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!

Let's get the obligatory, "I haven't blogged in a while" B.S. out of the way:

Holy shit, has it been more than two weeks since I blogged? Gee.

There, that's better. For a little more thought on that:

As I've mentioned before, I have a problem with focus. When I can arrange my thoughts and efforts toward a specific goal or topic, my ability to remain creative with that goal vanishes. It is a maddening blind spot on my mind's eye. The flip side of that is that when I am forced to labor for another's ends, as most of us are for much of our adult lives, the peripheral items that catch my eye seem to stir up much more useful grist.

In other words, when I'm stuck at work mining for cubicle lint, I am much more likely to dream up and obsess about things that strike my fancy. Things about which I might blog someday. Which brings me to my point:

Whilst I do still toil under the master's yoke, I have been engaging more and more in activities and experiments that, rather than insult and spurn my creativity and such-as-it-is intellect, they yank them in, grind and twist them in their ruthless clockwork and spit them out dirty, tattered and exhausted.

I have more to do and less to bitch about, which makes for a spindly blog entry, especially when you're accustomed to belly-aching about things outside your control.

This turn of events should make for an entirely different and no less interesting blog - one that describes the acquisition of hilltops and slaying of dragons. But it involves a switching of gears that I have hardly pondered until now, much less undertaken. I'm not used to acknowledging solutions and goals attained and describing successes; I find that it puts me back a bit!

In any event, I have been doing more 'doing,' and less postulating and navel-gazing. Therefore, the skimpier blog. This is a good thing. Once I can rework the machinery of my self-expression, it's entirely possible I have much to say.

We'll see!

Tired

Yesterday was just about perfect.

I woke up early, felt pretty good, and started the day by lifting some weights. I've been making another in a string of countless attempts to exercise with regular frequency, and over the last two weeks I've made a good run at it.

After that, it was housework for several hours straight. My brother-in-law John is coming for a visit this week, and if we don't make a big push over the weekend, there's no chance the place won't look like Hell when he arrives mid-week. We should have company every week; maybe then the place won't look like we rent it out to slaughterhouses and fraternities on the weekends.

Weather was perfect, and the afternoon and evening saw me building a nice little campfire in the firepit, and farting around with it (and a few Red Tail Ales) until after the sun went down. I played with my son throughout the evening, and generally had a great time.

One drawback of note: spring is here, and on the very day we set the clocks forward, I started a familiar routine of waking up sneezing. Here we go again.

Creative myopia

I am blessed and cursed with a powerful combination of cognitive short-circuits.

I am blessed in that I find many topics wildly fascinating at the outset. This is a blessing in that I can summon great amounts of interest and energy, sufficient to support an initial onslaught of research and genuine engrossment, some of which actually survives the rigors of time and occasional intoxication.

I am cursed in that this interest and energy necessarily abate over the medium term, at best. Always! No matter what the subject - computers, guitar, comedy and others - my fascination and ability wane after the first blush, and I am frustratingly unable to generate the wondrous blossoming of creativity (that sounds admittedly flowery, but it really is wondrous to me) that originally characterized my introduction or re-introduction.

Take comedy for example: for the longest time, questions abounded. "How do you start an open mike comedy night?" "What's the best way to light a comedy show?" "How much do comedians command for a given performance?" (If you've searched your way to this blog entry for answers to these types of questions, by all means, go to my comedy-related website, www.HumorMeComedy.com, for answers to questions like these, and more!) As I've progressed, I'm proud of the fact that I've answered many of these questions to my own satisfaction, and moved on to new ones. However, the levels of wonder and fascination have waned.

It's not that I don't still love comedy (for example); I certainly do. But I am no longer on the outside looking in. I am still near the outside of course, but have passed the most daunting palace gates. The waves of lust have broken against the honeymoon period regarding a topic, and at the end of it I find the reservoir of "I must know" drawn low. I feel like a honeybee or hummingbird flitting maniacally from flower to flower, sucking up nectar but rarely finding a reserve that lasts.

Currently, I maintain the will to see through the content-building necessitated to continue an endeavor like my comedy website - it's a potentially huge draw to create content of any kind for public consumption; the only constant requirement is to produce more - only because I remember, with active (though minimal) effort how much joy it has brought to me. The camaraderie of others with a similar love of the art, the creative challenge of putting a few minutes' material together, the joy when its success brings laughter from others, and the technical challenge of coordinating a real, live, no-shit comedy show like those I've attended myself and thought "I must be involved with that, too."

