[everybody here thinks he needs you.]

I think part of my problem is that I keep wanting my life to be more vivid and artistic and meaningful than it is. And instead of making the small changes other people do to achieve that kind of life, I spend my time bemoaning my lack, and watching television.

I want to write more, but I've lost the trust I once had in myself. The voice of the infernal internal critic has grown louder, and the voice of the inner writer has been silenced.

I feel disconnected from progress. I'm stuck in a metaphorical, metaphysical stasis that seems to be sapping the originality right out of me. I'm unable to move on.

Part of my heart is mourning something long dead, and even the memory of the thing mourned has left me. Now I half-mourn because that's what it seems I've always done. There was a girl once in high school whom I loved at a distance, but never told. When she disappeared, she stopped being a human girl with faults and flaws and hang-ups and oddities, and become a symbol. Dante's Beatrice. Adam's Maria. My Andria. Ten years later, I have to wonder if this ridiculous process was a half-hearted attempt at poetic longing. I don't think I knew the girl enough to justify any great depth of feeling, let alone a decade's remembrance. But even that memory is not much more than habit now.

Same old story, same old rhyme: I want to be in love, and I want to be loved. Not just by a perfect deity, but by an imperfect mortal. I'm done feeling guilty for wanting that. I need community with a creature like myself. It is not good for me to be alone. For one thing, it means I don't bother to do the dishes regularly.

I also worry because I haven't left anything lasting yet. I try to reassure myself that some artists don't produce anything notable until their twilight years, but I don't know if I have that long. At the speed I'm travelling, I may not make retirement age. I have lots of changes to make. (for one thing, I need to stop carrying around the body of two men instead of one.) But physical changes seem so coarse and unimportant compared the the GREAT BIG IMPORTANT THING that I can't seem to figure out I'm supposed to do. I spend my time trying to remember what it is that I'm meant to accomplish, and it keeps outrunning me, like a half-forgotten song lyric on the tip of my tired tongue. makes you wish you could google your own destiny.

I need help with this life thing. I need another voice besides the shifty, sarcastic bastard in my head. An outside voice to tell me, "I believe in you, kid. You're all right." Maybe then I can get my head on straight.

But I don't think I can wait on the owner of that voice to shimmy across my path, before I can try to get my act together. Fact is, I have no guarentees that such a person exists. Maybe for some, maybe not for me--no whining, now, I'm just saying, let's be honest. I'd like to think so; practically everybody hopes to find that somebody to split a pizza or a shower with. But no one's promised it, pal. Time to get real here. Maybe my path is to make my way alone, shoulder against the wind, until the right person falls in step with me. All the same, it's a mighty cold road to trudge along, some days.