I ended up getting maybe 2 hours of sleep this morning, so if this post lacks the ridiculous tone of my previous posts, it's because I'm not just tired – I'm dead.

I ran out of silverware yesterday,  so I decided to run the dishwasher and then go off and do some computery stuff and then read a bit. After maybe 40 minutes, I put the book down, and went to the bathroom. I was a bit shocked, because usually when I walk down the hallway, the carpet isn't soaking wet. I heard water running, so I turned on the light, and sure enough – the dishwasher was gushing water all over my floor. It must have been doing this for at least 20 minutes.

Shock. Panic. I turned the knob on the dishwasher to "off" hoping that that would help alleviate my flooding situation. No good. I opened the door, surely that would stop the water? Nope. I looked under the sink and turned off the first water valve I saw, and since it was the cold water, that didn't do much good either. I finally got the water turned off, and was able to relax slightly. I picked up my phone and dialed the "emergency after-hours maintenance" number, and learned that I can't rely on that if I ever have an emergency. I still haven't heard back from anyone.

So I spent the rest of the night, and most of this morning sweeping water out my door, laying towels on the carpet, ringing out towels, slipping around on my kitchen floor.. it's been a lot of fun. At one point I decided to take a break and lay down on my bed. About two and a half hours later I woke up on my living room floor. I'm not sure.. don't ask.

And I'm still working on drying this place out. At least it's windy. With all the doors and windows open, that should help quite a bit.

Since I'm venting, I might as well get out some other stuff.

1) I'm going to have to pick up a second job. I don't know where, I don't know what. If you know any place that's looking for a decent programmer that they want to pay way too much – hook me up.

2) I might have to rent out my second room. I don't know who I'd be willing to put in here though. I don't know anyone that's looking for a place, and I don't want to bring in some random person. A random female would be awkward, and I don't think I'd like it.. and a random not-female, well, I think I'd have nightmares and wonder if he was a not-quite-reformed serial killer or something.

3) I'm worried about the girl.  She's got a lot on her plate right now, and I wish I could make things easier for her, but I'm afraid that I'm doing the opposite. All I can do is be supportive and try not to fall-back on my habit of saying stupid things at the worst possible time. I know she's strong enough to handle things, but I think sometimes she forgets that. It's hard. I love her, and it hurts knowing that she's going through this. lyg.

4) I ended up eating over 4000 calories yesterday. Guess how much weight I gained? None.

Anyway.. #3 is my big concern. The other stuff can fall apart around me as much as it needs to, I can't really worry about money or anything anymore. I just have to enjoy what I've got, and try to take care of what matters most to me. The important stuff.

So I found a copy of the p90x workout videos that I can borrow.. It's pretty brutal. My body isn't really used to working out, and I threw quite a bit at it last night. I couldn't completely follow along with the video, because I don't have a chin-up bar, and I gave up after about 40 minutes because I couldn't do too much more moving.

I think I must have done about a billion pushups. I kept getting to the point where I'd be counting a set, and get to 30, and then my brain would kick in and be like "no, you can't even do 30. you're done" and then my arms would give out.

I'm really not sore anymore, but I think I have like "phantom pain" where I keep imagining what it felt like last night.

At the UNRELENTING nagging of spudart.. I gave in and took one of those personality test dealy things. This one – http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp. And here, for the world to see, are my results.. I am.. an INFJ. It copied the font and color when I pasted, I'll leave that, just because it looks all dramatic. 🙂

So, what does that mean? Here's an excerpt from one of the description pages:

Counselors can be hard to get to know. They have an unusually rich inner life, but they are reserved and tend not to share their reactions except with those they trust. With their loved ones, certainly, Counselors are not reluctant to express their feelings, their face lighting up with the positive emotions, but darkening like a thunderhead with the negative. Indeed, because of their strong ability to take into themselves the feelings of others, Counselors can be hurt rather easily by those around them, which, perhaps, is one reason why they tend to be private people, mutely withdrawing from human contact. At the same time, friends who have known a Counselor for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise. Not that they are inconsistent; Counselors value their integrity a great deal, but they have intricately woven, mysterious personalities which sometimes puzzle even them.

