Windows 7 and Thoughts on Brand Affinity

Friday night and here I am in front of the computer screen yet again, in an attempt to get back on track with my blogging schedule. Unfortunately, I think that my brain recognizes that this is not a usual time that I depend on it for productivity and creativity, as my thoughts are constantly wandering away from anything that might resemble an interesting topic.

But! I shall endeavor to press on without the use of my brain. We'll see how this goes.

I decided to make the jump to Windows 7 today. I actually qualified for a free upgrade when I bought the new computer a month or so ago, but I was hesitant to actually make the decision to commit. I know, I know, Vista is a dark and wicked taskmaster, I agree completely, but I think in the back of my mind, there was this subconscious fear that, just as the transition from XP to Vista was a sharp downgrade, I worried that Windows 7 would somehow be even worse.

Which reminds me, I really still do need to get my laptop fixed. I miss having it.

But so far, the word on Windows 7 seems to be that it's good, although admittedly, anything would be better than Vista at this point. I kept telling myself that I'd grow to tolerate it, it being Vista, I mean, and even now, after a month, I find that it grates my nerves and just refuses to do things the way I would like.

It always bothers me that it's impossible for me to complain about something like this without somebody mentioning that "well, you could get a Mac and then you wouldn't have to deal with it." And it's like, you know... I understand that people like Macs and that they're good computers. And I'm sure they're useful when it comes to art design or video editing or something. But to be perfectly honest, I hate being told to get a Mac, because I don't like them. I don't get them, I don't get the feeling, I don't sync with the aesthetic. I used a Mac when I was in journalism, I've used them several times since then, and every single time, I just feel off. Out of place. Disconnected.

It's like looking at a painting that's in a style you don't care for by an artist you don't like. Yeah, it's still art, but there's no connection for me, no affinity.

So I stick with the PC, because that's what I know, that's what I like, it's what's comfortable for me. And I bristle every time I'm told to get a Mac. Because to me, people like Apple for the brand, which is fine, because there's a certain satisfaction in feeling affinity for a particular brand. But I don't know whether it's because I just being an outsider in the tech world (I have a Zune, after all) or what, but I just don't feel the allure of that brand name.

And speaking of the Zune, that's one product that I'm actually very happy with and I'm proud to say that I'm a fan of, not because I feel loyalty to the brand, but because I think it's a great device that's severely under-appreciated.

Topic for another day, perhaps.

Death, Graduation, and Lyrics

It is always extremely difficult to think of something to write about when all you have in your head is song lyrics.

It's registration week for me. I say for me because I have no idea anymore how registration is supposed to go, or who goes when, or in what order. I mention to a friend that I'm having trouble getting a class I want and find out his registration was two weeks ago, or it's next month, or something. So who knows.

It's really hard to believe that I'm finally coming down to the end of my University career. I mean, I've known for a while that at some point, I would have more semesters behind me than ahead of me, but I was never really cognizant of the fact until I was looking at my SAPR and realized that "some day" has become "a year from now." Maybe even sooner, if I decided to do something crazily motivated like take a winter session.

I can't help but think about what life is going to be like when class is over. I have to admit, I'm pretty intimidated by the fact; it's like all the waiting I've done, all the preparation, all the build-up has reached its crescendo, and now it's like "Go! Get out into the world! Find your destiny!"

Of course, I realize that it's not exactly the way my thoughts imagine life after college to be. There won't be a referee firing off a shot or an announcer shouting "and they're off!" Maybe that would be the case if I had a different major, instead of Humanities. But it still feels like the time is coming to a close, that I'm going to need to soon start thinking, seriously, about what I want for life. Where I want to be, what I want to do. Which is not to say that I've never thought of those things in the past few years, but rather that I always thought of them only in the abstract, things that were hazy and obscured by the fog of "some day."

Maybe I'll travel first. That's something I really want to do.

Because I'm thinking about life and goals and time, I find myself drawn back to a comment my philosophy instructor made in class on Tuesday. I made a point about how the fact that the Earth is fated to die (which it is) seems like a great evil from which no good could possibly justify it, and he responded: "Is death so horrible that life is not worth living?"

It's stuck with me. Mortality is something that we, especially at this age, have a hard time really grasping. There is a difference between knowing something, after all, and knowing, in your heart and mind and believing it. We know we're going to all die, that every single person will die, and yet, I don't think we really know that about ourselves.

And it seems horribly wrong to think that life will end, which is why we cling to the hope of an afterlife, that somehow, our existence will continue on after our bodies have succumbed to the frailty of mortality. Is it greedy, to want more? To feel that no matter how much life is allotted to us, that it isn't enough? If you were given the choice of what age to live to, what would you pick? How many years would it be before you decide "that is enough. I have had enough of life now."

It's a strange paradox for me, given that I consider immortality to be the worst possible fate imaginable, the ultimate prison, to have one's soul or consciousness or whatever bound forever to flesh. And yet, I don't know at what point I can see myself saying "I'm ready. I've had enough."

And I know that there are people who do reach that stage, especially if death is a relief from suffering. Or at least, they think they reach that stage, a point where the quality of life is less than what good may come of a peaceful death.

I don't know what any of this means, but it's what's on my mind at the moment. Well, that and the lyrics to a Johnathan Coulton song. So there you go.

Devoid of Focus or Reason

You'll have to forgive me if I sound a trifle... angry, this evening. Take a glance over at the twitter feed on the right side of the screen if you're curious to know why. In the meantime (while I'm waiting for the site I need to load!) I decided it was a good time to update the ol' blog.

I mean, Jesus, really? The site's been loading for 23 minutes? This isn't 1996! I'm not trying to access somebody's personal home page with a million pictures on a 56k dial-up. Technology has moved on.

For some reason, I'm thinking about my desk. It's really messy at the moment, although it's usually always messy. Currently, though, there are no less than 15 assorted bottles, all empty, one wallet (it's mine), four different documents for a class, an old electric bill, my Nintendo DS, a remote control, a USB headset, a plate, a book about climbing Mount Everest, a digital camera, and I think that's a Comcast bill. I'm not sure. It's under a stack of bottles.

It's always been interesting to me how creative people relate to their workspace. Some of us treat our desks as sacred temples and take great care to keep them pristine, organized, clean and efficient; the idea of working in a cluttered, chaotic environment is anathema. Unthinkable! I'm not one of those people (obviously), so I'm not really certain what makes a person feel that way. I'd imagine an OCD thing?

For the rest of us, though, we don't care about the fact that the desk is messy. If anything, the messy desk is the mark of a well-used desk. It's the kind of statement that says "I don't have time to worry about this mundane shit, I'm working!" That's a bold statement, friends! People should be impressed by our dedication to our craft, not repulsed!

It's probably wishful thinking, at best; I very much doubt that anybody would look at a desk like mine and be impressed. Disgusted, certainly, indifferent, most likely, but impressed?

