As my mom always used to say, things did indeed look better in the morning. And since my sleep schedule has completely flipped, I got to witness the sunrise first-hand. Surprisingly, things still looked better than they did yesterday. Funny, I always figured sleep was an essential part of that equation.

A big lesson to be learned out of the whole experience is that, and I'm putting this in caps for emphasis: FINISH WHAT YOU START. Specifically, if the beginning of an e-mail looks bad, at least read the whole thing before jumping to conclusions. You know, when you assume, you make and ass out of you and... Crap, I forget the rest.

Today was pretty much a write-off. This cold isn't horrible so long as I keep up on my DayQuil, but that means I'm light-headed and dopey most of the time. Still, the real challenge is going to be getting to sleep tonight. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow afternoon, which means I should get to sleep sometime before 5 AM. This is an important visit. There's a lot I need to ask about before I move, but I'm sure I'll forget something. So let's start the list now...

• Are my immunizations up to date?
  
• What's the best way to treat a sinus infection?
  
• Will this monkey bite heal?
  
• Why did the money bite me?
  
• Is it a bad idea to poke a sleeping monkey with sticks?
  
• What was this monkey doing in my house?
  
• Is it possible to get long-term prescription renewals to cover
  cross-country moves?
  
• Will this heal if I keep picking at it or was my mother
  right?
  
• What would really happen to me if a radioactive spider bit
  me?
  
• Do you have any radioactive spiders?
  
• What about radioactive badgers?
  
• Is there some physiological reason women are nuts?
  
• Is it monkey bites?
  

That ought to cover it.

I feel the need to break something.

Ten minutes ago, I was cooking some soup. Split pea, if you must know, and the spoon I was using fell onto the floor, making a small but frustrating mess. I really, really wanted to just chuck that spoon across the room. Somehow, I managed not to.

This is not, in case you're concerned, simply about the soup. I've been thinking about breaking things all day. At about 1 o'clock, I got an e-mail from an editor informing me that my comic project had been shot down. I suppose, if things were going better, I could just brush this off, but they haven't and I can't.

I had the idea for the piece about two years ago, and in my mind, it's been about the only decent concept I've come up with in that time. I nursed it, rewrote it, forgot about it, resurrected it and finally put it into working shape. It was, in my mind, the best hope I had for getting something published, and right now I just don't have a clue what to do next.

But this is about more than just the project. This has been a fairly lousy week of dashed expectations and spoiled plans, and to top it off, I've got some sort of nasty cold that isn't helping my disposition at all. Honestly, this seems to be a pattern of rejection going back for a while now that is just festering like an infection. I know that it's a problem of focus, I know that. I know that all I need is a good "It's a Wonderful Life"-type intervention to make me realize all the things I do have, but at the same time, I can't help but feel stymied about these issues that I haven't been able to overcome or resolve, and it's dragging me down. They're all I can focus on anymore.

In college, I fell into the writer/editor profession with considerable success. I can't see how I missed it in hindsight, but it's really the only thing I excel at. Everything I tackled in that area succeeded beyond my expectations. I started out as a lowly editorial writer, and within a week, I was made columnist. In just a few months, I was assistant editor and then editor. I was writing two columns a week sometimes, one for the opinion page and the entertainment page. I was writing articles and interviewing my heroes.

One of these heroes, Al Franken told me the secret, in his opinion, to finding success: You discover what you love, you find like-minded people, someone gets a break, and that friend helps his other friends... and so on. It seemed like a reasonable plan, coming from someone who ought to know.

Ever since I was a little kid, I dreamed of working for Saturday Night Live, and though those dreams have changed somewhat, the concept remains the same. I've always wanted to be amongst a tight-knit group of people working towards a common goal, where the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. But ever since college, that fate has eluded me, to the point where I've now seen numerous "friends" go off to astronomical success, without the slighest interest in helping out anyone but themselves.

Maybe that's my mistake. Maybe I shouldn't be relying on others to help me out, but I don't see how it can be done otherwise. As the saying goes, it's not what you know, but who you know. Apparently I just don't know the right people. It's either that or the only other conclusion left: that I'm just not cut out for it.

One early acquaintance that I made who has since gone off to considerable success herself once made the snarky comment that I'm doomed to "always be the bridesmaid..." People tell me her career is an abberation, a freak occurrance, but I'm more upset about the fact that I haven't been able to get just one fucking break to her fifty. This proposal was, I thought, my one best shot, and now it's dead.

If this all sounds like self-pity, well, tough. I'm entitled a little of that. I hope it doesn't go on too long, and that I'm able to move on, because I've laid in bed staring at the ceiling about as much as any human can. But in this state of mind, I can't exactly seem to see how I'm supposed to keep going. Nor do I care. I am way too close to throwing in the towel and saying fuck it. Life would be a lot easier without all these high hopes and delusions of grandeur to worry about. Maybe I could be a regular joe like everyone else, who just wants to go do his eight hours at a menial job, get a paycheck and drink beer and watch TV.

Can't a guy get a break?

Three things:

• First and foremost, we must place a ban on all kitschy
  punk/ska/metal covers of 80's pop hits. If you aren't creative
  enough to come up with your own hit single, then you don't deserve
  a career.
  
• Do hair stylists have their own secret measurements that they
  don't tell anyone about? An inch to a hairstylist is like 3 inches
  to a normal human being. (That would make them good potential
  girlfriends though...)
  
• Why doesn't anybody sell hot apple cider anymore? It's about
  ten below wind chill out there, and all three of the coffee shops
  I went to didn't have any. Bastards.
  

That is all.

