No. You don't even understand.

I am exhausted. I shouldn't even be writing this. Because I'm exhausted.

But I thought that maybe I'd write something interesting because of it.

Nope. Same old shit, but I'm just tireder. And 'tireder' is not even a word. Damn, I'm pathetic.

I went to a family gathering today in Castaic. What made it better was that it wasn't MY family, but a friend's. Perhaps it was odd that she invited me, and odder that I accepted. I went, and it was quite lovely. I had fun. However, I was always introduced in a pretty lousy manner--maximal shock value, minimal likelihood of them saying, "Hey, that's cool!"

My friend could have introduced me in any of the following ways, and it WOULD have been acceptable:
1) "This is Ryan. He's a writer."
2) "This is Ryan. He works for the government."
3) "This is Ryan. He's unemployed." (a bit of a lie, but so what?)
4) "This is Ryan. He's just a nice freakin' guy."
5) "This is Ryan."

Instead, it was always, "This is Ryan. He works for the IRS." Ah, crap. And I'd talk to them for a minute and they'd start to think, "Okay, maybe I won't hate him." Then my friend would add, "He's in collections. He knocks on people's doors." Ahhh, for Pete's sake.

It tends to put people on their guard.

Meanwhile, I lost $20 playing Texas Hold 'Em while I was there. Goddamnit. That's almost a week's grocery money. That's at least 200 packages of Ramen noodles.