No Action.

I just made an awful realization about myself. Awful enough to warrant my return to the internets. I'd been clean for a while, you know.

Just twenty minutes ago, I was lying on my couch with the sun in my eyes, too inept with the mechanics of vertical blinds to keep it out. I was mulling my options about what to do with the remainder of a Sunday afternoon. The television was tempting, but again, this time of day was bad -- too sunny, too inept. The glare would prove unbearable. I scrolled through my cell phone's address book. Someone to call? I didn't really want to make plans with anyone, mind you. I wouldn't want anyone to see me like this -- unshaven and disheveled. I just wanted someone to text message with. Preferably a pretty girl. Something to distract me, if only momentarily. Distract me from what, you ask?

The Realization.

That is, the realization that I don't enjoy doing anything. I have no hobbies. Nothing that doesn't involve gambling (or at least uncertainty) interests me. Since I am not supposed to gamble anymore, I'm a complete waste of space. Ever the resilient one, I've found a cheaper and less satisfying alternative -- writing bizarre messages on craigslist.org and match.com, pleas for help, inflammatory poems, anything that might incite someone to write back. Sometimes on match.com, after reading the tenth amazingly vapid 'portrait' in a row, I just start sending emails bitterly mocking them. That this sort of behavior fills the void that I used to fill by playing cards is noteworthy, I think. I am not putting anything at risk -- no money, obviously, but not even my ego. It's entirely anonymous.

So I was never a risk junkie after all. I am a feedback junkie. I crave the moment when I realize that I have something to read from a stranger. Preferably a pretty girl. It's got nothing to do with making a connection with someone. It's got everything to do with snapping me out of the boredom of sheer radio silence. It's a reminder that I am not dead yet. It gives me a way to keep score, to measure success and self-worth. Especially when it's from a pretty girl.

Don't most people crochet, or play golf, or go to museums to have fun? I wish those were fun for me. If I can't get my dose of uncertainty, rejection, acceptance, excitement, self-esteem from gambling, then I'm going to get it from person-shopping on the internet.

Sadly, the ones who write back are usually overweight amd live in the suburbs with their parents. And that just makes me more depressed. God, I pity them so much.