My Old Blog

Slowly, and as promised, I will finish writing about/transferring from my journal the story of my trip to Peru.

Today I finished Day 2 of the Inca Trail and it struck me as I read back through everything I’d written how little of the trip I actually wrote about (if that makes any sense).

Writing itself can become a chore even though I enjoy it. The best writing is done as something happens, or very shortly after. While I was there, very shortly after one event I didn’t have the occasion to write about it because the next one was already starting.

Anyway, I will finish eventually and add some pictures too.

I really feel like I have arrived in the digital era. I have my first cyber stalker, and I must say I kind of like it.

It is the modern day equivalent of the prank call, or sticking notes in someone’s locker in junior high.

Someone is posting on my website that someone knows stuff about me yet claims to have never met me. Although on that front if He/She/They is clever enough they may just be guessing.

He/She/They has also written me several emails from two different addresses. The person is posting from Altanta, so he/she/they isn’t telling the whole truth about something.

I think the truth is overrated anyway. I’ll take a pleasant lie on most days.

I could reproduce all the correspondence here and get votes on who everyone thinks it is or make guesses about what kind of person he/she/they is, but I think I’ll wait. I usually don’t talk about real life on this website….just crap that comes to mind that may occasionally cross paths with or resemble reality.

It makes me think of my profile on Friendster under the “Who I Want to Meet” section:

My honest, heartfelt answer: “A massage therapist/independently wealthy hottie who makes me feel all mushy inside, likes my friends, enjoys exotic locales and doesn’t eat like a bird, but never gets fat.”

I do have a way with words. Hehehehe.

I never considered myself stable enough to settle down. Now I think I was just never settled down enough to be stable.

I don’t really mean that I was ever un-stable…in the depressive, manic sort of way. I just always sort of admired the oppressive similarity of most people’s lives as something that I would not be able to bear….because I thought myself unable to hold up the routine, to be responsible to BE a certain way all the time.

That is my instability…a meandering internal state that does not allow me to commit to BEING anything on a schedule. I am famous for bouts of antisocialism, misanthropy, drunkeness, melancholy, lethargy, self-absorption and a bunch of other quasi-states of mind that I thought made it impossible for me to ever commit to anything longish term…….because in the short term I can hide/put off these moods….but eventually I get derailed and lose the will to get out of bed in the morning.

That is for me the rub of work and the rat race….always having to BE something. I don’t mind having to be someWHERE, or having to DO some things…even on a schedule. What I don’t like is having to BE a certain person when I am on this schedule.

When I am at work I have to be formal, polite, charming, insightful, and thorough. Let’s say after that I go catch a drink with some friends after work. Then I have to be friendly, funny, entertaining, and positive.

That’s pretty much your whole day. And lets face it…most of the time I feel a lot closer to disaffected, tired, cynical, and apathetic than to any of that other stuff.

I know I don’t have to have dinner with friends after work. I could sit at home by myself….but then I’d suddenly wonder why I’m at home by myself when I could be out somewhere doing something with someone.

So how am I fairing these days with all that? Pretty good actually. What I’ve found is that stability/normality is not something you ARE which then enables you to do other things (like hold down a job). Stability is something that is enabled by doing other things (like holding down a job).

Boring people do not have boring lives. Boring lives breed boring people. By participating in a life of routine, it evens me out more or less.

That being said, I remember a conversation a few years ago where I made the point that a great question to ask yourself when you make a big decision is: What kind of person will this make me become? Do I want to be that person?

Events shape us in ways that we cannot control. If I work in corpo-world everyday, I will eventually become them. If I hang out with deadbeat travelers all the time, I will eventually become that too. If I organize, follow-up and forecast at work….I will eventually start to do it in my private life too.

Anyway, I have to make a decision about some stuff in the next couple of weeks, and I was laughing at myself today because I was trying to predict what I would decide knowing me.

It is surprisingly hard.

I’ve complained/discussed time management a lot on this website…sometimes constructively, sometimes just complaining or venting, but I’ve always said something.

Now it seems I can’t even find the time to complain about my lack of time….that is sort of sad. I can definitely say where my time is going though:

1) I have a roommate and I spend some amount of time shooting the shit with him by default. I used to spend that time in my apartment talking to myself….which would often end up on the website.

