Somewhere between Tim and Gabe

The commercial I starred in last summer is up and running again on the TV. I'm getting back in shape. Just got an amazing pedicure. Am cooking regularly. Met a nice guy of who(m)* my friends approve.

My friend Tim is very happy these days and rightfully so. My friend Gabe is pissed as usual. I think I'm somewhere in between. Hopeful, wary, scared, self-protective, at times both giddy and quiet, my feet alternately clapping or stamping while I blush into a handsome man's shoulders.

And the poetry I will attempt to cite verbatim here . . . is both a tinge sad but incredibly hopeful and comes from the silly talented Van Gogh ("Dear Theo," a collection of letters to his brother, given to me by one Tim Heevez):

So you must not think that I disavow things; I am rather faithful in my unfaithfulness, and, though changed, I am the same, and my only anxiety is: How can I be of use in the world? Cannot I serve some purpose and be of any good? How can I learn more? You see, these things preoccupy me constantly, and then I feel myself imprisoned by poverty, excluded from participating in certain work, and certain necessary things are beyond my reach. That is one reason for not being without melancholy, and then one feels an emptiness where there might be friendship and strong and serious affections; one feels a terrible discouragement gnawing at one’s very moral energy; fate seems to put a barrier to the instincts of affection, and a flood of disgust rises to choke one. And one exclaims, “How long, my God!”
Well, what shall I say? Our inward thoughts, do they ever show outwardly? There may be a great fire in our soul, and no one ever comes to warm himself at it; the passers-by see only a little bit of smoke coming through the chimney, and pass on their way. Now, look you, what must be done? Must one tend that inward fire, have salt in oneself, wait patiently yet with how much impatience for the hour when somebody will come and sit down near it – to stay there maybe?