For me, 2004 is going to be the Year of Refreshing Candor, and I'm getting started a few weeks early. I'm very tired of always being cagey and afraid to risk anything when it comes to communicating with people. What am I risking anyhow? It's not like I'm some avatar of coolness, I'm pretty much a hapless goofy fag anyway, so why not tell people how I feel? This town is even worse than San Francisco in that regard, people try so hard to avoid seeming like they might actually care or be interested, there's a maddening barrier around people, a membrane of self-protective silence and unmet glances that tries to pass off regular old fear of looking foolish as some kind of sophisticated urban shrewdness. In the last couple of days I've probably made an utter fool of myself a few times, revealed too much or whatever, but I just don't care anymore. So there.

I will probably chicken out and revert to my old ways, and rejoin the shambling masses of people out there just like me, not quite making eye contact, not quite connecting, missing opportunities to know interesting people better. No one changes.