Fog That Surrounds Us

Days like today make me feel like I'm home. Kodiak was always grey and rainy, and while a lot of people might find that oppressive or bleak, I always found it kind of hopeful. It's true that you can't go home again, but home can sometimes come to you. That is comforting, in its way.

Going out to work--at least on my own projects--feels alien. I work on a bunch of shit for other people so when it comes to doing what I want to do, I'm sort of at a loss. Compound that with the fact that I only yesterday hit rock bottom and decided to start living my life instead of being a passive observer in it and I'm feeling a little underwater. But I have to start somewhere, I suppose.

It was good that I reached the realizations that I did yesterday. Yesterday seemed right. It was an emotional blow to the gut, but I'm glad everything happened the way it did. Sometimes, these elaborate fantasies will leap into my mind. Everything is so vivid and real, and when things don't work out the right way for me, I alter the story a bit. "Wait and see what happens." Yesterday I learned that it doesn't work that way, and it's not a sustainable way to approach things. Control what I can control, forget about the rest.

In my personal stuff, I wrote about how I'm feeling scared for the first time in a long while. Things used to exist in a comfortable sort of stagnation; an unending slight-downward curve. Thank Christ my personal math has a zero in it. I'm not sure how much lower I could have felt, or what I would have done when I got there.

And today is the day. Cool, wet, oddly inviting. I've made a plan: flesh out my outline a bit more, firm up the drafts from last night, write some jokes. Write. Staying up to write until 4:00 am, trying to fight off the spectre of past regrets... Weird that I woke up at 7:00 this morning burning to do more. I feel purposeful again, in a vitally tangible way. Today is hopeful in a way days haven't been for a long time.

I generally try to avoid getting overly personal here. My experiences are refracted and stylized and used to draw reference to some great theme in a cosmic master plan, and that's all bullshit. Self-indulgent, self-important, self-destructive bullshit. One of the first things I did when I got home late last night, after lying on the floor and thinking of ways that I had hurt myself and others and trying and failing to find escape routes was sit down and be real with myself. Page after page of peeling away my veneered armor I had constructed to keep myself cool, aloof, distant. Apart. When did I stop being genuine? It's terrifying to look back and see that I haven't been myself in much, much too long.

This has been bouncing around my skull for so long it actually made me sick a few days ago. I'm unhappy because I was viewing myself through the lens of other people. How did they see me? How was I impacting them? At one point, I characterized it as being the main character in their lives. As if those around me go home and shut down for the night, waiting for me to buzz into their surroundings and save them from mundanity. Seriously! That is what a crazy person thinks. For too long, I have been a crazy son-of-a-bitch, and not the fun kind.

And today is the day. Cold, wet, real. Lucid. The first thing I'm going to do is stop lying--to myself, to my friends, to my potential. I'm shelving this version of myself that is comfortable with being tertiary. And yeah, that thing about being scared? It's true. Shields are at zero; I'm vulnerable in ways I didn't know I could be. The fact that this post is real, that people can read it, is horrifying. But this fear is a good kind of fear. Motivation by mortification.

And... Yeah. I guess that's what is going on with me. As soon as this posted, my outline and the drafts I wrote from last night--all for a deeply personal book about deeply personal shit, so let's just keep the painful revelations going I guess what the fuck am I doing--are going to spring up, and I'm going to feel overwhelmed in other, smaller ways. But for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever, I feel like I can face it. In fact, I know I can.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

Things I Will Keep

Getting older. The older I get, the further away I get from the person I think I am. What Happened To All The Time? There is a Christmas tree; a small one, and fake. It whirls in a quiet little circle. My cat loves it. Blank whiteboards, with reminders of impending bills. B.I.L.L.S. Hard-earned money for intangible, untouchable services. Lasers and waves beaming through space, a million miles an hour, screaming "lol" and "no, not tonight." Deflections, rejections. A rotary telephone sits atop a dusty speaker. The bass makes crumpled receipts dance and seem lifelike, the way they were when they were young. Pieces of art of loved ones, hidden behind empty ceramics. Awards for "a job well done." It's crystal, and clear, and hollow, and that says everything. Closet doors ajar just so, begging to be closed. The memories inside peek out, and reveal truths. Little tchotchkes I got to commemorate favorite pass-times. They are dull; they've been neglected. Why don't I like these things anymore? How can pieces of plastic and pewter and paper hurt like this?

A listless plant. Each third leaf is brown and cracked, thirsty. It's a beautiful, powerful pattern. Seeing patterns more these days. One lace crossed over another, the way a cigarette butt rolls to a gutter, the tree turning and turning and turning. Walking outside at night, with a breeze so cold the coat wraps tighter without a pull. It's all around us! And then, the street lamp goes dark. Stars burst into view and endless possibility is laid out before me, and I'm paralyzed. Breathes come soft but deep, and the vast potential of me and you and everyone else is so real I can taste it--metallic, delicate, electric. Alive alive alive. Reaching out to experience.

There is a meaning, a point to everything.

The bigness is gone now. Paths narrow and the movingbreathingthinkingbeing is easier; less fog. A grand-scale adventure. A world of untold, unimaginable things.

I hit shuffle, and pointedly wrap the coat around my body. Have to find a new way back home.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

The Bounds of Reason

A compendium.

Tumblr never made sense to me; I'm connected to enough social media aggregate sites that another seems extraneous. Managing Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, G+ and other feeds is exhausting enough. How much more snark can I take? One Tumblr rises above, however. And that is YUP. A buddy of mine came up with idea and executed it. It's flawless. Useful and entertaining. Much like most toilets, I'd imagine. Give it a peek on Sundays.

Catching up on movies has been painful. The summer movie season has a lot of releases I'm jazzed about in theory, but I can't bring myself to drive to a theater. The downward spiral begins with Prometheus, which I want to like and constantly try to force myself to like, but the more time I spend thinking on it the less it resonates. It was made, it is sleek, it is hollow. Calling it dumb seems cruel, but you have to pick on the weak to survive, I suppose. Why does Prometheus exist? Obviously, it's meant to be a long-form, multipicture story arc, so why not make a serialized television show? Those work. They give characters time to breath and evolve, and let the story organically grow. Prometheus is two hours of exposition with a few hints of allegory. Over thirteen episodes, though... Maybe there would be more meat on the bone. I'm digressing: movies are losing value proposition for me. When the option is movie or sitting on the couch being disgusting, the decision is alarmingly clear. That probably says more about me than film, though. Fuck it, I can have opinions.

