"Undermining my electoral viability since 2001."

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back (again)

I'm struggling. [[axioms of living|The most important thing is to stop struggling]].

Weeks of sly and furtive procrastination has lead my working life to another crunch period with looming deadlines and no way out but to bear down doubly hard. Why do we do this to ourselves? Is it just the sick work/life style we learn in college? Is it simply human nature to wait for pressure to act? Is it some kind of self-sabotage? Who knows, but I want to move beyond this. It feels juvenile, unprofessional. It creates feelings of anger and dismay:

Baaaah! This is not happening! (Rex from Memphis, a lovable old Baptist stoner who's daughter picked me up on the streets and brought our whole crew into their home for a night), or maybe MY EMPIRE IS CRUMBLING (Kids in the Hall; Brain Candy).

It's not the end of the world, but it is a setback. Here we are again, at the end of the rope, pulling ourselves back into the game. This isn't what I want to do with my life.

And it doesn't help my mood that this girl I was hoping to see won't call me back. It's not entirely surprising seeing as how I already used (squandered, said Dauter at the time, which I didn't quite understand then but do now) my second-chance a couple years ago. My life experience suggests that second-chances tend to be last chances, but still.

And it doesn't help either that a work-related trip back to NYC got bumped back to July, which is after the other girl I was hoping to see will have blown out of Brooklyn. Kind of a one-two punch to the hopes. They may spring eternal, but the snap-back's a real bitch.

Still, here I am, and it wouldn't do to hole up and read books all summer long. Life goes on, so I headed out last night on my bicycle, trying to get my street legs back. I coasted through the Haight and into the Mission, a lap around Deloris park, and eventually stopped in to have a beer and a peta at the Zeitgeist, my favorite establishment in town. It's typically a lively Friday night, but I'm not the type who really thrives as a solo flier, so I sit alone and contemplate.

Maybe that's something to work on, solo flying, but before I'd half drunk my Pabst my partner Zack calls and invites me over to the Elbow Room. He's there with a date, other people on the way, and it's good to be back with people, back in context. Zack's lady-friend seems like a winner, and the dance party upstairs is funky and fun, and I almost slip into a groove, but it just doesn't quite happen. My body feels slow and clumsy, and pretty girls float around like foreign objects, untouchable things behind shop window glass, not people you'd interact with.

I'm still tripped up about my hopes, and in general I just don't seem to have much of a drive to explore new possibilities. My blood is sluggish. I'm not a Young Buck any more, you know? I don't know if the thrill of the moment and the deep-tuned magic of being instantly, insanely, contagiously present ([[axioms of living|Presence is Perfection]]) will return someday (I hope so), but I ain't hitting those notes lately, at least not with strangers. Instead it seems I prefer pining away for old flames who won't call me back and/or won't be anywhere near at hand until who knows when. Pining away. The whole thing feels like high school crushes all over again.

I don't know if it's healthy or not vs. getting out and running with the bulls, but it is what it is. Maybe a comfort zone, but there's something sort of undeniably absorbing about the possibility that you had it, but let it get away, or blew it, or couldn't hold it for whatever reason. Anyway, more absorbing for me right now than random California girl #4267, salt of the earth though she may well be.

Love's a trickster sometimes. When it's on, you know -- and it's a sweet religious knowledge, a heady taste of pure faith I'd give my eye teeth to savor again -- but when you're trying to track it down there sure is a hell of a lot of confusion. For now I'm resolved to remain an uncompromising brute, to selfishly pursue the things I want in the hopes that I can actually have my cake and eat it too.

But it's a hard row to hoe, and it's been a lonely year in my heart. Pursuing this kind strategy without any cake around makes a man empty-handed and hungry to boot. Hopefully things will change.

Phiew! It's kind of a lowdown belly-dragger of a blog post. Things are not all bad, as the title would suggest. I'm just struggling. For every step back there are a couple forward, and I find solace in all sorts of things; in the dynamite pasta at the cafe down the block; in getting filthy sweaty atop a ladder, painting the conference room in our new office; in phone calls from treasured old friends, and in the glimpses of beauty and flashes of promise that ripple across the surface of a sunny San Francisco Saturday.

