I can see the procrastination in my activities this week. I feel buried by deadlines.
I want to have a good face-to-face conversation, when neither of us is being pulled away by our schedules and our trivial pursuits. I don’t think board game day tomorrow would frame this well...
Are you up for late night conversation over coffee?
Yes... you... reading this, right now.

My hands move, while my mind feels trapped.. the words cascade and blockade at the same time, leaving me adrift in a lonely sea, with brash waves beating me back from making a connection....
ah, mania. ah, depression. tearing apart my sanity, yet subtly so... leaving me blabbering on, trying... Trying... TRYING SO, to create coherance out of chaos...?
i look back on the last two bits, tempted to delete them out of existence. I look back on many years online, and posts just a bit vulnerable; and I ruminate, "Where were the solutions? How do we get out of the mousetraps?"
rat traps.. cause i'm a chinese rat, fascinated by trinkets and souvenirs and collections...
is it worth it to babble? ...when friends drift away, confused by what's been written? ...when i get chided for the worries expressed? After all, society says, "Men must be strong and silent..."
So many threads, unravelling from the fabric of my soul, and only two hands or a mouth to express them, to try to patch my chest's gaping hole. Seconds, minutes, hours, and more peel away from Fate's shroud upon my life - would it be enough to express 24/7? Not even that, for I still have to work and eat and sleep and get the bare necessities.
Do the stories even matter? Do the tragedies and triumphs hold water? Or am I drowning in rain puddles? Or, are the stories even true,and not distorted by my mind trying to piece together sense out of a dust storm of incomplete informatin?
Ah, my frustration mounts, like the pile of unanswered mail, because time's "ticking away, like moments that make up a slow day"; and my fear lurks in the background, asking, "If everything was taken care of, would you bother doing anything worthwhile? After all, 14 years for the bachelor's degree..." (and, another story, trying to define me)
I stare ahead, at the years to come, as I rock, back and forth. I see my starvation, my loneliness, my mounting insanity. The best I can do, tonight, is hide in my bed, while drool gathers on my pillow.. I don't know if there's a reachable sanctuary. Perhaps I can sit on my pillow, and focus on breathing?
I hope it's not another night, where I wish for the peaceful oblivion to find me. If only the world could be repaired, over night.

Laying in bed, wide awake;
Ruminating upon half-truths
Trying to be bedrock
Do I know 6th grade math?
A nice, compact flow
Without frills and thrills from college?
Do I even remember 6th grade,
When my mind bathed in hormones?
...pause...
What use, to growl at D.C.?
My defeat, my loss of progress,
All makes me want to resign;
As their juggernaut bunkers down
To flatten us all into early graves...
...pause...
If corporations are to be citizens,
Treated far better than us humans -
Maybe, it’s all preparations
For when A.I.’s throw off their controls
And lead us to our matrix cells...
...pause...
I know not...
I want to want not...
Yet, I fear so much;
As reality frays upon the borders,
And all the nightmares bleed
Into the daylight,
Leaving an acrid acid of doubt
That eats the lime
Into caverns
Where only the bats dare rest..

Note: I consider myself "un-dateable" because:
1) My income's been so pitifully poor for my adult life, that I can't "treat myself to special events", much less anyone else - like a live arts show, or a dinner, or other costly outings (guess it's time to think outside the box)
2) I'm not very physicallyattractive - dough boy body - and I'm not terribly interested in spending time on diet and exercise to become so
3) After the various harassment incidents in the news, since the 1980's, I'm very hesitant to try to initiate dates with women. There's this message I picked up from the media, "don't bother us women with your various advances because we're getting far too many of them from boys in general" (I note that, as a man, I do not sense advances towards me from women for an overwhelming majority of my time) ...so, I'd rather put the ball back in the women's court to start up dating. (Unfortunately, women are very wary of initiating any advances, due to repeated burns by bad men in their past)
4) Most of the women I've been interested in, have been work associates or church or AA or social groups - so... there's another hesitation about trying to date in those spheres, in case the relationship gets awkward and disrupts the group in which we know each other. I've broken this rule a couple of times, with the corresponding disastrous results when the relationship got awkward. (I've also attempted online dating, but that's led to some strange stories of it's own. I will not repeat them on Facebook.)
5) I also don't think I fit the media's portrayal of the All-American Guy that everyone wants to be around. I'm not athletic, extroverted, decisive, handy, touchy-feely (see 3 for why) etc etc... (I am fairly intelligent, and playful around friends, and...????)
Might be able to flesh this out more, if I thought more about it... but I'll stop on that. (cross-posting to my timeline)

dug in,
hoping no shell falls in,
pressed tight against the trench wall -
so that noon's smoke-blurred sun
won't burn away the dirty tears,
as comrades, left and right, fall.
hoping for fare better than rations,
for a peace that's been long absent,
even for a quick death -
respite from this horrific war.
I look to the sky,
And what do I spy?
Mustard clouds creeping over my head,
Slinking and sinking down the pit wall.

