Laziest post ever. Too many thoughts on my mind to speak just one. I wanted to also congratulate old Xanga friend @Zynverwex for getting married. She hasn't been on here for years, but she was part of the original small circle of Xanga friends I had, and I'm quite happy for her.

I found myself looking into my eyes in the mirror today. There was resentment there, a desire for certain things long past. And yet I knew those things to be empty, useless at best, damaging at worst. 

Admittedly, as Xanga is closing, I find myself asking who my closest friends were on here. Who meant the most to me? Who really went out of their way to care for me? Who did I get closest to?

In a moment of truth, I have to admit...I'm not sure of some of those answers. You think you know who will be there in bad times...and someone you barely know steps out of the shadows and carries you. You create a password inspired by his/her user name...and frown as you type it in, realizing you haven't spoken to that person in months. You ask yourself "Who texts me the most?," and realize that none of your readers would guess correctly. You dislike him for years, and then you end up finding him a friend.

One of the sweetest gifts in life would be to know how much everyone loves you. Hypothetically, in a just world, we would know those who loved us best, and treat them accordingly. But in the world we live in, we just guess and hope and love blindly, right? For some reason, today, that makes me more nervous than usual.

"You don't like 'Town'," he said to me, a sort of glee in his voice. I told him he was wrong, that Town and I were just getting to know each other. It was only a few months so far. After all, City and I had gotten off to an odd start as well. I was sure things would turn out well.

Here I am five years later...knowing that sometime in the spring of 2014, I'll be divorcing Town once and for all; or, if truth be told, Town will divorce me. The time has come for us to part ways. And so I start to wonder how this last year with Town will end.

There have been a few signs that maybe Town wants to make up. Three years ago, I was ready to leave Town, and Town suddenly provided some friendship and direction. It looked like a real change between Town and I, and so I stayed. But Town pounced on me as soon as I re-signed my contract, and has been insufferable since.

I've had to face the fact that in many ways, I don't want living here to feel better. That there's a part of me that is bitter, and treasures and nurses that bitterness. I am the Prodigal Son's angry oldest brother, not wanting to forgive when others have. Why not just choke on bitterness for the last 9 months? Why reach out when Town is just waiting to crush my dreams under apathy and false promises? THERE IS A NARRATIVE HERE TO UPHOLD, OF IDEALISTIC HARDWORKING YOUNG MAN BETRAYED BY...

But our lives are not narratives. We are not part of a movie, and there is much less plot than we may think, except in hindsight. Yes, I signed up for three years with Town, and another three, and a lot didn't work out as I had hoped. Yes, it saddens me, boo-hoo sniffle sniffle. But...I would be amiss to not give Town a chance to be nice to me on my way out. It's my party...and I'll smile if I want to.

I have to run, but this article is definitely worth talking about, particularly due to Xanga's large population of people who fall in one category or the other...

This morning, I started sending my email, taking about an hour to write several important letters to colleagues. Somehow, the emails got stuck in Outbox; hours later, I discovered that I somehow had deleted them by trying to send them.

This afternoon, I was excited because I had tickets to the local sports team that I adore. (You don't want to know, trust me). I only had $2 on me, and it's $6 for parking, cash only. I was running 10 minutes early, went to the local ATM...my card doesn't work anymore. I went home and scrounged for $5 in cash I got for doing a radio survey and had just enough to go to the game...20 minutes late.

This evening, I went to Tim Horton's to catch up on my work. I decided to be health-conscious and order a smoothie since I had already eaten one too many fattening things on the day. (Somehow, my decision not to order a full pizza at lunch ended up with me eating 4 slices instead). After I paid, turns out the smoothie machine is broken...and the only equivalent is an iced cappuccino at 10PM instead.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'll finish arguing with my parents about Greek brides. Wednesday, yo.

Your words always meant more than you meant them to, you know. When turned over, they revealed much more depth, much more feeling. I, archaeologist, gasped to see the depths within, seeing the gold and pyrite shining together, rather overwhelmed with the electricity of discovery. And yet you typed on, revealing the ways to your heart and head, hinting at the traumas of youth, sharing with your faithful reader so much in return for so little.