For someone without too much of a sense of direction, I seem to be making an awful lot of progress. Indeed, for all my stress, I'm sort of killing it on the career track. I just want some of that sweet momentum to spill over into my romantic life, but that isn't really how it works.

Responses

damnit, josh. it's because those girls you pine after are quite aware that they are plural, that they have no intrest in you... rather, have no intrest in being "one in a series of many"

I can't really write about any of this honestly without acknowledging a plurality of possibilities. I ain't trying to two-time anyone (which you might be inferring), just saying that, like most people who survive being a teenager, I have more than one love interest in my life.

so, today i was thinking that i'm too cocky and presumptuous sometimes. i have a tendency to assume i know what the picture is when i all i see is a small piece of the puzzle. i don't really like that about myself, and i think i've been kind of a shitbag. but i would also like to say, that i don't think i'm always that far off...
and no, i have no idea what it's like to have more than one love interest. honestly, if i'm interested in someone, that's it. i've never kept my "options open", because that's not what love is about to me. so, it's not about two timing, it's about exuding your capability of commitment and trustworthyness... it's just obvious to women. ESPECIALLY a woman who's been with you before. dude, i wouldn't want to go through that shit again with you either if i was that (those) girl(s). what a fucking headache! ick. YES second chances are last chances, why should it be any different? why should they be lead around by the neck and be potentially disposed of again? sheesh, that is SO unfair, furthermore, they probably don't trust you because of it. best to find someone new to pine over... but i'm sure those girls are tickled pink that you're all weepy about them. ha!
i like you, and i say you're fuckable... but right now, that's all you are. you have to bear a few more crosses before a gal is going to find you husband/daddy worthy. and by that i mean a little selabacy or monogomy for a few years perhaps. i'm at a point in my life where i'm feeling like i have to do the opposite, actually. i also think that guys live the way they'd like girls to live, and girls live the way they'd like a guy to live. as everything is when it comes to the man and woman, what a fucking paradox. i've only had 5 guys (good guess at the mileage thing ;), and now that my heart has been recently demolished and hardly recognizable by someone i thought i knew (when i proofread, that line makes me cry my bloody eyes out. it's so annoying!), i think i have to slut around a bit. i've never had the opportunity to REALLY put myself out there since i was involved with a guy for most of my twenties, and my teenage years were spent quite alone. not only was i very shy, but i was pretty much barred from social activity... which didn't help the shyness. now that i'm free from all that crap; myself, my dad, and my monogomy, i'm looking to date for real, the way it seems the rest of the world goes about it. not stick to just one person... not necessarily sleep with them all, but keep my options open for the time being, have some fun, get away from serious. i guess the only thing i wonder is if it will be just as lonely and unfullfilling. so, area man, how do i know when a guy is hitting on me?? how did you get so many interesting stories to tell? and how do i stay picky, but open? ha ha.
oh, and crunch time sucks. as does realizing you've procrastinated the month away, but i think a lot of us work best under pressure... plus, if you have something else on your mind, have an intense desire to do nothing, or would rather compete in a triathalon those things tends to take precedence wether it's the responsible thing to do or not. who knows why we do that crap. i suppose it shouldn't matter, as long as we are able to look back on everything and say "damn, i'm a pretty hip cat anyway".

every girl wants to feel unique to the guy they're seeing. and nothing NOTHING makes them feel more disposable than being with a guy who keeps his options open... in return, you get a girl who doesn't want you anymore either. fair's fair, right?

What a nasty comment. You suck. And should really run your shit through spellcheck.

err... what? what's wrong with being honest? it's not meant to be mean, it's just my perspective. if josh didn't want others' opinions, he wouldn't have posted a link on his myspace page. anyway, i tend to write like i speak. like if i'm chillin' having a beer or something, and dont really think about how another person would say those words. i am kind of mean i guess if i think about it, but i don't mean to be. i just don't tend to beat around the bush.
oh, yeah, i kind of am a shitty speller somethymes, i don't care.
and i don't suck, you do ppllllbbbbttt
(sorry josh, if i offended you. for real, man)

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