In Lieu of a Time Machine, a Restart Might Work

These last couple of weeks, I've been so emotionally up and down.  I feel like crap, I feel like I've been screwing everything up at work and in my personal life.  And I was shot down by a guy I liked who didn't like me as much I had hoped.

I'm finding that I really don't take rejection well.  I fall in love quickly, but I don't fall out of love quickly (if at all).  Therefore, I retreat from people.  I cry.  I lose my appetite.  I lose sleep.  I keep thinking about what I could've done that last time I saw him that would make things for the better, of all the things I could've done differently during a relationship that would've made it last.  I want to forget it all, the good and the bad.  I look for signs that maybe he's thinking differently, and instead find that he's happy where he's at and with the person he's with; perfectly fine without me.  Maybe even better.

All in all, not a healthy state of mind.

I also haven't been feeling good physically for a while.  I know the problem: I've been drinking a lot of soda at work and eating all fast food.  I told myself when I moved out that I wouldn't do that.  "Buy no soda so you only drink water and tea.  Cook at home, bring food for lunch.  It'll save you money and you'll be healthier for it."  And I was for a while.  I lost a lot of weight the first month after I moved out.  But then my dishwasher broke, I lost the grove of cooking and cleaning, I started going out with friends more and had less time to figure out what I was going to eat and make it, so I hit the fast food joints.

I want to go back to September of last year; I was pretty stable then, as I remember.  Or even better, before October 2006, since sometimes I have a hard time believing that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.  But I'm almost an entirely different person now than I was back then because of the relationships I've had.  I'm more open.  I'm not sitting in my corner as much.  I'm getting out and doing things.  Look at me!  I'm relatively successful!  I have a full time job that allows me to live on my own!  I'm conscious, breathing, and have a pulse!  I should be good, right?

Right?

Sometime during high school, I saw a poster one of the teachers had hanging on the wall.  It said something like, "Thirty years from now it won't matter what shoes you wore, how your hair looked or what jeans you bought; what will matter is what you learned and how you used it."  I'm not sure how the thought process went (I think an article I saw about how colleges didn't figure in grades as much as they used to in the admissions process), but I got the philosophy that everything will work it's way out in the end, and I started living in the present almost exclusively.  If something is meant to be, it will be.  Like fate, or hitsuzen.

However, having good practice living in the present, means I'm at a loss when I lose something in the present, like comfort or romantic love.  I have problems looking towards the future with the knowledge that I'll be happy and loved in that way, because there's that nagging doubt that maybe my future is to be alone.  So I'm left crying in the present while thinking about the past.  Because we're never to forget the past lest it happens again, right?  Isn't that what all the schoolteachers tell us when we ask why we have to learn history?

So why don't I stop believing in Fate?

Maybe because one of the links on the front page of Delicious today was an article titled "Why the Smartest People have the Hardest Time Dating."  Usually those types of articles don't make the front page.  I read it and it made sense.  I gave in a little to the blatant advertising for his book and checked out the site for The Tao of Dating.  I really doubt it's worth $40 (maybe $15-$20), but despite all of the advice he gives that makes me think, "I'm doing that and it's not working!" he gives a quote from the Tao Te Ching about "no-self" (he calls it anatta, but to my Japanese-speaking mind, I read that as "you," but I think it's similar to the muichi-motsu/hold nothing that I'm familiar with).

Do you want to improve the world?
I don’t think it can be done.

The world is sacred.
It can’t be improved.
If you tamper with it, you’ll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you’ll lose it.

There is a time for being ahead,
A time for being behind;
A time for being in motion,
A time for being at rest;
A time for being vigorous,
A time for being exhausted;
A time for being safe,
A time for being in danger.

The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.

When I read that last paragraph, I immediately thought of this image, the Wheel of Fortune/Fate card from a tarot deck. Each person is a gear, and there's a being/power there observing them as they work as planned, only stepping in when something goes horribly wrong.  That is the image I always think of when I think of Fate.

Something clicked, and I suddenly felt better.

I don't know how long it will last.  Till I hit another reminder of how things were and how they aren't now, probably.

Which brings me to the point I wanted to make when I first started writing this several hours ago: I need a restart.  Eric recently started a social sabbatical, deactivating Facebook and not dancing regularly.  I'm thinking of an emotional restart.  I probably won't stop dancing, but I'm thinking of deactivating Facebook. 

I originally joined Facebook since it seemed everyone was using it to schedule events.  Now, it seems I'm being notified of everything via text messages.  Facebook has mainly become a way for me to communicate with friends and torture myself with failed relationships.  I'm not pulling the plug yet, but I'm considering it.  Maybe next week.  Maybe never.  I might have to get an IM client again to keep up with people I chat with on FB (horror of horrors).

I also need a physical restart.  I need to clean my apartment.  I need to start making my own meals again.  I'm going to have to start bringing my lunch as the zoo gets busy; it's hard to get outside of the zoo without running people or peacocks over (one of those damn birds ran under my car yesterday as I was stopped at one of the gates.  I had to get out and make sure I didn't run over it).  If I feel good about myself, I'll feel better about life in general.

I'm not doing anything yet though.  I just need to step back and evaluate things as they are before I make any actions.  But I'm doing better than I was yesterday.  Every day should be a little better, right?