Oh, Loving Eyes, They Cannot See, A Certain Person Could Never Be, Love Runs Deeper Than Any Ocean, It Clouds Your Mind With Emotion

--"Everybody Plays The Fool", The Main Ingredient

Yet another reason I hate lists...

80 Questions That I Could Not or Cannot Now Answer:

1. Why can't she love me?
2. Is she too young?
3. Am I ready?
4. Is she ready?
5. Do I value her more as a friend or as something potentially more?
6. Is it wrong to want something different than what she wants?
7. Am I sacrificing a sure thing that makes me happy for something that has the potential to make me happier, but also has the potential to lose me everything?
8. Should I tell her how I'm feeling now or wait until some of these questions have been answered.
9. If I can make her see where I'm at, would it scare her away?
10. Is it really happening?
11. Can I trust her answers or is she just telling me what I want to hear?
12. Would it be better if I backed off?
13. Would it be better if I waited a few years?
14. Am I really going to go ahead with this?
15. Does she even really know who I am and what she's getting herself into?
16. Is it just a question of time?
17. Is it always this difficult to accept I'm getting what I asked for or am I always going to be this skeptical about everything going my way too easily?
18. Do I accept her invitation?
19. Can I trust myself alone with her?
20. What are her parents going to think of me?
21. What are my parents going to say when I tell them I'm missing Christmas to fly clear across the country?
22. Am I really going to do this?
23. Am I really here with her, seeing her in all her beauty, hearing her with all her charms and graces, holding her hand for the very first time?
24. Is she disappointed now that she's finally met me in person?
25. Should I kiss her and do I dare?
26. Is this really happening or am I just fooling myself into thinking she's experiencing it in exactly the same way I am?
27. Do I let her in?
28. Should I tell her to go before we're caught?
29. Do I even want her to go?
30. Would she even stay the whole night next to me?
31. Can she be this completely right for me?
32. Can this weekend get any more sublime?
33. Am I setting myself up for a crash when I have to go home again?
34. Is there any way I can stay for a couple more days?
35. Will I ever have to go through another good-bye as sad as this one?
36. Am I always going to miss her this me when we're separated from now on?
37. Is it love and do I really care to make the distinction?
38. Can I just let myself enjoy whatever this is for the time being?
39. Should I fly out again, knowing full well what will probably end up happening?
40. Should I go along with her charade that we'll be staying home and that's it?
41. Do I really want to go through with this?
42. Is this really what she wants or is she doing this solely to make me happy?
43. Can I ever live with myself if I turn down this opportunity in an effort to do the "right" thing?
44. Has she ever looked more beautiful than she does tonight?
45. Is there ever going to be a more perfect night than tonight and will it be the night every other night gets compared to?
46. How much has the world changed now?
47. How can I ever say good-bye now?
48. Is what we're doing really fair to her or to me?
49. Do we even stand a chance?
50. Is she really pregnant?
51. What should I do?
52. Am I really ready to be trapped into an entire life with her?
53. Will everything get back to normal again now that the scare is over?
54. Can I handle her talking about seeing other people?
55. Does she still feel the same way about me like she did a year ago?
56. Are we still the same people we were when we first met?
57. Do I want her coming over here with everything still so up in the air?
58. Did we always fight this much and is this what our future will consist of from now on?
59. Am I still in love with her and her with me?
60. Should I be supportive of her and him?
61. Is it just jealousy that fuels me or is it me actually regretting my decision?
62. Should I go to the wedding?
63. Should I just apologize for not going?
64. Is eight months of not speaking to me a sign that this time I've finally crossed the last line and are we truly over?
65. Can we really stay friends after all this heartache and turmoil?
66. Should I ask her to join me so at least we can stay in touch somewhere on a regular basis?
67. Have things really gotten better or does it just seem that way?
68. Do I encourage her feelings of disappointment over her marriage or do I play the optimistic friend, encouraging her to keep hope alive even though I want her for myself?
69. Is it wrong to want a married woman if she keeps insisting I'm doing nothing wrong?
70. Should I go to Chicago with her?
71. Will she really leave him?
72. What the hell are we now and how the hell do I describe her to other people?
73. Is it finally time to give up on that dream?
74. Can I be happy just being her friend?
75. Did I miss my chance at true happiness?
76. Is it wrong to still love her like that?
77. Will I ever get over her?
78. Will I ever meet someone else?
79. Is she really the one?
80. Why can't she love me?

