In the Spring of 1984, when I attended UT-Austin as a freshman,  I got really hung up on a girl in my art class named Cathy.  She had a serious boyfriend, and that really bummed me out.  I really went into a tailspin over Cathy.  I've often thought about her over the years for several reasons.  She seemed pretty nice, but later that year I encountered "Katy."  Katy was not nice at all.  She had a boyfriend too, but she told me that she'd broken up with him and that she loved me when I confessed my virgin status to her on our first date on New Year's Eve.  Katy seemed to represent a harbinger of things to come, too.  I really didn't get hung up on nice girls who just had boyfriends like Cathy anymore, and the women I did get hung up on just got meaner and meaner and meaner.

I've concluded that because I got so hung up on Cathy and became so bummed out over what now seems to me to be a really minor thing-that she had a boyfriend- that tendency to get so easily bummed out over such a thing made me extremely vulnerable to the Katies, the Wandas, and the Lindas of the world.  I would see  women such as them as heaven sent, and the shit would happen.  

Last night I got a little bummed out in regards to that young woman I still go on about.  I thought about Cathy and all of the girls after her.  I concluded that getting bummed out over this person would just leave me vulnerable to getting fucked over by someone else later on down the line.  I'm not bummed out about this person now, and I doubt that I will get bummed out about her within the foreseeable future.  

I promised I would not get ugly about anyone who may read these posts, and I will try to keep my promise.  In my dealings with women such as the one I go on about so much, as well as my dealings with friends, both male and female, whom I've had in the past that remind me of this young woman, I've found a thing about them.  I had this one female friend in the nineties who would talk about how cool she was and how she would be shitty to people around her and go on and on in that vein, at length.  Whenever I would attempt to call her out for this stuff, she would act really surprised and sometimes hurt that I would object to her whole line.  Seriously.  So, it was not as if she just didn't care what others thought of her.  It was not as if she could take or leave someone like me, and therefore she could say whatever she wanted to say about how she fucked this person over or what an uncool person that girl was who once was her friend, she really didn't like me or anyone else calling her out for this shit.

This girl I'm talking about, and a former male friend with whom I ended our deal after many years of friendship, really expected people such as myself to just love them no matter how they behaved towards me and others around us, or what their general attitude displayed about themselves.  I can only conclude that people like this want, expect, and feel as if they are entitled to unconditional love.  Unconditional love only exists, in my mind, in the relationship from a parent to their child, typically.

I think this young woman whom I go on about might expect that kind of thing from me.  Now, she might not be the total freak about this kind of love that these former friends I describe were, but from me at least, yeah maybe.  She might be more realistic about the kinds of love she can receive from people such as her real boyfriends, though.  She might realize that she has to meet certain expectations in her relationships with people like that, but she might really, really expect total, unconditional love and acceptance from someone like me.  I'm not prepared to give such a person that kind of love anymore.

The only reason I don't try to use the things I learned in my dealings with Sara to get a girlfriend is because it doesn't work.  In the Spring of 1990, while in my dorm alone in Jersey City, I came to the conclusion that I'd made a terrible mistake in letting Sara go back in the Summer of 1988.  From then on, I tried to get girlfriends with an eye towards making up for my supposed mistake in letting Sara go.

My first love interest I tried to win was Gwen, an undergrad at the School of Visual Arts-the school I attended as a graduate student.  I really tried to refrain from pursuing her to the ends of the Earth and back, but that just meant that things took a really long time to shake out.  Shortly after I encountered her in the school wood shop the week after Thanksgiving 1990, I realized that a lot of people at the school saw me as the obsessive weirdo/ bad guy, and I had a psychotic episode.   

I then took an interest in Ann Marie, and that dragged out until I felt compelled to let her go the following Summer because I was moving back to Texas after graduation, and I never connected with her in any meaningful way- just some games and bullshit from her.

Jenna represented my next attempt to right the wrongs I'd done in letting Sara go.  I met Jenna soon after I returned to Austin from New York/ New Jersey.   By the late Spring of 1992, almost a year later, the wheels had come off, and I wound up calling her repeatedly to go on dates with me, and then the wheels came off some more.  I went insane starting in July of 1992, after I let Jenna go on June 22nd, 1992.  

So, I have no demands to make of this young woman I think about as much as I do.  Similarly, I had no demands of the Invisible Woman in 2017/ 2018.  Eventually, I stopped looking her up in the online celebrity news sites every day, without really noticing at first.  These days I look up the Invisible Woman once every couple of weeks, if that much, and I'll often go for long stretches of weeks or months where I don't look her up at all.  Yep, I have no demands to make of the Invisible Woman or anyone else who came after.  I have absolutely zero romantic demands to make of any women in my world, or of the young woman I still go on about at length who is not even around anymore.

