Now. Things appear to be in order, so on with the meat of the business.

I've hated blogging since the day it was invented, and probably earlier. It was, to me, nothing more than a thinly veiled excuse to go on about one's own personal issues and whine to the world at large.

And I think I had some annoyance directed at someone who thought they were an excuse to use poor gramar and so forth.

Obviously, I've gotten over that.

The 'updates' page has mutated for some time, and recently become something that was ... well ... a blog. And a really crappy one, too.

So, I switched over to this format with the help of Friend Rezantis. Now I can attempt to have a good- looking blog so I can do what this is all about:

Whine about my personal life.

Hopefully, instead of branding me a hypocrite, you'll come to the same conclusion I did after reading enough of other people's blogs. You came here, no one's forcing you to read.

I could be wrong.

Anyway. On the subject, I found recently that in all honesty I spend too little time respecting my friends.

With all the time and effort spent on mediation and self-improvement, I became somewhat arrogant. I never expressed this (I hope!) but I began to think I was wiser than everyone else.

I realized when I read some of my friend's journals that this was not the case, and even if I was doing it quietly, I'd been conceited. So I found that all my work at refining myself into a better person was, while not for nothing, getting side-tracked. I imagine the path is something like a spiral. I keep going on in a straight line, and realizing I need to be turning.

But I'll spare you my complex personal visual analogy for the moment; it's really not that important.

What is, is this. By realizing my failure to become a good person, as I've tried, I've also realized that I've become a better person, and that's actually a pretty good thing, too. So if I keep up the good work, maybe I'll be a good person.

And to all those people I dismissed as being somehow less enlightened than me, I apologize. You don't know it yet, and hopefully you never will, if you were one of the people I thought I was better than. But know that if you were, I regret thinking as I had.

I've realized that my own philosophy was becoming hopelessly hypocritical, with me focusing on gaining useless bagage in the form of knowledge, when ultimately, true wisdom is something else entirely. In fact, my focus is not on gaining wisdom at all.

Zen (the philosophy, not the author) says that our desire is what makes us unhappy. Our always wanting things is what makes us suffer. Then again, it also says, "When hungry, eat. When tired, sleep." You'd think that you would desire food, and this would be inherently a bad thing, which would make you suffer. So obviously there's more complexity to the school of thought than you would think immediately.

Tao says that the less you know, the happier you are. Which is true, in a sense, though it can sometimes be depressing. If you don't know the grass is greener, then you probably never even worried about it. If you have things to lose and take for granted, they only make you sad when you lose them.

But there's more to it than that, too.

As in all things, there's a balance there somewhere, and finding it is the tricky part.

In further news:

I have a bracelet, which was made on my wrist. It will never come off, unless it breaks. I jokingly call it a 'slave bracelet'.

It is made of true silver, which pleases me, as the undead hate silver, and I hate the undead. All of them. (Ugly rotting bastards.)

It is quite suitable for carrying around the Power of the Stars. Now if Dracos ever gives me back the Cosmic Power, I can pick up TCL again, and replace Haruka. Won't that be nice?

In further further news:

I've reached a (surprisingly enough) gradual epiphany.

I don't think I'm really interested in finding the Girl anymore.

Or the Woman, or whatever.

I think I used to delude myself and think, "I'm waiting for something better," or the like.

But the truth of the matter is that at this point in my life, I've finally gotten to where I want to be. I don't feel like I need someone else in my life to make me complete. I don't look at every member of the opposite sex and think, "I wonder what we'd be like as a couple." (That's probably going to garner me a, "Congratulations, you've learned normal behavior," comment.)

And I've found, to a surprising degree, contentment.

If it happens, it happens, and I imagine I'll be happy for it.

But until it does ... no worries.

Let's just live life one day at a time, hmm?