the kitty litter

My name is Michelle and I am an addict.

haha. That's how they start those things, right?
Acknowledge your addiction and the road to recovery starts from there.
Well, i was addicted to this game. Then to procrastination. Then to people. Then to the misery that envelopes my life.

Interestingly enough, and it does not need to be said, the world did not stop for me. Things happened, people changed even as I froze my life, unfroze it and tried restarting it. So, yeah... the yawning gap between my peers and myself has turned into a huge 3+ year gorge. Maybe it's part of procrastination, maybe it's partly fear, partly making sure, partly loss of control, partly not knowing what i want, superstition, helplessness and a thousand different excuses that justify waiting, waiting until I finally decide to live the way i want to.

What do you want? Can you tell me with all certainty how you want to live your life, what things you want to achieve and what you want to do once you've achieved those things or finally have what you want in your hands? What will you do if there's only one thing you have ever decided to want and you don't get it?

Back to the drawing board. Want something else. That's what i'm doing, i think. I'm trying to fix all of the things i don't like about myself since i don't know what to want in the larger scheme of things--- i'm starting with the small stuff. There's the short burst of passion again, let's see how long it lasts before it peters out like every short burst of passion and desire for change i've felt before. Apparently, turning thirty with two degrees but nothing much to show for, with millions of experiences never felt, a thousand 12 year old dreams and promises never fulfilled, is enough to keep that desire for change as constant as... well, constant as michelle, the addict, the procrastinator, the lackadaisical adult stuck in a child's world would make them. I have promise beads. hahaha. yeah. I'm such a sucker for symbolism. I forget too easily, whenever I become complacent or resigned. I need my multi-colored beads. One promise per color, although i haven't had the chance to assign promises per bead yet.

Anyway... although my life right now isn't what I expected it to be ten or so years ago, things are changing at a rapid pace. People are getting married, having kids, breaking up, getting sick, dying, traveling, moving, getting laid, partying, graduating, getting laid off, crying, laughing, having the time of their life, getting perms, Brazilian waxes, coming out of the closet, sobbing in desperation, celebrating achievements. And I, michelle, well, sure, yeah, i shave, i cry, i laugh, i loathe getting married, cringe at having kids, have a cat that gets laid more than i do, feel grateful for not having a gun to point to my head. More than a quarter of a century but still clueless.

I just wish i'd stop floating around, yknow? I tend to just catch what life throws at me. A friend of mine once averred that if you look closely enough at your life path, you'll see what god wants you to do, that things are interconnected and the series of events and experiences that happen to you are but glaring clues that don't need sherlock holmes' power of deduction. That same friend, although she gets what she wants, is once again, clueless. If there is one thing I am sure about life, it's that nothing is ever certain. I've felt like a fool enough times when I've tried to pin all my hopes and plans on something i thought to be certain.

What is the point of this entry? I honestly don't know.

There's a need for conclusions, so let me make some that my life allows me to make currently... I strive to change things I am dissatisfied with, if I can. I know i can make things happen if i only tried and exerted the appropriate amount of effort. I strive to quantify the appropriate amount of effort needed. I strive to be independent and not mooch off the generosity of people. I strive to do good and be nice. I strive for excellence in whatever i do. hehe. excellence. i strive not to bullshit myself. alright, not excellence, respectability, then. i strive to be competent and industrious. I strive to remember and not forget. Good enough conclusion but as with the paragraphs in this entry, probably totally unrelated to anything i've written.

*shrug* not everything has to make sense right now. besides, intro+body+conclusion=drama but =/= life anyway.

Grrreat news! I finally got a decent job! The pay, although not quite approximate to what I would get in a law firm, is not that bad, either. kewlness. My job entails providing content for this site, wheredoyoustand.com. When you visit the site, you'll find that it's pretty empty right now. The buyer (of my services, that's how we refer to them. I'm the "provider", cool huh?) is still in the process of fixing the whole layout of the site. His ultimate aim is to make it a place where various views and opinions about the local events can be ventilated, and where members can educate themselves about politics and the world. Most of the political discussion groups out there only provide you with a forum platform. wheredoyoustand offers so much more, in terms of interaction between members and of course, *ahem* content. Once completed, I hope it'd be a huge success. Ooooh, sales pitch!

As a content provider, I really have to brush up on my U.S. politics. Although I'm a political science major and a law graduate, I wasn't that keen about politics and world events. I found myself getting depressed and cynical each time I read the papers. Now that I found myself in a situation where I need to totally immerse myself in that world, it surprised me that politics can be quite funny once you start looking at the world through a critic's eyes. The U.S. Campaign wars are amusing... each candidate will take every opportunity to take potshots at the other. It's too bad that Hillary is no longer in the game. It would've been very entertaining to watch her, Obama, McCain and Palin engage in a rumble. But Joe Biden doesn't disappoint, either. I love the way he can be passionately vehement and politically correct at the same time. And what about Thailand? Gawd, Samak got booted out because of his cooking show! and to replace him... Somchai, another Thaksin clone or a Thaksin clone of a Thaksin clone.

Anyway, kitchen duties await... more on this tomorrow.

*cross posting

KEWLNESS!
Pillchritude got the number 1 spot in google today.

but i suspect that it has got to do more with updating the old entry and the number of past visits than with posting using the same keywords several times. If keyword density and fresh content were the reasons why my page rank moved up, then the results should show the most recent entry or should at least show the entry i cross posted in thekittylitter. but then again, maybe the reason why thekittylitter didn't show up is because it's not as credible or relevant to google since it hardly has any posts right now.

oh crud. i did another search with quotation marks, and i found my post on the 6th page (of around 1,000+) results. This time, the search engine indexed the titles of my blog posts instead of the contents.


Feeling paranoid, I did a search again, without quotation marks. and *gasp!* my site was down 2 ranks! whatthehell....



You know I wouldn't leave it at that and be satisfied... So I used the quotation marks again, went to the last page and clicked on "show omitted results..." After I did that, google indexed my site at rank 1 again! remember, this time, the keywords had quotation marks. and instead of just an index of my blog post titles, google showed my original post.


I decided to tinker around with my post, thinking that google might've decreased my rank because of suspicious keyword stuffing, but before I did that, I checked again... I moved down 3 slots! when i tried refreshing, there were times when my site wasn't even on the first page. hahaha! whatever, it's daybreak and i've lost interest in trying to crack the google code.

a few points before i sign off... that multiply guy has the #1 rank because his blog's title is, you guessed it, "your fragile, folded wings..." the xanga one... well, it probably has more page clicks than mine. A surefire way to get your site to that number one spot? Put your keywords in your blog site title. PageRank and Hyper-Text Matching Analysis my ass! boo!

*sigh* google, what an enigma you are.

yeahyeah, instead of doing this experiment, I know i should read up more on SEO and all that jazz. but it's more interesting this way. :)