In my last post I talked about how my dealings with Sara in 1988 taught me how to look out for the both of us.  I don't think her interest in taking me down represented the best possible course of action for her.  I showed her, myself, and everyone around us a better way as I stumbled upon a way for me to best look out for the both of us.  I apply those lessons to women such as Sara all the way to these days, and I call such actions I take the Sara Template.  The thing is, i had no other options that seemed as viable as refusing to chase her to the ends of the Earth and back and, when the day came, letting her go.  Forget about dating, sex, love, girlfriends, relationships or anything like that.  I really seemed to have no other viable choice but to teach myself how to let someone such as her go.

The legacy of that time seems to live on in rather unseemly ways.  Namely, that my skillset in dealing with the cruel games these young women still want to play with me just seems to foster a gunfighter mentality in other young woman in my world.  I first had dealings with a young attractive female employee at that business I talk about in 2014, and the pestering and games from other young, attractive female employees continued into these times, with this young woman I go on about representing the last person to want to take me on.

Again, the things I learned how to do in regards to Sara in 1988, and the insights I've gained, just seem to serve as a method for dealing with a very specific, very annoying type of pest.  I"ve never dated someone who's come at me in this particular adversarial manner. But, I promise, I'll try in the foreseeable future to refrain from writing anything such a person as this young woman I go on about might construe as hurtful or hateful, just in case she still reads these posts.

I'm no mind reader, I swear.  But, I get the impression that my remark in the last post that implied this young woman I go on about is a vicious, horrible woman didn't go unnoticed.  I could be wrong, but I'm an internet content provider, so here goes.  I think about this person all the time, still.  She's long, long gone out of my world, but I still think about her.  That means I'm still quite fond of her, sometimes.  

Okay, I don't like that I have to fend off the adversarial advances of such as one a her as often as I do.  I admit it.  I don't like that.  So I'll amend my previous remarks about her and say I didn't like the attitude i perceived her to have towards me or the adversarial agenda she possibly tried to enact against me.  So, I mean to say that I perceived her agenda towards me as vicious and horrible, but I guess she means quite a bit else to people such as her friends, family, and, yeah, maybe her real boyfriends as well.  So, maybe she's not a vicious, horrible woman to everyone, and I guess I don't like the attitude and behavior I perceived her to have towards me, but I like her.

Here's the thing, though.  I know how to look out for her best interests as well as mine better than she does towards me.  My experience with Sara taught me how to look out for the both of us, even though I perceived her as having a desire to hurt me.  My ultimate agenda towards such a one as this young woman I go on about involves a demonstrable intention of looking out for her best interests as well as mine.  I never thought it in my best interests to harm her in any way, but I wish I could say the same for her and whatever she wanted in regards to me.

In 1988 and 1989, when I finished up my undergrad career and applied to grad schools for art, I faced a really shitty reality.  Three women, Sara, the one I now call Linda, and "Myrna" all had it in their heads that they wanted to achieve a vicious takedown of me.  Sara didn't succeed, but Linda and Myrna did.  With Sara I tried the experiment to see what would happen if I tried, just once, to "turn my back on love."  My only criticism of that experiment lies in the idea that I didn't take it far enough and try to adopt it as the way I related to women I desired in general.  I thought the experiment had its conclusion when I let go of Sara.  Little did I know that two more women waited in the wings with basically the same agenda.

And how could I possibly comprehend something like that?  The fullness of my years and the understanding of the stigma of my diagnosis compelled me to look at that time from some distance and realize that, yes, the possibility exists that multitudes of women who come into my purview just don't get it.  They will see what they want to see, no matter what.  After all, members of my own family treated me in much the same way, not too long ago.   Specifically, that the romantically obsessive man with a major mental illness gets seen, automatically, as the transgressor and bad guy in any deal that unfolds between myself and some woman who, most likely, believes that God is on her side no matter what she may do.

So, they line up outside my door for just those reasons.  The metaphor fits.  One train rolls out of the station, another one rolls in.  I sent the last one on her way, I believe, and maybe I'll have a break in this pandemic time before the next one dares to come along.  I don't know what kind of shape I will find myself in when or if that occurs, but I never do, do I.  These days I find myself projecting this kind of thought process onto random attractive young women I see in my world.  Is that a good idea?  I don't know, but I tend not to act on every single negative thought that comes into my head, so I feel free to think whatever thoughts I want to think.  I usually entertain at least two or more possibilities when, for example, I'm on my daily walk and I see an attractive teenage girl give me a guarded, suspicious look.  I said to my old friend Sam in 2018 that I usually try to entertain at least two, if not more, possibilities for such a situation, and that the best course of action for me to take in any case remains for me to do nothing.

