the only thing that's carrying me this far. And it's saying that all of this isn't in vain. If God doesn't save people who are suffering already, what sense would it make for me to expect him to save the people I care about? It's because we have to do these things ourselves. Maybe God gives us the little nudges we need to keep going when all seems futile, or something like that, but if that's all it is, then I'm okay with that. Because every disease we beat is like a giant "SCREW YOU!" to the notion that we're powerless as humans. And it'll only be that much louder and more deafening of a victory cry when we beat something as huge as cancer.

It will happen one day. And when it does, at least some people won't have to go through what my family's been going through. That's enough for me. I'll see them all again someday, somewhere.

That's enough.

I got the strangest urge the other day. I decided I really wanted to write a romance story.

And not just a story, 'cuz most of the stories I'm in the process of writing have some degree of a romance element. I'm talkin' a sugar-sweet, shoujo-caliber delve into the sorts of things that make people embarrassed to admit that they like it. Something you'd see in a manga between two students.

This is one of the stranger urges I've experienced in a while, and I'm not entirely sure why I've gotten it. I suppose there's a number of possible reasons. For starters, it sounds like it might be fun. I'm usually very action-based, or comedy-based, in my stories; something with a bent that's that much different at its core would be an interesting exercise, if nothing else.

I think another reason may just be that I never had that, or anything close to it. I never had a childhood or high school sweetheart, and college, well, isn't even worth mentioning in that regard(my own doing, of course). But I've never really had a lovey-dovey, actual romance before, the kind where a girl waits at her locker with baited breath, anticipating the moment where her guy leaves class and comes to see her, and he's generally happy to see her, with no playing hard-to-get on either side for bewildering, nonsensical reasons. A romance where things aren't necessarily always peachy, but they're genuine. Since I love living vicariously through my characters, maybe that's the big driving force behind this.

It's pretty pathetic, really. I was so caught up looking for the be-all, end-all love of my life when I was younger, when I should've just been looking for someone whom I enjoyed being with, and who liked me. In all honesty, it's probably neither realistic nor even desirable to "get it right the first time" and wind up marrying the first person you're serious about. I've known this for a while now, but back then, it never really occurred to me. That was the perfectionist in me, I guess, the "if I can't do it perfectly, I won't do it all" mentality that's been such a burden my whole life. If I could go back and talk to the kid I was, I'd tell him that it's okay not to over-think everything. When I think that I could've had something light and sweet back then(that may have eventually blossomed into something more serious), I just shake my head and kick myself for doing things the way I did, both in high school and in college.

But hindsight is 20-20, as they say. Most people don't need 10+ years to learn those lessons, but I guess I should be glad that I learned them at all. Maybe my new story will make for an enlightening/entertaining experience.

I want to write tonight. I know I should be - Altair and Ciela probably miss me. But even though I want to, I don't feel that I can. There's definitely something in the way, and I can't really put my finger on it.

I think at least part of it is my mood. I was great today, and I had lots of fun; but as soon as I got home, my mood sank. Maybe it's because of family issues, and the fact that it feels like the pain just won't stop hitting us. And then there's the uncertainty about my job situation, and whether I should lift my last barrier and shoot for something far and away from here - which would mean leaving behind just about everyone in my life. The usual "I'm lonely" business that I deal with doesn't even compare to either of those situations, which is probably the main reason why I feel so besieged whenever I come back from my retreats into Diversion Land.

At least with the job situation, I have some degree of control. I can choose not to pursue it, and stay comfortable here as I slip more and more into likely stagnation, or to man up on my big talk of pursuing something bigger than the daily grind that so many people fall into, and take a chance on something again. It feels like it's been an eternity since I did that, and some of the more prominent examples that come to mind didn't turn out so well.

A big part of me keeps wishing for things to get simple again. It's so cliched, but I really didn't realize how much fun and potential surrounded me in high school and college. I was surrounded by people who meant the world to me, and I didn't even realize how happy I was. Things were easy and clear-cut, and even though I still had (as I saw them) difficulties, at the end of the day I didn't really have any worries.

But life doesn't just get simple again because you want it to. I have a feeling that this apprehension is because I'm on the verge of some things unlike anything I've ever experienced, that will change my life in ways I can't even imagine right now, both good and bad. And one of those things just may be my willingness, or refusal, to go all in and bet on myself once more.

But I'm scared. I'm scared, because the wings I've always hunted for may finally be right in front of me, skirting just out of view, and I've never flown before. And even if I do fly, when (and if) I return, things will probably never be the same again.

Usually, one might expect to see more words in that title, such as "Memories Redux" or "Pirate Robot Attack Redux," but I didn't think it was necessary this time, for reasons that are about to become evident. I took a good long look through my LiveJournal last night(I actually think I may have read over just about every entry I've ever made over these five years), and I found something that seemed to be a popular theme for me: the concept of a halcyon return.

That word may not make much sense to anyone else other than me. Basically - in the odds that I don't myself remember upon future reading of this journal - a halcyon return is when, after things have seemed really shitty and hard to deal with, and I don't know how I'm going to get through them, I wind up being, some short while later(usually anywhere from several days to a month or two) in an odd state of serenity and contentment, if not happiness. I could just as easily have named it a "halcyon prelude," as things have always gotten bad again, so one could make the argument that the peace is but the calm before a storm, but I believe "halcyon return" is more indicative of the actual trend.

Anyway, I've noticed this happen several times over the course of my LiveJournal-ing, and it's a concept that's becoming a little clearer to me now. Happiness and sadness, I think, move in cycles for me. It's not that I'm generally melancholy, and something happens every so often to pull me out of it - as I usually tend to think - nor that I'm chipper most of the time, until something gets me down; though I feel the latter may be more accurate. For the past few years of my life, at least, I've traveled steadily between those two extremes, like a pendulum; never fully reaching the darkest depths of despair, or the highest peaks of euphoria. It's becoming more evident now that things I never thought would happen are hitting home seemingly left and right, and I'm not really sure why.

I think it may be that I was smack dab in the middle of another halcyon return for a very short while at the very end of last year and the beginning of this one, despite things that were happening that were most certainly not happy. So maybe it's more complicated than that; maybe they kick in while things are still crappy, and just help me realize that, in the end, it's going to be okay. As I face down the things life throws at me, and try to make some difficult decisions - including whether or not to try for a job across the country, away from the people I've grown to know and love - that's no small bit of reassurance.

Whatever the case...I like them. I like them, I wish to experience them more often, and I hope that more people in my life someday discover halcyon returns of their own.