Where the hell have I been?!?!?!

Woah!!! I haven’t been here in, like, two months! Jeeze! I really should get back to writing again. I… am a terrible person. So, without further ado, I shall write something and share it with the world.

So, what’s been happening? Well, mostly I’ve just been busy. There was an interruption in my daily writing routine. It was an interruption I was perfectly fine with and fully backed so it’s my fault I got derailed. I lent out my writing station to someone in dire need and just got out of the habit of writing regularly. Then other demands on my time were made and one thing led to another. That is to say, life happened and writing went on the back burner. Then other things took over my writing time because I let them. So I’m going to write tonight and see about writing again in the future.

I’m not sure I can guarantee a regular writing schedule any more. I miss writing like this, kicking back and letting the thoughts flow, melding with the keyboard and letting things out. Writing so much last year kept my mind in check, gave me a release valve for all those messy thoughts that clutter my mind at night. I need to keep writing in mind, make myself write regularly so I can get back into the swing of things.

I imagine I’m writing this and sending it out into the void where nobody will ever see it. A quiet, lonely diary. Ha! Whatever, I’m just gloomy and weird. I probably ran everyone off by not writing for two months. Two and a half months? Yeesh.

Yeah, so… blah blah blah, I was gone but now I’m maybe back, blah blah. Not very encouraging, is it? No… Oh, well. Just leave it at “I had the urge to write and maybe it’ll happen again tomorrow or sometime soon”.

Well…

I guess my problem getting back into writing was… more than one problem, I guess. A few things.

First, I didn’t feel like I had anything to write about. I didn’t have any life to write about. The best writers, I feel, write about people and experiences and places. I don’t have that many people around me, I don’t experience much, and I don’t go places. Therefore, what do I write about? I don’t feel like I’m writing about anything significant so it’s easy for me to lose touch with my writing.

Second, I don’t like my writing. I’ve tried changing things up and switching things around and just generally meddling but in the end my writing is what it is. It’s not going to change, it’s not going to suddenly vastly alter into something I adore, so I need to work on my editing or get used to the way I write.

Third, I tend to keep a lot of things to myself. Locked away, you might say. When I do let things out, I abstract them away to keep others from harm. That way I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings but I also don’t really say what I feel. It’s a double-edged sword. It keeps me safe but safe isn’t always where you become honest. Safe isn’t for creativity. Safe isn’t where beauty and inspiration blossom.

How do I resolve these problems?

First, I do stuff. Do stuff to write about, meet people to write about, have experiences to write about and keep writing about.

Second, keep writing. Be comfortable with who I am and what I say and how I say it. Play around with it if I like. It’s my writing, to do with as I please. That it is what it is and always will be.

Third, write honestly and from the heart. It does me no favors to try and paint a pretty picture all the time. Sometimes it’s time for the truth. I don’t want to name names because that’s not how it’s done, not right. But I’ll speak the truth all the same, if for no other reason than I can’t. I’m so… withdrawn in person. I need an outlet, somewhere.

That is all, in boring entirety. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope I can get some more in your face hole again tomorrow! Cheers!

A Never Ending Dream

I had a never-ending dream last night. It seemed to start just before I fell asleep and ended when I woke up scarce hours later. Not a flying dream, but a purpose dream. Bounds of significance, leaping through the air, devoid of anything resembling joy, moving towards an objective. Towards… Towards a goal: a golden egg, a place of comfort, a solid foundation. With every leap came a fear of where to land next, vast swaths of night below. It was a terrifying dream, one that woke me suddenly and fully.

I’ve never done any real reading on the meaning of dreams. If I were to interpret it, I’d say I’m spending too much time focusing on the next goal and not on the experience of getting there. Too busy worrying about landing safely than enjoying the flight through the air. Not stopping to smell the proverbial roses.

Another interpretation could be a combination of factors from my day. Exercise, caffeine, and a late morning coupled with an early night, all combining together with recent amassed game playing that heavily made use of flying through the air. The dream could’ve been chemicals from the exercise, a light sleep pattern, and my mind assembling images and moments from my games into a cohesive combination of factors to make a strange and disturbing recollection of events.

A third interpretation could be that it’s really just a combination of the first two interpretations and some oddities that make up me. That all these different aspects that make up me joined forces and made a weird dream. A dream that seemed to last forever, from the time I went to sleep to the time I woke.

No matter what the interpretation, I forgot most of the dream upon waking. I don’t intend to recreate the experience. I’d rather just let the dream die away and get back to the business at hand. Our minds don’t always do what we want them to. Dreams like this illustrate the lack of control we really have over our minds.

Past, Present, and Future

I don’t know why I worry so much about things that have already passed, particularly things I’ve already said or done. I’ve already flapped that butterfly’s wings. It’s time to move on, to look to the future and the results of what I’ve done. It’s time to take elements from my past and rework them to benefit where I’m going and what I’m going to do.

Growth

Being quiet doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not doing anything. Not producing anything publicly doesn’t mean you’re not working. Plenty of people toil and trudge through the regular exercises and heavy lifting of constant practice without anyone ever knowing what they’re doing. Growth doesn’t come from everyone seeing everything you do. It comes from the work, from getting things done, from building upon what you know, and from releasing when you feel ready.

