I don't like being cryptic...

...but, in a way, it makes all kinds of sense.

One doesn't want, for example, to bad-rap individuals for whom others have protective (or, in some cases, lustful) feelings. Nor do I want to directly besmirch the names of people I currently work with, or, with luck (bad or good) might have to work with.

On the other hand, getting all true-confessions-y seems to upset some people who drop in here. Even when they are "anonymous," it doesn't do much for my state of mind to read comments implying that I am nothing more than 90 kilograms of misery.

PARENTHETICAL TRUE-CONFESSIONS NOTE: I am, alas, a couple of keys over 90kg right now, which is more than I want to weigh anyway. Not quite a lard-ass, but weightier than I want to be. As if anyone gets close enough to notice....

What I suppose I am, by definition is stupid. Stupidity is said to be "doing the same thing over and over in hopes the result will be different."

That would be me.

For example, today I lit into the story I spent yesterday preparing for. Cranked out them words...and then the mail came. Once again, the expected -- and needed -- checks did not arrive.

One of the major offenders happens to be the client who ordered this article.

Result: full stop. Loss of resolve, energy and creativity.

I could blame this in part on my parents. After all, they were the ones who drummed it into me, over and over, that if I did above-average work, I would be a success.

Of course they also led me to believe that I should trust people in my personal relationships as well. Love, give to and be there for others and good things just have to happen.

They did not teach the latter dictum by example, by the way. But it took me years to see that.

The lesson I have learned, and still seem fated to need to deny, is: do right, and people will rip you off.

Of course this could all be horsecrap. I might simply be living at the bottom end of a bad-karma cycle.

My natural optimism, which I admit isn't too apparent around here -- this is the only place where I can vent dark thoughts, at least when not feeling intimidated by people taking me to task for not doing the Pollyanna bit -- has just about run out.

I will be incredibly happy to flush 2007 down the sewer. Not that I think 2008 will be any better.

If I can make it a better year, I will. But my resistance to what some people euphemistically call "challenges" and try to present as opportunities, though I tend to see them as thefts of my talents and emotions, is nearing an end.

Was all this sufficiently cryptic? Didn't mention a single name....