Sunday, bloody sunday.

So today my family had a scare, as my mother had to go to the hospital because her foot/ankle swelled really badly. She is a diabetic, and any problems with the foot are magnified by it. I was gotten from work although she didn't want me at the hospital, turns out I probably wasn't needed as she got home a couple of hours after I was brought home, she was more or less OK. Although I was worried sick about her, this brought up another conversation that I was really uncomfortable with. My mother said that if she was to die what would happen with me. As I stated previously, I am 23, I work part time, and I am working on a college degree, it is a bit insulting to be treated like a helpless child, even though I know her heart is in the right place, she just worries about me as I am by far the youngest of her children. I don't know how I should react, but I have chosen to remember something: I need to get my life in more order before I can act as prideful as I might have felt there. I mean, I do some stuff that is cause for concern, and I should be doing more, so I should do the actions before I try to do the words.

In lighter news, as a sports fan, I was pleased by how Sunday went. I am a huge fan of the Bucs, and they clinched a winning season after going 3-13 last year, so that was something to be happy about.

Christmas Eve and Christmas.

I was very tired last night, I tried to make a post but I ended up almost falling asleep at my keyboard. I had a long day at work yesterday, not to be confused with a bad day. Although I had a woman who was clearly drunk as all hell go up and hug me, which was more than a little awkward. As I said in a previous post I really enjoy my job, and yesterday was no different. Helping last minute shoppers with their gifts is awesome, and people always seem to really appreciate it, always asking for my name. I also found out from my boss that the District Manager himself liked how I helped people, so that made me feel good, glad my positive attitude is noticed by both customers and bosses.

Speaking of not being able to help myself in terms of spending, I got my mom a set of five books from a series by Diana Gabaldon (I hope I got that right) called the Outlander series about a woman who travels back in time, and my mom loves time travel books so those were a big hit with her.

This was the first Christmas that I got to spend it with a big extended family. I moved into a new house a couple of months ago that is much bigger, so during the holidays everyone can come over and spend a lot of time with one another. We have two kids in our family, one is eight and the other is three, and their presents were piled a mountain high basically, which reminded me heavily of my own childhood. The family as a whole realy went all out to make Christmas amazing for them, and as an adult that is something I hadn't seen yet, so the big smiles on their faces as they opened up all of their assorted stuff was heartwarming. It took us a good three hours to get through everyone's presents as we took our sweet ass time. I got a lot of good stuff, mostly video games. I got Halo: Reach which I have been wanting to play a lot, Madden 11 which I need to be playing, and Gran Turismo 5 which is going to consume most of my video game time for the next year or so, as I love that game.

I hope anyone who reads this had a merry christmas, or if that's not applicable, a good holiday season.

- Chris

Holidays.

This is a stressful time of the year for me, but all the same I like it a lot. I work for Gamestop, a company I love to work for despite what a lot of people might think about it. The reason I love it there isn't some odd pride in the name itself or anything, but of my experiences there. I derive a very big joy from helping people give things to others. I think a lot of times it is easy. and right, to believe that humanity can be one big bad apple, but the holidays always renew my faith in people when I work retail. I don't live in a huge city, but it is fairly big and people come into the store all the time, and where I am at they are surprisingly polite. I get to joke around with them, retelling the horrors of how a soccer mom ripped off my right arm last holiday with a smile and they seem to appreciate the joke as long as I can help them find that one game no one else has, and I can indeed generally do that.

I have always loved helping customers, because it is a unique experience every time. Everyone wants something different, from the attractive twenty-something in the skin tight dress picking something up for her boyfriend, to the average joe wishing his favorite game didn't happen to come out this week, to the elderly couple eagerly spending a lot of money just to see the joy on their grand kid's face, it is a time of year that I feel like I can most make a difference. I have learned a lot from my job, about people, about myself, and about the virtues of patience. The thing I take away most from other people's retail holiday horror stories is this: If you don't smile, your customer probably won't either. People like to know that you are the same as them, stressed about the holidays and eager to to get it done fast and right. Simple, really.

On a less robust note, I just sneakily bought my sister, who is in fact the biggest michael jackson fan on the planet, a book about him that has a lot of these great page-long pictures of some of his best poses along with a history lesson about him, she is going to totally freak out because everyone in the house thought that my present for everyone was just going to be the Wii and the games I bought a few weeks before Christmas. Like I said, all sorts of people are looking for stuff this time of year, and I am the sucker who just keeps spending.

- Chris

Writing.

I want to be a writer, but I often struggle with what I want to write about. I get these ideas in my head and try to roll with them, but often times I can't think of the minor details that seem to make up my favorite novels. So does this mean I am being lazy with my writing, or that the stories I am thinking up just do not lend themselves well to being very big books? I mean, I suppose not every novel has to be three hundred pages of small print, and not every good story ever told was done in a novel. Sherlock Holmes, a favorite of mine, is done best when it is a collection of short stories. I wonder sometimes if that is the destiny for some of my better ideas, if they are to be published at all one day.

It takes me back to why I write. I remember as a kid I wanted to write because of the positive experience I got from reading books as a kid. I was a lot more quiet and reserved than I am now, and I took a lot of comfort in the pages of books, and I always wanted to give that back to someone, kid or adult, one day. Naturally, I sucked. I am not ever going to be confused with a person who has a great natural gift for writing, but I do think that some of my ideas are original enough to work. I have a hyper-active imagination, always imagining conversations between characters and slashes of weapons in my mind's eye throughout the day, sometimes vague, sometimes very detailed. I figure these characters deserve to be written down, otherwise they are going to waste. The problem becomes when I have to go beyond the characters, or maybe the problem is I try to go beyond the scope of my imagination's jurisdiction. I find I am very terrible at "making up" stuff when it comes to writing, and I am not sure if this is how it is for many writers, haven't asked any writers.

With that said, I think the time for worrying about what I am going to do in the future as a writer just needs to be ignored for a bit. I don't do enough actual writing, and that is going to change. At least, that's the plan.

Well, this is random of me.

I have noted recently that my life isn't going exactly as I have wanted it to. That isn't to say that life has been unfair to me or anything, it is just that at 23 years old I am not where I had dreamed of as a kid. I don't have a lot of wisdom I think, but I can feel the slowness of my life overtaking the edges of my mind sometimes. It worries me, and I think it is a legitimate concern. One that I try my best to ignore.

Which brings me to this blog, I don't consider myself very honest with people, even if I rarely lie. I don't share my doubts, my fears, my worries as often as maybe I should. They seem far away if I only let myself think about them, if I don't allow people who care about me to evaluate them and tell me that the monster in my mind isn't as imagined as I'd like to hope. So I am going to make a blog that is likely to be far less doom and gloom than I am making this sounding, it is just my main motivation right now. Fear is after all a very, very powerful motivation to do anything. Maybe if I keep this blog, a journal of sorts, I can start realizing some personal goals by being held accountable via the written word. At least, I can hope.


 The title of this blog comes from the fact that I like the word Achromatic, it is my handle on a few sites around the internet, and "lacking color" could be another way of saying boring, and that sounds about right. My ultimate goal with this blog, if this isn't my last entry that is, is to be a tool that helps me realize my life's dream: to become a successful writer.

But failing that maybe I'll just get in the habit of writing stuff at least once a day and that'd be a good habit to develop or something. I am sounding overly serious, but when you are typing words as they come to you I guess you type how you are thinking.

This should be either completely uneventful or somewhere slightly to the left of completely uneventful either way.

- Chris