2001-06-18 - 11:11 p.m.

on every face...

i feel like i should write. i feel like i should be getting things down. like i need to record some events or thoughts or feelings from today, or it won't have happened.

or worse, it will have happened but it won't have mattered.

i mean, what can i say about today? gee, i spent all day trying to figure out why the charting servlet won't display japanese characters in the legend? and failed. wow, that's damned exciting stuff.

yep, you too can live the life of j-money. just sit behind a computer all day, banging your head on the keyboard. every fifteen minutes or so, get up, go to the bathroom, get another diet pepsi.

repeat until dead.

at least i exercised today. yay me.

i called and left messages for SoccerGirl and K tonight. SoccerGirl is now officially on the "you have so many chances to respond before i blow you off completely" list. she's got one more phone call before the "ultimatum" email. not like i've ever actually sent an "ultimatum" email. i have, however composed them in my head a million times. but this time, if i get no responses, i'll actually send it.

something else that falls under the category of doing the things i never dared do, i called K again tonight.

actually, that one might (just might) fall under the category of bunny in the pot psycho stalker freak.

i'm angling for the former.

you'd let me know if it was the latter, wouldn't you?

last friday i was trying to relate some point to ChefsKey and quoting CubicleGirl in the process (by the way, i've now officially read *every single entry*) and he just couldn't get past the concept of the on-line journal.

i've been straddling this line recently between an almost pathological need for recognition or acceptance or anyone to read my journal on the one hand and an almost pathological fear on the other that someone i actually *know* will read it.

i mean, my friends would have no difficulty at all figuring out my clever little nicknames. and i don't by any means write about everything that happens in my life (i mean, do you really need to know what i had for breakfast), or even for that matter most of what goes through my head.

however, i do use this journal to work through the crap that's bothering me. the way i have always done that is to write down what i'm feeling at the time.

that one bears repeating.

i write down what i'm feeling at the time.

it is not guarunteed to be what i'm feeling five seconds from then. it often is a fleeting feeling, something that i need to work through, something that by the simple act of writing about it, i can dispell it from my mind. sometimes, i write things that i don't even really feel or believe. in my personal journals (the dead-tree variety) i've plumbed the depths of my feelings. i've taken a path of which i've only seen the first few steps, and followed it to it's logical conclusion. see, i'm still trying to pull punches here because i know people might see it. in other words, i've called people names, said things that are patently untrue and that i don't really feel. but by writing as if i did, i can get inside that perspective and see understand better why i don't feel that way, why i won't ever feel that way.

what i'm saying is that i don't ever want anyone to take these things literally. except for the bits that i mean to be taken literally. to know the difference, you have to know me. and even then, who knows how sure you can be?

i've always been afraid that after i die someone will find my journals and read them. in some ways that's how i want people to remember me. the truth of me, the raw core of who i am and who i was at the time.

but on the other hand, there are so many things that could be taken wrong, could be blown out of proportion, could be misinterpreted.

i wish i had the luxury of well-thought-out and eloquent correspondance. so that i, like rilke, could be remembered for the best and best-formulated of my thoughts. not for the drunken ramblings and heights of self-pity that i know exist in my journals.

so, i guess the upshot of all this, gentle reader, is that what you read here is me. but it is not all of me. and never, ever forget that it is only the bits of me that i choose to let you see. sometimes the veil might slip a bit, but i will always wear it.

and don't you ever forget that you wear one too.

"On every face I see a black veil."