it's about the hunt for me,

always has been. I'm looking for something and I know what it is already. When I find it as I sometimes do I'm disappointed. Of course the surrounding context makes it bigger and smaller than just that, varnishes it into utility or satisfaction or release; but attainment doesn't really feel good. Hunting does.

It's about the drug for me, always has been. I love the taste of my coffee and have spent to shape it to my liking but I'll drink a coke if it's going on afternoon because the headache of incipient caffeine withdrawal isn't worth any feigned puritanism at that point. I'll use a nicotine patch. I'll drink the Old Monk, and with affection too. Last year about this time I was getting ready without knowing it to kill a bottle of Laphroaig, steadily, over the course of a night; to end a relationship how I began it, too drunk to stand, which is how drunk I have to be not to lie.

Love me, I want to say, but when I receive it I'm almost disappointed. The trappings of love indeed are fine but I'm searching always for my own affection. What satisfies me is having something to love.

Let me work long hours. Let me rest late, reassuring myself that I need to wake up to do more; let the work be completed on occasion if it must but let it never be done. Let me always have something to say next.

This is my prayer for the year.