When I look around at my best friends, almost all are married, in committed relationships, or have kids. Or worse yet, some unholy combination of all three. Upon realizing this initially, it's like a car crash and I fly through the windshield. It's brief, shocking, probably a little uncomfortable, but yes: brief. Things return to normal and it's great. The second part of the realization is "the rub," as it were: I've flown through the windshield, but now the world moves in slow motion as I wait to hit the ground. Everyone around me continues to grow up, but I'm stuck in perpetual motion. This metaphor is flawed, because the idea of getting married/getting into a relationship/having a kid don't necessarily equate to the painful death involved with smacking into a tree at 60 miles an hour, but they're close. People get on with their lives! It's not like I'm being left behind; I'm refusing to move forward. I spent most of the last few entries talking about change ad nauseam, and I won't go into depth here, but I gotta get kickin'.

Anyway, most things are good. I'm ready to hurt myself doing needless entertaining shit in softball. I'm ready to rage at fantasy football and these... interlopers. I'm continually offerring advice on shit which my knowledge would be considered "erroneous" at best. But it works, and I trudge on. Things are just right sometimes. So off I go now, to make more bad decisions and prolong necessary actions and enjoying the chaos it entails.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

Take to the Oars

While talking about heat waves and flop sweats and mustaches and tear-based cocktails and all of those things as the basis for a porno with Visser, he said something that I thought was hilarious:

We're getting a little older, man. Anything and everything does it for me anymore.

It's funny, but I didn't realize how subtly my expectations have lowered over the years. I'm not even talking about the weird shit I'll look at on the internet in order to promote... "sensory activities." That shit gets dark. Generally, my tolerance for bullshit has increased exponentially in recent years, which at first glance seems counterintuitive. Like, don't people get crotchety? Having to wait in line at the bank is supposed to fill me with a righteous fury that is passive-aggressively taken out on the teller and, later, my wife/children. The American Dream isn't what it used to be.

Frankly, I can roll with this. A friend of mine always preached a philosophy of "baby in the backseat": in her mind, if someone is actin' the fool, it's probably because of something serious like a baby choking in the backseat or something. What a hilarious mental picture! Every day, a million imaginary babies are born and painfully choke to death, I meet so many idiots. There's got to be a logical extension of this that applies to murders, rapists, etc. If you're involved in a hockey riot or something, you should be allowed to stab someone. Society has mores for a reason.

For each shitty thing that happens, something good balances it out. It's moral sphereism. Intent is irrelevant, action is significant. Making yourself happy--if you're not hurting others--isn't a bad thing. Karma doesn't apply, though. Go out and make something happen. And other times, don't. Staying in for Law and Order is okay, too.

Just not Criminal Intent.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

The Five-Year Plan

Throughout the month of May, I spent every entry focusing on the theme of "Change." Specifically, I looked inwardly and tried to find areas in which I saw weakness; by identifying them, maybe I'd be proactive in combating them. I don't know if this was a success or not--I'm certainly more aware of the areas of my life I consider weaknesses, but who knows if I'll ever address them. Who knows? Do I care enough about this shit?

It's a little awkward to look back on everything I wrote in the past month. I knew what I was doing, as it was a deliberate attempt to face some personal demons. But as someone who spent his life fighting every change at every turn, it's hard to see if any cathartic effect occurred. Until today, I could honestly say that it had not.

Until today.

There are a few things I've considered myself very good at: thinking, playing games, reading, sometimes writing, sometimes making jokes. Gun to my head, the only thing I'd say I've ever been consistently great at is surrounding myself with excellent people. I've lived my life as kind of a douche in order to meet the aforementioned benchmarks I set for myself. But no matter what, I made sure that those around me were the funniest, smartest, rowdiest, craziest, wrongest, rightest, brightest, dumbest, all-around best people a person could find. Have I had a conversation with you? Congratulations: you are among the best and most-wanted. And I really want to appreciate you more than I have.

Which brings us to June. If May was about "change", June is about "the future." In previous posts, I hinted about what I was going to change my lot in life; I recognized things that needed to be altered but didn't really offer any direct options about what exactly I was going to change in order to be happy. Thankfully, I now know what the first step I need to take in order to be happy.

I need a better chair.

A good friend of mine, the indomitable Andy Visser, has a very simple five-year plan: no matter what happens, I need to find a more comfortable chair. Andy's done the whole change thing; he's moved from Minnesota to the "great" state of Rhode Island to what must be the much better city of Boston, Massachusetts. Now, let's be clear: he is adamant about his love for Rhode Island, however misplaced it may be. But the fact remains that Andy has done and experienced some serious changes in the past few years.

I have, too. I mean, this is my blog, this is ostensibly about me. I went from living a life of wild, unrestrained hedonism to a life of controlled chaos. When a doctor looks you in the eyes and says "Hey, you may be dead in the next 20 years"--when you are goddamn 26 years old, mind you--things tend to take a sudden left turn. Not that I'm complaining, of course. Much like Hunter S. Thompson, I only ever planned on 50 years. Who needs more than that? Anymore just seems greedy.

When Andy and I were talking about shortened life spans, the topic of short-term goals came up as well. I'm sure he was humoring me, but Andy talked about the titular five-year goal and his was so simple, so appropriate, so downright correct that I had to talk about it. I had to drink a few glasses of wine and expose the sheer beauty of finding a better chair.

I laughed, too. I mean, who wouldn't? Your life has seen some pretty big changes--moving to a new state, finding new roommates, settling into the job of your dreams. Where is the consistency? Whether we like to admit it or not, most of our time is spent in front of a computer. It may be at work, it may be at home, it may be at the local coffee shop where guess what?--you aren't as cool as you think, buddy--but we are always ALWAYS connected to our computers. If you have to stare at a computer all day/for all of your free time/whenever you feel like it, you might as well be enjoying the experience.

When Andy first said "In five years, I want a really great chair", I laughed. Who wants a nice chair? We're all sitting, when you think about it. Nobody checks e-shit from a standing position. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar. But thing about it: you're at work. You're at home. You're at the local coffee shop, hoping against hope that someone asks what you are writing about. In any situation, you are sitting. And waiting. And doing what needs to be done.