I know I just posted, but I have to document my day today while I'm at it. I got shot down for a job I really wanted: assistant editor at the Tucson Weekly newspaper. It sounded like an ideal career fit, as well as allowing me to be close to some family I have there. Everyone I tell about the rejection is being very Zen about it, saying it wasn't meant to be, but I have the creeping suspicion that I dropped the ball. I heard the job was open on a Tuesday or Wednesday, but waited until Saturday night to apply. By Monday morning, I was informed that the position was already full.

Then again, if they hired someone that fast, I'm not sure they would have waited for me to get down there. It's taken me this long to even consider moving, and it will likely take me at least a month to get everything transported and settled.

Gah, I don't even want to think about that.

In an attempt to make that rejection sting less, I tried perusing as many job sites I could for that one decent ad that would make the whole debacle sting less, but all I found was that the job market in my destinations sucks chimp. In Portland, apparently the only openings are for chefs and "exotic entertainers," and I can't cook...

Things just didn't get any better. I had a blind date with a young lady last week, and I ended up liking her quite a bit. She works an odd schedule, and she had her days off yesterday and today. I blanked on calling her yesterday, and when I called today, she was too busy. Apparently she was trying to fix her computer so she could do a TV editing project, or so she said. Who knows? Maybe I waited too long on this one as well. Regardless, I was really looking forward to seeing her again, even though I know it's doomed anyway, since I have to move soon.

And then the really creepy part: I was taking a nap today, and was awoken by a shooting pain in my heart, followed by some erratic heartbeats. Scared the hell out of me. It wasn't a panic attack. It wasn't anything like I've ever experienced before. I'm still a little frightened of going back to bed, but I'll probably wind up taking something to help me sleep to aid that as much as possible.

Fun, huh?

It wasn't all bad news, though. My mother called and told me that my cousin Joe has connections somehow that might help me out, but I put off calling him, perhaps in a subconscious attempt to give my karma time to heal. One could say that the good news might have been enough to improve on a lousy day, but in the end I opted to not even consider the possibility of more crap.

Oh, and in a moment of weakness, I told my ex she could come visit this weekend. Guh. Is it possible to have latent brain damage?

I went to The Wedding yesterday, the one referred to on the current front page essay. For some reason, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected, perhaps because I had the option of leaving at any time. Besides, the activities were a little more varied, and I had the option of moving amongst a larger group of people.

The ceremony was marred, unfortunately, by some painful music choices (e.g., "Friends are Friends Forever," the song that they always played on the last day of summer camp) and by entirely too many children in the church. There were about as many kids as adults there, and the one next to me played his Gameboy throughout the entire ceremony. I almost slapped him. I tried making some "Hey Shithead"-type grunts in his direction, but he was too absorbed in his Pokemon game. I was hoping his grandmother would pickup on my disdain, but she actually seemed to be encouraging him to play the damned thing.

Then again, it hardly seemed to bother anyone else, and it wasn't my wedding. I'm seriously considering banning small children at my ceremony, or distributing sedative-laced Kool-Aid beforehand. Hey, it worked for my mother...

I was actually the last one to arrive, just as The Bride was walking up the aisle. I left my house in plenty of time, but Mapquest gave me bad directions. A freeway divides the street that the church was on, and the directions put me on the wrong side of it. (Stoopid Internet.) On that side of the freeway, the address I was headed to appeared to be a long-abandoned cemetery, which freaked me out a tad. My friend wasn't that morbid, was he?

Following the ceremony, we were off to the American Legion Hall, which we completely and utterly failed to fill up. I don't know if they were expecting a much larger crowd, or the preparations committee went mad with power, but the place was only about half-full, which was fine, as it gave me an excuse to move around. They went through the usual wedding motions, the stuffing of the cake in the spouse's mouth, the dances, the cheap beer... For a veteran of incalculable nuptials, the process is starting to wear thin. The only real variety comes from the attendees and the DJ.

In this case, the DJ sucked eggs. This was somewhat the fault of the people making requests, but quite a few songs seemed to originate with her whim, and not all of them appropriate. YMCA, fine, if you must, but not the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald...

But God help me, I did the Chicken Dance of my own free will.

The only available females left after the ceremony, much to my dismay. There was a beautiful young woman at the reception who I found out was the college-age younger sister of a girl I went to school with, but about midway through the conversation she revealed that she was a strict Southern Baptist, and that was that. I don't think they allow Southern Baptists to date Catholics, especially lapsed ones.

And then there was another former classmate, who used to date a close friend of mine in high school. He now refers to her as "The Troll." She has been divorced twice, has two children (one from each marriage), and keep in mind she's the same age as I am. And I got the distinct impression throughout the night that she was hitting on me.

Still, the prospect of not having to impress someone lifted some weight from my shoulders, and I did manage to have a good time, as well as a decent amount of beer. Still, when people started line dancing, I knew it was time to leave.

It was 9 o'clock on a Saturday night. I suddenly felt the need to salvage the evening, so I called up my former boss and we headed out to the Lumber Yard (note: probably not a good link if the boss is around) to try and make up for last week's non-Bachelor Party.

I'll just say that women love a man in a tie, and leave it at that.

Oh, and 20 bucks doesn't hurt either.

This is a test. This is only a test. If this had been a real weblog entry, everything you and I hold dear would have been mocked ruthlessly. The owner of this website, in involuntary cooperation with federal, state and local authorities, has developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an actual weblog. For the next sixty seconds, if you open your window and listen closely, you might just hear the whine of a twenty-something white male that will be used to alert you in case of an actual emergency, or just a bad day. Remember, this is only a test.