Here I was, working from home, just finishing lunch, figuring out my tasks for the rest of the day...

{ thunk }

Startled by the loud noise of something hitting my bedroom window, I turn to see nothing but a few residual feathers, floating lazily outside. That was a bird with some serious myopia going on.

Someone I hadn't talked with a while – an ex – emailed me today, asking me if I was OK. I told her I was. She read the last few entries here and wondered if I was in the process of slinging my belt over a shower curtain rod, or watching Bringing Out the Dead to brush up on the finer points of wrist-slitting.

Which surprised me. Because I didn't think anyone read my weblog. Thanks, I'll be here all week, try the veal.

Seriously: all things considered, I'm all right. My professional life is going great guns. My personal life is in a rut (which is status quo). My artistic life is showing signs of revival. I've just been venting my spleen is all.

I telecommute two days a week. Some days I don't know whether to be glad I'm out of the eye of the occupational storm and not on the road to the office 26 miles away, or to wish I weren't hermetically sealed at home from sunrise to sunset. Today felt like the latter.

Seems like a lifelong thing that I leave discipline wanting. Dissolution sucks. Having potential and still being dissolute is the shits. Pardon my longing pangs of artistic inspiration.

Hell, it's not just artistic stuff – writing, acting, etc. – it's also vocational stuff. There are so many thick books lying on my shelf and left half-read: Perl, CGI, Visual Basic, ASP, PHP, MySQL. My latest endeavor is to get better acquainted with Java. I know I have the aptitude to handle these languages. It's just a repeating cycle that I can't follow through. Ugh. I get in these ruts, and somehow I just sabotage myself. Is there a Sisyphean complex? If so, consider me duly afflicted. If not, let's just call a spade a spade; I'm your garden variety spoiled punk.

I understand the importance of willing to power, of the Eastern dogma that says the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. I just wish I could flip that fucking switch. And I know that involves not thinking so hard, and not fearing so much, and not building a high impregnable wall of tasks to complete in my head.

And I know that what I'm doing right now is a lot of fun. And that it keeps that 1000+ -page Java book on the bed, dormant, next to the two other books on my to-read list.

And that thinking about this is giving me quite the headache. Time to extract my head from my navel. G'night.

Snapshots of my Monday:

Went to take my 98th test drive in the last 4 weeks. A Toyota Highlander – nice midsized SUV, but a little too gargantuan for me in size and price. So I talk to the salesman and ask to test drive. He goes to the showroom to get the keys. I try to hand him my license for him to copy – a de rigeur thing for their security – but he demurrs. Then he comes back out, hands me the keys, and says, "Have fun!" So I did, all the while quizzical as to why he let me take a solo spin in a piece of merchandise with an MSRP of $33,000. I asked as much when I turned the keys back to him, and he said, "You don't exactly fit the profile of a car thief. I didn't think you were a scumbag." I laughed out loud, told him I appreciated the compliment, and went to lunch. It was somewhat monumental, getting my faith in mankind, and vice versa, reaffirmed by a car salesman. Not even Vonnegut could write such a twisted tale.

I cruised into San Francisco for my weekly acting class, classic Johnny Cash blaring on the CD. For all the work I'm enjoying in the class, I still haven't spoken much to the other people there. Sometimes I just feel socially autistic. How can I be near 30 and still shy, having nothing to say, feeling like I labor to connect on the most basic levels? I like my classmates; it just makes me sad that for some reason I haven't made friends. It's not different from the umpteen other acting classes I've taken – and all the other social situations I've been in where I felt like I was dying slowly on the inside – but still disheartening.

I jetted back over the bridge listening to the dissonant electric gutbucket music of R.L. Burnside, stopping to grab a godly late dinner – Double Meat and a vanilla shake from In-N-Out.

And now it's time for me to power down and break up the one-man pity party.

A humble suggestion: put wack jobs on the fucking Amtrak and not on airplanes.

Dammit, man, how many times do I have to tell you? No pot brownies until after school!