1hr Exercise - The Only Way

If you want to be a writer, or a photographer, or anything requiring creativity: get an abortion, or a nanny. Otherwise you'll never get anything done.

While you're at it, throw your television out the window. Release your pets into the wild. Donate all of your books to the public library so you can still read them later. Hide all of your clothes.

Put a microwave at your work space, and your work space near the bathroom, and a bed close to that. Get a comfortable chair, or learn to ignore your spine from your ass up. Stop paying your Internet bill.

Don't go out to bars, or movies, or dinner. Your mind would be preoccupied anyway, with words you'd use to describe the crowd, or photographs you'd wish you were taking, or strokes of color across a white space. Your friends and family will be there later, in between projects. And they'll be so proud; prouder than if you're always hanging around and not working your ass off. Find a mate who is similarly afflicted. That way they'll understand and you won't be distracted explaining yourself.

Agonize over commas, lighting levels, percentages of red, green, and blue. Analyze and re-analyze your creations until they've lost all meaning and you can't tell how you feel about them anymore. Flip flop between decisions a hundred times. Destroy huge chunks of your work only to recreate them again. Second guess yourself more times than you can count. Know somehow that it's all worth it.

Because that's the only way to do it. Right?

1hr Exercise - Optimism

Today I looked back at my old blog entries from four and five years ago. They seem to be written by a stranger.

I was looking for the actual date my brother died in a car wreck. I knew the year, just not the day of the month. August 20, 2006, by the way. It's funny, I use my blog to find dates on just about anything big that's happened to me over the years.

Like visiting Virginia for the first time, moving, finding out Kasey was pregnant. I used to write a lot so it was easy. Even as the updates become more and more sparse they still serve as a sun dial for when things occured. I wouldn't have been able to fill out the grueling application for a Top Secret clearance without it.

I read a couple posts before and after his death to see if there was a noticeable change. The Before Writing and the After Writing. From the limited sample I chose I couldn't really see a difference, although friends and family said I was changed afterwards. I think they were just upset with the actions I was taking. Like leaving my wife and significant other of eight years and flying across the country every chance I got to see a girl I'd just met.

I didn't feel any different at the time, but looking back I can see that something was stripped away from me. Not stolen, but cut off. Like fat from a steak. I want to say it was fear, but it wasn't that. Maybe some of my ability to care, care what other thought about me. I think back now and recognize the sudden knowledge that I needed to stop wasting time and do what I wanted to be happy.

Which is how I ended up here, in Virginia, with a redhead and the prettiest being I've ever seen. So I guess it worked out, although some of that fat has grown back, but in very specific places.

My writing in the early 2000's accurately reflects who I was then: Naive, excited, almost hopelessly optimistic, in love with life. Even vinegar was pleasant. While I quietly lament the loss of much of the lucidity of my emotions and experiences from that time, I don't think I would chose to go back. I do miss the sharpness of it all, though. My emotional life was full and dramatic, the way it is in high school. Everything meant something, it was all magic and life and death. Now life comes to me through a lens that's been scuffed over the years to a dull matte that removes a lot of the vibrancy. It seems ignorance is bliss, at least for me.

My brother's death affected me deeply, but barely put a scratch in my youthful exuberance. I was more experienced, but still an eager little puppy bounding his way through the world. The subtle amputation of my unflagging optimism began with the first two firings I'd ever experienced in my life. I suppose it's something that it took until I was in my mid-twenties to lose my first job, and I was unprepared for the emotional sub-dermal bruising that would linger long after I'd found another one.

I felt like someone who'd been dumped. I couldn't think of the old companies without bitterness, sadness, loss, hurt, and confusion. I hated them, and I wanted them back. That first firing is still a mystery to me. It was a small company, and the order had come from the two owners without warning or reason. I hadn't been perfect, but I thought I'd been staying on top of the avalanche of truly disgusting and misused computers that I was in charge of. When you are brought a computer to repair that's double sealed in garbage bags, be wary.

The second firing was expected and not expected, in the way we often find ourselves hoping against hope that life will sometimes take pity on the desperate. The job was exhausting but steady, and paid enough that we weren't drowning even with the addition of our new bundle of joy. Not long after sleep deprivation had nestled in and made a home for itself within our family (a home it still inhabits to this day) I began to arrive late for work. Not hours late, and not often, but the balding, limping help desk manager was strict and tardiness was a deadly sin. I was given my warnings, both verbal and written, bearing our signatures in duplicate. For two months I was able to reanimate my corpse daily at the appropriate time to avoid lateness, despite being exhausted enough to experience visual hallucinations every night. Usually spiders.

Then I got a flat tire, three or four miles from work. With less than fifteen minutes to make it on time, I began calling everyone that could possibly come get me. No one answered. I tried to fix the flat, and ended up breaking off the valve on the inner-tube itself. I chained my bike a a telephone pole and began to run towards the naval base near 6:00 o'clock in the morning.

Needless to say, I didn't make it. Even if I had been one minute late, the result would have been the same, and, in fact, I had been written up for just that amount of tardiness before. I had become a new father without a job, due to a flat tire and the uncaring nature of my place of employment. The world had taught me a lesson about itself that day.

Of course there have been other examples to reinforce that first teaching, but here, now, over a year removed from it, I can say that's when I lost the bulk of my optimism. I don't even know if I'd like some of it back. It feels like I was happier, then, but unless your name is Algernon there's no going back to naivety.

So I get my daily dose of bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, innocence and optimism from my son. I foster it, encourage it to grow. And maybe one day a little will rub off on me, and I can slip on a pair of weak rose-colored glasses and look around for a bit.

