over drinks a few days back, a friend of mine commented that this blog is depressing. a reference to “wrist-slitting” drove home his point to me. of course, i’m aware of what i choose to post here and wasn’t really surprised by his comments, though i have to say it was the first time anyone had said as much to me directly. so, as i tend to do, i’ve been ruminating on his statements since then.

this blog, which i created years ago as an online diary, of sorts, has always been an outlet for me to pour out all my thoughts and feelings. for the most part, that’s always meant melancholy and depressing posts. since middle school, when i started keeping a journal, the dark and sad feelings and thoughts are almost all i’ve ever bothered to write down and i guess over time it’s turned into a bad habit of sorts. when things are good and my mood is up beat, i’m less inclined to write, if only because i’m busy doing more productive things with my time. only when my mood turns south do i find it hard to concentrate on other things and am therefore more likely to write here.

he made another point, which was a bit more hard-hitting and i think is ultimately why i’m writing here this evening; so many posts are about this girl or that and he commented that i was never going to meet someone if i always seem depressed and unconfident. while i can’t deny the truth in his observation, i have to say it’s a bit more complicated than that.

for one thing, there are, as far as i’ve been able to tell, only a handful of people i actually know who frequent this site. put another way, i don’t think there are many, if any at all, women who might be interested in me prior to wandering upon this site only to find that i’m a sad and disturbed individual. while i see his point, i find it hard to believe that the contents of this blog have contributed to my perpetual bachelorhood. though maybe his point was that it doesn’t help, which could be hard for me to deny.

then, of course, there is the reality; i’m shy by nature and though a few years of therapy helped a great deal, i still struggle with a wavering self-confidence. for better or worse, this blog reflects that reality. i can say that i am leaps and bounds better than i was, but still have issues than may, or may not, always be with me. and for reasons i’m not keen to get into here, i’ve never been one to put up a front for the sake of dating; what you see is what you get, for better or for worse. maybe that mentality has been a major contributing factor and can explain why i’ve never been particularly interested in, or good at, playing the dating game. who knows? maybe that’s all bullshit and it’s all a cop-out….

really, while i wanted to address my friend’s comments, i hadn’t intended to get into a long essay of self-reflection. what i really wanted to say was this; on some level, my friend has a point. maybe about girl stuff, but more directly about the depressing tone of this blog. if i want more people to read it, it needs to be less depressing. so, while i won’t promise you won’t see as many depressing posts, i will made a good faith effort at trying to write more often, on a wider array of topics, thus balancing out the tone of regardingfrost to more closely reflect the balanced mood of my day-to-day life.

…until i’m out of here. not permanently, but for a couple of weeks. and i need it.

it’s been a rough few weeks; the stress of being jobless continues lay heavier on me a bit more every day and frustrating thoughts and feelings have recently made it a bit harder for me to focus. though there seem to potentially be good things just over the horizon, at least with respect to a job, there’s a level of uncertainty that keeps me unsettled about it.

on friday afternoon i leave for st. paul to spend a couple of weeks with family. it’ll be a nice respite from my life here and an opportunity to clear my head a bit. while i’ve learned running to another state won’t allow me to escape my problems, even for a couple of weeks, the distraction will be welcome.

i hope to return to promising news on the job front and a more settled emotional state.

it’s strange how a dream can alter one’s perception of their reality and this is something i’ve been thinking about for the last few days and though this recent train of thought comes on the heels of a rather nice, but unsettling dream i had a couple of weeks ago. while i understand everyone supposedly dreams every night, i often say “i don’t dream very often.” what i guess this means in reality is that i don’t recall my dreams very often. it’s always been the case and imagine it has something to do with the fact that i’ve never slept very well.

because “i don’t dream very often,” it’s quite rare that i awake in the morning with a perception that is different from the one i had when i went to sleep. it’s so rare, in fact, that i can count on one hand the number of times it’s happened. now, while i understand that human beings dream every night while they sleep, i remember reading, or hearing, that dreams help us make sense of our days, our lives, putting thoughts and feelings in some order that makes sense. i’m not sure if this is actually true, or not, and given my limited experience, so to speak, with dreams, it’s hard to for me say that i believe that explanation with certainty. what i can say is that before this recent dream, i had one view, one understanding of my life, one perception of my reality and when i awoke from it, i had another.

referring back to a previous post, the dream in question left me questioning how i had previously seen someone in my life. we had been good friends, or so i thought, for years, but i never really looked at her in any romantic sense. when she moved away, i was sad to see my friend leave, but after a while and as a result of a lack of communication, i came to not miss her all that much. the perception of my reality was that we were friends at one point, but that friendship became faded by distance and time. after a while, my perception of my life didn’t really include her at all. and it didn’t bother me all that much. i mean, sure it made be a bit sad from time to time, but i understood my reality; we weren’t as close as i had once thought and i moved on with my life here.

then, one dream shook that perception. i find myself missing her more now. i find myself thinking about her more. i find myself questioning how accurate my previous perception had actually been. that one dream has so altered my perception i find both interesting and frustrating. the dream was a completely fictional story, one that wasn’t based even remotely on the reality of my waking life, yet that story, that dream has left me questioning so many things. and all those questions have resulted in a slightly more uncertain life outlook than the one i previously held; when one aspect of your perception is changed, so is the sum of that perception.

at this point, i’m not quite sure what to do with myself. slowly, this new perception is becoming more familiar, more comfortable. soon enough, i will have adapted completely and it will become my new reality, at least, that is, until another dream shakes me loose yet again….

yup. it’s been approximately one year since i first got sick and though i know it was sometime in august, i never imagined it was something i would spend the rest of my life with, so i never committed to memory the exact date.it’s been an interesting year in terms of both learning about and how to manage the disease, but also in getting diagnosed and receiving monthly medication without health insurance.

i’ve managed to find a place to get my prescription filled without it costing me an arm and a leg (no, not on the black market) and so far i haven’t had to pay for my visits to the GI doctor. hawaii has some of the lowest medically uninsured rates in the nation, thanks to the pre-paid health care act, but if you’re unemployed here, as in most places in the country, you’re screwed. trying to get a potentially deadly illness diagnosed when you don’t have health insurance is, to put it mildly, frustrating. for the first couple of months, i was playing trial and error with a very diligent physician’s assistant at a local community clinic, but when all her ideas proved fruitless, i was forced to spend nearly $800 on a CAT scan (i think that’s what it was), only to have it whittle down the possibilities to crohn’s or cancer, at which point i was forced to find a specialist, which included a consultation with a surgeon. fun stuff.