And that actually sounds a bit like me. I've been categorized now. Feel free to put me in a box and label me however you see fit.

More info about this personality type:
http://keirsey.com/personality/nfij.html
http://typelogic.com/infj.html

Continuing the positive attitude and outlook was a bit harder today. Part of it stems from the fact that I got like 6 minutes of sleep last night. There was way too much time spent staring at the clock thinking "I need to fall asleep…. NOW!" And then at work, to compensate, I made extra nasty and double strength coffee. 8 cups. Followed by Mt. Dew. I got that beautiful caffeine high, followed by the caffeine overwhelm, continuing into the caffeine withdrawal, and then the pain.

Still, I managed to stay mostly positive. Even in the face of a group of annoying students that are around for the rest of the week. There are a few that have decided to try to give me crap, and I would love it if they fell down the stairs or something. But I'm still gonna smile, and treat them like they're not wastes of our resources.

And today I managed to cram in a bunch of extra food.. I've put on a few pounds. It's good stuff. I'm still about 5 pounds from my pre-"depressed and made myself sick and couldn't eat" weight, but I'm working on it. And then I've got another 10-15 pounds to gain to hit my target weight.

Last weekend I was bumming around and watching tv. There was a commercial for a fitness program – p90x. How extreme does that sound? Say it: p-ninety-ex! I was intrigued. It combines yoga, weight training, kempo(?) karate, and other good sounding stuff. A 90 day program, and it only costs 3 easy payments of $39.99. $120. ugh. I'm trying to find a used copy, because I can't shell out that kind of dough right now. But it would be nice to have a rigorous and comprehensive training program like that to follow.

So here we go. I'm a few steps closer to a happier, healthier me. It feels good.

I decided this morning to try to be as positive as I could throughout the rest of the day. This meant no getting upset with anyone, no getting stressed out, just staying in the zone for as long as possible. I made it a point to smile constantly, a genuine smile.. people can see through fakeness.

It was good. I noticed that other people smiled as they responded, and it made me feel better. It was a kind of self-perpetuating happiness. The more I did it, the easier it was, the better it felt, and the more I felt like doing it.

It even saved me a bit of cash.

I went out to Culver's to eat, big smile, and asked the cashier girl how she was doing. The standard small-talk, mostly taken for granted, almost meaningless in most conversation. But I did something different, I asked it and actually cared what the response was, I wasn't just saying it out of habit like 99% of people do. And the way she responded, sounding happy and smiling, you could tell that she knew it wasn't just a cold greeting. And she rung up a 10% discount.

Being happy kicks ass!

What is sparxMind? What does it mean? I think it was almost a year and a half ago that I registered this domain. At the time I had an idea for a project, but it was quite an undertaking and I was reluctant to actually begin it. I sat on it. Eventually I had another idea that I wanted to begin working on, I ended up taking no action on that one as well. I wasn't really conscious of my avoidance at the time, but a part of me decided to try to push things forward, and I ended up registering the domain sparxmind.com. It was originally going to be a place to house things like those projects, things that were spawned from my mind. But it went unused. And now it's finally being utilized, as a blog, which is probably the most literal use of the name that I could come up with. sparxMind – the most direct way that I can probably express what is actually on my mind.

For the majority of my life, I've allowed myself to be held back, as with those earlier projects. I let myself fall into a program of non-action and managed to somehow find things to blame it on, lack of sleep, headache, too much work, all kinds of excuses. I've allowed negative thoughts and insecurities to hold me back from reaching my potential. Recently I've been trying to tackle these issues, and I have made some progress, but it seems like as one obstacle is removed, I encounter a new one. I knew it would be a long and difficult process, but I think I've still underestimated it. I have to just keep facing and dealing with things as they come up.