Since tonight seems to be rambling, unfocused blog night, I'll just move on to the next thought in my head. Do you ever get nostalgic for the "old Internet?" I remember what it was like when I first started logging on, back in, oh, 1998 or so. Now, I'm sure there are nerds out there who would scoff at the idea of 98 being the "good old days of the Internet." They might mention things like Usenet or a BBS. Well, screw those people. 98 was the old days for me, it was my first experience with cyberspace.

I'm not saying it was better. It wasn't. MySpace didn't exist, true, but you had instead a thousand different Geocities, Angelfire and Fortune City websites that were even worse, if you can imagine such a thing. Broken HTML tags, scrolling text, animated GIFs: such things make today's abominable teenage MySpace page, with its irritating music and tiled background that obscures the text look almost palatable!

It was weird before things like Wikipedia, though. Everything felt different, and I'm sure a lot of that was an internal reaction, because I was the newbie, coming into this new realm for the first time. I can still remember the very first time I ever posted on a message board. Which, of course, means I can also remember the first time I was flamed, which would be my first introduction to the fact that the anonymity and audience inherent to the Internet means that most people will be dicks.

Ah well.

Oh, look, the website finished loading while I was typing. How quaint.

This May Hurt Your Brain

Back once again into the breach. The, um, blog breach, I guess? I have no idea. What shall we talk about tonight, my dear readers? I know that there are a few out there, given that comments have shown up here and there (!) along with profile views, so clearly somebody is out there listening to me ramble. At the very least, there's a crawler robot that comb the nascent Interwebs for search engine, or something.

I think that tonight, we're going to return to some philosophy for a moment, because a question was posed to me today that really froze my thoughts for a while as I pondered it out.

Let me outline a scenario for you: Things exist. I'm a thing. I exist. I was caused by my parents; the "reason" I exist is because they created me (I'm not going to think about that too closely, though.) But do all things have to have a reason for existing? Could something exist for no reason at all?

If you give this question some thought, you'll find that it's both simple and also absolutely devilish in how tricky it is.

On the surface, it seems that the answer is yes, absolutely, things that exist have a reason for existing, even if we don't know what that reason is. And logically, it seems like an existing thing needs a reason for existing, because if it didn't have a reason to exist, why would it? We can imagine non-existence; it's not hard to imagine a reality in which nothing exists, because there was never a reason for existence to occur. That's just an inherent truth in the definition of non-existence, which you'll either accept or deny based on whether you think that "nothing" can occur in reality. Some people don't buy that, or so I've heard.

So, let's try to imagine a world in which things exist for no reason. What does that mean? A guy named Richard Taylor has a scenario in which you imagine finding, in a perfectly normal forest, a large sphere that's as tall as you, translucent; clearly not something that would occur naturally. Your immediate reaction is to ask yourself how such a ball could come to be here. Perhaps it was man-made? Space aliens, perhaps? Some new kind of crystalline formation, previously unknown to science?

You most likely wouldn't automatically assume that the ball has no reason for being there. Surely someone or something caused it to be there; to say that the ball has no reason for being in that forest causes one to ask why there would be such a ball at all? Why wouldn't there just be a normal forest instead? That just doesn't seem logical, and yet, it's very tough to explain exactly why that is the case.

What's become particularly troublesome for me is when I've tried to wrap my mind around the idea of something coming into existence for no reason. Let's say, for instance, that the singularity that existed prior to the Big Bang, since the Big Bang defined all the known laws of the Universe (so far as we can tell) just popped into reality for no reason. Although would there even be a reality at that point, since there was no time or space? Okay, bad example. Let's go back to the ball in the forest.

Let's say the ball just popped into existence one day. Immediately, I have to ask myself: how would that have occurred? The matter that composes it would have had to come from something; it's one of the laws of thermodynamics that matter cannot be created or destroyed (at least in a closed system, as far as I can tell.) Even if the ball spontaneously appeared, something would have had to cause that spontaneously event. The really crazy thing is that shit like this actually does happen all the way down at the quantum level.

The quantum level, if you're not a huge nerd like me who spends his time thinking about this stuff, is basically the closest science has ever come to proven that magic exists. Things at the quantum level do weird things like appear for what's apparently no reason at all, or else exist in two places at once, or become altered by the very fact that they're being observed (Schrodinger's Cat.) Can you imagine that? Imagine changing something not because you poked it, or pushed it, or even spoke to it, or interacted with it in any way other than by merely looking at it. Doesn't make sense.

Back to my point.

So, we've got the quantum level, where things seem to happen for what is (apparently) no reason, or at least, no reason that we can figure out yet. It's entirely possible that people do have theories for the behavior for quantum particles, but those theories probably involve a lot of math, and well, there's a reason I'm a goddamn Creative Writing major even though I think this science stuff is cool: I just do not freaking understand how any of it is calculated.

Maybe quantum existence proves that things can happen for no reason! But then why do they only happen at the quantum level? Why don't people just spontaneously pop into existence? Or it is possible that there is an explanation for the quantum state, we just haven't figured it out yet. And even without that being the case, how exactly does something start existing without having a reason to do so?

If you're still reading along at home at this point, you're either extremely interested in this type of philosophical pondering, or you skimmed all the way to the end. Either way, thank you, although I don't have any answers to offer. Only more questions.

But that's part of the fun, I think. Asking questions, wondering why things are. It's why this philosophy stuff fascinates me so much, especially since it fascinates me in a way that probably won't affect the outcome of my life. It's not wondering for the sake of a better job, or to make life better; it's wondering for its own sake. To me, that's awesome.

Anticipation

I like how the weekend always completely kills my blog writing schedule. All during the week, I'm making sure that I'm posting every day, being on top of things, and then all of a sudden, Thursday rolls around and I'm like "sweet, tomorrow's Friday," and for some reason, that sends a signal to my brain that it's okay to turn off, even though it's really not, since I still should be doing work on Thursday and Friday. And inevitably, the "brain shutdown state" persists until Sunday night rolls around and I realize that I'm going to fall behind if I don't write something, so I make sure to get back on task and keep up with my consistency, while telling myself not to let it happen in the future, even though it's happened almost every week for the past month.

What can I say, it's a vicious cycle.

At the moment, I'm thinking about the fact that this is the last week in October, which means that it's very nearly November, which means that it's time, once again, for NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. Basically, the goal is to write an entire novel, 60,000 words (or so, I can't quite remember what the exact number is) in 30 days. It sounds totally crazy, but the idea is that by having such a crazy pace, you can't stop to think about whether or not what you're writing is any good, you just have to keep writing, writing, writing! And at the end of it, you'll have learned a lot about making a good writing schedule and overcoming hangups and other cool things. And you'll have a manuscript completed, albeit of dubious quality.

I think that the entire concept is a really cool idea, but I guess the problem I've had in the past is that November really is a bad month for this kind of project, in my opinion. It's a really busy time for students, who are feeling the crunch as the semester draws ever closer to its conclusion. If you work retail, you're feeling the oncoming burn of holiday hours, as we begin the long crawl into the frenzy that is the holiday shopping season. No matter who you are, November is a busy month.

I really do think that something early or mid-summer would be better for this kind of endeavor, because really, who has things going on in June, unless you're taking a vacation?