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

Every Time I Get My Hopes Up, They Always Seem To Fall, Still What Could've Been Is Better Than, What Could Never Be At All

--"Could've Been", Tiffany

I learned today that Alaska stands alone as the state that eats the most ice cream per capita annually than any other state in the country. Frankly, it took me by surprise because I always thought it was Massachusetts and its myriad of local ice cream shops. What doesn't take me by surprise is the fact that one of our colder states retains this title. Some would like you to believe that the reason Alaskans or any other northern state dwellers prefer ice cream is that by its consumption it lowers your internal temperature. This leads to the sensation of being warmer since one's body is closer in proximity to one's surroundings. It's the same rationale why people tell you to eat hot soup in the Summer. In that instance one's body temperature rises and soon approaches that of the temperature outside, leading to the distinct feeling that it has gotten cooler. It's a tidy explanation but I'm not buying it.

My theory as to why more people who live in the more frigid states prefer ice cream than those of the more temperate states is that ice cream melts less when it's colder outside. I've always believed that melted ice cream is the most useless food on the planet. It becomes all soupy. It starts losing its luster. Frankly, it becomes an ungodly mess. Coincidentally, you only find melted ice cream when the median temperature is somewhat above normal. I've always preferred my ice cream when the weather is at its coldest because you can go the whole way eating through a sizable bowl of ice cream without losing a single drop to melting. Whenever I'm in Boston I make sure to buy my ice cream at night because you almost don't need to freeze it since the weather sometimes will preserve it in all its solidly packed goodness. And that's exactly what I'm looking for when I'm eating ice cream--rigidity. I like knowing the dessert I buy will remain just as it is when I first bought it regardless of where I may traverse to.

Maybe that's just because I'm a person who likes to know what I'm getting or a person who gets attached to having things a certain way. I sometimes have difficulty with promises which start out so appealing, but ultimately fail to live up to their potential. That's all ice cream is, the potential for a truly rich and satisfying dessert even surpassing that of cake which, unfortunately, more often than not falls far below its potential to absolutely blow your mind. At least with a cake there's stability there. More often than not if you leave a cake sitting out on a table for an hour, it will still retain its cake-like properties. You leave a bowl of ice cream on a table somewhere for an hour and you'll find yourself with a bowl of ice cream soup.


how can you hold what could’ve been
on a cold and lonely night

I've spoken a lot recently with Toby about her stance that it's better to let go of people before they change too much on you. While I still don't agree with her point-of-view, I'm beginning to see more and more where she's coming from. Sometimes I hold people to the same standards of ice cream. I would like nothing more to see the person I meet, the person I immediately form an affection for, remain just as they are. Sure, there are moments where I'm the first proponent for some sort of push in the direction I want the relationship to go, but more often than not I find myself in the role of the old nostalgic, wanting to hold onto a bit of the past in which seemingly everything was sublimely perfect. I'm of the opinion that buying into a person, letting them into your life, is a bit like buying a car. It's not an easy choice or one that you make on an impulse most of the time. And most of the time all you're looking for is a car that appeals to you and which will prove reliable. Now, when it comes to letting people into my life, I'd almost put a priority on the latter criteria than the former. I'm much more willing to overlook a person's other faults, whatever they may be, as long as they prove themselves dependable. As long as I can accurately gauge a person's standard mode of operating I'm almost happy to overlook the deficits in their character. It's far easier to overlook a fatal flaw as long as you know it's there and always will be. What annoys me is when people act a certain way when you first meet them and then reverse footing to change their behavior in rather off-putting manners. When I can't predict a person's next reaction from day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year, &c..., that's when I start organizing my thoughts in the pursuit of finding someone else to befriend.

The steady decline of a person's personality from their youth till the reach maturity is some of the most disheartening days for me. It's like watching my ice cream slowly melt away from me. It's painful to see people change from being likable to being unrecognizably distant and strange. It's happened to me far too often for me to just brush it aside. When people change, for worse or better nominally, it always hurts. It pains me to know that they're no longer the person I care like I want to. It's like they're breaking some unwritten and unspoken covenant between the both of us.

