I am weary of excretion. I'd like to add up all the time I spend pissing and pooping to know just how many hours I lose per annum in the vicinity of the toilet. It's a very irritating habit that I have reason to believe is associated with my unfortunate addiction to food. Like the so-called "need" for sleep, it tends to manifest itself at unlikely and inopportune times, interfering with the flow of events that make up my life.

And I am feeling a bothersome sense of uncertainty about this journal. Like excretion, its ritual has become a necessary part of my days. Susan is accustomed to me slipping out of bed as she falls asleep, wandering upstairs to the computer where I hover in spasmodic attempts to conjure up something worth flushing out into the communal ether. I don't want to live without it, but I'm growing convinced that it could be something more than it is now. It's bitched me through a lot of hurdles: writing about my life with relatively few outright lies, suffering the potential (and actual) reactions of friends and family who occasionally make an appearance, and engendering a level of commitment that I never quite anticipated. Now it's... what? Here. Waiting. Wanting to be something more than I know how to make it.

Maybe I feel that the honesty factor has been endangered by the people I know read the Tales: my mother, my girlfriend, my former coworkers, my clients, potential psycho nutcase stalkers, etc. But that's always been the case. Since I seriously pissed off a friend by relating the details of her date with a new romantic prospect, I unconsciously shifted the focus away from people who might be hurt, or threaten me with serious hurt, following a personal disclosure. That was dandy, but tonight I'm feeling tired of the character that is me.

Nancy, an online journalist whose writing I enjoyed quite a bit, recently quit the trade. I don't know her, never met her, traded e-mails with her when I launched my campaign to be included in Brand X, but I miss her. Of course, her influence lingers on: she's mostly responsible for the fact that I now write in Arial font as opposed to Times New Roman. I got used to reading her stuff on an almost daily basis, and now it's gone. That's how I feel about what I'm doing now. It's comfortable, like an old friend, but I want my relationship with it to go someplace even better. I want the romance. I'm at that deadly phase when you look your best friend in the eye and tell them you're in love with them and want to consummate.

Maybe I'll act on this sentiment and try something new. I don't know what. Maybe I'll chickenshit and decide that what it is is good enough to accompany me into the future. My constant companion might look me in the eye and tell me it's not interested in the kind of relationship, because why ruin such a good thing? Whine whine whine. It's mine; it's not alive. It does what I say, right?

Someone recently wrote to me asking if they could buy deadlysins.com from me. Probably for a porn site; who knows. I said no. It's my little empire. It gets 400 hits a day and that makes me proud for reasons that I cannot explain except sheepishly. I want more, not less. I want to approach paradise, naked if necessary, and call home to tell everyone it's really better there.

While on vacation I was plagued with dreams about old friends and lovers, most of whom I treated rather shabbily at one time or another. They're probably long over any remembrance of me, but I'm still hearing their voices in passing doorways as I walk down the street. I have a mind to call them up and apologize. They may find that amusing and I may find that needlessly self-flagellatory. But there's something terrifying and wonderful about the sensation that I have unfinished business.