My friends are everything to me, and it hurts when I realize that I’m not everything to them.

That’s a very selfish and unhealthy thing for me to think.

I’m trying to learn to wean from such a heavy reliance on my friends, but the only way I can do that is to shift that reliance onto someone else (like God). It’s going to take a long time, I think. It’s tough because I have to play this balance game. I love hanging out with friends, but if I hang out with them too much, I start depending on them for things they can’t give me.

A big part of me doesn’t want to rely completely on God, because I feel like relying completely on anything is unhealthy. I’m trying to work out what I should be doing.

In other news, a stray cat took up residence at Matt and Catherine’s house. It’s obviously a well-cared-for house cat that ran away or something, so they’re gonna try to find the owner. If they can’t find them, though, I’m pretty sure I’m gonna take the cat. So that’s something to look forward to.

The creator of Ruby, Matz, gave a keynote this morning to open the conference. He talked about how love is the driving force behind Ruby. It’s his love of programming languages that drove him to design Ruby and the love of the Ruby community that has kept it going. Other Japanese speakers gave talks, too, and they were very passionate. It’s obvious that they care a great deal for what Ruby has become. It’s hard not to be touched by it.

Having been in the Ruby community for 3 years or so now, I’ve discovered some things about the kind of people who use Ruby. It seems like several of the people who are big names in the community are somewhat insecure. They need to be in the spotlight. Sometimes, they’re also assholes. There are very cool Ruby developers, too, but to be well-known, it seems like you have to be something of an ass.

I don’t know if that’s true of all open source communities, but I certainly feel that way sometimes about Ruby’s. Most of the people I meet at conferences are generally cool, so it’s not like everyone is a douche bag or something. I mean, it’s always fun being around lots of like-minded people. I do enjoy myself and learn a lot, but sometimes things just feel a bit off to me. Granted, most brilliant people tend to be a bit socially inept and eccentric, and there is definitely some of that going on in the Ruby community. Maybe that’s all it is.

The Japanese Ruby developers have impressed me a lot so far. Matz’s talk about love really was a breath of fresh air. They seem to be genuinely caring and affectionate towards the people who use Ruby. I appreciate that, a lot. Here in the states, there is definitely some douchebaggery now and again. It’s nice to see things from a new perspective.

My roommate at the hotel snores and tosses in his sleep.

Speaking of the hotel here, it kinda sucks. It’s in the middle of nowhere, and they charge ridiculous prices for small things. For example, I had Chinese for dinner last night and brought half of it back so I could eat it later. Except, this hotel has no microwaves. You can have one sent to your room… for $20 a night. I mean, what the hell is that. Also, the only fridge in the room is a minibar that’s already stuffed with crap that costs $3 if you breathe on it wrong. For $159 a night, I expect better than that.

The hotel’s internet has been one of its few redeeming qualities. It’s held up well, even with 500+ people using wireless access at once. But, there are very few power sources in the ballrooms where talks are being held, so everyone has to try to charge their laptops as much as they can in the lobby between sessions. Portland is definitely a way better place for a conference than Orlando.

Other than that, the talks have been generally very good so far.

Okay, I guess I better try to get some sleep. Ugh.

The thing that blows me away about marriage is the whole “freely giving” thing. Freely giving yourself to someone else. I have a history of doing this and getting my heart broken. I think most of the time, people have done it without knowing it and not on purpose.

The first time I remember really being hurt was by my youth pastor. I looked up to him probably more than anyone in my life at the time, and then one day, he told us he was leaving. Just like that. Leaving. It broke my heart.

Then there was the debacle of my relationship with Emily. Due to poor timing and very poor communication and misunderstandings, it left me in shambles.

More recently it has happened with my friends. I’ve written all about this many times. I think this weekend I realized how much I’ve hardened my heart to protect myself.

On the trip back I was thinking about this topic, and it made me uncomfortably anxious. I found myself feeling bitter and angry. Why does it seem sometimes that all of my friends have someone to rely on, while whenever I’ve relied on someone, my heart ends up being broken?

It would be selfish and naive to the point of stupidity to say that I’m the only one in my group of friends who has dealt with these feelings of abandonment and loneliness. But I just wonder when my time will be to find someone, you know? When I’m with Matt’s family, I see such a willingness to love and welcome people, and it unfreezes me a little bit. When I have to leave them, my feelings callous over again.

I watch Matt’s niece, Ivy, running around. She runs up to everyone. She’s so happy all the time and is never cautious about “talking” to someone new. Sometimes I wish I could be like that again.