There are curveballs all of the time. Almost nothing happens like we think it will. What is important is that we approach the things we can handle with some open-mindedness. Although things may look bad, whenever you focus on a specific goal, it happens. The majority of the time, we allow ourselves to fixate on what is right in front of us. Five years may seem like a long time, but when you set a goal that is reachable--a comfortable, ergonomic, and let's be honest, colorful--chair, things tend to become more clear.

Finding faults is easy. Talking about them is easier. Making a plan to fix them is easiest. Following through on them? Much, much more difficult. Having a five-year plan: one that's easy, comfortable, and most of all funny is the important part.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

Three Long City Blocks

Man, remember owls? Flying around, eating mice. Turning heads all the way around like a god damn boss.

The only reason I've ever wanted a house was so that I could sit on the roof, snagging a few brews. In my imagination, this situation involves a lot of high fives that I'm not exactly comfortable with, but home ownership is worth making some sacrifices for.

Right now my cat is jumping and clawing at some invisible creature. My assumption is that this is some sort of spider or winged bug, and that shit just will not suffice. He cornered a bug earlier today and simply sat next to the damned thing. He didn't try to eat it, he didn't try to kill it, he didn't play with it. When the bug moved, he moved. And sat. And watched. Don't get me wrong; I appreciate the early-warning system. I have some pretty specific rules RE: bugs in my house--you stay in the living room and don't come near me, we are going to get along swimmingly. You go in the bedroom? That shit is like THUNDERDOME: only one person leaves. Ladies, I'm being facetious.

I'm taking medications now. This is in addition to my love of self-medication; this is some doctor-prescribed horse shit about being "unhealthy." Why I put that in quotes I'll never know. Some tweets were posted earlier this week in which I talked about my doctor and his nurse describing me as "a fat sack of human garbage" and that's largely true. Should you get a chance, sneak a peak at the computer they use in the examination room; the descriptions the doctors use can be pretty hilarious. My previous doctor left a four-word note: "Mildly overweight but pleasant." What did she expect, exactly? Fatties are notoriously ill-tempered, but I've never bitten anyone. What would make me not pleasant? Who tells a doctor to go fuck themselves? Man, America just continues to grow on me, like a big patriotic malignant tumor. Good times all around.

So yeah, pills. My cholesterol and blood pressure are higher than they should be. It makes sense, considering my diet consists largely of booze and salt. No regrets here, but apparently some "quack" with a "medical degree and residency" thinks I need to make some lifestyle adjustments. Okay, great. This is something I can do.

Forming habits is harder than maintaining them. In my head the previous sentence appears as a revelation; in reality it simply is a matter of objective fact. People toss out arbitrary numbers--"You need to do something daily for two weeks for it to be a routine!"--but come on. The human will (or at least my own) is permeable to all sorts of osmosis. For instance, I don't drink every day for two weeks, but goddamn if my drinking isn't some sort of habit. Hell, it's a perk of the job. I don't masturbate daily for two weeks. Who has the time? But willpower can be fickle. It can be hard to pin down sometimes.

Making myself do shit I don't want to do--exercise, eat healthy, not kill my liver by drinking too much, show up to work, be nice to others, finish the half-gallon of milk before it expires--is easy in theory but difficult in execution. Learning habits (especially the bad, fun ones) is so easy. Learning the good ones, the ones that take work and dedication and perseverance and a sense of self-preservation isn't just hard, it's boring as hell. All of the males in my family have a tendency to die before the age of 50. Those who last longer are considered weak and different. This is the template that I've used to chart my life; I have 50 years. I need to squeeze out what I can. Some of the best times of my life have occurred when I've made some truly awful decisions. Why change now?

There's a certain sense of responsibility that erupts when you realize that other people want you around. I've lived my life solely for me, yet I've found myself in orbit around others. At first, this was just a kind of annoyance; one of my first break-ups happened because I lied to a girlfriend about being busy when in reality I was playing Spider-Man 2: The Game. Those who have played this game know that I was ultimately in the right, but actions have consequences and that shit is unfortunate.

But is it? Is it unfortunate? The liberation found in being solitary is profound; no drug available can mimic the feeling of being truly beholden to oneself--free. But there is a comfort found in being needed--no, wanted. Desired. I know the darkest tributaries that exist within me: the horrible, isolating, belligerent, unknown horror of my personal existence. "THE FEAR." It's different for everyone, but for me it's a close companion. And more often, I'm reminded that people see it sometimes. They see the load that it is. They offer to carry, if only for a few feet, a few minutes, a few moments. A brief existence. This is humbling and disconcerting and needed and thanks to everyone.

I never expected or wanted to live as far as 50. It's years away but just around the corner. But sometimes it's not about what I want. This is tough to learn. What I want can't always be right. Seeing what others want isn't comfortable in the least. But nothing worth doing is ever easy. Sometimes, you just need to put the work in.

It's a long distance to traverse. Repetition breeds routine; habit. Put the earbuds in. Fire up the new album. Make the walk. I don't want to be around forever. But some people want me to be around. The least I can do is oblige.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

Throwing Shadows

Of course things change over time. The very nature of being is change. Life is the story of a person choosing to change or die. It's not particularly difficult.

With physical objects, it's so easy. I can watch trees grow, die, fertilize. I can watch beaches expand, contract, disappear. More difficult to observe are ideas, notions, friends, beliefs. Over time, they change. Over time, you alienate yourself. But do you see this? Is it observable?

Like most things, I noticed this when examining myself. This weekend was my nephew's second birthday, and I spent a while with both sides of my "family"; both biological and expanded. My takeaway from this was a small game I played with my nephew and his aunt--a game of running, and hugs, and laughing; simplicity. Evan--my nephew--ran back and forth between his extended family and offered hug after hug. But it wasn't the sort of thing one does; these were hugs, things borne of love and desire. Borne from a need to express something deeper than words ever can.

A long time ago, I would have laughed at this. It's easy to make jokes about stuff and be distant. It's my natural state of being; the less I care about something, the easier I can deal with it. But watching a person--albeit a tiny two-year old with no concerns about what is cool or what isn't--engage in something pure was revelatory.

