Competition

Many years ago, before I had grey in my hair or groans in my bones, I went to University. I learned a tonne of stuff that I promptly forgot, and loads more stuff that I half remember and still hesitantly quote from time to time.​ And a smattering of things that, if reincarnation happens, I'll probably get reborn knowing. 

But one thing I never really learned was how to be competitive. I mean, winning is great and all, but in the top three was usually good enough for me. Maybe the top five. Top ten depending on how many people were there.​

The link between University and competitiveness has to do with beer. And two stories. ​

I went to Salzburg, Austria, for my sophomore year to (slightly) study and (mostly) travel. The first story is to do with a party we had, where we decided it would be a good idea to drink half-litres of beer as quickly as we could. Now, I was the smallest of the guys doing this (hard to imagine now, I know, but I'm slowly kicking adult-onset diabetes' arse. Or at least gently and unstrenuously ​pushing it around). I was also the youngest, by about six months, which meant because I was from the UK I'd been drinking about five years longer than most of the people there. So I could drink. I had, however, only recently developed a taste for beer. Anyway, I digress. We had the beers, we popped the tops, and I finished mine first. That upset one or two of the guys, who demanded a rematch, because they couldn't believe this shortarse youngster from poncy England could beat them. And I knew I couldn't do it again so I told them. They insisted. I explained that it wasn't that I couldn't drink beer fast, but that I was going to puke cos putting that much fluid in my stomach at once would lead to a disaster. They insisted, and I proved them and myself right. So competing not fun.

Fast forward a year. Back in the US, the Salzburg groups would have a "keg off."​ The older group bought two kegs, invited everyone from both groups around to a house, and had a race to see who could kill the keg first. So the drinkers were all excited about this prospect, because no young year had beaten the old year in the history of the Salzburg keg off, and we thought we had a shot. Then the beer started pouring, theirs was clear as only American beer can be, and ours was dark and foamy. And I remember one guy from our group being about as pissed as I've ever seen someone about losing a competition they were preordained to lose. Comments along the lines of "It's bullshit," and "It's not fair," echo through the years.

But the year after that, we were the old Salzburgers. IT was our turn to get the keg, and guess who was at the forefront of the move to get the thickest heaviest beer possible, and roll the keg on the way? The same guy who bitched about them doing it to him the year before. Hurrah for competitiveness. ​

So the whole point of this meandering, misty-eyed look back, is actually the Clipper Race. People keep asking me what you get if you win the race. And you know what? ​Never crossed my mind to ask. Don't care. Because when you finish something like that, the first thing I'll get is an amazing sense of accomplishment. I should be a pretty damned good sailor at the end of it. Memories. Stories. And isn't that enough? Why does there have to be something you 'get' if you win. Winning the race isn't why I'm doing it. Is that why half the people I know are doing marathons and triathlons and tough mutters? To win?

No, it's the sense of accomplishment. But for some reason when I say it's a boat race they immediately think of winning. I'm going to start asking them what they get if they win their triathlon.​

Although having said that, considering the whole race is made up of fifteen races, I'd love to get the yellow pennant on one of the fifteen.......​Or how about a Clipper Keg Off?

Stars

I've always been fascinated by the stars. I remember trying to learn some of the constellations when I was younger, and only got as far as the plough (the big dipper to you in the US) and Orion. I can usually find the North Star, and sometimes the Pleiades, but that's about it. IF pressed, I'll give any number of excuses, from I didn't have a telescope while growing up, to I moved to the US and the star patterns are different here, as to why I don't know more constellations. That's actually almost a valid excuse. The North Star, living in Vegas, is much closer to the horizon than it is in England. Everything shifts as you move further north or south.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped paying attention to the stars. I took them for granted. The bastards were always there, hanging in the night sky above me, so I didn't have to think about them much. I lost sight of them. I still appreciated them when I remembered to look up. I spent most of my time looking out, staying at my level. I lived in cities, on cruise ships, where ll the bright lights are within a couple degrees. I didn't have to crane my head back to look at different worlds, I could see them behind the twinkling in the distance when I looked out over the Willamette river, or on a different deck drifting above the inky black ocean, or as part of a cluster in the newest, shiniest, most-advertised hotel Vegas has to offer. Street, room, head, night lights became my stars, and I looked to them.

