I lost some time once...

Today is my birthday.

Somehow, I've managed to make it through 43 years on this planet. Forty-three. That's not a terribly large number, looking at it from this side of it, but that felt absolutely ancient when I was 16, or 25, or even 30. I mean, it was on this day, THIRTEEN years ago that Charles and Melissa threw a birthday party for me, invited my closest friends, and helped me say goodbye to my 20s. It was on this day, 12 years ago, when Scott -- who was then my roommate -- and a couple of people in my WoW guild, were the only people to recognize my birthday. It was on this day, 33 years ago, that my bunny rabbit's music box quit playing. It was on this day, 21 years ago (I think), that I didn't hear from ANYONE on my birthday except my brother, who I picked up and ran around with (this was corrected that weekend, but at the time, it was overwhelming). Heck, it was on this date, 22 years ago, that I sat on the hill behind the house in Munford that Kevin shared with his parents, reveling in my first legal drink (it was champagne).

I actually worked today. I didn't stay the whole day, but actually got up and went in to work. I realized, halfway through my day, that I will never work on my birthday again, if there is any way I can help it. I work on computers, and Windows 10 displays the time and date real big on the login screens. I don't recall exactly what the time was, but sometime shortly after my break, I realized that seeing "January 7" felt weird. I won't say that *I* felt disconnected, but it didn't feel like my birthday, and I didn't like it one bit. I've always said birthdays ARE special and, at the very least, *I* should recognize my birthday, even if no one else does.

I should have broken habits today, when I left work. I meant to pick up at least a pint of Wild Turkey, because there ain't nothing better for coughs than a shot or two of Wild Turkey 101. I meant to go see Aquaman, but I think I talked myself out of it, because of the coughing. I should have gone to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and indulged my ludicrous love of kitchen utensils, cookware, bedding, and towels. I should have picked somewhere random, and driven there. The thing is, none of that really appealed to me today.

Instead, I came home. The place was empty, and I opened my new Death T-Shirt that came in the mail (the image is my Facebook wall photo: "You get what anyone gets... you get a lifetime."). Then, I sat down at my computer, for I had a plan. This wasn't in lieu of better plans. This wasn't a result of being unhappy and depressed. My plan today may have made me more than a little anxious and nervous, but it was borne out of something good.

My plan was simple: I was going to buy some brushes and paint, and get back into painting miniatures. I used to do it pretty regularly, back in the 3e/d20 heyday. However, as time went by, I acquired more responsibility and had less time to do the things I loved (I love how Kroger always pushed the concept of "work/life balance," yet never cared to see it happen). Painting minis became a thing of the past, even though I thoroughly loved it. I like to think that it was primarily because I had to set aside time to do it. Later, it was because the paints had dried up.

I picked up some brushes, a decent selection of paints (being an adult does come in handy from time to time). I even grabbed a few minis, so I could try my hand with some brand new poses. Naturally, I tried to assemble the group who played Eberron.I think I may have done it. We will see, pending my ability to come back to this hobby.

This wasn't the only thing I decided that I was going to do this year. I adore Philip Wesley's "Dark Night of the Soul," a collection of solo piano tracks that soothe and cradle my spirit, even if I'm nowhere near sleepy. Years back, I tried my hand at violin. I love that instrument, too, but I also knew that I wasn't interested in spending more money on getting it tuned. So, it has sat in my closet for these past six years. But I digress...

I used to take piano lessons from first grade through late fourth, I think. I learned how to read music (maybe not well enough that I could sight read as I played). I was even All-City once. Then I discovered baseball, and lost interest, since practicing on a piano in the house couldn't compare to playing baseball with the neighborhood kids.

I never forgot about my time playing piano, and I was always prone to let my fingers stray across a keyboard, if time and place allowed it.

So, sometime this year, I'm going to pick up an electronic piano, and see if I can teach myself what I've forgotten. I am doing this for myself, because I want to foster my creativity, to say nothing about how much doing so will do for my soul. I don't write like I used to. I don't read like I used to. I don't have friends with unlimited time to play RPGs once a week. However, if I start painting minis and learning piano again, I suspect that I will find a small sense of satisfaction from creating something again. I feel the pull to create something, ANYTHING myself, and I see no reason to hold myself back.

