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.

October 25, 2013

So, I'm a bit of a mess. 10 days off the testosterone booster Test Freak and about a week since I left my job at Harley Davidson. I love my new place in Bethlehem but it'll be a work in progress for a while. Being without income or significant savings means that I can't just jump into a new life and expect to live like I have been. Still need to organize, clean and get things for the place. Anyway...

I've noticed that my will power has begun to really fall off. I don't know if it's the limited social interaction (though, I've been networking and meeting new people all the time) or the fall in my test production but I just have the fuck-its more often than I did a week ago. The fear of failure is starting to weigh more heavily on my every thought and intention.

Earlier today, in the middle of a job application, I became completely distracted by the idea of posting a blog or Googling "why is success impossible?" I really shouldn't even be having those thoughts and I guess I'm lucky enough to be "outside the sphere" of my emotional experience. Being able to see those fears and feelings for what they are makes it slightly easier to stay above their influence. It's still very, very difficult. I do keep wondering, "what makes some people successful, almost in spite of glaring character flaws?"

What, at 30 years old, is holding me back? Is it the lingering dispositions of my 10 year old self? Is it my pre-empathetic personality and its sense of entitlement? Am I really expecting to be rewarded? Do I, on the contrary, truly believe that I have to grasp and take whatever it is that I want in this world? I don't know. I just don't know.

What I do know is that whatever the next bullshit job I take happens to be, I'm going to be fucking awesome at it. History has taught me that. I rise to the top. Always. But then that begs another question. Why the fuck must I always start at the bottom? What the fuck is holding me down? Most importantly, how do I kill it?

Women's Expectations

It's obvious to most of us, yet many women, themselves, have no idea. The thing is, women don't actually want a man. Yup, it's almost that simple. Women want a companion whom, through the teaching of romantic comedies, fairy tales, tradition and outright delusion, they assume is a man. Men, in reality, don't work the way those "lessons" made it appear. Men watch and play sports. They power-struggle with themselves, their partners and their friends about everything. Men don't go out of their way for anything out of altruism. If a man brings you something, he wants to get something back, there are no exceptions to this rule. Oh and another thing, this one is really super-important: men don't know who they are. The "masculine identity" that particularly American men try to embody is a farse. It's wrong. It's inconsistent. It's also just plain stupid, but men, most of all, have no idea that it is anything but law. To them, man-rules are laws of nature. What does that make the women who meet a man, as he is playing by the rules and then 6 months into the relationship, expect him to be different? Uh... draw your own conclusions on that, but don't judge. Learn, apply. Lastly, for the women who the paragraph applies to, straight men are attracted to women. WOMEN. Not woman. Not Mary. Not the princess you think you are. Certainly not the woman you actually are. In fact, men are attracted to all of the above, at the same time. When you catch your man looking, be thankful you have a man with a sex drive and be glad he chooses to express it with you because that is the best you're going to get from anyone. Suppressing his attraction to other women, suppresses his attraction to all women. No exceptions. Anyway...

The women who really want a man, the company of men and the ways of men in their lives, already have 15 male friends. Everybody knows some. They drink beer, watch sports and when they want to go shoe shopping, they go with their mothers or sisters. They date, dream of weddings and smile at babies just like any other woman but they know that a "man's view" of those things is different and adapt their expectations to reality. They enjoy sex and are choosey about their partners but they don't expect love-making in the rain to a symphony of emotion, they expect satisfaction and respect that men want the same. The one thing you'll notice about these women, versus the first group, isn't that some magical intuition gives them knowledge of men's ways. It's that they learn from their experience and treat fairy-tales for what they are.

Reconnecting

It might just be time indeed to pick up the pace of my blogging. More specifically, let my inner dialogue flow in a way that is more concise and clear than the rants and tirades that sometimes punctuate the inane babble of the day to day. It's time to do this, not just for the sake of itself, but also to help me become a better communicator, improve my relationship with words. I've been out of it for a while and this is my opportunity to come back. More to come soon. See you there.

A new blog

I do a lot of writing. Most of it is emotional or reactionary and almost none of it is shared. While this has not been a problem in the past (for obvious reasons), it is time that I come out of my shell and and start publishing ideas. Once a week should be an attainable goal, an exercise in discipline and an opportunity to share and learn.

Once upon a time, this was not possible. If a person wanted to be published, he or she would have to submit letters to the editor, write for a local or obscure publication or beg to have their book published. These times have changed. Today, even a small time opinionist can become a nationally recognized writer whose commentary is trusted and respected.

My goal in writing a blog is not to be recognized nationally or to establish myself as a brand or to influence the ideas and perceptions of some imaginary reader base. Instead, I simply seek a medium greater than my own mind, where my thoughts can go unleashed.

I hope that if you're reading this, you click away from it as a better person or at least less bored. Thanks for stopping in.