Maybe it says something about modern culture. The internet and text messaging and popular culture and being cool and having fun all come from a sense of aloofness. We try to hide it and mask it under our predilections and ideals and charitable causes and the other things we don't spend enough time on, but the point is we don't spend enough time on each other in a direct sense. It's so easy to say "I love you," but demonstrating that in a quantifiable way scares me. It scares everyone. It's our motivation each day to prove we are above satisfying ourselves. And we find ways to obfuscate and distract from that, but the reason you can't sleep well at night is because you know "I could have tried harder."

And I'm reminded of my nephew. So pure, so able to love regardless of the horrible things I've done to my friends and family. So able to forgive me for putting myself ahead of everyone, even those who needed help the most. So eager to welcome me even though I shut out those around me because I say I don't want to hurt them but really I'm afraid of them hurting me.

And I think of change. Turning around and looking at yourself... Imagine a dusty road in the American southwest (or, for the weird Russian guy reading this, somewhere in fuckin' Moscow or whatever) where you walk, thirsty and weary. It feels like months since you've rested, and sometimes the thought of going any farther shakes you to your core. So turn around. You see everything you've left behind--every friend, every significant other you left because you couldn't commit, every decision you didn't make because stagnation was comfortable and why change that, every branch and extension and change you could have made that may have brought you to where you wanted to be. And you fall to your knees.

And blink.

There's a shift--the sun hits everything just so--and things seem clearer. The shadows fall at a particular degree, and you realize that you made mistakes; stupid, growing-up-too-quick mistakes. The kind that everyone makes in the rush to be someone before you know what kind of person you want to be. And it clicks. It's a matter of perspective.

I'll apologize until the day I die to those I've wronged, because I know now what it means to hurt another. But every step I've taken until this point has been worth it. I can see the bad--god, can I see the bad in myself and the things I've done--but I always see the good. I see the steps I took to reach this point and know I needed to take them. That's no excuse, no shaking off of my demons. Am I remorseful? Yes, of course. But only because of what I know now.

Sometimes you look at a thing and see it. Really, really see it: the crevasses and imperfections and hand-made warts. Other times, you can step back and see how it affects the world. Either way, it's a gift. Just taking notice of how the sun strikes it can be enough. Sometimes.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

A Tragedian at Heart

A lot of my time--my free, absolute free-from-others time, the time I spend wallowing and dreaming and scheming and apologizing and reminiscing and laughing and thinking--is spent in a state of remorse. Why is that? Sometimes I wonder about what I did, or who I have become, or who I am currently. The mirror is broken, or more accurately, waxed. I see who I am, but not clearly. Without inhibitions, I can look at the reflection and know that this is not what was expected. But nothing is clear. Everything is in question. Why do I feel so bad about who I have become?

Maybe "bad" is too strict. Right now, I am alone--those who would shield me from myself are gone, asleep, and the only suit of armor I can wear is one of my own design. Tonight especially, but hopefully not only tonight, I have been on a crusade to show those that supported me when I was at my most base that they were not wrong. And it can be so easy when they fawn you with compliments and sentiments and thoughts and sentences and words and letters and detritus to agree with them and think "maybe this time things will be different."

And the head hits the pillow and sleep comes, not as a friend in the night, but a burglar to steal you away from your concerns and doubts and misconceptions and maybe one day you'll be the person every one said you'd be. But until then you wake fitfully and toss and turn and what is real then?

I love my friends; my real friends. It's because I know me, you know? I see the marks and scars and imperfections and malformed tumors of the soul that define "Adam M. Robinson" because the "M." is so elegant and part of the facade. They see it, too. They embrace it. They see me at the lowest they could--the person I am every day; the adaptable, charming, smiling, laughing, fake, fake, fake, fake, fake version of whoever this Adam M. Robinson person is--and grab hold. They don't give up. I could never, ever place faith in anything--even something I saw with my own eyes--the way they place faith in me.

It's humbling and confusing and wrong and right and the reason all at once. And it's not fair. I didn't ask for this. My dream was to wake up and change someone, anyone. I want to grab hold of them and shake and scream "You're making a mistake, can't you see?" and push and prod and exacerbate and alienate and be lonesome and go back to the beginning all over again. But no one lets me, because they are bold and strong and wrong, yet cowardly and weak and humanly all the same.

And no one, not one, has given up on me. Not a single person. And it's tragic. I can't move on from it. I see and know myself. But others have this vision, this embodiment of potential, that they actively choose to see. And it creates an imbalance which is infuriating. It forces me to look beyond--beyond me, beyond you, beyond my parents, beyond our ancestors, beyond our ideas, beyond our conceptions of the future--and prepare. I'm not a planner. Every day beyond 25 is a gift and a curse and an anchor and the reason I keep on going. Because everyone who knows me is right, and because I have to prove them wrong. I'm exactly as mundane as expected.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

The Bed Frame

I've been afraid to write about this for a while.

For a long time, I didn't have a bedframe. It seemed redundant; I mean, I had that other thing that the mattress rests upon and really what else do you need?

The bed frame is the subtlest of status symbols. Being ostentatious with my iPhone is one of life's little pleasures--at this point, almost everyone has the "rare" white one if they truly want it. But I know, man. Day one, I went to the store, and I bought it. And even when I didn't need to know the time I pulled that little baby out of the pocket and checked it. "12:14," I'd think, "Exactly as expected."

Here's a universal truth: humans are terrible, and we all try to demonstrate how much better we are than everyone else. You can be altruistic and try to help others and yadda yadda and it doesn't matter. When you examine the basest reasons for why you do anything, it's because you want it to look good. There's nothing wrong with that; it's part of being a social creature. I donate to charity, support the ASPCA, volunteer, help friends move--I do it all to raise my social stock. The actual assistance or help I provide someone happens to be a fringe benefit. Maybe this is cynical. To me, it's honest.

So when Facetiming with a friend of mine a few weeks ago, I gave her a tour of my apartment. When we got to the bedroom, she saw my bed on the floor and said "just like a real college kid." The conversation took a few more minutes to wrap up and when I hung up, I couldn't help but be fascinated by her observation. Is this how everyone sees it? I have girls over here! Part of being social is being social. Maybe this is shallow. To me, it's honest. Do people have a hard time seeing past the lack of bed frame? What does that lack of bed frame say about me as a person?

