Coming Out

That's it. I'm coming out of the closet. I can't live a lie any more. Are you ready? I'm a socialist.

I know some of you had the feeling that I might be, there was something a little 'off' with me, something not acceptable in society. But damn it feels good to get it out and finally confess. It's liberating.

Can someone explain to me why Socialism is such a bad, evil thing? Anyone? I understand why it's hated- the misinformation and propaganda campaigns of the McCarthy/Cold War Era are to blame for that. Equate Socialism with Marxism and Communism and all of a sudden you get people afraid of something they don't even know about. You do know that there is a form of Socialism that exists in this country, right? It's how we have the  Fire Departments that come to your house when it's on fire and do their best to save your possessions, or the Police Department that sit on the highway and pull you over for going too fast. It's how the US has a Military.

I'm a socialist because I don't believe that the Fire Department should be run for profit. If my house is on fire and a big truck full of people trained to put out fires piles out, I don't want to have to run back in the burning building to find a credit card or cheque book before they put out the fire. In fact, read about Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman General and Politician. He's ranked as one of the top ten richest historical figures, and part of his wealth was gained by taking advantage of people whose houses were on fire. He'd show up to a burning building, buy it very cheaply, then call up to 500 clients who could put the fire out very quickly. In theory, if we were to have a for-profit fire department we'd pay them based on what, number of fires put out? Anyone see a problem with that?

That's one of the reasons why an unchecked, purely for profit health care system is a bad thing. If you go to the doctor and he actully cures you-- well, he only gets paid for that one visit. But if he just makes you feel better for a certain amount of time and then you have to go back, well then you get billed for as long as the visits keep happening. If you take away the profit motivation then maybe you'll be treated the best way possible, not the best way possible for Business.

Also, Health Care will never be subject to true free market supply and demand for the same reason oil is not really part of the free market. Those are things we can't do without. If I can't fill my car up I can't get to and from work (I can't bike 12 miles in 110 degree weather for two months out of the year, sorry). If I need surgery, I need surgery. I can't get it from someone else because of the way the insurance industry is structured. That's not free market competition, and as such needs some sort of oversight to make sure we, the people, are not taken advantage of and thoroughly reamed in the interest of profit margins and shareholders.

At the end of the day I think I'd much rather live in a Socialist State than in a Corporatism, which is what we live in these days. Politics is all about money- you need it to get elected, you need it to stay elected- it's got very little to do with the will of the people because the will of the people can be bought. When you're able to sink millions of dollars into advertising campaigns and spreading lies (Death Panels? Seriously?), when you lie to the very people who elected you and get them to support a plan that's actually detrimental to them because of those lies, well we don't have Democracy any more.

So call me a Communist if you want. I don't mind, because you're wrong. Call me all the bad names you can think of- Liberal, Commie, Marxist, Fascist, Nazi, whatever you want. Just by calling me those things, doesn't mean that I am a brown shirt wearing, black shirt wearing, red shirt wearing enemy of the state. I'm for the state. I'm socialist!

Incidentally, see why Fascist equals Nazi equals Communist? The shirts clash. Unless you want to wear a rainbow shirt, and that makes you gay. At least nowadays that's more acceptable than being Socialist.

Unauthoristic

I wrote a fantastic blog yesterday. Early evening, just as the sun was going down, on the 31st floor of Palms Place on the balcony. It was full of gorgeous imagery and insight into some of what it means to be human. It even had a clever title. But somehow my phone didn't save it properly and it disappeared into that mysterious shadowy world of digital information. Can I recreate it exactly as it was? Not a chance. Can I get close? Probably, but it'll never be the exact same thing I wrote. I'm starting to think about editing the short stories I have written and hidden away. Or posted on google docs. But what do I keep, what do I change, and what do I throw my hands up in despair at? And how do you know what is more likely to get your stuff published?

Hopefully, I'll hear back from thefirstline.com in the next week or two. At least, I'll hear back from them, hopefully it'll be a favourable reaction. I'm not stressing about it at all, surprisingly enough. But if the answer comes back and they don't want to use my story, I'll start going through all the reason why they didn't want to use it. And the biggest question I'd have is would one of my other drafts have made it? Or was there never any hope?

Writing essays and papers for school, I almost never drafted them. I was pretty lucky, I suppose, that my first draft could be turned in a lot of the time. It's also why I was never more than a B grade student-- because I didn't put in the effort to get the A. I didn't think it was worth it. I still don't. But in retrospect it would have been good practice for now, for getting right something that is important to me. I hope I haven't just convinced myself that writing is important to me because I don't know what else to do with my life. . .arriving at the realization you want to do something else with your life at 28 can shake anyone up a little, send you scrambling for ideas and plans that might not be the best thought out.

