Holding my heart securely inside

I had to drop off my dog at the Dove's house for the weekend. Seeing her always makes me feel incredibly guilty. I wish I could make myself love her the way she loves me, because she deserves so much to be happy. If I could make my own happiness, I would have my passions directed towards the Dove, not the Swan. 

Of course, I could say, well, I'm going to be selfless and put aside my own concerns for the happiness of another. But no. See, I've already been through a marriage. I know what marriage is like. *IF* I ever get married again, I intend to spend the rest of my productive life on this planet putting my family — my wife and hopefully my kids — first, in ever conceivable way. Now, if I am going to take that step — and I would very much like to take that step, because I think it is the only true path to human happiness — I am *DAMN* sure going to be selfish about the person I choose to do it with.

In many ways, I believe my first marriage failed because I wasn't selfish enough — at least at the beginning. You can't be selfish in a marriage if you want it to work, but I see no ethical problem with being as choosy as possible when picking the person to be by your side during the long decades of work and disappointment that characterize even the best marriages. Given the stakes involved, I am quite convinced of the prudence of absolute selfishness on this point.

I intend for my choice of marriage partner to be the last completely and utterly selfish decision I make in my life. After that, I will subsume myself completely to caring for and protecting my family. So if it's my last shot, I will NOT be settling for anything less than the best I could reasonably hope for.

But you know what? I am inclined to blame the Swan for this whole sorry state of affairs. You see, after my divorce, I was a completely broken man. Even as the other things in my life began to improve, I still felt utterly defeated.

Had the Dove come into my life then, she would have been everything I could have hoped for and more. I would spend the rest of my life loving her and treating her like a queen.

But instead, you know who DID come into my life then? The Swan. Again, of course — she'd already torn me up years before, and I'd spent many, many long years trying to heal that wound. And now, instead of the Dove, the Swan was the one who came tearing back into my life — convincing me that I was somebody she genuinely cared for and indeed, loved.

Doing that — giving me that taste, once again, then stealing it away — was the most horrible thing she has ever done. Because it hurt me. Here's how:

First of all, there was the obvious emotional toll of losing her AGAIN. That was very severe, of course. But secondly, somewhere in that mysterious fog that conceals the innerworkings of my mind, she fucking flipped a switch or changed a gear or — something...

The result was that she completely reset my irrational expectations. I had worked hard and long to resolve myself to never having another girl like her — and then she came along and fucked it all up. And now my restless damn soul is once again, desperately hungry for another taste of her — or something very close, at least. Meaning I am stuck once again apparently wanting something I can never, ever have...

Fuck, Swan. I mean, Jesus. I hope the man that ends up with you really fucking appreciates you. I mean he ought to litter the ground in front of your feet with rose petals everywhere you go. Because otherwise, it makes a total mockery of all the suffering I've endured on your behalf.

Are you worth it? I am utterly convinced you are — at least my bastard heart is convinced. Please know that — and please, if you don't take me, don't trade your gifts away for anything less than what I would have given you. I would walk a thousand miles for you; please don't give your heart to any man who wouldn't walk at least two thousand.

Shit. I can't take this. I can't take it, just can't take it. Something will eventually have to give. I am very, very strong, and I've made a commitment here to hold out for a very long time. But eventually, the thing that is going to give will be me and my worthless excuse for a life...

At the casino

Well I'm at the casino. God, I love beautiful women. I wish I knew what you had to do to get one. I'm kind of drowning in female beauty here...all these hot chicks dressed in nightclub outfits.

Sigh. At the same time, it reminds me: I am destined to die alone. I am the loneliest person in the goddamn world. I go out in crowds and I shrink from interacting with people because I am so intimidated, both by the men and the women.

But especially the women, the beautiful, beautiful women. How did a woman like the Swan ever notice I was even alive?

It's not all bad. I won $200 playing slots. I just went up, fed in a $5 bill, pressed a button, and boom: $200 richer. I immediately cashed out and walked away.

Yeah, nice, but I need that kind of luck in real life, not in a casino. I need it with women; I need it with my job. Sigh...maybe tomorrow...

Or maybe never.

Workout log I suppose...

Well, for Friday, the stats were:

60 x 2 crunches, 10 lb weight

30 x 2 pushups

10 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

7 x 2 arm curls, 30 lbs.

4 x 2 arm curls, 35 lbs.

44 minutes on the elliptical machine

It's been a hellish week at work, but luckily the weekend should be good. Going to Miami for the first time, with my Dad. Gonna visit the Hard Rock Casino. It should be fun.

Maybe I'll be able to write more, too...

I'll try to get in workout time while I'm there; we'll see how that works out.

Faith and responsibility...

I like C.S. Lewis and all, but I have to admit, on the subject of suffering, he really could be a bit of an ass. I came across this Lewis quote today:

The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and pose an obstacle to our return to God ... Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

This reminds me of John Kenneth Galbraith's observation that "the conspicuously wealthy always turn up urging the character-building values of the privation of the poor." You know, fuck off, C.S. Lewis. Seriously, go eat a bag of dicks. I know some Christians are called to a life of suffering, but I burn with an inner conviction that I am not one of those so called. I really can't apologize for the fact that I am made of weak stuff, and if God loves me, He will understand that.

My understanding is that God is not supposed to saddle us with a burden we cannot carry, and if He wants us to perform beyond our capability, He must stand willing to lend a hand. I do not shrink from hardship: "Batter my heart, three-person'd God," as John Donne wrote. But he ended the sonnet thusly:

Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

They call our relationship with God a covenant, right? A covenant involves two parties, and imposes obligations on both. I am angry and hurt enough that I've got the damn nerve to ask you, God: Are you holding up your end of the bargain? 

Catching up, etc...

I have not posted in several days...sorry.

Shit, who am I even apologizing to? It's not like anybody's reading this. Maybe I've anthropomorphized my daily diary — like Anne Frank's "Kitty." Fuck.

Fuck it all. Anyway, I'm not going to go through the rigamarole of recounting my daily workouts for the past few days, so here's today's totals:

55 x 2 crunches, 10 lb. weight

30 x 4 pushups

10 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

7 x 2 arm curls, 30 lbs.

