I’ve been drinking drip in the office for a couple months now. It seemed like a good idea at the time, cheaper than going downstairs to the Starbucks and easier. Unfortunately that means a couple cups of coffee a day has turned into 5+ and I’m pretty sure it’s having a lasting effect on me these days as I’ve been coming home tired for a good week. While soda is less caffeinated, it doesn’t seem like a great tradeoff. I guess I’m going to need to get a couple cases of Vitamin Water and keep them in office.

But here I am, up again after a short nap because while I feel tired, I can’t seem to find the thread in the dark betwixt feeling tired and actually sleeping. That’s alright, I haven’t written a good bit in some time doing to being busy and behind in projects. Bus rides, bar conversations and adventures have left initial sparks of rants in the back of my mind, shimmering now and then but never at the right time to find their way to paper.

Apparently one of our neighbors read my introductory post to the Georgetown neighborhood mailing list and comment to Ken about how I was a blogger. I didn’t realize the two were so intertwined. They aren’t really, blow over from my sarcastic attempts at taking over the name Bryan McLellan on the intartubes.

Eric Bixler came by the office today and it looks like we’ll be hiring part time for Help Desk / IT Support. I’m excited because he’s good people and I could definitely use the help. He’s cleaned up since my memories of Exchange 2003 class at Strategy with him, back in 2005 or so.

I had a great time hanging out with Julie on Sunday. After stomping around the woods near Gold Greek, I-90 West was still messed up from an earlier avalanche so we cruised up around through Leavenworth and back on US-2 giving us lots of time to chat about all sorts of subjects. She commented on hoping that was the first of many adventures and I’m not able to put it any better myself. I’m fortunate [through lots of hard work] to have reached where I am on a day to day basis but I still long for less repetitiveness and more adventure.

For Seattle having so much outdoor wonder to offer, I’m still a little surprised by how many seem to take advantage of it. Hiking isn’t any sort of a regular hobby for most and while I can’t claim that I have been on a regular basis before this dark winter I’ve felt like getting people to the mountains has been a hassle, enough to make me comment on my okcupid profile that “I tend to marry people who take me canoe camping, or live in a van-ing, or whatever.”

I’ve had a couple friends I’ve managed to drag along to places the last year, and with recent nostalgia regarding crazy wanderings in a past life, that’s been positive in the same way. All the same, I’m excited to hang out with Julie again and feel like adventure isn’t half convincing folks that it will be fun followed by cliches like “I bet the top is just over that next hill.”

I don’t think I’ve ever been a dramatic person. I’m unsure if I’ve always felt as easy going as I do now, but I know I’m more conscience of drama and despite my efforts to shrug it off, it’s tolls on me. I wonder if the drama at the Awful Shark was more intense than that at The Loft. It seems impossible, because we were all so much older, yet I know that alone means little. When I think of adults being more calm and reasonable, I start imagining boring nine to fivers who spend their evenings arguing over stuff white people like. Which I pretty much think is fully a waste of oxygen. Even before living in HipsterLand (known as Seattle elsewhere) I never picked up on people’s excitement about new music. It’s definitely an art thing, but I’ve always felt like much of it comes from an ego battle, a desire to be cool. I’ve commented recently on preferring a blue collar mechanic to the hipster elite any day and I stand by that.

I try to question myself and maintain a little objectivity and I find myself wondering what bits in the world I’m an elitist over? I’d tend to jump to computers, as that feels like where my greatest experience lies and I’d figure of arrogance would come anywhere it would be where I had toiled the most. I think all of the opinions I have in that land have experiences that have formed some degree of wisdom, albeit twisted with a bit of sarcasm and opinion. The usual Windows / Linux argument, outside of my sarcasm lacks enough hot air to be found in my persona. I use both on a regular basis and have use for both, any complaints generally come from frustration in trying to get either to do what I want, which applies more to all tools than either side of the operating system wars. I realize I’ve met many who have prejudices against software for it being too complicated but in the majority of these circumstances it was a lack of ‘big picture’ understanding on the part of the user rather than a major failure of the software, and less often the case of a user simply realizing it was easier to walk around that mountain than try to surmount it.

Anyhow, drama. It’s been a topic of conversation and thought as of late as to why people seem to generate so much of it. I’ve simply walked away from a number of situations over the last six months where I felt people were deliberately causing unneeded drama, knowingly or not, and whatever I was getting from being there wasn’t worth it. That is, I know enough good people that my time is better spent, and happier, spent with others. I feel like when that choice is made without any or little angst or ill-will sourced where I’m coming from, as fuel for going the other way; that it’s a healthy, positive choice that needs to be more active than passive in my life.

It’s quite interesting actually. I’ve often wondered in amazement how we can be so full of ourselves as individuals in a world with so many people in it, yet we do somehow, with the exceptions most often being when we have esteem problems. Not that everyone simply thinks they’re either awesome or worthless, but somehow the middle seems to be a barren place reserved for monks that the ‘spiritual but not religious’ folks aim to align themselves with. Similar thoughts can be traced back through I think I can do that.

I feel like I’ve written recently about confidence and arrogance, but all I can find quickly is a rant after watching Into the wild, and some okcupid inspired bits about being surprised at the number of of power hungry people out there in search of fast cars and fast [wo]men.

There was this situation a while back that I was a third party two where there were three folk talking about each other “behind each others back” in triangular form. The bonds or links weren’t equal, but were lines of communication at the very least. Because of the weakness of these bonds though, much of the communication was shallow, and became passive aggressive which was a brutal catalyst for near pure emotional aggressiveness. The question in my mind that come out of it was “what exactly do you hope to get out this?” We’re not talking about people that were likely to change, and the way it all came out certainly wasn’t conducive to being constructive. Another angle is interesting, which is, “what do you have to lose?” If the risk is little, and you’re still following through with your actions, what you’re hoping to gain almost certainly is your own selfish sense of self satisfaction from “putting someone in their place” by way of venting.

After that particular event, Andy and I were talking about it and he mentioned how odd it was that I seem to have so many dramatic people in my life. I have to consider if I thrive on it somehow, as others I know seem to, but I feel that I’ve been too passive in the past where a majority would explode and there’d be enough friction to end friendships, I mostly look the other way.

In a sort of medical surgery, attempting to separate past feelings with reality, I’ve been thinking about this whole sort of disaster lately. There’s some interesting bits in Nicomachean Ethics about choosing our companions based on entertainment value or morality. Two traits stick in my mind as having been held by friends: one is a lack of conscience and guilt being held retroactively under the guise of some sort of regret, and the other is a sort of extremist self-esteem that I’ve had more trouble looking at objectively.

The reality is that every situation I can ponder, someone righteously expressing how much they’ve done for, given up for, or catered to me is pretty solid evidence that it never was for me at all.