I'm 32

I'm 32 years old now. Great. Not. The year has started not too interestingly for me. I've gained weight, I'm feeling dizzy and work looks uncertain. I missed a deadline for a paper and had to humiliate myself to have it accepted. The most eventful thing on my birthday was the congratulation lines on my facebook account. My dog isn't interested in me anymore. I'm a bit pathetic. I'm immensely enjoying chatting with a couple of teens on msn. It is all surreal. I also crave for this not particularly attractive technocrat who sits in front of me at this Starbucks I go to. A few weeks ago I went to this nightclub, something rather unusual for me, and met a friend's friend. Not like we were supposed to hook up or anything, but it managed to destabilize me, of course. I could hear that little voice inside, in fact, I could hear a few of my fellow Order Members saying, "...guard your mental states." And I so knew it, one of the reasons why I don't go clubbing, is because I don't know what to do with my tumultous mental states afterwards. "... Always someone marches in, deep in my skin" I think I actually need like, reaching out, talking to someone, dig in the dirt, acknowledge a couple of neurosis. Professional help. But then, I won't. I don't have the time, I don't have the money, and as with all important things in my life, I'll leave it to a side.

The year also starts with me thinking, considering, wishing, to move to another country. Because of my experience of last year, and because of many other things, Montreal is on my mind. And here comes my neurosis again. I had left behind fantasizing about life in other countries, but I'm back at it again. And I feel a mixture of determination and helplessness about it. I feel terribly insecure about it, and then again I crave about it. I get all excited, and fantasize about how great life would be there, but then I remember how uncertain the road there will be, and especially I think of my volitional short-comings, how bad they are when it comes to doing what I should do and not otherwise. And then I get so anxious and start to get all insecure, and fearful, and I get all stressed out on how to get there, and how much I'm hating what I'm currently doing, and how unmotivated I am, but still I have to do it because there's so much at stake. And there's so few people I can really talk about it. I'm the one rock a few rely on. Yet, there isn't quite a lot of people I see as clear enough, or even strong enough to really be there for me.

Now that I teach at this psychology school, I should allow someone to check my head. I'm really good at giving people all sorts of reality checks. I can identify what they can't see about their reality. The awful, brutal truth. I can make them uncomfortable, but still clarify their experience. I can clarify mine just as well, but lack the will to do the proper course of action. Most of the time I think I wish I could move in to Britney Spears video. Live in those deliciously pop fantasies. I wonder where I'd be without my, erm, dare I say it, Dharma practice...