While I wouldn't go so far as to follow Marion's example of abandoning people preemptively before they become unrecognizable, I definitely am more aware when a person's disposition starts to unravel at the seams. I may not marginalize that person's importance to me to any sizable degree, but I notice a shift in how I treat them. I can see all the little ways I change stemming from somebody else changing. I stop giving them the benefit of the doubt so often, I stop being so adamant about seeing them on a regular basis, I start abbreviating my conversations with them, &c...--all in an effort of minimizing the damage done to me when communication between us possibly breaks down. I won't "break up" with a friend simply because they start making adjustments to their life, but when those adjustments start adding up to a new person with new goals and aspirations running afoul of my own, that's when I consider walking away from the whole shebang.

After all, who wants a bowl of ice cream once more than half of what you started with has melted away? One can only take so much alteration to one's dessert before it starts becoming unappetizing and even sickening.

If only we could freeze friendships as easily as ice cream....

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

But How Your Mood Changes, You're A Devil, Now An Angel, Suddenly Subtle And Solemn & Silent As A Monk, You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk

--"You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk", Pet Shop Boys

Stop me if you've heard this story before. I used to have a friend about two years ago that I thought I was pretty close to. I mean--we didn't hang out every weekend and she wasn't the first person I called when I was bored or lonely or just wanted to do something spontaneous, but we saw enough of each other for me at least to consider us decent friends. I could have been wrong. I could have been misinterpreting what we had for something more substantial than what she considered it. All I know is that two years ago she moved away and suddenly it was like the three years previous to that didn't exist any more. Suddenly it was like everything between us just died.

And it's weird because she celebrated her twenty-third birthday recently--this past Saturday, in fact--and I didn't even realize it until the day of. Facebook at least acts like information like that is still relevant to me. If it were up to me I probably would have gone blithely on all weekend not acknowledging the fact. It's not like she even remembered my birthday last month or the one from last year. And it isn't like she's even bothered to drop me a note or pick up a phone in the almost two years since we last spoke. When somebody has to tell you when a person's birthday is, you know you've stopped considering that person as being important to you at all. It's like when you're mom has to tell you to kiss your aunts good-bye because she knows you wouldn't do it on your own given the chance. Well, given the chance, I have no doubt I would have blocked any well wishes to the person in question at all.

And yet all this reflecting on how far the two of us have fallen away from one another has only stirred memories about how good we used to be. It reminds me of all those nights in the Dodger Stadium parking lot talking about how television shows aren't as good as they used to be, or how our cars were pieces of shit, or how a good whiskey or bourbon can make it feel like everything's better when it's really not. That last part we were always good at. Even when we realized that deep down we didn't have a lot in common between us, we always had passing a bottle around to keep us talking. If anything, she's the only real drinking buddy I've ever had. With most people the last thing I want to think about doing is going drinking with them. With most people, it's always a last resort, something we fall back on if we can't think of something better to do. But with her most of our nights it seemed to begin or end at the bar. And if not there, our outings always involved celebrating some random achievement with a bottle or two safely ensconced with us in the parking lot of the Glendale Galleria or the aforementioned Dodger Stadium. Whereas with most people a night out meant a decent restaurant in Pasadena or Los Angeles, my outings with her always entailed cheap Mexican food and an expensive bottle of scotch, wine, or whatever was readily available.

Maybe that's all we were to each other, somebody to listen to while we got drunk and started spouting off at the mouth. I can't remember any of our good times involving us being sober. I mean--I think we had okay times, but nothing memorable. All the good memories I have of us liking each other involved getting way too happy way too quickly. It's like we needed that social lubrication before we could be comfortable around each other. Usually that's a crutch one utilizes when one is in the company of strangers. One normally doesn't rely on such tactics with people he considers close friends. Let's face it, if you have to get drunk just to face a person then you know something's off.

I don't know--she was one of those gals that Longfellow once wrote about--when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid. And it usually revolved around whether or not we had been drinking recently. She was a foul-mouthed drunk. More than that, she was mean sometimes when she went too far. Yet she was also lively and talkative and half a million things I wish people could be when they were just acting normal. She was almost a different creature when she wasn't drinking. She was depressing and cynical; she was the definition of a person looking to escape the dreary life around her. Given the option, it was almost always preferable to have a little something before we did anything else. It made life easier. It made her easier to deal with.