3 x 2 arm curls, 35 lbs.

44 minutes on the elliptical machine.

Wow, it's kind of amazing that I could barely do 3 arm curls at 30 lbs. when I started. Maybe I am making progress.

My Dad is visiting this weekend. Not sure what we're going to do. I am feeling so crushed right now. Read the Swan's Facebook page...I know, just self-torture, right? Read another ex's Facebook page — she is happily involved with a new love. And I am alone, except for the Dove.

Oh, the Dove is keeping my dog this weekend. Is that wrong? It probably is, but I can't afford to board my dog while me and my Dad go on a road trip...the Dove will take care of her, and I will selfishly take advantage of her.

I am a miserable excuse for a human being. I want to DIE. I want to DIE. Please, God, I am begging you right now: Strike me with a horrible terminal disease. Give me fucking cancer or whatever. Spare some other poor soul with a spouse and kids and just dump it all on me. I beg to carry that burden, because it would finally free me.

Fuck. I'll probably live 'til I'm 99. And God will make every single second of it unbearable.

Words cannot express my self-hatred right now. I am a worthless piece of garbage. I wish the universe would destroy me.

Sigh. Great wish, huh? Shit, the microwave is beeping. Dinner is ready. On to another hopeless night, and hopeless day, ad infinitum...

Daily workout log

Saturday:

12 x 2 arm curls, 20 lbs.

8 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

4 x 2 arm curls, 30 lbs.

30 x 4 pushups

50 x 2 crunches, 10 lb. weight

44 minutes on the elliptical machine.

For Sunday: 

50 x 2 crunches, 10 lb. weight

44 minutes x 2 on the elliptical machine.

Feeling like shit right now. Want to commit suicide...

The cold and dreary cell

God. Feeling so bad today.

Watching a movie right now — there's a quiet scene with a husband and his wife. They are just lying together on a bed. He's still dressed in a suit from work, he's just gotten home. They are just whispering to each other. It's touching, soft, intimate...

It makes me sad. That's the kind of scene I always imagined with the Swan. God...

Father's Day is Sunday. Will I ever be a dad? I doubt it. My life is so meaningless, so hopeless. I am so far below the Swan, I feel so little and insignificant, like a piece of dust to be swept away. I am so small I am invisible to her.

But I wanted to be something to her. I wanted so much to be with her, to make her my wife, to build a family with her. She made me see so far beyond myself. She made me want to do everything, to scale mountains and leap across canyons to provide for her.

Nothing and nobody else seems worth it. Yes, it's early in the morning, and I'm tired and I'm not thinking straight. But damn it all, nothing I've ever written was more true. I would have given everything I had for her, and I have never been able to say that about any other woman.

And yet: I am nothing to her. Or at the very least, a warm and fleeting memory — nothing more. And if I told her how I feel? I would look worse than pathetic. I would not be a man. Because men are never allowed to show these things.

That's the thing that I like about being able to write here: I don't have to pretend to be strong. I don't have to pretend as if nothing affects me. Every day of my life, I have to wear that goddamn mask: I am not allowed to hurt. I am not allowed to cry. I am not allowed to be weak, to feel sadness, to feel damaged and vulnerable, ever. Even though every fiber of my being would love to run to her and collapse in tears and beg her to love me...

Oh, Christ, the image of myself doing that sickens me. I want to vomit out all that weakness. Shit, who the fuck could ever love a man so broken and pathetic?

And yet...Yet there's no way to tell her how I feel. How to tell ANYBODY how I feel. Shit. Listen, posterity, or whoever is reading this: Do you want to know what it feels like to be a man? Or at least, what it feels like to be THIS man? It feels like being locked in a supermax prison, under the constant watch of surly oxen guards. There is a whole life of emotion and feeling churning within you, but it can never — ever — be let out. Every outward motion is a calculated act to please your jailers. The slightest flash of your inner life earns you a stern and hard beat-down. Not a physical beat-down. Just a spiritual one. Just an overwhelming blast of social regard that YOU ARE LESS THAN A MAN. You are not worthy of the attention of any woman who is worth a damn, or the respect of any man of consequence. You are the scraps, and you are to be fed scraps. Some misguided souls might offer you sympathy, but strong and beautiful souls — souls like the Swan — will view with pity, at best, but most likely with just contempt.

So you chain your sorrows. You lock up your tears. You burn your emotions until they are black and cauterized and the only outward signs of feeling you betray are dull, stoic indifference. And in that you find strength. And that will elevate you, right? That will redeem your suffering? There is a final reckoning that will make it all balance out, right? Isn't that true? But even if it isn't: Hard. Cold. DO. NOT. EVER. BREAK.

Especially at the hands of a woman.

I wish you knew, Swan. I wish you knew how hard I have to fight to be nothing to you. This weight is far too much for me to carry, and if I must carry it for much longer, my back will snap and I will collapse. And that will be the end of me.

Oh, do not blame yourself. It will not be your fault. How could you ever know? You can't be responsible for things hidden from you, for worlds that have been carefully concealed and lifted away to avoid ever burdening you. I carried away those burdens from you because, shit...because I was ashamed, of course, but also because I loved you, damn it all. I hope you never read these words, Swan, because I don't ever want you to carry the kind of weight I have had to carry for the Dove. I do not want you to carry any weight at all. I want you to live and die as gossamer as when I first kissed you.

But I must write, Swan, and even if you never read this, I cannot keep these feelings within me. There must be an outlet for me. My wounded heart must scream its pain, and must bawl like a fallen, broken, damaged child. The universe must fucking know! Somewhere out there, some silent observer must be rattled to the very teeth with my suffering, even while my face remains a bar of solid iron!

Damn it, I feel, I cry, I hurt so very much! And I can love with the depth of the world, if only I could find a soul to receive it! But I am locked in darkness with my echoes, and I am growing to hate the sound of my own voice. The knife to slit its throat is yet dull; in days to come, it will be very sharp.

