Branching Out

So I'm working on branching out some lately, expanding my horizons as it were. I've complained a fair bit that I don't get out enough, don't meet new people... so I'm doing something about it now.

Last night, I went to the grand opening of a local club, "The Cherry Lounge & Pit". It was a VIP only event, free drinks until 11pm, and I was offered a ticket... so hell yea! The place actually turned out to be very nice. The crowd was definitely a mixture that I wasn't expecting. The sign on the door claimed "strict dress code".. but the clientele didn't quite show evidence of that. Perhaps this was simply because of the nature of the event, but I was very happy with the diversity. While there, I met several new people, found a good new club, and perhaps somewhere I may try to spin in the future.

Today for lunch, I also decided to try something new. I had to run an errand at lunch, so I decided to stop somewhere near there for lunch: Teakwood Tavern & Grill. This place surprised me, I like it. My first impression when I walked in was that it was a total dive... albeit a bit bigger than your typical dive. Not that this is a bad thing, I've haunted my share of dives. The staff was very friendly; perhaps a bit slow, but it was a busy lunch time so that's excusable. I took my seat at the bar, got a glass of Kilt Lifter (bonus!) and ordered some kind of... honey mustard chicken sandwich. This thing comes out, and holy hell it was big. Tasty too! I couldn't taste too much of the honey mustard, probably not enough with the huge chunk of chicken on there. It also came with a small cup of "fresh" fruit.. well, mostly fresh anyhow. I may have just gotten a bad part of a pineapple, who knows. Overall though, I was pleasantly surprised. I can definitely see going back there again.

I gotta keep this up, I like this whole "new" thing. It suits me.

Action

...at the wrong time, or too late, can have disastrous consequences.

But in every change, there is good. It just depends how you handle the change and how you adapt to the results.

Self awareness

Whether or not I've said it, admitted it, whatever.. I've been on a journey of self awareness for a while now. Strange that L and I should be doing this at the same time... but it works.

Obviously, according to my last post, I'm changing. I have been changing. Hell, I've made that pretty obvious in many of my previous posts. Some of this I've done on my own... some I've done through the help of teachers, some through friends like L, and also through the Landmark Education Center. (Thank you Sonia!) (Yes, there is one in Portland also. Yes, you are going.. some day. You know who you are.)

All this has made for the most challenging.. emotional rollercoaster period of my life so far. But it's also the most rewarding. The lows may be low, but the highs are in the clouds. Where am I going to end up from all this? I'm not really sure... but I like that idea. The future is open, a canvas yet to be drawn on. I know that I'm becoming much more aware of the world, the environment, my personal impact on it.. and the impact of our people as a whole. I would like to think that eventually I will make some kind of impact as far as that is concerned. Do my part to make things better. Perhaps I already am, simply by talking and helping educate others. I want to be able to reach more people though, a broader audience.

Coming up in February, I'm going to be attending a Landmark Forum... this is going to be something very big. I've seen the impact that it has had on Sonia, and I can see that she is a completely new person since attending... a much happier, more open person. I'm actually a bit scared of attending, because I don't really know what I'll discover about myself there. Even just attending the Introduction opened many doors in my mind, and incited many breakthroughs for myself. Attending a 3-day forum... who knows what may happen.

The search for a better life

"The grass is always greener on the other side." Right?

No, not always.

But that doesn't mean you should just stop and settle down once you've found a decently green patch of life. See, that's what I've got right now. I've got a pretty decent life. I make a decent salary, working a decent job. I live in a decent house in a decent city. I own lots of decent things. This should all make me a happy person.

But it doesn't.

The one thing I'm still searching for is the life that I actually want to stick with. The life where I'm no longer discontented with my situation; where I don't feel the need to improve my situation, because I'm certain I could be happier living differently. My greatest problem in this regard is, in fact, perhaps my greatest strength. I am constantly growing and improving as a person; and as a result, I need my surroundings to grow as well. I need my situation to change along with me. I've outgrown this city. I've outgrown this house. Though I've only been there for just over 6 months, I have more than outgrown my job. In essence, I've outgrown all of my surroundings... and yet, I still find myself in them. This is a constant point of frustration for me. I have, in fact, been looking for a new place to live for some time now. Currently, Portland is a very strong contender. I don't know that I could stay in Portland, however. It's a wonderful city, full of wonderful people, and I believe that it would be a good fit for me at this point in my life. I fear though that even Portland may not allow me to keep up my momentum of personal growth.

Guaranteed, as soon as it's a viable option, I will be dropping off the radar completely and living out my days on some remote island with nary a care aside from whether or not I want to get up from my chair for another drink.

Being Irish

So today I went out to lunch with the guys here at work. We had this little joke running about "Oh, you like that? Well that's just cause you're Irish." Oddly enough, it fits for a lot of things. Some of the things named were:

• Dropkick Murphys. Irish punk music.
• The Corrs. Irish pop-folk music.
• Drinking. Go figure. This also fits with the German in me.
• Guinness. Goes along with the drinking, but it's really in a class all its own.
  
• Boondock Saints. A movie about Irish Boston.
• Meat & potatoes. I grew up on them. What do you expect in an Irish family?

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's more, but yea... those really do seem to fit.

Twitch

My eyelid won't stop twitching. It's really starting to irk me.

I want to stab it.
That might suck though, since I'd end up stabbing myself in the eye.

Code Restructuring

Recently it was decided that I need to go into a documentation/maintenance phase at work, which I'm totally cool with. There was next to no documentation for me to work with when I came into this position, and I've had to figure everything out from the ground up. Some things I'm still not fully sure of... but that's what this period of time is for.

I've decided to take this to the next level though. Notice I said "documentation/maintenance", not just documentation. I'm taking the opportunity to rewrite and refactor a lot of the core functionality of our code. Build it the way it should have been done to begin with. Reorganize things, make things more readable and understandable, and document the whole process as I go, of course.

This is really turning into quite the project... one of those ones where I'm not really sure how it's ever going to end. Right now, I'm working on rewriting all of our database connection code... which is a large undertaking in itself. I think overall, this is going to be a very worthy project though. I'm building a more solid base for our code to run on, trimming a lot of fat in the code, getting it all figured out for myself and any future developers... plus I'm increasing my own understanding of PHP's object oriented programming, and in fact object oriented programming in general. This whole thing will definitely be good for my resume and my future experiences in programming.

I just hope I can actually give this project a finite timeline...