Hey, I'm back!
Can't promise I'll stay here writing, but I'm back for now, at least.
I can't even remember when I wrote last, but theres some things I'm pretty sure has happened since then.

1) I got a job.
Well... one may make the argument that it's not a real job, cause it's a part of my "rehabilitation" and my employer doesn't really pay me anything... Right now I get my pay from the swedish government. BUT: it's not your regular street-cleaning job. I'm actually working as a project leader for the internet page development for a small company here in Malmo. It may be argued that they should be paying for my work since it's goiung so well, but it's doing me very good, so who cares? I've actually been working for more than five months now. First I only worked 50% and now I'm up to 75%. Oh, and our development team is in Macedonia, so I get to use my english a lot. Trying to entrench myself as well as possible so that my employer can't afford to loose me *grins* seems to be working too...

2) Umm... it's really all been about the job lately, so I cant say anything else has happened. I guess that I could say I feel much better, but thats really not a definable happening :) Romantically or even erotically, nothing has happened, and I don't plan on making anything happen. Sure, I'm still lonely, but as long as I don't fell completely well, It'd be wrong to place someone in the middle of my life.

Oh, and I'm sick today... caught what seems to be a cold (can't tell yet, but all the signs are there). No big thing though, I bought a pile of microwave food and has entrenched myself in the bed for a few days.

Thats all for now.
I'll try to write more often ;)

Hi again.

It's been a while since I wrote. Usually that's a sign that I'm doing ok, but I should still try to write a few lines now and then.
Life's been running on in the usual way...
I'm still practiscng driving for my license and going to the doctor now and then... Hopefully we'll start with the job rehab program this fall, so I'll get something to do. I'm just getting even more passive at home.

Right now I'm talking with my half brother over MSN :)
He's 13 years old and he mostly talks about computer games. Distracting to say the least :) Plus I hardly slept at all last night.

Anyway, I'll try to be back more often.

Think I'm going to bed now.

Take care.

I had an appointment with my doctor today at 11 am. This was only the third appointment I've had with her so far, but I really like her and I've come to trust her pretty fast. Last time she asked me what I was afraid of concerning jobs and I really thought about it until this appointment because it was a question I hadn't thought about before.
I'm not sure I have a definite answer, but I think I set very high standards for myself, and combined with passed bad experiences with jobs, I'm afraid of failing and of drifting back into severe depression again.
Failing is something I've done a lot in my life. Both with jobs and relationships.

Anyway, today we discussed possible treatments. I'll get two more contacts for help; a coach of sorts and one more person to help me with more practical problems if needed. There is a possibility to get into a "job rehabilitation" program, which I think would be a good thing for me as well.

Enough for me to partially restore hope for the future :) It's great to find good help when you need it

Today I got a call from my fathers girlfriend, basically a cry for help 'cause the network of the driving school crashed again. Since my dad and her got together more then a year ago, I've somehow become the person responsible for their computers, which is really FUN :)

Maybe I should make this clearer before I go on with the story...
My father got together with this woman he's known a long time a while back, and now they live together (In the house in the forest I've talked about before). One of her sons own a driving school where a second son and my dads girlfriend also works. In other words it's a family company :)
So now, I kinda work there too, although it's more help and hobby then work. It's always fun to go there and fix things.

Today apparently the network was down, and I got a call. As the good son-in-law (that's the correct word, right?) that I am, I sat myself down on the bus and went right here :)

It wasn't a serious problem, just the router freezing up, probably because of heat, but I had to restart some things to get it working again. I also set up a thermometer to measure exactly how hot it gets in the server room. Maybe we'll have to set up some kind of cooling system in there... After that I've been poking around the place looking for things to improve and spent a lot of time drinking coffee and chatting with family. Not a bad way to spend the day :)

I can't express in words how much having this has helped me.

Thank God for family, huh?
At least when that family is a good family. I know lots of examples of bad family relations...

I haven't written in my journal for a couple of days. I've been at my dads place for a couple of days helping him with cleaning up his garden. He lives in the forest and he's decided he's going to remove most of the trees on his property. He fell ill a few weeks back and he's not up to speed yet, so I've been helping him with this work. We're not half through yet, not even a quarter through, but it feels good to helping someone with their "problems" for a change.

