I'm angry a lot lately.

Probably for good reason. Maybe not. 

Maybe it's for the best that I'm angry and nothing else for a little while. 

Maybe it's best that I just stay butt-hurt about nothing important because nothing important is just a distraction.

Distractions tend to put my creativity on the back burner. 

He's to another countdown to moving forward. A countdown that starts in zero. 

Right now, I feel like I hate everything. Maybe years of being selfish doesn't shed off that easily, or maybe I'm stubborn and once I decide I dislike something, having it could back around irritates me in a way that I don't realize until I'm in a quiet space. 

I wonder if I ever have that effect on people. I'm sure I do. I can get pretty annoying and insufferable. If so, open apology to the strangers and not that I've gotten under the skin of. But also, you probably suck as much as you think I do, just like I'm probably about as awful as I think some of the people I judge are. 

The circle of life rules us all. 

Why is procreation so deeply programmed into us - as humans? The older I get, the stronger it is and, somehow, the pickier I become with who I'm naturally attracted to. It's just food for thinking on.

I get confused a lot with what it is that I'm supposed to be doing. Most of the time, I've turned off a lot of my brain just to get through the day without some sort of anxious incident in which I've found a new thing to panic over. However, turning completely off feels entrapping and neutering. I don't much like it. There's a balance to be found there somewhere in the ether between too much and not enough, but I'm hardly great at solving anything, I'm more of a mind to make things more complicated and intricate beyond need.

Something else:
An inherent thing that I've found with myself is that I typically share in areas that have been shared with me. For instance, work colleagues usually share gripes and complaints about the job, the clientele or even co-workers - so, in fashion, when someone has vented about said things, I have inadvertently returned in kind. Maybe not immediately, but as time presses on, experiences are unavoidable in commiserating or finding some overlap. Now, I've known for a while that I compartmentalize a lot of my relationships, this is based on the idea that I think of myself as a complex person, and therefore scatter the puzzle pieces of my personality along the few very close friends I have, so they all have an very good and intricate understanding of who I am, but there's enough that I keep to myself that I'm not utterly and completely vulnerable. This is a self defense mechanism that I've known about for far too long and have no desire to fix. However, knowing (or paying more attention to) this share and share alike facet of socializing seems to make sense in more subliminal ways that I intended. It helps when looking at the map of friendships that I've grown dearly attached to.

I'm beginning to understand the blueprints of what kind of person I am more and more each day. I kind've wished I'd paid more attention to these things sooner, so I could be further along than I am now. But that would mean that I would have had to trade the people I know now for blurry unknown faces... I don't really think I'm down for that.

While trying to maintain a sense of emotional transparency, I feel like I've made myself invisible by becoming an idea of a person, while keeping my physical self in hiding.

There was something I really wanted to delve into tonight, but - for the life of me - I can't remember what it was. 

All I can say is that I've been working on transparency with myself and what goes on inside my head, no matter how insane some things come across. That's my hope for the exercises here. 

I don't think I understand how to express my interest anymore...

So, to put it bluntly, I'm not exactly looking to date anyone, but I figure if something comes up then I'm open to the possibility of following through. And a person of my awkward social cowardice, I tend to gravitate toward things like Tinder and OkCupid... that being said, I don't often find women on there attractive, so I don't often swipe right nor make the first move. However, there has been at least two occasions in which the norm was disappointed.

Moving on. This particular instance was with Tinder. I matched up with a girl, but since then she hasn't been on to see the ridiculously dumb opening message I tried to send her, so that was over a month ago. I'd given up on it. It was pretty much a whatever. Until the other day when she walks into the store, shopping with her mother. At first, I thought she looked familiar, but I couldn't exactly place it. So I was creeping on her, watching her roam around the store and shop. AND THEN I placed her... you guessed it, the Tinder match-up.

Now, nothing happened. I didn't make any conversation. I didn't lay down any charm. I ignored her, except for a couple of connected sideways glances that she smiled back to (which I'm more than sure I read more into). And she left. Oddly enough, however, later that night I was bored on instagram and ended up finding her on a suggested list of people, and like an idiot figured I should follow her private profile and yadda yadda, excuse excuse.

There's no positive resolution to this story. It's just that, a story that ended not the way I'd have liked, but how were things really going to change. There's a lot of variables that go into it.

The only things that aggravates me is that I'm sure I came across as creepy, when I'm really not. And I can't put blame on other guys out there being super pushy and assholes about approaching women, because they actually do it. I don't. I hide behind social media because it's safe and I'm a coward. I don't like putting myself out there for anyone, regardless if I'm interested or not. I stay safely in my head and play out on excuses of why it wouldn't have worked in the first place and I'd be dumb to think otherwise. That's the root of it all, beneath the pompous prick that I am, I'm just an insecure child with boisterously bold advice of how other people should do the exact opposite of what I'd do in that situation.

I'm just aggravated at myself for being bothered by it and letting myself be bothered. I'm aggravated because I both love and hate being lonely. And I'm aggravated that even if I did interest someone that I wanted to interest, I'd have nothing substantial to bring to the table. I'm a writer that barely writes. I'm a college dropout. I have no motivation. And all I want is the world to flood so I can sleep during the rain.

That's me.

There's a lot of things I don't really understand. And half of the time, I don't try to understand them.

There's a necessary margin for mystery in the world, and I use that to mask my lazy indifference.

I'm getting there again. It's nice to know that even after a long time of being lazy and neglecting the side of me that I enjoy the most - how naturally the faucet runs when turned back on.

I can't wait to get more time to focus on this. Routine and ritual. Habit.

And I guess I'm also back to being vague.

Two things:

-I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately... particularly just one with some others thrown in to change up the voices, but 80+ hours over the past two weeks.

-Today I had a nostalgic attack and was overcome by a sense of longing.

I choose to explore option one (first, at least):
It's interesting to hear people who are successful talk about their success and background and the obsession that drives them. But also from the places that they come from. It seems like there's a very good amount of struggle, but eventually everyone moves to the places where everyone has this idea that successful people go, then they work their asses off, surround themselves with like-minded people and boom - 10 years later, there's a small amount of payoff, if not more. It's gotten me to explore what I believe is my passion and what I'm doing about it - what I have been doing about to lead up to now, which is a whole lot of passively writing and promoting, believing that what I have is mediocre and letting it fall to the side because I really like something else more instantly gratifying at the moment. Even WeBe has suffered from my laziness more than my bouts of obsessive drive. It kind of makes me feel useless, like I'm wasting what talent I thought I had for complacency and safety, while I trap myself in a world that I'm not exactly happy with, all in the name of dulling my mind so I can continue to exist. I don't travel. I've barely written anything in the past year outside of WeBe, which I did in a couple of days and fell back on lettering. And I don't make the world any better than what it was without me.

I've made the posts before, over the many years of my narcissistic ranting, and made promises to myself that I've quickly broken over trivial things. I want to break the cycle and change it now, but I'm not really sure I know how to. We'll see how that goes. I've began a ritualistic routine that will hopefully get me addicted and inspired again, because my honest day to day dredge now is: work - home - tv - bed. I need something more than that. Especially when I get tired of absorbing and feel the true boredom weighing down on me, when I could just focus on what's important to me, so that I have something to be proud of that's not a totally rad mask collection or overwhelming comic book stack.

Deep breaths.

As for the other thing, I'll have to come back to it another time if it's pressing enough. I just know that I (from an objective perspective) realized exactly how important someone was to my mental development and I wished I could reach out to them to reconnect and let them know that I appreciate it deeply. But I can't.

Some days are just harder than others.