Once after high school, I went to a pentecostal church that some people I know went to. This was during the period when I was pretty severely depressed. I generally dislike pentecostal services because there is so much show. It feels so fake. But, at this service, something special happened. There was an altar call, and I went up. I was bawling. Someone came up to me and said something like, “God knows that you are suffering. All you have to do is ask, and He’ll help you.” It was one of those rare times in my life that I felt like God directly spoke to me. So I prayed.

“God, I really need a friend.”

I’ve always felt the intense need to love and be loved. To connect with someone. I know it’s unfair of me to say things like, “I felt abandoned”, because I know there are people that love and care about me. But sometimes, I feel so intensely lonely.

Maybe God wired me this way so that I would someday have a close relationship with him, since it seems apparent to me that sometimes, no one will be there for me to provide what I need except for God. In fact, I did used to be close with God back in high school. But that relationship was poisoned with legalism.

Incidentally, God did give me that friend I asked for.

After the rehearsal, we had dinner. It was an emotional experience. Matt’s brother-in-law gave the toast, telling the story of how Matt and Cat started dating. Cat’s sister, Kara, also told her bit. Then it snowballed a bit to everyone opening up about their feelings towards Matt and Cat. It was a very powerful time.

Saturday started early with breakfast, which was succeeded by the reception preparation. We set up chairs and rinsed fruits and veggies and what not. After a bit more frisbee, we ate lunch and set up a bit more. It was time to put on tuxes a lot sooner than I expected. We dressed and took pictures and then drove to the church.

After we got there, there were more pictures, and finally it was time for things to get going. The groomsmen ushered in the bridesmaids, and we watched Cat walk down the isle. She was beautiful. Dave gave the sermon and what not, and I threatened to cry, but held it back. After the exchange of rings, Matt’s sisters and Stuffy performed a hymn. That’s what did it to me. I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore after that.

When they were pronounced, we all happily recessed and greeted people as they walked out. After a while we went to the reception. Now, I usually hate receptions. I complained a lot to various people for the few days beforehand in anticipation of it sucking. But, lo and behold, I had a blast. I even danced.

Whenever I’m here with Matt’s family, I can’t help but feel God’s blessing rubbing off them onto me. His family is amazingly blessed, and they’re just getting more blessed as time goes by. They’ve touched my life more than they know.

Back during the rehearsal dinner, I did a lot of thinking. People told stories about Matt and Cat, and I realized how special they are and how special their relationship is. I couldn’t help thinking about my own life and felt myself wanting to be special, too. There’s only a few times in life when you really find out what you mean to people and what they mean to you. This was one of those times for Matt and Catherine. I caught myself wondering what people would say about me if I had been the one up there getting married.

During this weekend I discovered how much my relationship with both of them means to me. Matt and I have been friends since college, and even though I knew Catherine then, it’s only been in the past couple of years that I’ve gotten to know her. It’s really hard to put into words how much friendship means. They’ve become a big part of my life, and I love them both.

It’s been an emotional couple of days. It was a great wedding and a great reception. It was a time for friends and family. I’m truly grateful to have been a part of it. And I actually had a good time.

Tomorrow we head out early after breakfast. My knee is still bothering me. I might have to go get it checked out if it doesn’t improve in a week or two.

Apparently the Flickr and AOL OpenID interfaces don’t work with our app.

Considering that we only had 48 hours, a team member who had to bail halfway through due to other plans, a team member or two who might’ve been a bit rusty on Rails and/or git development, and no designer (except for my gimpy designing skills), I think we did a pretty kick-ass job. We were running on as little sleep as we could get away with. A couple of us brought sleeping bags and slept in the office. It was pretty awesome.

I think that our app is probably a little bit above average as far as all the apps people came up with, but there are some AMAZING apps out there, so I’ll be pretty surprised if we place. But man, it was so much fun. At the very least, we have a great start to an application that has a lot of potential to be really cool. If you’re feeling generous, go register to vote at the Rails Rumble website, and vote for us! =)

Everyone on our team took today off work. I caught up on sleep a little bit last night, but I’m still behind. I’m probably going to crash pretty soon, as I’m still exhausted.

~

In other news, another couple of my friends got engaged (to each other). Another two bite the dust. It’s kind of par for the course lately. I’m happy for them each time it happens, but it makes me feel a little bit sorry for myself.

Coming down from the high of the rumble made me think about a few things. Today I realized that I have a problem with needing to feel respected. I get angry about things too easily. Things like jerks running in the bike lane or cars opening car doors into the bike lane so I have to go around them. People who don’t signal when they’re turning. People who are indecisive frequently and pussyfoot around decisions. Stuff like that. Why?

Because I have leftover issues about being treated like a door mat back in high school. I let people walk all over me because I thought that’s what humility was. Bullshit.