Regardless, I'll give it a shot this year; as I said, I think it's a cool idea and I had a really good time with it last year. I actually got pretty far in the story, had something like two solid weeks of working on my project until, rather ironically, I went to a convention to receive an award for a short story I'd written, and spending the whole weekend at the con totally killed my writing schedule, so that by the time I thought about the work again, I was hopelessly behind.

I've got a few ideas kicking around in my head about what I want to write about, although nothing too solid. I found that if I tried to prepare some notes or outlines before I began, I ended up straying too far away from the goal about quantity over quality which slowed me down. So this time around, I'm going to think about what I went to do, ferment some ideas, and hopefully hit the ground running on November 1st. I don't quite know how this'll go since I still have my commitment to this blog; my hope is that by working on a novel again, I'll have more thoughts and insight about writing to reflect on in this space. But no matter how you look at it, this is going to be an ambitious undertaking.

I'm excited, though, if only that it's been a while since I worked on my fiction and I'm very interested to get back to that, given that it's what I'm particularly passionate about.

Why He Rhymes Remains Unclear

One of the questions you'll sometimes ask yourself, as a writing prompt, is "where are you at?" It's sort of like Twitter, except that twitter is always "what are you doing" which somehow has morphed into "what are you thinking/feeling/eating/repeating?" Which is not to say that I don't like Twitter, just that I am aware that it is not technically be employed in the manner suggested by its prompt. Or something.

So, the question of "Where are you at?" And it's a question that, if you consider it with just the right amount of obfuscation in your mind (I'm pretty sure that's a word) can be strangely compelling for all its various possible answers.

I could go with the obvious (and sarcastic!) answer: "In a chair in front of a computer. Duh. You idiot."

But what if we consider the question from a metaphysical perspective? Do I even know where I am, really? I could describe all the things that I'm on, and in, but that won't tell me, really, where I am at, which is to imply that there exists an actual place in time and space and not an endless series of contingencies that merely create the illusion of being in in a single place.

Or I could describe where I'm at, except mentally, emotionally, etc. That could be interesting; at the moment, I'm fairly happy, although my skull still feels like it's being pounded on, but they make little orange pills for that! Mentally, on the other hand, I'm probably somewhere between hilariously unstable and depressingly average.

And, that's really everything I can think to squeeze out of that particular prompt. It's just like, boom, hit a wall, ramble over, river dammed up. Nothing more to see here. We should just move on to another topic and forget about the fact that I was supposed to be building towards a larger point, but didn't.

Moving on.

Haven't talked about writing in a few days (to the best of my recollection, anyway.) One of the things that I've been thinking about lately is how my attitudes towards fiction writing have been shaped so much by what I've read and what I like to read. I understand and agree with the idea that a writer should read, should read a lot and that anybody who says that they don't have the time or interest to be a reader probably doesn't have the time or interest to be a writer.

I guess the thing that's been on my mind lately is how there seems to be, in all of the published fiction that I read, this sort of general "style" that most novels share. Sure, you have your own characters, your storytelling techniques, your own sense of cadence and pace and all of the other elements that go into writing a fiction piece. But what if I tried to break that?

What if I wrote a story from the same perspective that I'm doing this reflection? What if I stopped trying to worry about sounding like a professional writer and just tried to see if I could tell a story while sounding like me, nonsensical ramblings and odd observations intact? I've always differentiated between this voice, the "blog voice," which is very much meant to give the illusion of off-the-cuff, a little bit random, somewhat unfocused, but hopefully amusing, and my actual "writing voice" which is meant to be serious, meant to convey the story.

I'm not saying that I want to write a story where I'm the main character, but what I wonder is, does it always have to be that serious voice? What if I had a character who had thought processes like these? Would it be interesting?

More importantly, would it even be readable?

On Heads and the Aches Therein

What to talk about this fine evening? You'll have to forgive me if I'm not my usual chipper and witty self, although, admittedly, I don't think anybody would ever describe me in those terms ever, unless witty was being used as a euphemism for sarcastic. I happen to have the most terrific headache at the moment and I feel the need to share this fact with you all even though blogging about physical discomfort ranks only slightly more boring than blogging about food on the "stuff nobody cares about" scale.

Seriously, this headache is wicked bad. It was so bad, in fact, that I actually felt it before I even woke up this morning, which led to the curious experience of dreaming about being in pain and having this vague sense that, as bad as I felt in my dream, it was going to suck when I realized it wasn't actually a dream, after all.

The worst thing (for everybody who knows me, anyway) is that when I start to feel this way, I never know quite how to act. Do I recognize that I may, in fact, be getting sick and spend a few days holed up in my dwelling to prevent the outbreak of communicable diseases? That would certainly be the courteous thing to do.

On the other hand, that also feels a little bit wimpy. I'm tough, I tell myself, I can just deal with this with a grunt and a good old-fashioned elixir of whiskey and thumbtacks, and maybe a few reps of one of those hilariously large triangle weights. And then I'll go find the nearest bear and eat it, because that's how much of a man's man I am, even though I'm a vegetarian, and also afraid of bears. Anyway, my point is that surely no mere headache could slow me down.

Hilariously, though, my agony has only intensified as I write, as if in response to the ridiculous hyperbole of my sarcastic claim.

In non-cranial news, I was going to complain about the fact that my cat ran away this morning, but then she came back, which makes me very happy but now means I have nothing else to write about, which is why I'm whining about headaches.

Jesus Christ, this really puts that piece we read about the migraines into perspective. I mean, this doesn't even feel half as bad as what that author described; I was able to drive home without incident (I think) but man... if I had to deal with this chronically, I can't even imagine. It's one of those things, you know? I would never think to be grateful for being the kind of person who (usually) only gets headaches when I've had too much to drink the night before.

I think that will about wrap it up for tonight, although I feel bad about having nothing of substance to ramble on about. But the reality is that some days, you have something worth saying, some days you have something that's not worth saying but can be said in a humorous manner that will make a person laugh, and some days, you just want to turn off the lights, shut off the painfully bright computer monitor and wonder if maybe it's possible to think so many thoughts that your skull explodes like a pinata.

Beyond Being

I really like to sleep, but I hate waking up.

That's not meant to be some metaphor about life and death, even though that's exactly the sort of overwrought self-analyzing that I've been doing lately. No, the problem I have is that lately, especially in the past few months, I've been going through this weird cycle of waking up two hours before I'm supposed to be. Usually, that's a good thing, right? Score an extra two hours of sleep! Sweet.

The problem is that in this period, my dreams always become unusually intense and extremely fragmented. And when I wake up again, I feel exhausted and extremely disoriented. I wake up not sure of where or who I am, or when, and it takes several minutes of lying awake in bed for my mind to pull itself back together before I'm able to exist as a functional entity once again.

I think you can imagine why this would be especially problematic when I manage to oversleep and end up waking up from some disorienting dreamscape, dazed and confused, when the immediate need to get the fuck up and get out the door, because I'm late, I'm late, I'm late. One of the reason's that I changed the blog's sub-title or tagline or whatever the hell it is to "What did I do yesterday?" is because that very much captures how I feel most mornings.

