I often encounter situations where people around me want to inflict some kind of emotional or even physical pain on me to get me to see the error of my ways and exact some sort of retribution for whatever it is I've done.  I think this dynamic informs the situation I've found myself in regarding that former cashier from that grocery store I still patronize.  I've also brought up the notion that a famous woman became part of this mix in 2016.  Right now I wonder if such parties are having second thoughts about whether there existed a need to inflict pain and suffering on me in the first place.  I need to have a look around some more in my world.  

One interesting thing I encounter in these situations at such a stage- a stage where my adversaries have second thoughts about their chosen courses of action against me- has to do with how they just want to totally disengage from me socially and seem to wish we never knew each other in the first place.  They made their bed, and now they have to lie in it, or so it seems.  This stage where I see people who no longer relish the idea of being my tormenters or adversaries, and just want to go on their own way, can make me feel surprisingly lonely and isolated.  After all, if I could just be good friends with everyone who came after me in this manner, I'd be the least lonely man on earth.

I thought about this today as I wondered if whether people who coveted the role of my enemy came to have some knowledge, somehow, of the contents of issue number 9 of my Richy Vegas comic book.  In that issue I lay out in a dry, flat, dispassionate manner the events of 1986 and 1987 they seemed so intent on having me never be able to live down. I tell my side of the story.  This train of thought just remains a speculative notion until I have some proof otherwise, I guess.  

One thing I'm looking for is for random women I don't really know to try to fuck with me like it has been happening for some years now.  You know, remarks or behaviors towards me that seem to reference my past behaviors, such as crude sexual propositions or obsessive pursuits of women that I'm never, ever supposed to forget, and how those things I'm never, ever supposed to forget will forever mark me as a total piece of shit in life.  Or, another thing that's been going on since like, 1988: entrapment oriented flirtations with me from young, attractive women.  I look for these kinds of things because they occur so regularly, and they seem to offer conclusive proof that nothing has changed at all for me.  

On the other hand, I don't think I want to look for that former cashier from that grocery store to come my way looking to get to know me better.  Like I said, she knows full well that she just displayed a desire to bring home some point that, no matter how I treated her, no matter what I did to prove my feelings for her, she just wanted to bring home the point that she could never care for someone such as me.  If she has a change of heart about my actual guilt now, she probably just wants to forget the whole thing ever happened and not ever see me at all.  Lots of people who engage in this kind of shit with me seem to have little or no desire or even ability to hold themselves to account for the behaviors and attitudes they've clung to for so long.

So, as of right now, I have zero reasons to look for more positive developments from amongst the women in my world, but rather, to look for the same old shit interactions that random women just want to visit upon me to show what they really think of me, and how there's nothing I can do to change my standing with them or my situation. These types of interactions offer easy proof that nothing has changed, and such behaviors show up in places regularly enough.  Mind you, my behavior has been exemplary these past seven, fifteen or so years in the face of this ostracism, and I have no desire to change MY course of action in that regard.

I want people to keep this one point I will now make in mind.  I can forgive a lot of the shit people such as the wives and girlfriends of my male friends, and that former cashier as well, have desired to put off on me.  I can forgive these woman and lots of other people, male and female, in the sense that I will not try to retaliate or otherwise hurt them in any way.  If anyone such as these women I've just cited actually WANT to be friends with me, I would just have to take such a desire on their part on a case by case basis, each one individually.

I had events where I sold comics these past two weekends.  I sold over a hundred comics combined at the two events.  At the one this past weekend I went to the after party, which took place at about 7 p.m.  There were some women to talk to, but I just didn't want to do that.  I just didn't feel like submitting myself for the acceptance or rejection of women at that event.  I'm trying to get away from having that be a thing for me to have to weigh heavily anywhere I go.  That could include work, going to see bands at clubs, or events such as that after party.  I think attractive young women can tell when a guy feels as if his sense of worth depends on whether someone such as them accepts or rejects them, and I think that can creep them out.  I guess if they have to do that enough times, they can get pretty mean about it.  Some of them, at least.

I sold fifty-nine comic books at an event this weekend.  I got a little work done on the current book this evening.  I'm looking at the first week in January as the deadline to finish illustrating this eighty page book.  I finished pages 7 and 8 tonight.  

I've interacted a little with some of the women at my new job, and all I have to say is, man, I don't want to end up as a featured story on Reddit Nice Guys or whatever that group is called.  I subscribe to YouTube videos by Walter Fate, or Fatal Walter, and Vincey who just read horror stories written by girls and women who've encountered "nice guys" and posted their version of events on this Reddit page.  The problem is, I recognize some version of myself in these obsessive, mostly younger boys and men who assign way too much significance to everyday interactions with women they happen to have a strong attraction to....and the race is on.

I hope I can never really go back to those versions of myself from earlier days.  I hope it's like a testimonial a guy gave at my old stop smoking group, where he said he was addicted to cigarettes, and that he could easily relapse and go back to smoking, but he knew that is just wouldn't be the same as it was before if he did go back to smoking heavily.

Anyway, I spent my entire time at this event selling my Richy Vegas titles, and after this event ended, I noted that I really didn't think much at all about any women in my world I have an attraction to while I sat at my table trying to get people to buy my books.  I like not having a love interest.

I just finished glancing over the seventy-four pages I've outlined in blue ball point pen of my latest book.  I've got six more pages to outline.  I think the pen work on these illustrations looks pretty good, given how sloppy a lot of the pencil work is.  If this job works out, it will give me some structure which I can build my creative hours around.  Such a setup, with a part-time job at least, can actually increase productivity on the creative side.  I stayed pretty busy for all of that time I had no job, so in my case it may mean a slight decrease in productivity over all.

I see these twenty-two year old waitress and barista types in my world frequently.  I think about that former cashier at that grocery store I patronize and what it took for me to finally approach her for social reasons.  My deal with her went on for almost three years before I invited her to my comic book sale, at her job, in front of God and everyone.  I tried every which way to just let her go and move on, several times, before I wound up just-balls out walking up to her as she worked her busy shift and invited her to my sale.  I could not have done better at that if I had a hundred more chances to do so.  And still, she didn't come to my sale and she didn't seem to want to talk to me at all after I approached her.

I think about her as I interact with these hottie types in my world, and my take on that whole episode just demonstrated a real raising of  the bar on my part as to what it would take for me to stop everything and approach someone so much younger  than I am.  In the days of the early 2010's, at one of those coffee shops, I'd approach those baristas right and left for social reasons.  They really didn't like it, and the cruel games they played with me demonstrated their displeasure at my overtures toward them.

I think I came off so much better towards that cashier and those around us than I did toward those baristas of the prior decade.  And yet, nothing.  That really makes me think twice, and three and four times, about approaching anyone else that much younger than me under those circumstances these days.  Maybe I should thank that cashier for rejecting me, because I really have no desire to approach anyone her age in my world at all at this time.  The thought of putting myself out there to that extent, even doing as well as I did at it in the case of  that cashier, only to come up empty handed, really doesn't appeal to me at all.