Hiatus Now

I know I didn't do much for this blog, but with the other, I can't keep updating both. I never really knew what to write for this, but for that one, I have a direction, and as of right now, five months' worth of M-F updates. I'll come back to this eventually, maybe, perhaps, but for right now, email me if you want to read the other blog. I would recommend that only if you like pulp fiction.

Pulped Fiction

I like pulp detective fiction. There's no wasted words in pulp fiction, just wasted people. Everything means something. Not that much rambling, unless it means something to the story. It's black and white terms, but grey areas abound. The world's not fair, but the protagonist has to go along with it to get through another day. Not everyone survives. Sometimes, it feels like if you made it through that day without dying, it was a good day. No wonder it speaks to me.

It really started with a pic M.N. snapped and photoshopped. I'm in a tie and an overcoat, fedora hiding half my face. I'm looking down at the ground and slightly frowning. There's a greenish tint to it, as if it came from years back. Yeah, it's me as a pulp detective. Couldn't you see me in California back in the 30s, watching the rain fall, holding a highball glass in my hand, waiting for the next case to come in the door?

That thing became my Gtalk icon, and as an exercise, because I get easily bored and my imagination doesn't really stop, I decided to start posting status messages with a pulp fiction bent. Some nameless detective, really a full-blown alcoholic, trying not to get busted for good by the cops, muddling through his life, takes what jobs he can just to make it another day. I'd like to think he's successful, because he's got enough money to keep buying bourbon and whiskey, but he's on a cold streak now.

This concerned some people that thought I'd lost my mind. Which is fine, as long as you're concerned I've lost it, you're still concerned about my well-being. I'm still sane, by most objective measures.

I've been waiting for some people to finish reading the would-be novel, and found myself backed up mentally, no outlet for my creativity. It really was starting to wear on me. But in the end, T.G. convinced me I should start a blog based on this detective's life, my status messages writ larger. The past few nights, I've been writing up some potential posts to create a backlog of material. If I push myself, and post every weekday, I want two months of backlog, or forty posts, before I start posting.

The basic idea behind it is this luddite detective's secretary wants him to start posting his stories to a blog. He, being a hard-nosed ex-boxer, does it because she keeps insisting, but he makes her type up what he hand writes. As he recalls his stories, she chimes in in the posts, either with technical explanations of her data mining/online research, guesses at what his malapropisms mean, or just general comments. Between the two, he gets drunk, gets in fights, and pounds the streets to find information, while she surfs Myspace and Facebook. Thus far, I've got posts about his naming the blog, hunting a contract killer for the mob, a side story about boxing and MMA, and working on an investigation about the theft of a garden gnome. Further ideas include going to the opera, finding stolen baby formula, process service in the woods on Halloween, getting stuck in a drunk tank and being hired by a five-year old to get a cat out of a tree.

So much for keeping it constantly dark and gritty. Maybe this is postmodern pulp fiction.

Over the past few nights, I've got twenty-two posts written. Once I finish with this, I will generate a few more before bedtime. If tomorrow goes according to plan, I will have my forty. I think this is a perfect example of why you need to do what you love for a living. Right now, I'm not even getting paid for this. Just think what would happen if someone were to sponsor me.

***

I've noticed that my journal and this blog (my pseudo-journal) go through various peaks of activity, followed by troughs of inactivity. You can map it to how much I write elsewhere. There seems to be some level at which I write, and once that is achieved, I don't need to write as much for other things. If I drop below that level, I get depressed, and I usually need to ramp back up. Generally, the journal is that outlet.

But then, I can hear you asking, why don't you just write all the time? Skip the inactivity and the depression. What it boils down to is that I'm lazy. I wish it were something as romantic and straightforward as writer's block, but that's usually not a problem, not anymore. I don't say much, but apparently I have a lot to say, and that comes out through my pen. I'm like a junkie in rehab. The methadone's starting to work, so I figure I'm good, and I stop taking it. Next thing you know, I need more smack because I fell back in my old habits.

