So here I sit, savoring a cup of coffee along with this odd sensation of contented solitude. It's a feeling I was used to, not that long ago, and it's something I'm rediscovering.

It's not unlike opening your eyes early on a Saturday morning, with an empty schedule before you. You know you haven't yet fully awakened to the world, and there's a languorous, velvety warmth wrapped all around you. You're fairly certain that you're being lazy, but equally sure that nobody cares.

It's all right. But it gets kinda old after a while.

This was basically the state in which I've existed for several years; stumbling out of high school into college, then into a career, cruising through a decade with my eyes closed, my mind still wrapped in hazy half-sleep. I was becoming comfortable with the idea of this as an inevitable constant; my future as a soft-focus blur. Alone, regrettably, not exactly happy, but with no real hardship to speak of.

Safe.

Comfortable.

Then, of course, I went and got into an actual relationship.

It was astonishing.

This tiny woman, simultaneously as familiar to me as my own childhood and as alien as the minds that enjoy NASCAR,  sauntered into my life, took a casual look around, and pulled all the walls down. I was left squinting (yes, I'm aware my eyes normally look like that anyway) against the savage light of some very harsh realizations.

It wasn't really something I was ready for, so I started wrapping my life up around her, instead of facing it. So, you can kind of imagine (or if you're anyone I've talked to in the past year, you're probably already sick to hell of hearing about it) my reaction when she propped the door back up on its hinges and walked out.

Yeah. It wasn't pretty, let's just leave it at that.

So now I have most of the old walls built up again. They're familiar. They're comfortable. I'm (mostly) over her, over it, and trying to get over myself.

But it's not quite right.

I wake up early these Saturday mornings, and there's no velvety warmth behind my eyelids, there's no silky stretch and yawn. Instead there's a crackling light racing round the inside of my skull, and a hammering in my chest. I can't do anything but lie there and gasp for a while, then I have to get up and pace. It doesn't matter where. Lately, it's been up the side of Cowles Mountain. Every day. I mean, I'm starting to recognize rocks.

I think it's actually a good thing for me. Aside from getting me outside once in a while, it's once again convinced me I have to do something, and learn some things -- all those things that make me snicker cynically when other people talk about them.

You know. Like, about feelings and shit.

I'm not used to that. I'm used to analyzing things. I've grown accustomed to the idea that I can figure out most of my issues by picking them apart and thinking about each one, because I've been under the happy illusion that I'm intelligent.

Of course, I'm not intelligent. I'm mildly clever, which is not at all the same thing. It's the difference between the chimp who leads his troupe to local dominance, and one who's figured out his favorite stick makes a dandy ass wiper.

Now I'm starting to understand that it's not enough. I can rationalize away a lot of stuff, but not a purpose. I need something to do, and not for the sake of doing it, nor just because I don't really want to do anything else. I've been here before, too, and it's not exactly heartening to see how little progress I've made. If I don't make any more progress than this, so be it. But I probably shouldn't sit around and watch the next ten years pass the same way. I just have to, you know. Whatever, I'll do it tomorrow.

Ahem... anyway.

Socrates, Lao Tzu, Shakespeare, &c. have expressed and/or expanded upon the notion that a wise man is one who admits he knows nothing.

For me, and I'm sure countless others, I believe this is a fallacy. If you're just smart enough to know you're a jerk, in no way does that make you not a jerk.

It just makes you more insecure than the stupid jerk next to you.

Oof. I need to stop drinking coffee. Gotta wake up at the crack tomorrow to try and find personal growth at the REI used gear sale, or else some other asshole is going to buy it first.

That's it... show's over, folks. Expect a gradual cessation of posts like this, and hopefully more stories about getting farted on at the gym.

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I offered a timeline, told her I wanted to work at it, and see if we could keep things going. But she was either too frightened, impatient, or -- and I do have to face this as a probability -- reasonable and clear-headed to consider it.

We never really had much going for us, I guess. The culture barrier and the distance, of course, would have worked against us. I thought we could have dealt with it, but she saw 12,000 miles and her family dynamic as insurmountable barriers. I guess I can't be sure if she was wrong.

She has a pretty clear picture of how she wants her life to be, and she's positive an imminent marriage is the next step to that -- even admitting that it may not matter so much who is involved.

The most painful side of it is, I can't shake the suspicion that her practicality has already moved her further along her path, and she's trying to keep me in the dark. A lot of the signs are there, but there's no telling for sure. I guess that's the part really eating at me; the feeling of a betrayal. I don't open myself up to people often, nor very much -- this place, where I bare my soul to any East European spam bot that cares to drop in, is the exception that proves the rule -- and for a while I felt like this might be too much to handle.

It still might be, for certain things. But in all this mess, I have learned a few things. Some are old and known, some are new (to me), and some are borrowed. Nothing blue, sorry. That ship has sailed.