Perhaps that's why we ultimately failed at the staying in touch endeavor. We just couldn't think of anything to say to one another that was real. Maybe the only kind of communication we knew how to do was fueled by alcohol and insomnia and a shared distaste for doing as we were told. That's what our friendship was, an opportunity to vent without limits. That's what made it special, that we felt like we were saying something significant for the first time to somebody significant enough to recognize it. And then when the uniqueness faded away and we found ourselves repeating the same old tired chestnuts about how we had screwed up our lives or how being lonely fucking sucked, we each stopped serving that purpose for one another. She started to see me for the empty vase that I was and I started seeing her for the ball of seething anger that she'd always been. When she moved to Philadelphia, it might have given us the excuse to walk away from a dynamic that had outlived its purpose. Or, better yet, her moving away might have given us the excuse to put things back into order.

At the end of our days as being two people who knew each other well, it might have been akin to us waking up from a dream. For awhile there we both might have wanted to get back into that dream, but it might have taken that separation to instill the distinction of what was real and what was a case of convenience.

We staked our knowledge of one another to what we learned while in the midst of many an alcohol-fueled confessional. But once the drinking stopped, that's when the process of getting to know one another stopped. Without that there was nowhere else for us to go.

Our talks, our whole knowing each other, was a castle made out of sand and two years ago may have been when the wind and waves finally caught up to us.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

I Won't Leave, I Can't Hide, I Cannot Be, Until You're Resting Here With Me

--"Here With Me", Dido

Contemplating my upcoming second visit to Kentucky this May, I've come to the realization that the majority of the trips I go on turn out really damn well in the end. I'm not stuck with bad memories of long stretches of boredom with whomever I might be traveling with at the time. Nor do I have a stockpile of stories of how everything went wrong from the word go when speaking in regards to the dozens of trips I've taken over the years. Maybe it's just because it doesn't really take much to make a vacation successful for me--good food, good company, and some sort of purpose in being even if that purpose is only to take in a baseball game or attend a friend's graduation, as the case may be. Or maybe it's just because I've had great luck when it comes to everything falling my way when it comes time to sally forth from my perch in Southern California.

Indeed, the only horrifying trip I believe I've ever taken was the drive up and down the coast we went on in 1998. That's the only time that I can recall that something might have been off from the very beginning and continued to fester until we pulled back into my driveway. Even then, I still possess some pleasant memories of that trip. Even then, I would hesitate to label it an unmitigated disaster. It remains the one time I fell closest to completely canceling a trip entirely, though.

However, it's not even close in comparison to the trip that on the outside sounds like it was absolutely horrid. That honor goes to a trip I took in February 2003 with my ex at the time, one Miss DeAnn.

For starters, you have to understand, that the two of us while we were dating had the bad luck to have our first long-distance trip get off to a rocky start. Back in 2008 about two months after we started going out we were supposed to have taken a car trip to San Francisco. However, somewhere over the Grapevine my car had decided to overheat and completely leave us stranded on the side of the road. We had to wait for an hour before the tow truck came and two hours before my dad could pick us up from where they had towed the car. And yet, that time still turned out okay. I borrowed my parents' van and the two of us took a shorter weekend excursion up to Santa Barbara, where we spent most of our three days looking out over our balcony which was literally one hundred feet from the ocean and pretty much eating and strolling throughout most of the beach community. In fact, I'd daresay it was a complete rescue of what could have been a disastrous excursion.

Keeping that in mind, there was a precedence for us having somewhat bad luck when it came to going on trips. The intermediate trips between that road trip and the D.C. trip, which turned out to be the last trip I took with DeAnn had all gone smoothly (yes, even counting are planned trip to New Orleans on 9/11/01), yet there was alway the potential there that we could have had a repeat of San Francisco all over again.

My first clue that the timing may have been off was the fact DeAnn's body decided to come down with appendicitis a week before we were supposed to take off. Granted, we only decided to go to D.C. two weeks before the date of departure so it wasn't like a huge gap for something to come up, but it was almost like her body was trying to tell us something was destined to go wrong with the trip. We talked about canceling when she got out of the hospital four days after she went in, three day we were supposed to leave. A lot of her friends and family counseled us against leaving. Most of the people I knew thought it was a bad idea to even still be hanging out with an ex two years after we had broken up, let alone pay for a trip for the two of us, so I wasn't about to disclose that she had gone to the hospital at all. In the end, though, we decided that four days in D.C. was too much of an exciting prospect to pass up.

