This time, I thought, it will be different. This time, I will not cower inside the cell of my own doubts while fear and uncertainty stand vigilant sentry. This time, if I fail, there will be a reason.

Those might have been the last coherent thoughts that I had today.

I don't know how those turtles do it. Stick their necks out like that all the time.

But it's something that I had to do, if things were truly going to be different.

So I did it.

Too soon, people will say.

Better than too late, I will respond.

And now I wait.

You failed again, people will say.

At least I tried this time, I will respond.

Yesterday I was poking around The Dilbert Blog, which might be more accurately called The Scott Adams Blog but then it might only get a zillionth of the traffic it gets.

Seriously, this guy could trip over his cat, fall on his keyboard, and the resulting post would net ten thousand hits and one thousand comments.

Anyway, I really like it. Scott Adams writes the way I wish I wrote. He writes the way things sound in my head.

So I was reading an old entry about affirmations, which is this deal where you write down something that you want to accomplish and it comes true. Specifically, you write down your goal fifteen times a day for at least six months. And then it comes true.

You write, for example, I will cure cancer. You write that fifteen times a day for six months, and then you cure cancer.

Sounds pretty fishy, right?

Shouldn't that be Smells pretty fishy? I don't know. Or care.

I decided to give these affirmations thingies a try. What's the worst that could happen? That they wouldn't work. That I wouldn't achieve whichever goal I was trying to achieve.

Well, whichever goal I chose would be one that I wasn't achieving anyway, so there's no loss. Try to keep up please.

The decision to do the affirmations having been made, I had one final choice.

Which goal should I pick?

The cure cancer one is too obvious. I bet a lot of people are already doing that one. I'd hate to waste my affirmations on something only to find out that some prick had already achieved my goal.

In fact, I figured that most of the selfless goals like the cancer one and world peace were already taken. So I needed to find something more personal.

I toyed briefly with improbable goals like I will find a gazillion dollars, and seemingly impossible goals like I will understand women, and countless others, but none really jumped out to me as the goal which would be worth the effort of writing it down fifteen times a day for six months.

I was getting frustrated with myself, and I went to the kitchen to refill my soda.

And I tripped over my dick.

Again.

After that, I realized that the choice was easy.

So I grabbed my pen, and I opened my new affirmations-only notebook to the first page, and I wrote.

I will stop tripping over my dick.

I wrote that fifteen times.

I even wrote the date at the top of the page, though I don't think that's an official part of the affirmations rule. I just thought it made the whole thing look more official.

If this works for me, then I'll finally be rid of a curse that's plagued me since puberty.

I'll keep you posted.

I've got nothing to say tonight.

I'm all tapped out from another project.

Maybe tomorrow I'll write something brilliant.

Everybody can start holding their breath now.

I think what would be a good thing to do, if you were a car thief, would be if you always replaced the car you stole with a little Matchbox version of the same car.

People would be like Woah, somebody stole my car! And then they'd see the Matchbox car and be like Wait, it's not stolen, it's just been turned into a Matchbox!

And they'd never report it to the police because who'd believe that their car had been turned into a Matchbox?

Somebody told me today that I shouldn't censor myself here. This was well-intentioned advice from a person who, I'm assuming, doesn't have a blog out here for the world to see. A person who, I'm assuming, doesn't have to live with the fact that they're basically standing in a fishbowl with their pants around their ankles while friends and enemies and strangers all point and make judgments and assumptions.

As I said, well-intentioned advice. Just not particularly doable. Or not not doable, since I'm talking about not doing something. Wait, that makes no sense either. Where's a good grammar coach when I need one?

There are many reasons why I feel the need to censor myself here. All of those reasons have at their root, at their very beginnings, the same mistakes. I made mistakes here when I first started doing this. I made this my blog. I used my real name. I let people know about it.

And now they read the fucking thing. What could I have been thinking?

Joe Blow and Jane Doe in, say, San Diego don't know or care about the people behind the nicknames I use here. MixedSignalGirl is a love interest in a story to them. LaptopGirl is another, more mysterious, character. WomanRepellant is, to most of my readers, no different than Norm on Cheers. SassyGirl was a minor character who's contract ended and wasn't renewed. I could go on and on.

To Joe Blow and Jane Doe, none of those people are real at all. Hell, I'm barely real to them. I'm just the protagonist in this rambling story.

But guess what. All of those people are real. To me, and to themselves. Sometimes to each other.

And so I censor myself. Because some of the people reading are, get this - the same people I'm writing about.

The person who advised me to not censor myself?

BadPickleGirl.

