I've been talking to several people about what's going on with me lately, so we'll consider this the official place of reference for a "what happened."

Shortly after Ashlea and I broke up (in the vicinity of ten to fifteen minutes or so) I came to the decision that I'd made a horrible mistake and set to work immediately on a plan to fix what I'd made wrong. So began my first ever campaign to really try to undo a breakup. Long story short, there were many small romantic gestures, one medium gesture, and one really big gesture. I don't want to go into details; this blog may be very candid about the details in my life, for the most part, but sometimes things really are just private. Suffice to say, there were flowers, letters, pictures and couches involved.

But it was not to be; I'd done some pretty thorough damage. There was a final talk last night, and we're still on great terms, but the relationship as we knew it has ceased to exist. So now I pack it away and move on. But lessons have been learned, relationships with friends have been strengthened, and my brother and I are better in touch than we've been since he left for college six years ago. Altogether things could be worse. I feel fine. I slept well last night, started eating again, and I suppose my ugly, ugly couch will find a safe place to stay until a time comes when it's ready to be donated. I'm thinking the kitchen.

So, next on my big lifelong list of things to do: learn to fly. I start today.

Listening to - Never Do Anything by barenaked ladies

Sorry guys, it seems to me like I'm updating a lot lately, but I think I've started three entries in the past two days that have ended up just being saved as drafts.

For anybody keeping up, Ben made me eat a chicken sandwich today. God love that boy. I'm not used to being stressed, so this whole "loss of appetite" thing has taken me by surprise. It was a bit of a battle the whole way through, but I finished the thing off, so hooray for that. My body can continue to function as normal and, at least for another couple of days, I don't have to worry about starvation. Sic 'em.

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but I had something of a rough day at work again. I actually had a table get so mad at me that they walked out of the restaurant. Everybody else though they were just being jerks, but I really wasn't giving them the best service I could have. I knew it and they did too. It kind of hurt my feelings, which is ridiculous. I can't take it personally, because the rest of my tables were fine. My tips were lower tonight, but I don't think I gave sub-par service; I think I just gave worse service than I usually do.

I don't think I'll be able to keep working this job through the fall. Summer will likely be enough for me. But we'll see.

Still can't sleep... God I'm exhausted.

So today was interesting. It was Easter, and I think this is the only Easter of my life where I haven't gone to church. I worked a double shift today that started at 11:00, so I wouldn't have been able to go anywhere. It was pretty frustrating, though, because I ended up only getting one table for the entire morning; they called ahead to make sure they would have a table, and I got assigned to their table. Then they were late by about a half hour. Then they sat and talked for an hour after they had paid. And when I finally went to pick up their check, I found that they had only given me a 9% tip. That's $18 out of a $200 bill. For three hours of work, with them being my only table. Works out to about six dollars an hour, and that's really frustrating. Especially considering that Friday night I was making closer to sixteen dollars an hour. I should have gone to church.

After I came back from my hour long break (I'd call it lunch, but I didn't actually eat, so it was just a break), things got better pretty quickly. There were some Spanish speaking people waiting at the hostess stand when I went to check in, and I talked to them for a little bit using my mad Costa Rican Spanish skills, and found out from a lady that there was a convention for some Hispanic church in Waco that had brought people in from as far as Mexico City (she told me which church, but I didn't know the word and now I don't remember it).

Not ten minutes later, I just happened to get a table with a family (mom, dad, five year old kid) who had worse English than I have Spanish. So I got really, really excited. At first the dad, who spoke very broken English, tried to order in English, but then I told him that I could speak Spanish if he would prefer (in Spanish, thank you sir). He suddenly looked very relieved, and I got to spend the better part of an hour speaking only Spanish. I can't tell you how good that felt; I haven't spoken that much Spanish since I got to the airport on my way out of Costa Rica.

So anyway, short story long, the family was impressed with me. The kid and I bonded over talking about how much we liked bread and butter (seriously, he really, really likes bread and butter), and the dad and mom liked that I gave them good service as well as tried to speak to them in their own language. The kid even gave me the ultimate compliment by assuming that I didn't speak English (he asked me how I could work in this restaurant if I only spoke Spanish [Como puedes trabajar aqui si no hablas ingles?]). That was freakin' sweet. They ended up leaving me a 40% tip. After they had left, I felt better than I have in almost a week.