Gotta wonder, will I ever hit Malcolm Gladwell's estimated ten thousand hours of practice to become good at this craft? Not for a long while. I have always written, but never obsessively. Then again, I am only counting straight fiction. I have written a lot for school and for work. Roll all that in, and I come closer. If you count all the time I've spent reading (an entire cop-out), then I've probably exceeded it. But really, from that perspective, I'm a master of reading. Can't really get paid doing that, unless I get more creative, and I'm kind of tired, seeing as how I've been up at around 5 AM every morning for the past few weeks.

Our Obligations

I learned a few things in law school, believe it or not. However, most of the lessons never stuck, at least not consciously. A lot of it wormed its way into my unconscious, and pops out when I least expect it. There are a few things that I do recall, that made an impact. One of these things was during Torts, with Professor D.G. It had to have been near the beginning of the semester, when we talked about duty. The example he gave was one man drowning, while another man saw the first man drowning. The question he posed, did the second man have a legal obligation to save the drowning man?

Hint: No.

He then told us that not even Michael Phelps had a legal obligation to save the drowning man. The law can't force people to do the right thing. It's all about the minimum to get by. That drives me crazy, because it also shows how little people will do if you leave them to their own pursuits. You can't legislate compliance with morality under our legal system, beyond a basic level. (You could in a dictatorship or similarly oppressive governmental system, but that raises new issues. I'm not advocating this course, it's like killing a fly with an elephant gun.) Then again, look at the series finale of Seinfeld, and you see how ridiculous it would get.

It's up to us to do right. And it's hard. And we fail. I went grocery shopping, and as I parked, I noticed a guy with a bottle of orange fluid trying to get the hood on his car open. I own the same make and model of car, I could have walked over and popped it in a few seconds. Didn't, because I didn't feel like it, but it stuck with me as I went shopping. I told myself if he was still out there when I was done, I would help. He wasn't, but I should have helped in the first place. How hard would it have been to take fifteen seconds out of my day?

This was a small thing, but: "Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking." - H. Jackson Brown

What does this say about me, that I should have helped a stranger, and did not? And am I going too far? Wouldn't I help my friends? Probably, but again, we can't legislate people to do the right thing. Maybe I would've had a trickle down effect if I did help? Who can say? The moment has passed, and I have to move on. However, I did donate some money to a charity outside the grocery store to assuage my guilt over that situation. Now, what does that say that I think I can buy peace of mind with money?

***

Good gravy, that was a frustrating weekend. I went out every few hours to shovel the snow off my car, because it wouldn't stop, and I didn't want to spend three hours straight moving snow. As it turns out, when you calculate it, I did spend three hours shoveling, just spread out. At least it broke up the monotony of watching the snow drifts build, and the sad trees with their drooping branches laden with snow.

(If you haven't figured out, I am writing these in advance, and then scheduling a post for the future.)

I know a little better what Sisyphus felt like, rolling that damned boulder every day, only to watch it roll back down the hill every day. Every couple hour I went outside, only to see the same levels of snow all over my poor car. Still I persisted, having remembered how bad the shoveling was last time back in December.

I wandered outside Sunday morning, having not gotten much sleep due to not being able to sleep, as per usual. It looked like a post-apocalyptic wasteland, the area covered in snow after the nuclear blasts blotted out the sun. An inch-thick rind coating the streets, feet-deep snow drifts abutting road sides. Cars buried everywhere, and nary a soul to come out and witness the whiteness. Foul cold, the kind that threatens to frostbite your skin, flay it off in large frozen chunks.

On the flip side, it was reassuring, even peaceful. Lot of quiet, which is par for a Sunday morning, but even more so this morning. What few people I did see, they greeted me with a shake of their shovel, or a nod of their head, and I returned it in kind. I got to imagine a world abandoned by man, on its way to reverting to nature's control. A few more months like this, you'd hardly be able to imagine anyone colonized it, called it home.

