it’s just you and me

Two years ago today, a girl with bottomless blue eyes and dimples that frame a beautiful smile laid next to me on a tiny bed in her room in Richmond, and giggled when I suggested we change our Facebook relationship status to “in a relationship”. She looked back at me when I said that, those gorgeous eyes sparkling and those dimples becoming more pronounced as her smile widened and threatened to split her face in two. She said “okay!” and jumped up, bounced over to her computer, and made things official. At that moment, the course of my life changed forever.
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It’s been a rough year. I’ve lost a lot, and most of it is my own doing. I’ve made mistakes. Lots of mistakes. I carry a lot of secrets and regrets right now, and I’m not sure how much longer I can bear the load.

I try to learn from my mistakes. I try to approach things objectively and use reason and logic to figure out what to do. Usually, my initial reaction is very emotional and irrational, depending on the severity of the situation. I know that. It’s something I struggle with. But I can usually stifle that until I have time to parse things out and think them out logically. This way of thinking has served me well throughout most of my adult life.

I’m starting to question how useful this is in real life, though.

Is it right to not be upset when a relative dies because their lifestyle directly contributed to it, and they have no one to blame but themselves? It’s logical to prepare yourself for that death in advance, since it’s imminent, but it’s almost inhuman to not even shed a tear when it actually happens.

Is it right to end a relationship that, while not perfect, is mostly functional and makes you extremely happy, just because you see ever-increasing fights on the horizon and logic tells you that ending things now will result in less turmoil and hard feelings in the long run? I thought so. But I’m seeing now that the right thing to do isn’t always the right thing to do. I was a fool, and I’ve lost someone very important to me forever because of it. There’s nothing right about what’s happened here, and I’d give anything to take it back. I was wrong. Logic was wrong.

Does it make sense to never forgive yourself for your mistakes? It’s easy to argue that some things should never be forgiven, and that kind of judgement is always relative. If you believe you’re not allowed to screw up, even the smallest misstep feels like a tragedy. Logic dictates that mistakes can usually be corrected or paid for, and one should learn from it and move on. But people aren’t good at learning from their mistakes. They have a profound capacity for self-denial. As time goes on, the mistake is forgotten or mitigated until one finds himself thinking that it wasn’t THAT bad, and the mistake is repeated. If you always hold yourself accountable for that mistake, and suffer for it, it stays resident. Fear of repeating it becomes almost pathological. It’s always there, and you can never, ever do it again. It’s hellish, but effective.

There’s always a struggle between the mind and the heart, between logic and emotion. I’ve been in two situations in my life when I let emotion overcome; one was with she who shall not be named, in which the logical side turned out to be correct. The other is happening right now, and I believe my fear of losing control of myself again may have made me overreact 5 months ago. I always told her that “you never let something like that happen again”, and I certainly held true to that, but… I have regrets. Big, ever-present, soul crushing regrets. I took things for granted. I avoided dealing with issues until they were right in my face. I thought I’d expressed certain things that I had not. I assumed that she felt the same way that I did, and I thought I could handle things that I could not. Above all, I assumed that the future held infinite opportunity for second chances… And that was yet another giant mistake. The right thing to do in the long term was actually just a temporary fix for my own worries, and now I’m reaping the consequences.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of months thinking about the nature of my relationships with people. Certain people have shown their true colors to me and illustrated just how selfish and narcissistic they can be. That sort of thing colors the entire friendship, since all their actions are now viewed through a different lense. I’ve discovered that the infinite understanding and willingness to help of family is something I’ve taken for granted for a long time. I’ve learned that genuine love is not something to be tossed aside, because it doesn’t come around very often. I’ve learned that above all, though, I can only truly rely on myself. People will always disappoint you eventually.