So, despite her doctors giving her a strict warning that exerting herself so soon after major surgery was a bad idea, we left for D.C. that Friday morning. Everything went smoothly after we landed. DeAnn was a little tired so all we were able to do when we landed was go to dinner in the hotel restaurant. Happily, though, that restaurant turned out to be a Shula's Steakhouse, which please me to no end since we had an awesome steak dinner (ordered off a football, no less) to begin our stay in Washington, D.C. We came back to our hotel room, watched a little TV, and DeAnn soon knocked off within the next ninety minutes. I stayed up for another couple of hours, but turned earlier than usual since I too was tired from the flight and the fifty minute drive to our hotel in the midst of the city proper.

That's probably how I missed the start of what could have completely ruined our trip.

During the night the city received three feet of snow. While we slept the city was slowly being layered in white. What's worse, it just kept on snowing the next day off and on. By the end of Sunday, newscasts were calling it one of the top ten worst snowstorms they had seen in the last hundred years. By the end of the weekend almost eight feet of snow had been dumped onto where we were staying.

When we woke up Saturday, I thought there was still a chance they might have the roads cleared up by the afternoon. Hell, even if they had gotten the buses or trains running, I would have been happy. We had so many places I wanted to show her--Smithsonian, Congress, Washington Monument, Lincoln Monument, Monticello, &c...--that even a few hours delay was enough to make me antsy. We'd already been pressed for time when we thought the weather was going to be good, but missing the morning was like torture for me. It worked out for DeAnn, though, because despite her protests to the contrary, the surgery had knocked her out more than she had let on. When she heard the roads were snowed over and that they probably wouldn't be getting around to plowing it till the afternoon at the earliest, she used it as an excuse to stay in bed sleeping for another few hours. She probably needed the sleep, but all I could think of was how all of that was not what I had carefully planned the week before.

I think the only thing we ended up doing of any interest was go out to dinner at a restaurant a few blocks up the street since the roads were still too dangerous to drive. Aside from that momentary distraction, we stayed in our hotel room and watched TV. Well, I mostly watched cable on TV. DeAnn pretty much drifted in and out of sleep till it was time for dinner and then pretty much the same after we had returned to the hotel room.

Sunday's weather was no better. Fairly soon I realized that we weren't going to be able to do anything at all that was on our list of activites. Fairly soon I realized I had just wasted $400 dollars on a trip to see the inside of a hotel room and on a van that would pretty much drive us from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel back to the airport. We wouldn't be seeing any of the sights. We wouldn't be reliving any of the memories I had made when I had gone to D.C. in sixth grade. We wouldn't be doing anything new and different than what we could have been doing in any hotel back in California.

I should have been pissed. I was annoyed, for sure, but a funny thing happened on the usual path to me losing my temper. It turned out not having to do all that driving and all that touring forced the two of us to spend time together in a way that we hadn't spent time doing since we'd gone out. Rather than me trying to keep her occupied all the time so should we think of how much fun I was and the fun times I could pay for, which was the real reason I wanted to go on the trip, we ended up having a decent time all by our lonesomes in the hotel room. We were relaxed, something that I don't think we would have been if we had attempted to keep up with the hectic schedules we had planned for ourselves at the trip's outset. And I know we avoided a slew of fighting from the simple change in plans of not having to decide what or where we would go first. Yes, we were already broken up, but I have the funny feeling that if that trip had gone on as scheduled we would have been at each other's throats like we had been when we had been seeing each other.

Truth be told, it was nice just laying in bed with her, waiting while she slept. It was nice just taking care of her while her body was recuperating. It was nice just being in the same room with her without having to worry about what the status of our relationship was. In the hotel room we were just two friends trying to make the best of a bad situation and, for the most part, succeeding on sheer will.

By the time the roads had been cleared and the sun was shining again on Monday, we were both talking and joking like we had been on Friday morning when we had flown in. DeAnn, not surprisingly, was doing a lot better--way better than she would have if we had actually tromped around Virginia and Maryland like we had wanted to. Also, it was a point of joking of just how bad of a weekend I could have picked to go flying to the East Coast. Instead of going somewhere, you know, warm for February, I had decided to go to a place already known for snowstorms, blizzards, and just plain mean weather. All of this helped to relieve the disappointment at what the trip could have been. We were joking that this had to go down as possibly the worst trip in human history. To this day, I still think she jokes about it with her family and friends.

But as aforementioned, I don't consider it a disaster. If anything, it goes a long way to proving my theory that any time can be a good time as long you're with the right company. If anything, it only asserts the distinction that I'd much rather take a nap and watch cable with a close friend and confidante than scurry around all over our nation's capital with a stubborn and mean ex-girlfriend... even if, by coincidence, those were one and the same person.

