Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop to look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I’m not sure I agree with the first sentence. I mean yes, technically a whole lot happens from the time I wake up and the time I go to sleep. I take in a lot of information. My senses are stirred occasionally when I’m not staring at a computer screen. That’s why I always have my blog reader opened. It helps give the illusion that a lot is happening to me reading about things that happen to other people.

I remember I was so excited to grow up when I was still going to school. I had a pretty strict upbringing, which maybe comes with a lot of baggage. I thought as soon as I have the freedom to do whatever I want whenever I want, that’ll make me happy.

I’m a far cry from the happy adult me I’d imagined at that time. I get the feeling sometimes that my life is moving at a glacial pace. And instead of feeling that somehow the universe has dealt me this lot, I’m unable to feel any pity for myself. It’s no one’s fault but my own. Sometimes I think I’d rather feel helpless and victimized by circumstances outside my control than know I am perpetuating an uneventful adult life for myself.

One of the things that gives me some reprieve is knowing that there are plenty of adults like me who are in my same boat. See there I go. I am on a boat and I am not the captain. Isn’t that what I mean? I may imagine that there is no way to recalibrate my boring journey through life, but no matter how gloomy I get. No matter how hopeless things seem I ultimately have a choice in the matter. I could join the Peace Corp right now and be flown to a foreign country where I would surely not be bored. I could be helping the poor in the process and even learn a new language. I could create memories that would last me a lifetime.

Instead, I watch a lot of TV and drink a lot of beer in my little biosphere of an apartment with my Wii and my XBox 360 and my PS3 and Netflix. I’ve really been down on myself about the TV. My old routines are so ingrained I wonder if I will ever get out of them. Sometimes I hope I will be fired from my current job just so I’d be forced to seriously assess what is important to me.

I don’t mean to get all gloomy on you. I fear I may have ruined a new online relationship. Another part of me says if it’s that fragile to begin with, maybe I shouldn’t try to salvage it - I am likely worrying needlessly. The thing is when I come to expect an email on Monday and I don’t get it I fall into despair. I won’t go into the details of this one with you. To be honest I’m not really sure what my expectations should be for it.

It’s Monday. Those always suck. This is the worst Monday of the month for me. I just received The Wire on DVD. I feel like the whitest guy on Earth right now watching what I’ve read in reviews as one of the most realistic crime-dramas ever created. It follows the drug trade in Baltimore and ran on HBO for 5 years. I assume the dialog is authentic, but what do I know? I’ve only lived in the Midwest in places where there is no crime and the majority of the population is middle class and white.

So woe is me as I watch The Wire and see people addicted to crack, people beaten to death over a couple of bucks.

Life is pretty cozy for me. I can afford to buy nearly everything I want. It’s just this bloody social thing. I want to share my life completely with at least one other person. I have some skeletons and as far as I know only one person knows all of them and they seem to accept me even with my flaws. And I’m not talking about my mother here. I mean even there I’ve drawn a line in the sand.

Do you draw lines? Does anyone know every damning detail about what you do for fun? How about your prejudices and your weird taste in movies and books?

If not, then why not? I’ve found it very cathartic when it’s something pressing. For instance, I have this tendency to blush in meetings at the slightest provocation. Particularly when words are uttered that vaguely relate to sex. I work with a lot of beautiful women and I have likely at one point or another imagined having sex with all of them. Not all at once. For some reason when I hear these different words something in my nervous system goes unhinged. This happened in a meeting today and as far as I can tell the magic word was “commitment.” I have no idea why. I blushed so hard my eyes began to water and I could feel my cheeks become dabbled with sweat.

The worst part about it is that it’s slightly contagious. I tried to stare at the handout they gave us and propel myself to another realm of existence. One perhaps where the complexion of my skin would mask this very juvenile reaction to the stresses of being in meetings you can not meaningfully contribute to because there are too many higher-ups in attendance.

I hate pecking orders of all kinds. At work, I have historically hated nearly all of my superiors for the fact that I never felt they had my interests at heart. Now I have a good boss, so I feel like I finally have a foothold, but I still imagine that I am going nowhere, spinning my wheels so to speak. And yet outside of the office I feel much taller. No loans to pay. I save every dollar I don’t spend on crap. I could buy a new car with cash tomorrow. I could, were I not weening myself off alcohol, purchase a bottle of wine for every day of the week. And yet all this material wealth feels like peanuts when it’s the middle of the afternoon and I’m working as fast as I can to push some assignment through and the 2 remaining hours of the workday feel like eternity.

Of course, being homeless is an option. Not where I live, but someplace warmer perhaps. I could comfortably live for a year on the money I have saved. Of course, I’d be kicking myself come retirement age. I’d really just like to maximize my free time in the present. I could attempt to read all of In Rememberance of Things Past instead of watching crappy sitcoms like Pawn Stars.

Maybe the trick is to just make a whole bunch of small improvements to my daily life towards stuff that’s timeless as opposed to ephemeral – the slow burn to the flash explosion.

The conversation wore me out. I had no idea there was a person out there who would feel strongly about this and here they were right under my nose all along.