A friend commented that 5s are her number, citing a myriad of reasons. Well, I've always loved the number 7, and in numerology, 43 becomes 7. Is this a sign/portent for the year to come? Let's hope so.

It has been nearly 10 months since I last used my LJ for anything other than seeing the daily LOLcats (and that's because a lot of you don't post on here anymore, either!). I've migrated pretty fully to Facebook and Twitter. Twitter's more fun, perhaps because I have to figure out what I want to say in 140 characters or less. At this point, Facebook just copies what I tweet.

At any rate, I found a link on Facebook to LJ, and wound up browsing through various user info pages, adding folks. If I just added you, then you should at least be familiar with me. The new default user pic -- which I use on Facebook, Twitter, and the Summerland Grove site -- is recent enough that you should be able to match it to me. I know a lot of you from SG anyway.

The past almost-10 months have been.. different. I courted Christianity again, dated a devout Christian (the former admittedly DID halfway occur due to the latter), wound up giving up my D&D game on Sundays forever (I never have Sunday afternoons off anymore), met a great group of people in what I am apt to call the core membership of Summerland Grove, began smoking pipes for fun, became a pagan in name (I suspect I've always been one in spirit, whether I knew it or not), decided on a spiritual path (Asatru), began dating a wonderful woman, and have grown to despise my job at Kroger so much that I almost went to a job fair (my resume was... well, completely unmade and not gonna be ready in time, plus I got called on to help my girlfriend, which I had no hesitation doing).

Of course, outing myself on my LJ as a pagan could be considered... unwise? foolhardy? I dunno. Anyone with half a brain who has watched my Twitter feed/Facebook posts will have picked up on it long ago, though I deliberately don't come right out and say it, because I live in Memphis, TN, where you're accepted for who you are...

...that is, if you're a monogamous heterosexual Conservative Christian who is intolerant of others' lifestyles and points of view. (I still classify as heterosexual, though that's the only part of that statement that still applies to me.) I have far too many Christian friends on Facebook who I suspect will try to help me "see the error of my ways", so I am mum on the subject there, but I realize I don't give a flying fuck outside of being harassed about it on Facebook. I keep quiet at work as well, just because things already are a cluster fuck there, without adding "OMG IT'S A PAGAN!!!11" to the list. I've not dedicated to a specific god, which admittedly bothers me quite a bit (to the point that I can get downright moody/depressed about it), but I'm reading everything I can get my hands on that I think will help me understand my choice of path more clearly. (I'm currently reading "Our Troth, Vol. 1", and Tyr *STILL* looks like a reasonable choice, though he no longer feels like a perfect fit.)

About two weeks ago, I went to Festival of Souls. I'd never been, and even though I had to work two days and missed the workshops, I had a lot of fun. I made a point to attend the rituals, and was.. well, "blown away" is appropriate, if a little cliched. My brother, Ricky (titus_the_mage, though he's never used it), went as well, and surprised me. He'd always referred to himself as an agnostic, or as he put it, a "chicken shit atheist", but apparently *REALLY* took to the pagan point of view. I'm still processing that he has come to that realization, though I'm glad to have a longtime close personal friend with me in this new life.

While I enjoyed every ritual, I was absolutely thunderstruck by the candlelight labyrinth held after the ancestor ritual on Friday night. The solemnity covering the field, where the candles were laid out in concentric circles that slowly led to the center, was absolute. I didn't hear any voices (consciously), nor did I have any brilliant immediately-life-changing flashes of inspiration (again, consciously), but when I had gotten out of it, I felt different. Two weeks later, I wish I had the labyrinth still up to walk again, like I have a new appreciation for it, and if I could just walk it again, even more would become clear to me.

On the D&D/RPG front, I eventually had to drop lordreaibn's 4e D&D game, because work began jumping around on Sundays for me (I don't get to do payroll like I used to, though no hard feelings for the new clerk). I briefly attempted to get a game going involving nyminal, strieson, mfsfreak, and disker and his wife, but that fell through due to lack of motivation on my part. I just no longer "feel it" where D&D is concerned. I am far more likely to wax nostalgic over my old 2e games, and how engrossing they were back then. Perhaps, when my schedule settles down some, or I change jobs, I can start a game again with some folks, perhaps even including lordreaibn, tannenwynn, marius_98, or lostgamers. I have access to a larger pool of folks, and if I mix and match 'em a bit so I'm not stuck with the same collection of people I have played with for the last ten years, things might get interesting. (I have *NO* problem with my old D&D group, but the reality is that lack of fresh blood caused things to get stale, and we all know it.)

