Day 0348

Took some time to go over the 27,000 words of notes and quotations I've taken down over the last 18 months. Trying to construct a manifesto, some kind of structure to what I believe and what I stand for. Need a coherent narrative.

Jess is ill. Her coughing at night triggers my existential dread. Can't repress it!

Attracted to people who are sufficiently self-deluded to have a good opinion of me, and who flatter my pride by agreeing with my own best-case picture of myself. How dreadful when I see myself in an unflattering photo or in a reflection at an odd and unanticipated angle! Just the same with job rejections, client dismissals, tensions with friends, family dysfunction, non-existence to girls, artistic mediocrity: a dose of reality that threatens the integrity of the lie I have constructed where I am in some profound way simultaneously desirable, significant and full of potential. Back to the books.