ruminations 2 Comments

Fire

Every time I see Dan, I am impressed by his motivation, his drive, to do more and be more and live life to the fullest. This time, though, it occurs to me that I have several friends and acquaintances with a similar drive. Every time I see you, you’re always excited about what you’re doing in life—otherwise, why would you be doing it, after all? You’re bubbling over, it seems, not just with untold stories, but with untold vibrance for your current passion.

Usually I can say, “You know who you are,” but in this case, I don’t think I can. I don’t think you can see yourselves this way, as a direct function of the selfless vibrancy you possess. But on the off-chance that you might know…

Where do you get your Fire?

When I was an adolescent and a teenager, and was a stolid churchgoer, I was told that the Light had to come from within—you couldn’t be like a wind-up toy, being motivated and then losing steam after a while. And that’s how I’ve always felt: some event motivates the shit out of me, be it a religious experience, a personal epiphany, a change of scenery, or energized companions—and after that, I feel the Fire. I devote all my free waking hours to The Cause… for a time. After a while, though, I lose my motivation.

Sometimes I think I’m too hard on myself, or that maybe I’m spreading myself too thin. There are so many things I’d love to devote so much time to: mellophone practice (OK, maybe not so much), candle-making, updating my various websites (including my horribly-neglected drumcorps alumni site), my houseplants, photography, not to mention exercising and taking some walks outside when the weather gets nice. But I can only be passionate about one or two of these things at a time, it seems, before all my oomph leaves me. The only thing I’ve managed to maintain for a long period of time is this diet I’ve been on for six months now, and that’s only because Aaron’s doing it, too, and it’s become almost second-nature to eat this way. (And because there’s nothing to cheat on in the house, which helps…)

So, what do I do? How do I get my Fire going without getting burnt out? I’ve wondered and tried for years, but it never quite happens. Any comments would be appreciated—except Aaron’s standard, “You’re overanalyzing things again…” 🙂

house, site-related

T-minus four days and counting

We have almost everything packed, the U-Haul is reserved, and Aaron’s picking up the key to the house on Friday. Time to let everybody know The Moving Day Schedule.

9:00am – Aaron picks up the U-Haul
9:30am – Moving commences as fellow movers arrive
after loading – Aaron and Diana take the crew out to lunch at Easystreet (our treat)
after lunch – Return to Grove Street and line up vehicles for the Schnuth Caravan up to Toledo
upon arrival – Unload at 4651 Ventura

Unfortunately, we’re not positive what time the whole operation will be over, but we’re guessing sometime in the mid- to late afternoon. So far, the moving crew looks like myself and Aaron, Kris Fries (and possibly his wife Kathy), Kris Heath, Mark Sheets, and Eric Fertel. Jason Garza may be making an appearance after lunch.

I’m kind of frustrated that I don’t have Dreamweaver for my Mac, and/or that I haven’t gotten myself a new power supply for the other computer yet. I have grand ideas for a slight redesign of “the details” page, but it would require that great search-and-replace function in Dreamweaver, so I wouldn’t have to open up every damn file in the whole site and see what styles everything was set at. For the web geeks: yes, I do have stylesheets set up, and yes, they are a linked file and not individually applied within the page. Yes, I will pretty much just be writing a new stylesheet and making new graphics. Still, though, I have become a creature of habit and I prefer my WYSIWYG program to hardcoding, despite the fact that I once prided myself on my ability to code HTML. (That was long before the days of Dreamweaver and its Adobe analog, however, back when WYSIWYG programs were awkward and clunky and required code-tweaking, anyway, to output properly.)

Anyway, as much as I enjoy my LiveJournal, I think I’m going to begin updating my actual page again, as soon as the PC is back up. I may keep the blog section on LJ, and just add updates to the page, though. I’m looking at, first, a new and cleaner design. Second, I’ll be updating long-unused sections, like the Reviews, Photos and Bio. Third, I’ll be adding new sections, like an Atkins Diet factsheet with reviews of low-carb foods and links to Schnuth-approved recipes.

