A couple serious blogs today put me in the mood to write one myself.

I am trying to get over this notion that I need to avoid doing things that might cost me friendships. I've already learned the hard way, several times, that when that happens, those people who get up and leave the room weren't really friends anyway. Well, as long as the action wasn't that bad.

When I first started my store, I let some people buy things on credit. That seems so long ago it doesn't feel like it's a part of my life, really. But somewhere here in my apartment is a list I printed when I had to sell the Amiga computer I had then, of the people who owed me money and how much. It's a couple thousand dollars owed by several dozen people. Back then a couple thousand dollars was an entire month of sales. Not profits, the sales. So a couple thousand in profits would have been 3 or so months of sales. And as desperate as I was at that time, sharing my apartment with 5 other people, and paying bills on one credit card after another, I was afraid of losing a friend by not letting them walk all over me.

One day I wouldn't allow someone to buy on credit. His room mate at the time owed me over a hundred dollars and hadn't made a payment for a while. I stupidly mentioned that to him. That was stupid on a couple levels, mainly because it wasn't anyone's business but the guy who owed me the money. I did it because I was desperate and wanted him to tell his friend, thinking how friend would come pay me. Instead, they both went together and opened a rival game shop in town. My store outlasted theirs, maybe because the foundation of my business wasn't revenge but to give people something to do as cheaply as possible. Nah. That foundation doesn't stand these days either. It was because they looted their own store whenever they wanted a game.

I had another friend give me this reason for not paying me when I let him buy something on credit: (paraphrased though I can still hear it in my head) "You have an apartment and a car and a business, you don't need my money." I had a car that belonged to my parents and like I said, I shared a 2 bedroom apartment with 5 other people. And the things I sold him for $250, I was only making $10 profit off.

Letting people buy on credit is like giving out free money. That is just one of the many things I did that caused me to hate the store and myself and other people.

I don't know if I did it for attention or to be the good guy or what my mental problem is. I have a host of mental problems, I'm sure. If I could find a psychologist (or whatever) who wasn't full of shit I'd like to find out just what is wrong with me.

When I sold the store, also, several people I thought were friends just disappeared. They were new friends of the new guy who bought the store. So, really, how blind was I? They weren't friends, just people hoping for a hand out I suppose.

I wish there was some sort of way of knowing who is a real friend and who isn't. Barring some major drama that weeds out the false ones, I just don't know of anything. And making up some drama to try and weed them out? That's a worse idea that committing to a friendship with someone who isn't a real friend.

I don't have a whole lot of friends here. There are a couple people I'd like to be friends with but they don't show any sign of wanting the same thing. They know who they are. So I decided to stop trying. I'm wasting time on them when I have other friends I can do things with. and some of the friends I have now have popped out families and don't have a lot of free time. I understand that, but I miss them. And some of my friends here are probably so annoyed by me they don't like to come around all that often.

Which I suppose is why I really want to move. Far from here. I'll know who was a friend by who stays in touch through email. Then I could make plans to go visit them and, I guess, be like normal people who do that sort of thing. Because right now, most of those people are too busy or maybe too tired of me to want to hang out. And in a new place, I have nothing to offer but myself. No store to give credit, no money to loan, no connections, so maybe the friends I'd make in a new place would be the real ones.

Well, enough rambling. I was going to have a point but I don't think I managed it.

Today, being a day I had too much free time on my hands so I am making homemade spaghetti sauce and still finding myself bored (trying real hard not to play World of Warcraft you see) I decided to look through my bookmark list and offer up a sampling of stuff I like.

Firstly, my favorite online comic Cyanide & Happiness. Here's a sample.

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

If it's cut off it's because Xanga isn't behaving for crap today. Click it and view the site and the full picture.

A new comic every day! It is exactly what I wanted my comic to be, except that every time I sit down to make a new comic my brain shuts off.

Also, I like to go over to Pandora and listen to a bunch of music I can't possibly afford to buy myself, although I'm slowly working on it. Some of this music I have found out about from Jason, and some that Pandora played while playing what he told me about. It's a station of music that, for the most part, I had never heard the songs before and sometimes even the band itself, before until the miracle of the Internet intervened. You know, it wasn't that long ago, epochically speaking, that I was asking how people find out about new music when all the radio stations play is either the oldies or the new pop trash I can't even classify as music. Mind you, I don't like all the music played on this channel, I'm giving the thmbs down still to songs quite often. Well, here we go. Pandora.

So, I'm bored.

Bored with online games, bored with writing my game, bored with looking for jobs I don't want to do anyway.

And tired.

Tired of living in an apartment, tired of having no money, and definitely tired of living in Wyoming.

But, in an effort to not be entirely negative;

I love the way Firefox's spell checker lets me right click to correct a word, I love this freaky granola-type cereal I found at Albertsons even though it's really just a bag of oats, and I love reading your sites and seeing that I'm the laziest ho on here. No, really. If some of you were lazier than me, I'd probably just crawl back into bed for a week to compete.

I actually had nothing to say, except I have three friends I watch The Wire with. Matt is on season 1, Shane is on season 2, and Wade is on season 4. It's a good thing I like the show. If you haven't seen it, give it a try. But try 2-3 episodes before you make up your mind.

Edit*
Oh yeah, here's an example of how selfish I am. I'm not sure if I mean selfish or self-centered. Pick one and run with it.

A couple weeks after quittign OfficeMax, I was called by one of the ladies in HR and she did an exit interview over the phone with me. I answered as honestly as I could, trying to keep my opinions on how much the place sucked to myself and giving my ideas on why certain things seem not right and how it seems they could be, and I made sure to point out that "maybe there's a reason we do some of that stuff that seems backwards and completely unnecessary, but none of us know the reason. if we did know the reason, I'll be a lot of people would be ok with doing those things, or who knows, someone might think of a better way to do it."

Honestly, I was pretty damn nice and considering how much I hate that place and everythign they do, I think I gave a lot of helpful advice. Not necessarily anything they should change or implement as much as the way the people in the cube farm see things and why.

Iit was a 45 minute phone call, and she told me she was writing everything down.

And the really self-centered part of that?

She was fired a few weeks ago, and all i can think of is "What if she took some of my ideas to her boss?"

You know, her boss would have been that worthless wench who told me it was my fault I had to walk out of the training class.