Will others hurt? Yes. But I shall carry this heavy weight no longer, and who knows? On the far shore may live many other Swans, and many other bright days. I don't see them from where I stand now. But there is only one raft to ferry me hence, and the toll jingles louder in my pocket every single day.

Happy Father's Day, Swan. And I hope you have many Happy Mothers Days. I wish to God in Heaven I could be a part of them.

Daily workout log, and some philosophical musings

50 x 2 crunches, 10 lb. weight

44 minutes on the elliptical machine

Does anybody in the entire universe read this? God, I feel like killing myself... :(

"In the entire universe..." Hmmm... It occurs to me that this missive is being sent out via (extremely weak) radio signals to my wireless router. Presumably, that means it is also being broadcast out into space...

I've been reading James Gleick's "The Information" recently. He talks about the discovery of cuneiform tablets, written thousands of years ago. They mainly recorded commercial transactions; nobody writing them thought that people scores of centuries in the future would be reading them...

Presumably, the radio signals being sent from my laptop to my wireless router would be far too faint to be detected in the far reaches of the galaxy — with current human technology, that is. But some advanced alien civilization, on the other hand...

Hell, for all I know, these words I'm writing now could end up being copied down and studied for generations, for millenia, by some unknown alien race out there in the cosmos...untold light years from here, my words might be the last scraps of data from the vanished world of humans. Shit, I might be writing "The Epic of Gilgamesh" for some unseen race out there in the stars...

Hey, fuck you. I need to think I matter sometimes, even if it's a flight of fancy...

Belated daily workout log (for Thursday)

50 x 2 crunches, 10 lb. weight

12 x 2 arm curls, 20 lbs.

8 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

4 x 2 arm curls, 30 lbs.

30 x 4 pushups

44 minutes on the elliptical machine

I hate my life right now. I can't see ever being happy ever again. Shit.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches, 10 lb. weight

44 minutes on the elliptical machine

Didn't work out yesterday. Too damn depressed.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches, 10 lb. weight

30 x 4 pushups

12 x 2 arm curls, 20 lbs.

7 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

4 x 2 arm curls, 30 lbs.

42 minutes on the elliptical machine.

No significant weight loss this week, god damn it.

The twists and turns of melancholy

When I get really tired and irritated and depressed, I have this odd compulsion to scream at my coworkers.

I never actually do so, of course. I remain, on the surface, quiet and unobtrusive and anonymous. But the feeling is very intense. It's not because of anything my coworkers do. They are very nice people, and there's nothing wrong with them. Rather, it seems to stem from an overwhelming need to release the pressure building up inside my head. Don't you see?, I want to yell. Don't you know how much pain I'm in right now? I am sitting here thinking over and over again of killing myself to end the strain, and you are over there babbling like there's nothing in the world that is wrong.

I try to picture how my loved ones would react to the news of my suicide. I see them being sad, of course, but I don't see it leaving much of a void in their lives. I don't see it torturing them for years. I feel so insubstantial and unimportant, it's hard for me to believe I will leave any trace once I'm gone. Once the initial tears are dried, it would be as if I never existed.

Would my Dad be upset? I mean, I know he'd be sad for a little while, but would it really affect him? Would it affect my little brother? I honestly can't see it. I don't know who I really am to my Dad. Part of me feels like he would blame me somehow for killing myself, like he would yell at me and consider me a failure. It just seems like I'm such a disappointment to him. I'm not sure what I was "supposed" to do or be, but I always feel like whatever it was, I've failed, in his eyes.

And my little brother? Who am I to him? Who am I to anybody?

I know my mom cares about me. I know it would devastate her. But ... shit, she doesn't understand at all. I don't feel like she could ever grasp how awful I feel. I don't know if it's real to her, and even if I tried to communicate it, she'd just freak out.

And my friends ... shit, what friends? I don't have anybody I'm close to, save the Dove and the Swan. And I'm nobody to the Swan. And as for the Dove ... well, she doesn't need somebody like me. I can only hurt her.

Fuck, you see, God? Wouldn't it be so much easier if you could end things for me? I wouldn't have to grapple with this shit. God, I'm hurting.

Informal reader poll

Ha, I know, like I have readers. But I'm pretending I do. So my question is: Should I go home tonight after work and just say "fuck it" to working out, and just get fucking drunk off my ass? Or should I actually go through the trouble of working out?

If I work out, I'll probably just down three or four sleeping pills afterward to knock myself out. I've been having trouble sleeping lately and that seems to be the only thing that does the trick. If I don't work out, I'm hoping that the excessive alcohol consumption — I've got a bottle of Bacardi 151 — would help me black out, and make me feel better, besides. Which would you do, fair readers?

A prayer of depression

Dear God,

I am at work now and I want to scream. I want to bang my head against my desk until I am bleeding, until I pass out. I want to scream at the top of my lungs from the pain. Where does my sadness come from? Why does it eat me alive?

God, please stop the pain. It never, ever ends. I am so small and so useless and so scared.

I want to smash things with my fists. I want to yell at people for no reason. I feel like I am being torn apart and I cannot explain why.

I spent my lunch break alone in my car. Over and over, the same image in my mind: Pressing a gun to my head. Pulling the trigger. Blackness. Eternal peace.

Would others care? I don't know. My family would, I know. But I can't live for them. I have to have something inside me, some source to quench this horrible thirst I feel in my soul. I hate myself so, so much, God.

Why did you create me and why do you keep me alive? I feel like I am nothing. I feel like I am garbage. All I do is feed off others and destroy good things. It feels like the world would be a better place without me in it. Oh, I know my family would hurt. But in the larger scheme, what purpose do I serve? What use is there for me? Don't I just drag down everything and everybody?

I read the obituaries in the paper, God. You end the lives of so many good people, people with families, spouses, children. You rub out their lives like you were swatting a fly, and yet they are missed so much more than I would ever be. God, please, don't take one of them again. Next time you want to take a person like that, take me instead. Give me cancer, leukemia, I don't care. Let ME shoulder that pain, because I want it and I deserve it.

I don't want to hurt like this anymore. Take it away, God. End it. End ME. Erase this awful mistake from the pages of the book of life. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it. Stop my hurting. I cannot bear it.

