Nobody loves me unless I'm funny or deep.

Yeah, I know, I'm just doing a reprise of the Weekend Blues. Except now it's the Tuesday Blues.

It's my fault. It's all my fault.

Oh, wait, that's my neurosis speaking. In synch with my Uterus, which is, presently, bleeding like a stuck pig (yes, I like that expression).

The all my fault thing isn't entirely neurosis. Bear with me here.

With the company...it needs me to throw myself back into it. I have to confess. In the past couple of months...I have been withdrawn. I have not put in anywhere near 100%. I don't entirely know why. I know a bit why. I know that it is very hard for me to get myself up when things aren't great. I know that I have a tendency to lose interest over time. I know that I have a terribly hard time making myself GO if there isn't a real and clear point to what I'm going for.

The part I don't understand. All of the above notwithstanding, I have proven myself more than willing and more than able to go the distance when something DOES mean something. And this does, this company. I have tried, I have worked very, very hard. I love this thing we have built. I love it very much. I try to think of something other than this thing to do, and it feels abhorrent to me.

I actually think that having laid off the people I have laid off may make things better.

Because it was eating away at me. Coming in, knowing that *everyone* knows that those people aren't really worth what we're paying them. Feeling bad about it. Knowing what I have to do but shying away from doing it.

the Boy is not like that. He does what has to be done.

I'm the opposite. I *want* people to live up to my expectations. I want people to understand that I care. I want to be there for them. these days I am at least a hell of a lot better at *deciding* who it is I will care about. Though I have to admit that people who I was deeply connected to in the past retain some of that, even if I and they have changed since then. Not that I necessarily feel like I owe them something, but I do feel like I am compelled to honor those memories, that those people did something for me, were there for me.

At the same time, he is not nearly as deeply affected by things as I am. He doesn't *care* as much. He's a little like Spock, or Data. Not so coincidentally, my star trek crushes were always those types, Spock, Data, Odo. Well, except that I never really had a crush on any of the above. But they *were* my favorite characters. Data particularly.

But what I *must* get better at is listening to that tinny voice in the back of my head that is telling me when something is a bad idea. That voice said that about the girl I just fired tonight.

Said it repeatedly and over time, but even before I hired her. I should have known better. I guess that's what it comes down to.

Should have known better.

That may well be the most awful sentence in the English language.

It's also probably the sentence I have heard more than nearly anything else in my life.

As a child, I should have known better. It meant something different then. It meant that I should have known that I was doing something that would get me punished. Because right and wrong are a whole nother story at that age.

today, nobody really says it to me but myself.

It's a hundred times worse when I say it to myself.

Not because I have been wrong. I'm okay with wrong. I'm okay with misjudgement and mistakes and all that sort of stuff. I'm often wrong. I often slip up.

No, it's because it's then that I realize that once again I ignored that part of me that Knows Better.

That can see a Bad Idea a mile away and keeps trying to run, but no, no, stubborn onehanded must stay put, stand tall, defend the mythical territory from mythical invaders.

Because I let the demons beat me. Because of all of that. Because I am working so hard, it seems, although not all the time, to be the person I would like to be, and it's still so fucking easy to talk myself out of it.

My brain is my enemy.

Someday I will understand that more fully. Someday I will listen to that tinny voice.

Fuck, that's not even the hard part. The HARD part is balancing that tinny voice with those things that make life worth living, make me something beyond a steel automaton. If I listened all the time, my heart would disappear. If I listened none of the time, I would be lost.

Somewhere between the two has got to be Me. Just plain old me.

Here's a toast to between the two.

love, onehanded