Very hard to hope now

I had a long talk with a friend the other day in email. She is certain that somehow, I'm approaching all this wrong, that I should somehow take my hands off the levers and just "let things happen."

I just don't see how that would work. If you don't try to meet people -- if you're me, that is -- you just don't. My work is loaded with people I wouldn't much be interested in or could never make a connection with (sorry, young girl with the long dark hair who just started her first day last week). Where I live, everyone is far older than I am.

If I don't try, nothing happens, any more than if I wanted to eat, groceries would magically appear on the shelves in my pantry. If I don't do it, it won't get done.

And yet, I overreach. The beautiful brown-eyed, blonde harpsichordist in Manhattan is haunting me. In some ways, it's even worse than Melody, because I've already been through that experience, the one of being able to finally be with the girl of my dreams and then finding out the dream had some thorns embedded in it.

Still, I so wanted that to work.

It's very hard to hope again.

Please don't let me be one of those guys who just takes whatever he can get, bites his lip and suffers in quiet mediocrity the rest of his life.

I still want it all.