Being sick, as I was this morning, always has weird effects. For one thing, I ended up sleeping 4 more hours than I normally would have. When I woke up, I felt groggy and disoriented, and I haven’t completely recovered.

I can tell that there are a lot of emotions boiling underneath my normally calm, cool, and collected exterior. I had a massage scheduled today — the first professional massage I have ever had. While I enjoyed it, it was a constant struggle to stop thinking about work and relax. When I get in that mode — where I can’t shut down — that’s bad. I know that means I’ve been ignoring all the emotional drama in my life. And really, there isn’t that much, but when I ignore it it tends to build up to unhealthy levels.

Most of the emotional drama is centered around my love life (or lack thereof.) I haven’t had a relationship since R and I broke up. That breakup was 10 months ago. This is by far the longest time I have been single since I started dating back in high school 10 years ago. While I have thoroughly enjoyed most of my time being single, it really does gnaw at me sometimes. The problem is exacerbated when someone comes into my life whom I feel I’d actually work out with in a relationship — and there have been a few of those (I can name 4) in the past 10 months. I immediately launch (mentally) into this long list of reasons why it wouldn’t work. He lives too far away. Likes something I don’t like. Doesn’t date girls like me. Too old. Too young. Then I plow into the “even if” category — even if he wanted to be in a relationship with me, I fuck up relationships. I don’t know what I want. I vacillate. I throw walls up. I disengage from relationships on a regular basis and just work, work, work. And I seem to hurt every single guy I’ve ever dated in some way. That sucks.

I kick my own butt about all of this on a regular basis. The thing I keep coming back to is that I wish I could just throw it all away. I’m really great at being a nice person. I’m pretty genuine; I wear my emotions on my sleeve and give out lots of hugs. I enjoy my life, my work, and my customers. Why can’t I just be that person and never have to deal with relationships? It really seems like every time the word “relationship” comes into the picture, there is drama. I genuinely wish these guys would accept me as a best friend and I would be able to hug them with no drama.

But then there’s a piece of me that wants more than that. And that’s where it all falls apart.

I don’t know what to do. Other than begging for a drug that shuts off my heart; that allows me to be genuine and happy with people while never, ever wanting anything to do with sex or anything more than “BFF” (best friends forever), I’m at a loss. I have all of these emotions that I do not want. I do not understand them. They are complicated and they do not follow a logical pattern and that drives me crazy. Work — I am good at that. Things that are logical and make sense — I get those. Things that are emotional and follow no discernible pattern — yuck.

Life just doesn’t make any sense sometimes.

…when someone invents a drug that I can take that will 1) stop the pain in my heart 2) stop me from being attracted to anyone 3) stop me from even thinking about relationships with guys, because frankly they are only in it for one thing anyway, so why bother?

kthnx.

It’s been a little over two months since I wrote my last real blog entry, “It just doesn’t feel quite right…”

Where did I disappear to in those two months? Let’s just say I took an emotional hiatus. Yep, I put up a big ol’ wall, just like I had as far back as when I was 13 years old. As you read in my blog, I resolved not to think about those things any more. In fact, I resolved to just not think about anything emotional for a while. After all, I knew my company could function better when I worked like a machine (and worked my butt off) than when I was an emotional mess. So I said “Fuck this” and put up a wall.

Simpli did really well in those two months. We met our revenue goals for 2005. We completed a datacenter move. The datacenter move was complete hell, but Russ and I pulled through with little to no sleep for 5 days and pulled it off. It was good that we got it finished.

I went to NYC in November, to LA (for IBI Dec. 5th-12th), and to Miami for New Years. I met S in NYC, who is definitely the person most like me in this world. I don’t think I’ll ever meet someone more like me. It’s crazy to know how someone will react even before they say anything, but S and I are like that. This makes us great friends, but also likely to drive each other crazy on a regular basis. 🙂 We talk every day. I told him I didn’t want a relationship because we’d end up killing each other. I think we both know this and this is part of what helps us be such close friends…that we know we have that boundary there where we can walk away at any time and take some time for ourselves without suffocating each other. It is pretty cool to know someone who is the opposite-sex version of you. I guess I always wondered what I would turn out like as a guy. Well, now I know I’d probably turn out like S. Which is not at all bad. In fact, he’s a pretty cool guy! But I suppose I have a biased opinion, being that we are nearly identical in our thought patterns.

S and I spent New Years together in Miami, too. No, I don’t have any pictures, mostly because I had this gross eye infection that made me look kinda crazy. (Google image search for “sty” if you want to see what I had. Yuck!)

I did post pictures of NYC on Flickr, but none of me and S. Sorry. Neither of us are photogenic.

Back to the wall. I had a lot of fun in the past couple months, but unfortunately it didn’t solve the nagging feeling I had. I successfully kept the wall up until last weekend, when I saw R for the first time in 2 months. Within an hour of seeing him again I felt the wall come crashing down and I was crying.

You see, for the past couple months I have ignored the gnawing feeling. I distanced myself emotionally from everyone. I did this all because, deep down inside, I have a huge fear. That is the fear that something about me makes me inherently unlovable.

