So, I turn 39 today. And I'm feeling...oh, so-so about it, I guess, with some days being better than others and some days worser. And that's because of a personality weakness of mine that I've been dealing with for a long time now, but that I'm especially trying to get a handle over these days; that although things in my life are generally progressing in a positive direction these days, they're not progressing as fast as I want them to, which leaves me in general frustrated over what's missing more often than happy about what I've accomplished. Because the fact is that I'm a year away from 40 now, and am still not even close to having any kind of financial stability in my life, having health insurance, having a budget for my arts center so that I can start producing actual merchandise. And because of that, of course, I'm also still not close to having the kind of romantic life I want these days either (in which I date only sane, intelligent women, none of whom will go out with spottily-employed arts administrators in bad health); and among other things, that's had my sex life at a point of literal non-existence for years now.

And that's all very frustrating, and makes me sometimes want to bang my head against a wall; because all the things I just mentioned are major goals I've had in my life since 2004 now, when I first quit writing as a professional pursuit and decided to open CCLaP instead, and when I'm in a bad mood it's easy to see things currently as not even one bit better than they were three and a half years ago, when I started working towards these goals in the first place. Or that is, part of me is able to acknowledge that things are moving forward in my life, and that especially in the last year I've been laying the groundwork for a lot of things that should hopefully pay off in the future, once they reach their "tipping point;" but I'm still making barely any actual money these days, for example, money I can actually hold and spend, nor am I actually going out on any dates, nor getting to see a doctor on a regular basis. You can't work on these goals for a decent amount of time without sometimes getting very frustrated and stressed-out about the slowness of it all; and now add the fact that I in particular have a worse time dealing with this than many others, and you can see why I can sometimes get so bent out of shape over it all.

Better, I guess, to try to acknowledge the things that have been going right in the last year; for example, after three years of endlessly bullshitting about it, I finally managed to get a working version of CCLaP up and running nine months ago, albeit one with no budget and no paid employees. CCLaP may have only generated a total revenue stream now of exactly 21 cents (or exactly one Amazon referral, and thank you to whoever that was), but at least it does have around 12,000 unique visitors on any given month now, and around 2,000 unique visitors each day. CCLaP's now been mentioned favorably at such places as MetaFilter, and my reviews have been generating quite a bit of attention and discussion over at such literary social networks as GoodReads; and these are all good signs, the quiet growth that needs to happen for CCLaP to reach its tipping point in the first place.

Plus, today is my one-year anniversary of being cigarette-free; and this is something I shouldn't blow off, given that I tried and failed to quit eight times before this most recent successful attempt, and also given just how many non-smokers end up relapsing in their first twelve months. And as I explained in detail last year here, this has set off a whole chain of events that finds me in a much different physical condition than I was in a year ago: that is, quitting smoking let me get serious about bicycling last summer for the first time, which helped shape up my body somewhat and repair my lungs faster than otherwise; that has increased my appetite over the ensuing months, which has led to me actually putting on weight this winter for the first time in something like half a decade; that then is going to lead me into the start of this year's bicycling season with a lot more extra energy to burn, which will let me bike profoundly longer and further this year than last. And all of that is good too, although I'm not exactly at a place yet where my body can be called physically healthy.

And then of course is the biggest issue I'm dealing with these days as far as this transformation I want to make in my life, which is the whole idea of treating other people better, of not being such a sociopathic little prick all the time; and that, frankly, has been progressing more sketchily than any of the other things mentioned today, with me having plenty of small relapses at specific moments as far as being a manipulative, unpleasant little asshole. I've been thinking about this in particular a lot this week, actually, because last weekend I had this pretty horrible little experience over in Wicker Park, while attending a literary event for my old buddies Shappy Seasholtz and Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz, both New Yorkers now who were in town to promote new books; I won't go into details, but let's say that it rather profoundly reminded me of just how much anger and bitterness and contempt I still have over my years in the performance-poetry community (1996-2002), and for the vast majority of people I knew in those years. And that led to me just sorta losing my shit at this literary event, and screaming obscenities at this person I knew from my poetry years who was there as well, which has led to me just feeling weird and bad all week now, profoundly disappointed in myself for letting someone from that long ago in my past still get me that riled up.

I'm trying to get better at all that, and relapses like that frustrate and upset me, because it makes me feel like I'm never going to get better at it all. But then I have to remind myself of the small victories I've had this year; for example, at least I haven't actually made any new enemies in the last twelve months, haven't inspired any new people to start hate blogs about me or actively try to sabotage my love life. (And can I just say this, by the way? No matter how dickish I was as a young man [and I admit that I was plenty dickish as a young man], not once did I ever actively try to sabotage someone else's romantic life, a pathetic low in my opinion that this person I ran into this weekend has been guilty of with me in the past, which is mostly what made me so profoundly lose my shit with them this weekend in the first place.)

I know I still have some baggage from my past to process and get rid of, but I like to think that I've at least drawn a clear line in the chronological sand; that from here forward in my life, I am very sincerely working on treating people fundamentally different than I used to, so that this list of people I have awkward, obscenity-laced relationships with will actually go down instead of up. I mean, granted, that partly involves admitting some kinda ugly truths to myself about the subject, so as to understand my own behavior better and be able to change it; for example, with time and contemplation I've come to realize what one of the major problems was for me in the '90s with this subject, that I was acting to my acquaintances like I wanted to be friends, and thus were disappointing these people when I failed to live up to my half of the friendship. I have a whole new attitude about all this now, for example, with the new people I now meet in the literary community through CCLaP; I now try to have a very hands-off approach with such new acquaintances, to not really hang out with them or spend time with them in a way that "friends" do. They're fun people, don't get me wrong, people I love running into once a month or so at some literary event or another, and having pleasant little 20-minute conversations with regarding all kinds of nerdy artsy subjects; it's just that this is all I want from such people, all I ever wanted from such people, and so now try to make that abundantly clear when spending time with such people, versus acting like we're close friends and that I want the things that come with a close friendship.

This seems to be working for me, although admittedly is not the most pleasantly optimistic way of looking at humanity; but as I've been saying over and over today, I guess it's important to look at this stuff as the small steps they are, to acknowledge such small successes like that at least I've made no new enemies this year (or at least none that I know of). It's a complicated, sobering way to look at one's life, which I suppose is what has me in such a complicated, sober mood today on my 39th birthday.

Well, all right, that's enough for today, I guess. See you later.