Bad news first, I've been unofficially passed over for the position in Arizona. In a meeting, I heard that we were updating the technical help documentation for the "new guy" in Phoenix. I've heard through the grapevine that there was someone already there who has been "filling-in" in terms of technical support and would like to take that position officially and the job will likely go to him. I'll reserve my full wrath for when I hear something more official, but for a few moments after the meeting I was fucking seething on the inside. I mean I didn't even get a formal interview for the position. At the very least I should be offered that courtesy. To be fair I informally spoke with the manager of that position indicating my interest and we briefly went over the responsibilities of job.

It's not that I had a full hard-on for Phoenix, but the move would have provided the catalyst for a much needed change in my life. I can feel myself falling deeper into a rut of mediocrity, of every day being the same old tired shit. Every time I try to vary my routine, it winds up costing me money that I probably shouldn't have spent in the first place because the net result of change in my life winds up being zero.

If there is anything positive that happened from this whole mess, it's that my vision has altered. I'm no longer stuck with the idea that I have to live in Chicago the rest of my life. Yes, I live in a cool city and yes I'm living rather comfortably, but I've realized that change is not impossible. I actually envisioned myself in a new setting and I've envisioned a life different than the one I'm living now and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that change is not an impossibility. For now I'm thinking about the west coast, fuck Arizona, it probably would have been too boring for me there anyway. For now I'll have to bide my time and wait a few months until the job market gets a little better and I can find something suitable in that area.

My venue and my career aren't the only things that need changing. I've been celibate for the past 4 years and counting. Sure, some of it was by choice, like when I was deep into trying to finish school and didn't want anything including sex to distract me from that goal, but there are other times, especially more recently when I just can't stop thinking about sex, or at least the idea of sex.

I'd like to say that most of my situation is circumstantial and involved a lot of bad luck and bad timing, but deep down I know that isn't all true. Sure most, if not all the women I've been attracted to, I have later discovered that they are in some sort of relationship. Part of it makes sense, that the females who are most attractive and easiest to get along with usually have no trouble in finding and keeping a mate, but if you start adding up all the women I've been attracted to over the past four years and have close to 99.9% of them being in some sort of relationship, I start thinking that there is something wrong with the universe. Even worse is that I tend to mess up, the 0.1% of females that I'm attracted to that are actually single by doing things as simple as not getting their phone number.

As the eternally single, confirmed bachelor type of guy, I've learned that most of the time you only have that one really good shot upon meeting to indicate to a potential "date" that you like the other person and that you would somehow like to meet up or get to know someone better, and if you miss that chance it could be weeks, months even years before another chance with that same person happens again. Somehow I always fuck up that small window of opportunity, mostly by inaction or fear or some other lame, stupid excuse. Welcome to Derrick's world. I'm not as young as I used to be and the years just seems to melt away faster and faster and it doesn't help that I'm spending the majority of my adult years in solitude...

What really makes my soul feel just a bit darker is that I'm beginning to contemplate, splitting up existing relationships for my own personal gain. Despite my inability to get into a relationship of my own, I know that I am not unattractive. I get signals for women in other relationships and sometimes they are so overt that it makes my head spin because I'm forcing my mind to say no to the temptation. Although I've never cheated nor have I ever been a party to have someone cheat on another with me, I can see why it is so easy for something like that to happen. You have all this chemistry that you weren't even looking for in the first place, you have this "forbidden fruit" that seems all the more sweeter by simple virtue that you aren't supposed to have it in the first place and there is something just dark, dirty and dangerous about the whole thing, that for some people can make the situation all the more interesting.

For the record I don't want to cheat and I don't want to be a party to someone else cheating, but with each passing day, I find myself entertaining the thought more and more. Will my resolve eventually break? I don't know, I'm only human. I have needs and wants. I miss being intimate. I miss the scent and the touch and the presence of a female in my life. As whole and as complete a person that I believe I am, I can't help but feel a certain emptiness anyway because of it all.

For the majority of my adult life I've always taken the "high ground" in the moral and ethical choices that I make. I believe in karma, not only in the most basic sense where if you screw enough people over they will want to screw you back in some sort of way, but in the deeper, more spiritual sense where my actions towards good are somehow making the universe around me a better place.

Lately however I'm starting to get this sinking feeling, like if I don't take care of myself and stop thinking about other people and things around me that I'm eventually going to drown. It gets even harder when I reach the "gray areas". Am I the one to put the nail on the coffin on a relationship that is on the brink? What about that recent fiance who has cold feet about tying the knot and wants to be with as many guys as possible before she takes the final plunge? Do I want to be one of those tools, just to end my cursed streak of sexlessness? Whatever happened to two people just liking each other and wanting to be with each other, I mean does everything have to be so fucking complicated?

I don't know what I should be doing about my sexual situation at this point. Do I lower my standards? Do I leave the moral, ethical yet barren high ground that I've been taken for so long? Is sex really that important that I have to change who I am fundamentally? I'm not sure about any of it and in many ways I'm tired of having all these difficult questions thrust upon me. I just want to cut, loose, let go, have a little fun. Is that too much to ask? It's difficult to know where you are going without first knowing where you are at. I guess I should first start by getting my bearings the seeing where I go from there...