I’m not going to defend my actions today. There is more than one way to skin a cat. And in this case the only cogent argument I can think of to defend myself is that the chances of me being caught are slim to none.

Nothing seems to go to according to plan when I blog every day. Ideally, I have a kernel of an idea that comes to me sometime during my workday (between the hours of 8 AM and 5 PM). Today I decided that I was going to write about my thumbs. Thumbs? Yes, thumbs. The nails specifically on my right and left hands. Down the middle of each runs a slalom like the half pipes at Breckenridge. They are not deep. In fact these divets are fairly shallow, but they are there like the rings on a tree. My other fingers remain unaffected. I’ve been wondering if I should be concerned. When a carpenter bangs his thumb, he may incur a black splotch under his nail where a small pocket of blood has pooled beneath the nail. Eventually it will creep it’s way further and further down the length of the nail until one day when he takes his nail clippers out and deposits the last speck of blood into the trash can.

My problem is different. Like I said, the slaloms run clear back to my cuticles and run the entire length of the nail.

I work a white collar job. I do not bang my fingers on a regular basis. Certainly nothing to cause a divet. Am I malnourished? Perhaps. I tend to eat one large meal a day and that’s it. However, I have been doing the one super-meal a day thing much longer than I can remember first noticing the divets.

I’m at a bit of a loss now. I can’t remember where I was going with this. Ideally, I will have a kernel of an idea during my workday, yes.

Check.

But then also I will think about this kernel throughout my workday. I will identify a theme. A central point. And today nothing.

Were the divets somehow supposed to relate to my turning 26 tomorrow. A symbol of the aging process?

I’ve got nothing. I’ll soon be 26 and I’ve got a nail issue that is not so terrible I need to see a doctor, but no so insubstantial that I don’t worry about it on my own. Perhaps I should simply get a manicure and gloss over the problem. It’s not like a mole. If I get rid of it I will not likely be riding my body of a cancer warning system. The ridge will not quickly change shape and it’s coloring is the same as the rest of my nail.

Perhaps the central idea here is to let the issue go. Or maybe it’s the opposite. Perhaps I should procure a primary care doctor. Something I’ve been neglecting to do for several years now. Of course, the primary care doctor will have to duke it out with my dentist, which I have also failed to utilize for quite some time.

Feel free to wish me a Happy Birthday in the comments. And if you live in the Minneapolis area, let me know if you know of a good doctor or dentist in these parts. Taking better care of myself. I think that was one of my New Year’s resolutions. I am 90% sure it has something to do with my diet. This year I will shoot to have two meals each day instead of just one.

Freedom. It’s the one thing I craved most growing up. That and that my mother would meet with some unfortunate accident. I’m joking, partially. I won’t get into why I felt that way, because I love my mother very much. And perhaps I wasn’t the best son to have growing up. I’d like to think I was pretty average. Filled with angst. Rebellious.

When I was young. Before I reached the terrible teen stage, but when I was capable of putting pen to paper, my mother would force my sister and I to write thank you notes. Always at the worst possible time. Birthdays and Christmas mostly. As my sister and I opened gifts from relatives and family friends my mother would note the gift and who gave it on a piece of paper. We would enjoy our presents for a brief time and then mom would set us down with a stack of blank thank you cards and that retched list and say get to it.

It was during this time growing up I used to fantasize about how great it would be to get away from my tyrannical, moody mother. I put adulthood on such a pedestal, because as an adult, we can do whatever we want right? Of course, we seldom do. When we’re not working our asses off to keep our jobs, we’re nursing our wounds. I never thought it would be this hard.

People like to be thanked. I failed to recognize that as I sat down to write these dozens and dozens of thank you notes by hand.

Always these things start the same. “Dear So and So. Thank you for the [insert gift]. It is great! I never thought that a [insert gift] could be so much fun. I look forward to seeing you next year. Love, Brandon.”

It didn’t take long for me to realize that people can spot a form letter a mile away, even if it’s hand written. Besides, with so many thank you notes to write after each major holiday, I realized that it was much more fun to write them when they at least appear to be heartfelt.

This is what I thought about on the way home from work today. This Christmas I got both of my parents a book – “The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman.” My parents both loved the authors previous book, “The 4 Hour Workweek.” It was a no brainer (of course, the “Incredible Sex” bit was maybe a bit odd, but that’s beside the point).  Just a few days ago I got a short thank you note in the mail written by my Mom: “Your Father and I are really enjoying this book. It’s given us lots to talk about. We’ve been having some great discussions over it. Look forward to seeing you soon. Love, Mom.”

In a wave, the dreaded lists came back to me – the stacks of letters and matching envelopes with ‘Thank You’ embossed on the front. They all had to be filled. Over time I made them my own. To make the chore more interesting I would try really hard to connect with my readers. Of course, the best were thank you’s addressed to people who’d clearly put a lot of time and thought into the gift they’d given me. Not the “Thank you for the $20 bill and the crappy card. I hope you didn’t get a papercut on your tongue as you licked the envelope.”