I wonder if that wouldn't be such a bad thing. They have television shows that play the ultimate what if, at least from our perspective. That mainstay of historians, the game of what if asks "what if", and then extrapolates outward. Alternate and speculative fiction derives wholly from this basic question. Traditionally, it refers to past events, and then flips them on their head. For this what if, we ask what if everyone disappeared. Game changer, if I ever heard one.

There are a few ways this could go. Some people say that we need to head into space to discover new worlds, especially new worlds that could support human life. Unspoken in their hopes and dreams is that we, as a species, are ruining this world for our continued existence, as well as that of other species on the planet. The planet itself will find a way to continue, with or without us. When we speak of ruining the world, it's only from the perspective that we need it as is to continue living. Then, we can go and start over fresh, then ruin more worlds.

Or, maybe we kill each other, via WWIII. Nuclear, chemical, biological agents, all of them are in play. It's brinksmanship and bluster and pride that push us all towards the edge, and unlike a video game, you can't reboot to the prior save point if you make a big mistake. We're playing for keeps. Everyone realizes that, but it only takes one person to go too far, before we can't go back.

Maybe the new ice age comes and buries all of us. The earth doesn't possess a soul, far as we know. It's just a giant rock with a liquid-hot iron/nickel core. But what if it did, and it got tired of what we were doing, and decided to snow us all over? First, it tried to heat us off with global warming, and that failed. Maybe we go in the opposite direction. After all, some believe hell is cold, not hot. How well could we do amidst conditions constantly like what we just experienced?

Any way it goes, I walked through the snow, and felt a bit at peace. Then I slipped and almost busted my head open.

Self Medication

Non-drowsy cold medicine is a lie. Less-drowsy is more appropriate. It hasn’t completely shut down my higher faculties, but I am lackadaisical, and a bit slower. If you came at me with an attack, it would take me a second longer to register and react, by which point you probably would have disabled me.

The medicine has kept me from coughing up a lung, which is kind of useful when you’re trying not to infect others with the latest and greatest nature has to offer. It also helps when you’re working in an open room around others that have no desire to be laid low by whatever it is you’re carrying.

I never really took sick days as a kid in school, because my parents instilled in me that learning was so important. There was one occasion where I almost passed out and fell down a flight of stairs, I was so light headed. Even growing up, I am loathe to take sick days unless it is bad. Like the time I caught the flu and had trouble sitting up without falling back down, that forced me to take sick days.

This sickness makes me wonder about the state of my immune system, that I have one to begin with. Without it, this cold would ravage my body, until I could no longer sustain myself, at which point I would die. Hopefully, the cold virus would have found a chance at some point to jump to another host, at which point it would then reproduce and thrive again.

I get sick once or twice a year, probably about average. Can’t remember how often I got sick as a kid, but I have to imagine that it was fairly often, because my immune system is fairly strong now. Had to be exposed to all that crap as a kid to learn what was good and what was not, develop a response, and go from there.

Even as I type this, I want to pass out and sleep for a while. would much really change, aside from me getting a deserved nap? not really.

***

I love callback humor. Watch Arrested Development for a great example, constant callbacks to earlier conversations and episodes. We're all guilty of callback humor in our own way, like when you're joking with someone, and reference it fifteen minutes later. Of course, the only problem with callback humor is that you have to be paying attention.

Whenever I have to introduce myself, I tend to be very much the smartass when I do so. If nothing else, it lets people know that I am not always serious, that I don't take myself seriously. The last time I did so, I introduced myself as an alcoholic, also mentioning it was three hundred days since my last drink. Also asked if Irish coffee counted, since I had a cup of tea from Starbucks in front of me.

Then, I promptly forgot about this. This was a problem, as when all anyone knows about you are the few words you say, such as being an alcoholic, that's all they have to go on. R.L. kept making repeated references to me drinking heavily, which I completely missed as I was tired and not paying attention. That was embarrassing to me afterwards, when I had some time to think.

