I'm still sorting out what all happened and what all was going on and where the woman I reached out to socially last week was coming from in general.  That kind of stuff takes me a while to sift through.  It might be some time before I decide if I want to be around her again.

Here's page 2 of my latest issue of "...Songbook."  I find that I really have to have my "A" game when I work with these old school pens, brushes, and inkwell.  That means: lots of rest and a large block of time ahead of me to work for a session.  That's why it's going to take so long to complete the illustrations for this book.  I'm thinking July at the earliest.

I'm trying to relate to someone in my world in a way that I find sustainable, obtainable, and accessible.  For this  particular person, I've decided to disengage with contact with them for a period of time.  I think it will be a factor of at least weeks, if not months.  I've decided to stop bitching about not having conventional romantic access to this person, and just go a way in relation to them that has worked quite well for me in the past.  I'm not going to be able to keep a mad on the whole time in my decision, and I'm not even particularly angry about the lack of access to this person as a companion at this moment.  

​The course of action I'm undertaking really works for me, particularly when I want to set a limit to how much I will do to get with someone such as her.  After a while, I've found, decisions I make to disengage with such a person may be ones I make out of anger at first, but the anger fades, and I do well to come up with reasons to keep up the disengagement that don't involve anger or resentment  towards such a person.

It's looking like July before I finish illustrating this book. I'm enjoying down time.

I finished outlining the forty-eight pages that make up the body of issue number 2 of "Richy Vegas Songbook." Yay!

I've got a couple of things to say about the situation with that waitress at that diner I patronize.  The first thing I want to say is that, if this is a bad deal I got going with her, then frequent patronage of her place of employment at times I  know her to work there won't turn it into a good deal for me.  It's the same as too frequent phone calls to some of those women in my past.  No amount of phone calls to a Katy, Wanda, or Veronica would make the bad deals I had going with them into good deals.  Believe me on that.

The second thing I want to talk about concerns the time I got that waitress' email address from her, sent her an email, invited her to see me play at an open mike in the email, and how she never replied to my email or mentioned getting the email the next time I saw her at her place of employment. Perhaps she really wanted to let me know where I actually stood with her as far as ever going on an actual date with her.  Maybe she only likes me as a customer.

Maybe she'd see any attempt by me to invite her to the event I'm participating in next month as disrespectful of her wishes that she doesn't want to have to fuck with me as a suitor. As of now, I've have zero inclination to stick my neck out at all through any invitation to her from me to come out and see me anywhere.  I've no desire to take it upon myself to come off as some kind of "good guy" and try to "work things out" by any overture from me to her of that nature.  Fuck that!

Here are a couple more pages from "Richy Vegas Songbook, issue number 2:"

I've changed my mind about that waitress in that diner where I sometimes eat.  If I get a chance I will invite her to the event I'm participating in next month.  If she doesn't go for it, well, rejection is just part of the whole dating world game.  What makes me so paranoid isn't really every day, ordinary rejection, but rather it's when the rejection gets packaged into some really cruel game.  If I thought this waitress was like that or had that kind of agenda, of course I wouldn't approach her for social reasons, however, I'm sure she doesn't have that kind of agenda, so I'll see how it goes in the coming days and weeks. 

I guess I'm really apprehensive about my concern that, if this waitress at this diner does present me with an opportunity, that it will be what I've come to understand is more of a "lip-service" opportunity.  Looking back, I've had quite a few experiences with women who gave me what seemed like an opportunity, but that maybe these women weren't really into it, and these opportunities weren't really much in the way of genuine opportunities.  I can point to a lot of terrible experiences in my past where it seemed, looking back, that the woman felt somewhat obliged to give me a supposed opportunity because they felt as if they had to answer to some third party, such as a friend, or they felt obliged due to pressure from themselves.

I hope I have sufficient powers of discernment these days and can parse out whether or not this waitress really wants to move things along in a meaningful way.  In my past I used to get so very, very bummed out over "missed opportunities," when oftentimes the opportunities I would get really bummed out about were ones I could later categorize as mere lip service rather than missed opportunities I could rightfully beat myself up about.

One example of a "lip service opportunity" from my recent past concerned a very, very attractive barista at Thunderbird Coffee in 2022.  At some point late in that year, I seemed to have interactions with other female baristas at this Thunderbird location where I wondered if I caught a whiff of them seeming to hint at this attractive barista's interest in me.  I mean, I would get my coffee, right, and one of them would say, "It's all yours!" and it seemed as if this or that female barista would put a little more "oomph!" to what she said when she handed me my coffee.

I was skeptical, because, as nice as this very, very attractive barista had been to me over the preceding years I'd known her, she didn't field my Facebook friend request very nicely when I put one of those in for her in early 2018.  She never accepted my Facebook friend request, but she would mock me with pseudo-goo-goo-eyes on several occasions in the days and weeks after I put in the friend request.