Spending the time and stretching your skills is always worth it. Play with what you know and try to integrate what you have learned elsewhere. Have fun with learning. Use it to grow. Stagnation kills the awesome. Explore and expand. View the world through as many sets of eyes as you can. Not literally, that would be disgusting and weird and I would have to call the police.

You don’t need a special place to thoroughly develop artistic talents. A quiet place to focus. Space enough to work. Or maybe you like close quarters and noise. It’s a matter of finding where yo work best and go there. Put the time in practicing and perfecting. Go over old material. Create new material with wanton abandon. Let go and just go crazy creating. Tap into what you love, what you hate, what you fear, what makes you laugh. The same things affect other people. People just like you and me, full of the same emotions and thoughts and dreams and desires, consider creative works.

There seem to be three stages to creative expansion. Three general stages, I’m sure life is full of variety, of course. The first stage is wanting to create and getting started. This stage could take as little as a minute, unfortunately. The second stage is putting in the long hours practicing the basics, learning the specifics, learning the language, studying the masters, building up the muscle memory and the knowledge base, finding what works for you and what doesn’t. The second stage is the hardest, the longest, and where 99.999% of people will either skimp, give up, or forget. The third stage is almost as easy as the first. The third stage is taking everything you learned in the second stage, all the material and tricks and history and terms and fundamentals that you spend so much time mastering and memorizing and perfecting, and forgetting it all. Forget it and just do it. Let your nature be your guide and just do it. The world will never forget you for what you produce in the third stage. Ever.

Stupidity and Amenities

Bread and milk and bottled water. The shelves at the store will be empty of these things before closing time. These things fly off the shelf when there’s any indication of the white puffy stuff. Folks need sustenance, I get it.

But…

Why take it home and leave it there? That is to say, why would you buy supplies and then leave them? Go out into the horrible weather? Then you get stranded. Then you end up spending your evening in the company of your car’s bucket seats and dirty floor mats.

Why leave?

You were worried enough to buy all this crap from the store, why leave it at home? At least take it in your car with you? That way, when you’re stranded out in the horrible weather you were preparing for, you’re prepared! Stay home if you’re that interested in preparing for bad weather! Fortify and dig in! What you’re doing is the equivalent of building a fortress and then going out to fight the enemy on the field of battle!

Think, people!

A Sunday

I’m sitting here in a red shirt labelled “Barbecue Naked” and three day’s worth of facial hair. I didn’t take a shower last night. Too tired. Decided it would be best to go straight to bed instead of going through the typical night’s ablutions.

I slept for thirteen hours.

Started the day combing my coif into some kind of order. Restricted its air space to the back of my head and went with it.

Made eggs-in-the-basket for breakfast. Forgot to lubricate the pan. There’s an unspoken rule that the more horrible the appearance of your food, the better it is. This was five-star, ambrosial angel food. Best masticated with milk on ice.

Bought a bird, an albino parakeet.

Travelled to a popular clothing store and promptly found the one article of clothing I was going to buy. Spent 30 minutes trying to find something else in my size and failing like Napoleon in Russia. I’m a tall, gangly man. Tall, gangly man pants are either in huge demand in this area or, and this is far more likely, are in huge demand while stores conveniently do not stock them.

The bookstore was next. Bought a book holder. Spent ten minutes in a futile attempt to get it to hold open a paperback at the beginning. Gave up and grabbed a clothes pin to assist it. I’m now equipped to begin copying, word-for-word, one of the greatest books in the English language: Soul Music by Terry Pratchett.

Dinner was sandwiches grilled in a George Foreman, with chips and Tzatziki dip. My natural inclination is to pronounce the Tz with a Ts and it just comes out all wrong. All wrong. This leaves My Lovely in a fit of pique. “It’s Ta-Ziki! Ta! Not Tz or Ts!” I’m doomed to screw it up, like Worcestershire sauce. How I want to pronounce it based on the name and how it should actually be pronounced will forever be two different things.

I collected quotes from my favorite comedians and writers until my laptop died. In case you were wondering: Terry Pratchett, Bill Hicks, George Carlin, Warren Ellis. There’s more but I don’t want to give away all my favorites.

I’ve a pile of books on the bed I’m going to swim in when I reach a logical end point to this. It never fails, I finish reading one book and I start four more. Matter of time.

Drive Drive CLUNK

My car gave out about a week ago when I was getting ready to leave for work. Got behind the wheel, turned the car on, let it warm up for a minute, put it in gear, turned the wheel to back out my driveway, and CLUNK!!! The steering wheel turned into rock. Steering was gone. All of a sudden I was trying to muscle my car into going the right way while I pulled back in. Gah! Hrrr! Turn, damn you! Turn!

Fortunately it gave out before I ever got on the road or had to turn for real. So I parked it for a week while I figured out what to do about money and getting the repairs done. I had a general idea, from talking with money-grubbing soulless bastards that it would cost about $600 to $700 to fix. Sorry, stupid autocorrect… “Money grubbing soulless bastards” should have been “auto mechanics”.

