"I've become so numb I can't feel you there
I've become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you"
[Linkin Park, "Numb"]

I've wanted to write for a while but I haven't. Sometimes it was because there wasn't much to say (and there still isn't). Sometimes it wasn't things I wanted to share (and probably still won't). Once it was something that probably needed to be said, but that I wouldn't allow myself to say when I was as angry as I was, lest it wind up something I'd have to later retract. I try not to drive nails and all.

I guess I'll get that out of the way first.

The rules of engagement are not mitigated by self-righteousness. It's why laws are the way they are. They're not guidelines, they're rules. Breaking them has consequences. That someone might deserve to be beaten about the head doesn't mean it's not assault. It might be a good reason, but it's not a good excuse. I'm often wrong. I'm often a complete arsehole. And often I need to be told that. But I need to be told that within the parameters of the rules of engagement, within the confines of the relationship-contract, whatever sort of relationship that might be. Because if I were to break society's laws and punch some asshat who definitely deserved it, it still wouldn't excuse what I did. I might feel justified, but it wouldn't make it right. And if you want to stand on the high moral ground and pronounce your self-righteous judgement, your words ring far clearer when they're not obscured by your own misdeeds.

There, I feel better. Ok, well not really, but I don't see why someone else should have a monopoly on self-righteousness, so at least I've cut myself off a slice. I'm sure things are better this way regardless of whether or not I think someone used it as a cheap excuse to simplify an uncomfortable life situation. I'm not sure what exactly I expected to ever come of that situation anyway. Perhaps I was "playing Jesus to the lepors in my head". Well, for both of us, some other of U2's advice probably fits well: "Find yourself in someone else, don't find yourself in me."

"Don't project
Don't connect
Protect
Don't expect
Suggest
(I feel numb)"
[U2, "Numb"]

I've not rearranged my room in a while. It's too small. There are no other configurations that will work, and certainly none any better.

Once again, those who know and understand me will get what I'm saying, and those who don't, well, sorry, but we can hold onto hope that some day you'll catch up. I'll at least set you on the right path though: it's nothing to do with my discontent with where I'm living, with whom, or with my furnishings. It's everything to do with the rest of my life. The problems inside my room seldom have anything to do with anything inside my room. Shake your head and tell yourself I make no sense. There, he's just talking crazy, don't you feel better already?

The corner into which I've painted myself now has become very tiresome. I'd like to sleep a decent night's sleep, but the combination of weather and stress has made it as elusive as ever. I do sleep, just not properly. It's not restful. It hasn't been for months. It will take two, possibly three, maybe four (the last of which most cannot imagine and which I have trouble envisioning myself) serious life changes to alleviate this situation. I don't expect the third or possible fourth any time soon. I'm working on the first, and after that, I'll move quickly to the second.

Thoroughly confused yet? Think of it like a test. How well do I know Patrick? Grab your pencil and paper children, and write down what the three - maybe four - life changes are. Stash it away, and check back in a few months. See how you've scored. Bonus points for the essay giving a concise explanation of why he obscurely references his bedroom furnishings. Email it to me if you like and I'll tell you your mark out of five, though I won't tell you what's what.

"Laughing now I'm
Stopping now I'm
Reaching out and I'm
Feeling nothing"
[Disturbed, "Numb"]

Something really odd has happened to me in the past few months. I'm not quite sure I understand it, but quite honestly, it frightens me a little.

It's about weights and measures. I don't use conventional weights as measures as much as many. For instance, I don't own scales. I think of my current weight not so much in pounds, as in (a) how I feel, and (b) how my clothes fit, and (c) how I look in the bathroom mirror. I'm well aware that my weight fluctuates up and down in a range from about 190ish to about 205. Not owning a set of scales, I don't know what it is at any given time, but instead I ask myself: Have I been experiencing heartburn or back trouble? If so, I'm gaining weight and approaching 205 again. Do I need a belt with some jeans because they're too large, while others are just snug? If so, the 36s are fitting again, but the 38s are loose. I've been losing weight again. I'm probably approaching 190. When I look in the bathroom mirror.... I think I'll save myself the indignity and not go there.

The point is: that's how I judge my weight.

Whenever I'm feeling ill - fluish, for instance - I judge the degree of my illness not with a thermometer, but with my "manometer". If I'm still thinking lusty thoughts and getting erections, I know my body is still in relatively ok condition, and I'm probably fighting it off. If I'm still getting lusty thoughts but not getting erections, I know I'm getting quite ill and should see a doctor. If I've lost all sexual desire, both physically and mentally, I know I've got serious problems and need serious help.

So my problem lately is this: for the first time in my life, my libido is... half-dormant. I still get physically stimulated. I still get turned on by attractive women, pornography, and so on. But my desire to follow through is practically non-existant. It's not easy to explain quite what I mean, because certain elements of my normally-excessive lust are still there, but others are not. I see an attractive woman. I get turned on. But if she walked up and said "Take me now, big boy", I'd be more inclined to say, "Enh... nah." I would probably fantasize about her later. It's like a large part of me has just given up for now, and decided that a sexual relationship - any sexual relationship, even the most casual no-strings-attached kind of one - is not worth the bother.

Some might say I'm growing up. It feels more like dying. And when I measure it on the "manometer" of illness, it's an unexplained phenomenon. The physical usually drops off for me when I'm ill, long before the mental does. This reversed order, at a time when I'm relatively healthy, can only be the result of another sort of illness, a psychological one. Have I become so stressed, focussed, or unfocussed, that my brain is shutting down? For how long? How do I kick-start it back into action? If I get laid, will it all go away or go back to normal? Will it take a relationship to fix? Can I have a healthy relationship in this state? My brain, my thought patterns, my way of regarding sex all may have entered a whole new mode, and I'm unsure how it works. The (virtual) manometer is broken.

"When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse,
Out of the corner of my eye.
I turned to look but it was gone.
I cannot put my finger on it now.
The child is grown, the dream is gone.
I have become comfortably numb."
[Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"]

And in the end, it all comes back to one thing, one massive roadblock that has paralyzed me for over a year, and has cause this horrid stagnancy in my life. I need a job. I need a job I enjoy, and where I can express myself, dealing with people I like, and doing something I don't mind doing. From there, everything else proceeds.

This disgusts and infuriates me, and the fact that I'm so terrible at correcting it only serves to disgust and infuriate me more, and at myself. It bothers me that the rest of my life must proceed from there, since I do not, nor have I ever, nor will I ever, want it to be the focal point or purpose of my life. I do not anticipate "my life's work" actually coinciding with "what I do for a living". I envision "what I do for a living" being exactly, and nothing more than, just that - what I do to earn enough money to get by, so that I can do the things I enjoy, find my truer purpose, and pursue that. I know that's not the life model so many of us have been raised to believe, but I'm not my job, and I'm definitely not my fuckin' khakis, with thanks to Tyler Durden. And I'm not even sure what that truer purpose is, only what it involves: expression. It involves ideas. It involves one or more ideas. I don't know whether or not I'll have one or one hundred. I don't know whether I'll teach one person or one hundred. I don't know whether I'll be the next Albert Einstein, or, more likely, the next unnamed first physics teacher that got that child interested and showed him the basics. I'll settle for either: I expect the idea to be bigger than myself.

I live to inspire.

But I have to "make a living" first. Perhaps once I do, people will stop asking me what I "do for a living", or I can at least skip past that answer more quickly and get to the real issues: What do I really do for a purpose?