Facebook killed the blog star

I deactivated my Facebook account last night.

Unlike most decisions I make, this one was on the spur of the moment. It had been a long day, a long week and a long year for Facebooking. It had also been a long, trying day personally, and I suppose I was fed up.

The main reason that it felt right was the "lurkers." Lurkers is a term for people who rarely share of themselves in any way on social media. Rather, they watch others and sometimes kibbitz and judge quietly from the sidelines. Always spectators and never players, they have no skin in the game, and I find them cowardly in this way.

One reason I joined Facebook was to share with others and keep in touch, with text, images and videos. I enjoy sharing my thoughts and ideas, my occasional creative works, and promoting friends' comedy shows or other interests that benefit from additional eyeballs.

When others only consume and never contribute, it chaps me, as you can tell. I had an incident months ago where I posted a rather stylistic and amusing short essay about how shitty my commute was. I made the mistake of including an unnecessary reference to mother-in-laws, and it wasn't long before a lurking in-law fired up the switchboard to make sure eeeeverybody got a good look at the big bad words I had written, causing strife and woe to all around.

I could have been a lot more charitable in my writing, and I should have been more careful about others' feelings. I freely admit, I shot myself in the foot on that one. It is not in my nature to bash an otherwise innocent bystander. On the other hand, I consider nearly everything I put down on paper or electronic papyrus to be an exercise in creative writing, to one degree or another. And for it to blow up in my face rubbed me the wrong way.

The things that tweaked it for me was that none of these people even post pictures of their cat, much less discussions, family photos, messages, etc. So in the equation between me and them, I was carrying all the downside. Fuck that.

One might point out that I could simply block them, and I did. But still, the social stinginess still rankled. Not everyone has a need to express and be heard like I do, I get that. But holding back to such a perfect degree just seems wrong.

I've made much of this one incident, but it seems to be a common and recurring through-line in many Facebook interactions, and it's a recurrence I can live without.

When I write, it is right in my wheelhouse to choose cheeky, ribald turns of phrase, as well as topics. I playfully push the envelope, it's just how I like to do it. Lately it seems that even my more innocuous little jabs had pinched others' toes and caused the hurting of butts. While it is also in my nature to smile through these little dust-ups and recommend that others suck it up and recall that "names will never hurt you," I don't seek to hurt others, and it gets tiring explaining myself and apologizing.

Another reason I'm happy to be away from it is that Facebook is a seductive time-suck. All day, every day, if you see me hypnotized by my phone, it would be to catch up on my Facebook timeline, a list of goings-on for people and organizations I have some or no interest in. Now that I am "free" of this constant and willing distraction, I realize how much time I had given to it. It is not a frivolous amount. I find myself looking for and finding worthier endeavors in its place.

Finally, as I have long suspected, Facebook's Status Update made it easy to jot down the brief ideas that crossed my mind, but it sort of discouraged long-form thoughts like those I used to post here. While my creativity's waning may not have been fully due to Facebook's influence, I am certain it didn't help. I hope to see some contemplative wordiness return to this space. And extended journaling like this can be very helpful in luring the Muse down from the mountaintop, and that would be most welcome indeed!

One regret that set in within one day is that I won't be so easily able to track and promote friends' comedy shows. There may be other ways to achieve this, but Facebook's interface did make it convenient most of the time.  Ah, well.

One final regret worth noting is that Facebook's interface made it easy to share my creative works with those within and without my social circle, including drawings, videos and written works. I can and probably will turn to my website and YouTube accounts to display my brain's wares, but I will likely miss FB's utility there. On the other hand, I still have a Tumblr account somewhere. While I may be trading one social media platform for another, I am glad for the opportunity to shake things up a bit, and I am hopeful that the change will being welcome new exchanges.

I am encouraged by the fact that this is more than I've written in a good long while already. Let's hope it's a trend that continues.

A new start:started.

So last week I stopped going to work.

The last few years have seen work and its demands intrude farther and farther into our lives. If it isn't the hours spent working, it's the hours spent getting there and back, and the money it takes to maintain a vehicle, make sure the child is supervised: all the little details that every working family encounters and combats. 

That's all fine, but at some point, the machine you're building takes on a life of its own, creates its own demands, and you start doing things for the machine's sake. I was throwing all of my energy at things I didn't want at all. There was no time left in my day (or night) for fun, for relaxation, for reflection, for love. Nothing but eat, drive, work, drive, housework, sleep insufficiently in quality and quantity, REPEAT.