Well, at least for awhile. Then the regular ol' grumpy Americans started coming in again and I had to deal with people who didn't care that I spoke good English, they just wanted their food and they wanted it five minutes ago. And where the hell were those lemons they asked the busboy for? That would be coming out of my tip, etc. etc. That pretty much put me back where I had been before, but it was nice while it had lasted.

Also, the kitchen staff now knows that I have good Spanish and so have stopped calling me a cabron. That's nice too.

Currently Watching - High Fidelity and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Lots of posts lately. I guess that's just the way it is sometimes.

Good things I have accomplished today:
Really cleaned my room
Did the apartment dishes
Cleaned out my car (found Mary's sunglasses, they were tucked way underneath the seats behind some papers)
Had breakfast at Harold Waite's while reading some Donald Miller
Picked up some guitar stuff at Holze's Music Co.

And to think, this is about the time of day I've been getting up for the past three weeks, and already I've gotten this much stuff done. Every single time I finally fix my sleeping hours, this is exactly what happens. So why don't I do it quicker? Excellent question. I don't think I'll ever know the answer.

So on Sunday I wrote a lengthy entry that contained a few paragrpahs of purposely vague material. I'm feeling a little less inhibited about opening up right now, given current circumstances, and so I'm going to clarify as best I can. If you didn't read Sunday's entry, this might not make much sense.

I know myself to have a very stark, pronounced, and unabashed fear of accidentally ending up with the wrong person. I know full well that this is not something that is anywhere near unique to me, but that doesn't make it any less real. A problem that many people share doesn't cease to be a problem simply because it is a common one; it just becomes easier to ignore or shrug off. This translates, roughly, into a fear of commitment. After all, if I never commit to anyone, then I can't commit to the wrong person, can I? Safety in loneliness would be a simple way to say it, but obviously it's not as simple as all that. Who wants to be lonely? Not me. So this is a thought process that doesn't make sense. Still, in spite of that, and the fact that I know full well that it is completely retarted, my fear continues to allow me to feel safe.

So, in light of this fear, any time I start to get comfortable in a relationship, I try to convince myself that I'm not really all that into it. I become convinced that my comfort is really just a sign of apathy and boredom as opposed to contentedness. I tell myself, "You know, if this relationship were to end, I bet it wouldn't bother me. I'd be fine, probably trying to chase some other girl in a few days." This is reprehensible. Not just the thought process, but the fact that I do it every single time and the fact that I am always lying to myself. It is, as of this writing, impossible for me to admit that I actually just like the girl and just happen to feel comfortable around her because she's easy to be around. And so, because I am incapable of being comfortable, I decide to make things uncomfortable.

Anyone I've dated for more than a couple of months since coming to college can tell you approximately when this happened, even if they didn't know it was happening. Why do they know this? Because this is when I start to pick fights. I do things that are irritating and pretend not to know how irritating they are. I pretend to be irritable, and I am short with them. Like some elementary school crush or something, I antagonize them. Then I get to see them mad, pretend it's their fault, and when it's gone on for long enough I'll just throw up my hands in frustration and end the relationship. Problem solved, commitment avoided. It's a foolproof plan, acted out on an almost entirely subconcious level. Of course, within twenty-four hours after things end I realize what a bastard I've been and wish desperately that I could take it all back, but of course it's too late and the damage is done. The one time I called the girl the next day, she was crying her eyes out and I didn't have the heart to try to fix things; I felt horrible for making her feel that way, and I had no way of knowing I wouldn't do it again. I pretended that I had been trying to call somebody else and had dialed her number by mistake out of habit. Seriously, who does that? I mean, aside from evil people.

Aside: the greatest failure in my life, it seems, is the failure to figure out that unlike Photoshop, I have no "Apple-Z" buttons to push (that's "Control-Z" for you PC users; the "Undo last action" command). I never realize that I can't take things back until after I realize that I might want to. Solution: think before I speak. Problem: I've never been very good at that. Ask any of my teachers from high school.

