Spring Hopes Eternal

According to the calendar it is officially Spring. According to my senses Spring is still a few days away. Either way, I am glad to see the end of this Winter. It is not that I don't like Winter, I do. It is that this has been a long hard Winter, and I am not talking about the snow.

To me Winter is ... I hesitate to use this term, but it is the one that comes to mind ... A season of death. I don't mean that in a necessarily negative way. Death is a transition. It is the end of one cycle which allow the next to begin. Spring is the beginning of the cycle of seasons, and it could not be without Winter bringing the end of the previous cycle. Spring brings a new beginning and a re-awakening to the natural world.

This year I can feel the re-awakening in myself as well. It is barely there yet, but I can feel it. Hopefully, once the last of Winter is washed away (did you know that Winter itself is soluable in water) I will be able to fully awaken and strengthen my weakened ties to the natural world and my own spirituality.

I had more to write, but I can't seem to get to it form coherently on the screen. Therefore, I'm going to leave this here for now and see about coming back for another entry either later tonight or tomorrow.

Namaje.

I miss my friend.

Actually, I miss all my friends. This is partly because a lot of them are too far away to see very often, and it is partly because I have been feeling down for quite a while now and during this period I have not been very social. I have not been up to talking on the phone, for any length of time anyway, during much of this time. I know what you are thinking, or at least what I would be thinking at this point, "What about email at least?" Well, I don't really have an answer. Except, I guess, that when I get like that it is very hard to initiate contact. From my understanding, I am not alone in this.

That being said, it was not my intent to write about all of that tonight. Of course it seems like some of it needed to be said, possibly more than I have said, but I'll do that later. Tonight I was going to write about one specific friend of mine.

I miss my friend Paul.

It may seem strange to say that I haven't seen him in almost a year when he only moved out (he was one of my roommates for a while) about 4 or 5 months ago. However, it does make sense if you take into account that the person living here was not the same person he used to be. The old Paul was still there, but the new Paul never let him out. Let me give you some history that might help explain this.

I met Paul about 7 years ago and we quickly became friends. As our friendship grew we became close friends, almost family, and we remained friends for years.

Then we had a falling out. We stopped talking for a couple of months.

I am not going to say any more about that in this entry. Except to say that we did deal with it and started talking again.

It was after this, obviously, that we became roommates.

Well, things happened that made him withdraw from social contact. I have several ideas about what was happening but it is not my place to list them here. If he starts a blog he can cover them himself if he chooses. I am sure that anyone who knows him, at least the ones I have talked to about it, saw the same things I did.

The end effect was that he would sit in front of his computer playing games, or in front of the TV, and not talk to anyone. This was the birth of the new Paul. The old Paul, my friend, slipped away and disappeared. Or so people thought.

However, I got him out of house a couple of times, to shoot pool or whatever, and once he accepted the fact that he was out the old Paul would reappear. Once that happened we had a good time. Once it even lasted for a while after we got home. I know he is still in there, just repressed.

While I have been writing this I have also been thinking about why he has been on my mind so much the last couple of days and I think I have come up with an answer. I do miss all of my friends, but I know that they can look after themselves, in a lot of cases better than me. Paul is different and I am worried about him. I emailed him earlier asking him to let me know how is doing and asking if he wants to get together sometime. I hope I hear back from him.

I'll let you know if I do.

Better... (a relative term)

I don't know what it is, but this morning I woke up feeling better than I have felt in weeks.

Physically I am still ill. My sinuses are acting up and causing me to feel off balance and congested. At times it is so bad that I can barely breathe. On top of that, my knees are still bothering me, and while I still feel tired, I don't feel as run-down as I have been feeling.

It is odd. I have been feeling so miserable for so long now that when I felt OK this morning I didn't know what to do. And somehow it has managed to last. I am at work, and that hasn't dragged me back down yet. I got stopped on the way to work this morning (and got a $50 fine) and still feel pretty good. Stupid, and poorer, but still OK.

While a have a few minutes let me post a couple of quick updates.

[-- Post Edited by WyldWoods --]

But, on to another topic, my work visa. I'll give you the short version for now... I got a new visa, so I have been readmitted into the country for another year.

I might write more about the experience later, but for now I am being called to a meeting. I also have a few other things to write about once I get them a little more settled in my mind.

Peace.
Namaje.

I just got word that my review will be this afternoon at 4:00. Things should go well, but we will see what happens.

It is also looking like I will not be copying the entries from my old journal into this one. If you are interested in reading them you can find them at My uJournal Page. Which reminds me, I have to put a note in that system that forwards people here.

Well, my level of stress has increased.

The company I work for keeps doing more and more to cut costs. Earlier this month I was talking to the Director of IT (my department) and he said that we had cut all the fat from the department. Well, apparently it wasn't enough. On the 17th there was another round of layoffs and 2 more people were cut from IT, along with about 20-25 people from fulfillment. I don't knoiw how many people were cut from any other departments. So now, in an effort to save money, the company has started to cut deeper and is now starting to cut into muscle. How much longer before there is nothing but bone left, if that much.

Add into the mix the fact that annual reviews are coming up in the next couple of weeks... And something that is even more important to me, my work visa expires in a week. So with all this going on, along with the US policy changes, I have to go to INS and hope that they will allow me to stay and work for another year. This expiring of my work visa causes me stress every year. This time it is causing even more because of the rising tension in the world and the way the US seems to be trying to cut itself off from the rest of the world. At least the way the current US government is cutting itself off.

We'll see what happens when I get there.

Moving of my Journal

I started an online journal a while ago, but updated it very infequently. For various reasons, I have decided to revert back to an account I had setup a long time ago on a different system. So I have gone back to Blogger. I have started a new "blog" for this journal, but it is an account I have had for a while.

I will probably move the posts from my old journal to this one as there are few enough that I could do it easily. However, I am not going to do that immediately. I will make sure that it is clear any copied posts are clearly marked.

I will also try to post more often. No promises though.

-- WyldWoods