As a creature of habit, I get in a nice comfy rut, and brother, do I ever stay there. It's a strength, and a flaw. I've stuck with bad jobs and bad women for just this reason. So maybe you can see how difficult it is for me to declare "Fuck this!" and step off the trolley. With my habits and lifestyle reaching ever-more detrimental patterns, I truly believe that something awful would have happened, and soon. Physical event, car accident, mental event. I was red-lining on several fronts, and my commitment to routine was carrying me happily to an early destruction.  It wasn't just the 90-mile commute to my most-recent job - that was just the capper.

Even the previous job before that, at the campground in Avery, CA, I felt I was on the wrong track. Some people think I'm smart, but I'd be a lot smarter if I stopped and looked around more often to see where I'm headed. I felt things closing in but did nothing about it. Further committing to plans I didn't really want to be a part of, I was giving my life away.  This course correction I've made last week could have been more drastic, but I'll settle for this, what seems to be an enormous step back in the right direction. 

At a minimum, it is a break, for which I am hugely grateful and in dire need.  It is also an opportunity to embrace parts of me that I imagine to exist: creative thoughts, ideas, needs, passions, impulses, motivations, desires. God, I hope they're not just imaginary.

So last week was about housework (as will all weeks in the foreseeable future, but none so needful as last's). I threw myself at all the labor needed to push back the tide of filth that had worked its way into every corner of our formerly-nice house. The shit was truly disgusting and embarrassing. I was ashamed to be a part of it, and I wouldn't let me kid spend the night in someone else's home if it looked like that. And yet I let my kid spend every night there. My only excuse was that there was no time to spend making it better. And I knew it was literally true: I spent spare minutes and hours just to keep the place no worse than the unfit-for-human-life condition it was in.

So last week I dug in and started moving, organizing, cleaning, keeping house on a more-aggressive level. I cleaned a bathroom, cleared debris from the dining table and reclaimed 2/3 of the once-ample counter space in the kitchen. We can now set groceries down on something other than the floor when we return from the store. A start.

This week though, I have to start making good on the promises and fantasies that clouded my windshield for the last two years of my "supercommute," the name of the daily, merciless trek to work lasting (much) more than an hour each way. Every day and night I promised myself I would exercise, planned to write and perform comedy, and work with some forms of visual arts, if ever I was given the time and grace to do so.

So here I am now, sitting at a quietly-noisy coffee shop with my son, tapping out the longest blog post in a while, just to limber up my creaking fingers, and loosen up my creakier mind. One of the purposes of this blog is to leave little landmarks along my journey, but if nothing else, I hope this has warmed up the old Thinkin' Machine.

Gotta be a good thing.

Yard sales 5/18/13

My son and I went to a few yard sales today.

I have come to regard garage sales and yard sales as one of the great joys of the changing seasons, on par with the blustery broken clouds and winds of fall, the snows of winter (in some areas, rarely mine), or the buds and birds of spring.

I think it connects my frugal nature with my love of variety quite nicely. Add to that that I have taught my son to enjoy it as much as me, and you've got a pleasant family component that is also rare enough in my day-to-day.

ANYHOO.

My son and I found a fairly sparse number of yard sales to review, with NONE of them advertised on Craigslist.org. Unusual!

But the ones we found were remarkably high quality, with very few of them simply piles of clothes and dirty baby toys, or similarly weirdly bare offerings. Today was great because there were the novelty of choices that make garage sales fun. And the deals couldn't have been better.

The crown jewel of my purchases today was a $30.00 Compaq Presario laptop that has a firewire port! Huzzah! Up until now, I haven't had a way to offload video from my Canon camcorder, as my previous firewire-enabled laptop for the job finally failed. Looks like I found an affordable way out of that, at least for now. So happy.

Here's Poppa Rickie

It's been about a week since Michelle's Dad Ken (aka Poppa Rickie) moved in with us. He's got a little trailer he stays in, and it's his own space.

He helps a lot outside, and spring is a good time to have an energetic outdoor-doer. We all make an effort to get along and so we do. It's an adjustment, but not a big one. It's nice to have him around.

I was looking through one of those big coffee table books on Paris which I had recently scored at a local estate sale, and I took some satisfaction at showing him the image of the topless dancers in the Red Light district. With very little prodding I blabbed on and on about the history of the Eiffel Tower in a nusthell, and he and Michelle and I had such a good conversation I felt like they were doing me a favor, and maybe they were. I enjoyed it in any event.

Death of the Easter Bunny

My son is eight years old now, (nine later this year) and he has been making good use of his burgeoning frontal lobe, applying logic to long-held beliefs. I couldn't be happier. I hope he continues the trend for all his days. But his newfound fact-finding culminated this year in doubt at the existence of a favorite spring harbinger: the Easter Bunny.

