I don't understand how I can be so complacent and so dissatisfied all at once.

Maybe I'm just afraid.

I am so in love with the way the character of Don Draper unfolds in "Mad Men." The way he blows through all of his relationships like a fucking hurricane, grasping wildly at whatever he can get his hands on, just to see it all slip through his fingers. The way he holds himself responsible to no one but himself, hurting every single person he cares about because he doesn't know what he wants - he knows only the impulses that move him moment to moment. The way he manipulates everything to see it only how he wants to see it. The way he's constantly searching for a way to fit into everything that's changing around him. The way he tries to escape in every sense possible.

I have got to stop immersing myself in fictional worlds instead of dealing with real life.

One of the many things I love about my mother is that a few years ago, when I was going through a particularly rough time at school, she stopped saying "Have a good day" to me whenever we talked. She knew that I'd always say dully, "I'll try" or that the cynic in me would spit out "I probably won't" before I could stop it. So she started telling me simply, "Have a day," because no matter what, I always would. Whether it was a good day or a bad day, it would be a day.

I had a day today.

I have an awful tendency to start writing blog posts around 5am when I can't sleep, then never finishing them. Old habits die hard, and this is something I started writing a month and a half ago.

I'm browsing old posts and am quite amused by how I used to manage to make everything in my life a struggle. I still do this at times (like right now) but I guess I'm getting better at not being angry and frustrated and upset over things I can't change, and at not fighting battles that don't need to exist.

I'm realizing that a lot of the things that troubled me still trouble me - just to a lesser extent. I'm a lot less lost than I was. Or maybe just more okay with being lost? But the main difference between 2007/2008 and 2009/2010, is that I've got much stronger friends now who help me function like a normal, communicative person from time to time, and I love them for it.

At the same time, I'm greedy. I have all these people but I want more. It's been so long since I last felt a shared, intrinsic connection with another person - one that runs deeper than a few shared interests and "You're scared? I'm scared too."

Don't get me wrong - I'm not dismissing connections on those levels. I have that connection with several people and I realize it's a lot more than others have - it's a lot more than I had just a couple years ago. But this is one of the many ways in which I am selfish: I find myself craving something more. I know it exists, I believe in it. I don't have an unwavering faith in pretty much anything, except in the potential for a deep connection that exists between two people.

Besides, I am growing complacent. Too comfortable with what I have. I like it but I know I need to force myself to keep moving. If I don't want more, I'll never find more.

Clearly I'm still using this as a dumping post for self-interested musings that I don't want to force others to listen to. But there are worse things I could do with these. Like force others to listen to them. At 5:20am.

Maybe I can sleep again now.

Men and women.

"...we're at one of those points where the difference between men and women becomes evident."

"What difference?" he asked.

"The capacity of self-deceit," she said, but corrected herself and said, "Or rather, the things about which we choose to deceive ourselves."

"Like what?" he asked, striving for neutrality.

"Men deceive themselves about what they do themselves, but women choose to deceive themselves about what other people do."

"Men, presumably?" he asked.

"Yes."

If she had been a chemist reading the periodic table of the elements, she could not have sounded more certain.

...A long time passed in silence, during which he considered what she had said. "Sounds like men get a better deal," he finally replied.

"When don't they?"

- Donna Leon, A Sea of Trouble