I think it's times like this that drive people to join the military. "Feh, I have no idea what to do with myself, and life has that nice disintegrating feeling. I think I'll go shoot automatic weapons for a few years."

I'm well past that point, of course, and my reactions don't involve the military. Or automatic weapons, though that at least would be fun.

I'm feeling as though a good friend is drifting off; it's either that, or she's relying on the convention of our friendship that we can go a while without seeing each other and have that be okay. I don't like it, am fairly powerless either way, and am generally struck by my ongoing need to alter my life somehow: if one relationship is this important to me, then I am too isolated and unchallenged. I don't have enough to keep me occupied. As the Nice Girl reminds me, a real challenge for me involves emotional risk, a feeling much like flinging yourself off a cliff: putting yourself fully into something. Not exclusively, but fully. Something that makes me nervous, that gets my heart rate up, that tests me and requires that I grow and learn. I had that, it ended, and I haven't replaced it with anything, nor has the universe been helpful. (Aikido, while a challenge of its own, is rather different in being an ongoing spiritual practice whose effects are felt pretty gradually over weeks and months and years of training. My practice is entirely mine, and there's not really any consequence outside myself if I don't do it. Bottom line: it doesn't scare me and has no risk involved.)

In theory I'm taking a machine-shop class starting in a couple weeks, but that won't do it. I think, in fact, that eventually I need to move to San Francisco, or back to Oakland/Berkeley, but I loathe moving, and it's a massive, huge step. So, unless something changes and the universe sends me a gift and I accept it (I love how I talk about those two things as if they're separate; and yet, fuck you, universe) the next obvious choice is to change jobs.

Of course, the proper response (well, the only one that doesn't suck) to the feeling of my life or self disintegrating is to let go of it all, hard as that may be, and see what the world looks like when my consciousness calms down.

Here we go.