But probably not.

Just kidding.

But seriously.

- David

1Hr Exercise - Line Buddy

I'm standing in line inside of a department store behind a blond woman in her thirties. We didn't know each other past being "line buddies"; held hostage together by whatever is in front of us and the people behind us. We share a mutual comradery even though we haven't spoken. The dream begins like this, standing in a line that stretches past the scope of my conciseness.

People kept appearing from behind the circular, uniform bushes of clothes around us, emerging from the soft darkness created by the overhead lights placed only above us, trying to cut in line with the silence and gravity of guerilla soldiers. But my blond friend and I are ever vigilant. Nobody slips ahead of us. Our relaxed alertness has the ease and confidence of a lifetime of training. Everyone behind us could be murdered and laying in a pulped heap and we wouldn't care, as long as no one cuts in front.

Here comes a young woman with straw-colored hair in a ponytail sneaking past a rounded magazine of sport coats, trying to look nonchalant as she walks towards the line. I don't know how close I am to the front- it is outside of my ken to even wonder -but my position in line is treasured. Our heads swivel in slow unison as we stare at her. She notices. Suddenly she remembers something she needs to do, back the way she came.

My line buddy turns towards me and we smile at each other like we've been doing this for years. I pull out a voice recorder and say, "Line buddy," without breaking eye contact. A short laugh serves as her question. "I want to write it down later," I say.

I wake up.

---

The idea for this story stayed with me all day, and while the excitement of a possibly good story faded, the weight of it remained. Like something I really need to remember to do.

Hopefully I can do this kind of random writing exercise every day. Check back to see what else spills out.

- David

Resolve #1 - Clean the Apartment

I've started like three of these things for the new year, and abandoned them all. As one of my resolutions, New Year's and otherwise, was to write more, it doesn't seem like this year is starting out very well.

And, really it isn't. I honestly think I'm slowly driving myself insane. Or at least towards some kind of stroke or mental break down. I'm hoping it's the long term effects of sleep deprivation and not my age catching up with me. Or something else. Like a clot.

For instance, I'm not only misspelling things without realizing it, I'm missing entire words or replacing them with things that don't make sense. I can't concentrate on anything. Loud sounds distract me instantly and completely, and if there's multiple sources of noise pollution I feel like I'm going to slit someone's throat. My eyes are sensitive to light. I'm quick to anger, and I can't control my imagination or my thoughts to the point where everything just gets right in. Usually I can at least guard against certain things, but apparently that part of my mind is worn down (or off), and everything affects me fully. It feels like I'm in the beginning scenes of a House episode. Hopefully I'll start getting seven to eight hours of sleep instead of five to six and my symptoms will clear up.

Which is another unspoken resolution I'm breaking: Take better care of myself. More sleep, better diet, more sex, maybe some exercise (or just sex-ercise), and lose this gut. Losing my bulging belly is really at the heart of this. So I guess it's vanity more than anything. Hooray!

But I didn't start this entry to be negative, even though it's taken a big turn that way (which is why you haven't seen any of the rest). I started this to talk about my plan for a succession of single, attainable resolutions this year.

A couple weeks back I posted an article about why New Year's resolutions usually fail. The first thing they mentioned was the crushing pressure of too many resolutions at once. It's tempting to try and fix all this shit that's "wrong" with your life in one shot, but according to brain scientists that's too much at the same time. One of the things they suggested was pick one attainable thing and focus on that, so that's what I'm going to do.

So what to pick first? Start eating healthy and sleeping more? Actually write for an hour every day? Begin meditating again? Nope. Cleaning! Something easy and almost instantly gratifying, yay!

To be honest, the real goal is to get my apartment into shippity ship shape. The whole thing. Which for some is probably a reality already, and for most it would take all of thirty minutes, but for me and my couch potato-infested apartment that actually means a lot of work. Enough work to where I could probably break this first Clean Apartment resolution down into further smaller resolutions.

Like the bedroom closet. Good lord. Ever since we've moved in it's looked more like a junk drawer than a closet. Which is a shame because it's massive and adorable. But for some reason we just cannot clean that thing up. I once washed some Adderall down with two cups of coffee and attempted to tackle it. Not even with prescription speed could that beast be tamed. (Not really, but seriously. Didn't even dent it.)

And then there's the Green Room, which lies between the living room and the kitchen. It has bookshelves, a very stable table, every chair we own including a La-Z-Boy, a couple of lamps, and a twenty pound dictionary, but it never gets used. Why? Mostly because the TV isn't in there, but also because certain four-legged animals think it's a convenient Port-a-potty. Right now it's also home to all the Christmas packaging that was too big to fit in the garbage. I'd really like to be able to use that room for writing and other things that require quiet and concentration, but until I get it cleaned up that just ain't happening.

Which ties in nicely with the resolution I'm very tempted to try and shoehorn in right alongside the others: Write for an hour every day. It'll be 300% easier to actually sit down and write when I have a place that isn't pointed at the television and its near-endless supply of distractions (thanks Netflix!), which is what I'd really like to use the Green Room for. That and naps in a beam of sunlight coming in through the window, with a book on my chest and my mouth hanging open.

So here's to cleaning the apartment, probably one room at a time, until the whole thing is done at once. I know it won't stay that way, but to have each room actually capable of fulfilling it's intended purpose would be a fantastic way to start the new year.

Stay tuned for resolution number two: sane sleep schedule! Or sex schedule. We'll see.

 - David