High humor is hard. I started with fairly low humor, sarcasm, and R.L. took it to a higher level, making callbacks. I couldn't even remember my own words, which was quite sad. Of course, that also means that, for all that to have worked, I would have needed to be paying attention and concentrating on the funny.

It's so hard to focus on the funny, especially when you're thinking about it. In my life, I've found you can either be funny, or pay attention, so long as you're actively trying one or the other. If you don't try, it turns out you can do both. Unfortunately, I try way too hard, and things fail. And maybe that is the key, making it seem effortless, by not expending effort. It's hard to break the ice, and sometimes, maybe I should just let it happen naturally.

Or, you know, I could probably drink more. I am an alcoholic, after all.

Solo Creepy

The Starbucks men's bathroom door displayed an "Out of Order" sign, so the barista handed me the women's bathroom key. That alone does not make me a pervert, though the rest of this story might.

After I urinated, I moved to the trash can to toss out my water bottle. A swinging metal plate covered the trash. I pushed the bottle through the door, and noticed a white box. Curious, I held the door open with the bottle and looked inside.

It's a bathroom trash can. I expected all the used tissues. What I didn't expect was the Victoria's Secret bag, and the EPT box. Of course, when I saw this, my first thought was "Why haven't I been going into women's bathrooms before now?"

Flash back to a couple hours ago. I saw the woman with the Victoria's Secret bag earlier, and she had spent fifteen minutes in the bathroom. I know this because I had to go, and she was inside.

This is pure conjecture, but I think she took the early pregnancy test in the Starbucks bathroom. There was also a stick that was probably the used test, but I didn't want to dig down and retrieve it.

Who is she, that she had to go to the Starbucks bathroom and take the test? Z.M. theorized she had to hide something from her boyfriend. I felt she couldn't wait to get home; there was a CVS pharmacy nearby.

It's cruelly hilarious and compellingly sad. My twisted mind came up with the following: After some clothes shopping, she admits that she hasn't had her period, and had to get the test, but she's not ready for a lifetime devoted to parenthood. It's something that she's scared of, but has to know now. Of course, she can't pee, so she decides to stop in a Starbucks and slam some coffee to get ready. After a venti, she sneaks the VS bag with the EPT test inside into the bathroom. She takes the test, and it's positive. Somewhat stunned and in denial, she puts on the sexy new lingerie for her boyfriend in the bathroom, swearing that after tonight, the one last night where he will still think she's sexy, she will tell him the truth. She dumps the box and bag, and walks out to a strange guy standing there dancing back and forth, looking like he's ready to piss himself. She hands him the key and walks into the rest of her life.

***

I am a member of the Fellowship of Solo Diners. We are a soft-spoken group. Armed with our thick novels, our newspapers, our Kindles, we go into restaurants with our heads held high. When the waiter asks "Two?" we respond "One." The smile on the waiter's face wanes a little, pity enters their voice, they show us (as individuals) to the table made for many. After all, breaking bread should be a communal activity. The ancient tribes bonded over food. Everyone did their part, small or large, and everyone reaped the benefits. Now, our food gathering efforts are distributed, and we no longer need to break bread as a group.

It depresses me.

Not that I'm social or anything. I have lived my life as a loner, for better or worse. (And for whatever reason, that's changing, and I no longer want to be the loner. I just have no clue how to do that.) I still remain a member. Travel often finds me alone, and I have to eat. Most of the time, I either stop by Walgreens for Lunchables and soda, or get room service. However, every so often, I feel a need to venture out into the world, so as not to become a complete shut-in. I find a restaurant, we dance the dance, and I sit there with my book, ready to order my food, scarf it down, and get the hell out. What need have I to linger? You linger over company, good or bad. You plow through food if you're just there to push it down your gullet.