The littlest comments cut the most.

Procuring a bed frame, when you think about it, couldn't be easier. Hit up craigslist, buy one for five bucks, try not to get murdered in a Wendy's parking lot. In, out, done. But just getting some shitass' old bed frame wasn't going to work for me. Sure, it's just hunks of metal and slots and maybe a few functioning wheels if you get lucky, but people are going to see this. This wasn't just a bed frame. This was my bed frame, and it needed to speak a certain volume about me. Why I think this way is likely due to some sort of brain damage.

Getting a new one was the only answer. And paying a certain price was going to be key. When grocery shopping, I skip the generic food aisle. Are you kidding me? I'm not going to eat Fritz like some goddamn peasant in the Ukraine. I'm going to eat Ritz, like a man of my stature should. There's this lens through which I view the world--kaleidoscopic by nature, obfuscating, infuriating, necessary--but it makes a certain logical sense to me. I wasn't joking about that brain damage thing; there is a wiring misconnect there that affects day-to-day operations. And I would never medicate that away because in a way it defines me as human: unique in my insanity. Mundanity is overrated.

The curtain opens on an unseasonably warm Sunday. Like a dunce, I put on a fleece jacket because in my mind this helps hide the parts of me that I'm uneasy with. Off I go to a Slumberland furniture store, which--get this--is staffed entirely by people who couldn't making it selling used cars. Mean, maybe, but honest. A helpful Rick (is there any other kind?) offers to show me the bed frame section of the store after I make up an excuse for needing one, as the truth of the event would make it difficult for me to maintain face. I'm the only person who thinks like this. She's called the Iron Lady, or at least she is to me, when I introduce a woman obtainable only in my fantasies to her; the brown metal gleams with a grim urgency as the crossbars meet at Escherian angles. My bed is my playground, my fortress, my puzzle box. Together we will solve the mysteries of the universe, and the only reason she acquiesces to my offer is the Lady. Firm. Unbending. Comfortable.

Our Dark Lady comes with a steep price: my self-respect for knowing all to well that I'm doing this not for myself, but for another. Also, it's 130 dollars.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

To Lose Your Mind

I never go back and touch my writing. Someone, sometime, somewhere once said that art is never truly finished, just abandoned. Then, it is discovered and appreciated, warts and all. Whether or not that's the case is immaterial, but anytime you put something in a public space it becomes shared. No longer does it belong solely to me; it is ours. Even my stupid tweets about stupid, shitty things are going to exist forever. I won't change that, and I wouldn't want to change that.

It's not as though there is a preservation society that works to contain and catalogue my impressive, leather-bound works, which is good for me; I'd carry it around all the time and be an insufferable twat about it. But I think fan passion and the sense of ownership we have towards favorite properties is fascinating. I wonder sometimes what I would do if something I did really exploded and became part of the social consciousness. In the future, am I going to be okay with what I've done? When confronted with it constantly, wouldn't I want to tweak and make it perfect? What do I care about what someone else thinks of my work? Sure, things become shared when they go public but what's the ownership strata? These weird, unspoken social contracts are just insane.

For me, I go nuts about Neil Gaiman. There are a few generational touchstones that everyone experiences, like when you have your first profound realization or when you finally realize you are an adult. Another one is when you first "get" art. When I started The Sandman, just a few pages into the first collected volume (ugh, sorry), I think actually felt the power of the moment. Every year I reread the whole series and I still look forward to certain parts and dread others. Captured by a storyline you can sum up in one sentence. They recently released an Annotated Sandman that includes Gaiman's notes and discusses in-depth some of the choices that were made in each panel.

This makes me wary. I can never read these annotated versions because my interpretation of the art is my own. Mining the reasoning behind every decision made in the story would be doubtlessly interesting, but I'm very protective of my interpretation and connection with the work. Besides, I'll never--no matter how often or hard I try--capture the same feeling of discovery I had when I first read it. Maybe that's why we feel so passionate about art: it is the continued, fruitless pursuit of feelings extinct.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

The Monday News Roundup

I read the news because you don't want to. With links and everything!

John Edwards begins his trial
Get a load of this lede paragraph:

John Edwards "made a choice to break the law" by accepting illegal campaign contributions to hide his pregnant mistress from the public as he campaigned in 2007 to be the Democratic presidential nominee, prosecutors said Monday in the opening day of the former U.S. senator's criminal trial.

Essentially, that is every country music song ever written, but classed up a bit. Would we all consider John Edwards to be such a douche bag if Elizabeth wasn't dying/died? Cheating is bad enough, but man... It's hard to have any sympathy for the guy when she was real sick. Spoiler alert: even if Edwards is found guilty of any of this shit, is that really going to change his life? He'll pay some fines, and that's about it. He's no Blagojevich. Really, I just wanted to type out "Blagojevich." Isn't that the bad guy in the Modern Warfare games? I don't care. Does anyone?

Buddha's Skull is on tour; Simple Plan is the opener
This is pretty rich. Millions of years from now, when we as a society have been mercifully swept from the planet, I wonder what future generations will take on tour. Buddha was a ostensibly a cool dude; he taught about being nice to others, pursuing knowledge, foregoing personal wealth, etc. All great character traits (unless you are an asshole). What does modern society have to offer? Those big bazookas used to fire t-shirts into crowds? That's awesome, but not exactly a legacy. I'll be dead, though. Who gives a shit?

Dutch Government Collapses
Fuck 'em. Fuckin' Dutch.

Secret Service Hooker Fiasco Blows Up In Face
What a lazy joke. I'm kind of surprised this is as big of a deal as it has become. Protecting government/public service official, especially in Columbia (which, according to all of the movies I've seen, is filled with guerrillas and drug kingpins), must be stressful. Are we really going to fault a guy for getting a BJ on the side? He should have just paid. When you find out the lady is hookin', you always pay. Trust me.

