I can't presume to give advice to any men, young or old, about subjects such as online dating, or how to make money, or many other subjects I can't even think of right now.  I tried to put up a profile on plenty-of-fish years ago, but that didn't work out.  I haven't really tried anything like that since.  I get so much support from the government and my family financially that I only have to work part-time, so I can't tell any guy how they should earn a living.  The best I can do is offer to others the same kinds of advice I try to give myself.

First off, I started really working on taking care of myself in a sustained, committed way in October of 2001. At that time, we'd just been through the 9/11 terror attacks, and I came to the conclusion that I engaged in a lot of substance abuse that involved alcohol, drugs such as marijuana and harder drugs, and heavy cigarette smoking to help me cope with loneliness.  I decided that I needed to learn how to spend time by myself in a more constructive manner, because I saw a lot of my substance abuse as an unhealthy way to cope with loneliness.

I remember the night of October 20th or 22nd or thereabouts, when I had this epiphany about why I used so much alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. I had this epiphany in my efficiency apartment, by myself, and decided immediately to begin an effort to clean the place up.  My life was forever on a different path from that night forward.  I committed to quitting smoking cigarettes in the months that followed, and, despite many relapses on cigarettes over that next year or so, I stuck with it, and haven't smoked since December, 1st, 2002.  Two packs a day was my level of addiction to cigarettes at the time. I joined a support group I found by calling the American Lung Association, I used aids such as the patch, and later Zyban, and just kept at it.  So, first. last, and always, I really try to take care of my health.

I committed fully to abstinence from drugs and alcohol in late 2008.  For many years following my successful efforts to stop smoking cigarettes, I gave moderation a try when it came to drugs and alcohol.  Mental health providers such as psychiatrists, therapists, and social workers would really try to drive home the point that I needed to just quit all of that, and I saw a lot of those efforts they made as pointless nagging.

Nevertheless, I would go to substance abuse oriented support groups from time to time just to placate this therapist or that caseworker, and so I got introduced to that whole process that way.  It got to the point where I saw regular therapy as a way to keep tabs on all of that substance abuse, without really committing to stopping it altogether.  But again, the ball got rolling on that whole effort through those processes I engaged in.

Finally, I had another epiphany regarding the rock and roll lifestyle I had going back in full swing by Christmastime 2008.  Briefly, I saw that one of my friends seemed to get so much more play from women than I did, even though we indulged in about the same amount of drug and alcohol abuse.  The lifestyle worked for him on some level that it did not work for me.  I remember the very night, Friday, December 26 into Saturday December 27th.  I had my (hopefully) last six pack of beer that night, while watching Grade Z horror flick Bloodfreak on Turner Classic Movies by myself.

After I successfully committed to abstinence from drugs and alcohol (with a few relapses over the years), I tried my luck with the women again.  I was like Rip Van Winkle waking from a twenty year slumber.  The young women I found most attractive were of a whole other generation separate from me.  I didn't have much luck, and I still don't have much luck, but still, a lot has improved.

With the substance abuse issues meaningfully engaged with, I could turn to my inner workings regarding my relationship with women.  I self-diagnosed love addiction as a major problem in my relationship with women, and I've talked about that extensively on this blog.  I'll try to hammer home a few salient points about love addiction right now.

In 2012, after some pretty nervy efforts to ask mostly much younger waitresses and baristas out on dates and getting shot down every time, I decided to go a different way on those interactions.  I decided to revive an experiment in my youth, conducted in the spring of 1988, where I tried see what would happen if I "turned my back on love,"  The revival of this experiment opened me up to so many insights into how I think about and relate to women I find attractive.

Okay, so, "Turning my back on love." What does that mean, really?  To me it meant having a greater willingness to let supposed opportunities I would look for with barista and waitress types just slip through my fingers.  In other words, I would see what would happen if I did NOT ask a flirtatious, attractive, young barista or waitress on a date.  I even took it so far as to refrain from giving such women gifts such as my comics or CD's, unless they specifically requested that I give them something like that.

This line of inquiry, the "turn my back on love" experiment, has opened me up to so many insights and whole new horizons as to how to move forward with my relationship with women.  Briefly, I see my willingness to let supposed opportunities with so many young or youngish women I find attractive slip through my fingers over the years as a demonstrated willingness to accept an outcome where me and this or that barista or waitress don't become boyfriend and girlfriend, and in so doing, I'm better able to look out for said barista's or waitress' interests as well as my own.

