Michael

I find myself rather depressed today, maybe the most depressed I’ve been since being in the navy. While search­ing once again for a mail­ing address for the U.S. Navy (which is absolutely impos­si­ble to find, I’ve still been unable to locate one after 3 weeks of search­ing online) to list on my unem­ploy­ment appli­ca­tion, I read a post online today, sup­pos­edly from a retired senior chief ET (if his screen name is to be believed) basi­cally stat­ing that he was a hir­ing man­ager for his com­pany, and he’d not hire any­one who was ex mil­i­tary with any­thing but an “hon­or­able” cat­e­go­riza­tion of ser­vice on their dis­charge, which puts peo­ple like me, who received a “gen­eral under hon­or­able con­di­tions” but are listed as “uncat­e­go­rized” because our term of ser­vice was so short, out on in the cold.

Granted, its one person’s opin­ion, but it makes me won­der how many ex-military per­son­nel are in sim­i­lar posi­tions of author­ity today in the civil­ian world, and just how impos­si­ble its going to be for me to find work now?

Then I thought about school, and re-applying to UC River­side (where I had been pre­vi­ously accepted this past Jan­u­ary) only to find that all UC cam­puses are closed to new appli­ca­tions until Fall of 2010.

So I watched movies all day after that, Dis­trict 9, Trans­form­ers 2, and G.I. Joe. Sadly, they were all pretty ter­ri­ble, and while Dis­trict 9 had hope early on with some creepy ele­ments and great sto­ry­telling con­ven­tion, it quickly took on a major over­tone crit­i­ciz­ing the military-industrial com­plex, which while being a very good mes­sage to get out, was sim­ply not what I was expecting.

Its left me today want­ing noth­ing more than to talk to some­body, but at the same time, I can’t talk to any­one, even when my uncle called, I couldn’t answer the phone, and now can’t bring myself to lis­ten to his voice­mail, why?

I know my imme­di­ate fam­ily resents me (just read my about me sec­tion on the front page, and its easy to under­stand why, hell I resent and hate myself), but surely my extended fam­ily is sup­port­ive, right?

Does it even mat­ter if they are?

Their sup­port still doesn’t change the fact that I’m a fail­ure at every­thing I attempt.

And to end the day, appar­ently my request for dis­missal from jury duty for Ven­tura County, Ca. has been denied, even though I’m no longer a res­i­dent of VC, and now live 75 miles away, in the far east end of Los Ange­les County, Ca.

Makes me remem­ber why lyrics like these speak so pas­sion­ately to me (Eddie Ved­der, “Soci­ety” from the into the wild soundtrack):

Oh it’s a mys­tery to me.

We have a greed, with which we have agreed…

and you think you have to want more than you need…

until you have it all, you won’t be free.

Soci­ety, you’re a crazy breed.

I hope you’re not lonely, with­out me.

When you want more than you have, you think you need…

and when you think more then you want, your thoughts begin to bleed.

I think I need to find a big­ger place…

cause when you have more than you think, you need more space.

Soci­ety, you’re a crazy breed.

I hope you’re not lonely, with­out me.

Soci­ety, crazy indeed…

I hope you’re not lonely, with­out me.

There’s those thinkin’ more or less, less is more,

but if less is more, how you keepin’ score?

It means for every point you make, your level drops.

Kinda like you’re startin’ from the top…

and you can’t do that.

Soci­ety, you’re a crazy breed.

I hope you’re not lonely, with­out me.

Soci­ety, crazy indeed…

I hope you’re not lonely, with­out me

Soci­ety, have mercy on me.

I hope you’re not angry, if I disagree.

Soci­ety, crazy indeed.

I hope you’re not lonely…

with­out me.