Sad Excuses for my Absenteeism.

Oh dear blog, how I have missed you. I’m sorry that I have been away for so long. I am not mad at you and I did not forget about you.

The truth is that I just haven’t been feeling zesty and zany enough for you lately. I have just been sort of emotionally exhausted as of late. So I have turned somewhat inward. I have been reading a lot and I have been doing a lot of research for the story that I’m working on.

The book I’m reading right now is called “Drood” by Dan Simmons and it is a novel that seems to be about how Charles Dickens went all crazy during the last years of his life. It is dark and very interesting so far. Strangely, as I’m reading it, I keep picturing my Dad as Charles Dickens. That’s weird, right? My father doesn’t really look much like Dickens and as far as I know there isn’t any Freudian significance to this. I have gone as far as to google image Charles Dickens just so I have a better idea of what he looked like, but it still doesn’t seem to be helping. I have to say that, thus far, my emotional experience with the novel is probably far removed from what the author had hoped for.

Otherwise, I have been on a financial adventure.

You see, I have worked out this beautiful little personal budget in Excel. It is simple and elegant and reasonable. I gave myself January and February to cram my life into it, but alas, some things went haywire and I couldn’t do it. So I christened March “No Money-Spending March” so that I could get a better handle on everything and be perfectly on budget by the beginning of April. This has been interesting and I encourage everyone to give this sort of thing a try because it really does give you a clear idea of what you spend money on and what you don’t. See, if you limit yourself to purchasing the bare essentials required to get through life, you start to realize how much you normally spend money on that which is frivolous. And in doing so, you develop a profile of yourself as a person and as a consumer.

For instance, in this month of austerity I have spent exactly as much on fishing supplies as I normally do, which is to say, absolutely nothing. Ergo: I am not a fisherman or fishing enthusiast. If it was ever unclear before, I now know that about myself.

However, I have had to curb my purchasing of books and cool clothes from the Goodwill. Which means that I like owning books and cool clothes that were previously worn by strangers who are probably now dead.

Also, I have stopped myself several times from buying weird food at Trader Joe’s. Instead, I have been raiding the freezer and actually eating the weird food that I had previously purchased from Trader Joe’s. This tells me that I - like so many others - am afflicted with what psychiatrists call “Trader Joe’s Blindness”. The shrinks say that when confronted with all the strange and delightful stuff that Trader Joe’s sells, we often forget our own eating habits and purchase odd and obscure types of fish or couscous that we would normally never consider consuming. For instance, why did I previously buy two different kinds of eggplant parmesan lasagna when I have always preferred regular lasagna? I have no good answer except for the “Trader Joe’s Blindness” which caused me to become schizophrenically separated from my awareness of my own eating habits.

I should also mention about “No Money-Spending March” this is not an endeavor that I am setting off on because I am necessarily broke, but rather, because I am trying to bring some kind of budgetary order to my life. I have spent a lot of life being very broke and I am not that way right now (I don’t have a bathtub full of razor sharp $100 bills either though) but I’ve gotten to the age when not having any real savings is embarrassing. So I figure I should get to work on that.

That is pretty much it for me lately. Just feeling sort of introverted, confusing my father with 19th century novelists and not spending any money.

Maybe my life has been too lame lately to be blogging about.

Though that has never stopped me before …


BTW, here is a pic of my Dad




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Workplace Haiku! For You!

So I have been on a haiku kick today. This is unfortunate for all of us because I am so very, very bad at haiku (its 5 – 7 – 5, right?).

But sometimes I’m at work and I just get struck by the desire to write some embarrassing workplace haiku.

Here is some:


I work with Excel
and move numbers a lot.
So I can pay rent.


A spreadsheet is made
of lots of little white cells
and I am in one.


I drink cold coffee
and work quietly all day
and dream of quitting.


I will get a job
on a ship or herding sheep
anyplace but here.


But it’s not that bad.
The AC is nice and cool.
and my chair is good.


I try not to bitch.
Keep my nose to the grindstone,
but I’ve ground it off.


But back to Excel,
it’s waiting expectantly
for me to work more.


Back to work I go,
high ho, high ho. Tomorrow
I should call in sick!


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Plans and Maybe some Yoga.

Oh dear blog. I have been driving myself nuts lately contemplating the future. Or rather: THE FUTURE!