I don't know if he saw the goodies hidden in his parents' closet or if there was some other evidentiary loose thread to prompt his suspicion, but a day or two before Easter Sunday the kid was all questions; mainly, one big one: "Is Momma the Easter Bunny?"

I did what any unprepared coward would do: I stalled for time.

"What if she were, son?"

"I'd be sad. But I'd rather know."

We talked a little longer and I felt around inside his head to see just how much damage I'd do if I told him that the Easter bunny had tattoos and kissed Daddy goodnight at the end of every day.  After further review, I found that the "sad" part outweighed the "I'd rather know" part, and he seemed more reluctant for the unvarnished truth than he did originally.  So, and with both of us becoming weary of a conversation where one doesn't quite know what he's talking about and the other won't talk about what he knows, I offered the limpest-wristed confirmation that: "Yeah son, your mom's totally not the Easter bunny," complete with a sarcastic and defeated delivery, my lack of sincerity itself a clue.

My uncertain choice to flaccidly continue the lie for juuuust a little longer was proven the right one when my son eagerly snapped up the confirmation and let the whole mess go.

One sacred cow, rescued.

As it turns out, the cow was massacred just as sloppily not twelve hours later, when my wife set her alarm for 5:30 a.m. I knew as soon as we awakened that we were treading on thin ice. As soon as we stirred, our still-new Mastiff puppy "Kaos" sensed movement and start to fret and jostle, not ten feet from my son's sleeping head. With the spring sun already tickling the edges of the sky, it didn't take much for my son to rouse.  That, plus the fact that our house's layout demanded that we either creep directly past his bedside or climb out the second-story window, I "could smell what the Rock was cookin'."

Sure enough, one of us tried to slip by with a ridiculously large and colorful Easter basket, and the other with a plastic grocery bag full of eggs, my son piped up in the darkness: "Whatcha doin'?"

"Go back to sleep!" Came the slightly harsh reply, attitude borne of guilt.  But the little monster was not to be swatted away so easily. In fact, the persistent (dare I say "spoiled?" You better fucking believe I do) early-riser was so indignant and cranky about the whole thing (and about not being allowed to collect eggs sooner than planned, while Momma and Daddy still futilely clinged to hopes of returning to bed), that we threatened to tell the Easter Bunny to forget the whole thing, and meant it! I think part of his obstinacy was rooted in his disbelief that we had such powerful connections that we could cancel our reservations with His Egginess at such a late date.

After ten cold, dewy minutes of egg dropping, we were still finishing up the furtive task when the front door of the house opened, and there again, was my enterprising, curious young boy.  Again, we shooed him back to bed a little more stridently than would otherwise be called for, but there were secrets to be kept. Dark, difficult-to-explain secrets.

The task finally done, we "sneaked" back into the house, only to face a disillusioned and skeptical child who reminded me that the ladder to his bunk bad sits next to the window, out of which he looked when climbing back into bed. And what did he see?

You know damned well what he saw: his two lying parents dropping plastic eggs full of money and candy and a basket with his favorite new video game ("Luigi 3D for the Nintendo 3DS" or some shit like that, a forty dollar value by itself) in the front yard. My little toe-tapping darling was surprisingly hostile for someone who just found out his parents are way more generous than previously thought.

But soon he was over it and happily collecting eggs and money and sugar and plastic grass and singing our praises in a sugar-rush that will likely entwine with our benevolent betrayal in the catacombs of his child mind, and take years of psychotherapy to untangle.

Ah, parenthood. Good luck defusing this little brain-bomb, Dr. Quackenstein.

Confessions of a hopeless fuck-up

They always tell you: "Do your best."  The advice is less forthcoming when your best sucks.

I've got this job. There are some things that suck about it, but it's a good job. The people are fair and nice, and that alone is pretty rare, and makes me want to do well.

The thing is, I keep fucking up.  For a while there, I had good reasons to fuck up - not excuses, but real, verifiable causes that a conscientious person could identify and correct. Things like insufficient sleep, lack of training, inexperience and trying to work quickly at the expense of  of working thoroughly. 

One by one, I have corrected those problems, and things have improved.  But not enough.

I make stupid, rookie mistakes.  People hand me paperwork with obvious errors and my signature on it, just bigger than life. And I look at it, and it's like it's someone else's work. I remember handling it, but I don't remember skipping or duplicating or fucking up whatever got fucked up BUT THERE IT IS. And I am powerless to excuse or redeem it. All I can do is accept it, and promise to do better, knowing I probably won't.

It's all compounded for the worse that I am currently the main breadwinner at Casa de Loser; times aren't all that plush WITH me working. If I fuck this gig up, it's gonna get ugly and fast.  That pressure is the final turn of the screw, and there were times last year when I really thought I was going to succumb to it. I really felt like a mental, physical or emotional component was going to just give out, and shit would get real. All I could do was trudge miserably ahead and keep showing up as long as they'd let me. 