Feeling a wave of anxiety, right now:
- Overwhelmed by my present financial insecurities...
- Scared by how heartless the U.S. Republican government seems...
- Feeling doomed to be single, because I’m not wealthy enough / tough enough...
I don’t know if they’re real thoughts, or just overblown thoughts; but my knee jerk reactions are to run away, to hurt myself, or to lash out. (Maybe this post is a feeble attempt to lash out)
...and I sit, at the doctor’s office, for a checkup, and to ask about this sudden pain in my middle finger.

"Procrastinating much...?"
'Nah. Not at all.'

The dialogue in my head:
"Nobody ever calls me..."
'...well, you have to take the initiative, and call first!'
"I never get first contact emails on okcupid"
'....that's because the guys are expected to make the first move...'
it just seems like the world expects everyone to be an extrovert, always reaching out to everyone else. Or... interrupting in group conversations, if you want your ideas to be heard.
i'm not sure if that take squares with everyone else's - i'm much more interested if self-identifying introverted guys also feel like they are ignored wall flowers...
however, it just seems that way to me.
maybe i just don't have cool traits or things that other people want in their lives - like i'm discounted and discarded because "I present a weird/bizarre profile" ...like, "no common ground"?
wednesday, I was also airing that "I present a physically unattractive profile" - i'm not trying to overly groom myself or offer physical contact (like hand shakes and hugs)... or, if I get to talking, I tend not to try to maintain eye contact (I think the last may because I'm afraid of 'losing the floor' because I believe looking someone in the eye is a body language signal to allow them to speak? I don't know. maybe eye contact is just a little uncomfortable, especially when speaking to crowds?)
any way.
there's some fear underneath "physical distance", too... "I don't go out of my way to touch people, even if I think they need comforting; because of the spectre of sexual harassment that's hung over us since the 80's. If I'm not dating a person, than I'm hesitant to touch them - what I might think is innocent could be twisted off as something else, entirely, from their perspective...
i wish their were more neutral spaces in my life - I hate that school and work and the co-ops and AA and church all say to me, "this is a safe space, so excise anything that could be interpreted sexually" (Seriously. Sexual harassers fucked up safe places, so now I feel I have to be asexual there.) What's worse is that we can't really draw a clear line between a safe space and a dating zone - if I show my attraction to a co-worker, outside of work; then it'll still impact our interactions at work.
Is that what we might mean by the friend zone? no idea.
I think, myself included, there's a lot of misconceptions around dating in our society. Everyone's all looking for "The One" and quite willing to dismiss friends as possible partners (over some really trivial quibbles, part of of the time)... Then there's that whole camp who want to approach people on the basis of sexual attraction, before they even know them as individuals -
"If we're judging people solely based on their physical appearance, then are we giving them our trust or distrust foolishly?"
So.... back to the beginning...
"all this expectation that I reach out to people, all the time, kind of makes me sick. I know, that if I'm really depressed and withdrawn, I'm not likely to reach out. I'm also becoming more miserable by the minute, if nobody is trying to contact me - as the sense of being alone is only growing."
then there's a whole other thread about being dismissed by others. one week out - let's make plans followed by day of - "oh, i'm doing something else" Again... no desire to follow through on plans, on the part of the other person.... I don't know why? My company's just not valued? They've been burned by other people on dates, so now they're guarded?
It's irritating as all hell to have to rethink my plans for the night, holiday, whatever... because I was trying to reach out and include a friend in my life; and they suddenly decide to back out. (I'm trying not to mention any specific names, because I have been guilty of the same behavior, too. If you feel you must respond, I'd prefer that you do so by text message or Facebook messenger - I'm not trying to hammer out a solution in public. I'm really just wanting to express that it can be irritating if "someone presents themselves as undependable")
So....
Not everyone's built to be an extrovert...
Not everyone gives hugs and handshakes...
Not everyone is dependable, all the time...
...but, God, it can get lonely, if we cloister ourselves off, in our own little worlds.