"this is how
it begins
push it away but it all comes back again
all the flesh
all the sin
there was a time when it used to mean just about everything
just like now"
[Nine Inch Nails, "Please"]

I woke up early this morning from a dream about Jenny. I'd been doing a good job of putting her out of my head lately, of focussing on the future, of the endless possibilities of new and exciting women to meet and date, and on the hope of meeting that Special Someone^TM we all want to find, and which I damn well deserve.

No, you're not experiencing deja vu. I am. I made the mistake of going to bed right after reading an Email from my ex-girlfriend, and woke up from a rather x-rated dream about her. I've been having a lot of x-rated thoughts and dreams of late, most of which haven't been about her, but some of which still are. Overall, I've had an incredibly high sex drive, though I don't know if it's entirely sex-for-sex's-sake.

I think sometimes I must be a sex addict of sorts. Whenever I'm bored, I think of sex. Whenever I'm feeling lonely, I think of sex. When I'm stressed, I usually want to have sex to unwind, and when I've got something on my mind that I just don't want to think about, I tend to distract myself with thoughts of sex. I think I find comfort in sex simply because it's the one and only thing that ever seems to consume my whole brain at once. I can be doing almost anything else and still thinking (and stressing) over something entirely unrelated, but when my mind is fully focussed on sex, it's the one time the rest of it gets edged out. I can sit at supper and talk about one thing while thinking about something entirely different. I can follow a movie while pondering mysteries of the universe. But when I'm hot and sweaty and rolling around with someone else, the only thing that's usually in my head is, well, one of their delicate pink body-parts.

I don't know quite how I came to be this way. Perhaps it's hormonal. Perhaps it's a consequence of my youth. Perhaps I'm not at all strange and every man is like this; I don't quite know. But however it came to be, there it is.

I was chatting with a female acquiantance today, and considering, as I have many times these past few days, whether I'm ready for a relationship right now or not. The thing is, I know I definitely want the sex, the companionship, the comfort even, but whether I'm ready for the stress (and bliss) that comes from feeling deeply for someone I don't know. I realize most people probably scratch their heads at reading that - after all, wouldn't it be some time before those feelings came anyway? Well, that certainly should be the case, but I've come to find in my many years that while I am perfectly capable of having a "casual" relationship if it is decidedly that, when it's not decidedly that I do tend to develop feelings fairly quickly.

"I love recklessly," I once said of myself. I was told that was a great thing, to be such a passionate person. I insisted it's both a blessing and a curse. Few people get upset over me having passionate feelings for them. (I'd like to think being loved by me is a good thing, after all.) But when times comes for those feelings to end, perhaps because they are unrequited, that self-same passion that was once so fulfilling for me suddenly becomes very painful. Passion is like fire. It can warm your home, or burn it to the ground. I burn hot. Sometimes I burn up. Sometimes I burn out.

So besides all online-personals I've been considering, which have mostly been relationship-oriented women 26-36, I've also begun to consider if maybe I should just land myself something simpler, something less serious, something just fun. Perhaps dating a younger woman off and on, for a little companionship, fun times, and (hopefully) a little sex, would be just what I need right now. With a future still uncertain, trying to accomplish all 3 of my miracles in a short span might not be the best use of my energy anyway. If I did have something simple and casual going, I could focus my real efforts on my career and living situations, and then once they stabilized, decide whether I am ready to go forward with a relationship or not (with that person or someone else). I'm also getting very sick of explaining to strangers online what my job situation is. Every woman over 30 wants to know in the first 5 minutes if I'm employed or not. Reasonably so, I guess. I just wish sometimes that the old-fashioned ideal of passion were actually true, and that my yearly salary shouldn't be a consideration in whether a woman thinks she can love me or not. Hmph. And then, even if I did choose to go the "simple, casual" route, it's not like that sort of relationship is going to simply fall into my lap any easier than something more serious would. I still have to figure out who and how, and while I can think of one attractive young woman I'd love to have for supper this evening (no pun intended), I've no idea if she's really interested in that either. "That either." Me. I've no idea if she's interested in having that sort of relationship with me.

It's still hard to decide. I go back and forth on this daily. I can say with certainty that, being 'Life's what happens while you're making other plans.' (John Lennon), regardless of what I decide or how I feel at a given moment, if opportunity (for a relationship with Special Someone^TM) comes a-knocking, I'll be certain to answer the door. Life's too short not to.

In the meantime, I've been slowly building up this site and pondering things to write about. I got wind today of a possible job opportunity for me (in the IT field) that I can look into tomorrow, joined the Writer's Alliance last night (just have to mail them a cheque that's already written and sitting on my desk, need to find a damn envelope), and submitted a (sad, heartfelt, recently-written) poem to the Arts and Letters competition this afternoon. (It's not posted here on the site, as I cannot display it publicly until after the 14th - contest rules - but I'll put it up soon.) I might write a short story, a poem, or a bit of erotica this evening if I don't get up to something more exciting. I have been thinking and re-thinking the idea of putting the erotica up on the website, for a number of reasons. For instance, while they are all works of fiction, they are all fantasies of my own, inspired by real women I knew (and in many cases dated), and they do reveal a great deal about my own sexual predilections. So they might be fiction, but they're still personal on many levels. Perhaps I should just pen something more anonymous, or maybe re-write them a little less directed.

I still have to get to my sister Susan's to check out the possible living arrangements there, but in my mind I've pretty much decided that I'll be going to Dave's if that's still cool with him. Unless I land a job really quickly, in which case I might actually stay here. I hate moving. I love my privacy. I was just gearing this place up into my "bachelor pad" too. Be a shame to have to leave it, even if the downtown late-night noise does still drive me bonkers many nights. (I thought I'd finally gotten used to it up until lately, and then it somehow got noisier.)

No miracle just yet, but I'm working on it. Inching ever forward. "The journey of a thousand miles..."