For the past two days I’ve been sequestered in my house, aside from a couple of long, late night walks, when the city is quiet and I can hear myself think… I’ve been sitting in the dark with a hole in my chest and a mind full of regrets. I don’t know what else to do, other than the standard cliche advice: don’t torture yourself, move on, time heals all wounds, blah blah blah. I don’t want to move on. I deserve the torture after everything I’ve done recently. I deserve to lose her permanently. I deserve every bad thing that happens to me. I was selfish then, and I’m being selfish now by bringing it all up again, and I wish I could stop but I just… Can’t. It consumes me. Every mistake weighs on my mind every minute of every day, and it should, because I deserve it.

On the bright side, I lost another 4 pounds.

I need time to myself. For those who are reaching out, I appreciate the concern, but I need to be alone for a while. I have a lot on my mind, more than I can express or even allude to in a single post, and you can’t help me sort it out.

See you all in a month.

Yesterday, we had to say goodbye to Lacey, and it was one of, if not the saddest days of my life.
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I’m trying not to fill this new incarnation of my blog with whiny personal existential rants, but…

Jenn and I have broken up. It was a very hard thing for me to do, made much harder by the way she handled it, but it had to be done. Things had grown toxic between us. We were both at fault for that; her, unable to control her emotions, exploding at me in tears and anger over every little thing, and me, unable to bear even the slightest hint of conflict, to the point that I anticipated arguments and fights in even the most benign circumstances.

For the past few weeks, as things have gotten worse with her moving home to Annapolis and preparing to move to Kansas, I’ve been increasingly unable to ignore the obvious path this relationship was taking. Once she was in Kansas, and during the weeks immediately preceding her move, the amount of stress and anxiety she’d be feeling would be extremely high, which would lead to more and more fights. The frequency with which she would hit me with guilt trips over not being able to come see her as often as she’d like, while unintentional, would crush me. We’d both be miserable. She’d resent me for not doing more, and I’d resent her for expecting me to do too much. We’d grow to hate each other, and I can’t bear the thought of that.

It became clear to me that if I was going to salvage any relationship at all with her, it had to end before it got to that point. I can’t bear the thought of losing her completely. I still love her very much, but love isn’t the only thing you need to keep a relationship going, especially a long distance one.

Right now, she hates me for doing this to her. She thinks it’s a mistake. I hate myself for causing her this pain, and I sometimes think it would just be easier to take it back and go back to pretending that everything is fine. But I know that will only make things better temporarily. I have to keep reminding myself that this is better in the long run. I have to bear the burden in this, yet again, for making things work. I just wish she could see it…

Perhaps, in a few years, we’ll meet up again, and she’ll have grown up a bit, figured herself out a little, have some clue about the things that make her tick. Perhaps I’ll have grown more patient. Perhaps I’ll develop a desire to have someone be completely dependent on me for their happiness and well-being. Perhaps then we can try again. Right now, though, I can’t even talk to her about our issues without her falling apart and shutting down, and I can’t be in a situation like that. I have to be able to discuss things with the person I am with. It can’t work otherwise.

Between this, the encounters with my grandparents, and things going on at work… this has been a horrible week, and I’m inclined to just avoid human contact as much as possible for the next few days so I can grieve in peace.

There’s been a direct correlation between Twitter’s increasing popularity and my frustration at having a common name.

You may or may not be aware that there is a basketball player also named JR Smith. He plays for the Denver Nuggets. I changed my site several years ago into a Geocities-style fan site for this guy, as an April Fool’s joke.

Over the last week or two, I’ve been getting an increasing number of mentions on Twitter from people thinking that I’m that guy. It was amusing at first, but now it’s just fucking irritating.

I’ve decided to chronicle those cases here, for prosperityposterity.

It started off innocently enough:

@DaLeynaRae – Way to go Denver!!! Great game @jrsmith!

And some of these people seemed to have useful or positive things to say:

@WallerCo – @jrsmith….where are u? U know the conference finals started tonight right?

@Ericsona – @jrsmith what did Kleza do ??

@ShadCharleston – Lol , Ok @Jrsmith ! ..can’t even hate on you for gettin’ that Tech! Good shot boy ..But still Lakers gonna Pull it off!

@jtenkely – Huge! 3 from @jrsmith at the end of the third… But you gotta watch your mouth or you give ‘em back.