Second aside: I'm not sure what I mean when I say "evil people." I guess I mean people that do stuff that all of us do, the stuff that hurts people, but they're not doing it subconciously because they're selfish, they do it on purpose because they're mean. I would also imagine that they don't feel bad about it afterwards. In this example, we'll say that's what it means. I reserve the right to change the term's meaning for future posts.


I don't know how, I don't know when, but this blog entry will come back to bite me in the face. When I write about relationships, they always do. So why am I going to post it?

I don't have a good answer for that. Anymore, I post on here because it's something that makes me feel good. Problems be damned, I like to write and this is my podium, so I'm going to keep writing.

Ashlea and I broke up, by the way.

Listening to - One Sweet World by Dave Matthews

I've been trying to go to sleep for about an hour now, laying in the dark while the Tylenol PM I took tried to work its voodoo on me so that I could get some rest, but as always it is to no avail. I am, and I guess I will always be, a nocturnal creature.

I still like my job, even after having a rough first day on the floor. I had some rude customers, but I also had some friends come to see me and that was pretty cool. I'm looking forward to working tomorrow, mostly because I can't seem to find anything else to do. I'm gaining weight back that I lost in Costa Rica, and that's bugging me. I suppose I'll have to get out on the bear trail.

Oh, and if I can get the night off, I'll be going to K-Psi formal. Tara is cool for letting me be her tag-along date. You hear that, Tara? You're cool.

I have no stories to tell from my present, and so today I will regale you with an epic tale from my past.

Behold the history of Gauntlet Foilball.

Guantlet Foilball was a game that was borne out of a combination of boredom, competitiveness, and sadism. A large group of high-school aged guys (about 30, if I recall) had finished their third night at church camp, and we had been sent up to our bunks in order to start the process of not sleeping before we had to get up again the next day. Just like any other boys dorm, there was roughhousing, mostly in the form of pillowfights. That is, until somebody produced a ball.

A foil ball is an interesting thing, in that nobody is ever sure why they have decided to make one. But it is as certain as anything: whenever there is a group of teenagers eating in a cafeteria setting, if they are served baked potatoes, some guy is going to make a ball with the foil. In the event of two competing foil balls being made, sometimes they will merge or other times they will begin to rapidly compete for the remaining foil that has not yet made its way to the trash cans. This is completely up to the makers of the balls, but if we are to believe that bigger is, in fact, better, then it is obviously much wiser for the two collectors to combine their efforts than to divide them among a dwindling foil supply.

On this particular night, the cabin had been served baked potatoes, and the competing foil balls had been merged to make a rock-solid ball of foil, sized somewhere in the vicinity of a grapefruit. This was a perfect size for tucking into one's arm, like a football, and running around trying to get nowhere in particular while trying not to be hit with things. And this is exactly what happened, person after person getting tackled or hit with pillows, until eventually there was a cry for order in the chaos. Someone should make teams, it was said. So then they organized two teams of two, and each team would receive the ball for a time and begin trying to force their way through to the other side of the room. Again, not unlike a game of football.

However, those of us watching were bored. We were not chosen to be gladiators in this new and wonderful sport, but we still felt that participation was tantamount to our being able to enjoy our evening. So some people began grabbing their pillows and standing between the bunk beds, and whenever the brave warriors in the middle would come near, we would whack the crap out of them with our feather-filled mallets of doom. This would become known as the Gauntlet, and we as the Gaunleteers. It was a noble position indeed, and we considered it the highest of honors.

If you need help visualizing what's going on in this story, here is the playing field. Drawing is nowhere close to being to scale.



This first game lasted for only about fifteen minutes before the youth pastor came into the room and made us go to bed, but we were hooked. Just like Shekki and Ooga-Booga before it, Gauntlet Foilball had become a part of the canon of the FBC Hinton's youth group and was there to stay. We played the next night, and then the next, before we went home for the year and had only our memories to remind us.

Until, of course, the next summer when we made a movie about it. But that's a story for another day.

-Juan