- There are people in my life that won't screw me (figuratively), even if they're heartily sick of my bullshit. Also, to my unabashedly abashed surprise, my parents can stand up and be counted among them.

- If I'm being honest, I'm probably not as cynical and disinterested in other people as I think... but I'm also more of a wuss than I like to admit.

- Things will get different. Maybe not better, but that's largely up to me. See that? Self-actualization. That's like SCIENCE, that is.

- I'm a narcissist. Self-loathing, sure, but they're not mutually exclusive properties. I haven't decided yet whether my narcissism falls within the normal range for human self-interest, but seriously, come on. Look around at this site. This is like, a fucking temple to my self-abused ego.

- I can be unbelievably petty.

- Cherish the good, forgive the bad, learn from it all, and keep moving.

- That kind of sounds like a country music lyric. Except instead of "moving" I would have had "truckin'".

- I HATE country music.

Regardless of how it ends, the journey was amazing. I'll treasure almost all of the memories, and on balance I believe we'll both be better people for it, albeit in very different ways.

Knowing all that sometimes doesn't help, especially when I remember those special moments we'll never have a chance to revisit. And I'm positive I still have more blank staring to do.

But it's good enough for right now.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.
-- I Corinthians

Ironic as it may be, an agnostic like me (or atheist, depending on your particular definitions of those words) is pondering a passage from the Bible. More accurately, the sentiment of one small part of that passage. And since I'm completely clueless about the context of that line, I have to take it at its face value, which does have a bearing on my current situation.

I've already discussed at length my various predilections for apathy, vapid entertainment, and personal indecision. I seem unable to devote myself to a single pursuit, and so I whittle away at the hours left to me by generally wasting as much of them as I can. This was brought home to me with great force today.

I have been in a relationship of sorts for about half a year. To me, relentless procrastinator that I am, half a year is not nearly enough time to come to a serious decision about anything -- much less the rest of one's life. The better half of this relationship, however, is of a different mind. The problem is, I'm not sure who's right.

I'm on the verge of causing the dissolution the relationship -- assuming, of course, that it has yet to pass -- and I'm not sure whether this decision is sound.

Am I balking because of valid reasons, or just because I'm good at it? Am I holding out unreasonably, or are my hesitations justified?

I am naturally biased in favor of my own reasoning. I am also, however, just enough of a self-hating paranoid to consider the very real possibility that I am making a terrible mistake based on unsound reasoning.

While perhaps not a graveyard of missed opportunities, my past certainly has its fair share. My concern now is whether I have become incapable of seizing any to my own benefit, and in fact shrink from them. The fear of failure, in short, may prevent any chance for meaningful change.

Should I, then, embrace this situation, and initiate a cascade of events that will force my life down a certain path, or should I continue in this relatively anarchic state, pregnant with potential yet barren of certainty?

I have considered the possibility that any relationship that causes me to doubt my own judgment so severely is not a healthy one. This train of thought is derailed by the fact that my self-confidence is at a fairly perpetual ebb in any case. There's no way of telling whether the relationship is the cause, or simply one of many contributing variables.

I have tried to evaluate the situation from all possible angles. Why would I want to sever these ties? Why would I want to keep them, or reinforce them? And I always come up against the realization that I do not trust my own judgment.

I honestly believe she loves me; but whether this is a practical kind of love or not, I cannot say. She is determined to be married, but I am unconvinced as to how much this motivation is tied to any person aside from herself. There are ratios at play here that I believe are vital to the decision making process, but I cannot divine them.

I must doubt even this line of reasoning, however, simply because it may be my justification of a course of action taken out of fear. You see my dilemma. If I cannot trust my own thoughts, how do I make any decisions at all? Do I pick a course at random and hurl myself down it?

As for myself, I am unsure. Is this a pale imitation of that emotion, or is this simply as close an approximation to the real thing of which I am capable? Even in the midst of all this, I realize what a sopping, pansy-ass douchebag I have become. I duly apologize to anyone wading through this grotesquerie of self indulgence.

I look around me, and everywhere I see examples of what I do not want to become. The dissolute stoner with no visible means of social or financial support. The mother of two, a month of paychecks away from living in her car, spending her holidays alone but for her cats. The bitter, lonely father of an underachieving son -- and an estranged daughter who is forever beyond the reach of conciliation.

Ah, one might say. These examples all have a common thread... a fear of loneliness and abandonment. Ah, I respond. I also see a mother, married to the same man for nearly 40 years, who daily wonders how her life would have been different. Her marriage has absorbed so much of her will and her persona that she is chronically incapable of independent action. Now, she is perpetually berating herself for this weakness and the prison of a life to which it has sentenced her.

So now, I can say with confidence that I am not sure what I dread more: being alone, or the realization that being alone was the better option.

In short, I cannot decide whether it is worse not to live, or to live poorly.

Childish things, indeed.