This kind of willingness to accept such outcomes, done over and over again, will often go into the women in my world's book on me, if such a thing exists.  That can lead to them feeling as if they can trust me more than if I tried to come off as Johnny on the spot in regards to "opportunities."

Another thing "turning my back on love" did for me was point out to myself how I used to feel as if I always needed a love interest from amongst the women in my world.  Constantly looking for a viable love interest in this or that barista or waitress in my world probably didn't come off too well to these women.  I would feel as if I needed a love interest from amongst the women in my world to feel as if I played SOME meaningful part in the whole dating, love, and romance game.

I came up with "turn my back on love" through the process of reading, and reading again, Dr. David Burns' Feeling Good.  This book goes a little into love addiction, outlines it as something the reader of the book can diagnose in themselves, and other parts of the book outline ways in which the reader can begin the process of starting an inner dialogue that questions one's "silent assumptions."  Silent assumptions are the thoughts the reader has not put into actual words that run through a depressive person's head about any number of subjects.  In my case, a silent assumption I had was that I always needed a love interest from amongst the women in my world to feel as if I played a part in the game.

Okay, I take better care of myself, I also learned how to refrain from chasing hotties to the ends of the earth and back, now what?  Learn to cultivate an appreciation for all kinds of women who don't happen to be twenty-two year old hotties, that's what.  That's one area I've really tried to push the envelope on these past many years.  Since about 2003, really.  My standard for what gets a women at least one date with me: Available, interested, acts like she gives a shit about taking care of herself.

I really, really try to be as democratic as I can with this more forgiving standard for women I will go out with or give the time of day to.  Here's something I've found over the years; a lot of women who'll go out with me can't manage that last one, "Acts like she gives a shit about taking care of herself."  Substance abuse is a one way street, and I had a couple of women see themselves as trading up when they compare their unresolved substance abuse issues with my more-resolved substance abuse issues.

So yeah, that's the area I will try to work on most.  I will try to develop a greater appreciation for women who aren't twenty-two year old hottie types.  I've done work on this.  One thing I discovered was this block I had, where if I even imagined, even a little bit, about giving such a woman the time of day, my imagination would flash to some horrible moment of truth scenario where we would wind up naked together and I just couldn't do the deed. I crashed through this particular block when I set about investigating the actual truth of that scenario that would pop up in my head.

I mean, literally, driving to a woman's house to look at her art, and wondering, in a distressed way, what would happen if we came to some moment of truth when I got there, only to find out when I got there that she was seeing someone, and I guessed that she flirted with me the night I met her in order just get some kind of desired attention.  No shit.  She was nice, though.

A willingness to adopt more forgiving standards about who I'll go out with takes a LOT of pressure off of me to make it work with the hotties.  This probably takes a lot of pressure from ME off of the hotties as well.  Don't get me wrong, I love me some hotties, but god, is that all there is? If I made it all about the hotties nowadays, I'd never go on a date with anyone.

One aspect of my recovery from love addiction pertains to just how very astute I've become, in my opinion, about women and the various situations I've found myself in with them these past however many years.  For example, I've written about the time I went to Vulcan Video in late 2017, and how I ran into a woman I used to live next door to around 2009/2010.  When I saw her at Vulcan Video, I got the impression she wanted me to ask her out, ask her for her number, whatever.  I decided against it, because I just didn't feel like switching gears.

I lived next door to her for a good year, year and a half, and here at the Vulcan Video however many years later, I get the first inkling that she had any interest in me at all for that sort of thing.  And furthermore, back when she lived next door  to me, I invited her to an early evening party at my house.  At about 9:15/ 9:30, while people were still hanging out at my house, I had occasion to go outside.  I looked over at my neighbor, through her living room window, and she sat there watching TV and eating her dinner.  So this sudden interest in me at Vulcan Video, all those years later, made me uncomfortable.  I stood my ground and refused to jump through her hoops, By jumping through her hoops, I mean she wanted to get me to initiate the asking her out, asking for her number, and so on.