I don’t mean unlovable as a friend. I have lots of friends who love me, and I know my family loves me. But I feel that there’s something that makes me unable to have a long-term relationship with anyone. I have some idea of what it is — that I’m a real perfectionist and I don’t think anyone, including me, lives up to my standards. But I can’t seem to let this go long enough to enjoy a relationship. It’s like a compulsion — whenever someone lets me down, I don’t deal well with it. I get angry. I yell, I scream, and I distance myself from that person. A lot of times, the distance is permanent. Other times, like with R, my feelings are too strong to make it a permanent distance, and I reach out again, only to inevitably be disappointed and hurt again.

R is particularly frustrating because there are so few personality clashes there, and a lot of things I really like about him. (Okay, love. I’ll say love.) He and I get along really well. I know I’ve said that before, but there’s something in my heart that doesn’t want to let him go, because he actually makes me really happy when we’re together. It’s when we’re not together that the nightmares kick in and I constantly worry that I’m not good enough for him or that he’ll find someone else who fulfills all of his needs. And the fact is that he probably will. He probably will, and then I’ll be left to look through the window just like I do now with FG, and see how happy he is and wonder what it is about my personality that forbids me from finding this happiness with another person.

I admit it. You have it in writing now…I have such a perfectionist trait that I break out in physical symptoms, like itching, when people don’t meet my expectations, which are set so ridiculously high that no one can meet them 100% of the time…not even me. And yet I don’t know how to stop it. I see the devastation it wreaks when I demand so much of people. I’ve watched people break down in front of me because they can’t meet my expectations. And yet I can’t seem to control this, this thing that runs my life, that makes me so hugely successful but at the same time is slowly killing me. The drive and the passion that I have for succeeding come from this, or (in my perspective) are enhanced by it. But it’s also crippled me; it makes me constantly worry that Simpli will fail, or that I will run out of money, or that I’m in debt. And it runs my interactions with other people, to the point where people don’t want to be around me because I can’t stop being driven. I can’t relax.

It’s out of control and I need help. I don’t know what kind of help I need. I’m not really into the whole medication thing. But I know that I need to learn how to relax, and I know that I really love people who can help me relax, like FG and R. But I also know I drive those people away with my perfectionism. I need to figure this out, but I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do. This drive may make me really rich (it looks like I’ll be an official millionaire before the end of the year), but it doesn’t make me happy… and happy is what I need more than anything else right now.

I have a lot to write about my trip to NYC, and many pictures to post, too. Yes, I had fun. Yes, it was one of the best vacations I’ve ever had for several reasons. But that’s not what I want to blog about tonight. I want to blog this conversation because I need a “bookmark” that I can refer to later.

Keep in mind that I first started chatting with this guy only a few hours ago. Although we’ve known each other for quite a while, we’ve only been “Internet acquaintances” and have never chatted before. (Screen names changed to protect the innocent.)

[22:40] Me: I should just admit that I’m not really into the whole serious relationship thing… I get bored too easily.. but something in the way I grew up makes me feel guilty for thinking that way :-/
[22:41] Me: I love that first night… it’s so erotic… but I quickly get bored
[22:41] Me: After a couple months I want someone new and exciting so I can have that first moment again.
[22:43] Guy: ar you that way with jobs, too?
[22:44] Me: No, I’ve been running Simpli for 4+ years, and I’ve been full-time with it for about 18 months now
[22:44] Me: I love Simpli 🙂
[22:44] Guy: so see, if you love something it doesn’t get boring. 🙂
[22:44] Me: I haven’t had a FT job working for someone else since like 2003.
[22:44] Me: FT W2 job since 2002. 1099 since 2003
[22:45] Guy: but Simpli gives you new challenges all the time right?
[22:45] Me: Yes, it’s true… I created the company, so I can do whatever I want with it… that’s part of my passion… I can do whatever the fuck I want.. it’s a great feeling
[22:46] Me: I can sell it off for several hundred thousand dollars and just wander around the world if I really want to, at any time
[22:46] Me: Or keep working at it and make millions
[22:46] Guy: so you’re a control freak… so it would SEEM that you’d want a guy that would do whatever you want… but that’s wrong, you need a guy that you have to work at
[22:46] Guy: someone who’s as ambitious and controlling as you are.
[22:46] Guy: someone you have to work at to keep you both happy
[22:47] Me: I’ve gotta have someone who wants crazy adventures all the time too… and someone who loves traveling and seeing new places… and fucking in those new places. 😀
[22:48] Guy: EXACTLY!