I'm a big boy, and I know that it's just a job. But I've tried not giving a whit of a fuck about my job, and it doesn't suit me. I can't get the math right. When I try not to care, I'm really good at it, and it shows. And it's unsustainable. It's not long before I speak and behave as if I really don't care, and at that point I may as well just quit and get on with it.

On the other hand, I have managed to disconnect some of the gnawing shame associated with tripping over my dick on a regular basis, and it's a good thing. Being a witless fuckup is pretty painful, if you don't handle it properly (and I don't).  I have somehow managed to step back from the sting of failure, and while I still want very badly to do well, the cascading anxiety of relentless, ridiculous mistakes has become a little bit removed. All I can do is patiently surmise: "Well, they'll either fire me, or they won't." I don't exactly look forward to that, but I have to say I have learned to look on the bright side of that eventuality and recognize the good that comes from change.

But I'd much rather do well and enjoy the benefits of a secure position that pays the bills. And I would really like to enjoy the well-being that comes from competence and a job well done. That is much more my speed, and while I'm capable of it (in theory), I miss it.

The blank canvas

I found this picture on Facebook, and I like its message a lot. 

I like it because it speaks to the huge, hideous cramp I've had in my creative muscles for (egads) a couple of years now. As much as I've lost the impish little voice that was always on standby to connect two strange things in the background and present them to the foreground, my problem has also been laziness and a fear of "putting brush to canvas," in any artistic sense, including this blog or comedy.  My only outlet has been Facebook; while that is an outlet and serves my social needs, Daddy likes to go on and ON, and I need a long-form format to air my things out.

I digress (which is kind of the point, isn't it?).

I think somewhere along the way I let the mild fear of writing something, anything, that  might be met with disappointment turned into a reflexive aversion to writing anything at all, possibly corrupting the whole creative process.

I read on and off a book called :"Art & Fear - Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking." Right up my alley, you might say. Mostly and so far, it is encouragement to brace against all the fears an artist might have, about relevance, quality, skill, all of those bugaboos. I was hoping for something a little deeper, but then again I'm not done with the book yet, am I?

Anyway, in that book they point out that after the first stroke of the paint brush or pen, the potential of a work  narrows and with each successive stroke it stops being a possibility and starts becoming whatever it's going to be. 

I thought about that during my last drawing or two, resisting as I always do the temptation to quit in the face of my real and perceived inabilities and lack of skill. I would be preparing to draw a face, an intimidating task for noobs like me.  And it reminded me of watching boxing:

I used to watch the "sweet science" on television, and occasionally I'd watch a fight where one fighter would seem to become so afraid of a counterpunch (or perhaps he was injured or exhausted, but it looked like hesitancy to me) that he  wouldn't throw a single blow for minutes on end! I would become so frustrated that I would shout at the television:"Dammit man, it's a fight! You're gonna have to hit him at some point!"

It's the same with creative works. At some point, you have to create SOMETHING, even if it sucks.  I  found that once I started in on the face I wanted to create, it worked out well enough, certainly not as bad as the fears in my head had convinced me it would be.

It is the time of year for resolutions, for reflection and the will to improve.  Some years I resolve to improve and some years I don't, but I always hold the idea firmly in mind at the dawn of a new year. The usual suspects leap to mind: weight loss, learn a new skill, etc. But I'm thinking more about the underpinnings of such urges.  If nothing else, it's a more profound form of useless navel-gazing, so that's a comfort!

But with at least as many wishes and shortcomings as ever to address, and fewer and fewer years in which to do it, the bells toll more insistently, and from a nearer distance.

Which is a damned wordy way to say that true perniciousness of my laziness is becoming more and more clear, and that I am happier when I'm creating something. I think my favorite part is the planning stage, in my head and to some degree on paper or digital form.  It has all the delicious, invigorating potential of the blank canvas, and less of the intimidation. All the ideas line up in my head magically, like pennies in your palm. And all things seem possible. That is exhilarating!

Somehow that eventually spirals into a recursive loop of anxiety, where fear and inaction feed each other, and I've convinced myself, in miserable fashion, that doing nothing is bettter than doing something. I can smell the stink of that mindset even now, and I hate it.

I hope that I can keep the bright light of this motivating notion resident in my head long enough to redevelop good habits and revivie the imp, reawaken the Muse. I miss that bitch.  I used to write and draw and say such pretty things, and gave myself such joy.  It's a very sad and fearful prospect that I might not be able to do those things again.

And I damn well reject the notion.  Let's go dirty up some canvases, and make some mistakes!