If you love something, you are probably wasting your time.

She hasn't done anything wrong, but this isnt working for me and I don't want it anymore.

She can be wonderful for someone else. I can go back to being lonely because I'm alone, not because i feel unwanted.

All will be right in the world. As right as it ever gets, anyway.

Now to get it over with and get on with life.

"The cheese is named after the city of Gouda not because it was produced in or around that city, but because it was traded there.^[4] In the Middle Ages, Dutch cities could obtain certain feudal rights which gave them primacy or a total monopoly on certain goods. Within the County of Holland, Gouda acquired market rights on cheese, the sole right to have a market in which the county's farmers could sell their cheese. All the cheeses would be taken to the market square in Gouda to be sold. Teams consisting of the guild of cheese-porters, identified by differently colored straw hats, carried the farmers' cheeses on barrows, which typically weighed about 16 kg. Buyers then sampled the cheeses and negotiated a price using a ritual system called handjeklap in which buyers and sellers clap each other's hands and shout prices. Once a price was agreed upon, the porters would carry the cheese to the weighing house and complete the sale.<sup>[5]"

Gouda accounts for roughly half of all global cheese consumption, and according to wiki it's pretty fuckin' whimsical.</sup>

I wonder what happens when the views hit 10,000. Guess we'll see.

I was just re-reading shit from the last time I wrote here instead of in the notebook I've been using, and it's fucking amazing to see that pretty much everything I'm saying now is just a more refined version of the same shit I was saying a few months ago, which was a more refined version of the same shit I was saying what, ten years ago, which is probably the same shit I was writing back when I had piles of notebooks.

I'm glad I've evolved and developed so much in my life, really changed for the better and generally just been a dynamic, interesting person.

Fuck, man. Peak mediocrity.

Also, from a few months ago:

"I need one of them tattoo'd animal shelter chicks who cries about how mean people are to ants or something. A radical shift in the exact opposite direction things have been."

I mean that's actually pretty close, putting aside obvious exaggeration, lmao.

Turns out I have no idea what to do with one of those and what I need is a person sized pillow that gives you dreams about watching netflix with the perfect woman or something.

Or one that just shoots you up and makes you all warm for a few hours. That sounds much lower tech and possible to accomplish.

I bet there's a huge fucking market for that. Both those things, the dream pillow or the old blanket with some needles stuffed in it.

This is the worst.

There's nothing wrong. Work is ok. I got the girl and she's fun and normal and really just great. I'm unhappy with my living situation right this second, but it's objectively not that bad. I haven't really been drinking, just smoking a little too much, and smoking too many cigarettes, but all in all I'm pretty good on that front.

Pretty much nothing is objectively great. The job is shit and entry level, the girl is much too far out of  my league to stick around and it's pretty evident that she won't, the living situation isn't objectively that good either. I haven't been drinking only because it just bums me out, and I've been smoking just because it makes me a little more realistic and introspective on why I'm bummed out (which, I mean, is sometimes much better and sometimes much worse), but it is, in the end, probably making things much worse.

I have some good friends. I don't like most of them, or just can't deal with their dramatic shit regularly, but they aren't bad people and probably do care about me a little.

And so on and so on. I just fucking hate it. This is the worst. This is peak mediocrity and I didn't even think that concept could exist.

I don't want to do this anymore but I don't know what to do.

The real problem is that as a human, I just don't really fit. I don't know what else I'd fit as, but I'm just not like these people, even the ones I have things in common with.

And while I'm rational enough to realize a lot of people probably feel like this, it doesn't mean you can fit with those people, because that could well be the only commonality.

I'm tired of it, man. And I think everything else wrong with me in the sense of getting depressed really just stems from that feeling. Or maybe it doesn't. I don't know, I don't think there's anything more than just gut feeling to go with on that, or any way to be more sure.

I wonder if there's a pill for this somewhere. A little orange thing that turns you into everyone else and lets you relate and just kinda float around through life. I don't want to exist like this anymore, but it's not like I don't want to exist, period, and I think I'd take well to some kind of autopilot setting.

Actually, what I'm thinking of sounds a lot like opiates. It would be great to just be able to feel stoned as fuck and watching the show while your body just does everything for you.