Well, fuck that. I miss looking up. I'm done looking at a hotel tower, room lights giving a poor impression of a close-up night sky. Having lived in Vegas for six years, I think I've come to know what to expect from the stories behind the lights, and not much of interests me any more. We've become a culture of instant gratification, of misplaced self-importance, and that's what each and and every one of those lights has become. When our VIPs have become people with handles rather than names, with no discernible skills other than making the rest of us worship/hate/envy/mimic/mock them, then what is the point in looking up at a building and wondering what the stories are behind the lights? They're all the same. It's a bunch of people who saw The Hangover, or Swingers, or any one of a thousand movies or shows about Las Vegas, and decided that they could reproduce that when they came here.

I don't want to spend my time looking at lights, and wondering the stories behind them, when I can give a pretty good guess about them. I want to have no chance to guess. I want the people behind the lights to be original, have dreams and aspirations and stories and pasts that I cannot begin to guess at. I'm done with clones, with media-inspired plebes. I want to be able to look at the lights of a city or cruise ship or collection of humanity and find intelligent life, rather than having to turn my gaze skywards and hope that somewhere out there it exists.

Because we're doing a damned good job of killing it down here. We need new role-models, new leaders, and new selves. We need to stop using other people's drama as entertainment, and go out there and let the world entertain us. If you stop to think for a moment, the stars up above have a much better sparkle than the ones we fixate on down here.

Editing

I was intending to put me book down for a couple of weeks, step back from it, take a break, before I started the edit. But yesterday I just... I just felt like doing it. I'm learning to actually listen to myself when I feel like doing something, so I picked up a pencil and started to read my own words. My gods does it need work. The prose is quite. . .to be polite to myself, quite clunky. It's the sort of book I'd discard as aeroplane reading- good enough to read in transit, but if you leave it in the seat pocket in front of you that's no great loss. This is going to take more than one edit. one thing I do seem to be getting the hang of, though, is cutting parts. I've always been told that as a writer you can get enamoured of sentences, dialogue, etc., and not want to cut them. I haven't found that to be the case yet. Two chapters in, and I'm doing battlefield surgery with my pencil.

Now, in m defense, and because I have to say something to convince myself it's not all bad, I think my writing progressed as I wrote. The first couple of chapters I was feeling my way, but it seemed to come much easier the further I got into the story. I haven't read the whole thing yet, so maybe I should read it all first and then make the changes, but the ending is so fresh (most of it was done last week, altho the last chapter was done in September) I don't feel like I need to read it just yet.

Either way, I suppose it's a good way to start the New Year. I was certainly happy, and I don't think I'm alone in this, to see the end of last year. 2009 was a. . .bizarre. . .year. So many ups and downs, most real but some perceived. I got a promotion without a raise, reached 5 years with Cirque/MGM, met some of the kids of my Salzburg group, ran up my credit card, went to a friend's wedding I never thought would get married, bought a new suit, had the worst hangover I've had in years- with my father-, went diving with sharks, wrote the first draft of a novel, churned out a couple of short stories, two short screenplays, started on two full-length screenplays, broke 100,000 miles with my car, fell in smitten, fell in smitten again (okay, so that was more or les a monthly occurrence), argued about politics and religion, argued about politics and religion again(okay, so that was more or less a daily occurrence), started to twitter, re-started to blog (and one day I might just transfer all the old ones over here. I feel dirty with them on MySpace). I'm sure I'm forgetting some things, but I leave it to you to work out which were the ups, which were the downs, and which were perceived to be either by me.

