I spent some time today talking to someone I hadn’t talked to in…well, he mentioned something like ‘two years’, but I don’t really remember. It’s been a while — he asked if I was still living in Iowa.

So…it’s been a while.

Chatting with him for a bit got me thinking a little more about people — specifically, the people I’ve encountered in my life. The people I’ve talked to, associated with, and left behind.

Okay, mostly about the people I’ve left behind.

These are people who, for the most part, won’t remember me. Of those that do, some of them probably consider me to be the ‘left’ one. Good for them; I don’t really care about their feelings either way.

I’m not even sure I care enough about what I’m writing right now to finish it or post it. I got distracted by Dexter and a grilled cheese sandwich. These are important things, better than people.

And Dexter isn’t even that good yet. Sad, huh?

You’d think so, but…not really. A little dull, perhaps a tad empty, but not really sad.

Is it bad when you start getting a little introspective and find that there’s absolutely nothing to look at where you’re looking? It’s like there’s this room that I had to work at getting unlocked, thinking there might be something in there, and when I finally get in and get the lights working, all the boxes are empty.

That seems to be what most people leave behind. Mostly empty things. At least, in my head. And you stumble upon these things when you’re looking for something more important.

I’ve run across bits and pieces of these abandoned people online, and they’re a lot like the empty, pointless shit left behind in my head. Unchanged and unimportant to anyone but themselves. In their own little worlds — some of them for real. Like, in realities of their own construction.

People do that. It’s pretty much natural, I guess.

Mine’s messy, and there’s nobody here who does dishes, and there’s no chips. But there’s Coke. And videogames. And the potential for personal re-invention.

Right now, my goal is to get myself back into playing videogames a little more. I used to love a good game, but certain games and my head didn’t get along so well. And now, a few hours of Zelda turns my hands into these fun little claws….

I want the fun back, though. The Nintendo DS is really helpful with all that, and so is GameFly.

This went nowhere fast. What’ve I learned? Games, TV and grilled cheese = good, people = empty boxes. Mostly damp empty boxes that smell kinda funny. And not having chips kinda sucks.

Not all people are like the damp empty boxes. There are a few that I like, and a whole two that I think enough of that I’ve made a ‘friends’ category in Trillian just for them. I don’t talk to them, or anyone else, very often. Not these days, anyway.

Why only two? Out of the…hundred or so names on my combined AOL/YIM/MSN/ICQ contact list? Because most people aren’t worth more than the damp and smell and emptiness they eventually turn into, and I’ve learned that after many years of watching them pass through my life. They’re like…boats and leaves and rocks and stuff. Things that disturb the surface of water. Most of them don’t, somehow.

They don’t disturb the surface of me.

There are people on my contact list that don’t qualify as friends, though. They’re family, and that’s a totally different category. Family aren’t damp empty boxes, and they’re not insignificant lake-litter. Family are rooms full of heavy, overstuffed boxes, no matter what your feelings toward them.

And I think I just figured out why it doesn’t matter that people are mostly nothing to me. Zombi is why it doesn’t matter. My cat is better than you.

How proper and bloggy.

I really think that’s quite enough of all that. I need to quit before I forget what I’m comparing things to, because I stopped really caring about this about three sentences in. Also, Zombi’s about to climb onto my keyboard in a desperate search for a nose to break.

Don’t take it all too personally, and, if you do, don’t make it my problem.