For four years that encounter with my former neighbor at Vulcan Video rattled around in my head.  For the longest time, I saw the possibilities of where she came from with the sudden interest in me in dualistic, black-and-white terms.  Was she just playing me? If I went ahead and asked her out, would she have then said something about having a boyfriend and left me in the lurch?  Or was she genuinely interested in me asking her out, and I could have really had a shot at dating her if I'd only taken advantage of this opportunity she was giving me?

Four years later, in late 2021, I considered a third possibility.  1) Yes, she wanted me to ask her out, because she was genuinely interested in going out with me, but 2) I would have had one, maybe two dates with her before she quickly lost interest in me, because she got me to jump through her hoops in the first place.  This third possibility seems sooo likely, given what all I've learned about so many women over the years.  Trust me, a very astute observation.

The second observation I want to talk about has to do with the former cashier I approached at her old grocery store job in October 2021.  I mark that occasion as a transcendent experience.  When I approached her at her job that day in late-October of 2021, it was as if all the total bullshit she'd thrown up in my face the preceding three years didn't matter anymore, and this occasion marked the first time we'd really encountered each other in a naked, honest way.  She was very nice, for the record, about my rather ballsy approach to her that day.

After she didn't show up at my the comic book event I invited her to on that occasion, I knew of one thing I definitely DID NOT want to try to do.  I did not want to try to rebound, cash in, or otherwise try to take advantage of any supposed opportunities created by my gesture towards her at her job when I approached her that day.  Sure enough, no big windfall of attractive, interested women ever manifested itself after that transcendent experience with the former cashier.

Whenever I had these transcendent experiences in my twenties. I would have these big expectations that I could most definitely cash in with my pick of other women in my world, and that just never seemed to happen.  A couple of weeks ago, I concluded that my expectations of cashing in fucked me over BEFORE anyone like "Wanda," "Myrna," or Alice ever came on the scene and finished the job.

Nope, no windfall of interested, attractive women ever came around after that transcendent experience of two years ago, but I did get the usual cohort of less than wonderful women lining up outside my door to play the role of disappointment to me.  Among their number, I'm pretty sure I can count the former cashier her own bad self, and also, that famous woman I've gone on and on about these past seven months.

Anyway, I've outlined two very astute observations pertaining to women and some of the experiences I've had with them these past however may years.  Maybe my guesses about the famous woman inhabit a realm that is, by default, divorced from reality, given the very nature of bringing this famous woman, whom I've never met, into the equation.  That may be, but like I said, I'll go with my accurate take on the first two, even if the rest of the world doesn't want to acknowledge that my take on the famous woman in my last post maybe has a basis in reality.  

My last post talks about how I may take up enough space in this woman's head to where the habit of staying up late and drinking wine alone, which she confesses to doing in the liner notes of her last album, has as much to do with me as any other guy she's more famous for having associated with.

And yeah, I'm supposed to just buy into the notion that, on the one hand, I can make very accurate, astute observations concerning my former neighbor and that former cashier and the experiences I had with them both, but to go into some guesses about that famous woman...oh boy, now I'm totally in la-la land about this one thing and this one thing alone!  Well, okay, have it your way, but like I said, two out of three ain't bad.  In fact, two out of three is so good, I manage to make intelligent decisions about the la-la land woman too, such as sending her only ONE postcard to her fan club last summer, and posting only ONE message on one of her social media accounts. AND, the nature of both of the things I wrote, on the postcard and in the social media message, is pretty bland and unsensational in both instances.

Yeah, I've written and recorded some pretty outrageous songs about her, but who wouldn't.  AND I've called her things like "asshole,"  "bully," and  "coward," but hey, that's stuff I've written on this blog. For a guy who's supposedly out to lunch in regards to this famous woman, I've been pretty careful, overall.

These past couple of weeks may actually prove the best time for me have bailed on my deal with that famous woman.  I wonder if anything that transpires with her, or with me for  that matter, will negate the things I've thought about these past seven months or so.  Was any of that real?  Was any of that more real than I can even appreciate at this particular time?

For such an ambiguous, hazily defined situation as this one, I think about Neil Gaiman's DC Comics superhero, the Sandman.  The Sandman's other name is Dream, and in Gaiman's universe, he is so elemental to human existence that he goes beyond the mere god status of a Thor or a Zeus.  Gods come and go with the ages in Gaiman's universe, but Dream, and his sister, Death, they go deeper than that.