Makes me glad I'm not addicted to anything. I don't know how I'd manage to function if I had to deal with more than just the seeming instability of my own thoughts.

I should be going to my philosophy class right now, but I'm not. I really don't have a good reason for this, just... couldn't find the energy to get moving this morning. Not quite sure why, it's not like I had a particularly intense weekend. I even went to sleep early(ish) for me. Ah well.

So, we're past the halfway point through October, aren't we? It's insane to think about, how fast this month is moving, and it really does feel like the fastest month yet. I know the reason for that, for my perception of its haste, and it's because I don't have anything to look forward to anymore. All summer long, every moment of every day since June, I was looking forward towards the autumn, when some one special was supposed to come back into my life.

And then she did, and then she went away again, and now I'm just here, you know? Done with the waiting, unhappy with the conclusion and it's like, where do I go from here? What do I do now?

Times like this that I really miss the changing seasons and the possibility of a day other than "bright and clear and hot." Because sometimes it really fucks with my perceptions when I feel like time is skipping along, the days are flying by, and yet, everywhere around me, things seem static, frozen, unchanging. Today looks exactly like yesterday did, and precisely as tomorrow will. I wonder if I would feel such disorientation, such disconnection, if time seemed an actual, tangible thing, a physical thing reflected in the world around me.

We were brought out here into the desert to enjoy an eternal summer, more or less, and I guess it's poetic that I'm more afraid of an unchanging eternity than I am anything else.

They Say the Most Horrible Things, But I Hear Violins

Interesting aside: I find that I usually have to wait until I'm done writing a post to give it a title, because if I try to slap a title on there first, it almost inevitably will have nothing to do with the content of the post. Yesterday's post is a good example of that; the title's just some song lyric that I was listening to when I started.

Although that's not to say that song lyrics don't make awesome titles, especially out of context. I'll probably include a song lyric today, now that I've said that.

I haven't touched my fiction in a while.

I'm not quite sure why that is, but it bothers me, because writing fiction is what I'm supposed to do or it least, that's what it feels like I'm supposed to be doing. But I haven't written any short stories in a few months and only made a few half-hearted attempts at anything new. In fact, it just occurred to me that I haven't written any stories since I got the new computer. Although I have written quite a nice collection of blog posts, which is something of an achievement, I suppose. Unless the fact that these posts usually consist of me talking to myself indicates that this isn't "real writing." Or something.

I guess I'm always torn about that, because on the one hand, I read a lot of blogs these days, and whether or not I consider them to be "real media" is irrelevant, because I'm reading them, aren't I? People are creating words which I am consuming, and that's the whole fucking point of this craft. It's not about having something made out of dead trees that you can stick on your shelf (although, admittedly, that's something I very, very much want some day.)

But then whenever I think about feeling good about the fact that I've been writing so faithfully on my blog, I'm reminded of the fact that George R. R. Martin, one of my favorite writers ever, was supposed to release the next book in his excellent "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, what, three years ago at this point? And when I look at his blog, it's like, wow, man sure has a lot of time to talk about sports, but where's my goddamn sequel? I don't feel like I'm being unreasonable, because, here's the thing. If he'd written one or two books so far, I'd be willing to cut him some slack. After all, he doesn't owe me anything. He writes the books, I buy them.

The problem is that we're four books into the series now. These characters have become a pretty serious investment of my time and brain energy (I get concerned about the characters in a story, just one more way I'm a nerd, and I'm fine with that) so I feel like I deserve a little more than endless posts about the Giants and football, or whatever. I feel like maybe I deserve to know what happens, given how long I've stuck it out thus far as fan.

Maybe I feel that way because my own sequel has been languishing in an incomplete state for a few years now, and it'd be nice if I had a rabid fan who was eager for me to finish it.

Hah! See? We're at the end of this post and I'm going to title it after a line in the song I'm listening to, even though nothing in this entire entry even mentions violins.

This may indicate that I'm crazy. If so, I'm okay with that.

That Strange and Almost Endless Dream

It's been a few days. I'm not quite sure why.

It's like the fire just went out, you know? It's like a switch flipped, a gear slipped its track and the whole enterprise just fell out of synchronization with the rest of my life. Suddenly, it became hard to know what to say, even to myself, hell, it's still is hard, I'm only talking right now for the sake of talking without really knowing what I'm saying, or to who.

It feels like I don't really have control of the situation.

Which is weird, because this really isn't a feeling that's based in reality. I'm a little bit of a control freak, which I think that I've admitted to before, or if I haven't admitted it, it's probably obvious to everybody except for me. I've had the sense of being out of control, having so much entropy in my life, so much disorder that it was sickening, like being caught on a elevator in free fall.

So much melodrama in that analogy. You can almost taste it, can't you?

I can.

It's weird, you know? I like to think that I'm this chaotic individual, this free-form creative spirit that bends not to rules but to the whims of my imagination. I do what I want, when I want. As close to freedom as I'll ever come in my lifetime, here, now, in this balanced moment in time between having the resources to do what I wish and no real responsibility to hold me back.

You know what this creative, independent, free form chaotic mind does? The same thing. Every day. Go to class. Go to work. Go home. Eat at the same places. I'm not particularly punctual and I frequently go to bed too late, and I do it with clockwork regularity. Every day. My life is played by my rules, but they're still rules, you know? I wouldn't jump in my car tonight and drive to California, just because I technically could.

I tell myself that it's because I choose not to, that I choose not to upset the life I've constructed, that, hell, I could be chaotic any time I wanted to be. Just like addicts tell themselves they can quit any fucking time, that they're not addicted. Addiction is something that happens to other people. Not us. Not me.

So I tell myself that I'm this creative, chaotic thing, this artistic soul. The whirlwind of inspiration is my playground, brilliance and madness only a coin flip away. The absolutely glorious, beautiful cliche of the creative mind. I am the page and the page is me, and all of that shit. That's what I tell myself.

And then I have moments like these, where I allow myself just a little bit of honesty, where I take a good, long look in an actual mirror. Mirrors aren't kind; that's why I chose that title, because mirrors are honest, and they're honest in a way that we mortals, we humans cannot begin to manage. Because even honest men (and women, let's be fair here) do a wonderful job of deceiving ourselves, and even if we never lie outright, we lie to ourselves, somewhere, somehow.

So I'm taking a good, long look at myself, and you know what I see? I see somebody who likes the idea of a chaotic environment, who likes to pretend that the unpredictable is good, welcome even. I see somebody who tells himself he likes the disorder and the entropy of life, just as long as it's disorder that he can control. As long as it stays on the leash, does what it's told, it's a welcome thing, especially if you want to consider a real dark and manipulative mind that might even relish the fact that disorder is good when it happens to everybody except you, because then you feel like you're even more in control of the situation.

And that's the truth, the reality I see looking back at me in the mirror. The truth is that it's an order I crave, but it's what I define as order, it's a life governed by the rules that I choose. Because if I played by somebody else's definition of what an orderly life should be, I'd just be ceding my control, wouldn't I?

