my new robot home, part 1.3

every so often, i get the sense that i'm turning a major corner in my life. lately, that feeling has been sort of looming. this probably comes as a result of seeing most of my good friendships sort of fade into casual acquaintance. it's not that i take the people around me for granted, because i do not. however, i don't think that someone has to be around you all the time for years to be a good friend. i also think that sometimes, you just need something that you're not getting. it's not a reflection on the friends you're not seeing as regularly as you were before, it's just a shifting of needs. right now i need something i'm not getting from anyone i was around often. i'm a man of constant change, and that's okay with me. i wonder if that makes me a huge liability in a serious relationship. this is something i've actually thought about quite extensively since the demise of my last (and really only) such relationship. officially, we didn't make it 6 whole months. by most people's standards, that's almost negligible. if it weren't for the fact that we were still pretty well involved and nothing in our routine changed for another nine months, i'd say that it was more like a year and three months. still, that's a flash in the pan when you consider the grand scheme of things.

so, clearly, i have no proven track record for commitment. it's not a particularly huge goal of mine to get married; at this point, i feel indifferent about the subject, at least as a component of my future. and naturally, i'm appalled at the idea of being married any time soon. that should really be obvious; i'm only 23. in my world, that's way too young. luckily, i'm in no danger of marrying anyone anytime soon, so i don't really think about it a whole lot. what i do wonder, though, is - if i do end up getting married someday - how long will i be dating my wife before i marry her? and how long will we be married before we're divorced? clearly, even my subconscious worry machine has sardonic undertones.

anyhow, all thoughts of marriage are back-burner thoughts... except for one problem. lately, i've taken an interest in a handful of older women. i can't say the same for many younger ones. the way i see it, i've dated girls who were a few years younger than me up to my age, and they were too immature. i dated a girl who was exactly my age, to the day, and she was fucking crazy. there's only one other subset of the population who remains untested for horribly unfair stereotypes, and that's the older women. the last girl i was involved with, although things didn't really ever evolve into very much since she moved to hawaii two weeks after i met her, was 29 and even divorced. and actually, she was pretty cool. the closest thing i have to an "ex" i would have no issue with seeing again. additionally, this other girl, the one i awkwardly asked out the other night, she's 27. so maybe there's a pattern emerging here.

anyhow, without much i can really do about anything in my life, it was weekend as soon as i left work on friday. there wasn't really any chance for me to escape this weekend, unless i started making up really mundane things to do, so for the most part, i did not. i did get to world market for some framed artwork for my wall, and that was kind of nice, but it still feels a little bit insipid.

my ambition having nowhere else to turn, it seems to have abandoned me. i remember seeing commercials about depression on tv in which they would invariably list a bunch of symptoms and then show a very sad woman crouching down with her head in her hands somewhere in the corner of her kitchen and tell you to call if you're experiencing those symptoms. i cannot recall a single time that i didn't wonder if i was depressed, because my entire life i've been all of those things. eventually, i came to realize that there's a fine line between lazy and being depressed. i'm sure i cross over from one side to the other and back all the time, depending on the situation, but right now i would just say i'm lazy. that's why i had the weekend to accomplish all sorts of noble things, like scheduling a driver's test so i can get a minnesota license and have my car insurance drop in half, or taking the car in to get some service it's telling me it needs, or doing my laundry, or perhaps cleaning out the pantry or the fridge. maybe i could have even cleaned the bathroom. most of these things did not get accomplished, although i did sleep till 1:00 both saturday and sunday and i did watch about 5 episodes of the office and a movie or two.

last night when i went to bed, i knew i had to be at least slightly more productive today than yesterday. i did finally get around to it this afternoon, by way of cleaning up and rearranging my room. it's the closest thing i have to zen in the midst of all this chaos, and so i took pictures to show the disparity between my inner sanctum and the things that surround it.