Introspection

Hey all,

With my brother's impending nuptials and the rumor from my Mom that my brother is also an expecting parent with his fiancee 5 weeks pregnant, I have been thinking a lot lately. Though I am really happy that my brother has found what he is looking for, I wonder what it is that I am. I think that everyone has those occasions where they wonder if the choices they have made were the right ones, and if they had made different choices would their life be better...

I don't know what I feel about my life, There are times where I feel pretty good about my life. Though I have never been bursting with friends the ones I have are fiercely loyal and important to me. I have never really been a super social person with strangers anyway, preferring to have a few close knit friends over many acquaintances, a path my brother chose. He doesn't really have any close friends, and that is something I consider myself lucky to have.

A job is like any other thing, both good and bad, and for all the days that I hate going to work, there are the days where I am proud of the ability that I have to do my job and the status of which I am regarded. Just yesterday I sent an employee to a worldwide convention as one of North America's top crew people, and he thanked me so graciously for being an influence on him that it made a lot of the bad days seem better.

What I don't know, and I find to be a continuing frustration, is what to do in my personal life. I don't know how to deal with the pressures of dating, it being so long since I had a date and frankly never really having a girlfriend I don't know what to do anymore, if ever I did. The longer I wait the worse the anxiety is and the worse the anxiety the more I am scared to put myself out there. Then there is other parts of me that wonder if I am even ready for a relationship. It's been me for so long that I don't know if I am ready to put an others needs before my own. Or if I am even capable. Having so much space then having to share that space is frightening sometimes. Though the lure of having someone to relate to of the opposite sex is strong, can someone else feel the way I do about things? I find it very easy to pour my heart out in words and poetry, less so when those feelings are given voice. The things that I feel seem personal, to personal to share when someone is in your face to give you feedback, and possible ridicule. But even then I feel that it is my own anxieties exerting its will over my own common sense. Yet it is so easy to lay bare these truths to an audience that has no face. It's easy to write out these things and post them, I face no consequences in an Internet of anonymity.

When in looking at my brothers life he has so many things that I am supposed to want, a child, a wife pregnant with another, an impending marriage, all things that we are told are the rewards of life. But I don't know that I do want that. I know that I'd like to meet someone, but at 31 is it to late to experience all the things most guys try when they are 16? Dating and fun and all the trappings of youth, at an age when most people want to settle down? I don't think I'm ready to stop having fun and be "grown up." But I'd like to think its not to late to step out of my comfort zone and open the doors I have kept closed for so long. To take the plunge into the unknown, I just may need a push.

Part of me feels like I have missed something in my life, part of me wonders if I am better off for not knowing. People often wonder what the meaning of life is and the purpose of it all. I have always felt that life is a journey, and shit happened along the way. It's in how you deal with life that you find your purpose and how you react to the situations you are in. No one is perfect, but you do the best you can and you will find it returned in kind. Now I wonder if I really did the best I could, because is what I have now good enough for the rest of my life? I don't know, though the better question is do I want to.

End of Line.
Gerrad!