2) There is now a Playstation 2 always readily accessible. For those of you who didn’t know me during my years as a video game god…man did I waste/enjoy hours and hours and hours and hours of gaming bliss.

Many of you remember well the days of NHL 94. But there were also other games. Please forgive me for not naming them all….there wouldn’t ever be time to cover them…ever. I’ll tell you about two though, since I know you’re all interested 😉

1) Baseball Super Stars: This was a game for the first Nintendo console where the more you played the more skills you could give you players. Every game has that feature now….but that was the first game I ever remember that could remember what you did last time and save your player’s statuses.

I spent endless time (probably hundreds of hours) powering up my players but I never remember playing a real game against another person. Hundreds of hours, and never really played a game. That is the absolute height of waste and pleasure.

2) Civilization: This was the very first version played on my dad’s first laptop, a Pentium 150. You started with one villager and built a farm, then a village, then a city, then an army, then you crushed all of your enemies…..that is the part I really liked.

You went from wooden tools all the way to inventing space travel…which is how you won the game, not when you made peace with your fellow man, but when you built a space ship to get away from them before they destroyed you. Not a very inspiring story, but it was awful fun.

I remember one night I had been playing it for hours and hours, and then everyone went to bed and I kept playing…..then I remember still playing and all of the sudden the sun was coming up and I snuck off to bed because it was time for dad to wake up to go to work. I remember feeling embarrassed.

I thought it funny and pathetic. I had been playing for over 12 hours straight….sitting in that one spot hunched over that little computer watching stick figures crawl around the screen. I’m out of my mind.

I remember during the days of NHL 94 in college when I lived at Sloan Street this guy I lived with (Ryan Peitch) couldn’t beat me at hockey and he got so frustrated with it that he quit playing the game and started playing NBA Live 95. He played it for weeks…a whole season against the computer and one day I came home from skipping class and mentioned that I used to play a similar game with Josh in High School when it was called Lakers vs. Celtics.

He laughed it off and said he would crush me, so I agreed to play. I actually thought he would win. I hadn’t played in years. I remember watching him out of the corner of my eye…..he was getting angry….really angry, like when you’re so mad you’re trying to hide that you’re mad so as to keep your cool. He quietly lost and put the game away…forever.

The reason I remember it so well is that I think it damaged our friendship. I don’t think he liked me so well after that. In fact, if I were to ever see him again…..I think I would ask him about it.

Anyone know where Peaches is these days? I’m sorry Peaches…..I didn’t mean to beat you at NBA Live 95!!! It was all luck. I’m sure you would’ve won in a rematch.

So to make a long story short, Josh keeps asking me to buy an XBOX and I’ve always put him off because I knew if I bought it I would play all the time…I was right. I’d throw that freaking Playstation out the window if I could.

Josh, care to tell a story about Techmo Bowl?

My old Chevy is not a gas conscious car. I think I can safely say the only cars on the road that get less mileage than mine are….well, I can’t think of any. I am sure it is only single digits around town. It is a gigantic, heavy car with a gurgling, ineffective V8.

Gas is getting high too….about $2.25 cents a gallon here in Atlanta. I would say something like “I remember the ol’ days when gas was less than a buck a gallon” but those weren’t the old days. That was just a few years ago. Didn’t we win the war with Iraq anyway?

So I’m almost always on empty. It takes too damn long for the tank to fill up. Like the car and the engine, the tank is big. It holds just over 20 gallons I think. I get impatient at the pump waiting for it to click off so I put just enough in to get me through the next few days…when I’m right back at the pump thinking the same thing.

Today I was dead empty and for kicks decided to see how much it would cost to fill ‘er up. Just over 50 dollars. I cost me fucking 50 dollars to put a tank of gas in my car. I remember when I had the Volkswagon Scirocco back in the day it cost about $12. I still can’t believe it.

Shit is expensive these days. That’s all there is to it. Real wages (actual wages adjusted for inflation) have been dropping for more than two decades for all but the highest income brackets. The logical conclusion of all that is that one day things will become too expensive for everyone but those in the highest income brackets. I think that day has just come.

So what does any of that have to do with the price of tea in China??? Not a damn thing…..unless you’ve got to drive there to get it. The Chinese all have bicycles anyway.