Suicidal ideation at work, again

I can’t see any way forward anymore. It’s all darkness and pain and hopelessness. If this is to be my life, I can’t go on living.

Really, it feels more and more that suicide is the only logical outcome for my life.

I read a story today about old people who can’t afford their cancer drugs. This is supposed to be a tragedy. Christ, I envy those people. I wish to God I could have a doctor look me in the eyes and say, “you’ve only got six months to live.” It’s obvious to me that all the worthwhile parts of my life are over and that all that’s left are various species of disappointment and failure. I’m angry at the Swan right now. Angry or jealous or ... something. She has so much to look forward to: Marriage, probably to a rich guy. A life of great comfort. Children. So many happy things. So many happy years. I doubt she appreciates it at all.

Meanwhile: My life is effectively over. There is absolutely no promise of a better job or career for me, ever. No marriage, no kids, nothing. I just spend hour after hour waiting around to die. If there is a God somewhere out there, I wish he would hear my cries.

I hate myself. I hate my life. I hate everything. It is all nothingness, and I want to be set free.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches, 5 lb. weight

42 min. x 2 on the elliptical machine

Will try to blog some actual content tomorrow.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches, 5 lb. weight

30 x 4 pushups

12 x 2 arm curls, 20 lbs.

7 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

4 x 2 arm curls, 30 lbs.

42 minutes x 2 on the elliptical machine.

Damn it I need to sleep a normal schedule!!!!

Daily workout log (for Friday)

50 x 2 crunches, 5 lb. weight

42 minutes on the elliptical machine

Painful thoughts, late at night

God, the pain is really unbearable right now. I look ahead and see only darkness.

I can't decide who I should be angry at. Myself? Society? Fate? God? The basic fact is that I'm a cubicle drone with no outstanding job skills. I mean, I've been to film school, and I got a master's in that, so I suppose that's a "marketable skill," but I haven't really done much film-related since in almost 10 years.

Beyond that, there's my training in journalism. I've never been very good at it and have always hated it. And journalism jobs really don't pay shit. On top of that, the whole journalism industry is starting to die a slow death.

I look back and try to figure out where the fuck I went wrong. What bad choices did I make? At every stage, though, with the exception of going to film school, all the choices I made were the safe ones that everybody advised me to make. And even in the case of film school, I tried to chart as safe and conservative a path as possible, to maximize my chances for a job after graduation.

And now I've reached a dead end. I literally do not know where to go from here. Perhaps it's just my personality, but I've always tended to go the safe, reliable route. But there is no obvious safe route leading on from where I stand now. It's just a maze of gray misery, for the rest of my life.

This should be the point in time when I start to flourish in my career and start a family. Instead, I'm nowhere near either of those milestones. Why? I mean, was it me? Did I do something wrong? Is there somebody else I can blame? I do not know.

I am thinking now of the Swan. You know, I barely know her. Well, I know her more than slightly. We've had experiences together. But I was just the briefest flash of light passing through her life, and I probably don't ever figure into her feelings at all. I think we all have an internal narrative of our lives, and in her narrative, I am the tiniest of footnotes, an insubstantial asterisk in a large and complicated section.

I know, or can more or less guess how she sees me, because for the past year or so I've been seeing the situation play out from the other side. I was dating this girl — let's call her the Dove — and while I liked her and enjoyed spending time with her, she never really engaged me on any passionate level. 

Unfortunately, it seems that she feel deliriously for me. Thinks I'm "the love of her life," and all that. Even though I broke up with her months ago, she still hasn't really gotten over it. I still hear from her all the time.

My feelings about the Dove are deeply mixed. On one hand, it is flattering to be loved with such intensity — though what she sees in me, I will never know. On the other hand, my relationship with her uniquely illuminates for me my relationship with the Swan. The Dove does not occupy my thoughts too much, and I recognize in my own coldness of affection something of how I must appear to the Swan. It is not an encouraging thought. Indeed, it makes me painfully aware of the unbridgeability of the chasm between me and the Swan. There are no words the Dove can say, no actions she can perform, that will make me feel the sort of affection she craves from me. And seeing that, I am able to put myself in the Swan's shoes. I know there is not a damn thing in the fucking world I could do to win her.

If it weren't for my relationship with the Dove, I might not understand that. I might be able to convince myself that I had some chance with the Swan. But thanks to the Dove, I understand just how impossible that is. And for that — should I thank the Dove? Or be angry with her? She denies me the soft lullabies of self-deception. But also thanks to her, I am able to refrain from vainly offering the Swan any more pieces of my deeply wounded soul. I know just how futile a gesture that would be, and it allows me to lock away what's left of my heart and keep her from destroying it further. And she WOULD destroy it.

It really hurts, to have your own well-being so dependent upon another person. I mean, it's crushing. Why do I feel such a bleeding desire for something I can never have? How can I shut this feeling off?

See, it's my damn rational mind again. I am faced with a problem; I reason myself to a solution. Being honest with myself, I can't see any plausible scenario in which the Swan would ever be able to love me. For whatever cold reason God thinks it proper, my deep feeling for her does not move her. There is no way I can conceive of to change that. And it's not a situation that circumstances are likely to alter, either.

I will never be able to offer her the security that another man could offer her. The basic fact of the matter is that women like her don't end up with men like me. Men like me get table scraps. The men that end up with women like her are men that have value, that have achieved great success. That is just the naked sexual politics of life. I am an economic nonentity. A cog. I am of zero economic, political, social, or cultural significance. Nothing I do adds any value or advances or defends civilization in any way. I'm basically a parasite. I steal the resources of society and give nothing back.

My great accomplishment on any given day is putting together a nice newspaper page, and making sure all the words are spelled correctly. This is my bequest to posterity? This is the bold gesture of assertion I make against the unfeeling black heart of the universe? This is the blow I strike to proclaim the Nobility of Mankind?