There, see? I've already said too much. People will read that and know that I talked to her today. What if that gets her into trouble? It's none of the world's business that I talked to her today, but there it is anyway.

It's also none of the world's business that I kinda like BadPickleGirl but, now that information is available for everyone to read and know.

For her to read and know.

Oops.

I censor myself because it's the right thing to do.

I should, if anything, do a better job of it.

Maybe tomorrow I'll start working on it.

Women are strange.

They're also delightful and confusing and beautiful and aggravating and soft.

But mostly they're just strange.

I've mentioned before how I tend to migrate from room to room at night. Master bedroom to guest bedroom to living room to master bedroom, and so on.

I'm guessing that this behavior must be related to stress.

My cats and I have several little parades a night sometimes. MixedSignalGirl used to join in the parades, but eventually she wised up and she'd run on ahead to make sure she ended up with "her" side of the bed. Then she wised up even more and she just stayed where she was because, chances were, we'd all be back before the night was over anyway. Now she's wised up completely and wants nothing to do with me.

Anyway, I guess that last night I screwed something up. I remember going to bed in the guest room, and I remember waking up on the sofa in the living room. But I also remember waking up sometime during the night in my master bedroom sleeping on a pile of clean laundry.

That's what did it, I'm sure.

I fubared my back.

I suspect that the advanced yoga position I must have attained to be able to sleep with the laundry and the cats did something to a nerve or something, since this morning I could barely walk.

So I shuffled in to work because I had some shit that couldn't be put off, then I took the second half of the day off. Once home, I mostly just took a very hot bath and then slept.

Now my back feels a little better. I'd like to get a heating pad for it. Or maybe I could borrow one of my grandmother's old walkers.

I want to say something now.

I shouldn't say anything. There are those who would say that I haven't yet earned the right to say anything.

Well, those people are wrong. Mostly wrong anyway. So I'm going to say something. But, out of respect for someone who hasn't yet earned my respect, I'm not going to say what I really want to say.

What I'm instead going to say is this:

I quit playing that particular game a long time ago. I lost every single fucking time, and I never once had fun. I have no desire to ever play that game again.

There, I feel better now. I guess.

And the really cool thing is if anyone asks me what the fuck I'm talking about, I can make up some bullshit. Or not. I guess it'll depend on how much bullshit I get thrown my way first.

I hate it when my most recent entry sucks, so I'm writing this one which hopefully sucks less.

Somebody last night - I think it was one of the PBDs in a moment of alcohol-induced pseudo-wisdom, made the following observation:

You should just follow your heart, and do the right thing.

Head started to nod up and down in unison like commuters on a bumpy bus ride - imagery which looks much better in my head than it does on my screen.

Such a sage suggestion! Such worldly wisdom! Such axiomatic advice!

Such babbling bullshit!

I had to put a stop to it before people started getting whiplash.

"But what if following your heart and doing what's right are mutually exclusive?" I offered. "Remember that hearts are stupid and selfish. It's very rare for them to be right about anything. What if you're always finding yourself being forced to choose between following your heart and doing what's right?"

That stopped the bobbing.

"Well then that's pretty fucked-up," someone responded.

Indeed.

After Friday's um, interesting scenery, Saturday was back to the same old same old at Rich O's.

Strangers and weirdoes. Assholes and idiots.

They were having some kind of fancy music thingy in the special people area, and society's elite took advantage of the opportunity to look down on us beer-drinking trolls. So that was fun.

When I arrived, a little before 8:00, It was pretty crowded. I didn't know anyone except at the island, which was full of regulars. But since it was full I had to sit on the loveseat and get gawked at by a couple of weirdoes who were sitting on the sofa.

I had a yummy Rogue Smoke (370).

After about a million years, during which absolutely nothing happened, some assholes came and sat with us in the living room area. Luckily a space had opened up at the island by then, so I picked up my shit and moved over there.

I had another Rogue Smoke (390).

I spent the rest of the night emailing RockGirl and talking with MusicalHippyDude. I tried to call HatGirl, to she what she was doing, but I fell asleep during the epic masterpiece that she uses instead of a ringer on her phone. Oh well. I would have called NotHideousGirl but I don't have her number on my new Blackberry. Oh well.

Let's see. I heard an interesting story about SuperShitHead which further confirmed the appropriateness of that particular nickname. I talked to one of the PBD ladies about this secret school for smart kids. MusicalHippyDude told me that I had "The gift of pen" which I decided to take as a compliment.

After several million more years during which nothing happened, I went to White Castle and then came home.

And now it's 7:45 in the morning and I have to work for another hour or so.

Yippee.