Irrevocability

What a strange, tangled four years this has been.  Emerging from the mess that is currently my life is ME.  Thanks to many factors - my friend Garlon at work, all the reading I've been doing, and a disciplining of my own stubborn mind, to name a few - I am a man, and no one can shake that.  Not my manager at work, not a rude customer, not a woman who lacks interest in me, not my own father.  Enh... I might be able to undermine myself if I'm not careful, but I doubt else will ever be the case.  (In fact, a woman I was crazy about just turned me down recently, and while I wasn't particularly happy about it, my life barely skipped a beat, let alone sunk back to old depressions.  That in itself speaks volumes.)

I have also been doing some memorization of late - here is the first thing I memorized, at the behest of www.artofmanliness.com:

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait, and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master,
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
And watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them, "Hold on,"

If you can speak to crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth, and everything that's in it,
And - which is more! - you'll be a Man, my son.

~ Rudyard Kipling

The second, again found on the same website... the "Man in the Arena" portion of a Presidential speech:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man
stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit
belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by dust
and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again
and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who
does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great
devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the
end the triumph of high achievement; and who at the worst, if he fails, at least
fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and
timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

(Both typed from memory, so note there may be some punctuation/capitalization mistakes.)

Reciting these to myself at work and at home has proven them to be worth their weight in gold... though I guess paper, ink, and synapses don't weigh very much, so maybe a billion times their weight?  They've turned many a brutal day around.  Combine these with the book Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman and you have a nearly impenetrable mental and emotional fortress.

The latter piece of famous writing above has been particularly inspiring to me of late.  I have been holding the same dreary retail job for two years - note that I am not saying I regret it, or that a retail job cannot be honorable or worthwhile.  The lessons learned have been invaluable, and someone in the world has to do these jobs, and sticking a job out for two years has been worthy cause in itself.  However, part of me suspects - nay, confirms - that I am flowing downstream, and it's time to paddle.  I'll be dropping my job to two days a week and making MUSIC my full-time job on the former workdays... with an eye toward writing music for a living.  This will be one of the hardest things I've ever done, and leaving some of the financial security is scary, but I need to do this.  If I stay in retail, I'll be no less of a man, in troth - but what of my dreams?  It is time to chase them, so here I go!  If I fail, I'll not hang my head, but raise it proudly to say I gave my best.

This is going to be an interesting year...

Who I am

It's funny how many places I've been since the last entry.  The rollercoaster of the last four years is at last slowing down, and I think that is mostly thanks to the fact that I'm learning so much about myself and my emotions - and how to control them, instead of letting them control me.

I am a man.  Let me say that again with special emphasis - I am a man.  The forests and mountains ring with the echo of my battle-cry, women see me as a haven in a predatory world, and nothing anyone says can cripple me.  The world is full of boys: the apathetic, the sex-crazed, the egomaniacal, the condescending, the weak.  I know who I am and why I am where I am.  I don't always have the best self-control, but my passion and honor are intact.

Once again there's a specific woman I'm interested in (gasp!), but things are different than before.  There is no awkwardness around her, because I know I have nothing to fear but things staying the same - and that's not so bad.  I take the lead in our interactions, but not a stranglehold - my tendency to interrupt has diminished, and my inquiries into her life increased.  I have learned to give sincere compliments sparingly and confidently enough to be charming rather than pathetic.  I've even developed in my body and in my sense of style (which was actually always there, and poked its head out a few times in college).  My job has put me in the best shape of my life, and I'm sure at the least I can lift almost as much as my dad.  I've updated my thinking about what sort of clothing might be appropriate in various settings, and am updating my wardrobe to match my image.

If this woman isn't interested - or, as in Bethany's case, believes God to have said no - I can move along in the knowledge that I am a handsome, dashing, charming, sexy, earth-shattering kind of man, and any woman would be lucky to have me, and in fact with all this learning finally taking hold, it should not take long for a different woman to notice me.  Ha, but that's already happened, hasn't it?  About a month ago a girl confessed attraction for me.  I cannot overstate the contribution that made to my confidence - especially since that confession, I believe, happened as a direct result of the application of some of the things I have been learning.  I made that girl infatuated with me.  I don't think anything will come of it since I'm not really that interested in her, but it does show that it's possible.

Much of my learning has taken me back to the three relationships I have been in, and their beginnings - especially how I behaved immediately before each started.  In each case I was a picture of confidence, and in each I was not actually interested until the woman in question obviously was... this allowed me to behave naturally.  In Laura's case, she got interested probably in part due to a staring contest we randomly started playing at Late Meal.  I showed up in Maggie's life just as a messy breakup happened, and rather than be aware of my own chances or lack thereof, I stood by her and helped her through it.  (Also I ran into her just as the over-the-phone breakup happened... in a tuxedo.)  In Kelly's case, I was still dating Maggie when we first met, and thus wasn't even thinking about Kelly as a prospective girlfriend.  I'm not sure of all the details but the fact that Doug warned me about getting involved with Kelly behind Maggie's back tells me Kelly was probably interested in me during that band trip.

Another random boost to my confidence: a friend recently had me act for a short film, and since he's finally finished the post-production process, I got to see my own acting this weekend.  I have made great strides in my acting prowess since college speech class (the last I saw myself "act"), and while everyone tells me I'm particularly handsome and I have had trouble believing it, the doubts were dispelled with that film.  I am in fact handsome, very much so.

Like I said, the rollercoaster is slowing down, and the climb is still steady.  Life is getting better!

Improvement

Alone

Confused