Reminder.

I don't post pictures all that often.

I jumped onto my computer to have a drink of coffee before I wash up and head out to get some paper apps. You can do a lot of job hunting right from your own computer, but the flip side to that is you end up spending all day on your computer without moving. It gets old. Even doing the job hunt on foot, with a paper and pen, provides a certain amount of relief from that aspect of my life. So, while sipping coffee, I came upon those two gifs, and they kind of relieved me. 

Life is a lot of things, obviously. People make a lot of fuss over the beautiful things, and I think that's partially because in a world where we're often feeling stressed and trapped, it's a relief at the core of our being to see that there are good things and we can still remember them. The taste of a really fresh apple or a garden grown tomato. The spray of the ocean off the beach. The sight of your partner sleeping next to you on a day you get to sleep in, the wan light of the sun seeping past drawn curtains illuminating their face. Whatever, man. Even good old urban decay porn is regal in its decaying splendor. 

But a lot of times, things just kind of suck. Winter is gray and cold, our jobs are often unforgiving, meaningless drudgery designed to provide profit for others and payment doled out to you only grudgingly. Politics are a mess, starvation is rampant, and your fucking car won't start. Underneath all that, there's no inherent meaning. No particular reason for this, and no particular reason underscoring life, which often makes the situation all the worse - the civilization we've built is only like this because we've let it become like this. 

In short, it's kind of a fucking nightmare. 

I had a dream last night where I was talking to a childhood friend back from his service in the military briefly. When we were in high school, he signed up for the army, pretty sure we weren't actually going to be invading Afghanistan. I urged him to reconsider. Well, we did invade and he didn't reconsider, and now he's got his own sets of problems and troublesome memories, very different from mine. We're not on bad terms, but we don't talk much anymore, even when he's around. But we were around the dinner table and he asked me how work was going, and I got to tell him all about it. Apparently, I don't even get a break from this shit in my dreams. I literally have nobody but myself to blame for that one, I guess. 

Just a year ago, I was just getting fired, and I had a reasonable hope that things would look up. (They did, and then they didn't again. We've been serially employed for about a year afterwards.) Two years ago, I had a solid gig and a weekly paycheck. I was saving money, paying my bills, and lived a relatively happy and carefree lifestyle. Waking up, and knowing deep down that there isn't any reason, in particular, cosmically speaking for my misery - it just is - is somewhat comforting. I'm not losing some larger game, I'm just another person in a somewhat miserable position. It's a nightmare, but there's no greater meaning to it than that. In time, it'll pass. And when things are good again, or maybe just okay again, it'll be good to remember that there's no larger meaning to my relative success, and that I'm not winning anything, either. It could happen to anyone. 

Kind of a lot to read into an Invader Zim gif, isn't it? It's probably because I'm still on my second cup of coffee. I'm sure I'll calm down as my day drags on.