Of course, I feel like everyone is staring at me. I say that because I stare at the solo diners when I see them, and I wonder what their story is. Like the other day, I was having dinner with Z.M., and sitting a table over was another solo diner. I recognized all the traits, the barren look on her face, the crossword puzzle she was working on, getting through her meal ASAP and trying to get out ASAP. We almost collided going to the bathroom, and I wanted to give her a high five and say "I'm with you." Of course, after 1995, I learned you can't do that to strangers the hard way. The restraining order should have expired by now; I don't want another.

It's not as if there's anything wrong with eating alone in public. Except there is something wrong with eating alone in public. More than anything, it's a subtle reminder that, well, you're alone. Again, nothing wrong with being alone. It's just kind of sad. Eating is one of our fundamental survival activities. You eat with others, on a very basic level, you're saying "I am existing next to you." It's different than sitting next to them on the metro, when you're forced together. Generally, you choose the people you eat with, and even if not, at least there's still that social component to it. In some ways, maybe eating with others is a subtle form of acceptance and love.

Think about how vulnerable we are when we're eating. Seated, hands full, mouths full, not really in any position to defend ourselves. Eating with someone is also a very basic show of trust. "I trust you not to stab me while I eat this potato." I'm trying now to remember a meal I've had with someone I don't trust, and I really can't. But, as is my right as a writer, I am imagining eating lunch with someone I don't trust. I'm baring my teeth a lot, and not at ease.

I just found http://www.solodining.com/ after a quick Google search. I want to go the opposite route and set up a website specifically to find the fellowship members a dining companion for a couple hours on short notice. Some auto-match criteria based on day/time, you put in your preferences and locations, and are told to meet somewhere at somewhen with someone you don't know. And why do I feel like I'm reinventing online dating?

But really, not as such, except exactly so. Still, at least for someone that travels, this would be a surprisingly useful tool. Hell, for anyone that doesn't want to eat alone, this could be useful. Maybe this is my destiny, to unite people for the purposes of eating a meal that wouldn't be so solitary.

Hm. Solo diner that goes through a trash can in a women's restroom at Starbucks. I am a pervert, apparently.

All Good

I wished A.A. a happy birthday, as his upcoming birthday looms near. He expressed mild displeasure at having to witness yet another birthday, to which I responded he'd done some great things, and he would continue to great things even after the passage of this day, and that everything would turn out OK. It helped him deal with the birthday.

Ultimately, people want me to tell them that "everything will be OK." I didn't learn this lesson for a long time. Growing up, I thought they wanted me to tell them what to do, or how to resolve their problems. And still, some people want that, but mostly, they turn to me because they want to know they're not alone, and that they'll get past X, where X equals whatever their problem is. And a lot of people would get mad at me for "not listening" to them, to the point where it became obvious it didn't matter what I said, so long as it was "everything will be OK."

This was not an easy lesson to learn. I am like a mule, stubborn as all hell. It goes against my natural instinct to solve a problem. My legal training taught me to apply the law to a fact pattern, i.e. solving a problem. My job requires me often to solve problems. I played a lot of Tetris growing, up, i.e. solving a problem. See a problem, solve a problem. That works for objects and situations. It generally fails with people. As I've learned, you can't help people unless they want help. Why fix what's working? Accept it for what it is, accept them for who they are, help only when they need it, not when you think they need it.

That is part of why you cannot solve people's problems for them. Oftentimes, they don't want you to solve the problem. They may know what the solution is already, in which case they wouldn't need your help in implementing, or they are denying what they need to do, and just want some reassurance that (all together now) everything will be OK. It can be rough watching people make their mistakes on their own, or so I have been told when people watch me stumble and fall all too often. However, you need to let them make a lot of mistakes, learn from them, become better people. Otherwise, you get this current generation of entitlement and expectation the world is handed to you on a platter.