One year my mother reported to me that one of my thank you notes made one of our close family friends cry. It was one of the proudest moments in my life. I could lie and tell you that that’s what made me decide to study to become a writer, but I won’t. It did inspire me to write better thank you notes, though. I still hated to do it, but I think that was the first times I came to understand the power that words have.

When was the last time you received a letter? Before email, snail mail was the primary mode of communication over great distances. Men of letters. All that. I think something has been lost. Email just isn’t the same. With a written letter there is no margin for error. No spell check. I imagine writing a large number of physical letters would be a pretty powerful exercise. I find myself getting extraordinarily impatient when I don’t receive a reply to an email I’ve written within 24 hours. A letter, even sent first class takes at least 2 business days to arrive in the recipient’s mailbox.

Perhaps the writing of letters is a dead art. Why not find a pen pal? Are there services that will connect adults via email? I’m not talking about online dating either. That normally ends quickly with an exchange of phone numbers and an agonized chat at the coffee house, does it not? I’m talking about old school pen pals.

Right now I am conversing with people on a daily basis via email. I’ve never emailed this much in my life. It is very fun. I wish I’d discovered it earlier in my adult life. Before I realized how boring and tiring really is. At first, I thought that it would be detrimental to my blogging activities. I’m the type of guy that hates to tell the same story twice or write about the same topic in more than one venue on the same day. Now I don’t worry about it so much. I am a loner in every sense of the word. I can still keep my blog writing fresh no matter how much I email during the day. It’s partially a matter of forgetting, but that’s not all it is. I work with lots of extroverts. I hear them tell one person a story and then tell it again to another and another. They refine it each time. It’s never the same twice and if their lucky or particularly savvy in the realm of socializing it will always get better. Even if it doesn’t they correct what doesn’t work the 3rd and 4th time around.

I prefer to think of blogging as performance art. Not only that, I think it works best when it’s completely improvised. I want to entertain myself just as much as I want to entertain you. Sometimes I’ll repeat myself, but never consciously. It goes back to those damned thank you notes. They taught me how boring it is to follow a formula. It’s much more fun to try to make your recipients feel something and you can’t get that with a formula. At least that’s been my experience. What do you think?

I’ve been struggling to find a good cardiovascular workout since my apartment’s gym is only equipped with free weights and weight machines. Sneaking into The King’s Speech after Tron actually got my heart racing. First there was my very casual walk from Tron into the adjacent theater for The King’s Speech. Then my heart was still racing as I posited my ass next to an old lady who for some reason thought it appropriate to save a seat for her coat. I kept expecting someone to claim the spot. Someone she knew perhaps, but no.

My heart raced more when the lights in the theater were turned on to help folks who bought their tickets last minute identify open seats in the primo section where you’re not forced to crane your neck to look up at the movie seats in the front rows.

I said my heart raced, but only for a moment. When I thought about it I decided that I’d never in my life been in a movie where the ushers check your tickets. I worried as the theater got more and more packed, but even then I knew, if people were unable to find seats they’d go to the front and get a refund as opposed to a witch hunt to find out who hadn’t paid for a ticket.

Both movies I liked equally. They were both very different. There was considerable downtime before the start of each movie. I’d timed them out almost perfectly. I think I waited 15 minutes before the previews started on the 2nd movie in my perfectly engineered double feature. During this time I thought about just how social an activity going to a movie is. It’s certainly not a place for intimacy. I have never in all my times going to see a feature film on the big screen seen anyone make out. It’s really terribly introverted this activity. Sure, you can look at box office revenues and know that you are partaking in an activity that thousands and thousands of other movie goers have experienced in the same way as you. But if you’re someone more lucky than me and you have someone you’re attending your movie with, is your experience really more social than mine? Maybe you will mutter a few words between you before the movie starts, but once it starts and you’re urged not to make a peep once the movie begins, I figured I was on equal footing with anybody else. In fact I did something which I would only feel comfortable doing with people I know really well, which is to enjoy snus throughout both pictures and just chuck them under my seat when I was ready for the next. It’s like chewing tobacco. I’m sure people next to me can smell it.

Wait. I’ve started doing this at work as well. I guess this is my new movie going habit. I would feel odd making out with someone after using it unless they also used snus. I guess there isn’t anyone I wouldn’t feel comfortable using snus with during a movie. Especially when I’m watching 4 hours of movie in one sitting. I couldn’t leave the theater and come back. I almost changed my mind after Tron. I thought to myself, it’s Saturday, why don’t I just go see The King’s Speech tomorrow after I’ve had some time to rest? But The King’s Speech really was the adjacent theater. When Tron ended, I pulled out my iPhone and saw The King’s Speech would start in just 15 minutes. Perfect. I plan to pull this trick next time I see a movie. Only one theater looked like it would be playing both these movies in succession like this.

What else happened this weekend? I read both the Saturday and Sunday paper. I had it in my mind to do this in an environment populated by other people in order to work on my resolution to socialize, but I instead brought them home. I thought that a coffee shop might be the perfect environment. Perhaps there being a slight chance that I have an extended or even brief conversation there with someone I do not know – that list includes just about everyone except my mum and dad. To top it all off I purchased a coffee maker to save money on coffee, so it looks like the only logical place for me to read in a setting conducive to reading and containing other people will be the library. I plan to go there next weekend. Perhaps I will meet a shy Swedish girl with enormous tits who will ask me where the Fiction section is.