On and on it goes, layer by layer, mental strands woven more intricately than the most elegant spider's web. I can't imagine every untangling it all, sorting it all out and determining what's really me, and what's just what I want to be me.

Honestly, I'm not sure that I'd want to know, even if I could.

Clockwork Symphony

I can't quite shake the feelings that led to last night's post.

When did it get to this point? When did routine become so comfortable, so preferable, that its absence becomes a distraction, an irritating disturbance. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I'm the goddamn rebel. I'm the filthy iconoclast (well, not really filthy, the morning shower is very important to me). I'd use the word maverick, if not for the fact that John McCain took that word and killed it during his presidential bid. Bit of a shame, really... I always liked that word.

It's a bad joke that I think that I was supposed to be different. Everybody thinks that. It was my choice, it is my choice and I make it every day, every time I turn left at the underpass (towards Tucson) instead of right (towards Phoenix, and perhaps adventure?!)

And every day, I wake up and wonder what changed, at what point did this become the preferable choice? When did bills start to matter? Didn't used to, you know. Used to be this thing, where it was like, "oh, shit, need power to run the Xbox, man." Now I have a ledger. Well, it's really just a piece of graph paper, but it's next to my desk in an accordion folder with files for all the different expenses.

What weirds me the fuck out is that I don't even mind that this is who I am now. And I feel like it should, I feel like it can't be that I'm done already with having long hair and that peachfuzz stubble too unkempt to be called a beard... unless, of course, the homeless look is what's in these days. Is that over already? And then I realize that those days are years in the past, at a point in my life where I was living on my own for the first time and my idea of being responsible then was showing up at my job as a counter jockey at a video game store.

This might be growing up, not in the "fuck yeah, I can buy my own booze now" sense, but in the actual perceptible sense that I'm not the same person that I was a year ago. I feel different, as I'm sure I have every time a new personal milestone was reached, except that now, for once, I don't have quite so much trivial bullshit occupying my thoughts that I didn't notice.

Well, that's a dubious claim, at best. There's still plenty of trivial bullshit and immaturity in here. Probably as much as there always was, except maybe now I don't let it have quite so complete a hold over my life. The idea of going to bed before 3 AM because I have class the next doesn't quite seem so much an anathema as it used to.

The weird thing about this sort of reflection, which has become a recurring thought as I do this, is that there exists a profound discrepancy in what I write about each time I sit down to do this thing. Because the reality is that we're all fluid, chaotic beings, despite our routines, despite our schedules, and our sense of self is forever colored by the mood, the moment, the manipulation that is the present reality. Today, I'm feeling mature, strangely lucid, caught up in the marvel of the recognition that I'm not a kid any more. Tomorrow, it will be entropy incarnate, a sense of despair that thoughts and actions are lost in the empty noise that is the void of a meaningless reality. Or whatever. The point is that I'm a little bit different each time I write something here, and I think you can see that, if you go back and look from post to post.

I don't pretend to assume that this makes me different in any way; we all change according to the day and I think the only difference is that in my case, you have these little shards of each of those realities spread out in one neat little place and while for me, twelve hours have passed between what I'm writing now and what I wrote last night, for you, there's only a difference of a few sentences and, at most, mere minutes. Depends on how fast of a reader you are.

I should go write some philosophy. Got a paper due.

Children Waiting for the Day They Feel Good

I'm waiting for something.

This isn't a comment about humanity, the human condition, my peers, or any other such thing. No. This is just me now, just me talking about me, slicing off a little piece to see what interesting things ooze out of my psyche. Bleed a little bit of honest truth onto some white paper. Digital paper. Whatever.

I'm waiting for something and I don't know what it is.

The days move more quickly now; they run together, each one bleeding into the next. It seems like I've barely had time to hit the pillow before I'm waking up again, shuffling into the shower, kicking on my shoes, driving. And all the while, I'm looking at the clock, at the calendar of my phone, as if it's still the same clock as it it was when we were kids.

Back then, we knew that clock well, didn't we? We watched it tick by, minute by minute, until it was 2 PM and class was done, and we were free for the day. It was a curious relationship, wasn't it? So eager for the day to tick by right up to that magical 2:00 PM, after which the whole fucking thing turned on its head, and suddenly, we're hoping to make each minute last, hoping to slow the crawl from afternoon to evening to night.

And now it just floods past me in a blur, too quick for me to even notice. I don't even know what week it is, not really, didn't even realize October is almost half gone until I wrote down the date. October? What the hell happened to September? I can't imagine what a drug addict goes through; I mean, this is me stone cold sober, more or less and I'm having a hard enough time staying synchronized with the world.

So, what am I waiting for? I don't look at the clock now, except in the "oh, shit, it's almost 2 AM, I should hit the sack" sense. The "goddamn, overslept again" sense. The clock isn't the frenemy that it once was, when I was a kid. But I'm still waiting, still feeling like this is a holding pattern, not the way my life is supposed to be. It still feels like I'm just ticking off the days, and that there's a date somewhere on the horizon where it'll all just be better, which doesn't make any goddamn sense, because it's not bad now. Hell, it's really fucking good right now. I don't have any illusions of that.

I mean, what am I anticipating? I've got virtual freedom right now, a complete lack of responsibility to anybody but myself. Sure, there's classes, there's work, but those things I do because they benefit me, because they're the things that I want for my life (or I want what they'll give me). It's not the same as if I was a father, if I was responsible for a human life. That's reality. That's a responsibility a man doesn't abdicate. But a job? A class? They come and go, good and bad, experiences all.

Do I feel like I'm wasting my time? I don't know. I don't think so, because there's a very real sense in the back of my mind that I know this can't last forever. Sooner or later, it has to end, and all the little bits of my life's detritus have to be addresses. Sooner or later, I'll have to stock a fridge that's more than just last night's Chinese, a carton of milk and a bottle of water. Sooner or later, it won't just be my cat and my snake that depend on me.

Am I waiting for the next phase of life to begin? At twenty-two? Christ, I hope not. I have a hard enough time remembering to feed the cat. Or myself, most days.

What I Learned About Ethos Today (and by Extension, Myself)

So, today I learned a little more about writing an ethical appeal. I also happened to learn something about myself, and it's the sort of keen insight that I feel deserves to be recorded here on the Intertron so that it might persist forever in digital immortality.

I was given (along with my writing group, can't forget them) the task in today's class to write about why the class was the worst one I've ever had. I was supposed to do so in a way that made me seem trustworthy and reliable. I'll note that this was rather difficult to do since I actually like the class, and I've always found it difficult to talk about things that I like; certainly, it's more difficult than talking about things I genuinely dislike, and trying to pretend to dislike something that I actually like is even more difficult by several degrees of magnitude.

At the time, I decided that in order to appeal via the ethos, I should use high language, the sort of "institutional vocabulary" that gets undergrads like me all fired up and ready for a revolution, or something. You know the type, real grandiose speech, lots of polysyllabic words (I absolutely love the word "polysyllabic, by the way, definitely adding it to the list) and high diction to make me sound, you know, really authoritative.