It is nothing — it is worse than nothing. The lightest footprint, washed away by the tide. I am just so much prideful seed for the millstone. I am the dregs of the gene pool. I feel the blunt blade of Darwinian logic hacking away the useless offal of my DNA. It is like my suffering has a sinister purpose: Natural selection is driving home to me how useless I am, as a way of commanding me to pare myself out of the rootstock of tomorrow. The Swan's children — she will have them, you know — will be beautiful and strong. I know they will, because I see that in her, and I know that their father will be beautiful and strong as well. I must die that the way be made straighter, the path softer, the road easier for them.

That hurts, you know: That for someone else to be able to look forward to tomorrow, I have to go to bed every night fearing and cursing it. And for me to look forward to tomorrow, I have to make the Dove miserable, too. Can there be any way forward that, if not making me happy, will at least bring me peace, and in turn, will bring all others peace, as well? If this situation must persist forever — well, then life, when all the accounts are settled, is really not worth living.

Well, maybe that is ultimately the truth — this life is a vale of tears before we go home to the New Jerusalem, with paradise our reward for earthly struggles. Fine, I can deal with that. We must all bear our cross, we must all carry our own burdens, and I am strong and can carry a heavy, heavy load. But this, Lord, this is too much to bear. I will walk as far as I can, but my legs will soon give out. Please help me before I reach that point, Lord. Please.

Daily workout log

30 x 2 pushups

12 arm curls, 20 lbs.

6 arm curls, 25 lbs.

3 arm curls, 30 lbs.

I didn't do more because I need to get to sleep early tonight.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches, 5 lb. weight

42 minutes on the elliptical machine

Late-night gloom

It's a little after 11:30 p.m. as I write this. I am feeling so low and so worthless.

I have to go back to work tomorrow. I am trying to decide if I should try to spend the rest of the night working on my novel, or just watching videos and getting drunk. I can't make up my mind. I really, really want to get drunk...

Ah, but I won't. And I won't work on my novel, either. Instead, I am going to take a Benadryl — they always knock me out — and drift off to sleep. Perhaps tonight I'll finally die. I can only hope. God, I hate this damn life so much.

The deal with me and women

Let me introduce you to the woman of my dreams: Holly Golightly.

  

I'm in love with Audrey Hepburn. And of all the roles she played, I am most in love with Holly Golightly from "Breakfast At Tiffany's." Let me show you my calendar at work. This is the one bright spot in my day, the one thing I have that always gives me a lift when I'm feeling down:

I'm extremely, extremely in love with the opposite sex, and Holly/Audrey basically encapsulates everything that captivates me about women.

For one, she's an unabashed girly-girl. Like, whatever happened to girls like that? Oh, I'm not some Neanderthal with Stone Age ideas about sex roles. But let me give you a little background. My parents divorced when I was 11, and me and my little brother went to live with my Dad. My Dad later got remarried, but my stepmom never played a major role in our lives, and even before the divorce, my Mom wasn't notable for being very girly — she was very much a tomboy and still is. Exhibit A: One of the highlights of her life was when she got her first pickup truck. She'd wanted one for years. Later, she upgraded to an even more butch model because she thought the first one was too dinky.

Now my stepmom is dead, and when I go home to visit my Dad, it's just him, me, and my little brother again, just like it was after the divorce. That's the way it's always been, that's all I've ever known: Just us three guys against the world.

Aside from my marriage, I've never really had a real strong feminine influence in my life at all.

I have spent quite enough of my life around men, cut off from any real femininity, and I am done with it. When/if I have kids, I want ONLY daughters. I want to spend the rest of my life on this earth surrounded by pink bows and ribbons and tiaras and makeup and the 15 bottles of hair-care products women always have in their showers. With Holly/Audrey, I'm pretty sure I'd have it.

Secondly, she possesses that elusive quality of elegance, or class. I'm not sure when this stopped being a common or desirable feature among women, but it seems like I don't see it terribly often these days. If you watch a lot of old movies, it seems as if it was once quite common; alas, in this day and age, it seems to have fallen by the wayside.

I wish I could give a more precise definition of what I mean here; "elegance" and "class" are hazy qualities that could mean different things to different people. I'm tempted to fall back on Potter Stewart's old saw: "I know it when I see it." Indeed I do. When I DO see it, I find it pulls me in like a magnet. By contrast, women who conspicuously lack elegance usually repel me.

But for something so essential, it just won't do to leave it undefined and subjective. If I'm going to declare the importance of such a quality, fairness dictates that I at least try to hash out what I'm referring to.

So here's my best shot: Elegance and classiness refers to a certain "air" that some women have about them, a quiet, inner, unforced conviction that, as women, they are special and deserve special treatments. Subtlety is key here; that's why I use words like "quiet" and "unforced." There is no pushiness or whininess here. No in-your-face queen-bitch attitude. There is not even a hint of nastiness or ill-feeling toward others. It is just treated as a given — a kind of sweetly naive confidence. Women who have it just make me melt.

And third: Holly Golightly is just a tiny bit of a bitch, and she's high-maintenance. For whatever reason, this is a turn-on for me. I suspect it might be genetic: My Dad married two high-maintenance women with tendencies toward bitchiness — my stepmom in particular was a terrible, soul-rending harpy.

I'll never be able to go that far. I simply won't subject myself to the sort of abuse my dad put up with. But that being said, a little bit of bitchiness is essential for me; I do not function well otherwise. Having a woman who acts bitchy toward me sometimes makes me feel like I matter — it makes me feel, well, like a man. Scarlett O'Hara is one example of the type of woman I need — hell, I named my car "Scarlett O'Hara." And Holly Golightly finds the absolute perfect balance. JUST bitchy and high-maintenance enough, without going over the line.

I haven't had much luck in finding this, and I'm beginning to suspect I never will. Well, I know the Swan had all these things. But the Swan saw nothing particularly special in me.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches, 5 lb. weight

25 x 4 pushups

12 x 2 arm curls, 20 lbs.

6 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

3 x 2 arm curls, 30 lbs.

