Life & Times

So there are lots of times in a man's life where most everything changes at once. School, High School, Graduation, College, getting a girlfriend, losing a girlfriend, and (as I've found out through personal experience lately) having a child. I know that people tend to say things like "When you get married/girlfriend your friends will change" and that tends to be true to a small extent, couples begat couples as it were, plus there are the people who don't do well with non-single friends, and the people who don't get along with your significant other. Well the same thing seems to be happening now that I'm a father. Now I realize that technically I'm the one who's changed, so it's not fair to put all the blame on the friends who are falling by the wayside. But a man tends to change when there are people in his life he cares about more than himself, and a child tends to fall into that category. Things like me quitting smoking, ME, the guy who actually smoked because he enjoyed it and tended to argue against anti-smoker propoganda. Some people can't deal with those type of changes. It's not that they like me less now that I'm done smoking. It's the kind of people who doesn't wear change well anyhow, they tend to think the friend they knew is gone now, or when the change affects them (in this case the fact that my residence which has been an automatic smoking zone for the last 6 years is now NO-SMOKING.) And then there are the other changes, for one thing I haven't slept right in over two months now. I feel like I'm catching up on sleep from then. I'm handling it well, I think, but others may have a differing opinion. This has also left me with a shortage of patience (something people who know me realize that I've never had an abundance of in the first place.) This has led to problems at work, at school, and apparently with old friends. Bob and I have been arguing since the day we met. I've never taken it too seriously, we've never argued about anything I cared about anyhow. It was always meaningless shit like Half-Life vs Unreal or ATi vs nVidia. Mostly opinion but I tend to back up my opinion with what I (and others) think of as well reasoned, logical arguements. It might not look like it as I swear alot, especially when I get frustrated. Lately Bob and others whom I've been arguing with for years have started to get on my nerves. And as I've always done I warn people when I'm getting upset. I'm not subtle about it either, it's usually something to the tune of "Let's drop it cause this shit is pissing me right the fuck off." Like I said I swear alot and two curses plus in one sentence is usually a good indication that I'm upset. Anyhow, some of my friends have been great about it, spinalcold especially has been not only supportive, but has put up with my lack of patience and generally just carried on being the brother he's always been. Bob hasn't handled it so well. I don't know, the big problem between Bob & I has always been just a difference of opinion, blown out of proportion because we don't debate the same way. Realistically the only things Bob does to piss me off are to stop the debate in the middle to tell me I'm swearing too much or he doesn't like me using the word "gay" to mean "bad" and the fact that I feel he doesn't use reasoning to back up his arguement, and then he accuses me of the same damned thing!! He then decided that it would be a good idea to post parts of the conversation on his blog (I say parts because according to my chat log there are about 93 lines missing) including altering the conversation by adding my real name in place of my handle as well as moving my words around to make his points stronger!! He also tries his damnedest to come off as a benevolent innocent victim while painting me as an unintelligent, unenlightened asshole. For one thing this was (or so I thought) a private conversation between friends, posting it to a blog and editing the shit out of it to make yourself look good is down-right fucking low. Then to top it off I read the comments of his friends and family, there was one person applauding him while the rest (including his own brother and the person who agreed after re-reading it) felt he was in the wrong! I check back a while later and suddenly there's only one post?! Three guesses which post the bitch-boy decided to leave intact, the first two don't fucking count. So I talk to him about it and explained to him why I didn't appreciate it, he decided he wanted to continue being the benevolent asshole and said to block him if "I thought it was the logical thing to do." Fine ... don't try to save five fucking years of friendship ... blocked and done. So while I realize that Bob, Mars, and the I-lost-track-of-how-many-others aren't completely at fault, they are out of my life now. I just wonder if there are any more changes down the road, and if I'll lose more friends along the way. C'est la vie. I'll just take comfort in my wonderful and beautiful wife, and my perfect son. In the end ... I feel I win.

Kleedrac