No, I don't consider that trip a disaster.

I call that trip as one of the many good times that I had the privilege and honor to share with her.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers

It's Like Running Away With The Wind In My Face, It's Like Flying, And You And I Are Open Wide

--"Running Away", Polyphonic Spree

Marion was stopped the other day at her church service by somebody who reads this blog and recognized her picture. She, like me, has only been used to people she willingly gave out the web address to reading her posts here. It took her rather aback because blogs are a curious thing in that you think you're writing them for yourselves and a select group of people, but anyone and their mom can read them (if it isn't locked, that is). There poor delfty was, thinking she was writing for less than a handful of people and she finds out that not only are certain classmates reading here, but that it's also spread two generations across by now in reaching people she doesn't know directly. She could have reacted differently, but she took it in stride as befitting her newfound confidence. She thanked them for their patronage and went on her way.

Me? The only people I know who read here are people I've suggested read it. I know people from both when I worked at Bally's and people I know from my current job at Eclipse read it. I know people from my boardgaming group also read it. Hell, I know people from almost school I've attended has read our blog at one time or another. Does that alter what I write? I can't say for certain, but I believe I would have to answer no. While I might have intended the audience for this site to be limited, I learned a long time ago that there won't be any controlling of who has access to my thoughts which are posted here. It'd be a losing battle if I tried to fight that fight. As of now, I just write like I write my letters, picturing as if I'm chatting with one of my friends or telling an anecdote to someone I may have just bumped into at a party or something. One strength I've always had is that I'm able to write about personal ideas and events without a sense of propriety. I attempt to write everything as I remember it or as I think of it, without editing and without hesitation.

Yes, it bothers me a little bit that there are certain groups of people who are reading this that have frankly no good reason for reading it. Certain people I know who I know I've grown out of touch with and who have made it clear they want nothing to with me still read this blog. That doesn't make any sense to me. And, yes, it makes me a bit nervous that my full name is associated with this site, meaning that my vendors from Eclipse can, if they want, find out some fully embarrassing tidbits about me. What they would do with this information is beyond me, but it is out there to color their assessment of my capability to do my job. That bothers me some. And, yes, ever since my parents upgraded to their laptop I'm sort of curious to see when they'll finally stumble across my blog. I'm anticipating a call from my mom that will be long and in-depth about what certain facts about me that I may have hid from them. That's not going to be a fun call, explaining each and every indiscretion and questionable choice I've made in the last thirty years.

That doesn't mean I'm thinking about taming anything down here and I'm encouraging the other SFoM members to do the same.

The way I see it is that, first and foremost, this is a place where I can relay what I'm thinking and what I'm remembering so that there is some kind of record of what I was going through at any given moment of my life. I'm basically telling stories to myself before I forget that they were once important to me. Also, it's a place to get certain skeletons in my closet out into the open before they stink up my psyche. I have a problem deciphering what I'm supposed to feel about certain poor choices I've made until ten or fifteen years have passed. I tend to hold reflecting on what a mess my life has sometimes become until an acceptable amount of time has transpired. That's usually when I come to write it here, so, again, there's some kind of record of the lessons I've gleaned.

To stifle that simply because I'm worried what other people might think would be disservice to this whole exercise. I'm pretty sure Breanne and Toby would say the same. What's the point of writing down your feelings and telling your secrets if you're only going to be embarrassed by them later on? If you feel that way, then you might as well keep them inside until they fester. Part of the process of unburdening yourself is the restraint to not care who later rifles through those burdens. It's like throwing away trash; you've just got to let certain things go into the world lest you hold onto too tightly.

That's why if a similar situation were to happen to me where a friend of a friend or long-distance acquaintance were to disclose to me they've been reading about me, I'll try not to take it personally as well. I've opened that Pandora's Box a long time ago. I've let my stories and Lucy's stories and Marion's stories remain up here for over five years now. During that time over 100,000 people have shuffled through them. I'm sure of those 100,000 people quite a few them could recognize the name of Patrick Taroc before they even came here. I'll just try to thank the person for reading my stuff and try not to dwell on which potentially unsympathetic story they may have glanced through.

After all, this is a place for my words to be read. I can't back down now because I may take umbridge with the quality of those selfsame readers. I either let everyone read it or let no one read it.

Right now I'd much rather have the problem of too many readers than too little.

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers