yikes

I lost my password to this account and got locked out for months and months. So here I am again. Aren't you lucky? (/sarcasm)

I'll start posting here again shortly, my first post being a general political rant that'll go up as soon as I'm done with this one...

Just as a general update... I'm currently working on a website that's going to be kind of a cross between Facebook and DeviantArt. Both sites do what they do very well, but personally I'd just like to have a single place where people I know can upload what they've been working on so that I don't have to run all over the ends of the earth (or internet, as the case may be) to find their own personal Tumblr or DeviantArt or whatever.

I have some other ideas for sites as well, including an online marketplace-type thing that also provides the ability to actually TRADE for stuff (something the eBays of the world lack) and some other features. No matter how popular or successful any of these sites are, they build up my web design/programming portfolio and that's really what I need.

As a side note, I've been kind of isolated and distant and hardly ever around over the past few months... there's a very simple reason for that. Aside from my friends, whose numbers are dwindling as they venture off to other lands and places (and as those few who are here get tired of my free-wheeling, wild-dog-esque comings and goings and unreliability), and my family, my life sucks hardcore.

I'm still living at home so that I can save up money for more schooling / whatever, my free time is incredibly limited because I work 10+ hours a day, and I'm moving later this year so the present for me right now is basically just a long, drawn-out closing down of things I've loved and come to take for granted. There's very little that could draw me back into the science field; I went into it thinking it would be financially lucrative (HA!) and that, being science, it would be more logic-oriented and thus fitting with my personality. Nearly two years in the field taught me that there's very little on this earth LESS logical than the science/pharmaceutical industry.

Besides, if the one recruiter I talked to about 6 months ago was correct, I'm essentially obsolete and unemployable in the science field anyway, thanks to my being out of it for over a year. In short, I need to build up my portfolio for web / programming stuff so I can show potential employers what I can do so that they'll hire me and then for the first time in my life I'll actually have a job I actually kind of enjoy.

So, we really have two choices here... I can be around more often and spend a lot of time griping about how much I hate my life. Or, I can spend a good deal of my free time at home squeezing out PHP and Javascript code in the vain hope someday this will make my life better.

I only bring this up because, thanks to my job, I've had a lot of alone time in which to think about how many people I've alienated over the years in one way or another. It's always been due to one of a handful of reasons: I'm too distant and people think I don't like them, or, out of fear of this happening, I'm entirely the opposite, too involved or present or considerate or whatever, and it gets cloying and bothersome.

Or, I get into a party situation with a lot of people, and I drink too much in order to block out my paranoid guardedness, and then I wind up doing something inappropriate.

I've had enough Enforced Time Alone over the past year, though, to have come to terms with a lot of this, and I'm actually kind of okay with it for the first time ever. I used to get frantic if I was alone for too long. Now I kind of enjoy it.

Sometimes you just have to face facts... I am not going to be most people's cup of tea. I'm entirely too guarded to be really open and spontaneous. I had to deal with family issues at a very young age that licensed psychiatrists with 20 years experience had trouble dealing with, and while you can certainly work with the lack of trust and openness that causes, with time, the basic circuitry is still there and probably isn't going to change much.

On the other hand, I have met a number of people over the past few years that, despite being in very close proximity to them for extended periods of time, often in completely bizarre states of consciousness, I have yet to alienate. Of course, 90% of them have left the immediate area, but it's nice to know I'm not completely impossible.

That's enough on a personal front for right now. Up next! Political ranting which may or may not be cogent!