Even with that happiness firmly in recent memory, I can feel the intoxicating romance of firsts dim. Although it's never quite drudgery, my legs become heavy as I trudge around in my mind, trying to arouse again the springtime of wonder I felt before. I am not discouraged, because I find that I still can rouse it readily enough, but it does cause me to wonder if it's like this for everyone. It also causes me to suspect that genius may simply the ability to maintain a grip on this mental inertia, this wonder, allowing it to ford the obstructions of weariness, ignorance and other difficulties that keep us from excellence and success.

I'm glad I don't ultimately tire of writing/blogging, though. Although I tend to repeatedly (maybe tediously) revisit and dissect topics like this over periods of time, it still feels good and useful to me.

Sometimes you eat the gator, sometimes it eats you

I went to our local meat market, minutes from closing time. As I scanned the displays, the clerk behind the counter asked if he could help me find anything. I said: "Yeah, ya got anything weird? Snake, alligator, anything unusual like that?"

And by golly, he had a deep-frozen plastic pouch packed with alligator portions. My dubious wife sauteed the meat for me and my son, using her patented, secret spice recipe. By the time she was done, well, I can say that was the best damned alligator I've ever had.

My wife thought that it (the one whole bite of "it" she had) tasted like chicken. I disagree: it tasted like alligator. I'm beginning to think that that oft-noted chicken reference is the product of a limited frame of reference, both of vocabulary and culinary comparison. I'll take my own whack at it:

It had a mild flavor, similar to pork. I didn't know that alligator meat had light and dark portions (you know, like chicken! and other meats). Although I've read it has a low fat content, the dark meat had the luxurious, gelatino-fatty texture I would compare to catfish or pork. The white meat was a leaner, stiffer version of the same, but I've always been partial to dark meat.

I guess it should be no surprise that a land-and-water creature should have comparisons to land and water creatures, but I was pleasantly surprised that the comparisons are so favorable. I look forward to having alligator again, although its expense ($20 for two, hand-sized gobs of meat) will relegate it to "special treat" status.

I knew it

No political issues stick in my craw like those associated with "The Nanny State." The government putting its nose in your business and its hand up your shirt, telling you what to drink, smoke, eat, wear, do - it drives me absolutely mad. "Sin taxes" are among the worst, with elected officials (and don't forget, they're just a bunch of clumsy dicks like you and me, only less intelligent on average) deciding it's appropriate to discourage you from doing things that it thinks are naughty (though not naughty enough to be illegal) through exorbitant taxation - and by the way, if it fills their coffers quite a bit faster, so much the better, yes?

That's why I'm glad to see this study: Cell phone bans don't reduce accidents - CNN.com. I shudder to think of the slicing and chiseling of personal freedoms in pursuit of the illusion of a little more safety, while it's been determined that another of the measures that crowd your personal rights don't have any beneficial effect (except to extract funds for government accounts, of course).

Bah!

What if...

Given the amount of unnecessary anxiety and negativity that I for some reason inject into my every waking thought (I do, and it only sounds unnatural when I say it externally like this), it occurred to me to wonder the other day: what if I were to replace all that tension with joy?

Odd, introspective and to me, bizarrely revolutionary, but a useful proposition nonetheless. What if I just unclenched my butt cheeks, trusted that the universe is one of plenty, and just let it go? What if I replaced the sniveling, risk-averse functions of my thought process with those that have a measure of hope, trust and (if I must say it) faith in them?

Other people do it; live without making every decision like there is a Murphy's-law boogeyman, gunning for them around every corner. It seems to me that it serves them really well for the most part.

With that, I also realize that choosing joy is a tricky maneuver on several levels. For one thing, I imagine that doing or not doing it is largely a matter of psychology and/or chemistry, and unless I devoted the next two lifetimes to developing the physiological control of a Tibetan monk until I can choose to sweat out of only every other pore, I'll not likely achieve such a degree of control over this flabby vessel of mine. Indeed, it would be something of a miracle if I could simply lose 30 pounds.

Back on the other hand, negativity and fear are a choice, and changing my mind to think more positively is the type of incremental, ongoing task that I think suits me.

