7.26.97
You don't have to have sympathy for me, but I have a hard job. I'm trying to make art in a place where people don't expect it. I'm trying to be honest in a world that's primarily full of shit.
And every day my inbox is full of people spilling their guts to me, wanting to be included. And there's no way to publish it all. So what remains is time and quality. It becomes a judgement. I hate that aspect of it and I especially hate it when I have to tell people that I can't, or won't, publish their work.
It's all just part of my job.
7.25.97
I don't believe that love is the root of life anymore. I used to, long ago.
I believe the root of life is hope.
Last, night in my despair, waiting for her to come home, wandering the house, noticing all the little changes in two days of being away, I found a book on hope. I opened it randomly (as Richard Bach taught me to, a long time ago) and started reading. And I found a paragraph that I wish I could recite verbatim. But it said, basically, that when Pandora opened her box and set its contents free, only one thing stayed. Hope.
Hope.
Without it, I have nothing. With it, anything is possible.
7.23.97
I thought I could stop worrying about being alone. And, for a time, I actually did.
But now the sorrow is back.
And it's been so long, I find I don't remember what I used to do with it.
All the old fixes don't work anymore.
And I don't know what else to do.
7.21.97
Wanna hear a funny story? A boy goes to college and sits through journalism classes and gets scolded for being "too confessional" in his writing. And the boy discovers the web and puts himself into it, naked, posting love letters and everything. And then he hits on the idea of letting other people do it. And he does. And it works. And he gets lots of jobs. And he's successful. And now he spends all his time making other people's stories, or his client's stories, instead of making his own stories.
Wouldn't that be funny?
7.11.97
My god I want to send you something enlightening. Something poetic. Something wonderful and meaningful and alive. Something to tell you how much I love you both, how proud of you I am for risking it all, and how much I want you to be happy. I want to find the perfect quote, the bittersweet line, the tiny bit of hope to send you both to your respective airports with....
But I can't seem to find it.
So I'll just sit here in this stuffy, bitter office and type out clumsy ascii to you and hope you know exactly what I mean.
And I know you do.
7.10.97
Saying "no" is a rare and valuable thing. I'm learning to use the word more and more these days. That's a good thing.
Of course, it means that I'm being presented with more and more unreasonable situations. That's a bad thing.
7.7.97
Anger is a cycle. And it comes around every so often. And, when it does, I really ought to stay away from the live servers.