So here I am, at 2.56am, after having been to a nightclub in Birmingham. I am only slightly drunk. I've just arrived home, thanks to a lift from my Dad (I wonder how he doesn't mind). My ears are ringing because the music was so loud. It was the kind of volume where you have to shout to be heard, and even then, your friend can only guess at what you said.

I believe in intelligentism, which is a word I've just made up. It means, to put intelligent decisions first, to place more importance on well-informed decisions than, say, on emotions. I believe that it is through intelligence that we better ourselves and our situations. After all, Homo sapiens are the dominant species on the planet, because of our intelligence.

This can be quite a sad, lonely view, because it neglects emotions. I am wary of emotions. I think they can have too much power over a person, and can cause people to make irrational, bad decisions. But my view is naive, because emotions play a major part in our lives. Thanks to evolution, our behaviour is driven by emotions. The primates who felt the greatest fear were more wary of predators. The ancestors who felt the greatest lust were more likely to procreate. And so on.

I fear that we are slaves to our emotions. At times in my life, I've wished I could just be a robot, without emotions, with only a 100% logical brain for computing decisions.

But then what would be the point of life? Which begs the question, what is the point of life, exactly? I suspect that it is to have the largest amount of 'good' emotions as possible, while avoid 'bad' emotions. This seems like an oversimplified view, though. Do something as complex as emotions fall simply into binary categories: 'good' and 'bad'? I suspect not.

I think the most important emotion is love. I remember Harlow's 'monkey love' experiments. Harry Harlow raised baby macaques in isolation, away from their mothers, and any other living beings. The monkeys were severely disturbed and couldn't interact with peers when introduced to them. He gave some of these isolated macaques a replacement mother made of wire and cloth. The baby monkeys would cling to this makeshift figure as if it was their actual mother. I suspect it was the warm, soft feeling of the cloth that the monkeys were drawn to.

Love seems like a good foundation for general life, too. I suppose it is why people form long-term relationships. Fundamentally, it must be evolution that has favoured people forming bonds, in order to encourage both the man and the woman to raise children together. What this leaves us with, thanks to evolution, is a need to find love, and keep it.

Love forms a major part of music. Peter Gabriel says, "//The book of love has music in it //In fact that's where music comes from".

Why am I talking about this? It's because I have a decision to make. We always have decisions, actually, it's just that we forget about them. You could go live in France, from tomorrow, if you wanted. You have the legal right to live and work there. You could go to any country, really. Or you could quit your job. Burn down a house. They're all possibilities that you can choose to do, though there are so many possibilities available that you'll only ever do a tiny fraction of them.

Sorry for meandering. I have a decision whether to stay with Girlfriend, my girlfriend, or to carry on with my plan to travel. She says she loves me, pretty much every day, in some form or another. And some part of me, long-neglected and frustrated, is happy, and content.

But how much can a person sacrifice for love? What if you had to go to a country where you couldn't work? Not only can you not speak the language, but you couldn't legally work there even if you did? How would you earn money?

And I'm tired of Montreal. I've seen it all, in all its faces and facets. My boredom of it will depress me, I think.

What can you do? Christ, I don't know. If I was a stronger man I would be gone, I suppose. But my soul is like an empty field that is desperate for nourishment. Or something.

In The Hurt Locker, Sgt James says, "The older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe it's only one or two things". I feel like this. All I want is a comfortable, steady relationship. I guess I'm prepared to sacrifice travelling for that. We'll see.