I feel no need to go onto online dating sites, or try more positive approaches to try to pick up women who do not have this vicious, destructive agenda.  My learned impulse to let go of such vicious, horrible women solves so many problems for me and guides me so well in my relations with more datable women that I don't feel much of a need to make something happen for me right here, right now.  One thing that has happened, though, is that I more often approach some women who may not necessarily vibe all sketchy in addition to flat out rejecting bad deals from the Saras, Lindas, and Myrnas of the world.  I approached five other women while under the yoke of the last problematic woman, and I had no luck, but at least I tried.  Only one of those women vibed sketchy, the others I had no problem with.  I hope that trend continues if we ever get out of this pandemic time in the next several months or so.

I still think about that young woman.  I think about her pretty much all day, every day.  Any new readers of this blog can just go to about any entry starting in June of last year in earnest, although I mentioned her as early as February, 2019.  Here's the thing, though.  This phenomenon of thinking almost all the time about a person I never really knew, haven't even seen in over two months, pretty much know she doesn't work at that business I patronize anymore;  nothing new under the sun for Richard J Alexander, Jr, born in the year of our Lord, 1964.  I've been this way since about the age of thirteen, to a greater or lesser extent, up to this very day, September, 6, 2020.

The fact that I think about this young woman to the extent that I do now, and to the extent that I have done for over a year now, does not mean much to me in and of itself.  All it really means to me comes down to the fact that this one aspect of my persona has not changed much, if at all, since the late 1970s, when I was all of thirteen years old.  How I THINK about this aspect of my persona, and what exactly I DO about the fact that I can still think about a person such as her, that's all changed completely.  I feel very comfortable with myself now, even though I most likely will never know this person in any way as a friend and/or a lover.  This tendency to fall under the sway of such a one as her, or more accurately, to fall under the sway of some notion of this person that exists inside of me, just represents a key part of Richard J Alexander, Jr, born in Austin, Texas, in the year of our Lord, 1964.

I'm not despondent or depressed about this reality I'm in, for I know this notion of this person will most likely leave my body and mind and leave just traces behind, eventually.   That always happens.   And, I'm very, very, very happy that no crash and burn psychotic episode happened, this time, as a result of this tendency I have to fixate on such a one as her.  I'm also very, very, very happy that I never, to my way of seeing things, mistreated this young woman and gave her cause to hold some kind of grudge against me as a result of my unyielding fixation.

In my blog post of these past many years, I talked often of Sara in 1988.  I talk often of that time and how it serves as a template for how I proceed when faced with whatever dilemmas come up in regards to a young woman such as this one of the past year-plus.  The Sara Template works beautifully every, single, time.  That may ring true once again, because, this young woman may have had an agenda in regards to myself that had nothing to do with friendship, dating, sex, love, girlfriend, or relationship.  My worst-case guess about her involved some crusade she may have undertaken to strike a blow for women all over the world by doing some kind of vicious take down of me.  As it stands, I never had the slightest inclination, when push came to shove, to engage with her on even the most incidental, superficial level.  I never tried to make small talk with her, nor her with me, on the few occasions such a thing could have occurred.  That also makes me very, very, very happy.  I never, ever, saw any aspect of my time in this fixation where I missed an opportunity to get to know her better, because I'm very, very confident that none such opportunity ever, ever, ever, even once, ever existed.

If, for some dumbass reason she ever, ever tries to engage with me as a possible adversary again, and tries to reach out to me socially in some attempt to engage in such a conflict, I feel one hundred percent confident that no, even then, I will not even attempt to chase her to the ends of the Earth and back.  The legacy of no attempt of my part to reach out to her socially in any way will still rule the day.  I made a rhyme.  If she shakes out the same as all the others of these past eight years or so, I've probably seen the last of her.  Maybe not the last of her kind, but the last her, probably.  So, I can think, think, think about her all the time, time, time.  This notion of her will go the way of the others, some day.

I'm on the last third of the eighty page comic book now.   That is, the last third of the outlining in inks phase. I've got one more major phase to go, which is filling in the outlined pages.  Normally, the obsession would take over right about this time and I would just grind out the last twenty-six or so pages of this stage in a short period of time-like three or four days.  This time I'm stopping to smell the roses, for whatever reason.  I like this.  The obsession can go like, "If I do six pages today, and six pages a day from here on out, I can be done by Wednesday.  But, if I do eight pages a day..." Or maybe ,"If I have one good day where I do like, twelve pages  in a day..."  Ai, yi, yi!  That would drive anybody nuts.  I hope to finish this stage of production by next weekend.