Every Tuesday we go to Arby’s for lunch. It so happened that we couldn’t go yesterday until after our 1pm meeting. We start walking towards 21st to catch to bus, when the pwnage started. It poured, and we got soaked. We found shelter under one of the pedestrian bridges, and we waited until the bus came. We got to Arby’s and ate, but when it was time to go, not only had the rain not let up, it had gotten heavier. We only had one umbrella to cover three of us.

So we walked outside to the bus stop with no overhang to speak of, getting drenched until the bus came. When we finally got back, Cole and I were like, “Screw this, we’re going home.” Cole offered me a ride home, since I had biked in that morning. We left around 3.

This morning I decided to try to take the bus, since my bike was still at work. I rush to get ready in time. I go out the door, the plan being to first stop at my car to get my umbrella. I go to my car, and open the trunk. Not there. So I look in the front. Fucking puddles in my floorboard, AGAIN. I love you, Jetta, but quit flooding every damn time it rains. SERIOUSLY. And my umbrella wasn’t there either.

So no umbrella. I run out to the bus stop, getting rained on pretty good. I find an overhang and wait there until I’m satisfied that I missed the bus. I walk back through the rain to my apartment. At this point I decided that I’m just going to work from home because I’m soaked and my car is fucked. I reach for my phone from my backpack to call my supervisor. It’s not there. Great.

I go back outside to see if I dropped it. Sure enough, it’s lying on Belmont Blvd, soaked and turned off. Luckily it was in a place where it might not have gotten run over. Wow.

So I got completely owned. One might even say that I was roflpwnd.

Being a pleaser also makes me do things I would otherwise choose to not do. On a scale from 1 to 10 on how much I want to do something, I will do a 3 or 4 for someone so as to not disappoint them.

At work it drives me to get things done. I had a meeting yesterday where I had to tell someone how long I thought it would take to complete their project. I told them two to three months, and the look they gave me sucked. Granted, it’s not going to take that long, but pleasing them makes me want to get it done that much faster.

I don’t know if it’s a spiritual thing or a personality thing, but sometimes it’s annoying. I sometimes admire people who just don’t give a shit, because sometimes I really wish I didn’t care about people.

Lately it has started to get bad. My anxiety isn’t really bad yet, but it’s getting there. On the way to work today I decided that I needed to do something about it, and that decision alone made me feel a little better.

The story for what’s going on with me right now goes back a few years, maybe even longer than that. Over the past few years since I graduated from college, one by one my closest friends have “let me down”. Maybe they were a little insensitive to my feelings, or maybe there wasn’t quite enough communication. It’s been a cycle. I rely too heavily on one of my friends, and then they pull away from me a little bit to pursue a girlfriend or a job, and my equilibrium gets fucked up.

I blamed lots of things. I blamed them for abandoning me. I blamed their girlfriends for taking my friends away from me. I blamed myself for relying on them too much. But in the end, blaming people doesn’t solve anything. The real reasons why I felt hurt or betrayed or abandoned or whatever is because I counted on them for things that humans just can’t possible provide me enough of: security and self-esteem.

People fail. That’s just how we are. We fail. Friends fail. Parents fail. Children fail. Everyone fails sometimes. So if everyone fails, who can I rely on? The only logical answer left to me, is God. I’ve maybe been to a church service once or twice in the last 6 or 7 years, and I’ve been generally happier as a result of not going. But I think it’s time to give it a shot again, because I don’t really know what else to do.

A month ago Mitch was talking about just this topic, and it stirred a little something in my spirit. I don’t really know what’s going to happen, but I’m tired of being anxious. I still don’t like a lot of things about church, like the legalism and the political and emotional bullshit, but I’m going to try to go to a few different churches and see what happens. The first step I made to get help when I was depressed after high school was really hard, too, but eventually it changed my life for the better.

I’ve felt this coming on for a long time, and I knew it would happen eventually. I knew I would go back to God eventually when all of my pain from high school maybe started to scar over. When I had maybe unlearned some of the poison that was put into me by legalism. And maybe this is the time for it to happen. I’m a little bit wary, but I’m also a little bit excited to be free from this.

~

In other news, I discovered the band Justice the other day when I was listening to Marketplace on NPR. I dig them. Kudos to NPR for playing kick-ass music. Funnily enough, Justice is from France, and so is Daft Punk, and so is AIR. Why are so many bands I like coming from France?!

It’s hard not to be pessimistic sometimes.

Been a bit anxious lately. I hung out with people this weekend for the first time in a week, more or less. It felt weird.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have any feelings.

I never got into 4chan, but today someone in IRC linked a post from /prog/ which was pretty funny. I started reading more, and I think I’m now a fan.