I get these minor epiphanies, and not only do I wonder how such a departure would manifest itself, I wonder what my wife would think of me embracing such a core change, to make a true break with the reservations I've known much longer than I've known her. There are a number of weird-ass things I might have done by now, if not for her to keep me grounded. Some good, some potentially not-so-much. She said something to me recently, something she'd never said before: "I just want you to be happy." I nearly collapsed!

Now, I know she loves me and it's no surprise to hear it said out loud, but I know she feels the same worries and responsibilities as I do, at least as keenly. Maybe I'm not explaining it sufficiently, but to hear my stoic darling say such a thing out loud, it was overwhelming. Maybe it's because I've been pondering these things on the sputtering back-burner of my consciousness. Maybe it's because my woman, as my delicate, late, saintly mother used to say: "wouldn't say shit if she had a mouthful."

In any event, such a change, like all change, involves fear and uncertainty, which is the subject at hand, isn't it? Dragging others into such trepidating exploration sounds selfish to me. On the other hand (Daddy has a lot of hands), maybe it's just one more excuse not to make a hard decision, to stay on the same, dumb, apparently-safe path I'm on.

Don't be a pussy, Tom.

Plug in

There has been a thread that has run through my life, and it always will; that of turning away, flinching, retreating from things that sound difficult, tedious, un-fun. That of avoiding a person whom I have failed, ignoring an unpleasant circumstance, pretending that something bad will get better with abject, single-minded neglect.

This condition is not a thorough one. Certainly, I have embraced difficulties, met challenges and steamed through tough spots with courage, confidence and certainty. I don't run from every spooky corner, but I've tiptoed away from enough to recognize a pattern.

As with most of my areas of progress, recognizing and correcting this trend has been glacially slow, but I'm glad to say that it's persistent. I'm getting engaged in areas that were always walled off in my mind, stenciled garishly: "Not My Problem." I'm opening up to more, accepting more, embracing more readily than before. I feel like a cable box that's been upgraded to the Premium Package: "Holy shit, there's a lot going on out there."

It's not always easy, but it's always the right thing to do. I'm growing from it and I recognize the old traits in people around me who keep their narrow blinders clamped on tight. I feel better this way.

Nothing

I have nothing to say. I don't like it, but there it is.

Middle Age

I was talking to a friend last week about middle age. He is older than I am, and told me not to worry about that, because it's still a few years out yet. I looked at him quizzically (which isn't easy because I haven't perfected that expression), and it brought up the meaning of middle age. I always took it to mean the forties, or roughly half your reasonable life expectancy. At the rate I'm going, I would consider myself fortunate to be at the halfway point now, and I'd less surprised if the sun didn't come up tomorrow than if my true, chronological midway point was still ahead of me. The only useful observation I have on the subject is that I've recognized one warning sign of maturity: you become the one who sends holiday greeting cards, as much as or more than you were the one who sits around waiting for them.

In any event, it raised the question of middle age, including an ever-popular subject inside my head, the midlife crisis.

I have always been the first to admit that I am an odd duck. If I were a cow among the mooing herd, I have no doubt that I would stand around all day going: "Mehhhhh..." in an innate, irrepressible expression of individuality, and giggling when I fart, with a conspicuous distance between me and the other, rightly-nervous cows. If midlife crisis is a time in a person's life where he is hit with a jangling, unavoidable reflection of his life and its direction, then I've been in such a crisis since my preteens. I've been trapped in a pulsating, recurring loop of myopic introspection, complete with gaping blind spots, for years. I've always been had this sensation of rudderless self-doubt, and I suspect I always will. My friend Joe would likely decide that I have a lesson to learn about certainty, or confidence or some shit. It's as good an explanation as any I have thus far.

The good news is that my wife and employer can expect that I won't thrash about in a sudden, flailing attempt to right my leaky, wandering vessel and change its heading on the ocean of my life, especially by taking up abruptly with some skank or buying a Corvette (not that my credit would allow it anyway). It's just not in me.

The bad news is that I certainly will thrash about, reliably and often, with moderate, less-frightening but still-moderately-bizarre decisions like doing stand up comedy when I have the chance (and enthusiastically seeking out more of those chances), and keep a vigilant vigil for a lifetime pursuit that feels right and true and rewarding. That is most definitely within me. Lots of people can happily watch television for years on end and not feel like they're missing anything. Although I have a lot in common with those folks, I can't quite escape the nagging feeling that something truly fantastic is whistling quietly by, and that if I don't snap out of it I'll wake up at the end of a very steady, boring ride to discover that I've slept through the best parts. It's a very petulant, fearful feeling, but that's usually the only thing that will motivate me, so I guess it's as good as anything.