The problem was that I didn't really know what to say and I felt this sense of pressure given that I had only a few minutes to write. To compound my unease, it was meant to be a group writing activity, and while I'm normally a fan of group things, when it comes to actually writing something, I'm not much of a team player. My little "writing thing," the part of my brain that does its thing whenever I say "hey, brain, get to work," well, that part of my brain doesn't play nicely with others. I try not to be selfish about it, but the brain, you know, it's going to do what it's going to do, totally a "Be quiet now, Daddy's talking" kind of thing.

So all of these things lead up to a bit of anxiety about what I should be doing, how I should be helping. And what I realized today was that my sarcastic side comes out entirely as a reflex in these situations, and that even though my intention was, legitimately, to write a serious thing, I fell back into sarcasm and the sort of acidic wit that I know, I know will get a laugh. It's a defense against an insecurity.

I'm not always sarcastic; right now, for example, I believe that I sound entirely collected and honest in my observations. But I'm also sitting at home, in my sanctuary, at my desk in front of my computer with my beer, so there's no danger. There's only me and the page, and I can take as long as I want to say whatever I want. No need to be sarcastic unless I want to be.

But man, you get into a social situation, add a little bit of pressure, and it's like a goddamn cobra or something. I get the fangs out, dripping venom, and even if... hell, especially if, I don't have a target, I let the bitterness flow. In fact, I probably do it more often when I don't have anybody in particular, when it's just the situation that's making me feel uneasy, because I don't really want people to think that I'm a jerk. I'm not trying to hurt anybody's feelings.

I found myself afterward thinking why it was so hard for me to write an honest (well, trustworthy) ethical appeal to meet the requirements of the piece. Surely it can't be that hard to imagine it; I'm a fiction writer by nature, a storyteller! Yet in the heat of the moment, at the actual time and place, all I could think about was using the most ridiculous language possible, the most absurd and grandiose claims that I knew would garner a laugh, even though it was contrary to my intention.

It's like, damn, realizing that facet of my personality really calls into question a lot of other conceptions I have about myself. How much of me is really me, and how much of who I am, both in the perception of others and the reality of my actions, is just one anxiety or some neuroses governing all that I think and feel?

It's Been a Few Days

Spent the weekend at a convention, geeking out. I won't go into the details, because they're both shamelessly nerdy and also obscure enough that nobody would really understand. I like to think that this is one of my saving graces, this ability to (hopefully) recognize that not everybody is necessarily interested in the same things as I am. Which is why you likely won't see me expound endlessly on our criminal under-appreciation of the humble d12 or whatever.

Jesus Christ, what did I do today?

It's a day off, you know? One of the lovely benefits of working for the government (well, the county) is that we get to take all kinds of holidays that nobody else even remembers or cares about. I mean, today's Columbus Day, which I'm pretty sure nobody cares about these days unless you're in a school district that gets Columbus Day off (we did back in New York, I think) or you work for any level of government. It's just one of those cultural artifacts that's hung on long after the fact; after all, I think it's been determined that the Norse (vikings, if you prefer) actually beat Columbus to the New World by a few hundred years, and that whole "the world is round thing" was already established by the time Alexander the Great was conquering the known world. Why don't we celebrate Amerigo Vespucci Day? I mean, half the world is named after him! Interesting side note; has anybody ever wondered why he named those continents after his first name and not his last? Who does that?

Now, I'm not saying that I think days that celebrate people are wrong. I just think that it's time to own up to the fact that we're not really celebrating or saying a whole lot by picking Columbus Day as the day to acknowledge the deeds of the past. While I can certainly appreciate the epic voyage of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria (I can't believe I still remember that, and to our Spanish speaking readers, I'd have included the little ~ above the n if I'd known how), I think that it sticks out as somewhat shortsighted and lazy to celebrate Columbus and not ol' Amerigo, or Leif Erickson, or whoever.

Maybe I'm just prejudiced, or it could be that, out of all of the people in history that I regard highly, the explorers aren't the ones I'm eager to give days of remembrance, because the virtue of the achievement to an explorer is that they happened to be the first person who made it there and back to tell the story. If it hadn't been Columbus (and as we've learned, it really wasn't) somebody else would have made the voyage. Compare that to the likes of Socrates or Newton, whose thinking marked them as true visionaries and whose contributes changed our world. Or compare it to Martin Luther King Jr. or Mahatma Ghandi and the social progress their actions wrought. Granted, MLK does have his own day and I'm grateful that he does, because he deserves it.

It just feels a little strange, and somehow devalues the prestige of having your own Day, if we allow artifacts like Columbus Day to persist simply because that's what we've always done.

However, I am still grateful that I didn't have to go to work today. So, that's something.

Outer Space is Really Scary

So, I'm reading this book Death from the Skies by Philip Plait, of the famous Bad Astronomy blog that you may be familiar with if you're a huge nerd like me.

Anyway, the book is all about the various cosmic disasters that could befall our planet in the future. Some of them are familiar to you; we've all seen Armageddon and thought about how much it would totally suck if we get hit by an asteroid. What's different about this book, however, is that the author goes into some of the deep science surrounding these various apocalyptic events and also doesn't hesitate to describe in detail about some of the really, truly terrifying fates lurking out among the stars.

Initially, my reading started to bother me considering the fact that there is no "possibility" of death raining down on our planet from the skies. No, it's quite the certainty, with the only questions up in the air being the particular "how" and "when." Our planet's been hit by asteroids before, and it's entirely possible our beloved blue marble was once virtually sterilized by the gamma rays of a hypernova, and even if none of those events happen again, the sun itself has a finite lifespan and will someday die.

I'm not sure why it stopped bothering me, though, to consider the fact that some of the events are particularly brutal (albeit unlikely)... we could, for instance, have our entire solar system be devoured by a black hole. I just have to wonder, if we did find ourselves in the path of something truly unstoppable, say... a burst of gamm rays that was billions of miles across, something we couldn't escape or defeat, what would I do?

What kind of person would I be in my final days, as we all came to terms with the fact that our entire solar system was doomed? Part of me can imagine the panic, certainly, the sense of terrible anxiety knowing that the clock was ticking down and that every moment was now rare, and valuable. And part of me can imagine the sense of serenity, the ability to let go and accept the whims of fate. That's something that's difficult for me to grasp, given that I am something of a control freak in my personal life.

One thing that's different between the apocalypse event and something like a terminal illness is that, in the later case, I'm pretty much alone with my countdown. My time is running out, but the world will go on without me. I think I'd worry a lot about what my legacy was going to be, how people would remember me, and so on. I think I'd try to finish my book and pass that on, just so that it could be completed.

But if we were all going to die, together? Legacies wouldn't matter, right? There wouldn't be anybody around to appreciate it, after all. And yet, despite that, I think that I'd still want to do the same thing. I'd still try to finish my story, so that I could know how the story ended. So that I could know it was finished, though it will not survive the coming fire.

