This is going to be weird. Prepare for weirdness. I know am alive. I see myself wake up every day. I wake up in a place that is legally mine. I do things that get me money. I do not have a boss. My income is precarious in theory because of not having a boss, but I haven’t had a boss since 2017. So I’ve learned to live with fluctuating income and a lot of uncertainty. I have learned that certainty can be a cushy prison. That money buys me things that matter to me. Almost exclusively food and some experiences for me and my son. I like luxury only in the sense that I love to spoil people I love. Am naturally frugal and only my mind and my body have serious appetites, all require very little money. Strangely I do love money. But only in the sense that money allows me to work better, I don’t want money to go lie on a beach, I want more money to buy myself an alternative theatre or a small film studio or some kind of ethical shop or ethical company. Money also allows me to say no to stuff I do not like. I also need some to pay for participation in psychotherapy workshops which are often pricey. I do not care at all about travel for travel’s sake. Right now I’d much rather go to Beirut to interview people than to Bali to do whatever people do in Bali. I suspect it’s getting pictures to prove they have been to Bali. I can get contemptuous that way and am aware of that streak.

There are currently not many people who want to be spoilt by me. In general I find myself in the odd situation that all the people who want to spend time with me only do so when they are paying me. This made no sense to me till Charlie Sheen said in a docu: ‘I wasn’t paying prostitutes for sex. I was paying them to leave in the morning.’ So now I take it like this: Am paid to reduce my presence in people’s lives to only 60 to 90 minutes a week. I said it was going to get weird.

I used to be a guy that got invited to parties and the organizers would prepare extra plates because they expected me to walk in with some extra people. That has changed. William went on pause for so long that I have lost my ways. Plural.

So a week ago I invited six people to my home. None came. I’ve already noticed a long time ago that when something isn’t working I think trying harder will make all the difference. It often doesn’t. The Germans couldn’t hold Stalingrad by just trying harder either. I know that, but it’s my nature. I’ve gotten better at cutting my losses, but sometimes I can’t let go. So yesterday I invited 19 people instead of just 6.

Two showed up.

A young architect, about 26-ish who I met when she was 19 and informally helped with her irrepressible urge to vomit whenever somebody hugged her. I said it. Prepare for weirdness. She no longer has this problem and now complains when I don’t hug her when we meet. Am not very comfortable hugging women who haven’t made it abundantly clear they don’t mind waking up next to me. Why she out of 19 was willing to come over past 20.00 on a Monday I honestly don’t know.

Then there was a man, trained as a lawyer, but who refuses to work as a lawyer, about 45-ish, who had an accounting course till 21.00, but jumpedd in a taxi anyway to come over. The young lady and the man found out they had attended the same gymnasium, but about 20 years apart. It turned out they had some of the same teachers in their highschool years.

We played a quiz. The questions were in Slovak. We either read them in Slovak or translated them to Dutch or English. She used to be one of my Dutch students, he still is.

I felt incredibly dissapointed that I had invited 19 people and only 2 came.

Until someone pointed out that every single person I had invited had also replied. All had good reasons. Not all were in Bratislava. One was in Prague. One was in Vienna. One was in… Vietnam. Several were ill (true for sure in at least one case). Some had business dinners. Some merely said they were too tired. One was doing the register at a tea house.

Also note that I got so desperate to get a party going like in the good old days (see the picture showing people) that eventually I invited people I have met only once.

Someone else asked – when I complained that only two people showed up – if the evening had been wholesome regardless of how many people were there. I hadn’t even asked myself that. The answer is yes. For whatever reason I like to bring people together and my two guests liked each other. They shared a taxi on their way home. The lady wrote me in the morning, at 7.40 am that she thought he was nice and fun to talk to. We chatted on and off for most of the day about all kinds of topics. At a certain point we agreed to go into couple’s therapy even though we are not a couple. We’d seriously pretend to be a couple for the duration of the sessions to find out how we operate in relationships. More weirdness, yes.

Do I now feel at home in my life?

No, I do not.

One strong effect of not feeling at home in my life is that at least I wanted to feel at home in my own body. I got fixated on weighing 64 kg. Now again, weird, this is partially because 64 reminds me of a Beatles song and of a year in the American Civil War and yes, that makes me care. But more importantly, the last time I felt at home in my own life and body, was when I weighed 64.

So this year I went from weighing 91 kg to weighing 73 and I won’t stop till I weigh 64 kg again. Will that make me feel at home in my body? No, but I do feel a little less alienated from myself than before. It’s not the solution, but it helps. It’s also about control. I can control what I eat. I can’t control who shows up at my door step, who wants to jump my bones or who wants to meaningfully interact with me.

Am again confronted with this pattern in me.

Yesterday I went: I AM NEVER TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO A SALON LIKE EVENT AGAIN.

Today I catch my mind going: so what if invite 38 people instead of 19, make it a theme event with signature cocktails and make sure to invite them two weeks up front and not on a Monday, but on a Wednesday.

And so now there is a serious risk I will be fretting some time soon because I invited 38 people, made all kinds of preparations and only 4 people showed up.

It’s 19.49. I have a client. Someone who wants William for exactly 50 minutes and likely pays me to limit it to only 50 minutes.