The above paragraph is a fair description of midlife crisis as I understand it, but it's always been there. The only difference today from when I was twelve is that I'm not getting any taller or thinner, and the bottom of my hourglass is getting noticeably fuller and it makes me sweaty thinking about it. Maybe this is just splitting hairs so that I can still feel set apart from the other cattle, but it's a distinct enough distinction that I feel it's worth noting.

Nike should strike endorsement deal with Herzog

CNN features an article about film director Werner Herzog, where he offers advice to film directors:

"Rejection is not something you should be afraid of," Herzog advises filmmakers just starting out. "It happens to all of us, in particular when you are beginning. You have to have the courage to move on anyway."

He goes on to advise, and I'm paraphrasing: "just do it," highlighting the value of experiencing things, especially in relation to learning things in academic settings. The story offers nuggets, saying: "the world reveals itself "to people who travel on foot. Period.""

For good measure, he throws in the value of the threat of bodily harm to an impossibly difficult cast member:

On the set of "Aquirre: The Wrath of God," in 1972, Herzog admitted he threatened to shoot Kinski if the actor made good on his threat to walk off the set.

"I told him it was impermissible for him to walk away," Herzog said. "I explained to him calmly that he would not survive if he tried. I had a rifle ... and I told him I would shoot him. He screamed for the police. The nearest police station was 40 kilometers away."

I think I like this guy.

Empty

Just feeling empty this week. Desolate, running on "E." I don't feel strong, and I don't like it. Maybe I need more Jesus in my life.

Hah! That felt good; I needed a laugh.

I've been lower than this, often and recently, so I know it could be worse and that gives me some strength. Still, I feel spent and I get the sense that a remarkable change is necessary to alter this course; half measures won't cut it. If I knew what to do, I'd do it. I guess that's the fun of free will and the human condition: we're all just scrambling around in the dark, hoping to stumble into something that smells like joy.

If I bump into you, try to smell like joy, will you? It's not really that much to ask. I'd do it for you.

Snow, man

Sunday morning (yesterday) woke up to an unusually snowy condition, in Valley Springs and elsewhere in the state. Newsworthy, even.

We wrapped up my boy and sent him out to frolic in the flakes, his gear including a boy-sized pair of house-slippers. Hey, we never said we were good at this.

We even managed to put together a pretty fair snowman. One departure from the norm: we didn't have any carrots, so the part of his nose was played by a dill pickle. I had to discourage a boy who'd skipped breakfast for flurrying fun not to eat the snowman's proboscis.

Overdose

My wife made a stop on the way back from an out-of-town trip this weekend, and picked up a treat for the two of us: sushi! As requested, she also picked up extra Wasabi, which is a spicy spice that I prefer over those found in Mexican cuisine, because it typically only burns once.

Skilled sushi-snarfers will attest that mixing soy sauce and Wasabi (is "Wasabi" capitalized?) make for a most excellent paste that tastes fantastic and is easier to apply to your food. Therefore, I mixed up a lean batch of Wasoybi (trademark, Liberated Pachyderm Productions) and enjoyed it.

The trouble came when I, rather than dipping a fat morsel into my soylent green concoction, I lost control of it and splopped the entire gob into a small, homemade vat of Japan's revenge for Nagasaki. Dumb as I am, I thought: "No matter - if I enjoy a dollop of this culinary battery acid, think how much I'll enjoy an entire fistful of octopus and rice that's been dumped, turned over and fished out of such a potent potash!" Into my stupid maw it went.

At first, I tried to tough it out. "No need to panic; we've been here before... I've taken borderline-regrettable hits of Wasabi before, and survived; I'll be fine." It only took a moment to realize that I was in over my head. First, the pain. The great thing about the Wasabi experience is its purity on multiple levels. If used correctly, you don't just taste the sting; it wafts through your sinuses and slaps your stupid brain for allowing the body to consume such a wonderful abomination, and then continues to scald its way out your nose. In small doses, a pleasurable extreme. In larger doses...?

In the blink of a watery eye, I couldn't breathe, couldn't chew, and was concerned that swallowing would lead to hideous some combination of barfing, snorting and shitting my pants, none of which had any future (although there are those upon whom I could call, had I needed the voice of experience).