@Johnytheanomaly – @JRSmith please duff #Kobe tonight

@dquarles5 – LOL @jrsmith slow mo replay of him cursin da whole dam stadium out!

Then it became evident that JR Smith is not well-liked:

@ShadCharleston – Seems like @jrsmith gets more playing time than Jones ..even though Jones starts.

@Wizdom80 – lol @JRSmith what a sissy…@nate_robinson would sock him all over again

@ShadCharleston – Ga dammit @jrsmith!!

@dnldidit – @lakersnation he smoke weed look @ his lips. Lmao @jrsmith

@D_AMAZIN – i think jr smith has a twitter.wel if he does @jrsmith i wanna see u do that goofy ass strut game 5 in la u fuckin clown!!!lmao

And, of course, the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory came into play:

@MdotPORTER – @jrsmith shoot urself in the head! Thanks

Honestly, how difficult is it to click the link that forms when you mention me and see that I am indeed fat, white and not in a nationally-televised basketball game? Even if the picture on my profile didn’t give it away, maybe the fact that I’m checking in at a mexican restaurant on Britekite while you’re watching “me” on live TV might be a clue.

Morons.

I was asked at lunch today to guess at how much money I spend on domain names a month. I wasn’t sure. I spent some time just now doing some rough calculations, and here’s what I found:

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What was once jrsmith.net, then blog.jrsmith.net, then jrsmith.net/blog – amazing variety and creativity, I know – is now it’s just you and me.

I’ve moved my blog to this domain for several reasons:

1. I needed to make some use out of the several .me domains that I foolishly splurged on several months ago.
2. I desire to make jrsmith.net into an actual network, as the TLD suggests.
3. I like organizing things.

So, here it is. I’ll leave the default theme for now. The old speech bubble theme was dependent on some things that no longer exist, so it might be time for a change.

Links and feeds and so forth should redirect automatically, but please, update your bookmarks and feed readers. Enjoy the functionality that I never bothered duplicating in my own themes, like search and archive browsing, and let me know if you come across any errors.

Time marches on. There’s no fighting it. With time comes change, and evolution, and death and birth. This blog is not an exception. Changes in theme, evolution of Wordpress, death of topics and the constant gestation, birth and abandonment of ideas and new directions. So much is possible, so little is ever actually done.

My posting statistics have steadily fallen in recent years. Three or four posts a month, then two, then one, then one every 3 months. I think about this, obsess over this, constantly. As absurd as it sounds, of all things, Twitter has brought this more into focus. I follow other web designers and developers who constantly blog about the dumbest shit; it’s nothing but well known CSS hacks and “top 100 plugins for Wordpress to make your dick grow!”. I look at these tweets, and the resulting retweets and fortune and fame, and I think “There but for a lack of free time go I.”

I look at my lengthy list of domain names, my vast swath of “web properties” as I’ve taken to calling them, going mostly unused… I look at the dawt net in jrsmith.net and lament that this is not a network of any kind. It’s all such a waste.

I look at my 9 years worth of posts, a good 90% of which is bullshit emo drivel, or chronicles of bullshit emo drama. Most of it could be completely washed away and this site would be the better for it. I find myself more and more inclined to do so.

It may surprise some of you, but the things that I talk about here, and have always tended to talk about here, are the things I dislike talking about with other people. I dump those things here so they don’t spill over. It’s gotten me into — I want to say trouble, but that’s overstating — irritating misunderstandings. It’s no longer safe to do so, which goes a long way to explain my unwillingness to post.

So, just as soon as I have some spare time, I’m going to archive all the existing entries and comments and begin deleting anything that doesn’t have some kind of worth. I’m moving the three or so entries that survive the slaughter to itsjustyouand.me, where I will start fresh and blog about things that are relevant to my interests: web design, perl, python, databases, art, books, movies, TV shows, phones, fourth century mating rituals and what having a third testicle really means for a man in today’s world.