As to this year? I feel good about it. Despite not being able to stick to one of my resolutions for more than six minutes, and breaking a couple more a few hours later, it's going to be a good one. I've got to finish book one completely, I want to finish the first draft of book two, and the screenpl. . .you know what? This year is about finishing. I've always been good at starting things, so I'm going to work on seeing them through this year. Which is why I'm going to get up now, fix myself something to eat, and then sit down with my draft and keep slicing away at it.

Maybe this year I should work on editing my blogs before I post them too? Or at least re-reading them to see if I've made more of an arse out of myself as usual. . .

Taking Stock

Numbers from my Portland trip: Five thousand, two hundred and sixty-nine words written.

Thirty-one beers, two bottles of wine, and two jack and gingers drunk, and eleven new wines tasted

Twenty-one friends and two professors seen, and nine people met.

Four offspring introduced to.

Three hours spent in Powell's City of Books.

One Pub Quiz won.

And yet quantifying things like this doesn't really give the whole story behind a trip. For instance, some of the beers were drunk on my own, winding down, relaxing, while others were watching Joe, Eese's fiance, try to hula-hoop. The conversations, religious and political discussions, and memories dredged to the surface are the treasures I'm taking away from the trip. Meeting the kids of some of my best friends for the first time still hasn't sunk in, even though I've got pictures to prove that I didn't drop any of them. The ache in my legs that only feels like it's gone now, from a night of drunkenly wandering around Portland looking for another bar with Shannon-- that is one thing I'll miss about Vegas if and when I move away from here. There's always something open; a bar, a pub, a grocery store or supermarket if you need.

So taking stock in the trip, it was a good one. The numbers may speak for themselves, but not at any volume. That's where the details come in, the little incidents and trivialities that seem and are so minor, but all of them added up made it a good trip. A very good trip.

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.

Strange mood

This isn't the blog I was going to write, or probably should have written. The drafts for those are scattered between my laptop, a couple of computers at work, one thumb drive, and the digital graveyard. All those blogs I started but didn't finish, or saved because I meant to finish, and now never will because life got in the way. I'm happy. I have been for a couple of hours now, although for reasons I can't really explain. Went to the bar, had a few drinks, played some trivia, this has all happened before. But driving home after the bar, I decided that when I got home I was going to chill some Whiskey, and go for a walk. This I did. I got home, retrieved my backpack from the boot of my car, and went to the kitchen to chill some Whiskey. The single malt I had in mind was a 10-year-old Laiphroag, which was given to me for my birthday, and which I'd never had before but have decided it's one that I very much like. Decanted a tad into my flask, and went out the front door, which I seldom use because I come in through the garage most days.

I went for a walk because it was raining. Having lived in England, Louisiana, Oregon, Austria, Hawai'i, and the Caribbean, all those places have a fair amount of rain. Some are warm, some cold (guess which ones!?!), but I think all are refreshing to some extent or another. The rain in England is why it's green, and can support 55 million people living there. Louisiana, Hawai'i, and the Caribbean, the rain is warm and is much better than the humidity, because it's nice to be wet from something other than your sweat. Oregon is somewhere between the two; it can be warm, it can be cold, but it definitely rains there.

And now I live in Vegas. (Oh, by the way, I might go on for a while. I'm not busy, or in any hurry to go to bed, so I might sit here and type for a while. There, you've been warned.) Vegas is one of the last places I thought I would end up. And I shudder to use that phrase, cos I ain't dead yet so don't like to think of myself as having 'ended up here.' But I've been here for coming on to four years, and that's a long time for me to be anywhere. I'm a little antsy, to say the least. There are things I miss. I miss seeing those friends that at one point or another in my life I've taken for granted, and now they're not just a couple blocks away, ready to go out for drinks. I miss moving around, and having to see a new place and how I fit in to it. I miss being able to start fresh every few months, with at most four or five people who knew me before. I miss not having to drive home after going to the pub. This list could go on forever, but I'm going to grab another drink, back in a few. . .