It IS important to me. I'm sure of it. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, exhausted from a weekend of entertaining (and being entertained by) friends from University down here for a 30th birthday celebration. I should be sleeping right now, getting ready for my monday-tuesday weekend and all the things I need to get done. Instead, I'm lying here typing, hoping my laptop doesn't set fire to my bed, because I haven't done enough writing in the past week and it's gnawing at me. Yes, the stranger than usual work schedule didn't help matters, but I have to stop making excuses like that. Looking at my handy dandy word count spreadsheet for this month. It's very sad. I'm aiming to try and write 5000 words a week, and this past week I was nowhere near that. Blogging counts is a crappy cop-out way (it is writing, even if it's somewhat lacking in substance and sellability), and maybe by admitting online I've been unauthoristic this week it'll guilt me into achieving marvels the next few days.

Not much chance of that, guilt never worked on me when my teachers and parents tried it. But wish me luck this next week, maybe I'll have something worth reading. Or at least something worth editing.

Oh, and a quick mention about an idea for a screenplay I had a week or so ago. Could be good. Could be very sellable, we shall see. . .Because I don't have enough bloody things on the go already, right?

Addiction.

I always claim that I have an addictive personality. That's why I never took up smoking, or drugs or anything like that cos I'd get addicted pretty quickly. And I still stand by the claim, even if it isn't true. I'm really good at excuses, I can usually come up with any number of them for any situation, and that's what calling myself an addictive personality started out as. Hey man, you wanna smoke? Nah, if I get into it I'll never stop because I've got an addictive personality. Hell, that's what I tell people about my tongue ring- I got it cos I have an oral fixation and I'd be a 2-pack a day smoker if I didn't have it. It's got absolutely nothing to do with oral sex. But maybe I've started to convince myself that I am that sort of person. I find myself doing things over and over, almost like I am an addict, can't get enough, can stop any time but don't want to right now thank you so very much. There's this bloody stupid game on the iPhone, Undead Live, and I keep playing it even though it's completely asinine and you don't actually do anything in it. I think about signing up for World of Warcraft again, even though I got to level 80 and a lot of it is repetitive (they call parts of the game grinding, for crying out loud). I like to have a drink most days, doesn't really matter what it is as long as it isn't Jim Beam or Jose Cuervo (bad experiences when younger).

And now I'm finding myself thinking about going to the gym a lot.

Strange? Yeah, I thought so too. But two weeks ago I started going three times a week (and I still can't see a change, what the hell?). Last time I went this regularly was two years ago exactly, and it stopped when I went on holiday to Germany for Dad's 60th and a beer/wine festival. Got back, had put on weight from all the good food and good booze. Instead of being encouraged to go back to the gym, I got depressed that I was back here and not still over there, and started (re: continued, only more so) drinking.

But that was then and this is not then. For the first week I tried going after work, which was when I had been going before. Didn't like it, cos I'm finding myself waking up earlier and earlier right now, and that sucks if you don't get out of the gym until 115am. Last week I went before work and that was much better-- I was waking up anyway, and instead of reading the latest cracked.com lists if I got out of bed and went to the gym then I could actually get things done before I went to work.

So my days are thursday, saturday, and monday (my monday, wendesday and friday). this week however, we're dark so I have a fucked up work schedule. I had tuesday off (normal), worked today (wednesday) at 7am (definitely not normal), tomorrow at 8am, friday at noon, saturday off, sunday 4 til midnight, monday tuesday off, wednesday 9am, thursday back to normal. How am I supposed to stick to a routine still in its infancy? Do I go to the gym tonight, even though it's not my day to go? Do I go tomorrow after work? Or do I try to go before work cos that's the routine I'm trying to develop, even tho it'll be five hours earlier if I do that?

The answer is, I'm probably going to get up and go before work. That means I'll be getting up around 5am, a time I'm much more likely to go to bed at. But it's only one day, I reckon I can do it. Why not go after work? I hear you ask. Well, remember that whole thing about addiction? Now I have two addictions almost competing for my attention. If I get up early and go to the gym before work, then I can go from work and catch Yardhouse Happy Hour tomorrow night, where the beer's cheaped and select appetisers are half off. . .

Sad? Or just the way life is?

Probably shouldn't write about this, cos it's a tad embarrassing. . .but that's the problem, should I be embarrassed about it? I am referring to online dating. Which is really a misnomer. It's online meeting, hopefully the dating happens face to face. But I filled out a profile on Match.com a couple months ago, turned off all email notifications, and promptly forgot about it. Hey, I was drunk and I'd been having a bad day.

