Hi, Steve

I just told my friend Steve about this. Which may make him this site's very first visitor.

So, Hi, Steve! Hope you like my Blog so far! Try not to spill anything on the carpet!

And get your feet off my coffee table, dammit.

Thinking happy thoughts

I'm riffing on the power of positive thinking, or, as my wife calls it, "Talk a Good Life." It goes something like this: If you always see your life as positive and talk about what you're doing as something you're excited about, you'll feel good about that and, incidentally, people will feel good about it. My immediate reaction: phony, phony phony.

My more considered reaction: For a long time, I've pictured my thoughts as liquid circuits, and my brain as a planetary surface, cut by channels like Martian canals. Unhealthy thoughts run over and over again in hard cut channels, and change direction only by great force of will. Like 'talking a good life'.

I say this because I tried thinking something nice about something I did yesterday: how I contributed to an office brainstorm. While most of my liquid circuits flashed the "roll your eyes sarcastically" signal, there was this small, happy wave of clarity, like a pair of hands brushing away some dust and papers from a cluttered desk.

I will continue explore this. But first, back to my real cluttered desk.

In sickness and in health

...but mostly sickness.

I've been suffering my first serious cold in many years over the past four days. I'm feeling almost desperate to kick this. I'm drinking water, and forcing myself to go to bed early. Nothing's working. Last night, I crawled into bed at 8:00, fell asleep at 9:00, woke up again at 12:30 am, went downstairs and turned on the TV at 1:00 am, watched the mystifying Wolf's Rain and then something else, went back to bed at 2:00 am and was up pretty much every hour after that until 6:30 am, at which point there was nothing better to do than to go to work. Where I did very little today...

So, I just checked out that link on Wolf's Rain. It appears that they actually are wolves. Well. Good.

There isn't enough time

I was wondering today what it would take to break my internet addiction. What if I were to start a blog?

Some background: I was reading a book last night called Delivered From Distraction, about dealing with ADD. Yeah, I'm probably poster child for this "collection of traits", as the author genially names it. People with ADD, apparently, often will "medicate" themselves with alcohol, drugs, sex.

I don't.

I medicate myself with words.

I read. All the time. I get to work in the morning, log in, check email. If there's nothing disasterous there, I start my routine.

First Slate... I like the media column, movie reviews, the political/military analyses and pop culture. Now that the elections are over, it's a harder read.

Then, to the humor sites...Pointless Waste of Time...incredibly juvenile, incredibly funny, over and over again. Related is Pinkerton's Weblog...highly creative, blunt, juvenile humor with a brain...and a working knowledge off comic books.

From there, it can vary...a quick check of fantasy basketball scores...My Yahoo page to review client news. Romenesko for what's on The Media's mind. Metafilter when I just need fix of something new. After a couple of hours of this, I'm wasted.

The goal is to never be alone with my thoughts. I do shots of the New York Times Crossword in the john, and the read the editorial page while walking to lunch. At home, it's The Atlantic and Sports Illustrated ... in a pinch, the daily newspaper. In the car, talk radio, bouncing between sports and offensively conservative talk to avoid the ads.

Turn it off? What would happen then?

Is anyone else like this?

Gotta Get Out of This Place

We gotta get out of this place
If it's the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place'cause girl,
there's a better life for me and you
Eric Bourdon and the Animals

I’m having trouble concentrating. When I talk to someone, it’s fun. I wake up. I’m a little more energized. When I sit down at my computer, my head gets heavy, my eyes blur and I feel vaguely dizzy. I’m writing. It’s all I can do. Last year, I saw a career counselor. Let’s call her “Colleen” (her real name is “Colleen”). She got me to define what I was after in a career. I think my problems may just be deeper than that. Let’s define it:

Fear.

In my internal biological debate on how to react to fear, “flight” wins out of “fight” about 90 percent of the time.

Here is a start on the list of things that make me afraid:

Changing jobs·
Doing my current job·
Challenging authority·
Losing my paycheck·
Getting fired·
Not getting fired·
That I’ll be found out·
That I won’t be found out.

Frankly, I’m just afraid that anything will happen. Or that it won’t. I’m afraid of doing whatever it is myself, and afraid that it won’t happen on its own.

* * *

I wrote the above about a year ago. Not much has changed. But I'm learning... I'm finally talking to someone about net around my mind, the one that has settled gently over my life like a blanket that comfortably discourages the straining and striving against something so intrinsicially unfair as a net.

This is an exercise in straining and striving.

Manifesto

This blog will remain "under construction" for a little while...whilst I figure out what to do with it. What am I thinking?

It will chronicle the flotsam and jetsam of my brain; the grand dreams, broken promises, aching desires.

It will over promise and under deliver. Or, as a sage candyman once said, "strike that...reverse it!" Perhaps.

It will be an outlet for stories and essays and maybe a song or two.

It might even be funny.

And finally: It will be honest. This is a very scary thing.