Anyway, I came back home today around 3 pm (15:00), and I went out for a few beers with some friends. Now (at 10 pm or 22:00) I'm, half-drunk. It's been a good day, not that I need alcohol to feel good, but I love spending time with my friends.

To connect to the subject, I'd like to try to catch my feeling of my present in words.
I've devoted my journal to truthfulness and I guess this is why I venture into writing in my journal in my present state. Seems I'm never as open as when I'm somewhat drunk. Usually I'm kind of closed off. *laughs* Maybe I will not even delete this entry tomorrow when I read it again :)

I believe that the true mood of a person shows when they're drunk. People who get violent when they are drunk are usually violent people when you get to know them and so on. When I get drunk I seem to get nostalgic. I start thinking about passed relationships and what I did wrong... My fingers start itching to call old girlfriends...
I guess this is a sign that there are issues and relationships in my passed that are somewhat unresolved... still feelings I have not been completely successful in burying.
This is something I'm thinking of as I write this.
Combined with this is the futility of it all. I have not been enough for the women I've truly cared about, and what does that make me? The one thing I've really wanted in my life has been one person, one woman to know me and still love me. One woman to truly know me for what I am, (my bad sides and all,) and to still love me, as I would love her.
I do not look for the perfect woman. I do not think there is such a thing. Who I look for is the perfect woman FOR ME and that's a completely different thing. My standards aren't that unreasonable.
*sighs*

I guess by now you understand that I'm the philosophical / sad type when I'm drunk.

*shakes his head* I think I'll go to bed instead of writing.

Take care.

P.s. Thank God for spellchecks.

Well I got up late as usual, but its sunday so who cares?

I feel great today. Think I'm going to go out and walk for a while. I really have no motivation to stay inside and write in my blog, so I wont. *grins* I guess I mostly write when I'm depressed which is why my blog looks like it does. :)

Take care.

After I wrote last night I still couldn't get to sleep for a few hours. Typically, when I can't go to sleep immediately, I start reading some old book and sometimes it takes hours for me to even try again. Stupid? Yeah, I know.
Anyway, I got up late today and I haven't really done anything productive at all yet. Sure, it's saturday, and I don't have to, but still. Just seems a waist.

In some ways, that seems to describe several aspects of my life lately. Several of my friends with the same education as I, have jobs as test engineers. Jobs I know I am more then capable of coping with and even excel at. I've applied for several positions like this and havent gotten a chance to prove myself with even one of them. Now, I just sit around waisting my time when I could contribute to something. What a waist for me and those companies both.

I've often felt like there must be some point to my life, some talent of mine I have not yet discovered, something I was meant to do that I've not yet caught up on... *sighs* Maybe it's just my imagination playing tricks on me, some romantic notion of there being a purpose to things. I simply do not know. I envy people who have a clear belief that there is purpose to everything. Even when those believes are religious in nature. But my views of religion is something to write about some other time, I think.

For now, simply take care.

Ok, after a few hours of tweaking the graphic representation of the 3D galaxy, I've realized I'll have to hit the books and study up on this... There's something about my end result that just is not working... *sighs*
I wonder if there are any good online resourses on the subject...
Oh well, it'll have to wait until tomorrow. I should try to reset my day/night rhythm and that means not going to bed around 3 am anymore, even when I dont have anything really important to get up for, and even though these late hours are really my most productive of the day.

Time to hit the bed!
Take care.

I just got home from my moms place, and now I'm really bored.
Maybe I'll keep working on my MOO3 clone for a bit *smiles*.
I got Master of Orion 3 a while back, and I've played it a lot, but I always get annoyed with a few things in the game, like not being able to micromanage or even macromanage in an easy way, not being able to sort the event report properly... All these things make the game virtually unplayable in the late stages, and it would be all so easy to correct  for a developer. So, I started making a similar game... In part because I was just annoyed, in part because I thought it would be a nice way to keep up my programming skills.
It's not meant to be a commercial thing. I do not intend to make any money off it, and maybe it will not even get finished... I usually get all these crazy ideas about improving games that are near impossible to actually implement. *laughs* I'm writing it in visual basic of all things... *grins* Bah! It's only what you'd call a prototype anyway, so if I decide to actually release it somethime I'll remake it in a more platform independant language... maybe C++ or java.