Fast forward to five days ago. I remembered about the match.com thing, tried to log on, couldn't remember my password or user name so had to have them email me all that info. THEN, I logged on, finished my profile, uploaded a couple pictures, and actually paid for the service. Okay, so I was drunk again and having another bad day.

(one day I'm going to be able to give up drinking. I won't actually give it up, cos I enjoy it, I just won't need to drink.)

So far I've had 30 people look at my profile, one wink (which is like a non-committal hello, talk to me; the wink didn't actually look at my profile tho. How does that work?), I've had one interested in me (that I'm not interested in), and I've saved 8 that I'm interested in. Oh, and I've seen profiles for three women I know, two of whom I kinda maybe hooked up with. . .not through match.com but that I actually met and know by other means.

And that's as far as I can go. The biggest problem is do I actually want a relationship? I'm pretty set in my ways, I can be a miserable bastard and hard to get on with at times, and I don't always put out. Hell, not sure if I really believe in concepts like 'true love,' or 'soul mates' (besides, I sold my soul to Cirque years ago), and half the profiles online go on about things like that.

So my problem is twofold. First, I don't know what I want, so how am I supposed to find it. Second, I have to admit I feel like a bit of a sad twat paying for an online dating service. But then how does one meet people these days? Statistically our circles of friends are getting smaller. Church attendance and other community events at which people would meet are also decreasing. Ten years ago I already spent more time online than a lot of my friends- I had one of those geocities websites and messed around with it, but like most things I never put in enough time and effort to get good at it. I don't go to the movies, or watch tv, or read newspapers, or buy porn, I do all of that online. (and I don't want to hear any complaining about 'TMI.' I don't really think there's any such thing. If someone tells me they have an embarrassing rash, I don't squeal and go 'eww, gross, TMI,' I nod and finally understand that the reason they can't sit still has nothing to do with the sandpaper-lined underwear I assumed they were wearing). I spend my time on facebook keeping up with friends, on twitter pretending everyone gives a shit about what I'm doing. I online bank, online shop, online write, online pretty much everything. If the internet has become such an integral part of my life, then why do I feel a little sad and desperate to use it to meet people?

And who's to say if I knew what I wanted I still wouldn't be able to meet people in real life? Even tho I've got those profiles marked as 'interested,' I'm still not winking or emailing them. It's a bit like being in a bar, seeing someone you might like to get to know better, and not going over to them. In fact, it's exactly like that. But at least in the bar you can order food and a drink-- at home I have to get it for myself.

Maybe I haven't got to the 'know thyself' part yet. I'm on the 'know what thyself is not,' plan, which sort of works, but it means I need people to keep suggesting things to me so I can agree or not. Maybe if everyone pitches in I can arrive at some sort of consensus at to what it is I'm not quite looking for yet.

Rough Week

for my writing. Really haven't done much to talk about-- haven't even been blogging.

Well, that's not true. I've started a couple but not wanted to post 'em. They've been half-finished, badly thought out, just not worth reading. And it's been the same with my other stuff. Since finishing and submitting 'Back to Bed' Friday last, my head's been all over the place again, not just cos I wrote something I was really happy with and so rested on my laurels.

I just feel like work is getting in the way of everything right now. . .writing, travelling, private life, I feel like everything's affected because work puts me in a bad mood nine times out of ten. So how much is too much? At what point do I need to say I'm done, and move on for my own sanity? Unfortunately, thanks to my current financial situation there's not much option of change right now, and might not be for a while if things continue the way they've been going with the economy.

Maybe I'll just up and leave, go work in a bar in Germany for several months, write in my time off, learn to sprechen sie Deutsh properly. Or I could be down with Alsace, Provence, Prague, Florence, Budapest, any number of places really.

Am I the only one, or does everyone go through this at a certain point in their lives? Are we so much more aware of the world than previous generations have been that we feel more restless? Personally, I blame my parents. They lived in Germany for five years, then had no problems upping and leaving England and moving first to Baton Rouge, then Eugene. Maybe if they hadn't instilled this sense of wanderlust in me I'd be quite happily settling down, making a go at a family, white picket fence and all that bollocks.

Should I be grateful for the experiences I've had, or pissed because it's made me want more? Do I need, at some point in my life, to say I've had enough and it's someone else's turn? I'm sure I do, but as far as I'm concerned it'll be the day the bloody life support machine gets turned off.