It isn't difficult to listen to people. There's a very simple list of requirements that works for me. Sit down next to them, or stand if they prefer. Look them in the eye every once in a while, if they're not crying. If they are, put your hand on their shoulder. Shut your mouth. Make them believe that, at that moment, they are the most important person in the world. Fake it if you don't believe it. Stop thinking about what you're going to say when they stop talking. Listen to them. Listen to them some more. Listen to them until the silence becomes too unbearable for them after they stop talking. Listen to what they're not saying, as well as what they're saying. Remember what they said. Make them believe that what they're saying is important. Fake it if you don't believe it. Don't tell them what you'd do, unless they explicitly ask it, and then make sure they want to hear it. Finally, tell them you're sorry to hear it, that the situation sucks, and that eventually, everything will be OK. Simple, right?

Oftentimes, it's the same thing with people that have legal questions. The answer can almost be secondary. The basic point, that everything will be OK, that there is a course of action sustainable under the law that won't result in a judgment posted against them, or a prison term. Note that this applies more to civil questions than criminal questions, but can be applied to both in certain situations. It is just law, but because it's the law, people tend to get frightened, because of everything that can go wrong. I'm a wizened shaman, sans beard, and I know the magic incantation (all together now): everything will be OK.

You can get a sense of a person, and who they are, just be what they do when you talk to them. Take my aunt and uncle, very different people. She was trained as a teacher, he is a computer developer. She hears what I have to say. He hears I'm not doing the right thing. For him, it goes back to the issue of problem solving. Here's a problem. Solve it. For her, it's a case of teaching. Listen and hear, suggest if you need to, otherwise just listen. I like them both, but guess to which I respond more favorably.

***

I love telling stories. Two thousand years ago, I would have been the tribe's scribe or oral historian. Nowadays, I'm just a compulsive liar because I need to tell people stories. I love storytelling so much I have been working on a novel that, chances are, no one will really ever see because I just had to tell the story. Of course, every story needs at minimum one to tell it, and one to hear it, and for right now, I fulfill both roles. But still, I want someday for someone not me to hear the story.

All at once, storytelling is both wildly important and simply frivolous. Let's start with the latter. Few people make their livings off storytelling. Ours is not a society that can sustain that. With the ever-increasing role technology plays, needs must reward those that can advance our technology, or better weave it into our lives. Storytelling becomes a diversion, but does not truly make our lives better.

Yet stories fuel our dreams, and it is through our dreams that we make the world a better place. By imagining what might become, we're all forced to explore those possibilities, somehow make the intangible tangible. I think of it as the father's role in the son's accomplishments. The son did all the grunt work, but who nurtured the son in the first place?

Withholding Information

Writing comprises a significant aspect of my job (and my life), but if I had lived six hundred years ago, it is possible that I would not have been allowed the privilege of learning to write. Before Gutenberg's printing press, books were rare and limited to the upper classes. Once printing made books widely accessible, more people were able to learn to read and write. Resistance arose from those who had that privilege, trying to keep the information from spreading to those without that privilege. The haves wanted to keep the have nots down. Ultimately, the fact that I can type this, post this freely to the web, and others can read it without a second thought shows who won.

At work, we had a discussion about writing technical documentation, one that reoccurs. Some feel that my job is extraneous, as the computer code is self-documenting. If you want to know what it does, you should be able to open the files and read it yourself. Though this is not necessarily a case of rarity, it is a case of the haves against the haves not. However, now the disparity results from knowledge scarcity, not necessarily resource scarcity. Also, reading code is not as important as reading a written language. Code is a much more limited subset of language, and some would even argue that code doesn't convey information in the same way that a language does.

The base issue remains, that people don't want to share. Not a blanket statement, but true more often than not. Look at toddlers playing. Up until they were playing together, they were the focus of their worlds, and when their worlds collide, they are forced to learn how to share. They resist, and many will do it because they have to get along, but given the choice, they will not share. Hell, I hate sharing my food. L.C. one time forked some food off my plate, and I almost flipped out because she did it without asking. I am highly territorial with my food, for some unknown reason. Probably a dirty residual effect of being an only child.