And that's part of what I hope to accomplish with this blog. It gives me a way to keep track of where I'm at, and to share what I can. My main hope is that something in one of these posts will strike a chord with someone, and help them enjoy their life and themselves more. My method of documentation is pretty random and at times incredibly vague, but I hope that I can add enough entertainment value to it that it's worth reading.

Like I said, my insecurities have held me back quite a bit. They've prevented me from building real friendships, and from having any sort of real relationship, friend or otherwise, for a long time now. In my head, I'm avoiding socializing not to avoid people, but to protect them. I feel like this burden that I put on myself will weight down on those that are around me, and it doesn't seem fair to expect anyone else to have to share the weight of it with me. It's not a fun thought pattern to be stuck in.

For almost two and a half years now, I've had this goal.. and I think there's only one person here that will, or should know what I'm talking about. It's something that keeps coming up, and something that I really want to make a part of my life. But I haven't been able to do that yet. I've felt like I've been really close a couple times, but something always seems to happen. The insecurity, the worry, the pushing.. And it makes me wonder, not about whether or not I really want it (I do, of that I'm certain – I want it more than anything,) but I wonder if I would actually let it happen. I wonder if the decision ever became mine to make, if I could say "yes" and that that would make it happen, or would something, some worry, some insecurity, cause me to destroy that chance? I want to say yes. I want to have that chance. I think that's where I'm supposed to be.

One very important thing that I've learned and am still absorbing, is that happiness isn't something that happens. It isn't dependent on what you've done, or what you have. It's a way of looking at things, a way of thinking. Even with everything that I'm trying to deal with, I still consider myself happy. I'm choosing to be happy. So many people fall into the way of thinking that they need to do something or need to have something and THEN they'll be happy, but once they do or get whatever it is, there's something else out just a little further. All you need to do to be happy is decide to be… even then though, you can't be in that happy state of mind 24/7.. I think they call that denial.

I'm reminded of the movie Peter Pan – all that was needed to fly off to Never Never Land (is that 3 words? 2? 1?) was pixie dust and happy thoughts. I have the happy thoughts.. that part is mostly taken care of. What I'm trying to hold onto now is my pixie dust. That one thing that will allow me to experience what's beyond "happiness".. It's so close, I just need to figure out what I need to do to be able to actually hold it in my hands.

Hopefully I can get someone trained in the arts of dream interpretation to stumble over this post…

My dream last night started out with me waking up and starting to get ready for work. Everything seemed completely normal, nothing out of place. Until I decided that I needed to shave before going to work (which is something I hardly ever do in the morning.) Not even half-way through the process of de-stubbling my face, I realized that I was already late for work. Panic sets in and I fall deeper into the dream. The only logical thing, apparently, was to jump in my car and proceed to finish shaving on the way there, which is less that a few minutes.

So the trip to work was pretty normal, except that for some reason the drive started on the complete opposite side of town from where I actually live. I remember thinking that that was pretty bizarre in the dream, but just shrugged it off. So I got to work, but somehow the 5 minute drive had made me almost an hour later, but I still wasn't finished shaving (you try shaving in your rear-view mirror while watching traffic, even in my dream I couldn't pull it off.)

My work.. it was completely different though. I ended up in some enormous bathroom, the likes of which I've never come across before. In fact, there was a huge conference room area (complete with vending machines) right in the middle of it. Somehow the lighting near all of the mirrors made it impossible to actually see myself in the mirror, so the task of shaving went unfinished. But while I was trying, for some reason people kept coming through. A tour was led through the bathroom, which was really odd since there was only one door, and they somehow continued through without going back out that door. A girl that I work with also made a point to come downstairs and enter this non-existent bathroom to further give me crap about my situation. All things considered, I was a bit entertained, both in the dream and out.

But now.. now I'm just wondering what the heck it was all about. It seems way too random, so there must be some rational explanation or meaning behind it. Anyone have any ideas?