Stupid Assholes Insist on Bringing Video Games into Tragedy
You know what really grinds my gears? Shit like the above-mentioned article. The guy who perpetrated the Norway killings is a little crazy--you have to be, to just start killing people like that. I don't care if some court-appointed professional says "he is mentally fit to stand trial," if you kill a bunch of people, regardless of circumstance, you are fucking nuts. The fact that he played video games is immaterial, as everyone plays video games. Sure, some of the games he has played are violent, but all games are inherently violent; slapping balls around with pong paddles can be construed as a violent act. Pac-man eats ghosts all day long! Mario crushes anthropomorphic mushrooms! Angry Birds is a thinly-veiled allegory for the Holocaust, with birds as Nazis and pigs as jews! See, anyone can talk crazy shit about video games. I'll defend games because I think games are an interesting way to tell interactive stories and they get us to engage with difficult ideas in ways that movies can't. But regardless of that, to say--to even imply--that video games had some sort of impact on this awful event cheapens what happened. It's terrible that so many people died that day because of a crazy person. He was crazy. Blaming his intentions--again, even tangentially--on an entertainment medium is pretty disrespectful to the victims' families. Even by my fucked up standards.
Besides, nobody blamed Pilotwings for 9/11.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

Liveblogging my Microsoft Excel training

This seems like an appropriate use of my time. I'm going to forego the time stamps; just assume this goes in chronological order. I'll be taking notes here as well just to keep track of some of the "great tips and tricks" this guy has in store.

My bosses--most of the admin team, excluding the vocational coordinator and the human resources professional--are helping this guy get his technology and stuff set up. He seems like a good dude. People are starting to show up now and get set up. I have a pretty solid spot in the class; it's sort of in the back, near an outlet. I can literally feel the power of this spot.

The breakfast spread ain't too shabby. I'm eating a croissant with some artisan jam. It's pretty nice. They got these small oranges--they keep calling them clementines but I like small oranges--and various juices and coffee. Apparently there is even going to be a lunch? Maybe this won't ruin my day as expected.

Things are about to get started. We are doing some introductions. This guy has a great last name, like some sort of viking god.

Although I use Excel every day, I'm not super comfortable with it. Making it do what I want is easy, but I'm interested in some advanced stuff used to streamline my work day.

Using templates and things through the Options menu can set it for each subsequent workbook--pretty cool but I knew that stuff. You can author it, etc. I love that this guy's presentation is ostensibly a PowerPoint presented in Excel. He's committed.

Basic customizations and ribbon work in order to reduce workspace clutter. Setting up page layout through ribbons. Etc.

Okay, getting in to ways in which you can simplify work stuff. Switching to Excel for a second.

Sort of cool. Probably wouldn't mess with this too much in order to keep things similar between workstations.

Review tab offers all the stuff you'd normally find in Word for keeping track of errors. Text wrapping. Basic things for making printing easier/clearer/more correct.

Adding cells to formulas so they are not missed when making calculations; it may be useful to differentiate some stuff with a garbage row--formula autocorrects to stop at row. Kinda cool.

Filling formulas left and right to reduce reentering.

Haven't exactly covered stuff I'm not aware of. Good refresher, I suppose.

For my data tracking purposes, I'm not sure of using other functions when tracking numbers--general with two zeroes tends to do the trick when tracking behavior/goal data. Maybe I'll play around with this and see if there are better ways to present data.

Using conditional formatting to highlight desirable/noticeable items could be good when calculating success rates; reader can see when goal is met/not met without having to jump around. I like this conditional formatting. Apply it to quarterly data tables in annuals and it could be pretty powerful.

Formulas. Going to go to Excel and putz around a bit.

F2 key sort of "hard resets" the formula in a cell to recalculate. Sort of cool; but more a cautionary tale of not messing around with cell formats all willy-nilly.

Not convinced there is a value for me in using absolute/relative references in data books. A dollar sign locks the reference row or whatever in place when filling values in some direction. A double dollar sign when referencing the cell locks the specific cell. Cool to know, but usefulness is in question.

Commenting on cells could be good for multiple people working on the same work book--maybe when I work on stuff and pass it on to Linda to review? Would she catch this type of thing?

Autofilling some cells with designated names--months, highlighting numbers together, can be useful in pattern stuff. Not sure there is a work function in here.

Copy and paste. Pretty sure I have this stuff on lockdown. Well... Pasting values versus pasting formulas. This is in paste options when right clicking. Pasting formats moves visual changes, etc. Not exactly new information, just a new spin on stuff I knew. Copying versus cutting. Cutting cells doesn't break formulas, which is pretty interesting. Amazing what you can do with computers I guess.

Paste special: mostly useful for bookkeeping? Like, actually keeping track of accounting books. I see no real value to doing this with my current stuff. Paste special, values, transpose can swap vertical/horizontal. Pretty cool.

Double-clicking edges of columns/rows will automatically make it as wide/narrow as it needs to be. Cool little shortcut.

Man, I guess I like Excel much more than I thought. It's pretty interesting stuff.

Referencing across sheets/workbooks is cool. Equal sign, click on other sheets/books. Not valuable but could be cool with multiple workbooks on related stuff. Might be more useful to paste values.

First break of the day at 10:30 am. My notes are all over the place. Found out some pretty cool things that might make information easier to digest. Everyone seems to be snacking and settling back in for round two. I guess we are halfway done? What am I gonna do after this? I need some afternoon plans.

Backtracking to referencing other workbooks. Moral of the story is not to move books around; file them accordingly. I have this at work, but good tip to have at home.

Moving on to advanced ideas. This is where I start to pay more attention. Starting with navigation. Switching over to Excel to keep up with stuff.

On bigger workbooks, avoid black rows. Basic navigation commands stop at these points. Utilize all spaces, dummy!

View:Freeze panes can keep a header attached no matter how far away you are from A1.

Just basically avoid blank cells as they will fuck up any type of navigation/selection you try to do.

Creating/inserting a table with well-defined headers can make navigation of information pretty easy. This actually blew my fucking mind.

Highlight table, data clear removes all filters. You can get as specific/general as needed. This is cool! No sarcasm! I would never use this at current job but this is pretty jazzy.

Always double-click everything. It just works in filling stuff up. Technically down but who gives a shit.

Tables, subtotals, and filters are definitely better when using larger, more information-heavy workbooks. I doubt I'd be using this too often here.

This viking horse lord has some workbooks that are fascinatingly gigantic. It's horrifying.

Find and replace is great, especially when writing. I guess it works the same way in Excel.

