Moving on.

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I’m a little odd, or different. I have spent most of my life trying to conform to what ever is considered normal and failing at it. I have always had a hard time fitting in, and if it weren’t for a propensity for situational assessment, I probably would have been incapable of having a social life. With this conclusion of being an oddity came the illation (not elation, not the same look it up) that I’m ok with it, in fact I prefer it. I spend far too much of my present dwelling on a past filled with self-doubt that was fueled by my unfortunate choices in companionship. I’ve realized that my life has been filled with friends and lovers who saw me for what they thought I could be and not what I am. People who thought they could help me to be better, when in fact their idea of better actually meant, “more like them”. My life has been a waiting room for those who would use it as a temporary distraction until their real life showed up. Then they would wipe their feet and merrily skip off forgetting to shut the door. I’m tired of twelve am phone calls and chat conversations full of regret and “what ifs” from people who realized my value far too late. I wish I had been able in my youth to embrace my quirkiness, maybe if I’d grown up in a community with less bigotry and judgment I would have. But now that I have embraced it, I’m going to run with it. I enjoy my eclectic, weird, even possibly eccentric personality.  To any that I wasn’t good enough for in the past, I’m sure as hell not good enough for you now. Wait… Strike that, reverse it.  Kirk out.

Undeclared

A new semester is upon us and it's feeling a lot like last semester, bla and boring. It's not like there's not plenty of homework to keep me busy; this is one of the more homework heavy semesters I've had. I just don't seem to care about doing it. If I'm already feeling this way two weeks in, it's going to be a miserable one. I think it's time for a break. I've got a lot of things I want to do before I die and it's occurred to me that some of them have to me done in a graduated order. Otherwise, realizing some will negate the possibility of others. So I think it may be time for another adventure. I have my passport and thanks to a combination of budgeting and really good investing (despite my complete ignorance of how that stuff works) I think I have enough in savings to finance an adventure. I don't relish the idea of taking a semester off and thus prolonging the completion date of this experiment I've been conducting the last three years. However, at this point, I've already toyed with the idea of terminating the whole thing, forgetting about doing the "school thing" and just going back to work. And that will not get me where I want to go. Ahh, it seems that I am once again at a cross roads. Things were much simpler last semester when I could put off decision making until this semester, but now that time is here.

So.

Last week was my birthday and no one remembered. Well, aside from family, one person remembered. But not the one I was hoping for. After the big fuss she made last year when i didn't tell her about it, I figured that she would remember this year. But she didn't.

Music to my ears.

Possibly the coolest thing I've had a woman say to me. "Hey, do you want to go grab a beer?"

Is It Possible That I'm Just An Idiot?

I have found myself once again crazy about someone who cannot or will not return my affections. This has become so common a pattern in my attempts at making a love connection, that it's not even sad anymore. It's more like hilariously tragic.
The pattern goes exactly like this:
We meet and hit it off instantly.
We get along great and are very comfortable with each other, finding lots to converse about.
We begin to REALLY like each other.
Enough time passes for her to realize that I am actually as nice a guy as I seem to be (apparently that is rare).

Then it occurs to her that nice guys are suppose to finish last, those are just the rules, she didn't make them up, but they must be followed. And then we have the conversation where she explains that she's not done figuring herself out yet. She's not done having fun or ready to commit to one person.
BUT, She also explains that I am so amazing and so special to her, she can't bare the idea of not having me in her life. And with that, I am cast in role of best guy friend.
She then proceeds to date every shithead in site all the while saying to me, "I can't believe you haven't found someone, you're such a great guy."
This has happened to me no less than half a dozen times. Needless to say, I am angry at the entire female gender. Ladies, I really wish you would get together as a group and decide who among you is willing to welcome me in from the wasteland known as the "friend zone".

I refuse to be governed by conformity.

So, a funny thing happened to me today. For about half an hour (maybe forty-five minutes) I forgot who I was.
Let me preface this story by saying, "I hate glassware!" I am a big guy, who is clumsy. I like my kitchenware durable.
So, after a trip to the state owned store of sin , I was in search of wine glasses. At the dollar store the glasses were too cheap. At Target (a.k.a.Wal-mart plus) they were too expensive. As I was looking at a set of 4 glasses for $15.95-ish, it suddenly dawned on me, "Why am I looking at a special glass to drink wine out of?" I am Ian Owens! Since when do I conform? Why would wine taste any different from a wine glass than it would from a mason jar? Plus a mason jar is so much more my style.

Sunlight

There was once a troll named Ugh. He was like most trolls, he lived in a world that was always dark. He liked it that way; Always hidden away from the world. He did what trolls do. He went about his daily affairs ignoring the light of day, always keeping his eyes on the ground. Until one day, while munching on his midday grub, he caught out out of the corner of his eye, a ray of sunshine casting a golden beam of light on a lone wildflower. For the first time in Ugh's life he saw pure beauty. He was perplexed by this singular flower that could grow between the thorns of roses and stand above the tangles of the honeysuckle. In the days to follow Ugh found himself returning to that spot to try and catch a glimpse of the majesty of a world he dared not dream of. Over time Ugh began to visit the meadow that was home to the wildflower less and less, because he knew that the flower belonged to a world that was not his. After a while Ugh began to forget about the wildflower. And then, one day after returning home from a day of toil, he found a crack in the wall. The crack let in a tiny blade of light that was shining in on a small wildflower.