I finally found a friend of a friend who repaired my car and got me back on the road at an extremely affordable rate. I guess the moral of the story is “don’t go with your first option”? Or maybe “I should learn to fix my car but damn is it a lot of time so find someone capable and kind to take over for you”? Or, “sometimes things go bad and you just have to roll with the punches and do what you gotta do”? Pick one, I’m not too picky.

The Bad Day

Days don’t have feelings or emotions. They don’t have depression or angst or anger. They don’t smell fear or cozy up to you. A day is just the passage of time, seconds to minutes to hours until the day’s and the next begun. The moments of the day aren’t good or evil, right or wrong. They simply occur.

All that being said, today was a bad day that was out to get me.

I woke on the wrong side of the bed, tired and cranky and weary. The disasters at work didn’t come one at a time, they bum rushed me. In the midst of dealing with one problem, another came up. Then another. Then another. Soon I was managing problems and getting things resolved and it was time for lunch. My lunch boiled over in the microwave, spilling everywhere.

That’s when I started thinking I needed to go home and go back to bed.

I stuck with it, though. Cleaned up the microwave. Resolved the big issue. Then the next biggest. Then the next. Then the next. Triaged the ones that were more suggestions and requests than errors. Finally got all the problems resolved and the crises averted.

Things got better once I made it home but I can’t shake the feeling that today was out to get me. There was the unmistakable looming dread that permeates a day that’s just bad all around. I’m looking forward to hitting the sack and putting this whole day behind me.

 

On Success

The world never wants to try to help you. Never. No, that’s not entirely right. The world never wants to help you succeed. The world will help you from time to time. It’s just not interested in success. There’s getting by and there’s success. Getting by, the world can help you with. There are programs, there are people, friends, acquaintances, happy happenstance. They don’t equate to success, though. They’re helping you get by, helping you float.

Success comes from you.

What is success? How do you define it? What does it mean to you? Is it like a light switch? Do you flip it one day and it’s there? Click, I’m successful? Of course it’s more difficult to define. There’s no clear end. You define when you’re successful enough. Maybe you could allow some stoking of your ego by others telling you you’re successful but that doesn’t quite feel right, does it? If other people can tell you you’re successful then they can tell you you’re unsuccessful too. They can give and take your success at any time. No, better to define success yourself than allow others to define it for you.

How do you reach success? It’s not like getting a can of corn off the shelf, opening it up, and you have success. Is it money? How much money? A hundred thousand dollars? A million? Is it fame? How much fame? Do you need accolades? A-list status? B-list? Have a speaking role? A name in the credits? Or is it material wealth? A house? An expensive car? Land? Gold? A skyscraper that bears your name, huge and imposing and phallic? Do you own a country? An island?

Or maybe success isn’t any of these things to you. Maybe it’s racing. Maybe it’s swimming further than anyone else or running faster or staying underwater longer or anything else that challenges your body or your mind. Maybe it’s getting into Guinness. What about twice? What about three times? What about an Olympic medal? The Heisman Trophy? Best Chocolate Milkshake?

What does success mean to you and what are you doing to reach it? How do you become successful in your own eyes? More importantly, what happens when you become successful? What happens when you reach that point where you feel success is here, now, in your hands? Where do you go from there? Will it make you happy? Is it everything you ever dreamed of? Is it worth what you have to do to reach it? What you have to climb on to reach the apex? It’s your choice, your success, your goal. Do you have to climb the way you think?

Every choice has consequences. Every goal can become a footnote, every success a stepping stone. There’s a wonderful warmth to success but it can quickly turn cold if you’ve scorched the earth on the way. The cold winds blow colder over ashes.

Food Questions

There’s something fundamentally wrong with the state of food consumption around here. Healthy food is so hard to come by! Unhealthy food is flying at you from all directions. It’s hard to eat right when there aren’t really any options to do so. As nice as it could be to get fried food all the time, eating something a little more healthy would be nice, now and again. Salads are more expensive than burgers. Burgers! You’re not supposed to eat all this processed crap but it’s cheap and it’s plentiful and you’re bombarded with advertising so it stays in your face and seems good for you. It all seems so wrong, so backwards, so bizarre. Is this opposite land, where all that is right is wrong and inverted and strange? It all tastes so good and yet it’s so bad for us! What is that? Why can’t we figure out a way to make good food as cheap as bad food, or cheaper? Why can’t we make fast food uncool? Why isn’t it uncool already?

Full disclosure: got some earlier tonight and it was fantastic! So bad for me and yet so easy to come by! So tasty! Healthier options on the menu were hard to find and more expensive than the unhealthy ones.

Is that it? Is there a fitness tax? Is fitness not actually our natural state? Are we to believe that fit people are the freaks and weirdos, genetic aberrations who don’t actually represent the real state of people in the world? Are we destined for amplitude, serious size in our lives? Or is it that we’re inundated with messages about food every minute of the day until we give up and give in? Is it really just a vicious cycle we can’t escape and simply have to eat things we know are bad for us but continue to anyway because there aren’t other options? Or are there other options, real options and not the attempts the fast-food places ply us with? We shall see. We shall see.