I gotta take off work early and do a house walk-through before they start sheetrocking.
Missus Construction Project Boss can't make it. Her caseload's too heavy.

Sheesh. I hope I don't miss any details.
I know SHE wouldn't!

I'm supposed to be moving.
In less than three weeks.
Which is freaking me out.

Not enough to inspire me to PACK anything, mind you.

But enough to freak out otherwise.

don't trust what you can't see.
i'll miss who i thought she was.

i slept 14 hours and ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner today (tea and cinnamon toast, organic peanut butter and jam sandwich on oatmeal bread, homemade chicken noodle soup).

ugh, i'm almost normal. how awful. i went and played in some snow. watched kids slid down the huge drifts. came home and read.



reading has made up a huge part of who i am. my mom used to drop me off at the library and i would be there all day, from noon until eight (it was either there or @ the lawson aquatic center) ... i would take out 31 books a week (the limit), and haul them all home. i would read them all (some of them multiple times), and repeat the process. for years.

i picked books out based on what their cover design was. i still do the same thing now.

i spent about two hours today re-organizing all my books. i have two small bookcases, one of them wasn't being used previously, it was in my bedroom because the wood it was made of didn't match anything. i moved it into my dining room area and filled it with books i've borrowed from aja on the top, metaphysical books on the second shelf (christ i have a shelf of metaphysical books, someone please kill me), and textbooks on the bottom.

i've gained 34 books since i've moved.

my trip to australia has been rescheduled due to horrifyingly bad weather circumstances (on both ends). i'm playing around with the idea of going to chicago monday morning. but i have a bit of a bad feeling about the endeavor. i'll decide tomorrow.

best christmas of my life last night. my life's pulled a total 180 and i don't think it'd even be possible for me to be happier at the moment.

wonder if the rain will detour shoppers on this gray and wet boxing day afternoon.

...as they played the BEST commercial EVAH.

Poll #1503415 The X-Mas movie Poll
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22

So which of these would you rather watch all day?

since my drive through iowa, an odd quiet has settled inside of me. it doesn't vex me to not know quite what it is. it's the feeling a very specific kind of cultivated detachment.


for once in my life, i am without any kind of Great Plan. when i was 12 and the overall circumstances of my life changed greatly, the need for a Plan of Action was a fundamental driving force in everything i did. when going out to the mall became a clandestine operation out of need, it colours every other thing you may want to do.

evenings out with friends become spectacles and flurries of phone calls. going to a job interview evolved into perfect timing and analyzed perfunctory statements, painstakingly chosen for maximum effect. moving was not just a new experience but some kind of destiny -- like an explorer has. to discover uncharted territory and make maps and diagrams to put everything in it's place. visiting online friends became entire summer-long debacles, averaging in $3000 worth of libations and noise violations from the city.


i usually knew what i was working toward in the immediate end. usually i was working within such strict confines that i had very little to decide. i could only manipulate variables, not change the course. the end of that era was a conversation lyle and i had in wisconsin, where we both realized that we had choices to make, but none of the options were bad. it wasn't shitty option 1 or shitty option 2.

now, with more choices in front of me than ever before due to the circumstances i am in (i'm talented, i'm single, i'm insane, i'm impulsive, i'm resourceful, i'm employed), i am also completely paralyzed. i had a conversation with someone about how responsibility (something i have shirked with great skill for the past decade) ultimately frees you to do more things.


but what the hell do i want to do?

i honestly think that one of the many reasons i'm jealous of college students is the structure. you choose a goal, and there is a path laid out for you. you can skip along the path however you like, but there's still confines that hold you to what you need to accomplish.


as the midwest turns to white noise, the carefully constructed detachment in me is being solidified.


in 20 minutes, i'm going to completely re-arrange my small universe @ 1201 e street and try and figure out what i'm going to do from here, because i don't like this sense of quiet in me. it's not relaxing, it's apathetic.

sometimes i forget how much i love my apartment, and living alone, because i don't tend to be here a lot.

sometimes i get home from work and read for 7 hours and get confused as to where all the time went.


sometimes i methodically go over all of the information i've picked up in a day. i was told this is one of the contributing factors of my not being able to sleep. not so. it actually relaxes my brain. i go through all of the components of language i've noticed in a day. i mentally scroll through diagrams, infographs, and internally composed photos i've partially digested. i recite articles read, code learned, solutions figured out, and realizations. strengthening the physical pathways in my mind, retrieving the information to make it stick. i'll try and name all the countries i can think of. i shuffle an idealized rack of scrabble tiles and analyze how my brain can't present just one solution. instead, it tries to formulate them all at once. a rush of feeling. all this against the backdrop of all the music & all the conversations i've heard in the last 12 hours.




most of the the time though, i just feel incredibly stupid and ill-equipped.