So I poured myself another Whiskey, and I'm going to take the chance to correct my spelling from up above. I'm drinking Laphroaig. 10-year-old. Nectar. Anyway, where was I.

I miss the rain and the ocean. Vegas is the first place in my life that I don't get either on a regular basis. And when I do 'end up' somewhere, I'm going to need one or the other. I drink less water than anyone I know, I'm a prime candidate for dehydration, but I seem to have this need for water in my life. As long as I'm not drinking it or putting it in my Whiskey (I'm a one ice cube guy), I seem to love having water in my life. Walking in the rain tonight, deliberately neglecting to put on anything waterproof (including my shoes, as it turned out). I think the rain is one of the things I'm really going to miss when I die.

So let's make a list of things we're going to miss when we die. . .I'll go first (and these are in no particular order):

1. Rain on my face. in fact, rain in general whether it's on my face, a tent, windscreen, wherever. 2. My parents. Although I'll probably miss them before I die, cos I'm sure they've arranged things so that they won't have to be here after I'm gone. So my family as a whole, because I'll probably leave some of them behind, and I'm sorry for that, but hey, we had fun, right? 3. You guys. I'm going to be sorry that I won't be able to write anything that might make you smile, frown, or just bring a thought you might not have had were it not for reading some crap I'd written. And hey, we had fun, right? 4. The sound of the ocean. And the feel of the ocean. Whether it's fucking around in the surf, jumping in time with the waves and snotting out salt, being on a ship and feeling the whole thing move under you, or being a part of it, diving, there is something I find calming about the Ocean, even when it scares the shit out of me. 5. Sunrises and sunsets. 6. Dogs 7. I'm going to miss being able to close my eyes while listening to some pieces of music and just feel that things are better. And there's a couple on the album I'm listening to right now. 8. Alcohol. Be it Whiskey, Cider, Absinthe, Jager, Beer, or any of the others I have come to know and love in the past 17 years of imbibing. Mostly I'm going to miss the feeling that comes with having just enough but not quite too much. 9. Orgasms. Mine and other peoples. Mine, because at the end of the day it feels good to come. Other peoples, because if you're lucky enough to get to give someone else one, then you've delved that little bit deeper into their soul, you've both shared something of yourselves that you don't give out to everyone. And it feels good to come. 10. Smells. There are some fantastic smells in this world, from fresh-cut grass, to someone else's skin, to a wood fire, to a summer wood in the middle of the English countryside. 11. Tastes. See above. 12. Anger. Because it feels good to be angry. I'm going to miss being angry. Angry at nothing, at things that dont matter or mean anything, and anger at those world-changing issues that some people just don't seem to get. I know I shouldn't feel this way, but anger can feel good, and I'm going to miss the feeling that righteous anger can give. 13. I'm going to miss the feeling standing in the middle of a club, with a bit of a buzz, and just giving in to the music. To feel the music in every nerve, muscle, et cetera et cetera blah blah blah, insert body part here.

Thirteen seems like a good number to stop on. Promise there are more, but I'm not thinking of them right now. And after going back and looking at them to make sure I'm not repeating myself, I realized it might seem a bit morbid to list things I'm going to miss when I die. But the strange thing is, I'm not depressed or morbid when talking about things like this, I'm just matter of fact. I think that the short story I just wrote has something to do with it, cos it's sort of about death. Well, more about fear and selfishness, but death's a big part of those two things. But we've all got to go through with it, so why ignore it?

Well, I'm done with this for the night. But I'm not done writing for the night. Going to work on some other things I've been thinking about, might finish up in time for the sunrise; I just hope it's still raining, because two for one is always good.

The revolutions that change the world are the ones that happen inside of people's heads. I'm not sure if that is a quote, but it feels more true than ever right now. Peace out. And thanks for making it this far with me. . .