sidearms and parsnips

god, i'm loving this album. dicks, that is. i love dicks.

okay, i'm quickly running that joke into the ground. and as fun as it is to be brutally immature, i should probably accomplish some higher level brain function.

BLAT!

BOOM!

like that.

nah, i'm just joking.

i'm incredibly amped up on nicotine and caffeine right now. why the fuck don't they make some legal drug that will knock your ass out? why does everyone want to be stimulated? i've wanted to sleep for 17 years. why don't they make something for that?! HUH?! i want to eat my cake and have the same cake whilst eating it.

me: oh look! a cake! NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM...oh look! a cake!

got back a bit ago from moscow. so fucking hyper. thinking about everything at once. i don't think S (i don't think she reads this, but i'll anonymize her anyway) realizes how close she came to being literally talked to death. i'm fucking nuts.

FUCKING NUTS!!!

i'm freaking out a bit because as a result of my crash from two weeks ago (which was pretty spectacular and frightening even considering the great collection of grad-school crashes i've had over the years)...and i decided i really couldn't keep working at the rate i was working. that it would literally destroy me. so i got sick as fuck. i literally couldn't work. i quit smoking. i quit staying up all night for no good reason. i quit thinking the only point of life was to stay ahead of the next deadline; a train of thought i've subscribed to for 2 whole years now because it allowed me to justify professionally and personally not dealing with most of the other shit that's been going on in my life. fuck that. i started reaching out to people. i got over myself and went to other people and said "look, i'm not going to be able to this without help", and they were all like "right on". humility is always not stupid.

see what i did there?

my friends are great. there are the usual occasional hangups and whatnot, but whatever. who ever gained anything by holding other people to higher standards than they hold themselves? i'm stopping brutalizing myself, so i should go easy on other people too. that doesn't mean i'm going to befriend serial rapists, but...i could be a little less of an ass about who i spend my time with. i realize that now.

i'm learning to care about people in moderation. i always talk about how i just like having a few "good" friends instead of a lot of "shallow" friends, and the good side of that is that i know the kind of people i get on with and will search them out and some funz. the bad side of this, i'm realizing, is that it keeps me from having to deal with another issue i have, which is that i become insanely attached to people insanely quickly. and when i only have a few friends i can justify that. mostly. when i have more, i need to learn how to not treat everyone i know like they're the most significant person on the planet, because they're not. we all are. and we're all not. at once. and junk.

anyway, my point is that i'm trying not to go bonkers for everyone that i find to be fun to hang out with. a corollary of this (and a harder thing) is to learn how to care about/love friends of mine who are girls without mistaking that for that other kind of love (the one that i suck at). i've never been good at this...and i'm trying to learn, but dammit it's incredibly hard. something about autumn especially puts me in this weird, cuddly sort of mood where i just want to go apple picking and pumpkin carving and outdoor-walking with a girl, and it sucks that now, after 2 years or so of being single, when i finally feel like i'm not so insane that i'd just devour someone if i was to enter a relationship with them, that it's not happening. my response is of course to just project a romantic-relationship schema on like every girl i meet who's half-nice to me...which is stupid, and sucks. and i shouldn't do it. but i just have a hard time being friends with girls and not eventually either actually having or at least thinking i have feelings for them. and the "really having" and "not really having" are hard to tell apart. shit.

but i'm really, really happy to have a lot of great people around and to feel like i can push myself to engage with them instead of just being too scared/lame to do so. after everything i've done the last few years, with the degree, and the teaching, and the music, and the writing, and the photography and everything else...somehow this feels like the one thing that actually means something outside of my own head. just being with good people, and being good to them. and that scares me, because none of them will be around forever, and when they leave, it's quite possible nobody new will come around. but i've used that as an excuse for at least 10 years in my life to not seriously and meaningfully engage with people. and i've also complained constantly about how unconnected i feel. maybe it's time to start shouldering the responsibility for my part in that.

i'm going to somehow try to sleep. peeps iz awesome. monday in t-minus five hours. engaging deflector shield, preparing for impact. entering atmosphere. anybody else smell smoke?