I recommend watching this movie about moveable car barriers in Manchester.

I seem to be feeling better after the last couple of weeks. It was a full moon yesterday; I'll try to start paying attention and see if the cycles match up, though I don't think they do.

When I saw the doctor a few weeks ago, he suggested that now would be a great time to start a meditation practice, and not have sex for six months. I gave it kind of a half-assed try, but the simple fact is that as much as I hate dating, I fundamentally don't like not-dating. I never really have, though it's only fairly recently I've come to understand and admit it. My mood swings are particularly harsh when I'm by myself: I have to crawl through the tunnel without someone to give me a hug, or provide a touchstone in the outside world, or tell me I'm being whiny and selfish. (Not that anyone tells me that often, but I can see it on faces as soon as it happens.) I don't grow or learn much by myself; I know the running streams of my own solitary internals pretty intimately. In isolation, I know my own secrets, I keep my own counsel, I understand my darkness and my light. It's the things outside my inner world that challenge me; I need a universe to feel myself a part of. And I have my issues with patience and self-esteem: it's not that I necessarily should be in a relationship, but I like to go on dates just to remember how, and more importantly to remember that I can, that such things are possible.

I'm never sure if connecting with people doesn't come naturally to me, or if there's just a limited number of people I connect with. They probably go together.

I'm playing with Bloxsom, a lightweight website management thinger, because there are 855 journal entries here, presented in a format I've never liked. I originally intended to write my own, then realized that other people with more knowledge and interest were actually doing so. Fortunately I'd written all the entries with an eye toward this sort of thing, putting all the entry text in <entry> tags, so I can probably write a little conversion script. This works for Blosxom as far as formatting goes, but Blosxom uses a file's modification time as the journal entry date, so if I convert the files, they all appear brand-new. So perhaps this is not the solution I am looking for.