'Til the beep switches to the solid tone, I'm gonna push through, get some shit wrote, and see what I can do to having more experiences, and not let work get in the way of life. . .

Done!

Submitted. I submitted it. Now the next month is going to suck waiting to find out whether it's good enough to make it. Really don't know anything about the publication except for what's on the website, but I'm thinking about submitting for the next one as well, got until 1st November for that one. Can't believe I just emailed it off today even though I had until 1st August. Maybe that's what growing up is, the ability to turn things in before deadline? Now, all I have to do is ignore that I have a piece out there, and focus on getting some of the others up and ready to go. Beauty's coming along, on chapter 2 of Atlantis, and even thinking about revisiting some of the others.

And woke up this morning thinking about another one. Might give it a go, see what I can come up with today.

Oh, the one I submited was called Back to Bed.

First go.

I found out about a quarterly publication called The First Line, that gives you the first line and then lets you go from there. It has to be between 300 and 3000 words, and the fall issue needs submissions by 1st August. I'm going to submit something. I found out about the contest on Monday, wrote a first draft on Monday. Got a friend to look over it, see if it works as a story (there's a few reasons I only talked to him about it, and they'll become apparent later on, depending on what happens to this story). He suggested a couple of changes, some of which I used and some I didn't. Second draft I finished around 430am Wednesday morning after a great night, and the almost final draft I finished this morning.

It's a little like being back in school. I have an assignment and a deadline. The only differences are I've chosen to do this assignment, and I'm ready well before the deadline. And I suppose I care more about this than most of the stuff I did in school. I turned in papers on Freud, Tolstoy, McEwan, Shakespeare, and a tonne of others, and all they were to me was assignments that had to be done to get a grade so I could move on with my life. This is much the same, but I feel that by actually submitting something with the possibility of getting published, I'm no longer going to be talking about just writing. I'm not going just for a grade, but recognition that I can write and should write.

Now, if I don't get into the publication, is that going to disappoint me? Of course, but I'll just have to do what I did in high school. I'll keep going with what I'm doing, and see if anyone else likes it (like the AP english examiners did). If I do get in, then I'll frame the cheque along with the one I got for being background in Race To Witch Mountain, and I'll be able to add author to my list of jobs. And I'll try not to be too cocky.

And I'll tell you about my great Tuesday sometime. Probably.

Sharks

So it's been two weeks since I got back from the Bahamas. Two weeks of proudly showing off the video of Adam and myself diving with sharks. I need to get it on YouTube, cos I think it's pretty damned cool. Two weeks, and we're already talking about our next dive trip. Maybe Roatan and one of the live-aboard or dive package trips. Maybe the Galapagos. I'd love to see the scalloped hammerhead sharks schools. We're also talking about getting a group together, maybe ten people or something. Anyone interested?

So for the first couple of days I was completely on a high from the trip. And a little jetlagged, don't know why I find the east coast harder than I do England to readjust from, but I do. But just to have been diving again! To be lucky enough to see the hammerhead shark on our very first dive; to glide through the water as though I was flying over the wrecks used in two James Bond films; to kneel in a circle like sacrificial victims while some bloke wearing chain mail fed chunks of fish to sharks and got them to swim right up to us. It's definitely one of the most incredible trips I've had, and one of the most amazing things I've ever done.

But the problem is that now I've done it. I want to do it again. I want to do it lots and lots.

I've loved diving since before I started it. Snorkelling in Hawai'i with turtles, that's what made me want to dive. And hence the turtle round me neck, and the 'I saw a Turtle' T-shirt that everyone always comments on. Learning to dive in St. Thomas back in 2003 was one of the things that got me through my last ship contract. Once I was under the water it didn't matter how crappy my day had been, because suddenly everything was better. Even the one or two times I've had pressure problems and only been able to stay very shallow, just floating under the surface is great. So now all I can think about is diving. Adam didn't help matters because the whole time we're down ther he's saying 'If I was you I'd be here right now, you have nothing keeping you in Vegas.' And I really don't. I mean, I have some great friends, but I'll always stay in touch and I'll make more. I have the house, but being upside down in a mortgage almost $100,000, ir really makes you lose interest in paying the bloody thing. So why AM I stil here? I can't seem to focus on anything properly right now. I don't really want to hang out with people, or go to the movies, or write, or work out. The flip side of this is I'm actually trying harder- pushing myself to write, managing a couple thousand words a week which isn't too bad. I went to the gym for the first time i a year or two, and I'm still hanging out with people. But there's something in the back of my mind, looking out, whispering to me just beyond the edge of my hearing. If I could hear what the voice was saying, maybe I'd be able to focus properly and be able to follow through with something. . .something like a blog that was supposed to be about something else but then I got distracted. . .