42 minutes on the elliptical machine

Those 30 lb. arm curls were tough! I could barely complete them. I'm noting that now because as I'm able to lift heavier, I want to look back at this post to appreciate the progress I've made.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches

42 minutes on the elliptical machine

I ate a bunch of junk food because I went to the movies. Gotta do better next week.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches

25 x 4 pushups

10 x 2 arm curls, 20 lbs.

5 x 2 arm curls, 25 lbs.

40 min x 2 on the elliptical machine

Saw "X-Men: First Class" tonight. Much better than I'd expected.

Belated daily workout log

For yesterday:

50 x 2 crunches

40 min. x 2 on the elliptical machine

I'll get the numbers in for today later.

The Death of the American Dream, pt. 2

Here's part two of that essay I linked to earlier, about the death of the American Dream. I'm not sure I buy his vision of what the future might look like, but I agree that things are probably going to have to change. I think the life I grew up wanting may, unfortunately, be long gone.

The porn that people like

So there's this story in Time magazine about these researchers who analyzed all the porn on the Internet.

They were looking for patterns, see — pop-quant numerati type stuff. Interestingly, while Rule 34 basically holds true, it's not as wild or weird out there as you might suspect. The vast majority of people's tastes are pretty vanilla.

On a personal note, I found it intriguing that he "cheating wives" theme was so incredibly popular. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, this is porn that focuses on uptight, conservative, happily married women going out and cheating on their husbands by having lots of wild, freaky, nasty sex with complete strangers. A lot of guys love this stuff — though, I should probably emphasize, they like it strictly as a fantasy. Except for a handful of real weirdos, they don't actually want their wives to go out and do this stuff. They just like the thought of it.

Now, I used to be puzzled by this. The appeal completely escaped me. Then, well, I got divorced. (Yup, I was married for about four years.) And then my ex-wife started dating another guy, and then she eventually married him. I haven't spoken to my ex in about three years, so I don't know what she's up to now — hell, she probably has a kid by now. Anyway, when she started dating, and later got married, I discovered something: On one hand, it made me insanely, painfully jealous. I mean, thinking about her with another guy really, really hurt. But at the same time, I found it incredibly, uh, arousing...

It was a very, very weird feeling: I could be both incredibly upset and incredibly, unbelievably turned on, simultaneously. What the hell? I thought at first that there might be something psychologically wrong with me, but then I remembered the whole "cheating wives" porn genre, and I had a light bulb moment. "Oh," I thought. "Okay, so that's what that whole thing is about..."

Anyway, it's nice to see that, according to these researchers, my reaction was boringly mainstream, which means I'm not some huge perv. But I still didn't get what caused it to be so arousing. According to these guys, it's because "men are wired to be sexually jealous":

"This is an example of what biologists call a sperm competition cue. Across the animal kingdom, when males see other males mating, it tends to provoke arousal. If he is going to compete with the other male, he has to produce more sperm.

Human men also respond like this; if a man sees a woman — including his partner — with another man, he becomes more aroused."

So basically, it's the combination of sexual excitement coupled with hormonal caveman aggression at the thought of another guy with "my" woman. (Yes, I know she's not "my" woman now; I'm speaking figuratively here.) I can testify to the fact that the combination does produce a very intense experience. It's interesting to now have a sense of why — and to know I'm not some freak for feeling that way.

The Curse of the Swan

This blog is supposed to accurately reflect me, and since I assume that nobody is reading it, I might as well attempt to be as candid as possible.

Look, there's just no way you can really understand me unless you know about the Swan.

"The Swan" is ... well, a reasonable person would say that the Swan is a girl I have an unreasonable obsession with. And a reasonable person might very well be right.

Fortunately, I happen to be hyper-analytical (I'm the son of an engineer), and I recognize unreason when I see it, even in myself. The problem is that it's, well, in myself. Like my depression, I can't reason myself out of it. It exists and I have to deal with it.

Being a hyper-analytical person, though, does mean that I deal with it better than most folks — well, I "deal with it better" in the sense that I am better able to conform my outward behavior to societal expectations. I can coolly and calmly step back and imagine how things would appear to a disinterested person. True, I do have a certain tendency to undertake bold or startling actions, but they're always preceded by a sober reflection about the costs and possible outcomes. I take Patton's counsel: "Act boldly. That is quite different from being rash."

I also like to think I have a bit of character and old-fashioned morality. At any rate, the point is, I'm a controlled, self-disciplined person, and there is no danger that I will be driven into madness or menace by my damnable, damnable Judas of a heart.

At the same time, I need an outlet for these things. I cannot keep them sealed inside me, known only to myself. For whatever reason — vanity, self-aggrandizement, pathetic self-pity — I am driven to communicate my pain to others. Writing is a way for me to do that, a sort of therapy. The best way I can explain it is: I get lonely here inside my own head. I need to share it with other people.

I realize that "sharing" via an anonymous blog that I make no attempt to publicize is rather abstract. This is functionally no different than a private diary. Yet for some reason, I find it impossible to keep a private diary, because writing — oh, how did John Cheever put it? Let me look it up. Okay. He said: "I can't write without a reader. It's precisely like a kiss — you can't do it alone." That describes me exactly. I need at least a theoretical "reader," or I can't write. Writing done for myself, privately, doesn't seem real to me, partly because I always wonder if I'm lying to myself — and yes, like most intellectual types, I have a quite fearsome ability to lie to myself. At least if I lie to a reader, I can keep the lies more or less straight in my head. If I lie to you, maybe you won't know the truth — but I will, and for a person who at least strives to be as good and honest as my crooked timber will allow, that's the important part.

But back to the Swan.

The Swan — I'm not going to use anybody's real name here — is a girl I've known for many, many years, and I am very infatuated with her, perhaps to a fatal degree. There is no really good reason for me to feel so strongly about her, but I do. If she were to call me right this second and beckon me to come see her, I would do so. I would drop whatever else I was doing and go to her. Hell, I'd even take her over my dog, and my dog has probably done more for me with her love and affection than any human woman could ever do, even to the end of time.

I really, really, really shouldn't like this woman. She's actually done a lot of damage to me — well, she personally hasn't done it. It's the crazed, confused emotions she summons up in me that have taken a wrecking ball to everything. And make no mistake: Wrecking ball is the right word. The massive damage it's done to my self-esteem, to my relationships, and even my physical health has been incalculable. Really, I ought to hate her forever.