I may have stalled out on my weight loss.  Oh well, I've really changed my eating habits, regardless.  I've changed them so much my grocery bill this week came out a third less than normal.  Forget about take out or delivery.  I can better control portion size by cooking my own food.  I'm still going to try to refrain from weighing myself every single day from here on out, too.  I eat a lot of popcorn when I watch T.V.   That's as close to eating styrofoam to fill me up as I want to get.

I watched The T.A.M.I show last night on TCM.  I normally don't have time to watch feature length movies with the music and art, but like I said,  I want to take it easy and not get so obsessive about production.  I'm zapping the two Decline of Western Civilization  music documentaries that TCM features tonight to watch later.  Serious about the leisure now. 

I read somewhere that obese people won't get the full benefit of any coronavirus vaccines that come along.  The article said that the obese have this problem with just about any vaccine, not just a potential vaccine for coronavirus.  I decided to embark on a more serious endeavor to lose more weight.  I have a lot of weight to lose before I can go from obese to merely overweight, but I'll set more modest goals for weight loss than that.  The project started a few weeks ago, and I already can count some pretty significant weight loss.  Since late 2018, I've lost about thirty pounds, going from 280 pounds to about 250.  About half of that weight loss started since the pandemic began, with quite a bit of it these past few weeks.  

I decided to eat a lot of the same foods I took on since the pandemic.  Mostly I eat really easy to prepare stuff such as baked fish, or hamburger with Hamburger Helper, or even a corn dog for lunch, for example.  The difference lies in the portion sizes I eat of these kinds of food.  I have one breakfast taco for breakfast instead of two, I have one corn dog for lunch instead of three, and so on.  I look at the recommended serving sizes for everything from prepared Hamburger Helper to peanuts to crackers and try to stick with that.  I snack on fruit lot as well.  I try to eat some kinds of vegetables everyday too.

To mark my progress I give myself token rewards on my calendar, such as a green foil star for following my diet for a day, a gold foil star for going on a walk, and a little animal sticker for not eating things like cake, or cookies, or ice cream.  I also track how many sweetened beverages such a coffee or tea I have a day with a little sticker for each of these kinds of drinks.   I gave up a lot of artificial sweetener and just try to watch my consumption of sugar.  I try to drink lots of ice water with a wedge of lime instead.  

I also give myself a blue foil star for NOT weighing myself over a twenty-four hour period of time.  Very important!  Nothing drives me crazier, faster than obsessively weighing myself every day, sometimes more than once a day.  I try to go some number of days without giving in to the urge to weigh myself.  For example, I can mark five days as my record of no scale-stepping so far, so I then try for a goal of three days as my next marker to set. I tend to set goals that way; go for a little LESS the next time instead of a little more.  That way, if I do make three days in a row, I can always try for more and thus set another record. I try to spend that time NOT weighing myself every day enjoying all of the weight I've already taken off.  At this business I patronize almost every day, I can see my whole body in the store window, and I can see the difference in my improved appearance.  I can just register a lot of happiness on the progress I've made so far without getting all hung up on trying to lose a whole lot more weight. 

Sorry, not going to talk about women for a while, most likely.  That means my remaining NINE unique weekly visitors will have to go elsewhere for their bad woman fix.   In other news.  Issue number 22 is coming along nicely.  I inked FIFTY pages of text to finish that phase today.  I even had enough gas to start the next phase, which consists of outlining the pencil drawings in ink.

I still have two songs left in the guitar/vocal tracks phase of I Make Country Music Records, Sir.  I Make Country Music Records, Sir represents the fifth solo album from the one and only Richy Vegas.  The songs I still have to track are, "Hockey Goon of Love," and "Anna."  I just missed tracking "Hockey Goon of Love" last week.  I fucked up on the last verse, because my guitar pick slipped so much that I had too little pick left to strum with.  "Anna" is a six minute song about Richy Vegas, the Serial Killer Hound.  I still have a ways to go before i get that one down.  I hope I can cram enough to record a passable version by Monday.  Having a live audience to play in front of really helps to get the songs down to where one can play them smoothly.  I really think the experience of having an actual audience listen to one play a song helps one rise to the occasion and builds confidence in one's ability to perform the song.  Oh well, cramming it is.

The Small Press Expo will announce the nominees for their awards for this year's virtual ceremony next week.  I submitted a PDF of issue number 20 for their consideration.  In anticipation of possibly earning a nomination, I ordered ten more mailers in case I received some internet orders for my books.  I didn't order a whole bunch.  I will probably use up most or all of the mailers I will have in less than six months, even if I don't get nominated.