In summation, I really wasn’t that social this weekend, but I was busy, which made it difficult if not impossible for me to dwell on it too long. Most weekends I live in squaller and am happy for Monday to arrive, for then I will have my co-workers to interact with and I can pretend to be just like them. This weekend, I am in contrast wishing that my weekend would last for all eternity that I might blog without time constraint and enjoy the paper every day and smuggle an entire meal under my coat so that I could enjoy every decent movie playing at the local theater without my stomach calling to me rebelliously to feed it when I’m only halfway through with the 2nd feature like I experienced on Saturday. Lesson learned. Bring food.

Today I want to record a dream I had. I wish I could literally have recorded it – the experience of having this dream. I find that most dreams I have cannot really be told as stories. None of them seem to have any continuity to them whatsoever and I don’t think it’s because my memory is failing me. Whenever I hear someone tell me about a dream they had I am very dubious, especially if the dream this person is describing makes sense or is entertaining in the same vein as a story I assume they’re embellishing. Dreams are fractured (at least my dreams are). I’ve heard of authors who’ve created best-selling and/or classic fictional stories based on dreams they’ve had. Like Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings. Here, I’m not going to invent details that I can’t really remember to make this dream more palatable to you. Not even a little bit. You had to be there.

This dream I had was odd as far as my dreams go. It was intense. More so than usual although I’m out of practice in the art and skill of recalling my dreams upon waking. Perhaps the strangest thing about it is that I forgot it when I woke up and didn’t remember it until about 5 o’ clock in the afternoon when I was reading an article in the Guardian. This dream. I remembered it as I was reading this article on 20 predictions for the next 25 years. I skimmed to #6 – predictions about neuroscience. After reading these two lines the dream came back to me in a flash…

Then there’s the mystery of consciousness. Will we finally have a framework that allows us to translate the mechanical pieces and parts into private, subjective experience? As it stands now, we don’t even know what such a framework could look like (“carry the two here and that equals the experience of tasting cinnamon”).

That line of research will lead us to confront the question of whether we can reproduce consciousness by replicating the exact structure of the brain – say, with zeros and ones, or beer cans and tennis balls. If this theory of materialism turns out to be correct, then we will be well on our way to downloading our brains into computers, allowing us to live forever in The Matrix.

I love predictions. I also love sci-fi. I’m planning to see Tron Legacy this weekend. I don’t know what it was that triggered the dream.

Like I said, I don’t know all the details. One minute I’m being led up some stairs to some kind of zen-esque temple with like bonzai trees. Then I’m meeting with my old neighbor who worked for Boeing creating jet engines. Then I get this incredible sensation of being split into two separate people. I see a red flashing light. I get the distinct impression that I’ve just entered an alternate universe.

Have you ever seen the movie Moon? Aw crap, I don’t want to spoil it for you. I think what happened to me in the dream is that I was cloned, memories and all. It was as if someone clapped there hands together when the red light went off and suddenly I didn’t know if I was myself or the clone. The Guardian article I read at the end of the day mentioned that in the future it may be possible for us to download ourselves into something resembling the Matrix. Not only did that bring my dream rushing back to my consciousness, it was like I solved the mystery of what the dream was about.

I really hope Tron is good. From what I’ve heard it’s about a video game that you play, but if you die in the game you die in real life. My dream was like that. If I was the clone, I’d be able to live forever, but if I was plain old me I would die per usual. This all seemed incredibly real for me. I felt elated for the 50/50 chance that I’d suddenly achieved immortality in this dream. Or maybe it was more a sci-fi movie. I do recall thinking that somehow I was very special – that I’d been somehow redesigned as a kind of super-soldier… that I was now invincible after this splitting of self.

Later I thought that it would be cool to write about decision making. How we often bank on having a long and healthy life while we’re alive. Like I said, I ate a lot of candy. I’m trying to insulate myself from any deep thought this evening. I’ll put that idea in the oven and see if I can’t make a great blog post out of it later.

That red light. The sensation of being split in two or perhaps living in two separate bodies. I wish that I could convey the experience to you better. The sensation really was amazing. I don’t even have a good story to relay it to you. At least now it’s not lost to me forever.

No more of this doing things, because I think I should or because I imagine that other people are doing them. I read an awful lot of advice on how to write more. Never have I read when is a good point to stop writing. I suppose that is because it is different for different people – another bit of truth you don’t often find. And I suppose the same thing goes for how much is enough. Is it 5 emails and 2 blog posts? And how long should each of these be?

One of the things that I find most frustrating about writing is the variability of it. If I’d written this blog post an hour earlier it would likely be completely different. I’m a Capricorn. You say, what is that? I’m not sure exactly, but I like routine. I don’t like to take huge risks. I don’t like surprises unless they come wrapped in paper with a bow on top. Those surprises are fine. The surprises I really don’t like are the ones I could have prevented with a little foresight.

