I took a walk. Not a long one, maybe just a couple of miles. To the end of my road and back. It was a little chilly, and a little drizzly at times, but it was still nice. As an unexpected bonus, I got to pet a kitty in the gas station parking lot.

I never did get anywhere, though. Not really.

RockGirl was telling me about a movie she'd seen, with a quote that went something like, "half the people are running toward happiness, and the others are running away from sadness."

I like that quote. I'm not really sure where I fit into it. Usually I feel like I'm just spinning in place. Sometimes I get dizzy.

I think that tonight, I was walking away from something. I had two ideas for blog entries. I didn't really want to write either of them. Both are bad ideas, but both need to be said.

I walked, like I said, for a couple of miles. It wasn't nearly far enough. I never escaped these ideas. They followed me. They're still here.

So, apparently, Pizza Hut is now hiring disabled people to take phone orders. Good for them, I guess.

Before this, I was pretty sure that I'd seen every possible misspelling of my last name. Even the infamous Sililililitz from 1986.

For an added chuckle compare the phone number to my actual number.

People ask me. All the damn time, they ask me.

I tell them that I don't know. Then, in a somewhat firmer voice, I state that I don't want to talk about it.

That second part is kind of a lie. The insistence in my voice is as much for my own benefit as it is for my interrogators.

Because, I do want to talk about it. I want another pair of ears to hear the story. I want another brain to process the information. I want another pair of lips to, I suppose, explain to me that which I haven't been able to explain to myself. I want, maybe even need, a different perspective.

I desperately want to talk about it.

But, I don't. I'm trying to be a nice guy, after all. Deserved or not, I'm trying.

So, I don't talk about. I pretend that my silence is my choice, but it's not. I don't talk about it because she doesn't like it when I talk about it. And I don't blame her for that. I'd be the same way, in her situation. Whatever that might be.

That first part, however, from way back at the beginning of this stupid entry, is the truth; I really don't know what's going on.

I have my suspicions and opinions, though. And I don't like them very much.

And I really really really wish that I didn't care. My life would be so much easier, if I could just stop caring.

But, I do care. I suspect that I will always care.

That suspicion scares the shit out of me.

Yeah, I'm awake again. Been that way for a couple of hours. So I got five hours of sleep. That should be enough, even for the long day ahead of me. Heck, it might even help to get me back onto a normal schedule.

In a few hours I get to drive to Bumfuck, Egypt, to attend my uncle's funeral. There seems to me some confusion, at least on my part, about exactly when the thing is happening. Either noon or 11:00. So I'll show up in time for either schedule.

That will all eat about four hours out of my day, I think. Then I have a dinner date with HatGirl! Yay! That will be nice. It's been a long time. I hope she doesn't cancel on me again.

Then, I dunno. Maybe Rich O's will be safe. I doubt it, though.

Okay, so I wrote this back in 1996:

A million times.

Disappointment times a million.

It never fades. It never gets any easier. It always astounds me with its intensity.

Someday, it will end.

Someday, in a portion of a fraction of an instant, disappointment will transform into joy.

Until then, disappointment will be my reason for living. My purpose. My destiny. My fucking calling.

After that, well I guess I'll have to wait and see what happens after that.

Anyway, that one sentence - the one about joy?

Hope is what caused me to write that sentence.

I miss having a reason to write sentences like that.

Maybe someday, somehow, I'll have another reason...

Damn. There I go again, having stupid hope.

I find this mood, every now and then. It's a little hard to describe, but I'll try. It's not like I've got anything better to do.

For the longest time, I was that guy. Everyone who knows me, and some who don't, know what I mean by that. I was that guy who...who...who...

Well, I guess I don't want to say it. It's been said a million times already, and its always fallen on deaf ears. Deaf and doubting and disbelieving ears. I won't say that my words were wasted, but that's probably just because I'm being stubborn. If I wasted the words, then I wasted my life. And I don't want to say that. Not yet.

So anyway, there I was, being that guy, and then, then I wasn't anymore. I was someone else.

I mean, I am someone else.

But I'm not sure who, exactly.

I spend an inordinate amount of time searching for clues to my identity. I search my heart, my mind. Sometimes, I search the bottom of a glass. Sometimes, I drive to South Carolina or Covington or Nashville. I fly to Las Vegas. I search and I search, but I elude myself. As I've written before, I'm a slippery bastard.

Every now and then, not as often as I'd like but more often than I'd expect, I find myself in a certain mood. It's the mood I'm in right now.

It's not that I've given up, on this quest for myself. It's not even like I've taken a break. It's more like, like it just slips my mind. Like I forget for a while. I forget, not only that I've changed, but that I exist in the first place.

I'm a disinterested spectator of my own existence.

It's a peaceful mood, but a little boring.

Of course, by writing this entry, I've reminded myself that I don't know who I am anymore. So the search renews. Maybe I'll go out to my garage for a while. There might be storms tonight, and who knows?

Maybe I'm already out there, waiting to be found.