Cartoon Socks and Free Time

This is a pair of socks gifted to me this year by one of my close friends (and a former student), the same one who got me the Leonard Cohen set for my birthday. She says these socks look like me, and I am inclined to agree with her -- down to the little aviator sunglasses.

I am currently wearing said socks right now, by the way. They're comfortable, if a bit meta.

(They're "a bit meta" because I'm wearing a comic-like representation of myself on my feet, in case you were wondering.)

I don't know if my friend who gave me these socks reads this blog, though she does know of its existence. We're close, we follow each other on Twitter, we talk all the time, etc. I would imagine she at least reads it occasionally, which probably means I should at some point come up with a codename for her. Her real name is rather...distinct, shall we say. I've never met anyone else with the same name, so anyone in the Wichita area would easily be able to figure out I was writing about her if they cared to look her up.

I'm all about privacy for my friends if I mention them on here; it's me who's the open book, obviously. Like I've said before, I don't give a shit who reads about my own life here -- that's sort of the point of the blog: my own life. I don't censor myself, but I also don't write anything possibly incriminating to myself or others.

So. Anyway.

I have become fairly content with my life right now. I know that sounds weird coming from me, but right now I'm in a pretty good place -- at least during the winter break, anyhow. No, I don't have a ton of money, but at least I can sleep when I want to, can decide to leave the house or not at my own choosing, and have time to relax, listen to the podcasts I've collected over many months, and play the occasional video game or watch a movie if I so desire. The first few days after the semester ended, I didn't really know what to do with myself. All of my responsibility came to a grinding halt, and I broke free from the proverbial chains which held me.

Ugh, that sounds so pretentious. Let me rephrase that.

I ended up sleeping a lot and not doing much else, because I didn't have to.

There, that sounds better.

As you folks know, my sleeping schedule when I'm off from school is really, really weird. Yesterday, for example, I slept from 2 to 7PM. Then I got up, and have been awake ever since. In the overnight hours I did the dishes, vacuumed the entire house (yes, in the middle of the night; I'm special like that) and spent a few hours playing my Xbox. Shortly before sunrise, I began watching the set of Arrested Development that Andrea got for me a few weeks ago. As you may know, I've never seen the show before. Believe me, if you haven't seen it, it lives up to the hype. Totally lives up to the hype. Very well-written, intelligent comedy. And brutally hilarious. I'm so totally going to enjoy watching all eight discs of it over break. All else I have to watch may be put on hold until I finish it.

I do have some stuff to do over the next 24 hours or so, including getting some sleep at some point. I must venture to Walmart again (yes, three days before Christmas, I know) to quickly pick up some essentials -- the cats are almost out of food and litter, which is sort of important, and I'm out of a few smaller items like sugar, salt, and butter, which are important if I want to do any sort of cooking over the course of the next week or so. While my parents' box provided me with many meals' worth of food in one fashion or another, I still want to be able to cook the basics even if I'm poor. Of course, the weather has decided not to cooperate as well as I'd hoped, and it's currently snowing like hell at my house.

Although I did just watch the neighbors' cat, a big, fluffy-tailed Maine Coon-looking cat -- chase and catch a squirrel, which fought off said cat and ran up a tree. In the snow. It was hilarious. The cat followed about four feet up the tree before going fuck it and jumping back down to the ground. Ah, my little bit of amusement for the day.

I don't particularly care how much or how hard it snows; at least it's snow and not ice or sleet. Walmart is two miles away, and I'm not going until I get some sleep anyhow. If that means I end up going in the middle of the night tonight, well, no big deal. It'll be a quick trip anyhow, and I'll have to put it on the credit card anyway. I don't get paid again until tomorrow, and all of that paycheck is going to the rent. Every cent of it.

After that Walmart trip, by the way, I'm not planning to leave the house again until well after Christmas. I really just want to have as much peace and quiet time to myself as humanly possible. This may sound ironic coming from a guy who never leaves the house unless he has to anyhow, but during the holidays it's different. More than anything else it's like I'll be avoiding the thought of how alone I am by keeping myself occupied, doing my best not to think about the fact that most, if not all of my friends will actually be doing something to, y'know, celebrate the holidays, whether with family, friends, significant others, or what-have-you. While the thought of my Christmas alone may be soul-crushingly depressing to most of you -- and to a certain extent, it is -- I see it as training and practice for what I foresee may be a long, long stretch of years of living alone and not doing anything significant or otherwise celebratory on days like Christmas.

Because, really, if nothing else I'm a realist, folks. You know that. I expect to be single and living alone for a very, very long time, if not the rest of my life. Whether I'm "okay" with that fact or not does not matter; the reality is that it's greatly probable. While I'm optimistic about a lot of things, this is one of those harsh realities that I can look at in an objective way, and think to myself yeah, that's probably how it's going to be, really.

Ugh, that really does sound awfully depressing, doesn't it? I didn't intend it to sound that way, to be honest. Merry Christmas, right? I really don't dwell on these things; I don't think about them much at all, to be honest. As you probably already know, I've always lived a sort of solitary lifestyle, trying my hardest most times to depend on no one but myself to get by. Sometimes that's been easier than others, but still. I really don't want to dwell on thoughts like these; there's no point to them. What happens will happen, and there's no point in my getting all mopey about any of it -- and no reason for any of you to feel any sort of pity or anything for me either. My life isn't bad. I'm going places (figuratively speaking), if slowly. I'm getting an education, I have a car that runs and a roof over my head, and three cats who love me. I get by, I'm fine, I survive. Life's still worth living, etc.

On that note, folks, I'm going to wrap this up and eventually, sometime this morning, go to bed. I need the rest.