Lookup: goes through x cells vertically or horizontally, finds desired number, places it in cell. Could be cool on bigger projects, but we don't really use callbacks and stuff in day to day data keeping. This is the only time in my life I have wished I was an accountant. I'd feel like a golden god right now.

IFERROR is actually pretty cool, especially when calculating success rate on a goal that a client does not participate in. Man, the syntax of that previous sentence is a nightmare. Not gonna fix it.

For a gigantic math-related data application, Excel has some pretty metal terminology. "Just destroyed that cell. Fuggin' obliterated."

Could add a section below goals tabulation area with IF something is greater than you can have a quick "Did client pass this goal?" Just making it easier on the reader. I think I will add stuff like this to a workbook.

Thanks, Joe. For absolutely nothing.

After applying the IF formulation, I have a mental erection. It works pretty well. Going to have make some changes to the formatting of the tables/workbooks but it looks great. Combined with conditional formatting, you can make our data tables look really snazzy.

Concatenation has no place in my life or the lives of anyone else, thank you very much.

I think charts could be sort of useful, but a graphical representation of the data seems redundant with additions made using conditional formatting/IF functions. How much time are people going to spend reading our reports? Without any data to back it up, I imagine it takes longer to process data presented graphically versus numbers. But maybe I'm just an unfeeling machine.

This guy's attempts at spelling have been a nonstop laugh riot.

Man, we got a guy here who is such a wisenheimer. Asking questions just to get the boss happy. What a frittata.

I have a certain format that works great for my job--I wonder if I make the changes to it and it could be applied to other workbooks without fucking everything up? I doubt it. I think I have a lot of work to do.

Eh... Maybe make a new template on additional sheets and continue from there. Least amount of work it seems.

Pivot tables are pretty neat. I have absolutely no idea how that would apply to this job, but if I was working with reams of information and wanted to see some stuff in a geographic/itemized/etc. breakdown, I'd have a pretty powerful tool.

I made fun of this guy giving this presentation in Excel but he is a goddamn magician with this.

Use refresh on pivot tables if data from original fields change. Like banging F5 on a keyboard to reload a nudie pic.

Macros. Essentially developing new functions; baby's first programming.

Macros are so far outside the realm of things I'm going to work with. If I knew anything about basic coding it could be useful but I'm not going to be doing stuff with this. Just going to stick with basic formulas.

And just like that, he mounts his flaming stallion and rides into Valhalla. Overall, I'd give it a 6.5 out of 10.

Until an asteroid,
Adam

You lose, say less

Just the first couple of words are hard. Why do I stop? Why have I ever stopped? Gears are churning, rust crumbles, locking and stopping. There are long sighs and then I power through. What is left is unfulfilling. The hard boot. I'll come back to that, I think.

Without a theme to wrap these around, I feel sort of lost. Instead of fighting this and eventually losing, I'm going to go with it. Just some stranded islands in my brain ocean.

--There are these opportunities in front of me, and I am double-slitting this shit to death. After floating aimlessly for so long it's scary to have a path. Multiple paths! Paralyzed by indecision, I just float by. I don't think I have it in me to do this anymore.

--Meeting people is easier. Stretches of inactivity and unavailability--mostly self-inflicted, if we are being honest here--are breaking like waves on the shore. Understanding that those who care for you really do is hard to grasp. Second-guessing everything accomplishes very little. This is all easy to say, but we are talking about chemical imbalances and wiring issues. I make a choice every day to be better and yet things exist as they are. At this point, insert French witticism here.

--Whenever I miss the freedom my younger years offered me, I always wonder: why am I less free now? What changed? There's gold in them hills.

--The ballet world is not ready for a husky wunderkind.

I feel exhausted already. Piles of work appear around me; it's daunting, but exciting. Time to knuckle down.

until an asteroid,
Adam

Get out of the cold

I've been confronted with numerous ways to escape being "single" in the past few weeks, although none of them are exactly what I want. The hazards of love are delicate thing.

On Friday, my friends and I decided that bar hopping through Hopkins was a great idea. It was. I ate this juicy Lucy that made things shimmer and pale in comparison. But a bar later, I discovered Derrick Williams, international copyright lawyer, who resides within. The Wild Boar is a terrible bar; the popcorn is awful and kids years--almost decades--younger than us were bogarting the pool tables. That left the shuffle board table open, and we played shuffle board. It's a terrible, fucking awful game. There's salt every where and you have to keep track of the score. Are you kidding? It's 2012. That is retarded.

As we left the Wild Boar, we noticed the exterior sign was broken--someone had ripped the legs off of the sign on the rear entrance to the building. I remarked to my friends that "this is some serious bullshit" and that "we should sue for some such bullshit" and we decided to return to the minivan. But as I turned around, some hot, extremely drunk broad opened the door, heard the end of our conversation, and said, "This is awful. We should sue about this sign."

Long story short, she invited us all in to a class-action lawsuit against the bar and its shitty sign. Like a gentleman and a practicing lawyer, I offered to represent us in the trial as a practicing international copyright lawyer. There was a small conversation that followed during which I realized that this lady was drunk. Like, DRUNK.

And I could have had that. But as a king of the lower-middle class, I had more important issues to attend. Part of me is always going to wonder what happened to the hot, drunk broad that wanted to engage in legal briefs with me. It's unfortunate that she liked that awful bar but as god as my witness, I will see her again. Bronson Tuggs, international copyright lawyer, takes only yes as an answer.

Continuum

I've stopped and started four times now. Get a grip.

Relationships are a nightmare. My day-to-day interactions with peers, coworkers, and friends are all pleasant enough, but I find myself viewing these types of things as a battlefield more and more often. Conversations become sorties, words become weapons, laughs are tactical nuclear strikes. I feel like a World War II soldier whenever I write a Facebook status update: in the trenches, shivering with trepidation, waiting for someone anyone to do something anything to break the stalemate, scribbling a letter to my sweetie back stateside about how the junkslut at Subway used too many green peppers on my Fastball sub.

Suddenly, a "Like." Validation. We aren't fighting and dying on the constantly-redesigned-but-never-improved timeline for nothing. Whenever a "friend" signs off of Facebook chat, I struggle to remember her face. Profile pages line up in tidy white lines; wall posts may as well be grieving families placing a trembling hands on a head stone. "good to see you the other day lol." Somewhere, a dove flies by a setting sun.

