I hide behind sarcasm because I fear honesty.

the chair next to you's free

it's back again.

the desperate need to be a part of something.
something bigger than me.
bigger than this.
bigger than all of it.

i don't know how it works.
i don't know how i don't have it.
and i don't know how i don't know.

maybe it's something i did.
maybe it's something i didn't do.
maybe it's something i don't know how to do.

and maybe no one else has it.
and maybe no one else wants it.
maybe it doesn't even exist.

but it's here.
the hole.
the need.
the desire.

nothing much to do

i'm in the middle of a do-nothing saturday which is part of a do-nothing weekend and i couldn't be much happier.

it's been a while since there was a day so nicely gray and morning where i could sleep in but decided i didn't really want to. not because i have important things to do, but because i just wanted to be awake for this beautiful welcome freedom.

leisurely making breakfast and reading the paper and two things that i haven't done in far too long.

i love the feeling of absolutely no obligations for an entire weekend.

i feel the need to tell someone this. and with all my whining and bitching and moaning on here this seemed as good a place as any. recently this stupid blog has been nothing but regurgitations of feelings of dispair. and i hope i can stop doing that and start writing about things that are interesting and fun and valuable instead.

sure i could make a promise to myself that i'll never write think or say anything negative. i've known people who did that. but it always seemed dishonest to me.

denying any negative feelings doesn't mean that you'll never feel them. it just mean that you'll lie to yourself about them.

but for right now i'm fixing to change.

i woke you up a four this morning, to whimper and to whine

this whole blogging thing is tired. it's been tired for a while.

maybe it was when i decided to stop pretending that i was something else that i stopped being interested. but when i look at that it's only with disdain, not nostalgia.

maybe it was when i decided i would only write what i was feeling. probably that's it. when i decided the only thing worth writing was variations of a self-important and utterly impotent and empty view of reality.

my problems are not nearly so important or so big as i imagine them to be. as i make them to be. as i feel that they are.

and yet i put them here, and for what? for someone to say i feel the same way, which would be utterly self-defeating. for someone to say that i'm wrong, in which case i would probably disregard all they had said. for someone to say i shouldn't worry, which is no more reassuring than it ever seems to sound.

i guess i thought that putting it here, that pointing out my faults to a small and irrelevant portion of the world that i don't actually interact with, would somehow make the problems go away.

quite the opposite. exaggerating my feeling to make them interesting only makes me feel more depressed and disappointed with all that i, and the world, are not.

i still find it impossible to believe in anything. i don't believe that people can change. i don't believe they want to change. and i don't believe any of them care about anything important.

and i don't believe in the transformative power of ideas or the ability of love to save the world.

i don't believe in anything because i don't want to risk anything. belief is risk.

i don't risk anything that i don't think i can afford to lose. and as i have a precious few things that i'd still claim as my own i won't risk any of them.

i want to believe in things. all kind of things. i want to believe that there are people out there with whom i could feel comfortable. that there are things in this world that i can change. that there are things in the world with living for. or dying for.

but i know that to believe in those things means that i could be wrong. at somepoint in the future i could lose a lot. everything. because i believed in something that just wasn't, that just couldn't be.

i don't know where to start. i don't know how to do it.

i want to learn to believe in people and ideas and causes, but i don't know where to start.

please. someone. tell me how. to begin. to believe.

but it's thoughts like this that catch my troubled head when you're away

reading hemingway i found this:

"In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure he would never die."

and then i realized i had no one to tell about this. no one to even read it to, no one to even to feign interest in it. no one to not care.

i have at various times turned here when i didn't have anyone to say what i wanted to say to.

and i'm not sure that that's as horrible as it feels. but it feels pretty dissappointing.

i don't know that even if i talked to more people i would have a solution to this problem. part of me doubts there's a person in the world i would tell something like that to.

that's not their problem. it's fundamentally mine. at some point in the past i decided that it was to much to put myself out there. to risk being hurt.

so instead i superficially interact with the rest of the world. i don't really give all i've got.

i half listen to my conversations and half wonder what's behind them. this gets me in more trouble than i'd like, but i've yet to fix it.

i don't really think most people give more than that. but sometimes they seem to. and the seem upset that i'm not.

more and more it all feels like small talk to me. and they call it small talk because it's about small things and thus it relatively insignificant. and i'm bad at it anyway.

i've been told that i should practice. that i need to be good at it. and i always said there was no need. that anyone who wanted to could struggle with what little i'd give them.

i've increasingly realized that they were right. that you need to know how to have insignificant conversations. but i'm still too impatient to do it most of time.

and i think i've been misrepresenting small talk most of my life. small talk is only small when you don't care about the topic. you can have an honest conversation with the exact same words that would at other times be called small talk.

but if you really care how they're doing, asking it not as an idle question but an honest curiousity, it's completely different.

i guess it may just be that i never feel it. i never feel them caring about the responses. and so i don't give them honestly.

maybe it's because i never care. i have to remind myself that it's polite to ask about the other person. rarely do i actually want to know.

maybe i can't tell the difference where i thought i could. maybe they all care. maybe more care than i realize. and then maybe none of them care.

i've wished more than once that i was the kind of person who could genuinely care about everyone. who does genuinely care about everyone. in my life i can only think of one person who honestly appeared that way. maybe i was wrong. and maybe he was amazing.

some people fake it well. some people fake it poorly. some people don't bother to fake it. and some wish they didn't have to fake it. that it was real. and for some, it must be real.

i'm the third and fourth.

and sometimes that makes me pretty damn self-righteous. and sometimes that makes me hollow.

do your dances alone in your room, becoming a star will become your doom

i used to think that i felt lost because i really was. and then i wasn't so sure.

but really, i don't like being lost and confused. and if i'm addicted i'm stupid and deserve this feeling.

but then what's so hard about getting unlost that i've been unable to do it for more than two years.

partially its for the same reasons i've written too many times on here. the internal contradictions.

that i want desperately to save the world but i'm to scared to. and don't know where to begin. and i don't know anything and have no power.

mostly i think i just don't know what to do. i could become a businessman and hope desperately that one day i'll be rich like bill gates and be able to solve all the problems.

i could become nothing and live a comfortably meaningless life rising to no acclaim and risking nothing.

i could throw all of my advantages away and go work construction all over the world. getting paid very little for very hard work.

i could learn every language in the world and travel around and talk to all the people.

i think i've probably written this same thing before. listing every possible thing i could become and not liking any of them enough to go for it.

i'm too scared that i'll fail to even think to try.

i've been blessed to have a lot of people think very highly of me and give me great goals to aspire to. somehow i don't want to let them down. as though not trying negates the failure to meet the expectations.

this feeling that i've already said all i'm saying is really starting to bother me. it seems that i must quite incredibly simple to keep having the same thoughts. and yet i never ever solve them. i never find the answer.

part of my problem seems to be that i have no idea what i want. i possess more useless things than i should.

and i can't think of a person or place or thing i want either. nothing as abstract as love even.

i decided a while back that romantic love was a poor substitute for something more important. however, i seem to have forgotten what was so much more important or how i was going to get there.

maybe it was self-knowledge. but thus far that hasn't brought me much of either peace or happiness. maybe i just don't have it the way i thought i would or wanted that i could.

so here it is. again. for the millionth time.

i. don't. know.