hyenahell

yeah, i can relate... that seasonal shit kicks my ass every year

as for the advice... i'm dating this girl that generates phone calls from friends of the "does she know she's white?" and "why do you wanna date a ghetto chic?" variety... should i give my friends time to come around or tell them to fuck off for being narrow minded pricks?

[Edited on Mar 18, 2006 2:08PM]

Nah - definitely not too jumbled and manic. Or, if it was too jumbled and manic, I guess I'm right there with you. Either way - I get it.

You definitely took the smart approach with the thing. Look it in the eye and kick its ass. The only way. But the allergies? As soon as we get a couple of weeks with temperatures steadily above freezing, I'll be in hell right next to you. My story is similar. I'd had my ass kicked around for my entire life until I moved to Vermont. That began eight heavenly years of alergy-free living. Outstanding, it was. As soon as I was back in Chicago, they all came rushing back. I've been happier. One thing I have found, though, is that they're not quite as bad as when I was younger. I don't know if the allergies themselves have relaxed or whether I've just decided to be an adult about it. I'd like to think its the latter. Maybe.

The sneeze is a perfect analogy. Perfect. I hate to say it, but that's exactly how everything started-up again. I managed to speed things along by finally committing to asking myself the big questions. I re-tooled them again and again until they took the shape of something that I could wrap my head around. Once I had them packaged nicely, I finally sneezed.

I'd literally done nothing with myself for a few years. I only worked when I absolutely had to. I worked my clothing gig, but that hardly filled the hours. Going on buying trips for one, small family store only takes so much time. Aside from that, I bought and sold cars. I'd put together just enough capitol to get the ball rolling and hooked-up with a friend from college who was liscensed to buy at auctions. I was quite the black market for a couple of years, yet I only worked a handful of days a month. Had a couple of pimp-ass rides while I was at it, too. Thing of it was, it was all a pretty elaborate facade. I wasn't doing a damned thing and I wasn't even terribly interested in the few things it looked like I was doing. I love the functional art component of clothing and fashion, but I could only exercise that to a very small degree doing the job I was doing.

I think you're in a pretty good spot right now - probably a better spot than you give yourself credit for. If you felt like you were in a rut and it didn't bother you, then I'd be worried. You don't strike me as a high-stress person, but you don't strike me as a complacent one either. I'm sure you've already started to take stock of some things and ask yourself some questions about what makes you happy on a larger scale. Eventually, frustrating as that word is, you'll whittle the questions down into very fundamental notions of satisfaction and happiness. You'll think of the skills you have and probably one or two that you'd like to cultivate. From there, your options will proabably be pretty clear and will be made up entirely of things in which you could find fulfillment. Initially, for me, that involved knowing and indulging the frustration. That actually felt pretty good - letting myself get worked-up so that when I inevitably lashed-out, it was wasn't haphazard. It was productive.

Yeah - still hair. Working with my ideas and my hands on projects that were both evolving and tangible proved to be the deal-breakers for me. That led to functional art which, in turn, led to hair. I'm not in school yet. I'm going in on Monday to have some final interviews with people and tour the campus. How they can call it a campus when its nothing more than a couple of floors in an office building is beyond me, but when in Rome..... They start classes every month and, I'm probably looking at April or May. It's a 10 month program and I'm hell-bent on being certified and working by 30, so its high-time I got off my ass.