And this is the easy stuff! I have an unhealthy reliance on virtual interactions because of the structure. In person you have to be on and that is exhausting. Electronic personas are always charming, always aloof, always calculated. I never worry about saying the wrong thing online because the medium is the message; plausible deniability behind a screen and keyboard. My meatbag body and mind and voice crackle with energy. There's no control. It all just happens, whether I want it to or not.

Which, sure. No regrets, right? But there's a haunting permanence in exasperated responses. I love everyone, and it's so much easier to type than say. A raised eyebrow, a nanosecond of frown--these things are more devastating that bombs.

It's winter, though. Cold times and cold thoughts and stolen moments of warmth are the point.

Elevator Music

This is a list of things that make me envious:

--People who wake up early enough to eat breakfast.
--People who sleep in long enough for lunch to be their first meal.
--Musicians.
--Magicians.

There's a commercial on television with Papa John. I'm going to call him Papa for the rest of this entry even though I don't recognize his authority as a father figure or an elder in a small Italian village. Regardless, he's talking about how football and his brand of edible frisbees are the "perfect... combination." The flow of sentence is impeccable until he reaches that point, at which time he has a minor stroke or something. I'm not worried about Papa at all; in fact, what I am worried about is professionalism in commercial production. Papa stutters so obnoxiously that I am considering never patronizing that establishment again, and that's the take you use for your national commercial? Standards.

Just...standards.

Tudo o que voce sempre quis saber

Too many aspects of our lives are universal. Today I went to the dentist, and left with my thirst sated, what with all that blood. Even with impeccable dental hygiene, those charlatans with pointy sticks will draw. If any dentist reads this, please take this bit of advice to heart: just... stop it with that.

So here we are: I didn't like going to the dentist. Does anyone? How unique! I want to meet this person with a bizarre probing fetish. Actually, no.

I wonder why I share these things. The history of written thought is filled with lamentations about dental visits. To free our newborn country from the shackles of tyrannical oral surgeons was the reason we fought a war. Wooden teeth are the closest real analogue to freedom we may ever see. But if I hate the dentist, and you hate the dentist, and the dentist drives home to her house but can't bring herself to turn off the engine because that means she needs to go into the house and face the things she earned from her horrible profession including her husband-with-a-chip-on-his-shoulder and their nascent dentist brood absorbing dark dental secrets through social osmosis, why talk about it?

The dentist makes me feel small. As a medical profession, it's pretty selfless when viewed detachedly--dentists, much like I imagine podiatrists, receive very little attention and respect for the positive outputs of their vocations. If I had a bunion and a podiatrist "cured" me, I'd be pretty jazzed. But the simple fact that life involves, you know, maybe getting a bunion or a cavity or whatever every now and then which requires me to see some specialist to inflict pain on my person in a therapeutic manner is science goddamn fiction.

You can't compare it to open-heart surgery or tumor cleansing or kidney modification or liver enlargement or body-part medical-jargon. If my heart doesn't come out of my chest today and the hole filled with a potato battery, I am going to die. But if I have a cavity? I'm uncomfortable. I may even get sick. But I can take care of it.

Perspective ends up concealing and congealing things. The reason I share these things is because my world view is mine. It is all I know and therefore supersedes all others. Right by default.

All you ever wanted to know is inside. Miner dig deep.

I carried it quietly

All of the framed pieces of art in my apartment hang crookedly.

For lunch, my boss and I got some greek food from this little hole-in-the-wall place taking up half of a gas station. It wasn't in the same strip mall as the gas station; it actually was half of a gas station. Although you'd expect some Mediterranean-class diarrea eating in a place this, the reality is quite different. These guys are as greek (Greek?) as you can get, speaking Aegean or whatever the hell. The terminology escapes me but these sumbitches execute the authentic.

Each time I leave that place I wonder about the physical space. It's awful. You got guys cooking or lambing or whatever on side--you scream at them you want a heee-row (or as I always get, a GYE-roo) and they give you a piece of paper. This paper is then taken to another, different counter where you give it to yet another, different Greek (greek?) dude who rings you up. This paper is stamped and you sit to drink your ginger ale and wait. It takes a long time--longer than it should--for a very soft-spoken g/Greek fellow to feebly mumble your number. If by some chance you hear it, you saunter up in all your slackness and pick up a tray of mythologies.

There's even like a sauce or something on it, I don't know. I'm no connoisseur of yogurt (yoghurt?) sauces, man. It's 2012. Greek (Greek?) restaurants need a yoghurt (yogurt?) sauce sommelier coming round, giving you some wine, recommending sauces for grape leaves and whatnot. The industry booms. Jobs:created.

There's a new Guided by Voices album and it's just nostalgia. Singing 'bout eatin' early morn donuts (doughnuts?) gets you thinkin' 'bout the way things were, the way things ought'n be. Wakin' up from your dream excited to write it down. Walkin' to school seein' people in the trees where you know they shouldn't be. Laughin' and laughin' and cryin' and laughin'. Fightin' sleep just as long as you could knowin' the dreamland is round that corner. When I was young it made sense.

Now it's sleep and black and driving to work listening to news getting informed feeling depressed because the world keeps spinning and when it stops we all fly off, a million billion miles an hour. Light-speed.

Things can be pretty horrifying sometimes. But it's those shadows in the corner of your room, hiding behind the door, what give relief in an all-too-needed physical sense. Running your hand across the surface and feelin' the impurities. The splinters are feedback.

A Start

To keep myself busy, I'm going to write this while watching Die Hard, also known as the best Christmas movie of all time.

This break has been odd. I've looked forward to the time off from work for weeks, but now that I'm reaching the end of it I'm ready for another. My contact with other human beings has been limited which is both a blessing and a curse. We're social creatures. I just wish everyone would leave me alone sometimes, too.

My resolutions for the new year are pretty basic: write every day, be a better person than I was last year, don't let depression win, and go on my great adventure. I'm not sure how to do many of them. You've got to try, though. I don't want the last interesting thing I do to be my suicide.

So here I am, dipping my toes into the pool. It's cold and unusual and fun and daunting and FUCK John McClane just shot a guy. I better get going.