Like the moment I realized I'd worn a groove in my front tooth from biting my fingernails, these small denials of my own needs have accumulated in my life and now I am staring in shock at the damage I have done to what I thought was stable, solid, and resilient. I have done this before. I was heartbroken and betrayed when Debbie left me, at least until my life started to get better with my increased freedom and I realized that I was better off without all those small compromises even at the cost of being alone. Now again, here I am again, the dream of my romantic relationship shattered, nothing much really, though it has the weight of the world. Just a dream, just a way of seeing things, a way of holding things, a thought pattern. Nothing real has broken.

How to put as much energy into the act of living as possible.

Discover your goals. You may not think you have goals, but everyone has goals. If you do not have a concrete plan for your life you can make very little happen. Think about what you have been telling yourself is a possible future and write it down. Write them all down. Evaluate and choose the best one. Until you think of something better, this is your plan and you should take at least one step toward fulfillment of your plan every day. This is how you make things happen. You make a conscious effort toward accomplishing something you think you want. Nevermind that you won’t want it anymore once you get it. The fun is in figuring out how to get there and trying to realize it. If you don’t have the right plan, you’ll know it because you won’t be having fun. The best way to realize that you have an unfun plan is to go on trying to accomplish something toward it every day until you find a new plan to replace it with. Possible plan inducing questions…

1. Improve finances?
2. Improve your relationships?
3. Increase quality time?

Each of these questions has a corresponding addiction, but that doesn’t mean the questions should be avoided. On the contrary, the addictions exist because these things really are important or fun or life improving to a certain extent. It is an experience of lack, an experience of having not had enough of something that creates the psychological addiction.

So what’s my lifegoal for right now?

Find an enjoyable way to increase my income to at least $1200 per month, clear.

Best prospect so far: become a teacher. Might not deliver on the “enjoyable” in which case I’ll have to abandon it since that’s a core part of my goal. But then again, I might really like teaching. It might give me a sense of larger purpose and help me to feel connected to a community. I might like knowing so many young people and having their influence on my life. The time commitments might be heavier than I’m used to, but the salary is much more than I need, which is an added bonus. If I can stick it out for two years I should be able to save up $20,000 or so not to mention the equity I will have built into the house we’re buying.

Next Step in Current Plan: Interview is on May 9^th at 9am. This requires transportation arriving in New Orleans no later than the 8^th. I can arrange this transportation tomorrow.

Step I Took Today: Took a returned call from Karen Ollendike to reschedule interview for the 9^th. Arranged housing plan in New Orleans with Keli and Hany.

I lay here in the darkness. I lay here in the darkness, listening to the rythmic thump of the headboard against the wall; The rythmic thump of the headboard against the wall, and the delicate gasps of breath from the parted lips of my lover, who is in the next room, in the arms of her lover, my not quite but almost friend. I want to cry. I'm longing for the sweet release of tears, but they won't come. They won't come and I'm stuck with this terrible ache.

I'm thinking, I have to get out of here. I have to get out of here at least while I can still here her breathing like that. But then, a shrill little moan, and another; a rustle of the bed and the breathing is heavier, deeper. The breathing is from down low in her belly and I'm transfixed with dread. What is this life that I've chosen for myself? I know that her orgasm is comming and I know that she won't be able to keep it quiet though his father is sleeping down the hall. Just as I know that I'll feel a terrible thrill in my chest and my stomache will drop when it comes, and God, I wish it would just hurry up and come. But no, the heavy breathing just starts again.

I'm reminding myself that I love her but she's not mine. That just a few nights ago I was happy to share in their lovemaking and it was a sweet little threesome that we had. But I feel my stomache drop even before I expected it would, and this is not that. No, it is a very different thing to share sex together than to listen helplessly from the next room.

On the long drive to get here, to his father's house, she and I had a hard talk that left my emotions coiled like a hard knot in my belly. She said that she hasn't felt hungry for me sexually since I got here. And I asked, knowing full well it would be disasterous, if she was hungry for him. Yes. Of course she is. And I still here her demonstrating it in the next room.

Would I feel differently about overhearing their lovemaking if we hadn't had that conversation? If I hadn't felt mildly snubbed first by being put in the seperate room, then by having to knock on the door and ask for sheets and a pillow? Then by her coming in to my lonely room to say she wanted a proper goodnight hug, oh, and by the way could she borrow a condom?

In every lull of quiet from their room I decide that I'm exhausted and done with my melodrama, then comes another little gasp and no, I am not yet done. But then, suddenly, to my surprize and against my narrative instincts, I am. Really done. The heart wrenching that was so unavoidable a few moments ago is now a bit forced and ina moment more I am laughing at my sub text of victemhood and mistreatment. Happy for the sounds of pleasure that are now slowing from the next room. And as it becomes apparent that I was wrong about the inexorability of a climatic orgasm, I'm a little sad that it didn't happen that way. Not too sad though; sounded like they had plenty of fun.

It doesn't matter whether I'm at the top of her list of men who get her going. It doesn't really say anything about me; about who I am. And even if it does, I can handle being the worst sex partner in the world if it's true. I don't need to secure her love. Her love is none of my business. It's my love that matters, and I find, in this moment, that I love her just fine.

I dreamed about the nanotech future. I don't remember the rest. I'm at John Flanagan's appartment in SanFrancisco. He was a little biting last night, mocked me for living in the middle of nowhere and said I had no style. That part was funny because it shows our different reality maps. John would be mortified to think he had no style, and I'd be embarrassed if someone thought I'd bothered to craft my appearance. He immediately tried to say he was only kidding, but it was so plain that he wasn't that it made me laugh. John saw that my laughter was real, that I hadn't been offended, and joined right in laughing. He made me sleep in his bed while he slept on the couch. Wouldn't even discuss it.

Mondays are for project projection

Setting down a few of the goals I would like to accomplish this week

mail package to dad
finish Love Slaves editing & print mock-up by Friday
pay all bills & figure out how to deposit cash
research trailer upgrade materials
come up with at least one of three workshop exercises for Eve to review
research and register at Hany's financial website
research and aply for temp jobs during philly visit

I've been having powerful and confusing dreams. I've long had the idea that in the nanotech future information will be encoded onto microscopic spores that can later be retrieved to ensure against data loss. But what if this strategy fails to accommodate the vastness of the universe. Wouldn't the data be better ensured against loss if each of these spores were engineered to create copies of themselves if they encountered conditions favorable for doing so? But then isn't that life? What if our mysterious junk dna is itself the data primordial beings were designed to propagate and all the rest, all the instructions pertaining to the propagation machine is just the result of data corruption over time. All life on Earth would be an incidental library, with data perhaps still extractable and perhaps corrupted to the point of unusability.

Unhatched Dream

Incoherent, but here goes. A woman is pregnant, and whenever she experiences regret the pregnancy advances suddenly. This continues until she s near birth, but then her husband, while touching her hand, experiences fear and anxiety and this causes the pregnancy to be transmitted to him. Whenever he experiences fear or anxiety the pregnancy advances suddenly. The cycle continues and the dream remains unborn.