Barter systems and monetary systems only work because the two parties (in the simplest example) require more than they can generate on their own. If one party could grow the wheat and raise the goat, they wouldn't need to trade for either, they could be self-sufficient and live on their own. What it boils down to, that need forces us to live as a social species, even though our technological innovations are making it more and more possible (though not entirely likely) to live a solitary life. As we go on, and we are raised more and more with technology as the intermediary for our interaction with others, we come more and more to shun that human interaction, in favor of the technological.

My hatred of how pervasive technology has become is more because of how it is changing our society, not necessarily for the better. However, am I no better than all those nobles that argued the common man should not be allowed to read, because it would irrevocably change our society? I can't predict the future, and oftentimes I feel like I'm trapped between two worlds, the humane and the technical. The world keeps moving towards the technical, we are integrating it more into our lives, and I am part of a rapidly falling group of holdouts. All this coming from someone who couldn't go through a day without touching a computer.

***

The large-scale and small-scale can be in opposition to each other. Let me give you an example. I think that in the long term, "everything will be OK." However, in the short term, everything sucks. Similarly, I do not believe in the goodness of humanity at large, but I do believe in individuals being good. It's just that the mass of humanity drowns out those good people.

I also believe that we don't have a set identity, that our surroundings are just an important factor as to who we are as much as our personality. You act slightly differently around your family, your friends, your coworkers, your acquaintances, strangers, etc. I don't know how much variation is possible, but I think it could be very significant.

What does this all mean? I think people can be good, on the whole, yet be bad on the small scale, to certain individuals. Which is fine, unless you happen to be on the receiving end of the badness. Thanks much, E.S., if nothing else, you've reinforced that I need to be ever vigilant in my life against mean people, and that I need to really stop being so trusting and accepting of people.

For a fair amount of people, I am more valuable to them based on what I can do, as opposed to who I am. I mistake their overtures of friendship, take them at face value, and invariably get hurt when I realize the truth. Don't get me wrong, I'll still help my friends. The difference there is that they're, you know, friends. We don't interact only when they want to. There's a baseline level of respect, and all that jazz.

Thankfully, I never told E.S. about this blog. That would be fun, and I say that in a sarcastic manner. I have to wonder if people realize what they're doing, and if they rationalize it by saying it's OK because I either don't realize it, or haven't called them out on it. Or, even worse, I wonder if they just don't care, and want to see how far they can take it.

It's strange, I have met enough people that have used me that you would think it would sour my outlook on people, and that's not really the case at all. Despite me saying I don't believe in the goodness of humanity at large, I secretly do, deep down, and just don't want to admit it. Part of my problem is that I hope for the best, that people really are my friend, and these rose-colored glasses keep dooming me.

Yet I keep on meeting people, and I don't keep my guard up around them, and I end up going out of my way to do something to make their lives better and mine worse. If any of you wonder why I loathe giving out my perspective on a legal situation, this is the reason. Don't get me wrong, when it's important, I'll do it. That's the other secret, I'll help when it's important. It's just that most of the problems people throw at me are ridiculous and selfish. I make it clear it's not something I want to do, but if you come to me and ask about the nature of your non-compete agreement with your workplace because you want to quit your job, then you're not a friend, you just want free legal advice.

I suppose that it's a bit of a compliment, in a way. That I am a good enough human that you want my help. You just also happen to want nothing else to do with me, and that's fine, you could just tell me up front and we could keep things on a solely business level. I would prefer this. There are a lot of assholes I know that I like because they don't try to hide it. They're comfortable enough with who they are that they can be free to be it, and I respect that. Tell me what you want, and I'll assist you as best I can. But, please, don't keep up the pretense of trying to be friendly with me to make yourself feel better. Just take what you want, and then leave me alone. Let me spend my time and energy on the people that are actually important to me.

Of course, it suddenly occurs to me that it's necessary to keep up that pretense if you want to keep coming back to the well to get more water. If you have to resort to that, I guess I can only feel bad for you, after feeling bad for myself. You need to go meet more people.