Maybe I'll try some anti-depressants and see what happens there. Even if it doesn't get you stoned, maybe it will autopilot a bit.

I have a handful of real things to worry about anyway. I should probably stop being such a bitch and get to work on the affect-able things like finding a new place to rent.

The River of Dreams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo_vn_Ilsu8

Her name means River.

Things didn't work out. But I feel good. I'd say they might still, but that's not what I feel good about, nor to I feel good about those odds.

I did the right thing.

Anyway.

I realized I don't look at love the same way other people do.

I don't think you fall in love. I think you fall out of it.

The usual way it seems to work for people is that they meet. They spend time together. They build something, and they find something they love about that thing, about each other, that they put in effort and dedication to keep and protect. It's progressive, and I can see why it's the way it works.

But it doesn't make sense to me. It's not how I work, I guess.

I fall in love with everyone, every minute of the day. I find something that just makes me shine, something that I see and go "wow, that's it. Right there." And that pushes me forward, it gives me this overwhelming drive to be around that sparkle, to be able to share in it. To be part of why it happens.

And usually, I get to. And it's always awesome. For a while.

Here's where love comes in. After a while, it seems like that shine usually dulls up a little, and while I usually try to polish it back out, it's difficult to make something old and everyday seem bright and novel.

Love, real love, for me, is always finding that thing novel, no matter what. Never not shining just because things are always shining.

Lisa said for her, it was like breathing. Despite our differences in what we want out of life, I think that's a good way of putting it, and actually pretty close to my line of thinking. She's a clever one.

Of course, both statements imply there's no work involved in this, which isn't the case. There's always going to be something. And people can always change.

But I think so long as you never lose sight of the glow, things work.

I don't think anything is happening with this, now, but I think if I'm wrong, and it does, things will work. I'd rather do things the right way, to try to make sure it plays out that way if it plays at all, than to just play around because it's a chance to be in the game.

That's what I think love is, anyway.

But here's what it actually looks like these days, because my beer is a little bitter, and it imbues a guy with that trait pretty easily. Let's turn to the more realistic side of this situation, and just the way existence allows for things in general, lately.

It sucks to even bother to worry. Or think. Or try. Like. What's the point?

Everyone can shine somehow, everyone can look right, not everyone, or rather, nearly no one, can keep it up. Not in the long term.

Anyone can keep it up for a night. Easily.

And that's amazing in it's own way. It's permanent. That one night light, it doesn't really dim or go out, because it exists alone. It's separate from reality. It's just a splinter of a moment that gets left behind when everyone is finished up and out the door. And it's all that gets left behind.

There's a beauty there, in what is left and taken.

When you let someone stay the night, or the day, or the week, or the year, you are opening a very different door for yourself. No one who is leaving is just leaving a good memory behind, and no one who enters is doing so just for that potential.

You're opening you. and anyone who comes in is going to see you, and everything that happens from there on out is going to, in some way, be about you.

When it's only one night, it's not like anyone actually really knows you. So they leave a shine.

When it's not, then you can't deny they did. And then they just leave you.

So really. Love.

Behind the building with Katie the Bartender doesn't seem like the worst place to find it sometimes.

The last couple posts have all been very preemptive.

I'm not sure why I have this anymore, truly. I guess because I'm just not used to not.

I probably could have helped you. I won't say saved, but maybe, just for this one moment, it might not be that far off.

But you're not one who can help me, and I don't think you really want to.

That's ok. I don't really want it anymore. I'm better this way anyway.

So, apparently that was a second to last post. Here's why:

Tonight everything worked out for me. See, there's this woman. And she is incredible, and always has been.

And I now know she's in to me.

And I'm so sure I will fuck it up and wreck things and lose her forever and all the usual.

But here's the deal.

After I found out she was in to me, all those thoughts flashed through my head. And then I thought "well shit, I can't even talk about this to the person I would usually tell it to, because that's her".

But then I realized I didn't. That's a big part of why I want this, and that's a big part of why it's incredible.

Nothing's changed, we just have a much better chance of sharing the same bed now.

Being into your best friend. Now that's amazing.

This one is about you, if you somehow couldn't have guessed.