What a day.
What a day to be the acting supervisor.

I'm about this far from writing myself a leave slip to take the rest of the week off.
'Xcept I'm bossing, so I kinda can't cuz, oh never mind.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.



it is solstice. i was thinking about how exactly to celebrate such an odd thing. being technically without any kind of cemented belief, but also knowing that this day made a lot of sense to me as being important kind of confused me.

i didn't want to do anything with anyone else.

i didn't want to cook a huge dinner. i didn't want to do any kind of ritual or specific meditation. so this morning when i woke up i decided to just go with what felt right.

i stuck a garnet in my pocket and walked to work.

a weird afternoon spent sitting in the alley behind the office gained me insight into how i wanted to spend my evening. i left work early and did the following:

a) downloaded broken social scene's entire discography
b) made a cup of tea
c) started reading the last bit of the first harry dresden novel (reading about magic on solstice? MY GOD)
d) lit bunches of 3 candles all over my apartment (as you do)
e) turned on 'feel good lost'
f) began to drink heavily


i forsee a very long bath and then some meditation in my immediate future. life is good. be grateful. be not so fearful, friends. much love.


#legion: "How can I convince you it's me I don't like? I'm bound by these choices, so hard to make, but none of it is real." A message from Windows to Taut, just before the reinstall.

Things that Make Me Happy-Giggle

1) THIS ARTICLE in which somebody's FINALLY starting to 'get' Brett Favre. That he's all about Brett Favre. And very little else.

I. Cain't. STAND. Him.

And it's about TIME people took him off his self-prescribed pedestal.

I haven't been online much cuz I'm acting supervisor right now.
It was initially going to last a couple days, but now I'm It for the week.

Things have been flying about in every known direction.

More later.
I think.

Brenda's gone to work.
On A SUNDAY.

This is our day to sleep in (or not) and she's out in the Minnesota countryside driving around in the snow so she won't have to perform her therapy minutes on Christmas Day instead.


Actually, I'm supposed to be at work, too.
Yeah.

I should honestly be grateful.
After all, this will let me get a (little) caught up and it's not as if they AREN'T paying me time-and-a-half.

But BLAH.

Caught up in the superficial, maybe that's a good place to be. We think too much about the metaphysical, but we won't get it-- we're too naïve. I focus too much on things I won't understand, I can't comprehend… If I'm happy now, I can find a way to ruin it. Pessimistic and full of doubt-- maybe it's just habit. Every thought seems to lead back to this, I guess that's only natural. It's easy to say that there's no truth, when we give so many attributes. But if I could drop these preconceptions, get past my bias-- I'd still swear that there's hope, though it gets trampled down. There is so much good that gets taken out. Enough hopelessness, we got here somehow.

project one is live. project two goes live on solstice (predictably). i had an interesting disagreement with the owner of project two. that probably doesn't bode well.

i drank too much at the party and then went to the bar, and decided to tell him he's a dick for not thanking me for any of the work i did.

whoops. definitely did not go well.

a lot of variables in my life right now are very hard to pin down. i have about 6 large concerns hovering outside my grasp, and all i can do is wait for them to settle in. best not to focus on what i can't do.

the dissent at work continues. i do a lot of sympathetic nodding these days. my attention is so divided right now, i don't bother trying to figure it out. i'd make a joke about turbulent times, but that seems distasteful, considering the associations with the phrase. hah hah.

i haven't seen my family in almost a year.

i did honestly think having a full time job and being 'responsible' would somehow slow my life down. some people used to tell me that my expectations of living were unreasonable because i didn't work 40 hours a week. that you can't work full-time and still, essentially, poverty jet set.

no, apparently i was correct in my assumption that those people were just, indeed, boring. and that's fine. but not what i want.

just having come back from crazy circumstances in chicago, working 20 hours a week on the side on freelance projects, traveling all over the goddamn place, and running the city ragged with Rocksteady, i can confidently say that it has nothing to do with 'not having the time', and just comes down to laziness or apathy.

i will never stop being amazed by the world. by people. by math and geometry and physics and matter and rocks and plants. i'll never get bored of music. i'll never stop taking photos. reading will always be a huge focus in my life. my vocabulary will continue to grow weirder and i can't wait. i'll never take the train ride to chicago for granted. i'll never stop loving dekalb. madison. minneapolis. i'll never stop loving ryan or jake or any other number of people who i supposedly shouldn't.

a house, a new episode of the daily show, and a successful pasta dish coming out of the oven is not enough to placate me.

i can definitely appreciate those things. but it'll never be enough. and i'm very happy with that. it's one of those things that i need to remember. if i feel bored or listless, it's all on me.

oh also, at the second work christmas party, the white elephant i got was a cassette tape collection of 'the power of persuasion'. ... hilarious.

man, i can't freakin' wait for the next episode of jersey shore