More kids

Disclaimer: I'm not knocking having children. And as I said a few weeks ago, I've never had the option of starting a family. Is it bad when you have to add disclaimers to your blogs on a regular basis?

'tis the season for sprogging, apparently. One of my best mates from uni welcomed his first, a daughter, into the world Thursday last. Paul, bloke I work with, had a son yesterday morning. Adam's kid'll be here in four or five weeks. And this means a couple of things. One, that they all shagged around the same time. Two, the human race will probably keep going for a little while. Three, there's a chance that they are the reincarnations of Ed Mcmahon, Farah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson.

Again, I have nothing against having kids. Sometimes I hope for my own someday. And maybe when I do I'll understand this. . .but I really don't get why couples who have just had a kid are 'proud parents.' They've just managed to do what people have been doing for quite a while. Maybe one day I'll eat these words, and I'd have no problem with that.

I can understand full of love, amazed, overjoyed, at peace with the world, or fascinated at the birth of one's kid, but proud? All that's happened is some crying, quite a bit of excretion, and some sleeping. Are parents proud of themselves at having brought this new life in to the world? Because, to be a bastard, if Octomom can do it I think anyone can.

I think the time to be proud is when the kid's grown up and become a decent person. If you manage to raise a kid nowadays with all the instant gratification, sense of entitlement, media, and other people's bad parenting that abounds, then you have every right to be proud.

Organization

I got back Thursday around noon, it's now Saturday night and I've barely said anything here about our Caribbean trip. I will, I'm just trying to organize my head right now.Cos that's what I have the hardest time with, I'd say. Organization in general, not just the confines of my own head. I get everything done somehow, but not in the simplest way just cos I can't seem to get my arse organized. But it seems like these days our lives are getting more and more complicated. There's so much clutter that goes along with everything we do that it can get a bit overwhelming sometimes. If I want to clean off my desk to plug in to the hard drives, then I have to clean out this drawer to put away the photo paper and extra USB cords, but then I have to work out where the other, non-computer paper should go, and pretty soon I'm reading an article about properties of different crystals I haven't been able to find for a year, my bed's become a storage unit, and I still didn't get to edit that video. If I actually make it far enough that I can plug in, then I have to work out which of the three hard drives the file I'm looking for is on, so I decide to try and sort those out, and next thing you know I'm finding old resumes and half built websites, crap I haven't touched for a while and don't need any more but will end up changing or deleting, just to find a different version (or, more usually, the exact same thing) on a different drive. I could go on. But my point is everything seems to have so much more. . .crap. . .to go along with it these days that it can get a little overwhelming to even start. Deleting emails, organizing files, going through your iTunes library and deleting the stuff you apparently illegally ripped from CDs you owned when you were in high school- why is it computers, those marvellous things that were supposed to make our lives easier, just seem to add to the clutter? And now my brain is just like a computer, in that I have to get the bloody thing organized before starting anything, and then I get distracted by what I find in there. I want to write about travelling and diving with sharks, so I sit to think about that. And then I start thinking about all sorts of other crap, like how to travel full time, be a travel writer, what trips I should try to do, how to leave Las Vegas, making new friends in a new place, not making friends in a new place, keeping in touch with people, missing out on their families, mission out on my own family, having my own family, could I do with a shag? And while the time in Nassau hasn't been forgotten, it's been put off. My head is like a hard drive that needs to be defragged, which is strange considering I'm an (almost) apple fanboy. I'm just going to have to learn to live with distraction I guess, and still get everything done, sussed, worked out, planned, defragged, and get on with all my grandiose plans and work on attaining all the goals I'm settin-ooooh, shinies!

Home

Sitting in the Nassau airport writing this, but it'll have to wait on getting posted til I get home, cos despite the insistance of my phone that there's a dunkin donuts wi-fi network, it won't let me online.It's been a good trip. Really good. I finally proved to myself I didn't crack my skull open when I fell out of Ian's car in Denver (I was worried for a while cos I had some issues equalizing last time I went diving). Saw my first hammerhead shark, dove with reef sharks, dove around the never say never again and thunderball wrecks, saw my first cruise ship with its new (to me) paintjob, spent a day in Paradise, had a traffic accident, had a conversation with a bloke who looked like he had that skin thing where you change colour, got eaten alive by mozzies, a little bit sunburned on my nose, spent money, and saw my life flash before my eyes as the cab driver got us to the airport in record time. Even got a bit of writing done. A page or two, but every little bit helps.