I'm not feeling particularly fatalistic or depressed or anything. Honestly, all of this has come from the fact that I'm reading about all the ways the Universe could destroy us. It's a great book, by the way, unless you're prone to worrying about things that you have absolutely no ability to control. If that's the case, you probably shouldn't read it.

I Work in a Library

Sometimes, you need to have something to write about. And sometimes there's just nothing in particular that you feel like saying, so you start looking around your room or your coffee shop for a bit of inspiration. At the moment, I happen to be sitting on one of the computers in the back room in the Valencia Branch Library, where I work. I just finished my shift and I need to write a post before I scurry off to class.

I really can't think of anything else to write about, so I'm going to talk about my library.

Well, not that it's my library, I mean, not really. That's one of the things that's always amused me, the fact that our slogan is "Pima County Public Library: It's your library." Which is true, because after all, the public pays for us to exist.

Even before I started working at this job, I've always enjoyed libraries, although it was once a more abstract appreciation than it would be now that it's a library that allows me to pay for my rent, and my food, and so on. The library is my favorite government institution and one of the things that will forever insure that I believe that government should exist, because it's an institution founded on the principle that all citizens have a right to information. That's not something that's spelled out in our Constitution, at least, not to my knowledge, and yet it's something that we all take for granted now that we live in an age where information is a click and a search engine away.

But that wasn't always the case and the truth is, not everybody has that luxury. Also, I really like to read books, although I don't enjoy paying for books as much as I used to. Which is pretty weird to think about, since if I hope to make my living as a writer, you think I'd want people to pay for books. I don't pretend to be internally consistent with my logic.

Information is a great thing; very possibly, it's my favorite thing to exist. You've already read my rambling enthusiasm for philosophy, which is currently my favorite thing to be informed about. But philosophy aside, the truth is that I just really enjoy books and I'm happy to be doing a job in which my entire purpose is not to maximize profit margins but to get people to read books and learn things and realize how much information is available in the world if only they know how to search for it.

If you're still reading me at this point and haven't wandered off to go look at the more dark and interesting (in my opinion) Monday post, take a moment to consider how good we have it, that we live in an age of information. We are situated at a unique time between having a wealth of knowledge at our fingertips, but there is still so much more to know. I do fear the day in which there are no more great mysteries, if, indeed, such a day is possible. I certainly hope that it isn't, because there should always be an unanswered question that drives us.

Otherwise, what would be the point?

And We're Back

We now return to your regularly scheduled navel-gazing and random pontification.

When I started out, I never really gave much thought to what my "voice" would be when I write in this space. We talk about voice quite a bit in writing, don't we, and you'll hear it said that one should "write the way that they speak." And that's good advice, assuming that when you open your mouth, you are witty and clever and interesting. Most of us aren't, though. We lose our train of thought. We make random references to pop culture that's entirely inappropriate outside of its context. The simple truth is that, yes, while you need to have a voice when you write, it needs to be a different voice. A "writing voice."

I was accused by somebody recently that I don't write the way that I speak. I think it was because I used the word "thus" while making a point about something. First of all, I happen to think that I do use "thus" and "therefore" and other such fancy language in my daily lexicon, for the simple fact that I'm the kind of pretentious nerd that would employ the word "lexicon."

Secondly, I don't care if my writing voice is the same as my speaking voice, because these are two entirely different means of communication. Anybody that thinks otherwise, quite simply, is wrong, and that's just facts. Because the truth is that if I was telling you this verbally, you would be seeing my hands move. You could see my face and my body language, hear the inflection in my voice and all of this would contribute to your understanding and interpretation of what it is that I am saying.

Writing, on the other hand, is much more of a magician's game. We're illusionists, we're shysters, we're the man behind the curtain with our levers and our smoke tricks and our microphone. Everything that we do is an attempt to recreate the same emotional response in text that you would acquire through the contextual clues of the verbal communication. And that's why we do things the way we do; that's why we use words and punctuation in specific ways, use run-on sentences and fragments and all sorts of other little games so that you get the feeling of communication even though I'm miles away, hours gone, not really here except for the shadow of my self left behind in these words.

This is better, isn't it? I'm referring to the above little rant, in a jarring and unfocused transition. I like this better than what I wrote on Monday, even though I feel strangely proud of Monday's post. I actually went back and reread it a few times. But is that me in those words? I was writing from a place of emotion, writing out feelings that I had in those moments. There is a clarity to that writing, a raw honesty that lacks the tricks and construction of what I'm doing now. It's harder to write that way, that grimly honest way, harder for me, anyway. Surely this is better, isn't it?

I think we both know that the answer is no, it's not better. Because on Monday, I had something to say. I had something real to put out there, and you can always tell, you can feel when it's real. This, here, right now, this is something that I'm doing, but it's not quite the same. The prose might be all in a row, the voice (ha ha!) might be dry and witty and whatever else, but it's Monday that'll stick out. If you went and read all the posts I wrote, the ones you'll remember are the ones that made you feel something. You'll remember Monday because it made you feel bad. You'll remember something from a few weeks ago that might have been particularly funny.

It's a sobering moment, to imagine that to be the kind of writer that I want to be, to be the storyteller that I hope I'll become, that I might have to become that person I was on Monday, that I might have to tear into myself to pull out the reality necessary to make it all worthwhile.

They say you have to bleed for your art. I guess I never really thought about what that meant before today.

Disconnected

Some people can write through their pain. I'm not one of them.

You always hear it said that the greatest art, the finest writing, the most profound music... these things are created out of an attempt to deal with the suffering and the sorrow that is inherent to the human condition. You hear it said that it's a good thing we're not perfect, that we're not in Paradise yet, because nobody paints or writes or composes in Paradise.

Because to create art by ink or paint or voice is the attempt to capture a little piece of perfection for one's life. And that's something you can't do if perfection is what you already have.

We need the hunger. We need the inequity, the imbalance, so that we might long to fill the hole inside.

But I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to take those feelings and make them into art, make them into a composition that will create some tiny piece of good out of how this feels. I'm not saying that it's impossible. Not saying that others can't or shouldn't do it. I'm just saying that I don't know how.

I know it's wrong, but to me, I always think of art as something that's beautiful. Majestic. Pretty. I know that there is art that is disturbing, art that's raw and visceral and twisted, because that's the human condition in its most primal state, and art is a reflection of that condition. It's okay to paint with your own blood.

But I don't know how. I wish that I did, I wish I knew how to take these parts that are twisted and broken and base, and make them into something meaningful. I wish, I wish I could make it into something, anything. But I guess the truth is that I'm afraid to try, I'm afraid to create something ugly. I'm selfish enough, I'm arrogant enough, that I only want to create pretty things. Only the best!

I'm proud enough to think that I can do a better job than God did.

Pride and insecurity are strange bedfellows.

I think, if I allow myself to be so brutally introspective, and hey, if I'm not going to be brutal about it, I really should just take my ball and go home, you know? If I allow myself the cold comfort of brutality for a moment, I can get a glimpse of the reason why I only want to write from a comfortable place, from an easy and happy place. It's because I do want people to think that I'm like my creations. I don't want to expose all the wrong, I want to be special and different, the most unique little snowflake ever.