Ah, but I do love her, intensely. Now, I could wax lyrical here and recite a bunch of romantic bullshit about why that is. And none of it would be a lie or an exaggeration. Every jot of it would be the clear and untaught truth.

But ... ehhh. I know I said I'd be candid on here, but that is a door I am not going to unlock. That's another consequence of her, by the way. I nourish a chilly mistrust of my softer emotions. I've built a wall of self-analytical objectivity around them, and it is heavily patrolled and fiercely guarded. The bulls in the watchtowers have standing orders to shoot escaping poetry on sight.

In short, it's a curse. You know the film "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?" It's about memory, specifically about a process that allows people to wipe out any trace of painful memories from their minds. It's supposed to be sad and tragic, right? And yeah, it's a bit of a tearjerker, but you know what? Every time I see that movie, I wish I could do that. I want the Swan scrubbed clean from my mind forever, to the point I would not recognize her face if she were standing in front of me. That's what my head wants, anyway. My beastly, selfish heart desires her still and won't stop.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches

25 x 4 pushups

10 x 2 arm curls, 20 lb. weights

40 minutes on the elliptical machine

I am not a fucking secretary

Not a day goes by at my job that I don't wish I could scream the following:

I AM NOT A FUCKING SECRETARY.

I was not hired to answer phones. I was not hired to handle "customer service" or direct callers to different departments or assist callers with their problems. I was not hired to organize paperwork or master the intricacies of filing and record-keeping. I am manifestly not a people person or an organizational wizard, which should have been obvious when you hired me — FOR A JOB THAT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO REQUIRE THOSE SKILLS.

I do certain tasks very, very well. Those tasks involve very little interaction with anybody other than my immediate coworkers, and require little understanding of the corporate hierarchy, or the correct flow of paperwork, or of the endless arcane details of record-keeping. I was hired specifically to do a certain set of tasks. If you need someone to perform secretarial duties, I suggest you hire someone to be a secretary.

What's that? You said times are tight? You have to cut back, so you can't afford to hire a secretary? So "other employees" ought to just pick up the slack?

Fine. Then be prepared to accept substandard performance of secretarial duties. I was not trained in secretarial tasks and have no skill in performing them. Because believe it or not, "secretary" is actually a position that requires a certain skill set. The position of "secretary" developed because there was a specific need for individuals who could perform these tasks; it was found that people in certain job categories, while skilled in the specific area of their occupation, performed poorly at other essential duties. "Secretaries" were hired for this purpose. Because, believe it or not, employees are not identical, interchangeable parts.

I'm not sure where we developed the idea that employees, all employees, are supposed to be equally competent at a broad range of tasks, able to step in at a moment's notice and seamlessly replace missing colleagues. I suppose it developed from the notion that companies are supposed to be "lean and mean" in order to function in the highly fluid global economy. It sure is a great way to justify firing a bunch of people and driving the remaining employees like galley slaves, though. Because a worker is a worker, right? And anybody can answer phones, right?

Well, no. Oh, I can pick up a phone and announce my name and ask "how may I help you?" But it strikes me as deeply insulting when companies appear to assume that this is all a secretary does, or that all secretarial tasks can easily be handed off to other employees. In this line of thinking, "secretary" was a position invented to provide make-work for women.

Why aren't more people, especially women, offended by that? "Secretary" was not always a job associated with women, you know. There was a time when almost all secretaries were male. When that was the case, nobody had any trouble understanding that this was a key position in any healthy business, and one that couldn't be easily discarded without compromising quality. Take answering phones, for instance: Like I said, I can pick up the receiver and introduce myself. But unless the person on the other end has a question specifically related to the job I perform, I'm pretty helpless. I do not have a deep understanding of the company outside of my department, so I'm not always very sure where to transfer them. Nor can I fake it or deal extemporaneously with unforeseen issues; I lack a natural intuition for social situations. Hell, maybe that makes me a horrible employee. Fine: then fire me ... IF you think you can easily find a person who will be able to perform all the duties you expect of me, at a level at or greater than my own, for roughly the same salary I meekly accept.

But it is simply a fantasy that these talents can be willed into existence by insisting that employees "dedicate themselves to customer service." I like to think that I AM serving the customer: By doing the job I was hired to do and doing it well. But "customer service" is seldom used in that sense. Instead, my company (and a lot of others, I assume) treat it as a euphemism for "asking employees to perform the sort of human-relations tasks that used to be performed by secretaries." Which, rather conveniently, allows the company to trim its expenses by eliminating secretaries. Ever notice how you can make a nice career by providing companies with plausible-sounding excuses to do what they'd like to do anyway?

And that's just answering phones. There are other tasks performed by secretaries that I am also unskilled at. Which ought to be okay, because those tasks shouldn't really be part of my job. But they ARE part of my job, and because of that, those tasks are performed poorly. On top of that, the MAIN part of my job — the part I was supposedly hired for — suffers too, because I am unable to devote myself to that part as much as I'd like to.

IMHO, this degrades the quality of the final product. I'm no management expert, but shouldn't the quality of the final product be the primary goal? Wasn't this Deming's central insight? If management needs more work done, management should hire more workers. If additional workers are not practical or not available, the product should be scaled to fit the optimum productivity of available workers. Scaling down the employee footprint while leaving the final product unchanged seems like it would lead to slow-motion corporate suicide, because realizing that a task that should be performed by three people can, in a pinch, be performed by two people ultimately leads to the conclusion that it can — in a pinch — be performed by one person. Which ultimately leads to the question of why the task is being performed at all, if it cannot easily be performed well. If your ultimate goal is to cut costs, you'll eventually realize that you can eliminate all of your costs by just going out of business.