I voiced my general skepticism of her interest in me on this blog in late 2022, and, sure enough, it seemed as if she took up with some other guy with, like, lightening speed shortly after I put out some blowback to her supposed interest in me.  So yeah, that's what I'm really paranoid about concerning this waitress at this diner.  Soon after I seemingly caught this development that the Thunderbird barista had taken up with some other guy, I blogged about how I'd never learned in my younger days how to catch a freight train going ninety miles an hour down the railroad tracks, either.  That's still true today, so we'll see about this waitress, I suppose. 

Last night at a songwriter's event I performed two songs about the little fat man.  I emphasize in the songs that the "turn my back on love road" that I initially embarked on in 1988 presented a manifest way to show Sara I actually cared a great deal for her.  I cared enough for her to refrain from playing the same old role I would play when someone such as her started in on me.  I cared enough for her to try something I'd never tried in hopes of having a different outcome, even though the outcome might only involve a kind of divorce from the whole courtship ritual and all that one might or might not gain from participating in the courtship ritual.  My willingness to embrace such a path and follow through with my intentions seemed to arouse an actual interest from her in me that seemed directly proportional to the extent I embraced this "turn my back on love" path.

Last month I saw a young woman working at a coffee shop who looked a lot like that former cashier that I go on and on about to this day.  I wondered whether or not this barista was the former cashier's sister.  I entertained the notion of making this coffee shop my new, regular coffee shop and going there almost every day.  I would stop short of asking about that former cashier, because I'd been down that road before when I'd spotted ANOTHER young woman in late 2022 that worked at a book store and I asked HER in January, 2023 if SHE knew the former cashier.  The young woman at the bookstore said no, and I left it at that.  I made a point of patronizing another bookstore after that.

I guess I would have attempted to make this barista's acquaintance as a regular costumer in her coffee shop, but then I came up with the whole revelation about point "A" and point "B."   I decided my effort to refrain from trying to get from point "A" to point "B" in regard to that former cashier could best manifest itself materially if I DID NOT patronize that coffee shop where that barista works and if I DID NOT try to make that barista's acquaintance.  So far it's been about a month or so since my decision, and I'm good to my word.

I've talked some about a waitress in a diner where I sometimes eat breakfast.  She gave me her email address sometime last year, and I promptly sent her an email inviting her to see me perform at an open mike.  She didn't respond to my email.  She didn't mention getting my email at all during my next visit to her place of employment as a customer.  She started acting like she didn't want to talk to me sometime last November.  I couldn't figure out why.  I thought she wanted me to make it about that former cashier.  I let the notion of that former cashier into my being even though the mere act of allowing myself to think of this former cashier as a possibility for me could invite a kind of emotional and mental chaos I did not miss at all.

I resolved the whole issue of  that former cashier and how I felt about her with that insight about how I always found it impossible to get from point "A" to point "B" with her.  I felt really good about my solution to try to refrain from going from point "A" to point "B" in regard to that former cashier.  Like I said, the most material manifestation of that effort to restrain myself from point "A" to point "B" resided in my effort to refrain from lurking around that barista that resembles the former cashier and trying to make that barista's acquaintance.

I have an event I'm participating in next month.  I won't patronize that diner where that waitress works until after this event because I don't want to invite her to it.  The last time I ate there, the waitress was being friendly and talking to me. I liked how she was being friendly to me, for sure, but I still DO NOT like how she's treated me in the past.  I figure the best way to show I care enough about myself, and by extension, to show I care about her, would involve letting this supposed opportunity to get with this waitress slip through my fingers.  The best way I see to materially manifest my desire to play a different role than that of the nice guy who gets passed over in favor of "Chad" or whatever would involve me refusing to play the part of the persistent, devoted, ardent admirer of this waitress.  The best way I see to refuse to play the role of ardent admirer resides in an attempt to refrain from patronizing that diner for the next month and a half and to not invite her to the event I'm participating in next month. 

Look, I'm showing that I don't care at all whether or not I get laid in a very material way.  I won't see this person for quite some time if I follow through.  If the problem women such as her have with "nice guys" stems from the perception that nice guys are nice only if the woman they are being so nice to grants them substantial access to them, then I'm definitely walking away from all of that.  I DO care about how I'm treated by women such as her to show in a very real, material way my disdain for the supposed "opportunities" these women sometimes deign to "favor" me with.

I really try not to be a "great guy" when someone rejects me these days.  I think I'm right when I say that trying to come of as a great guy to a woman who has rejected me can be so very manipulative.  If anyone wants to know the gory details of what I depict as having happened in this book, they will have to write me for a copy to purchase the book.  I have an email address on my contact page as well as a P.O. Box they can write to for info on that.

The second page I added many years later as the second moral to this story.  The episode depicted in this issue number 4 was like a psychotic episode without the psychosis.  The environmental elements of one of my typical psychotic episodes all fell into place on this one, but my medication prevented actual psychosis from occurring.  The episode in this issue marks the last time something like this ever happened to me (knock on wood!).

The next sixteen pages of my latest book illustration effort will see me doing pencil work exclusively on all sixteen pages before I begin the inks on page 31.  Upcoming posts will feature excerpts from previously published issues of "Richy Vegas Comics."