On this blog, a bad surprise might be that I end up writing something that will make you feel less of me. Of course, the majority of people to this site are likely first-timers so they have no frame of reference. I don’t like to sound crazy. I write things here all the time that sound crazy, but it’s only okay if you know that I am doing it to be sarcastic or for a laugh. I can never know for sure that you get it unless you tell me and even then I may not believe you. It goes both ways.

Not only is it terrifying to publish. The act of writing itself is terrifying. You don’t know whether what you’re going to write will be good or bad. Often you only have a finite amount of time to finish whatever it is that comes out the other end. It’s so easy just to say, “I’ll try it later.” And later turns into tomorrow and it’s all downhill from there. You’ll never write anything ever again at that point. It’s now or never. That was the terrible pressure I felt as 9 o’ clock slowly, very slowly creeped up on me today.

I have a list I keep of blog post ideas. I sat in my favorite spot. The spot where I blog from on the bed with the cat. I shuffled through the ideas. There’s 2 pages of these ideas. None of them sounded appealing, so I just started. Word after word. This is not my preferred style. On a perfect day I would think of a topic while I was at work – a tiny seed of an idea. I might think about it a little here and there throughout the day. I might take a couple of false starts in my head as I drove home from work at the end of the day. Actual sentences I could use I’d commit to memory on the car ride home. I’d lay on the couch and read a book. I’d eat dinner. I’d read some more.

Can you believe that none of that happened today? I went to work. I read. I ate. But no mental blog writing of any kind. Not even a topic in mind. Who or what should I be mad at? Should I yell at my boss tomorrow? How about the company that manufactured the pizza I ate for dinner?

I can’t be mad at any of these things. I can’t really even be mad at myself, because at some point (I’m not sure where), blog posts find their way from out of the ether. I had plenty of seeds, but nothing wanted to germinate. I’m a firm believer that good writing writes itself. None of my ideas were speaking to me today. Not even the good ones.

I’ll let you be the judge if this seems like a lazily-crafted post. This wasn’t easy for me, you know. Every word was like a drop of my own blood and I’m down a liter now. Ordinarily, this is how I would remember a post like this. I did not blog yesterday and I will sure as hellfire beat myself up about it if I don’t get some perspective on this. Right now. In this blog post. That’s what this is about. And I even thought up a headline for it. It’s not fantastic. I doubt it will draw many hits, but it’s descriptive.

I really did think about this at work today. In the back of my mind. I was all, “Oh my god. I don’t think I’m going to be able to do it.” I thought for sure I’d be too tired. I’ve experienced that a lot lately. I’ve been late for work every day. I haven’t shaved. But none of that seems to have mattered, because I’m very nearly done with this blog post. And it’s not completely awful, is it?

I’m going to continue to do some experimenting to see if I can somehow make this easy for me and entertaining for you. I don’t mean this post anymore, I mean this whole site. I want you to like me. I don’t want you to feel like I am wasting your time. I really care. The other side of that coin is me. My needs. I’ll go ahead and blindly adhere to the one-a-day rule. If I miss a day, I won’t sweat it. I’ll just pick it up the next day. I’ll try not to abuse it like the alcoholic who’s slowly but surely sick-day-ing his way out of a job. I want to write better. I want to be more articulate. I just have to try not to cheat on you with my work writing assignments, long emails to my worrisome mother, or any other place I write. At a certain point I think even the most productive writers have a limit to how much reasonably decent writing they can put out. Or maybe the only constraint is time. Could a person write continuously every waking second… let’s say 12 hours a day with breaks only for food and bathroom and sleep? This is why if I were a famous writer I would never want to be cryogenically frozen. Imagine 1000 years in the future you are unfrozen by an evil government which forces you to work in this way forever, because by then it is possible to live forever. Now does blogging every day really sound so terrible?

I’ve got a routine now, which I think is going to help. I’m going to blog from 9 to 10 every night rain or shine, topic or no topic. And I’ll know you’ll forgive me if I write something boring or disjointed or just plain stupid.

I would post a picture, but I left my camera phone in the living room and the cat seems pretty contented gnawing on my foot here on the bed. Besides, I don’t have the energy to go get it, because guess what? I wore myself out reading. How did I do it? The solution was really very simple. I decided not to watch television after I got done with work. Here reading seemed like this daunting thing to me yesterday and today I finished this book I was in the middle of in no time flat.

I miss this wholesome form of entertainment they call reading. I also spend way too much of my time in front of a computer monitor, but I’ll kick that habit another day. I live alone and without really thinking about it, I’ve gradually been watching TV more and more often. Even when I’m not watching it I usually have it on just to kind of spill out the space. I’m sure some people in my predicament of social solitude would have the TV on just to have the illusion of connectedness, but I don’t think that’s why I’ve gradually kept it on at all times. I sleep in the dark. I’m a big boy. This habit just sort of happened. And now that I’ve had all evening to read and contemplate my existence in silence, I think I’m going to keep the TV off for the rest of the week. At least through the weekend.

