All my friends, from the closest to the acquaintance, have left me to live out their lives. The one's I have left I rarely see because of my work schedule. At home, at play, outside of work and at work I'm nothing but bored and lonely. It seems there is nothing for me here.

I don't have a car, I don't have a place of my own, it's safe to say I haven't accomplished anything at all, really. Aside from flushing my life away; heading down a horrible path of destruction for a time, then getting off it. But what of it? Am I really in a “better place” or am I just back where I started?

I don't know anybody here. I have no real reason to stay here. Sure, my parents live here, and my brother, but is having family in the area make my staying absolutely necessary? If I were to move to, say, Taiwan would that really separate the bond I have with my family? If I completely uprooted myself and moved on, what would I be leaving behind? Nothing! That's what!

My job is secure, but I hate it. Having a secure job in this terrible economy, with my lack of experience and education is a blessing! But the hours I put in for the meager pay I receive? Going to work should give me a sense of self worth, but it doesn't. I go to work and wonder what the hell I'm doing there. I put every ounce of my energy into fighting for some form of respect, but I never get it. How long does this need to go on?

Seven years after high school I'm no better off than I was on graduation day. Instead of gaining life experience, I've merely increased in age. Nothing has changed. But why? I'm giving one hundred percent of my being to figuring out what my place in this world is, and after 25 years I'm still clueless? What is it that I'm missing?!

Even the things I truly enjoyed, for a long time have become boring. People I've gotten to know, from the schools I've attended, to the online “communities” I've been a part of, to the church I go to, people have come and gone, come and gone. It's a never ending cycle. Am I psychotic? Am I ugly? Am I a burden of some sort? What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with everyone else? I ask around and all I hear is nonsense.

Do I speak in some sort of alien language? Why doesn't anyone understand me? Why can't I complete a thought without being interrupted? Why can't people just listen to what I have to say? Why can't people just share their opinion rather than telling me what to think? What to do? Why do people of every age treat me like a child?

Damn, this eerily resembles a a suicide note. I'm not suicidal, I'm just worn down. I've been pushed over the brink of insanity. Everywhere I go I'm alone. Everywhere I go I feel out of place. Like, where the heck is everybody? It's as if I slept through some sort of Armageddon, woke up to a dead world and didn't notice any change.

Everything I do bores me to tears. Nothing is fun anymore. Being alone can totally ruin even the greatest of moments. What's a great time without someone to share it with? What's a heartfelt conversation with yourself? What's a blog nobody will read? An uploaded video nobody will watch? You know, I kind of feel like Bruce Willis must have felt when he realized the boy was the only one who could see him at the end of The Sixth Sense! Is there someone out there who can see me?

Don't talk to me about God. I know God, quite well, and I am absolutely grateful for all the wonderful things He has done in my life. He has saved my sorry behind so many times in so many different ways I'd have to be totally psychotic to believe He wasn't there; that He couldn't see me; that he didn't care about me. This note isn't questioning my religion, my beliefs, or my knowledge of God's existence. It's about me and my relationship with other people. Or lack thereof.

It just seems that everywhere I go, other people don't give a crap about me. They might pretend to for a moment, to preserve their own self image perhaps, to be glad to see or talk to me. But outside of that moment, it seems, to them I don't exist. I'm nothing more than a casual acquaintance, a classmate, a coworker, a Facebook friend, an AIM buddy, a name on a contact list.

I'm really pouring my heart into this here document, and when I post it online, I'll bet you everything I have it won't receive more than a glance from those who have access to it. Maybe a few empathetic comments, or fortune cookie bible verses, but that's not what I'm after.

Maybe I'm the problem. Maybe people listen to me, maybe people love me, and maybe I'm the one who can't listen. Maybe I'm the one who hates everybody. Maybe I'm the asshole, and people have every right to ignore me like I'm not even there.

I don't know. Whatever it is, it needs to change, and fast. I'm so sick of wondering what the hell is causing me such terrible pain. All I want is a good group of friends I can enjoy life with and a girlfriend with some sanity and some brains.