Anyway, I wrote code for generating a random galaxy and I'm in the middle of making a good presentation of the graphics of the galaxy view. You can already tilt the galaxy different ways to see it from different angles, but I want to be able to zoom in and out too, and I havent decided exactly how to do that. Hehehe... who said trigonometry isn't useful? Here's a screenshot, nothing really spectacular...



About life, today everything seems pretty ok. It's always like this... some days up and some days down.

I thought some about what I wrote yesterday about relationships. Even though I'm not looking for someone right now I can't help to miss having someone, but thats perfectly natural. I do not let myself obsess over it as much as I have done in the passed. Even though I do not look for someone actively right now I still have this creeping feeling that I probably never will get to have a family of my own with my own kids. I've known women with their own kids, and I love kids and all so thats not a bad thing really, but I'm not getting younger and neither will the women I meet. Chances are that who ever I end up with wont want more children, or maybe even will not be able to have them. Having children is a dream I'm not really ready to let go of yet. *sighs*
Still... children and even other responsibilities are pretty far removed from my current situation. I'll have to at least sort out my economic situation first.

*grins*
I hope I'll be able to write about more positive things here eventually, cause when I read this stuff myself I cant imagine anyone wanting to read about it.

Anyway, take care and all. I'm going to dig myself into my code for a while.

Hi there.
I'm Chris, and I got the idea of writing on here from a friend who has a blog/journal here. I've never really thought about having a blog for myself, but I love writing and sometimes it's really helpful to write things down.
Maybe a good place to start would be to read my profile, but I'll write some things about me here too. I will not write down my address or phonenumber here. If someone want to know stuff I choose not to write here, they are very wellcome to ask me.

Antrak is a name I came up with while playing a MUD named Dune a long time ago. I like using it online because its not a common name and it's not usually taken.

I'm 32 years old and I live in Sweden.I have a degree in software engineering, but I'm currently unemployed and have been for a while. My last relationship ended about a year ago and I'm still friends with the woman in question. I still miss her and her daughter very much at times. Enough  to add to my depression. Oh, yeah, I'm what you'd call clinically depressed. Popping pills and all. It's been really bad at times. Enough so that I probably would have ended things if I hadn't made a pact with myself while I was still just a kid not to ever do that. I think thats the easy way out, and I still believe that there are enough small stuff in life to give joy. Like standing outside on a really rainy or windy day just feeling the weather all around you... reading a really good book... eating really tasty food. (Didn't type "good food" on purpose *grins*.) Basically I've learned to take pleasure in the small things in life.

I'm currently not looking for a relationship, mainly because I do not believe that you can have a truly healthy relationship unless you get along with yourself when you're alone. I'll wait with searching for someone until I feel I've worked some things out with myself, and maybe built some kind of a life for myself. I'm not ruling out the idea of a relationship though, if the possibility comes along.

I've always tried to do things for others, thought more about the well beeing of people around me then that of myself. This is something I'm trying to correct in a way, although I still think that thinking about others is a good thing to do. It's just that one can not truly give much if one does not have much (not talking about things or money).

I like reading and writing fantasy and science fiction. I've started writing a couple of novels, the latest based on a fanatsy story I started telling to my half brother (age 13) a while back. I've written some poems too. I only write for myself and only one or two people have read what I've written.
Like writing and reading, computer games give me the possibility to escape reality for a while. I mostly like strategy or role playing games. I can escape life for long stretches of time with a good game... Both good and bad for me, I know, but sometimes I just don't care enough to do what's good for me.
Oh, I'm not always a loner. I love spending time with family and friends, when I'm not completely depressed. I also love cooking when I'm not by myself. My ex really liked my cooking and I take some pride in it.

That's enough of boring facts for now. More about what happens in my life when I find the need to write... Maybe even some more background stuff... We'll see. Take care.