I drunk deep in the knowledge, but the itching of my one eye revealed to me the cost of such knowledge. Odin knew, after all. So I tore my eyes away from your blog, unable to drink more, knowing myself to be an unworthy explorer. What does one do with the knowledge of a human heart? Forget it, I say; resist the temptation to walk those newly-revealed halls. The aorta is not strong and large enough for the casual explorer to leave their dirty footprints within.

So I left. But I did not forget. And I hoped that the next archaeologist would not only understand, but be invited into those meandering pathways and empty halls. Aortas are strong and large enough, if they are in contact with each other.

For all the bloggers that taught me so much, but whom I could give back so little. Best wishes.

Lengthy ruminations about artistry from a non-artist follow. Please feel free to roll eyes at the screen as needed.

In the beginning, the blog was small, and it was good. I sought out interesting people that met certain tight criteria, and wrote whatever random thoughts I couldn't discuss with my friends in grad school. But over time, the blog kept growing and metastasizing.

On the one hand, I think fondly of all the different doors good writing (here and elsewhere) opened for me. It's flattering to have intelligent, respectable people speak well of you, to get texts at random times saying "Hey, great blog the other day." It's sweet to think that a near-stranger still wants to have lunch with me because they think my words reveal a person worth knowing.

But in the end, writers are forced to admit that their art has become them. It's ironic, feeling one is only as good as one's last blog. This was supposed to be another compartment, to put random ideas in for sport. The blog is not me, it is merely a warped extension of me. I felt pressure to ensure that the blog more closely resembled myself, as if I am inherently condensed to words on a screen and marks on a page. This idea that the blog has become the gateway drug to me is oddly abhorrent, turning thoughtfulness into nothing more than advertising copy. "Try Greek! Better Taste! Now with Enablement!" the billboards seem to blink in cheap neon signage. "Oh, yeah, if I blog, Susan will return my texts" is hardly the statement of a healthy man, be it true or not.

Somehow, my blog became about me, and that's the issue. I like to put out blogs and then stand to the side and look at them with you. I'm so meta, I don't even exist in the present. I suppose after a while, I decided to satisfy curiosity, but I somehow gave up personhood in the process. I was learning so much that I decided to share, only to regret that choice. They tell a writer "Write what you know;" the irony is that when I wrote about what I did not know, I was at my best.

So there may be more blogs, but I find myself needing to divorce "What I do" from "Who I am", knowing full well that Do is superior to Am. And yet, I would rather go into exile a poorer, gentler me than enjoy the fruits that are merely a testament to my cleverness. The world loves a con man, I suppose, as long as the con man is in on his own joke. I'm just not sure I'm in on my own jokes anymore.

I bought more memberships than I actually need. So shoot me an email/whatever if you want one of my extras. If there are more requests than I have extra memberships (doubtful), I'll use some biased selection method as to who gets one. 

We know what the Tsarnev story really means. It's about evil Muslims striking back against the hand that fed them, right? That's what it's about. It's not about our backward immigration policies and xenophobia. It's not about a suffocating layer of red tape making a man give up on America and turn his mind back to a more savage time. It's not about our inability to realize that many beautiful, idealistic, passionate people want us DEAD and may even have good reasons for doing so, to the point that we protest when a magazine tries to tell us that story. Nope.

We know what the Zimmerman story really means. It's about racism still alive and well in America. It's not about the breakdown of local policing due to one budget cut too many. It's not about how the local police doesn't care if your daughter's getting blackmailed by some pedo scum online or if your neighbor poisoned your pets. And in this case it's the local policeman, because there were three of them last year, but, hey, budget cuts. Cut the education, cut the cops, and wonder why Susan is selling marijuana when she's such a pretty, bright girl. Let's not talk about vigilante justice born of necessity, being transported to the 19th century when we claim to be in the 21st. Nope.

Think about it. Often the truth to a story may lie in the boring bureaucratic details rather than the flashy themes.