There's no phrase as ridiculous to me as "most unique."

So I only write when I'm good, when it is good. And it's like editing parts of my life away, you know? Because if people only see what I tell them, only glimpse the pieces of me that I want them to glimpse, well, how's that for a perfect mask? How's that for the ultimate recreation of yourself in the eyes of the world? I can be anybody I want to be. So, yeah, I grab that mask and I wear it, and nobody gets to see the broken parts that we're all too scared to admit to ourselves and to each other.

Better to hide those shards deep inside. Put a mask on that shit.

I'm not even saying that it's wrong. I'm just saying that it was easy.

Time is a Strange and Slippery Thing

My thoughts, for today, are on the nuances of time.

It's really a strange thing, when you think about it in the right perspective. And often times, it's a depressing perspective, a realization that begins to happen as childhood and the teenage years start falling further and further behind, and suddenly, you're no longer faced with all the potential of what you could be, but the reality of what you are, or will very soon become.

We have a finite number of breaths to take. It may be a variable number, certainly, longer for some than for others and a number that we ourselves can change (you could burn through a few extra breaths by hyperventilating right now, if that's your fancy) but no matter how much variation we have over the number of breaths we will take during our lifetime, it's still a finite number. There's no way to make it into that little sideways 8 symbol that represents the infinite.

We spend a lot of our time worrying or doing things that are largely trivial, and yet, there's nothing wrong with that, because for most people, myself included, a well lived life is just as good, or maybe even better, than an important life. Because important people might be remembered, might have their names recorded for all time, but they're not really people at that stage, are they? George Washington, Julius Caesar, Michelangelo... they're concepts to us, ideas conveyed by the legacies that they left in their place, but the whole of their humanity is lost to the grave, their very essences distilled down to the facts about what they did in life. Is that a form of immortality worth pursuing?

At least with a well-lived life, even if you spend it doing things that matter to no one but yourself, you can have the satisfaction of the experience, of knowing that you may die unknown, but that you had a good run in the process. You had some good times, and that's something. It might not be much, but it could be enough.

I don't know the names of all of my great-grandparents. And you know something weird? My grandmother (who is still alive!) is actually a great-great-grandmother (not to me, it's my brother's daughter's child). I don't know the names of -any- of my great-great-grandparents. And it's weird to think about the fact that, unless my lifespan is such that I'll be around to see the great-grandkids and the great-greats and so on, they won't know my name.

Human life is immersed in the immediacy of the moment. It's what we are and we lose ourselves when we go outside of that fact.

Better Than I Expected

I'm blogging about an exam score tonight.

There's something dark and mundane about this task, a feeling that I would associate with a certain sense of misplaced importance. Me? Write about a mere exam? Bah! There are worlds to contemplate!

But this is a reflection and that's the thing about an honest mirror; you don't get to choose the image that looks back at you.

So, exam scores. Interestingly (or not), I actually did pretty well. I should mention that my particular expectations for the test were low, since I haven't been the most attentive or dedicated student thus far. I'm not even sure if I own the textbook, to be honest, and I will admit, there's something particularly odd about admitting all of my flaws as a student to a public space that's dedicated entirely towards a student pursuit. It's like telling your priest why you can't be bothered to go to church, or something.

The problem with doing well on a test that I didn't study for is that now I have validation that I didn't have to work particularly hard to do decently. And I hate it when that happens, because then it makes me wonder. Did I get lucky? Is my ability to muddle through essay questions a result of me actually having some idea about what's going on, or just a product of being able to write well?

It's not something that I can feel proud of, you know? But it's not something that I can complain about, either, because certainly, I don't want to fail. So, I got what I wanted, but at the same time, I don't really feel like I got what I deserved, and it all devolves into this twisted circle of what I want versus what I know I should have.

That's one of the things that I've always enjoyed about my major and English classes in general, and no, that's not something I'm saying for the sake of saying it on my English blog. I like this discipline for many different reasons, but one thing in particular is that I've always felt more... honest about my work. That is not to say that I cheat in other respects! No, no! But you can't fake your writing. You can try, certainly, and you can lie to yourself in all manner of ways, but unless you make the decision to try to steal every single word that you ever create (which actually sounds harder, in my opinion) you have to put your actual work out there. And when you do that, you don't have to wonder if you managed to sneak your way through, whether or not you just "got lucky." You either did it, or you didn't, and either way, there's none of this bleak introspection.

I like that.

Seriously, though, could you imagine how hard it would be to try to fake your way through your entire career as a writer? I mean, to try to steal every single thing you've ever said? You'd spend so much more time being a thief just to find the right thing!

It keeps us honest, although I don't presume to speak for the journalism majors, but for the rest of us, the temptation to steal just... doesn't work. Or at least, it doesn't work for me. Because you can tell, you know? You can see the bits that weren't woven into the rest of the work, the lines that sound just a little bit off, the tiniest bit of disharmony in your music.

Rarely in life do we get such refreshing honesty, and more and more, I find myself taking time, like right now, to remind myself to savor it.

The Nirvana Fallacy

No, not the band.

Maybe you have one of those friends. You know the one I'm talking about, right? The one who says, typically after you mention that you're a writer yourself, says something to the extent to "oh, I've got this idea for a book, or a story, or whatever, but there's just not enough time to write it. Maybe someday."

And maybe you've told yourself something similar, at one point or another. I know that I have. Because there are days when I don't feel like it, days where nothing sounds good and the idea of being artistic is about as appealing as pulling my teeth out with my fingers. But that's the thing about making your passion your job, you know? You don't get to quit. You show up, even on the days when you're hungover. Because that's what it means, to do this thing, to do it for real.

I titled this post the Nirvana Fallacy, and there's a reason for that. It's a term that refers to one of the particular mental deceptions we subject ourselves to, just one of the ways our brains mess with us. When we experience this thing, we tell ourselves that the reason we're not doing what we feel that we should be doing is because the situation just isn't conducive to the action. We tell ourselves that if things were just this certain way, then then we would knuckle down and get it done. But, you know, the rent is due, and it might rain today, and my toe kinda hurts, so maybe I'll write tomorrow instead.

Tomorrow is never good enough. And so we never get started. We never move past that phase where we want to write, to actually writing. And really, that's the only step, the one, single barrier between being a writer and just "wanting to write." Because anybody can write. We can all string sentences together. But it's overcoming that recalcitrance, that belief that I'm going to write "someday" instead of "today."

Writing is work. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it is to be done because you really do feel inspired, but that's the thing; anybody can write when they're inspired. Just like anybody can cheer for the Cardinals when they win. It's fun. It's easy. Try doing it when you don't feel like it, trying slogging through a draft when you'd rather be doing anything else in the world, even the teeth pulling. It's like cheering for the home team even though they're down by four touchdowns and the quarterback just got sacked in his own end zone. Overused sports metaphors aside, that's what separates us from those who aspire to do something, and those who actually do it.

You know, it's somewhat ironic that I'm using football to make my point, since I don't really like football all that much. Maybe that's not irony at all. I always get confused about what's ironic and what's just coincidence.