I Am Shy By Nature, A Person

I'm Still Prone To Periods Of Isolation, Still More Fearful Of The World Out There And More Averse To Pleasure And Risk Than I'd Like To Be; I Still Direct More Energy Toward Controlling And Minimizing Appetites Than Toward Indulging Them.

Something Is Missing: That's As Close As I Can Come To Naming The Sensation, An Awareness Of Missed Or Thwarted Connections, Or Of A Great Hollowness Left Where Something Lovely And Solid Used To Be. ...there Is Something Fundamentally Insatiable About Being Human, As Though We Come Into The World With A Kind Of Built-in Tension Between The Experience Of Being Hungry, Which Is A Condition Of Striving And Yearning, And The Experience Of Being Fed, Which May Offer Temporary Satisfaction But Always Gives Way To New Strivings, New Yearnings.

For Years, I Ate The Same Foods Every Day, In Exactly The Same Manner, At Exactly The Same Times.

Consumerism Thrives On Emotional Voids.

There's Something About Sober Living And Sober Thinking, About Facing Long Afternoons Without The Numbing Distraction Of Anesthesia That Disabuses You Of The Belief In The Externals, Shows You That Strength And Hope Come Not From Circumstances Or The Acquisition Of Things, But From The Simple Accumulation Of Active Experience, From Gritting The Teeth And Checking The Items Off The List, One By One, Even If It's Painful And You're Afraid.