Last night, Samantha and I went into NYC to see Daniel Bauer’s “Purity” show at The Duplex Theater with my friend Ian. It was a fun show and his magic is simple but effective. The Duplex is a very small venue and the intimate setting really lets you enjoy the experience nicely.

But, that’s not the point … what I really want to write about is some introspecting I did. I’ve known that I’m an extrovert, but oddly I don’t tend to enjoy myself amongst a large number of people. I usually end up spending time with the same few people once I identify who I want to spend time with.

A while ago, I stumbled upon the definition of dissocial personality disorder which fits me to a tee. I’m finding that the Paxil and Wellbutrin combo are helping a lot with this, but it hasn’t totally eliminated the feelings of “gee, I wish there weren’t so many people here.”

I realize that the definition of extrovert doesn’t necessarily speak to the number of people one interacts with but merely the fact that external interaction brings positive effect, and it’s clearly possible to be a dissocial extrovert because I am one, but it also means finding people that I enjoy spending time with is difficult.

I just wanted to get these thoughts down in writing before they escaped my head, so I can reflect on them later, and perhaps some of you have insights to share that I may not have thought of, yet. See, there I go again, that extroverted nature which thinks better by expressing than reflecting, looking for external inputs …

I’ve said this to people in the past, but I wanted to put the quote down in writing:

True friends are there to help you celebrate your success, not complain that you have it and they don’t.

Tags: friendship, success, quote

It’s a task I’ve been putting off for years — reorganizing the home office — but I’m finally doing it. The rack and servers that sat behind me for years is now finally in the basement, thanks to my Dad helping me run two 20A circuits for the equipment down there. Here’s what the room looks like mid-reorganization:

Sure, my desk is still a mess, but that’ll also get taken care of once I put up some new shelves to better organize stuff.

The one thing I still can’t get over is how silent the room is, now. The fans from the various computers and the Liebert UPS were loud! Over the years, I just got used to the low level noise and tuned it out, but now with the contrast of the room without the noise, it’s eerie.

Tags: home office

Depression is a funny thing sometimes. I deal with intense feelings of loneliness a lot more often than I’d like to admit. What’s strange is the fact that I know hundreds of people. I talk to dozens of people online every day, by email, instant messaging, social networks and other ways. From the outside looking in, I appear to be constantly surrounded by people, at least virtually. Yet, I feel incredibly isolated, very alone, intensely lonely.

I’ve been seeing various therapists regularly for the past five years. I’m on two different anti-depressants (Paxil and Wellbutrin) and I take them daily. Perhaps I’m on the wrong medication or I need to add something else to the cocktail. Whatever the case, I’m actively seeking ways of trying to fix this problem. But, the intense feelings of loneliness start to trigger despair, and that just makes it that much harder to cope and try.

I recently wrote, “Sometimes, I really hate being me.” I don’t think anyone who read that really understood what I meant. I don’t know how to explain it. A therapist I saw for two years, who had been practicing for probably close to twenty years, finally said to me, “I don’t even know how to classify you.” I know that this quote is vague and lacks sufficient context, but he understood the gap that isolates me.

I’ll try writing more about this if I can bring myself to do it … I’ve wanted to write this for years, but every time I sat down to try, the words just wouldn’t come. Right at this moment, I’m determined to try and push through that barrier and finally write some of this down.

Tags: depression

Things have gotten seriously busy lately. I’ll try to re-cap some highlights:

I’ve just joined the Ridgewood chapter of the Barbershop Harmony Society after being a guest at their meetings for the past few weeks. This is a great complimentary activity to my singing in my church choir. We meet on Monday nights in Wyckoff, NJ, and it is a lot of fun.

We survived the girls’ birthdays again, this year we celebrated at Skylands Ice World up in Stockholm, NJ. Everyone had lots of fun and it just felt good to be out on the ice again. You aren’t allowed to bring in outside food, so I was nervous about the quality of the in-house catering as you effectively have no other choice, but it was surprisingly good! If you or your kids like to skate, this is definitely a place I’d recommend for a party.

Work has been keeping me busy and engaged as usual, working on developing products that will generate serious revenue. I really wish I could talk about them in more detail, but I can’t. Perhaps I’ll be able to link to a press release or two, soon.

I recently decided that I’d had enough of the annoying markup that ecto 3 generated and went looking for an alternative. A few people recommended MarsEdit 2 so I gave it a try. Let me put it this way: after 10 minutes of playing with it in my trial period, I bought it. It’s somewhat unfortunate as ecto was so close to being just right, but the few annoyances really got on my nerves after all this time. I think I would have hung in there except it seems like ecto’s development has pretty much stopped, but when I registered my copy of MarsEdit, I got an email from Daniel Jalkut, thanking me. That seemed like a good sign, you know?

I’ve probably forgotten a bunch of things that I wanted to mention, but at least this is a start.

Tags: Dossy Shiobara