102--What I need

I’m sitting on the floor at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. I chose not to attend the workshop in progress about placing music in film and television. It’s something I want to do, but I wouldn’t quite call it a need at this moment. It’s not where I’ve put my focus at this time.

Today it comes to me very clearly the difference between those things I want and those I need. I need to make music. It’s what I’m made to do. I need it.

I need to be near water often and regularly. I need to be within view of trees. Without these things I can survive. But I didn’t come here to just survive. I need to live.

I need to make money from my music. There’s been a shifting in me for some time now and I think the most succinct summation of that matter is that whereas for a long time now I wanted to make money at this or would have liked to make money at this, now I NEED to make money at this.

And I have things to say that you NEED to hear. Like the value of a promise is not a small thing. It costs the promissor and the promissee when commitment is dishonored. Yes, it costs both parties.

There’s pretty girls here in vegas. There’s pretty girls everywhere. But apparently here they’ve run out of cloth for making dresses so these poor things are walking around with 8-inch strips of cloth covering their bodies. I want to look at them and touch them. I NEED to not. What I want and what I need are at odds in the same way that what I feel often contradicts what I know.

I’m a tortured man. Tortured artist. Tortured soul. It was bad enough back when I knew unequivocally that I didn’t have the power to attract women like that. Which starts a whole different dialog about self-fulfilling prophecy, but we’ll get to that. That’s a different story.

What’s torturing me now is knowing how to gain the attentions and, at least temporarily, the affections of these pretty creatures, and yet holding to a code of belief that pre-empts me from taking what I cannot keep, since it was never mine by right of the King’s assignment. (That was a long sentence. I ran out of breath just typing it)

This also reminds me of my conversation with Dan about Peter Parker’s conversation with his uncle and the famous line: With great power comes great responsibility. I’m not claiming magic powers with women. I’m acknowledging that I have an increasing need for responsibility.

This is going somewhere. I have toyed with and avowed the practice of not spending time alone with women. Eventually I go back on that and create justifiable scenarios that allow me to experience intimacy. This time it needs to stay in place.

None of this is new or recent development. It’s just time I stepped from the shadows.

I read Stephen Arterburn’s book Every Man’s Battle. Helpful, especially the concept of the database, the visual database.

Today I found myself walking scared lest my eyes devour and lead me into temptation. And I’m not built for this kind of skulking. I don’t like it and I’m not going to do it. This isn’t living. Amazing how fear dissolves when in the path of light.

So I was telling Amelia about the “bounce your eyes” strategy, because she asked me how all the porn in plain view was affecting me. OK, pause right here to be grateful for family that asks you real questions.