Good trip. Roatan next year, anyone?

Hammerhead

First day of diving was today. And gods did it feel good to get back in the water. It didn't feel so good getting up tho. We landed around 11 yesterday, to the hotel by noon, enjoying the bar's honour system by noon thirty. Twelve hours later we'd run out of space to put the check marks for each beer we'd drunk, so headed to bed. Barely slept.

But we made it to the bus and the dive shop, 'stuart cove's.' Made it out on the boat. Our first dive was a spot called lambert wall, part of a drop off for the third deepest ocean trench on the planet. We didn't go down the whole trench, six thousand feet is a little beyond my dive rating. But we were at about eighty feet, ready to head back up the walk, when I saw Adam hold his hand up on his head like a sad attempt at a mohawk and point frantically into the deep water. Looked where he was pointing to see a Hammerhead shark about thirty feet away. As soon as we started looking and pointing at it, with a turn and a couple flicks of its tail it was gone.

Now, this is the second shark I've seen in the ocean while diving, but the first one was in the distance swimming away from us. To see a hammerhead that close, to see the speed, power and grace is incredible. It was only a few seconds, but it'll last forever in my mind.

After that, diving at the wreck used in a James Bond film was cool, but not as monumental.

Sitting in the bar now at the hotel, trading stories with a sixty-three year old Swiss bloke who's been divorced four times, an American on the island to be a pilot for one of the smaller airlines, and a Scotsman who is travelling the world diving after his wife died a few years ago.

This is what makes life.

Do not read

So when you blog, it's because you want to share something with the world, right? Whether the world gives a shit or not, you write it so it's out there and then post it on your chosen site. Well, part of my blogging is to help me work out shit in my head, and I just tried writing without posting and it didn't help. And I'm going to be a bitch by posting this with a password still not helping, I'm going to bed.

Anticipa. . .

I know I've used that as a title before, but that was in the MySpace days so it doesn't count. Or maybe one day I'll actually transfer all of 'em to here and actually get rid of MySpace seeing as I haven't used it in over a year. The problem with that, though, is I'll probably realize as I'm doing it how depressingly repetitive I can be. But that's not what I'm here about right now. I'm sure at some point in the near future I'll be at home, have a few too many drinks, and start crying online about my 'sues and hangups and blah blah blah. But right now, I want to talk about being giddy with anticipation about diving in a few days, and I think the ability to be excited about something is funamental to being a human being. Now, what you get excited about is fundamental to being a well-adjusted human being.

When this posts,  Adam and I are flying to Nassau, the Bahamas, to spend four days diving and switching off for a while. And I don't think I've been this excited about anything since my trip to Oz in November 2006. That's not to say I haven't been excited since then, just not to this level. Well, maybe the Germany trip in August 2007. But see, that's the thing I've noticed. There's something about travel that just gets me worked up more than anything else. I'm not one to get excited about movies coming out, or visits by celebrities, but travel really does it for me.

I don't even mind the airport or the plane part of travel, although the older I get the less patient I am with other people. I'm ready to go through the security checkpoint, why the bloody hell aren't you? Yes, you do have to take your shoes off, it's been like that for years. Oh, it beeped because of the change in your pocket? Well imagine that. 'Swhy I travel in flip flops and without a belt, it's just easier to deal with.

So yeah, I'm going to be in the Bahamas for the next couple of days. Probably no blogging, cos I'll be busy.

Self-diagnosis

The internet is a blessing and a curse. And I just used it to either save my dive trip or completely fuck it up. Woke up yesterday with a toothache. Enough to go see my dentist. They got me in, took a look, told me I needed a root canal which is what I figured would happen- my teeth don't go bad by half, it's all or nothing with the bastards. When I told them I'm going on a dive trip in a few days they said they'd give me antibiotics and do it next week when I get back.

Fair enough, except that prescription drugs scare the crap out of me. Well, over the counters are pretty ominous to me too. They gave me a scrip for an antibiotic and a painkiller, got them filled out, and haven't opened the packet. Spent the night not sleeping, partly cos of the pain and partly cos of worrying about the trip.

So of course I went online. Found a great website that has a discussion forum about diving and medical issues, and on just about every post I could find about it they said get the root canal done asap, just make sure there's no airspace left. . .not sure how they go about doing that, but I'm going to find out today at 3pm. So either the internet just gave me good advice and there'll be no problems on my trip, or I'm going to get down to 50 feet and my tooth's going to explode, flying out of my skull and taking out a passing cod, which in its death throes will turn the water pink with blood, attracting every shark in the vicinity.

