2002-02-21 - 5:01 p.m.

Trying to figure out how to parlay my newly-acquired web acumen into a better site. If only ordered and unordered lists were somehow useful for this diary!

I've started writing again occasionally. Here's one you missed:

Some Fridays I get nervous. In the afternoon I�m excited � it�s Friday, anything can happen. This is what I�ve been waiting all week for. The end of the day comes, I clear off my desk, zip up my jacket and head outside. Then the excitement mixes with dread. It�s Friday. Anything can happen. Nothing can happen. This is what I�ve been waiting all week for.

I head home and I start to think of the weekend. My mind races as I try to anticipate, wondering what I could possibly do to make all this living worth it, to make this path of my life meaningful. The sun will still be up for an hour; I could be home in a few short minutes, with a full night ahead, and can think of nothing I want to do. A year ago I would be sitting in traffic as the night passed me by, quietly cursing the damn cars, but mostly cursing myself for another weekend underway and me all jammed up again with nothing to do but wait. Now I have no such excuse. I want to just go home, read, sleep, somehow shut off my brain, but I cannot. Friday is the day that you make every moment count; those little things are okay when you�re just passing the time during the week but on the weekend, man, you�ve got to really do something.

So instead of going home and facing the reality of the weekend and nothing doing, I take a detour into a coffee shop and read. This is acceptable, because people are here. It counts as social interaction, even when you spend your whole time wrapped in a book. You interact with the person at the counter. You tell him what you want. You give money and get change in return. This is a legitimate activity. Then you sit down to read your book, and for a while you enjoy it. But then you notice that the sun�s going down, and you get distracted from your book. You start to think that this is a Friday, that this is your time to do anything, and you think how you�re sitting here reading a book. You start to think that you�ll waste your weekend, and every wasted weekend is a chunk of a wasted life.

You know there�s only one thing that won�t make a weekend seem wasted, and that�s finding a girl. You know it�s stupid, irrational, hormonal, but you can�t help it. And you know that finding a girl is the one thing you�re afraid of, it�s the one thing you shy away from at the critical moment. The only thing you really want to do is have that quiet, that quiet that comes when you�re not facing all this possibility, when you can just sit and have your cup of tea and not worry about it. You�re not allowed that because this is the weekend, and on the weekend you do great things. Or at least you make enough effort so you can live with yourself on Monday.

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