And I don’t just mean hover boards and meal pills that taste like an entire Thanksgiving dinner. No. I mean my own future (sadly I do not see myself owning a hover board any time soon).

As you well know, I am a failure at life and school, as I was recently rejected from some of the best writing programs in the country. This has left me wondering what I am going to do with myself when I graduate in May. Thus far I have come up with the brief outlines of a plan. I will discuss this plan with you now.

First! I will keep writing. I have been writing my whole life and almost none of it was for school. I am going to get back to a place where I write for the joy of doing it.

So that being said, here is what I am going to do:

I have a play to finish. It is a cute and charming play and I like it very much and have not gone near it in ages because I have been in short-fiction mode since I went back to school. And believe it or not, the LA theatre scene can be broken into.

I have a half-written screenplay to finish. It is kind of about Jesus and it is also kind of funny and I think I can finish it really fast if I can dedicate a couple of weeks to it. Also, I need to have a script in the hopper because the final edit of 'Strange Angel' is almost done. We hope to finally sent it out to the festivals!

Also, I have a 130,000 word novel that really needs some editing and some tender loving care. I think that if I can get it cleaned up then I can send it out to agents.

Also, I have a half-written novel that I adore but just haven’t had the time to go back to because it is kind of complicated to write. It is basically a love story and I think that I have kept them apart for too long!

Also, I have enough short work to put a collection together, so I’m contemplating going to a print-on-demand publisher and trying to self-promote. I know, that doesn’t sound dignified, but everybody seems to be saying that it’s the way publishing is going to work now. I’m tempted to try it out, if only because it’s an area where nothing is set in stone yet, there is no clear path. It’s all “new media” wild west. I find that intriguing.

Also, I have a bunch of short work laying around and I haven’t really been submitting it out to the world, so I need to get myself a new Writer’s Market book and get my work out there.

But before I get to any of that, I think that I need to re-train myself as a writer. Not a student of writing. I think that as soon as I’m done with this semester I’m going to start work on ONE PROJECT. Just one! I think that I’m going to work on a short novel. Something that will let me purge all of this pretentious writerly crap I have been learning the last two years. I need a project that I can write on every day. Something that lets me stretch the way that writing for workshops can’t. I need to get in the habit of sitting in front of a keyboard everyday.

Oh! That also means that I will be writing to you more, my dear blog. So get ready for more of my life (such as it is). I have not really been a life-blogger up to this point, but what the hell. I have to start doing more then posting links, right?
And that’s just the writing.

There actually is real life stuff to figure out too. Violet and I are contemplating moving to a different part of LA when our lease is up in a few months. We live in Santa Clarita (which isn’t really even LA) and it is nice and easy in a yuppie suburb kind of way, but we are thinking that we can get a cheaper rent if we move south, out of this Starbucks Stepford. And I really do want to live in a place. I would love to be able to walk to dinner or to the grocery store. I would love to be able to walk to the corner and buy a paper. I don’t know if that is practical, but there are some places in LA where it is possible. So who knows, this may turn out to be an interesting year.

No matter what happens I think that I will apply to grad school again in the Fall. I need to put together a different kind of list this time. I need to worry less about the funding (it hurts me just to type that) and more about what will be best for me. I need to worry less about reputation and more about aesthetic.

In other news, I am considering taking up yoga. Yes, yoga. I’ve been on overdrive for three years (working and getting myself educated). I was thinking about the numbers the other day and I average about 36 hours of work a week (that includes my time on the weekends), 12 hours in class each week, 8 hours driving (about 45 minutes each way for school) and (on a good week) about 6 – 10 hours of school work at home. So I think that maybe some yoga would help me down-shift. And maybe I will even be able to detox off these god damn energy drinks.

So dear blog, those are my plans, as far as I have been able to conceive of them so far. It is possible that I’m loading myself up with a lot of expectations because I’m terrified of the possibility of stillness, but hey maybe I should get a therapist. I will add that to the list!

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You got a problem?

I’m so excited! Right now I am downloading a new driver so that my scanner will work and then I can start scanning stuff for you to read on my blog! All my doodles and pictures and drawings and scribbles and stuff!

My life is very eventful and awesome!

(Look it was a really stressful day today, alright? Sometimes a guy just wants to have a beer and blog about the software he is downloading. You got a problem with that?)

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