Penultimate day.

The new year's bash is still teetering on the line between "not enough people will show up" and "keep it down before someone calls the cops." I'm pretty sure that even if it's not 150 people, that the right folks will come and thus make it hella fun.

Other than that and some possible shopping action tonight (not to mention the usual trying to get ahead of the end-of-the-year eight ball)...the only thing I'm trying to do today is not hate mankind in general. We're just so fucking hurtful and selfish and thoughtless, and we don't have to be. It takes so little effort to shape your life with honesty and integrity, and the idea that you have to trample someone else to reach your goals is pure bullshit.

It is confusing, I know, finding the difference between focussing on yourself and helping others by being wholly and truly you...and being selfish, greedy, and shutting everyone out for fear they might get something you want. Ugh. I know it's human nature, but it breaks my heart.

I have always tried to operate on the principal that if you give people the chance to rise above, if you show them that you trust them with your own honesty and vulnerability, that people will respond in kind. Often this works for me. Often it nets me great friendship, mutual respect, trust, and highest regard. This attitude is why I'm generally treated very well, why just about wherever I go, I'm welcome. It's why people tend to remember me.

It's also why every now and then, my breath is taken away by sorrow and anger and pain. Because I trusted where I should not have trusted, and now I'm paying the price.