Okay, now I'm just being silly. You don't get cod in the Caribbean.

But the internet is both a blessing (because it allows so much access to so much information) and a curse (because it allows so much access to so much information). Usually I'm not one to be a hypochondriac, but I'm going on this dive trip instead of getting a therapist so I'm extra paranoid that something's going to stop me diving and then I'll have even more issues. If it all works out I promise to do my best to not be a smug git and go around boasting about it (although I do reserve the right to tell everyone about how awesome it is and encourage them to do trips of their own). If it doesn't work out, then it's probably you buggers who'll have to sit and listen to me complaining about it in the bar for about a year.

Kids

Went to a baby shower BBQ yesterday. It was actually really good to get out in a public park in Las Vegas and just chill with a group of friends, drinking wine and eating Russian pork kebabs. It was something you almost never do here cos it's either to bloody hot, windy, or crappy out, or you don't have access to Russian pork kebabs. Being there with a group of friends, half of whom have kids already, in anticipation of one of them having his first child, seems a little wierd when you're a single, 29 year old bloke. It almost felt like those of us without kids were saying goodbye to him, and those with sprogs are getting ready to welcome him into their fold. So much of interacting with other people is comparing yourself to them- not in a bad way, but trading stories and experiences, finding common ground, living though other peoples memories of an event with them- that at times like that it seems the world is divided up into two parts. There's the part that has kids, and the rest of us.

In about six weeks Adam's going to be able to talk to all the other parents about the birth of his kid, the experience of holding the little bugger for the first time, and all that other mushy stuff that comes along. The rest of us will be able to stand around listening, but not really understanding because we haven't been through it. I don't begrudge him any of this. In fact far from it, I think the world needs more smart people breeding. And I can understand the desie to have kids. . .sort of, in my own wierd fucked up way.

Disclaimer: Bear in mind I'm writing all this as someone who's never been married, or even close, and kids have basically never even been an option. I've had the dubious luxury of being selfish for far too long, and that's why seeing friends who have kids always brings up mixed emotions for me. I have no way of fathoming what it's like to see it begin to form in utero, to hold your own child in your arms, and see it grow from a ball of unpleasant sounds and smells into someone who can wipe their own arse. Do I want that? The jury's still out on that one. I'll go through phases where it seems like a great idea, and times when it's the worst idea in the world. Another one of me running around being all cynical and drunk with a mid-atlantic accent? Yeah, the world needs that.

Maybe that's what growing up is. It's not reaching a 'milestone birthday' like 16, 18, 21, 25, 30, 40, etc. It's not buying a house, or voting in your first election, or getting married. It's being ready to have kids, giving up the right to be selfish in the interest of someone else. And I do mean being ready to have kids, deciding that it's something both you and your partner want and will enter into completely. Knocking up some chick you met online doesn't count as being ready for kids. I'm definitely not ready for kids, but maybe I can see the possiblilty of being ready for the buggers one day.

Until then, I'm going to hold off growing up.

Motivation Pt. II

Ahh, retail therapy. It really does work wonders. Even more so when you can actually use whatever it is you buy. Most of the time I'll be out running errands and decide I need a nice wooden bowl carved out of a tree stump, or a hookah, or seasons 1 through 4 of Blackadder on DVD. But yesterday was retail therapy with a purpose. I had to be up at the crack of dawn (about 9am) for a Las Vegas community theatre get together, which was rough to say the least. But as I was up, and as the meeting was finished with time for me to go back home before headed to work, I stopped off in Office Depot and bought myself a white board.

'A white board?' I hear you say. 'Why yes,' I reply. 'A big fricking white board, 3'x4', and about an hour ago I hung it on my wall, removing the Pirelli calendar pictures I had up there- it's not porn, it's art cos it's black and white and pirelli and monica bellucci. The Nelson Mandela quote is still up there.

Now there's a big damn white board staring down at me. I've just written up the summary of me novel, and started keeping track of characters, their ages and other timelines within the story, and now I don't have to go back leafing through 23-odd pages of scribble to try and remember what Tomar's girlfriend is called, or who originally came from which country. Not that any of that is set in stone, and the chances are I'll decide I don't like he sound of some of the names and change them, but it's easier now to remember who I'm talking about. Or probably would be if I was actually writing instead of writing about writing. But that's today from 12-2. Now I've got a big bloody piece of motivation hung on me wall, and I'm not sure there are any excuses left for me to use. I may well have exhausted my near-endless supply of them.

Nah, I just think at this point it's easier to write than to keep excusing myself.