As I wondered idly about the number for the Poison Control Center, I made the decision to cut bait (unfortunate fish reference noted). Eyes watering freely now and with my wife by my side (surely feigning concern while she stifle inward torrents of laughter), I nodded at her questions about whether I was about to die and leave her with two mortgages and a five year-old psychopath who's just learning to spell, and I expelled the entire unholy mess back into the styrofoam tray where the painful nightmare had begun.

Having rejected the malignant mass, I coughed and choked entirely without dignity until my eyes pointed in the same direction again, at which point I assumed the stance of a cat who'd just clambered drunkenly off a bookshelf and careened into an aquarium, strutting away as if to say: "Yes I meant to do that, and what's more, I stuck the landing. I can teach you that, you know."

Can't wait to see what's for dinner.

Stunted, convoluted

I am chagrined at my lack of blog postings. I lean on the fact that the busier I am, the less time I have to ponder and pontificate on the subject of my own life. Sometimes I'm just jerking around, but lately, I've been making changes, learning, growing. These events will make worthwhile blog posts, but they'll have to wait for retrospect. I'm a little caught up in the moment lately.

In other news, the November 21st Comedy Night at La Contenta in Valley Springs is selling tickets hand-over-fist; if you haven't scored your ticket yet, it's getting late. They're over 85% sold.

In related news, this show keeps asking more and more of me, beyond the initial arrangement. I am bending, reaching and growing to fit the shape that is required of me.

Onward!

Happy Anniversary

My wife and I took yesterday to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. We spent it in true middle class fashion, driving into a real town with movie theaters, shopping centers and other civilized services, and spending money.

We held hands the whole drive.

We spent money in amounts that would embarrass the poor by their extravagance, and the rich by their paltriness. For us though: just right.

I shopped for books, she shopped for candy, and we were both happy. We talked about tattoos, music and how silly conditions at work are. We ate like denim royalty and at the end, we were full.

My brother's the shit

My brother is the only guy I know who can choke on a taco and turn it into a regional event. Way to go, Bickle.

After a brief but harrowing incident that led him to the brink of death, he is rebounding nicely under a physician's care. He's been brave and relatively good natured (depending on whom you ask) through most of his troubles over the last few years, and I'm proud of the gutsy little troll. I say that with the utmost of familial warmth and respect.

I have not lied a bit in this brief and cryptic account, but I admit that I have wantonly misrepresented a few details in the hopes that my bro will hurry home and counter-blog to defend his good name. I'm not good at manipulation, but I'm learning, and that's what counts.

Passion II

Following some good advice, I took another look at what I love to do, rather than the things I must do. I departed from the comfortable norm, and drove two and a half hours to downtown Manteca last night, performing a four-minute set at a two-hour comedy show for a good crowd.

The upside: I got a respectable amount of laughs. I stolidly acknowledge that I didn't bring down the house and that there were many funnier, more experienced comics in attendance. No posing here.

That said, I must also say that it was thoroughly exhilarating to have done some time and not only not embarrassed myself, but to have acquitted myself reasonably among local peers. As wordy and mild as that last sentence is, the buzz of the experience carried me home and kept me awake for hours last night. Opiates have nothing on the joy I felt last night.

Passion, and lack thereof

While I had a few days off, I never really got much done, other than housework and minor fiddling around. I can't seem to muster enough passion about any one subject or endeavor to really dig into it. This must be what ADHD feels like: a broad-but-not-deep fascination pool, and the inability to focus on anything for long.

When I do try to burrow into something that attracts my interest, I find the interest flagging after not too long. The only good news is that it always comes around again, like some great merry-go-round. Trouble is, progress is disjointed, scattered, and many things must be re-learned, sometimes several times.

This is no way to run a psyche...

Know what I mean? Or are you just saying that?

You ever get the feeling that there's almost no one you can relate to? And even fewer that you can trust? I've got that feeling right now. Cold. Alone. Not lonely, just... isolated. Hell, maybe it is loneliness, by another name. I dunno. I've got that right now.

...

I waited a while to post the above, and it's a good thing. It gave me time to reflect, and realize that there a few - a precious few - that have got my back, and wouldn't hurt me for anything. That is a comfort, and I'll lean on it.

Still, it's discouraging what people do to each other, and unnecessarily. Out of fear. Out of greed. Out of malice. With a few notable exceptions, people really just bum me out.