A new year, and with it, an empowering sense of a new beginning, though it comes from little more than untouched calendars. I resolved to find what makes me happy this year, and pursue it with everything within me. I also plan to be more self-contained. Somewhere along the line I became incredibly dependent on the emotional support of others, and it's brought me little else but heartache.

I've been thinking about the whole soulmate idea recently. I still don't believe there is only one person out there for every person, but I do think you'll only run into one or two suitable lifetime companions during your life. I think that each person before that one person, the one you can stand and love and depend on, is just practice - to develop yourself as a person in relation to other people. I believe that not getting involved at all, waiting for "the one" to come along, risks that you'll screw up the relationship with someone you really do care about.

My natural tendency is to be alone most of the time, but semi-friendly and sometimes even cheerful when I am around people that I like or seem likable. I love being around friendly, happy people. Of course, there is a perverse joy to be found in depression, but it's one I'm quite willing to forsake for the moment. I want to learn how to make people happy, and do it by observing happy people instead of trying to cheeer up depressed ones.

I am well on the road to believing in academia again. The motivation I needed came yesterday - in the form of the A I received on the last paper I wrote for my humanities class. Not an A-minus, not a B-plus; a solid A. The teacher called it "first-rate," "strong, clearly written and observant." My two last papers and studying for my Calculus final were the things I really put effort into last quarter - so I suppose if I really try, I can succeed. With the exception of that last calc class, of course (I got a 98/200 on that final) - but this quarter I have changed teachers and have found one who is better suited to me. The future is ripe with possibility, and nothing has failed to meet my expectations yet this year - so I feel good.

Last Friday, I wept for someone I know and deeply care about who is going through an incredibly difficult time. I did so out of empathy, frustration in not being able to help him, and at the cruelty people can inflict on one another - especially those who care about them. If you know someone well enough, all the peer counseling training fails. The textbook response of clarifying, validating, and reflecting doesn't do much if someone feels like their heart's been ripped out.

It is times like these I feel like humbling myself before a God I'm not sure I believe in, to seek blessings on someone else's behalf. If I could make some personal sacrifice to heal this man's heartbreak, who has both knowing and unknowingly soothed so much of my own hurt, I would do so without a second thought.

There is a book by Christopher Pike, Midnight Club, where a character asks, "Time heals all wounds....But what if time ran out? Could love heal what was left?" I can only hope so. He has, fortunately though, more of both time and love than he knows now. Once the darkness of his soul lifts, perhaps then he will see it. Or maybe he will understand first, and that in itself will bring the light.

When I left California for the University of Chicago, I brought a few extra things I didn't need and just weighed me down. A huge caboodle tray that didn't fit on any shelf in my room, a disk holder with about 30 disks when I have plenty of drive space and 5 disks are enough to back up all my present and future papers, and a torch for someone who was not only involved with someone else, but devalued his relationship enough to cheat on his girlfriend with me. I claimed my feelings for him as a defense for my actions, but they were pretty dispicable at that time as well.

Anyhow, since our own previous relationship attempt had ended because of something he claimed was my fault, I was wracked with guilt and fear that I would forever view him as "the one that got away," because I had let it happen. I didn't see any of his faults, and his figure in my memory set the impossible standard for all the males I met here to live up to.

Of course, I am not without hope in such matters, so before I left I told myself, almost as a mantra, that at college I would meet someone "smarter, and better-looking, without such an overinflated sense of personal manifest destiny," even if I didn't date that person. I didn't believe it then, of course.

However, though it took 4 1/2 months, it has happened. I've met one person that is the stereotypical perfect man, and seeing that possibility in him has allowed me to notice other males around me that are also cuter, smarter, etc., than this old ghost of a boy whose flame I carried with me for so long.

Absence does make the heart grow fonder - to a point. After that point, reality starts to become a much better-looking option than fantasy. As for now, I have quite a bit of both. The promise of this year, this environment, is clear to me once again, as I've reclaimed my sensibilities on both social matters and academic ones. My head's back on my shoulders, and I do homework first. Time after that, I spend daydreaming, and doing what it takes to make my abstract daydreams come true.

The graph of my emotional line is nothing if not periodic, but I'm trying to lessen its amplitude. I woke up happy today, despite the early morning hour. However, I made one fatalistic mistake - I placed too much importance on preparing for one simple social event. I naturally avoid doing such things, due to the various independabilities of my friends and schedule, but this time, as in so many others, the event seemed so certain to occur that it seemed almost inconceivable that it wouldn't.

However, the best laid plans of mice and men....It didn't happen. And I felt myself become upset, much more than the situation warranted. Then I remembered an affirmation for cynics, one I really need to keep in mind: "I have a right to be emotionally detached from all things around me." I do. At least, pertaining to people who have not yet proven their worth as friends and my interactions with them. In fact, considering the track record of most of my so-called friends, it's probably best to not expect much from them, either.

It seems important to explain, though, that I will still care about people and enjoy the time I spend with them. However, expecting those times to happen seems to set me up for disappointment, and it's not fair to do that to myself.

So I will attempt to make spontaneity my middle name, no matter how much it goes against my Virgoan nature, and hopefully, by doing so, be able to maintain the cheeriness I've felt since I came back from winter break.

Some exhibitionists strip to their underwear (or less) whenever they get the slightest chance. Others change in front of windows without drawing the blinds. Still others wear scanty, see-through, or tight articles of clothing.

I am an exhibitionist. This website is my medium. For whatever subconscious reason, I get pleasure from putting some of my innermost thoughts and feelings onto the internet for people to read. It makes me feel better, I feel it might entertain someone, and it's an easy way for people who call themselves my friends to stay informed on my doings.

However, no man or woman has ever been an island, and I'm sad, in a way, to say I'm not the first. What I write here is always directly or indirectly related to other people and how I interact with them (or don't, as the case may be). And I do my best to keep it honest.

In this honesty, though, sometimes I'll refer to people in ways that others can recognize, even if I don't use names. And they may feel I'm intruding on their privacy by doing so. As a response to this, I can only apologize. This is my clarifying forum, a showcase of my changing moods, personality, online identity, and my real-life self in the only way it can exist in cyberspace. It's not a big deal, though, as far as other people are concerned. As a friend of mine that I've written about said, not much "contained in [here] would be of any value to anyone else, other than perhaps 4 minutes of entertainment - and what would that do to me?"

This page is a show. You come to watch, and if you're pulled up on stage for a moment, enjoy it. I don't mean any harm, and if you want to, you can argue with me in front of the audience. (email me).