First feeling of deprivation

Dear Diary,

I'm going to be sharing another tidbit of information; I'm vegetarian. People would classify me as vegan, but I really don't like that term. It is true that I do not eat animal products and it is also true that I avoid products that were produced by or made from animals. I believe in altruism toward animals. What bugs me about the term vegan is that their needs to be a term, to specify how closely someone follows a way of life. Isn't a vegetarian who eats animal products the equivalent to a Christmas and Easter Christian? What is the point of classifying yourself as something if the classification doesn't fit? What really annoys me about the term vegan is that with it people expect you to have some moral high horse agenda. If you tell someone you are vegan it's like you are attacking their personal views and they need to go on the offensive and get you defending your choices. What I want to know is, "How does what I choose not to eat affect someone else?" People assume that if you are vegan you will start preaching about why they should be vegan also. Do I have a list of reasons, Yes I can think of numerous benefits. Am I going to tell you about them, No if you wanted to know you'd do your own research. I'll make my choices and everyone else will make their choice.

Now that we have that tangent out of the way on to my first feelings of deprivation. I have been a vegetarian for many years now. Most of the time there is a delightful option that tastes similar to what I remember from my pre-vegetarian days. However there are some things that I have not found vegetarian options for, such as lemon meringue pie, angel food cake, and white chocolate. Most of the time there are other options that I am perfectly content choosing instead. However I live with my best bud who bought one of those items that I don't know how to make or where to get a vegetarian version. This is killing me, it is sitting in the kitchen taunting me. Years of being vegetarian and having people ask me don't you miss anything, and being able to honestly tell them "nope". I am being taunted by baked goods. I feel like I am missing out, because it's there, in my kitchen, ready to be consumed. I guess I'm lucky that I've never really missed something before. I don't have any intention of eating my best buds sweet treat. I'm pretty sure that even if I did it would in no way taste as good as I remember.

I'm just startled to realize that I feel as though I am missing out on something. I guess it wouldn't be hard to respect animals if you were never tempted, and for many years it hasn't been hard for me. I guess this experience has taught me a few things. 1. I do have self control after all. 2. You never realize how easy something is till it gets harder.

Until next time,
Me

Sunset from a cave

So the first photo that I am putting in my diary is "Sunset from a Cave". This was taken many years ago and is still my favorite picture that I have taken, I recently set up a flicker account and entered in into a viewers choice, raw photo contest, where it took first place.

This is my diary

Dear Diary,

Well I guess this is my diary so it will be full of my private thoughts and feelings about; well anything and probably everything that comes into my mind as I type. I will probably express thoughts and feeling that many people do not agree with and may offend someone, I apologize in advance (hopefully I haven't offended anyone yet). On that note I need to clarify something, I am writing this for myself, I do not expect many people or any people to read this, I am doing this as a type of therapy, and making it public might help keep me honest. It will not be the most exciting reading, because lets face it my life is not exciting. In fact I am a bit of a home body.

I think I should start by documenting where I am in my life right now. I am basically no where, see not exciting at all.  I live with my fiance (I know I'm quite the heathen, living together before marriage) but we have been engaged for years and together for years before that, basically we have been together longer than a lot of marriages have lasted. I also live with my best buddy who I have known longer than I have been in my relationship with my significant other. There will be a lot on this topic, because I have learned a lot about friendship, and myself through this experience.

My significant other and myself have both been unemployed longer than I care to think about and since both of us are very capable and intelligent people and one of us (the one that is not me) has a graduate degree I am very disillusioned by the length of our unemployment . I have reason to hope that my unemployment will end soon, but I've thought that before with discouraging results, so we shall see.

I am not the most positive of people, in fact if I'm honest (see making this public is already helping) I'm naturally pessimistic. If someone says they will meet me somewhere at a specific time and they are not there my mind jumps right to them lying dead in a ditch somewhere being eaten by rabid raccoons. The prospect of them running into a little traffic never enters my head. What does enter my thoughts, that they really hate me and just didn't want to tell me they never wanted to meet me in the first place. The everybody must hate me thoughts generally come right after the raccoons have consumed their appendages, but never does something so benign as a flat tire or a road construction detour enter my mind.

I don't like confrontation, I have elaborate debates and arguments in my head (where my point of view is always victorious). In real life I generally just smile and agree then tell someone else (who I think will see my point of view) what I was thinking and how the other person was wrong or completely illogical. The point in stating that I am pessimistic and dislike confrontation is that these are things I am trying to work on. Nothing wrong with trying to improve myself, but I do have my work cut out for me.

I think right now I might be fighting a slight case of depression (if I am it is completely reasonable given life events which I'm sure I'll get into at some point) because I find it hard to motivate myself to do much of anything, most days I stay in watching television shows on the computer. I'm not actually sure if I'm depressed or just unimaginative it's kind of hard to think of things to do on cold rainy days when you have no money. Or is that just another excuse or justification (I'm really good at those).

Okay enough about where I am, maybe my next entry will be about dreams for the future and where I hope to go. I have a bucket list floating around somewhere maybe I'll put that in here, it will be good to have all my thoughts in a centralized location.

Until next time,
Me