I didn’t want to mention it, for fear of jinxing the thing, but I also am blogging every day. At least I have been for a couple of days. I don’t want to make it official though. I know WordPress is encouraging bloggers on it’s platform to try posting every day (heavy) or every week (light) in the year 2011. I don’t want to even acknowledge that it’s happening, but I mentioned it, so there it is. Another unconscious decision. I really try not to worry about this kind of thing until it gets so bad I wake up one morning in a gutter somewhere. No cause for alarm. I am just a writing machine. I have been denying my true nature for too long.

Also, yesterday I complained that my commute to work was super long on account of it snowing. I complained that I’d somehow caught writing block (which I somehow managed to write about at great length). Actually, life was just really good today. It wasn’t any one thing specifically. It was just like I worked through some perceptual hurdles that had a really strong grip on me earlier in the week. And I guess it wasn’t all just in my head. A lot more people said hi to me and smiled. I had some c o n v e r s a t i o n s with the other human beings I also work with. I seriously wonder if staying in my apartment all weekend affects my communication abilities come Monday. I mean Monday’s are supposed to suck, but I seriously am mute when I get back and my head is filled with gibberish.

And that is why I am introducing a fantastic new routine into my weekend that will bring me back to the present and aware of what’s happening around me. I haven’t done it yet. The TV… That stupid pacifier to the masses. It makes me turn it on as soon as I wake up on Saturday (half way through the afternoon) and I sit on my couch and stare. I used to watch movies. Smart movies. Movies you have to r e a d. But it is really difficult to establish a compelling argument that watching 50 episodes of Futurama in a weekend is making me a better person. It’s hard to argue that doing such a thing is entertainment. A better example would be a more mediocre show like Monk (sorry if you like the show – it’s just so formulaic – watching someone pretend to have OCD is not funny after 50 episodes).

The book I just finished was about how to create compelling PowerPoint presentations. It’s not as boring as it sounds. In fact I’d argue it’s more about Zen than it is about PowerPoint. The book of course is called Presentation Zen. For instance, in the book I learned the 5 principles of Judo…

1) Carefully observe oneself and one’s situation, carefully observe others, and carefully observe one’s environment.

2) Seize the initiative in whatever you undertake.

3) Consider fully, act decisively.

4) Know when to stop.

5) Keep to the middle.

Isn’t that cool? Those principles could apply to all sorts of things besides Judo and PowerPoint presentations.

Now I wish I could remembered the theme song to Reading Rainbow or I’d sing it to you now. Here it is on YouTube. Now are you going to try to tell me it’s propaganda? They won’t give you the ability to do anything or go anywhere, but it’s the next best thing and all the cool kids are doing it.

In case you are just joining, I write these posts as much for you as for myself. So if you think I’m being bossy, get in line.

I am sure that the sheet I draped over my TV as a barrier to me pressing the on button will not hold forever. I will inevitably decide I can’t take it anymore and finish watching Monk episodes until I’ve seen every last one, but for now I’m going to pretend I never said that and find a new book to start… and finish – none of this halfway-through business, because there’s nothing more painful than trying to finish a book you can’t even remember the beginning of.

I should tell you why I’m down, because really, my ability to read a book is not really in question here. I can read. It is really very simple to do. You just start and you don’t stop until you’ve reached the last page. The question is one of enjoyment. I read a lot of books in college. I naively wanted to be a writer and I was willing to gamble all of that tuition on the slim chance that I might make it in some form or fashion. Stupidly, I thought I might have a knack for writing fiction. To the best of my knowledge I am not, but in the process I put a pretty good dent on the classics. It was a badge of honor to know I read all those great books. But I won’t read all those titles off to you now to boast. To be honest, I don’t remember a whole lot about them except that I’m glad that I read them. I’d like to think that all that writing my professors told me was so great and I must continue reading book after book until I have something resembling a well-rounded education… I’d like to think that it’s rubbed off on me at least a little and given me a better ear for language.

That’s still not getting to the heart of the matter. In the morning I gave someone some advice, which I’m calling to question now. A blogger with some trouble finishing. They  said they always had several drafts of unfinished blog posts at any given time. My advice to them was to turn off their proof-reader. I wasn’t talking about their internal proof-reader, either. It was a given that they turn that off. I was talking about WordPress. It has a bazillion proofing criteria beyond just your basic spelling and grammar checks. I wish I had the list here to illustrate, but it reminds me of this proofing software I’ve seen at the office called WhiteSmoke. I think some of the copywriters use it, because I swear I’ve seen it on our network. Anyways, it’s supposed to make your writing better, in a nutshell. It’ll check for cliches…

Here it is. I found the WordPress list of proofing options… Bias language, cliches, complex phrases, diacritical marks, double negatives, hidden verbs, jargon, passive voice, phrases to avoid, and redundant phrases. I don’t know what a quarter of those things are and I majored in English. Anyways, I suggested blindly to this fellow blogger that they turn off all the extra crap and just run a spell check if possible. That’s what I meant at least. I’m not sure I articulated it very well.

