What is my catharsis?

As I fight my sleep yet another Saturday night, I wonder what is my catharsis, or probably more appropriately, my release. What delivers me from my calculated, modulated self into a free flowing human? What's my liberation?

In my teenage days (that's how far back I can recollect my self as being introspective), it used to be music. Just the daily dose of my MTV followed by ad nauseam discussions with friends to break it down thread bare was liberating.. It was followed by the boyish craving of females (not that it has died! ;) ) The off beat movies came later on, interspersed with movies about sweaty females in procreating poses (how tacky! :( )

See, its always been a shifting target, steady ever so little until you become too comfortable with it and it stops being effective. Dissolving myself in work was a very weird way of doing that. My seemingly huge and complicated programs were but a mere speck of dust in the castle I would have wanted my code to be.

What has not shifted is 2 things - Books and Friends (notice the emphasis). Unwavering true friends and the one sided conversations with books (yes, JSha, we spoke about this) are the perfect deliverance for any pathetic mood swings, pangs of loneliness and general frustration at being ineffectual in changing the world. Books are that perpective you've ever had, maybe always had or never would have had if not for that writer putting his thoughts down for the others to ponder over. I digress, but does a writer think about the readers when writing?

Friends have head banged with me, split those countless inane jokes with me, helped me stay alive when puppy love caught up with me, have tried to keep me on the path to sanity when life was crazy. Isn't it funny how we realize the value of most of the precious things in times of distress?

But these have their limitations. Whom can you have at your beck and call when you need them? At 3 in the morning, there are only so many things you can call upon. Rush would probably do.