Well, let’s do a combination of games and RL here. It’s a little bit of a change from the usual run. This will be the longest post I’ve written. I hope it doesn’t get too tl;dr for your tastes. If it is, just skip past it. I promise the next won’t be so emo.

It’s weird. I feel like I’ve drifted from a lot of the friends that made my life what it is. I don’t really talk to them, or even interact with them. In fact, I’ve noticed that when I talk to them, it’s usually me initiating the conversations. I try to keep in touch, but it almost feels like these friends wouldn’t feel much of a difference if I didn’t. Is that really the case?

Anyhow. What has happened?

Gaming-wise, I platinum’d Assassin’s Creed II. My first platinum for the PS3. I have beat Uncharted 2 on hard. Started Oath in Felghana on Inferno. Got creeped out by Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood… (I’ve never found anything so creepy!) and had the latest game of the Kiseki series come out. It made my year.

RL-wise, I graduated.

Of course, just before my graduation, I had decided to ask a best friend of mine if we could try dating and see what would happen from that. Strangely enough- he just stopped talking, stopped interacting, and it was the advent of what would become the most painful year I’ve experienced in a long time. It’s one thing to lose a boyfriend, I’ve learned, but it’s something else completely to lose a very good friend at the same time. To this day, I still find myself asking what did I do wrong? I can’t even find that out. And thus I continue on, with this thing having no closure. At all.

Anyway… several months later after graduation, I was told that due to the issue with my math class, I would be denied my degree.

There were a lot of heartbreaks like these this year.

I found myself in a dead-end job that I still blame to this day for failing that math class. I nearly broke down several times before May due to the pressures of work and school on top of each other. There was no path of progression in my work, and after seeing that we had people that held the same position for 7-10 years, I wanted out.

During my preparations for graduation, my grand uncle, Fleet Wilson, passed away due to thyroid cancer. It was right in the middle of my finals and nearly wrecked everything for me. I had to pick myself up and continue forward with it as if nothing had happened. I had to make myself numb to the fact that a close relative of mine passed away.

Of course, Lost’s finale served as a sort of cartharsis, and I broke down, finally managing to put together how I felt about Fleet.

But school would not be over with yet. I would begin to take a very difficult Algebra class, that- when I learned I couldn’t handle the class load. It was too much, too fast. So I dropped and took an easier class- Math for Business and Economics. These two classes meant that I was continuing with the school routine for a bit longer than I had intended and I was already burned out. Something happened, however, and at the last minute, I’d fail the class on my final, losing the chance for my degree.

I continued to simply work. Work my ass off. We had ridiculous amounts of OT. I stopped considering my shift as 3:30pm to 2am, but either starting at 1:30pm or 2:30pm. I think I could count the number of times that my schedule began at the actual time on my hands. This is for the whole year. Of course, then there’s the fact that I started to learn that it sounded like things that it was my contractor pushing for the OT, and Verizon bending backwards to put it on us just to make them happy.

I started to really hate my job. Especially, as I said before, I already blamed them for my failing of my math class.

Things continue this way- but Extra Life happened. That was amazing. It was the chance for me to really give back to something that meant a lot. I was saved by Children’s Medical Center when I was seven years old. I had to have an emergency blood transfusion when my bone marrow gave out, due to my blood condition.

I fought with everything I had, and I feel like I managed to do something great. Immediately after the marathon, I flew out to Los Angeles to see old friends and go to Disneyland for the first time.

It was an amazing trip, and I was on such a high, that I thought I could be reenergized to finish the year out without an issue.

Except I didn’t. I came back from LA, only to learn just how terrible shape I was in, what kind of terrible position I was in with my job, and what kind of rage I felt for it and the way they treated us.

I started to spiral down a path of ‘I don’t care.’ And I just stopped caring about everything. The life I felt days, weeks, and months ago was gone. Completely.

I’ve felt myself becoming someone I hadn’t felt for years. Siwel was doing to me what Ticket Retriever did years ago, and this time, I could see it, and that made it worse. I caved in on myself, and just did not do anything. I stopped bowling, I stopped worrying about keeping my room clean. I’d go to work, come home, stay up and talk a bit, and go to bed- all while hiding just what was going through me during the time.

Then came something I should’ve expected. Nana’s death. My grandmother, Grace Miller, died the Sunday before Thanksgiving. What little I had setup to keep me going just began to collapse. It was, you might say, the straw that people were worried about.

I fell down to a depth that I had not seen in many years. I felt that I was just a husk at my job. I didn’t care about what they did to me. I didn’t care about what I did there. I just… went, did what I had to, and went home.

Nana meant the world to me. The whole life that circled around her meant the world to me. I was going to meet with my family for Christmas, but when I came back, I found a letter saying that I had to go into training during the Christmas season, which meant a schedule change. Which also meant losing my Thursdays off.

I had already planned those Thursdays for stuff with my family. I was denied my request to go to Vegas for my friends’ wedding. I think it was because of this. This load of crap.

I HAVE A LIFE.
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT FROM ME!

I wanted to say that, at least. I rearranged my life and my Christmas to fulfill their wishes. Then I find out that the dates that they told me were wrong. They told me that my training was meant to be through the 27th. Then the schedule change came through and said it was into the second week of January.

That I could not do. I contacted my supervisor to explain that I couldn’t do it.

However, in this case, the training date has been set and you were notified in advance so that you can make the necessary adjustments to ensure that you are able to attend the training class. Training classes are not scheduled often, therefore this should only be a minor setback in your schedule.

That was part of the response I received.

Minor setback? The notification in advance was NOT for the dates that they gave me. I rearranged my life for you bastards. You expect me to throw away everything else while I was dealing with the death of my grandmother?!

December 10, 2010, I walked out on my job. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was falling and losing it. I didn’t go home from work Wed night. I went to see some friends. I went home on Thursday afternoon and chose to sleep all day. Sleep and cry. I cried all morning Friday at the thought that I’d have to go in. That I’d have to give up one more day of my life to a job whose methods I could no longer agree with. I felt like a victim to their redtape and bullshit.

I decided I wanted no more of it. I gave my badge, and went home. And continued to cry.

To this day, I don’t know if it was a mistake, but I’ve got a major interview on Jan 3rd. I’m fine, financially, at the moment. I’ll be able to handle my life as it is right now. I’ve had a chance to recover and get my mind straight.

…but at the moment? I don’t know.

But I did decide that I’d start the new year a little different. I wrote my friend to tell him I’m sorry for what I’ve done, and if there’s a chance for the friendship we had to be repaired, I’d like to make a chance at it- or to just stop pretending to be friends and never interacting.

The ball is in his court on that. There’s nothing I can do on it anymore. If he doesn’t want the friendship, that’s fine. Nobody interested in a friendship pulls that crap, as another friend of mine says. It’s obvious that it won’t go very far if there’s no real interest in it on his behalf, and I don’t want it if that’s the case.

But cutting some strings loose, and getting ready to retake that class. Let’s hope that I can try to make 2011 a better year. And I’ll put in some more streaming.

Afterall- up next? I beat Uncharted 2 on Hard, and promised a Crushing run. I should do that soon, really.