Making profit not only the primary goal, but the only real goal ultimately seems to raise some uncomfortable chicken-and-egg questions about the nature of capitalism. I am a firm believer in capitalism because I think capitalism ultimately benefits everybody, including workers. I am not in favor of capitalism for the sake of capitalism, free markets for the sake of extending market logic into all spheres of existence — doesn't that line of thought ultimately undermine the benefits that capitalism is supposed to provide? My embrace of capitalism is functional and pragmatic, not ideological, because ideologically, it's hard for me to see how following capitalist logic to its ultimate conclusion doesn't end up leading to some modified form of widespread slavery. I'm as pro-free-market as they come. You'll never see me stumping for Marxism or socialism or communism or anything of that sort. But I'm not going to march down the road to serfdom, whether it's brought about by central planners or free-agent barbarian marauders.

Again, I'm no expert here, and I assume some smarty-pants types have already thought Deep Thoughts about all this stuff and come up with good answers.

I bet they got paid a lot of money for coming up with those answers, too. Maybe not a fortune, but I bet they live a damn sight more comfortably than I do. And I bet, while they were coming up with those answers, they had a goddamn secretary.

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches

25 x 2 pushups

40 minutes on the elliptical machine

The bad sleep well

Terrific. Just terrific. How shitty are things right now? Well, basically, Madison Avenue has decided it's no longer worth it to market goods and services to the middle class, because they're too damn poor. The only consumers that count, it seems, are those making $200,000 or more. If that's not you, then you're "irrelevant." To quote the article:

In the future, if current trends continue, no one else but the rich will essentially matter — to Madison Avenue.

Great. Just fucking great.

Maybe I'm not the only one...

I found this story about "The Death of the American Dream" to be interesting. I often feel depressed because I feel like the American dream that was promised to me all my life seems to be slowly slipping away. According to this article, it's not an illusion. On the bright side, it's not the first time in American history that this has happened. The author points out that the dream of owning a family farm was what preoccupied the first half of our nation's history. It was replaced with the ideal of life in the suburbs. Now that dream, too, seems likely to die. But perhaps it will give birth to something new...

My new word for the day: "Ecdysiast." It's an H.L. Mencken word for "stripper."

Daily workout log

50 x 2 crunches

20 x 4 push-ups

12 x 2 arm curls, 20 pounds

40 minutes on the elliptical machine

I have decided to hold off on running for a few weeks. I am having too much trouble with my shins and I need to give them time to heal.

Always feeling trapped

The thing that has always frustrated me about my depression is that I can't reason myself out of it.

My Dad was an engineer — hell, he worked on missiles, so I guess you could probably say he's even a rocket scientist. I evidently didn't inherit his facility with math, but in many other ways, I am very much my father's child. We're both natural skeptics, natural pessimists, and we tend to approach problems in a highly logical fashion. Indeed, I am drawn almost magnetically to puzzles. The other day at work somebody left a little three-dimensional wood block puzzle on the counter, and I picked it up and literally could not put the damn thing down until I'd solved it. Here's the result:

Nifty, huh? Anyway, that's kind of how my mind works. I see a problem: My instinct is to find a solution.

I am unable to do this with my depression. Depression involves emotion, which is frustratingly beyond my control. Emotions flutter in from some place I cannot see, bend and break me, then scamper off to some hidden place that I know nothing of. Yet they seem to be the most important part of my life, the tyrants that rule my flesh during all my waking hours, and the traitors that can sabotage everything I seek to accomplish.

Sometimes I will sit down and take an inventory of my life. And while I am perhaps not everywhere I would like to be, and perhaps haven’t accomplished all I’d like to have accomplished, I suspect you'd find few people who don't grapple with that. They learn to deal with it. Looking at things objectively, I have no good reason to be depressed at all. My life has suffered no severe, outsized tragedies. I face no deep threats to my life or health. Financially, things aren’t wonderful  for me, but I am not wrecked or desperately hanging on by my fingertips. Relationships? Well ... from the outside, things would appear fine. I have friends. Occasionally, I have lovers. I don’t struggle with loneliness. I really shouldn’t have anything to complain about.

If I were looking at me from the outside, I wouldn’t feel sorry for me. In fact, I might find my deep, gnawing depression kind of pathetic. Weak. Ugly. The world is full of people who would be grateful to change places with me. I’d tell myself to man up, look on the bright side. Be happy with what you’ve got. Be grateful. And so on.

But if it looks that way on the outside, why does it hurt so much in here? Why do I spend so much time wishing I could die? Why do I dream of going to sleep one night and dying peacefully, never being forced to rise and face another day? Why is my rationality totally incapable of unraveling this constant feeling of self-hatred?
 
I hate that about life. I hate that I cannot crack open my head and trap my feelings. I cannot dismantle and destroy them through careful thought. I grasp them tightly in my mind’s fist, and they slip out through my fingers like smoke, reassembling themselves and mocking me to my face. And again they crack the whip.

One might conceivably take refuge in the idea that all these things we call "emotions" are lies. Since they are so powerfully resistant to the attack of reason, perhaps they do not exist in any meaningful sense. Maybe, like the shadows in the cave, they are just ephemeral garbage, the unintentional byproduct of more meaningful things; they lead us astray because we mistake the shadows for the  truly beautiful things that cast them. To achieve one’s full capability as a human is to learn to see emotions as illusions.

Indeed, I think that’s essentially the view offered by Eastern religions such as Buddhism. In a roundabout way it’s at the heart of the monastic tradition in Christianity.

But I can’t quite take that view; it seems to leave out a large chunk of what it means to be human. To define oneself into victory over emotion is a neat trick of ideas. But I’m an old skeptic who believes sweating, bleeding, crying people are more important than intricately constructed theories. I have trouble buying into any doctrine of human fulfillment that dismisses the role of feelings and sentiments. Indeed, aren’t emotions the very engine of human life? They drive the world. How much of the important work of our species has been inaugurated by the phrase, “come, let us reason together?” Very little, I'd wager. But how many great chapters have been heralded by the insistent exclamation, “I feel...” followed a passionate flood of natural emotion?

Acknowledging the validity of my emotions doesn’t really help me, though, as long as those emotions continue to hurt me. I am still faced with the fact that I am deeply unhappy. Where is the path that will lead me out of this awful pit of despair?