And after an hour of talking to me, he pretty much summarized it. Imagine my shock that someone who didn’t even know me could so easily summarize what I wanted in a guy. Because, see, it’s not really about the car he drives, or any of that stuff (even though I’ll mercilessly tease about those sorts of things.) It’s just that I want someone who’s going to make my life new and exciting on a regular basis, and who knows when to take control and when I want to be in control. Which is a challenge, I admit. But then, I don’t think I ever said that I would be easy to please! 😉

Over at Simpli, things are starting to return to “normal” (by whatever metric you would like to define “normal”.) Brandon is leaving on Friday, so we hired Russ, a customer of ours, to replace him. In fact, when Brandon told me he was leaving, I was on the phone not 10 minutes later with Russ, letting him know that the position was available. He decided to move out here from Michigan and take the position, and right now he and Brandon are in some intense training to get him up to speed in 5 business days. It’s definitely going to be an interesting transition. I think it will be successful — otherwise, I wouldn’t have hired Russ — but there will be a couple weeks there where there will be some confusion because of something that only Brandon knew. Fortunately, I will still be able to call Brandon in sometimes if necessary. I’ll send out an email with details about Russ’s hiring to our customers today.

We have more challenges coming up with Simpli, which I will detail in future blogs, but right now things are moving relatively smoothly. Of course, I know I can’t get complacent, but I do more than my fair share of worrying about everything on a regular basis, so I think it’s okay to say “Hey, we’re doing well right now.” And we are. September, 2005 was our best month ever, far surpassing even my best revenue estimates, and we managed to pay down some of our debt and still have a surplus. I’m really grateful that everything went so well in September. This month, we’re actually doing some new promotions and advertising a bit (just so I can try to beat September’s revenue!) That should be fun, too.

On to my personal life. Over the past week, a lot of my thoughts have focused on “What do I really want out of life?” I’m a firm believer in the theory that we shape our own destinies; that anything we can imagine, focus on, and create a path to is within our collective grasp. This belief has changed my perception of myself, first and foremost, and now that I’m doing better with regards to my emotional health, I can start to focus on what I want to do next. That’s not to say that I’m going to run away from Simpli–not at all! I love Simpli and what it’s grown into, and I want to continue running it for the foreseeable future. But I’m starting to have more free time, and I’m interested in exploring and studying things other than computers and web hosting during that free time. Forex is cool and I expect I will continue to do Forex (though I haven’t had much time lately), but I want to understand more about how the world works and (my favorite subject) the fascinating interconnections between religion, spirituality, and scientific pursuits.

I know that writing a book about my spiritual beliefs will be a staggering undertaking. For one thing, my spiritual beliefs are not as well-defined as some people’s are. (But then again, if they were that well-defined, would they truly be mine?) So, if I can imagine anything to be possible, create a detailed path to it, and then achieve it, what is it that I want to achieve with this book of mine?

I wrote a bit about the book in this blog entry from November 2004. Today, almost a year later, I went back and revisited that blog entry. A couple more pieces have come together in the past 11 months. First, although I want to reference Christianity, I don’t want to focus on it. Why? 2 reasons: 1) I want this book to have a wider appeal than Christians. There are already plenty of books out there for Christians. Despite Christianity being the dominant religion in our society, I don’t think it’s necessarily “better” or “worse” than any other religion. 2) I haven’t been a practicing Christian for several years, and I’m concerned that some Christians would discredit any theories about religion that didn’t come directly from a Christian. I still believe that my book should recognize the good things in Christianity, but I also believe I need to write about where other religions got it right.

2004 was all about the study of religions for me. I tried out different churches. I read books about different religions. (I tried to stay in the realm of the analytical books that talked about the religions, but also read several holy books themselves.) I went to different churches, which I think was the most enjoyable part of the whole experience, because I found something at every church to like.

2005 is the study of science and how that interacts with religion and spiritual beliefs. I’m slowly wrapping my head around quantum physics and reading books about it. I’m trying to figure out whether quantum physics and other far-out-there scientific studies can be used to give us a more complete picture of what God looks like. In my studying, I’ve gone all the way from “There is no God” to “I’m not sure” to “There is definitely a God”. I stayed on the “There is definitely a God” track and am now working on expanding that into what God is. Is God simply the collective consciousness of all of us, and we just work together in some mysterious harmonic pattern? Or is there actually a being/presence out there who coordinates it all? Assuming a being/presence, who is this being, and how did it come into existence? Why does it not show itself? Or does it show itself, and we just can’t see it? The questions are endless and have been pondered ever since we realized consciousness. What’s most interesting to me is that quantum physics, which would definitely be on the leading edge of science, is trying to use science to determine the answers to these same questions. This seems to indicate a convergence of science (led by technology) and religion/spirituality. I’d like my book to run squarely in the middle of those two ideas, perhaps fusing them together in a way that could show commonalities between the extreme of “I believe in science, not God” and “I believe in God, not science.”

The other key is that I want to write the book in a way that will appeal to spiritual seekers who are not necessarily well-versed in either spiritual studies or science. In other words, I’d like to explain what other spiritual seekers throughout the ages have thought and how, perhaps, there is something underlying their teachings — a common theme of love and banding together instead of hate and separation.

I know that was a lot for one blog entry, but I have lofty goals. 😉 As I figure out more of what I want to write, I’ll put it here. Perhaps eventually I can stitch my book together by expanding on my blog posts!