Hello, dear reader. I hope that you are well. I hope, too, that you can take time out from your striving onward and upwards, to spare me a few minutes.

As for me, I am already tired of this week, even though it's only Monday as I write this. I am still tired of being me, stuck living the same old life full of daily grind. I am tired of my efforts to move forward getting me nowhere. (I'm tired of working hard, not smart, and achieving little to nothing. I don't want to spend my life working for something better, only to end up with barely anything or nothing to show for it. I've seen it happen to my parents and I'll be damned if it happens to me too, but it looks like that's where I'm headed if I don't change my life.) I can't do this on my own, but I can't expect/rely on anyone else to pull the sword from the stone.

I miss the companionship of having a co-conspirator, a trusted partner in metaphorical grime. I miss having someone to share in my defeats as well as victories, even if a problem shared is a problem doubled. I miss having someone to hold close, to cuddle, next to whom I can fall asleep or watch sleeping next to me, with whom I can be intimate. Most of all, I miss not just being heard, but listened to, talked to instead of at. I miss having someone who loves me in my life, and loving her in return. An army of two may be laughably small, but 'tis better than an army of one (which is no army at all).

Yes, I admit that I also miss regularly having scorching-hot, fantastic and wild kinky sex on the weekends that now seem so busy with trying to get done the things that keep my life on track that I wouldn't have time between work, laundry and other domestic crap. I miss the pleasure of long, intense shagging sessions that leave us both breathless, incoherent and spent, but that's only a small aspect of all that I miss.

I really need to get my career/long-term employment on track. As I see it, I can make a start by pulling my current project back from slipping, showing some functionality and progress towards a long-term goal and thus get my contract renewed by Wednesday. That will give me some financial security, at least enough to get a place of my own and move away from my old life. However, it's not going at all well and I don't know what to do. The more I work on it, the more behind I seem to get.

I really want to move into a place of my own and start looking for someone to join me, but the financial aspect of it is holding me back. I'd really like for my Spanish sugar mommy to join me (or, ultimately, for me to travel to Spain and join her, but that's a major undertaking that's pie in the sky at this point). It seems that the next steps in the right direction are perpetually out of my reach, beyond my means. Even earning more than I ever have and being able to put away a third of it means little when I have no way of knowing if this particular path will come to an end next month (just like many of the months in the last two years).

"Hope; it is the quintessential human delusion, simultaneously the source of your greatest strength, and your greatest weakness."
 — The Architect; The Matrix Reloaded (2003); The Wachowski Starship

Maybe you are still young enough not to know this (and I certainly hope so), but hope is bullshit. It allows us to keep thinking that one day, somehow and despite all our past experience to the contrary, we will reach a point where we not only finally get our shit together and also keep it together. We think that we will make our lives better, that the uncaring and insensitive people in our lives will improve beyond their current flaws. Hope lets us waste our money on things we don't need and can probably ill-afford (like self-help books that promise to amend the shortcomings in our attitudes, behaviours and characters, even though we know we won't read them or apply the lessons learned for long enough to form the seven habits of highly effective shitgibbons nobody likes). We know, deep down, that we will stay pretty much the same way as we always were and always will be, because people don't really change much in any fundamental way. Still, we keep trying to delude ourselves to the contrary, ending up despondent and bitterly disappointed in ourselves.

This is the part where I'd write something inspiring and useful if I could. If you've been following along, then you should know that by this point, I probably can't. You might have guessed that much.

I can't deny that having money certainly plays a part, but I don't think succeeding is about that as much as it is about mindset. I'm not denying that money certainly helps. If I think back on all the books I bought or collected, I could have learnt and applied most of what sits on my bookshelf and hard drives. If I had dedicated myself to absorbing and practicing knowledge, I would be a fantastic developer, employee and partner. The fact is that I am not, because I never learned and adopted the habits of a disciplined, organised and successful person.

"Some people are so poor that all they have is money."
 — Bob Marley (attributed)

Not All About the Benjamins

It's not only about having money or being born into it, at least not to me; it's about mindset. It's possible to see people rise up out of the gutter, because they've taken the opportunities in from of them when someone's reached out a hand. It's also possible to see people who have a lot going for them crash and burn. Real riches and wealth aren't about how much money you have, but how well you're able to make it grow and work for you (instead of you for it.) That's why anyone who works for an income will always be poor, no matter how many figures on the monthly salary slip.

On that bombshell, I must bring my busy workday to a close and get some sleep. I bid you adieu in the hope that I will hence travel in the Land of Nod,
The Out of Time Man

Thumbnail image: The Persistence of Memory (1931); Salvador Dalí