November 14, 2004

Running to Stand Still

The degree to which I am being pulled in multiple directions is currently at a level that I haven’t experienced since college… and a search of this website on the term “anti college” will quickly explain how much I enjoyed the stress of those years. Honestly, I feel like I am being atomized by my existence, forced to split my molecular structure at the sub-atomic level just to make sure that I have everything covered.

I mean, it’s exciting. There’s so much to do and a lot of the stuff is reasonably stimulating, but at the same time I only have so many particles, and I am only able to do so much.

Something somewhere has to give to make room for all this stuff. My room is a mess of unfinished projects, and is a fine reflection of my mental state. My Halloween costume is sitting in a box, waiting to be folded nicely and stowed away. I haven’t completely unpacked from my San Francisco trip, even less from Hood River this weekend. I shattered the LCD screen on my new digital camera the last time I was in Hood River, and I sold my old camera to my roommate, so I currently have no photographical outlet. My new camera is in pieces on my night stand, and half the screws that would put it back together are lost in the carpet.

If I process photographs in the late evening I don’t have time to write in the late evening. If I write I don’t have time to read. My latest reading materials include php programming, database management, economic/social/moral/political philosophy and small business management, though I’m making little progress on any of them. Julee said that she’s had a lot of success in reading graphic novels, and I think that would probably be a really good idea.

My to-do lists conflate such reasonable goals as “pay car insurance” and “buy notebooks” with unreasonable requests like “climb highest point in 50 states” and “rule humanity.” I know that these lists are counterproductive and merely contribute to my frustration, but I am so bored with the mediocre and ordinary that I am unable to filter out the difference between short-term goals and life-long dreams. It would appear that the only projects I’ve managed to finish lately are all these bottles of Black Butte Porter.


You need a super sweet, 19 year old Swedish personal assistant to follow you everywhere. Kind of like a maid but not really–fix cameras, clean rooms, drive, read to you, give extended back rubs and comb your hair. I used to have one. His name was Fritz.
I live in the Bay Area and BART is considered a joke. A huge money pit.
Where is the life you have lost living?

Heh. My room finally got cleaned up, but alas no Fritz came to my aid.
Which is probably just as well, because when I think of people associated with the name “Fritz” I typically think of the character from the ill-fated 90’s computer game Braindead 13. I think Fritz looked like a giant purple bat or something, with hooks for hands and lots of knives and chainsaws hanging from his cape.
I have faith that the life will return soon enough. I get cranky when the days get short, but it typically works out.

“My” Fritz was tall, rotund, Italian hairy, with a sultry voice and very, very flirty. Bummed me out hugely. I thought I was getting the sweet, sexy, firm and flirty Swedish girl I saw in the ad.
Life doesn’t work out Dane. We adjust to its outcomes.

Heh. Perhaps life really is just one big Fritz after another, and our best defense is to just step back and laugh at the whole dang thing.
…or move to Sweden…

Funny Dane. A friend of mine just got back from Europe after buying his car in Sweden. He said that as you move south of Sweden, people get uglier and uglier. Not sure if this is true. I just wish life could be Swedish magazines.
Anti-Fritz
Ron

Eh. Whatever. It’s nice to see some action in the comments, seeing as how most of my readers make less noise than a dead horse trampoline.