Motivation

If I knew how to get this, I'd be done by now. It comes and goes, but there's almost no rhyme or reason behind it. I'd describe myself as generally motivated, with a side order of wherewithal, a dash of laziness, and a garnish made up of procrastination. And the problem is I'm the sort of bugger who always eats the garnish.

You should, you know. It's generally there for a reason. Parsley is used as a garnish because it helps to freshen breath, so chew it after the meal. But anyway, today I tried to set aside some time to write, and it didn't really work very well. I did no writing. I was online and I read several interesting articles, a couple of funny ones, took care of some Producer stuff for BNTA, and then the two hours were up and I had to head in to work. I accomplished a couple of things I had to get done, but why is it I keep putting off what I really want to be doing? And why is the internet so full of shinies that keep distracting me?

I'm thinking about maybe doing another Primm weekend. Or maybe not in Primm this time, but somewhere that isn't so devoid of distraction. That was the problem with Primm- I may have managed to churn out 18 pages, but do you have any idea how much time I spent playing with the stupid games on my iPhone, or looking out the window, or wondering around Willaims Sonoma (they had a sale on)? I think I'd do much better going all the way to the coast and trying it there. On the coast I'd be able to take a break from the writing, maybe go for a romantic walk along the beach as the sun goes down. . .it counts, I'd be walking with my most frequent lover. . .I could even do it on the beach!

I mean write. You people.

Anyway, the less there is to distract it seems the more able I am to distract myself with completely pointless stuff. Hell, I could be writing right now instead of trying to come up with more ways to joke about masturbation. Hey, get it? Come up with?

Sorry.

ANYWAY, the point is, as of now I'm really going to make a concerted effort to do everything I keep talking about, all the things I know I should do but keep putting off. I'm going to edit my short stories, maybe even excerpt them here if anyone's interested. I'm going to keep plugging away at this whole bloody novel thing. I'm not going to get sucked in to the cracked.com lists, or what other stupid thing Limbaugh said today. I've got a book called The Freelance Writer's Bible, and it's got some really helpful advice in it. I was reading it earlier, and it talks about setting aside time to write as one of the most important things you can do. And suddenly I was motivated. I actually put down the book and started writing, got a page knocked out in not much time at all. So thats going to be the new me. Promise. Watch this space, I'll let you know how it goes.

And so it begins

The week, I mean. At least my week. And I can't decide whether the sound of multiple sirens a couple of blocks away is a bad way to start it. . .I am awake an hour earlier than I had intended. Not that it's easy to anticipate something like waking up, but I know for a fact I don't get enough sleep so when I'm lying here in bed, looking at a clock that's an hour earlier than I was expecting to see it, it does kind of annoy. Well, considering I woke cos of the sound of sirens I guess I'm lucky that my arse isn't on fire, I'm not having a medical emergency, or the cops aren't carting me off to prison for some heinous crime like running naked through a fast food drive through and stealing a bunch of food (this actually happened. . .not to me, but it was on one of those odd news websites). I can lie here and put my thoughts in order for the week, think about what I'm going to accomplish, what I should accomplish but probably won't get to, and. . .remember all the things I was supposed to do this weekend and haven't done yet. Bugger. If you'll excuse me, I should go take care of some stuff.

When it rains. . .

I don't like to write about work. Or rather, I'd love to be able to write about work, because there's so much goes on that is definitely worthy of bloggage. But there's only so much you can talk about before you piss someone off and divulge too much, so I find it easier to just not bother.But this week has been special, and deserves a mention. It was pretty shitty. And when I say pretty, I mean very. First, in case you don't know, I run automation for the Cirque Du Soleil show LOVE. It's the Beatles one. Automation is basically all the moving parts of the theatre- stage lifts, flying lines, curtains, etc. We've got a hundred and twenty-something moving parts, and I get to play with them all. Well, without going into detail, I'll just say the automation department couldn't catch a break. We had a rough week. How rough? Almost rough enough for me to give up drinking. When it can make someone who doesn't drink think about taking it up, and someone who didn't make it home this morning from the bar before the sun came up think about stopping, it's been rough. Why would you automatically assume that I'm talking about me getting home from the bar at that time of day? I'm not, I'm talking about Matt, one of our sound guys. Okay, fine, I was drinking with him. But in my defense, it's solstice time so the days are at their longest right now. And if I get out of the bar at 5:15 in the morning, that's like you leaving it at 10:45pm. See? Not so bad from that perspective. Not as bad as this week's been. Well, the work week is over now, and I'm not yet giving up drinking. I'm headed to the bar right now. But it's weeks like this that all I want is the original crutch, the original coping mechanism. . . A hug from me Mum.