And then you know what? After work I was drafting an email and I swear I haven’t had this much trouble preparing an email in months and months. I wrote it in one shot like I normally do when I write, but it was completely bloated. I think because I had a rough day. It’s Monday after all, and I had to dig my car out of the snow after work, and I really wanted to just pick up a bunch of beer, but I’m limiting it to the weekends only if at all, etc. etc. I could have blamed the day for my being unable to write a coherent first draft of this really very short email or I could do what I did, which was not only to twist and contort the email so it had just the right tone I was after and then right before bed slam out this blog post. That’s what it feels like some times. It’s like war. Every word and sentence seems to be doing exactly what you don’t want it to do, but you must trudge on, because you are a writer (though you’ll never ever quite believe it) and writers bleed. They’re the nuts crazy enough to fail 99 times out of 100. We’re very courageous people that way.

Now on with the show. Honestly, one of the hardest things to do is to bear all your flaws online. I am probably a hell of a lot more guarded than most, too. I have since made only minor attempts to promote my tiny bit of web real estate here. Not that I could promote this thing if I tried. I am only vaguely familiar with the tricks used to claim top spots on Google and the rest. What pains me is after I post something. As time goes by the writing and the content grows more and more terrible in my mind. I want to just trash everything I’ve written, but I’m in way too deep at this point. There was a time maybe less than a year ago when I was posting like a madman. I put way more time into this blog than was probably healthy.

In 2011, I’m not going to be a slave-driver to my digital self. I’m going to write whenever I feel compelled to and no more. I don’t want my rant about a co-worker to be the first post anyone sees, so I’m going to post today about my cat and also I will rate the Sunday paper which I got about halfway through and felt compelled to blog. Such a lovely word – blog. So glamorous. Like something an angel might utter. Blog. Excuse me.

I have fairly low self-esteem, which is why I hope you can appreciate my hesitancy to talk about being a single man with a cat. I got talked into it by a friend maybe 4 or 5 months ago. Maybe not even that long. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of as a man. Because as a real man, you should own a dog. A gigantic wiener dog, because you are so manly. Not me. Did you know you have to walk dogs? I was almost sold on the idea until I learned that my apartment complex has a 50 pound weight limit on dogs. And I couldn’t get any of the killer breeds either. I thought that maybe I could make it work. I searched every dog breed at or below a 50 pound average weight looking for the biggest by volume. There are all of these bizarre looking hunting breeds that have the build of a greyhound, but they all seemed to have some very bizarre temperaments and behaviors like jumping on top of your refrigerator and sleeping 23 hours a day.

So I bit the bullet. I decided to become the proud owner of a cat. I went to three Petco’s looking for the biggest and meanest looking cat up for adoption. And so, I bought Hemingway or Meatball for short. I thought his tail had been cut off until his vet told me a month or two later that he’s a Manx and it’s supposed to be like that. He’s colored like Garfield.  He is the opposite of cuddly. The only way he knows to show affection is to sink all of his teeth and claws into my forearm until I beg for mercy. He has taken over my bed now. I tried to keep him out of the bed, because I had a cat once that would curl up on top of your head like a hat. Lucky me, Meatball is almost entirely nocturnal. He’ll prowl around the apartment all night and paw my face in the morning when he wants to be fed.

Of course, he’s not all that bad. Just not the kind of cat I remember as a kid. Manx like to climb things, but there’s no way I’m buying one of those enormous cat playgrounds wrapped in carpet. Instead, I let him climb a twin mattress I inherited and was basically just using as a headboard, because I’m wealthy like that. I don’t buy headboards, I just buy more mattresses.

I rarely see the cat anymore. I think that it’s mostly carved it’s waking hours into the time I’m either asleep or at work. Sometimes I can pet him for as much as 10 minutes before he bites and I have to kick him off the sofa.

And of course, I love him very much. Cats are amazingly easy to take care of. Right up there with fresh-water fish and pet rocks.

I don’t think I would make a good dog owner. I’m really glad that I didn’t in the heat of the moment buy a Beagle or a Bassett Hound or some other breed. It’s bloody cold out and I’m afraid I’d neglect it and it would be mopey all the time because I didn’t want to play with it or pet it.

And don’t go thinking I am a terrible cat owner. I play with him, but you’ve got to understand he is a fighter. A fearless man cat.

So, I’ll talk about the newspaper tomorrow after I finish it. I thought I’d have enough time to talk about both the cat and the paper, but I got carried away here. So this is what I’m going to hang my hat on. Sheesh!

When I told him this the first time, he went to our head production guy, who’d I’d already spoken with for his opinion. Are you sure this is something I should do? So, fine, he questioned my authority on the deal. This is what this guy does. So, I spend the rest of the day working and I run into edit after edit. What should have taken 20 minutes is now taking me hours and hours. On the ride home I thought to myself. This guy is going to completely ignore what I’m saying. Why else would he right under my nose question my authority in this matter. He’s asking well what about in this special case and what about in this special case. I keep telling him to error on the side of caution and RECORD IT ALL. Record it all. Record it all. He’s clearly not getting it, so I send him an email. Nothing too terrible. I title it ‘WW3′ and sent it to him at about 5:30 as I’m driving in my car…

“If I see another edit next month it’s going to be WW3. It is taking me hours and hours to sort out this month’s edits. Am I getting through to you?”