The Sandman has a unique set of superpowers that I'll try to outline below.  He can influence or persuade humans by getting in their heads and influencing the way they think about things.  He can haunt their dreams, and their waking life.  For example: In one story, a mortal human kidnaps Dream's ex-wife, Calliope, and holds her prisoner.  The villain is a writer who feels his own inspiration for his writing inadequate, so he rapes Calliope on a regular basis in order to get ideas for stories.  He becomes a bestselling author this way, top of the heap.

Calliope beseeches Dream to free her from this bondage this mortal has subjected her to, and so Dream appears before the writer.  The writer tells Dream that he has Calliope in bondage to have ideas for his stories.  Dream says, contemptuously, "If it's ideas you want, I can give you ideas."  in the proceeding days and weeks, ideas for stories start to manifest themselves in the author's head.  The author likes this development at first.  There's all sorts of ideas that feature variations on mythology and history and literary figures, in all kinds of twists and combinations, and they seem really cool.  

But soon enough, the great ideas flood the author's every conscious moment, waking and asleep, until he can't stand it anymore.  He begs Sandman to release him from this burden, and the author frees Calliope in exchange.  The final scenes of the author show him washed up, with no more muse to guide him.

I wonder if I'm like the Sandman to this famous woman.  She may carry on running her life just the way she sees fit, but what do you know; two years from now, or four years from now, she comes up with another album that has the theme of her staying up at all hours of the night thinking about how she's run her life.  This time the album alludes to the two o'clock hour, or the four o'clock hour.  Maybe I'm wrong about all of this.  Maybe all of this was in my head.  Then again, maybe not.

Yeah, it seems that now looks like a good time to bail on my "deal" with this famous woman.  The job hunt is underway, and I'll wrap up whatever loose ends impede that process in the next couple of days.  The smartest thing I did coming out of that whole deal with that former cashier involved resisting the urge to try to rebound or cash in as far as things went with ALL the other women in the world.  That resistance to try and do that marked the first time I put my realization into practice that things can really suck for me in the aftermath of those experiences.  The experience I refer to specifically being the transcendent experience I had when I approached that girl at her cashier job for social reasons.  Some of my very, very worst experiences I had in all of my relationship with women stemmed, probably, from the expectations I had that I could cash in on such a transcendent experience.

Sure enough, I can cite several instances where attractive women were less than wonderful with me after that transcendent experience with that girl at her cashier job.  It was like I was young again, except I was just reliving the parts of being young that really, really sucked for me.  Again, maybe it was the EXPECTATIONS I had after those transcendent experiences in my youth that made things suck so much for me.  Well, I didn't have those expectations so much this last time around, and I'll try to not have those expectations this time around after, I guess, I've let go of any expectation of getting with this famous woman.

My last post related to forgiveness and like that.  I hope I practice the right kind of forgiveness in letting all of that shit go regarding that famous woman.  The wrong kind of forgiveness involves vying for something in return, such as love, sex, attention, validation from women in return for such a gesture, and does not actually constitute genuine forgiveness.  I'll try to practice self-awareness that I'm not veering over into "nice guy" territory.  I think I can do that, and I think it's something worth working on.

When I invited that former cashier at that grocery store to my comic book sale and she was so nice about it, I vowed to not punish her for being so nice to me.  Instead, when it became apparent that she would not reciprocate in kind for my gesture in any way, I bailed.  I think that was the right thing to do.  Hey, it's not as if I expected the moon and six pence in return from her after I bailed, is it?  My behavior helped me later on when it looked to me as if this former cashier was vying for some "free" attention in some weird way, and I could separate myself mentally and emotionally from her to the point where I could see where she and hers left off and I began.  If that makes any sense.

I think I'm onto something with this day to day routine stuff.  I'm fine with the idea of just letting this affair of the past six-plus months just go by the wayside.  I'm in the process of looking for a job, and I have to integrate the demands of my art and my music with whatever job I've got.  That can be tough for anyone to do, and I just don't have the interest in fucking with the situation I've talked about these past six months or so.

Okay, maybe all of that stuff resided mainly in my head, or maybe therein lay some truth.  If there was anything to all that stuff, I wonder: Does that mean I "have something" on that famous woman I went on and on about?  Who gives a shit!  It seems as if a lot of what counts as interpersonal relations between men and women consists of one party "having something" on the other party.  I'm gong to do a Harry Truman on this affair and say, "The buck stops here." In other words, all of that "having something" on someone that can go back and forth between me and these women just ends with me.