In short, for the last 10 years I've been lonely and bored, and the loneliness and the boredom have led me to make some pretty poor decisions. I've taken responsibility and corrective action for these mistakes over the past few months, but even after all the time, money, dedication and patience I've put into getting my life back on track, I'm still sitting here at square one. Bored and lonely.

Where does it end?

     The time has officially come. The changes I have wanted so badly to make all these years have begun to take place, and let me tell you I am both excited, and terrified.

     Four years ago I met up and hooked up with a woman at a bar. A year later she moved into my apartment. A few months after that her kids moved in as well. We all lived together for just over three years. As time went on my life took a serious turn for the worst. I did everything I could to hang on, mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, but every step in the right direction came alongside two steps in the wrong direction. As time progressed, those two steps became three, then four, then five and so on, and after a while the steps in the right direction ceased altogether. I was withering into an aimless, if not meaningless existence.

     I’ve never been supportive of the idea of “new year’s resolutions.” Why wait for specific time to come before attempting to make necessary changes? This year is no different, but as fate would have it the days in which I finally leapt from the pit my life was in just so happened to be the days leading up to January 1st, 2011.

     I was in a bad relationship. No, not bad. Just… wrong. The woman I was with was very good to me, and I was very good to her. We both had good intentions for each other, and we got along just fine. But every day I fought with the question, “Is this the woman God chose for me?” I wanted desperately to passionately exclaim “Yes! She is obviously the one!” But I couldn’t. I was terribly unhappy being with her. Her very presence was a burden on my soul. I could barely stand the sound of her voice, no less her presence, no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how hard I tried. I wrestled with myself for the entire duration of the relationship, trying desperately to justify the tremendous pain I felt every day. I conjured up written works of art that spoke of how this woman fit into God’s plan for my life, and despite the nagging voice inside me calling bullshit with every keystroke, I pressed on doing my best to appear like I believed it one hundred percent. I never believed it. Not even once, not even for a moment. I wanted to, very badly, and I wanted everyone else to believe it, too, even knowing it was a lie. Well, after nearly four years I just couldn’t believe it anymore. It was face the truth or die. I reluctantly chose the former. Thank God.

     This choice I made, this decision to make the 180 degree turn towards God, involves many intricate steps, the first of which was getting out of a “wrong” relationship. I’ve successfully taken that first step, and I’ve begun the long and arduous journey that is the remaining steps. I am eternally grateful for all the prayer support I have received, the advice and support of my friends and family, and I am especially thankful for God, His love, His grace, His guidance and His forgiveness.

To God be the glory.

~Josh

I recently purchased three new hard drives for my computer. One was a Crucial C300 RealSSD at 128GB, the other two were Western Digital Caviar Black's at 640GB each (Western Digital no longer makes their Black drive in 640GB, so get 'em while they're cheap!). Before the drives came, I ran some benchmarks on the drive/system I was running at the time. The drive was a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue with 16MB of Cache, and it was pretty old. Below is a Crystal DiskMark of the hard drive, and a Windows Experience Index (WEI) readout of the system with this drive.

WEI with WD Caviar Blue and EVGA GeForce 9800GT:

Crystal Disk Mark readout of WD Caviar Blue:

That's actually fairly decent as far as the standards for HDD's go. Now let's look at a WEI and CrystalDiskMark of the same system with a SATA III SSD, two Caviar Black's in RAID 0, and a Radeon HD 5670.

I was really surprised to see just how fast those WD Caviar Black's were in RAID 0. The Sequential Read and Write speeds are neck in neck, and the write speed of the HDD's for both Sequential and 512k random writes are actually faster than the SSD! The two video cards are pretty close in performance, the nVidia card at 6.9 and the ATI card at 7.0, but the rating difference between the old HDD and the new SSD/HDD setup is crazy. 5.9 to 7.5 (out of 7.9). It's nice to finally be rid of that old clunker, and my External WD MyBook. Don't buy one of those, they're slower than molasses. I suppose that's ok if you're just using it for a backup, but seriously, don't try using one as you would an internal hard drive. Bad news.