Well, that's my life this year so far. It's an oversimplification, and you'll notice I didn't post about work. I'm on vacation for at least two more days, so I refuse to acknowledge it until then. :) Welcome to all the new people. I hope that you add me back. I want to get to know each of you better than I have so far.

Oh yeah, I also, at the urging of my girlfriend, am going to begin writing again daily, even if it's just in here. I am one of the worst procrastinators you'll ever meet, but I want this. I miss writing something down, reading it, and going "holy crap, this is GOOD."

P.S. Holy crap. I've had this account for over 8 years now. I feel damned old suddenly. :)

I'm not entirely sure where to begin. I suppose that this morning is a good place, huh? :)

When I woke up, I fully did NOT want to bother with work today. It wasn't that I didn't get squat for sleep. Instead, I'd done most of my ring errors for payroll yesterday, so I knew I didn't have much to do when I went in. I wasn't going to let myself be late over that, though, so I dressed and got to work close enough on time to be okay (I was one minute late, but the morning checker was like 3-4, the self-checkout girl was 15, and the CSM -- who was doing the end of week paperwork, was 16).

Payroll was as I thought it would be if I was allowed time to work on it during the week leading up to Sunday. Yesterday, I was brought upstairs to get all errors fixed, so that the Co-manager would know how things were going before his off day today. As a result, I flew through payroll, which turned out to be rather beneficial, since we had four -- count 'em, four -- call-ins today. I don't know what was in the water, but that was ridiculous. I took my lunch early, and helped keep things going smoothly until I left at 3p.

One thing happened while I was there, though. I had to call another store to report a new tranfer's hours, since he'd not been moved into my store's Time & Attendance database. To make the call, I had to find their information on our intranet, which lists who department heads/managers are in each store, along with contact info for the store. I was suddenly struck by how many people had worked for Kroger for less than 10 years, yet were Drug/GM managers and Front End managers and Produce managers and so on. I have over 14 years with the company, and in that time, I've allowed myself to be content with working in accounting as a regular clerk. Sure, at Riverdale I was "backup", but that was in name only, and I never took advantage of it.

Back in 1998, a co-manager said of me, "he's ready to be the backup of any head checker in the city." I was 22 at the time. I had my life ahead of me, and that would have been a nice step up. Instead, I deprioritized my job/career, and coasted through it. Apparently, as long as I collected a check, I was okay, even if I griped about how poorly I felt I was paid. I realized today that, every evaluation, I wanted it to say "is ready to move up into another position", even though I didn't want to go anywhere, because that would have taken me out of my comfort zone. That is insane.

As a result, I'm working at a store where I've been shoved back down a rung on the corporate ladder, because they don't know me like my old store did. Because of how I handled things when I first arrived, I'm not likely to see that change. My only hope is to get out of that store or find another job. Honestly, the second option is probably more likely, as that stigma from my current store could follow me. Besides, who would want a 33 year old accounting clerk who can't even be a backup, despite knowing most of the job?

What in the world was I thinking for all those years?

Also, I realized that I want to keep an inventory of what passes my lips during a typical week, so that I can see exactly how badly I eat. I tried to keep up mentally at first, but I realize I'm going to have to keep a log handy (in my wallet), so I can jot down details of what I eat during the day. I will begin tomorrow, now, for sure.

I came home, and decided I'd play some WoW. It was raining, and I didn't want to attempt to start walking or otherwise on a day like today. I hopped on my holy paladin, and flew around Northrend, collecting ore for my blacksmithing. I traded some titanium for more saronite, and got my blacksmithing skill to 448. Tapping into my bank reserves, I bought a few more raw materials off of the auction house, and made my Titansteel Guardian. I've lost a bit of crit, though, so I may wind up using gems to make up the difference until I can begin picking up heroic and naxx pieces.

Having done that, I logged out, made a quickie dinner of a chicken pattie and cheese on bread. :) Now, I'm going to attempt to get some shuteye and relax. My birthday is on Wednesday, and while I *am* off, I work the rest of the week.