Big in Japan

Sitting on an air mattress that I swear they wouldn't let a prisoner in the U.S. sleep on, in a house where my voice echoes because it is practically empty, I still look pretty damn good on paper, which is sad, and kind of an insult to paper.  There is some threshold between a complete lack of gratitude for what one has, and enough dissatisfaction with the same to force change, that I have been teeter-tottering with for as long as I can remember.  From time to time I indulge and look at pictures, read cards, emails, look at the various official (and usually wooden) pro-forma official expressions of gratitude and I think, damn, you're welcome America.  I also think, hey, maybe that's enough, you've done enough.

I haven't been capable to date of achieving any semblance of balance and the older I get, the more demanding the work role has become and the more diminished my life outside of that has become.  I was never a big people fan but until now, that was mostly a social thing.  I am almost never going to show up at an optional group gathering over 5 people.  That has never been my jam and I don't see that changing.  Now however, it isn't social, I sincerely don't like most people anymore.  There are people in my life that I think, 'if we were dating, we would have broken up long before now.  Why do we insist on forcing this?'  I find myself thinking in a way I never thought I would which is to keep contact warm in case I need them for something but otherwise let the distance that is already there just settle without insisting too much.  I find myself realizing how little of my life they were actually a part of.  I see myself as the one plugging into their lives, they did not plug into mine or really know much about it.  I want new friends.  I don't think I will find them but I hope to at least build a better circle.  People with whom I actually have intersecting interests instead of a series of lovely people that I essentially explain myself to constantly, who think I am missing something, and that they know what I am missing (a man, a hobby, a god, a workout...).  I am missing nothing.  I am doing the same thing you are doing, making it up as I go along, feeling self-satisfied and smug when I think I've figured something out, and wrestling with it all while looking like I've got my shit together on paper.