The last few weeks, or maybe months, it’s all a blur, have been pretty jumbled in my mind as it were. The state of the nature of the software emergency has been pretty brutal for all of us involved in development, testing, and maintenance of said software. The release of Borderlands 2 has mitigated some of these symptoms, and the on-going anime girl tournament I’m blogging for has kept my photoshopping skills up to par. Fall is a crazy, crazy season.

Sometimes I can’t tell what kind of authority I should exert over my own position, sometimes I feel like a police officer responding to dispatch requests every twenty minutes, but then I realize I lack the end-point power police officers have, which makes me more of a short-order cook when all is said and done. I grew up in a very authoritative household, or in organizational behavior terms, autocratic. There was very little room for debate or discourse, what was said went, so naturally I fought a lot with my parents, because I rebelled against the idea that something was set in motion only one way. I’ve always felt I treated the people I work with in a more laissez-faire style of pseudo-management, in the respect that people know what they are doing, ergo they do not need me to tell them what to do. I quickly found that you cannot do this one hundred percent of the time though, people sense that, and take advantage of that, or they don’t know enough to be independent. I the tried to be democratic, allow people to come up with their own ideas and collectively vote to shape the rules to work best for us all. That turned out to be a terrible idea because everyone wanted something and didn’t feel like giving much ground out to another person. So I tried participative, which has been the easiest to work under by far, but makes you too reachable, when you want to hunker down and get work done, you pretty much have to disappear off the planet into a cave to do so. At times, I found myself lapsing back into an autocratic style, and it’s reflexive both from growing up, and from outside my workplace. Being a male in society requires you to be this kind of person, very often. I don’t like to be, but otherwise I end up being the bitch. But being the alpha draws its own demons because other people want to be the alpha too, and it all comes around full-circle to human behavior and dynamics. I’ve been told that if you’re respected by many, they will follow you anywhere. That may be true, but I don’t want anyone following me anywhere. That’s just my anti-social shut-in shield going up though, ya’ll be crazy for following me into anything. I’m not a cool guy. I’m a dork who plays video games, watching cartoons, and pretends he isn’t an adult three-fifths of the day. So I guess in the end, I am probably the one at fault for why I can’t enforce my own position at work. You wear a disguise to act like human guys but you’re not a man, you’re a Chicken Boo.

Other activities of note, we paid off the first third of the wedding reception through most of my girlfriend’s tip money from work. I feel bad that most of her money is going into the wedding fund right now save my base savings account money, but I’ve been holding down the summer electric bill and grocery expenses among other things that it’s been hard to spare some money into the fund, but now that I got a handle on everything and we no longer have to pay for the A/C’s to run, I can start dumping into that more in the coming eight months. Eight months though. Truth be told, I am not scared of getting married so much as I am scared of the ceremony. I’m not a social creature, and I freeze easily in awkward spotlights. We’re so worried about things working out exactly as planned that it can make things frustrating, especially when it comes to making decisions about certain elements, or about the honeymoon. We’ve talked about a cruise, and then about a getaway to somewhere north. Both sound like good ideas, but it’s an extra 1-2k we have to save for on top of the general funds for the wedding, so the worry is we won’t have the money for it, and she doesn’t want to skip it because we’ll never take one otherwise. After all this comes the even bigger decisions, kids and a new place to live. I want to be able to buy a house, to say I own a house, to be able to work on it, make it mine, make it look nice, and all of that, but the housing market scares me, and I don’t make enough money where I work, and I don’t think I’ll be making enough to afford a house any time soon. She wants to have our first kid within the next couple years, and that just makes me worry more about my income. Naturally I’m sure I will solve these issues down the road somehow, and make things work, but there is so much for me to do and so little time it feels like. We all have to move into this realm someday, but damned if I forgo the things I enjoy doing just for that, I still think I can have my cake and eat it too.

The Big E came and went for us, and that was a good amount of fun. Got my intake of bad food and wound up buying my girlfriend a Christmas present she already knows what it is. Seems troublesome. I’m scoping out the possibility of going to the Berlin Fair next weekend, supposedly they got a go-kart race going on and some other interesting stuff, plus some things a friend of mine might like, with the fall and the cool weather I think it’d be nice to get out and see some of the local fairs and such. There is probably a few more mini-golf places to hit as well before the winter sets in, or the indoor place we went to before she liked. I also want to find out more info on an indoor go-kart track I saw a mention of on FB being built in Massachusetts maybe, that sounds like it could be fun. Finally, I definitely want to see Wreck-It Ralph when that comes out in November, it looks pretty interesting. Probably a few other fall movies we saw previews for we might see. Then there is Borderlands 2 and its vastness, and the Mechromancer DLC coming out in a couple weeks. Lots to do, lots to do…

So how does it feel to be twenty-nine post September 8th? I dunno. The same really. I haven’t had an interesting birthday probably since my 10th (?) birthday where me and friends camped out back and got the police called on us for being loud, or my 20th when my ex organized that big get-together with laser tag and ice cream cake and all the interesting gifts. I suppose the interesting ones come every ten years, so perhaps my thirtieth in 2013 will be crazy? Sometimes I look back at the last ten years and wonder if I did things differently, how it would have turned out. That kind of retrospection is dangerous though, I like what I have now, I wouldn’t want to change that, but I can’t help but wonder that if I had more self-confidence, or made better in-roads with people, or took more risks, that things might not have been so gloomy for me as a person, that I might’ve had a different experience, or not be so awkward around girls, including the one I am marrying. I just wish I wasn’t the shy nerdy fat kid throughout my life sometimes, but that was the card life dealt me, I think I’ve done pretty well with that hand ever since, for what it is worth.