My dad, a psychiatrist, told me several times about treating patients with a diagnosis in the schizophrenia spectrum.  He said, that with continued treatment with medication and all of that, that the day to day routine these patients would embrace would often usurp the delusions that had such a hold on them when they first came in for treatment.  For example, six months to a year after "Paul" began treatment, Dad would ask him, "Paul, what about all of that trouble you were having with the FBI and CIA?," and in a scornful, dismissive tone Paul would reply, "Aw man, what are you bothering me with that for?  Why are you even bringing that up?  That's the last thing on my mind these days."  Note, it's NOT that Paul no longer BELIEVED the delusions about the FBI and CIA, it's that they were no longer very IMPORTANT to him.

I figure that the above example serves as a likely outcome for my whole preoccupation with this famous woman I've written so much about these past six months or so.  My focus on upcoming day to day stuff such as looking for a job, going to support groups, taking music lessons, dealing with challenging people and situations in a variety of settings, all of that and more will become much more important than my thoughts and feelings about the famous woman.  My experience in the past of this day to day routine overthrowing the delusional stuff as the main thing on my mind tells me that such an outcome represents an achievable and desired way for all of this famous woman stuff to play out.

I'm finding these tiresome fantasies about a life of romance with this famous person seem to have dissipated a bit.  I don't know if it's a temporary respite, or if this dissipation of these fantasies represents a substantial, point-of-no-return change for how I think about this famous person.  The other night, as I lay in bed in a bummed out state of mind about this situation, I started talking back to my bummer thoughts about the situation.  I decided that, 1) I would actually have to spend a substantive amount of real time with the real live famous woman to come to a decision about her romantically and, 2)  that I will take responsibility for my own personal happiness and not try to put it off on some famous person I've never met, etc., etc.

These past several days I stood ready to jump ship on this particular deal, but that fizzled.  It would have been nice to have someone to talk to and go on dates with, but logistics may have been the culprit on that one.   I think my desire to just find a real person to go out with speaks volumes about where my heart and mind resides in regards to this phantom of a presence I've had to deal with these past seven years.   I think my demonstrated willingness to jump ship may have helped diminish this psycho, probably-divorced-from-reality flame I have no desire to keep alive at this moment in time. 

In the self-help book Feeling Good by Dr. David Burns, he tells of several cases where patients had to come to terms with wayward spouses, elusive boyfriends, or spouses who were reluctant to do things with their afflicted wives, such as go to a museum or take a class.  Dr. Burns encourages emotional self reliance in these patients, and gets results that basically tell the same story to a point where the afflicted party feels so good about themselves they state that they don't need the elusive boyfriend or the wayward spouse, and they make whatever decision they wind up making about that person coming from that place mentally and emotionally.  He tells of one story where he counsels the abandoned wife to not give her strayed husband shit when he called, and to instead set up a reward system when he did call her.  She finds happiness through this process, and the husband leaves his girlfriend and comes back to her.  

Several different outcomes pivot off of the emotional self reliance that the author counsels his patients to work towards, depending on the individual circumstances of the patient and what the patient concludes they want to do.  That's what I'm going for.  I don't want to tell anyone at this moment in time to go jump in the lake, I just want to achieve that sense of self reliance in regards to my own personal happiness.

I think these principals that David Burns talks about in these stories can apply to the absurd situation I find myself in.  One thing I've noticed in the days since I re-upped on the idea that I want to take responsibility for my own happiness has to do with just how much of a basis in reality these thoughts I have about this famous woman contain.  I see the process of letting go of my convictions about these thoughts' bases in reality as first coming from this willingness to attend to my own happiness and satisfaction with my life, and then reevaluating what exactly I think about what goes on around me in my world, and how that all fits in the larger world that this famous woman inhabits somewhere.  

As this sought after outcome of personal happiness seems to unfold before me, it makes sense to me that the process works this way rather than the other way around, that is to say, instead of first debunking these thoughts' bases in reality, then trying to attend to one's needs. It makes sense that it works to attend to one's personal happiness first from the perspective of someone with a mental illness on the inside looking out to the world, rather than someone on the outside looking in to some world of happiness that one can only achieve if one first lets go of the unusual thoughts about someone such as this famous person and where this famous person stands in the world relative to to the afflicted person.