Pacing in the Darkness

Waiting. Waiting mostly for more time. More hours in the day. More days in the week. Everyone wants time to do something. Me, I want it to slow the fuck down.

Slow down! Give me more time. I feel like I just woke up. I feel like I just got my driver's license. I feel like I just figured out what it is I want to do. I just realized my hands aren't shackled.

Now my boundaries are determined by what I can and can't take, what my personal limits are. How long can I sleep only five hours and still study and do martial arts? How will my work suffer? I've taken the girlfriend metaphor that I've struggled with for eighteen years -- longer -- and have transposed it onto myself. Folding it over, living with myself... dating myself, as I told a friend once. Dealing with myself, with no one else to blame.

I'm not a bad date. We definitely have a lot in common, me and me. I've taken myself out for concerts and dinners and movies. There's never any tension about whether or not I want to have sex. Although amazingly enough I do yell at myself for dirty dishes in the sink and the complete disrepair of whatever is in disrepair. I am kind of a slacker.

When I said, right after graduating from college, that I wanted to spend the next ten years watching T.V. I meant it. And, I did. And now...

You know my career has chugged along. I'm smart and fairly sociable. This goes a long way in the corporate world, especially when you're find yourself amongst programmers and other geeks. Especially when you wind up managing them, at some level. But even at work I am prone to slack. I need deadlines. In some cases a little frenzy is good. Or extreme work hours. If I put everything off totally then I have to pull an all-nighter... well this is just what I do to myself.

And that's what I'm watching: what I do to myself. Partnerless, after being partnered for so long, it's astonishing to realize what crap is yours.

So... I'm dreamy, which can make for motivation sometimes. There is nothing holding me back but my own mind. Unfortunately, there's a lot to that. I'm pretty good at fucking with myself, and not as good with doing what I need to do. I give in and eat a Honey Bun because I know for those three minutes that I'm stuffing the sweet, warm gooeyness into my pie-hole I will feel as delicious as it tastes. Nevermind that ten minutes after I'll wish I hadn't done that. I'll watch a stupid T.V. movie -- live and with commericals -- rather than study. I'll stay up late just to try and squeeze out a blog post. (er.... )

Most days are a combination of a good job keeping to the plan and a handful of oh-well's. Today I didn't study but I did go to the gym. I consider writing to be part good deed, even if it takes me a minute to get into the space. I was good at work today. Big meeting; my part was easy, easy, easy. (I ended with the phrase, "I've got some work to do." What else can you say when you list all the things you still need to fix?)

Some days I slip. Badly. Some days I call in sick and hide in bed. Some days I *am* sick. Some days I drop everything. Like, on my toes. And figuratively as well.

I love it when I think I did well, and then find out after that I bungled something.

Check, check, recheck. Measure. (Hmmmm.) Tall enough? Strong enough? Smart enough? Loveable? Liveable? Contributing? Helping? Doing the Right Thing?

It is an obsession, I think, to worry about such things. And I think it is also necessary. Otherwise, I'd just watch T.V.