i stayed my ass home.

I took this picture a few days ago. July 19th, 2006, around 4PM to be exact. There's a power outage in my neighborhood in Woodside, NY, and for the two days that I had no power I have been practically forced out of my house because I can't sleep without air conditioning.

So I eventually got up, hit the shower, then milled about the apartment with the towel up around my armpits, at which point on a whim snapped a candid photo of myself. You don't see the towel, which i have been in the habit of wrapping around my chesticles whenever i'm right out of the shower, in a preemptive attempt to soak up any potential sweat that may result from the heat. I hate sweating when i've only JUST showered.

Whaddaya know?! The picture came out pretty well, and I was pleased enough with it that I decided to post it on my myspace profile. Why the fuck am I talking about this? Because I'm trying to look at my near-obsession with online life, despite the many opportunities that present themselves for me to go out and interact with "real" people in the "real" world.

It's Friday night. I had plans to go out which I pretty much let slide, because I didn't trust my motivations for going out. Lately I have been experiencing what I can only liken to a woman who claims that her biological clock is ticking. What's the equivalent for men? I feel empty, but didn't want to fill it with anything meaningless. I don't want to LOOK for anything either, as I suspect that even if I were to run into "The One" I'd only fuck it up in my zeal to find him in the first place, so caught up in looking for telltale signs, or grilling the hapless victim with loaded questions.

I wanted to go out, but wanted it made easy for me; given door to door service. As it were I'd have to venture out and go a-foraging under my own steam. I feel empty. Sad? I don't think so. Discontent, certainly. I don't want to work at "it" anymore. The whole process of meeting somebody new, and getting to know them, and learning to appreciate whatever it is that they have to offer. Knowing this, going out JUST to meet somebody would prove unfruitful, and I'd only have myself to blame.

I'm lonely, dammit, but I can't bear the idea of settling for just anyone, or even having to look for some kind of resonance with another. I need for it to happen naturally and darn near immediately, otherwise I don't see myself finding any reason to cultivate it further.

The only thing that I did, braving the elements and whatnot, was to switch my gym membership back to NYSC, primarily because there's one on every freakin' corner, and I need it to be just that accessible. I cancelled dinner with Andy because I overwhelmed myself with my string of plans. The original plan was to: 1) switch gym memberships 2) dinner with Andy 3) go to Joe's Pub and see Lisa Shaw 4) go to a club with some friends.

Just the idea of doing all those things with no downtime in between tired me out. I had already gone to a concert and dinner the night before with some other friends, and, I was starting to feel like a crotchety old man.

This was compounded by my reward/punishment philosophy, which kicked in when I wasn't able to squeeze any gym time in for the day, and therefore didn't feel I merited all that leisure activity. And true to form I went back home and stayed there, hitting refresh on my myspace page every 5 minutes. Oy.

What's worse is when someone I'm very attracted to tells me I'm handsome or peppers me with any other kind of compliment, I feel like maybe they don't see everything; that eventually, they'll "come to their senses". I have this overwhelming desire to display myself in every damn angle imaginable, if only to find that ONE that will be the dealbreaker for them, and why? DON'T I want to be found desireable? Absolutely. I delude myself into making it conditional upon the other party finding ALL of me desireable, however, and at "every angle" if you will. Desireable, loveable, whatever.

Dude comes up to me and says I'm hot. "Sucker," I think to myself. Why do I hold MYSELF accountable for what other people choose to see, over what they don't? Probably because I ALSO know that not everyone is nearly as honest about themselves; certainly not in that regard, using their "pluses" to overshadow their "minuses."

At what point did I stop believing in the final equation? That the sum of me is greater than the plus and minuses? The very advice I dole out I'm hard-pressed to believe in, and not because I don't believe in it, but because my self-esteem won't allow me to believe that it applies to me. Annoying that I can have such a small AND huge ego at the same time.

Oh. I DID do ONE small productive thing. I made a new t-shirt. It's the "acrobat" from dungeons and dragons.