Pretty tame, right? I’m clearly using hyperbole. So he replies…

“I heard you the first time.”

So, we’re okay, right? Wrong. The next morning he wants to let me know that he didn’t like the tone of my email. He actually tried to call me last night. I tell him that I didn’t think he got the message. He’s openly questioning my directive. I tell him that the cost saved with the voice talent by editing all these snippets of audio together with stuff we recorded pales in comparison to the extra time that the audio engineers like myself must put into all these crazy edits – splice these 2 sentences together using new audio and audio file A from script 234 and audio file B from 256. In an ideal world, all our audio would be indexed, but it’s like the treasure hunt from hell in the world we’re currently living in. So, I try to sound as reasonable as possible as this guy sucks up an another 20 minutes of my time on this thing.

Case closed, right? Wrong. Just today, I’m meeting with my boss, who completely sympathizes with me. As I said earlier, this guy can be damned near impossible. It’s departmental knowledge. How he got through our rigorous hiring process I’ll never know. Apparently, he showed the email to his boss. She showed my boss. By the time my boss gets around to telling me, she’s not scolding me so much as mutually bashing this douche bag we both have the misfortune of having to deal with from time to time. I can’t imagine what working with him on a continual basis must be like. Always on the verge of wanting to wring his neck I imagine. Praying that he will lose the ability to speak. Arrogant like you can’t believe.

On the other hand, he is kind of like a fungus. If you can get over his numerous flaws. He is actually a nice guy. He occasionally has a good idea. Whoever got him hired though must be some kind of masochist. I never ever met someone so insolent. At least my boss knows how to read people. Sure, I’ll think twice before saying or writing anything to this guy, but minus the hyperbole I really just wanted him to show just a smidgen of empathy and know just how much extra work these paint by numbers edits take to splice together. It’s like finding Mr. Potato Head’s body parts for Christmas. It’s the technology we have, unfortunately. It’ll be the last thing that gets revamped after every other high priority IT request gets dealt with and there will always be high priority IT requests. This one is low on the company radar. The least they can do is let us record an adequate amount of audio to meet our client’s growing demand to use our automated phone services.

I’ll stop there before I have a post that could potentially get me fired from my job were my evil friend to stumble upon this tiny little blog riddled with cobwebs and almost entirely anonymous. I figure a little reading would let you know my first name and what city I live in. You could find out what industry I worked in even, but beyond that I do a fair job of keeping out any information that might link me to this blog personally. I caved and even removed this blog address from my Facebook profile. I find that it keeps me honest. On the flip side I’ve only just gotten comfortable blogging about stuff that happens to me at work. Not that much juicy happens to me there. I do feel like if I ever want to leave this job I should be able to describe it to a complete stranger. I don’t want to be in a job interview again some day and make myself sound like a bumbling fool who didn’t really understand his work at all.

My office is strange. In the next couple of weeks I’ll try to let you all in. Have no fear. I must do that.

I’m really ignoring the elephant in the room by writing about work. Yes, this co-worker was on my mind this morning, but now I’m thinking about something else. Someone else, really. I can only check my email so many times, so I decided I might as well distract myself by writing this. I know they say that email is dying. That text messaging and something else – what is the other thing that’s posed to kill email? I can’t remember. I like email though. It’s long-form. I find that for myself, one juicy (my favorite word today) email is worth at least a dozen text messages. Do kids still have pen pals anymore. I remember I had one when I was in elementary school. I don’t remember anything about my pen pal now, but I’m sure that I had one and that it had a positive influence on me. The tough part is the waiting. Why is waiting so agonizing? I feel like I’ve suddenly been thrown into a graduate level course on delayed gratification. In that class you learn how to enjoy waiting. Really enjoy it.

I should take a cooking course. It would be great for my overall lack of patience. Imagine spending an hour slaving away over a 1-course meal. It must be terrible learning, too. Like that Julia/Julia movie about the blogger who spends an entire year learning how to cook. I would lose it I think if I spent 1 hour cooking only to create a dish that was inedible.

Last thing and then I’ll sign off… I saw True Grit this weekend and in it there is this scene where Jeff Bridges is describing a very elaborate and almost suicidal plan to kill an oncoming group of outlaws. As soon as he finishes slurring out his plan in this thick and old-timey accent, the 14 year old girl who has the misfortune of being wrapped in the middle of this dangerous plot remarks after a moment of silent contemplation, “You show great poise.”

That bit of dialogue is probably all I can remember from the entire movie. The dialogue was pretty difficult in the movie. Especially Jeff Bridges’. The play on the word poise I thought was brilliant. I’m being a little myopic. I really liked the whole film very much, but the way she said it without any emotion and Jeff Bridges’ blank expression after describing the plan. Very funny. It’s too bad we can’t look back on our day and re-work the dialogue like that. I suppose we can try. I wonder how important it is we remember everything the way it was. It’s not like it’s possible all the time anyways. I’d rather look back and have a sense of humor about things. If only I could write about the Coen Brothers. Meanwhile you’re likely thinking when will he stop talking about them. Give it a few months. Once they’ve not made a new movie for a while and there’s none on the horizon.