Throughout my life, when things have started to go bad, I’ve coped by simplifying and shaking things up. Removing the cruft. Assimilating a new habit, denying existing ones. It works well enough; the hue of life shifts just enough to smack of freshness and renewal, while retaining enough resemblance to the old one to keep shock from setting in. And while life right now is not particularly awful, I am unhappy with my circumstances enough to crave change.

Doing something with this blog is a good first step.

I used to read Word Up magazine.

It’s been a while since I posted anything here. Free time has been in very short supply.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary with Jenn, officially making it the longest functional relationship I’ve ever had. On this auspicious occasion, I can’t help but look back over the past year and take stock of what we have. There have been a few rough patches, but that’s to be expected in any kind of relationship. Nothing is ever perfect. The thing I try to keep foremost in my mind is that she actually, truly loves me. She’s not faking the funk. The way she feels is genuine. That sort of thing is rare, and not easily dismissed. If the price that I must pay for that is the occasional frustration and sometimes feeling more like a parent than a partner, then I pay it gladly.

I mean, she bought me a 3 pound bag of gummy bears. What’s not to love?

Here’s hoping we make it another year.

Today is Obama’s inauguration. It went pretty much as I expected. The noteworthy thing, in my opinion, was all the idiocy leaking out of people on cnn.com’s Facebook feed. Honestly, I missed half of his speech because I was laughing so hard at their comments. I’ve saved a few for posterity:

Andre Rivas is glad everything is fixed now. Thanks Obama!

Shit, everything is fixed?! I need to leave work early and check that old TV in my bedroom.

Brandi says “It’s over, pack your bags… we’re moving to Canada.”

OMG A BLACK IS PRESIDENT QUICK LET’S MOVE TO THE NEAREST WHITEST COUNTRY. YAY CANADIA!

Dave Baca wonders where Clinton’s hand is?

No inauguration is ever complete without a quick handjob.

Kiley Gray is The next 4 Years Are Going To Be Magical!!!

And not that sissy magic you see at birthday parties, either. ” I meditate to regain my mana, before casting Lvl. 8 Cock of the Infinite.”

Sherri Buford Today is the first day of the rest of our lives…well 4 years of our life anyway…

No fucking shit. How profound.

Bethany Kaufman thought a red tie meant Republican?

I have no idea if this is true or not. If it is, hilarious. If it isn’t, hilarious.

Cheryl Wesson Thank God for a President who can use multi-syllable words correctly & with ease!

How insensitive. I sure hope there’s someone on Facebook with the guts to respond to your libelous statements…

James Michael Keel stop making fun of the former president of the united states.

OH SNAP! You got served.

Jason Rustle Barr is eating dried fruit for Obama

I believe this is the textbook definition of patriotism. It also explains why fruitcake was so popular.

Fee Guity is Praising God for this moment in History (THE REAL INDEPENDENCE DAY) and praying that Lil B Passes his 1st spelling test!

If “little” happens to be on Lil B’s spelling test, I’d say he’s pretty well fucked.

James W. Hills is hoping that all Black Men answer the call and step up and be more responsible and accountable…

…all other ethnicities can continue to screw around.

Jan Riggs Obama is human.

I guess this won’t turn out like that one Halloween episode of The Simpsons after all.

Kaley Jordan he sucks.

Eloquent.

Anthony Akuamoah-Boateng LiKeS tHe sPeeCh. cAnt wAit fOR tHe tRaNscRipT.

sO i cAn fUCK It uP juSt LIkE i do WITh ALl oF my oWn tEXT!

Daniel Millikin watched the Obama inauguration. Hope in Jesus.

I thought Hope was in Arkansas?

Seriously, though, I’m glad Obama didn’t get shot or blown up. Aside from the obviously sad nature of such an event, if it had happened, I think we’d have no choice but to declare Game Over on America and go play somewhere else.

Edit: One other thing. To anyone else that watched the inauguration: did you notice that when Arethra Franklin started singing, she paused just a little too long between syllables when singing “Our country”? It sounded like she said “Our cunt”, and I giggled more than I’d like to admit.