Narcissus in print

I have a weakness.

Okay, I have many, but the one I'm addressing today is my love of the sound of my own voice, in print. When I write something and it goes well, I can't help but read it over and over. It's proofreading made mental masturbation.

Greek mythology includes a character called Narcissus, who was so vain that he was cursed by the love of his own reflection so abject that he starved at the edge of a pool, so reluctant was he to leave his own image.

I have my vanities, but I don't think this is one of them. The ability to shit out a thought (granted, this phrase is not among the prettier ones I have wrought) and turn around and look at it scratches a very basic itch. I can feel it dance along the tiny nerves and neurons that conspired to give it life, little cerebral high-fives as it retraces the steps it took on the way out of my brain.

Then again, it may be the nature of vanity, that one doesn't realize or want to realize that it is vanity. That just adds to my assertion that it's a weakness. An indulgence, certainly!

I bore myself, sometimes

Ach. I'm sick of my own navel-gazing. Looking back over my blog, it's not (quite) as full of self-interested, how-do-I-feel-about-me narcissism as I recalled, but it's still too much. Even this post is all about it, even as I reject it.

I've tried to let it flow, write it out of my system and look towards the day when I have something external and interesting to blog about. You've got to give yourself creative space to deal with the things that bother you, and work it out.

I suspect part of it is that I've increased the "action" side of the ledger, which has always been disproportionately small compared to the "ruminate" column. I've spent most of my life up in my frontal lobe, gnashing my teeth about all the things I could do. Now that I'm doing a little more about all these Big Ideas, I think there is less friction, less heat and less light generated there. Less goes in the blog, but more is going into real life, and that's not a bad thing. Unless you're a blog reader. Sorry about that!

But, enough is enough. One reason I haven't blogged more lately is that I can't think of anything to write that I or others would want to read. I've reached the end of the creative cycle, the well is dry and I've got nothing new to rant or lament. Until I kick start that process, I'm just gonna be quiet.

Something will come around. If it doesn't, I know how to prime the pump. Failing that, I'll just wait some more.

Talk soon!

Don't interrupt me

Just shut up.

Not forever. Not as a rule. Just as an occasional courtesy. Consider it a conversational exercise. Take those flapping, meaty lips of yours, those clicking teeth and your grunting throat, and make them still, just for a three-count.

Take a breath. Consider your next blurt, before you blurt it. Hey, while you're at it, take a real chance and listen to what I have to say for a change, you monopolizing boor.

By now it goes without saying that I don't like being interrupted. To tell the truth, I actually enjoy a conversation so energized that one conversant will excitedly interject something before the brainwaves lap against his mind's shore and obliterate the elusive thought written in mental sand. I dig that.

What I don't like is when I can't get an entire sentence out of my mouth before I am cut off, time after time, until I find myself at the end of a "conversation" without having completed a thought. It assumes I have nothing useful to contribute. It assumes your thoughts are the only ones that matter. It assumes I won't flick out my knuckles and rap you one in your relentlessly-vibrating throat, just to listen to the comparative silence between your ragged wheezing.

So, take a quiet breath. Smile and nod, even if I go on a bit. It's the polite thing to do. I'll shut up eventually, and it'll be your turn.

Hard to reach

For anyone out there who's been trying to get a hold of me, I apologize. My job keeps me away from home a lot (just about 12 hours from the time I walk out the door, to the time I walk back in it), and in the meantime, cell phone coverage is spotty at best, and usually non-existent.

But, it keeps me busy, my mood is up, my interview for a more ideal gig went well enough on Tuesday, and I've got today off to catch up with some stuff around the homestead.

Life is good.

Septic Stress

We went to sleep last night listening to an odd warbling sound outside our window. It was like frogs, which are common here, but constant, a frog that never takes a breath. Not common.

With my ability to talk myself into anything, I assured myself that it was a chorus of frogs, and lulled myself to sleep. Waking to the same chirping song, I realized it was our septic alarm. Now, I'm concerned. We just had the septic guy out for a look, and it cost $125. I don't even know what to check, and you can't just let shit like this go. I don't know whom to consult. I went to check the cap on the sand filter (whose alarm was going off), and I can't even open the thing to begin to contemplate its mysteries, because some sadistic bastard has skulked away with the allen wrench set that usually sits in my toolbox.

So, you add up:

• broken technology I can't fathom
• unknown but certain costs on a budget that surpassed the red zone long ago
• lost items that shouldn't oughtta be lost

... and you have ample ingredients for a rage-tinged panic attack on Tommy's part.

Antidote? Talk about it, and quickly, before it takes root and floods the rest of the morning with unreasonable desperation and fear of the unknown. Luckily, my wife caught me kicking my way through the house, and I was able to unload on her in the space of forty seconds and two sentences all of the above concerns, and I immediately felt better.

The septic tank is still fucked to whatever degree it's fucked, but I am scheduled to spend the next 6 hours attached at the hip with my wife and daughter, and this narrowly-averted shitty mood is just what we don't need.