It's like a storm.

Crack! The roll of distant thunder strides across the landscape. An audible threat though as yet, not damaging.

It starts like that. You can feel it coming with the wind changing direction suddenly and a flash of lightning in the distance. It's not actually affecting you yet but it is. Like an impending storm might keep you from washing your car but compel you to make a grocery run you start battening down the hatches.

When the storm rolls in, the world is dark. Everything is dark. The sunrise doesn't reach you so you can't get up. You can't get started. You can't move around. Everything is gray. The rain is heavy. Normally doing things, staying busy, helps you forget the storm rolling in. Not so when it's here. Now everything you do, you do with wet, heavy shoes. Cold, lead blocks for feet. Is your shirt so wet that its weight is dragging you down? Down to the center of the Earth. Something is.

When the storm leaves, as it inevitably does, the morning is filled with it's lingering effects. The fear, like wet pavement, is telltale that it's been heavy. The leaves, shorn from trees are littering the pavement like the scars of the words you've said. Sometimes things are broken. Nevertheless, it is over.

Something interesting about interpersonal interest

I learned something interesting lately by accidentally leading on a gay man. You see, as a straight man, I am quite used to being the one in pursuit. Not at all used to things being the other way around. What I've noticed is that when someone shows you that they like you, part of you says, "alright! validation! I can go with this." This is pretty natural. We want to be liked. That's about all we can handle though.

When someone expresses an interest in you, something that's more direct, perhaps more self-serving, we immediately cringe away. Even if we share the interest, we don't like to be pursued. We want it to be a partnership. We want them to like us and we want to like them back. We want to develop and interest and then have it returned but we can't stomach it when their interest happens before we develop our own.

As men, we don't ever get to have what we want. Not a partner for life. Not a fuck-buddy. Not anything beyond acquaintance. Not unless we provide the opportunity for the other party to develop it first. It has to be their idea.

This is the game. Much as we might hate it, most people are just not sophisticated enough to comprehend it and thus, cannot truly rise above it. Most women, specifically, don't even realize it's being played and so it's up to us, the nice guys, to learn it, then master it, use it to our advantage and get what we want out of it, whatever that might be.

Belonging

Using prior jobs as an example, I never really ever felt like I belonged anywhere. I never had a locker that was anything but borrowed.

I never really felt like I belonged anywhere because, I suppose, that feeling takes a while to develop and I never stick around too long.

I'd like to stick around. I think I want to belong. I'd like to be taken seriously.

**I'm a little buzzed.