All this… as soon as I get myself a new power supply.

randomness 1 Comment

I’m (kind of) a nerd…

42.857142857142854% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

How disappointing. I am a “well-balanced nerd.” I even knew all the answers to the LOTR and the Star Trek questions. Hell, I even knew the Dune questions and the Asimov questions! It was the D&D that got me, though, I think.

Now I’ve given away too much of the test, and you won’t be surprized when you read the nerdy questions. Ah, well.

…Hey, wasn’t I going to clean my desk?

anecdotes

Dan!

Yesterday evening, Dan stopped by on his way from Cincinnati to Ann Arbor. Very cool. I don’t know why, exactly, but Dan makes me smile. He’s just got that kind of personality, I guess, where he makes everything seem exciting and invigorating. I like Dan.

We ended up having dinner at Easystreet, where Michelle from Madhatter was our waitress. She was in rare form, too, and talked up a storm. Dan wasn’t sure what to think of her… Come to think of it, neither was I, at that point. Anyway, Dan and I spent quite a while just sitting and talking after dinner. Afterward, we took a short walk (short because it was so f*&%ing cold out), and then stopped into Grounds For Thought, but decided against getting anything after staring at the menu board for a couple of minutes. Dan really wanted to see our new house in Toledo, so I Mapquested directions to my own damn house (how pathetic is that?), and I navigated while he drove. The trip was a little anticlimactic, but at least he kind of knows where our house is now. When we got back to BG, we came home and fired up the computer again so Dan could show me the scooter he wants to buy off of eBay. We talked for a while after that, and ended up crashing at 11:30 or so, which is waaay past Dan’s bedtime. 🙂

At some point during the evening, we were discussing actions vs. intentions, and how important it is to follow through on your promises, to have integrity, especially as you get older and (supposedly, theoretically) more responsible. Of course, he was talking about someone else, not me, but that sort of follow-up is one thing I’ve always struggled with. It goes hand-in-hand with procrastination (which I’m doing right now by posting this entry). I always have the best intentions, but I end up finding different or more pleasant things to do, rather than what I know I should do.

So, today I proclaimed to Aaron over e-mail that I am going to begin cleaning and packing my desk area. Anyone who hasn’t been to my apartment, let me explain: my desk is a disaster area. I write notes on scraps of paper, or I work with genealogy documents, or I read mail and open bills, or get reference books from the bookshelf. These items I then stack neatly on my very small desk real-estate. And on the defunct scanner. And next to my mouse. And on top of my tower. And on top of my other tower. And on top of my file box. And on top of my printer. And on top of my other printer, sitting underneath the desk. And, well, it’s a bunch of crap that I don’t want to throw away, but don’t know what to do with. So, this is no small feat to clean and pack. But I have committed myself to at least beginning to tackle this monstrosity tonight, and tackle it I must.

So, off I go.

Really.

…Have I started yet?

—Oh, by the way, before I go: My high school buddy Melody got accepted to BGSU as a Vocal Performance major! Wheeee! Congratulations, Mel! Now we’re going to hang out again on a regular basis, for the first time in years and years… damn, almost ten years it’s been since we really got to spend much quality time together. This is going to be cool… for both of us.

OK, now I’m really going to clean and pack. Really.

ruminations

My Brain Hurts.

I have that weird feeling in my brain. The one that precludes either a stint of creative writing or a long intellectual conversation with Amy. I swear to God that I feel different in my brain when it feels like it wants to think. Aaron thinks I’m crazy.

Thing is, I don’t really have any pressing tales of fiction to tell, no poetry oozing from my fingers. I had contemplated busting out the Kay and strumming a few chords, but I don’t think that would do it for me. As for writing, I’m tired of writing simplistic me-disguised-as-hero stories. I’m also tired of reverting to my junior high days and writing soft porn (yes, ladeez and gents, Diana has a libido, frightening as that may be to you).

I wish I could be like Isaac Asimov (lofty, I know) and plunk out a decent short story in 20 minutes flat. Hell, I wish I could write a decent short story at all. —OK, maybe that one was pretty alright, but besides that… *shrug*

Maybe I just need to write more often, instead of maybe once every four months. Write fiction, I mean; I write in my LiveJournal (or, previously, my main blog) nearly every day. My eighth-grade English teacher once told me that, like a world-class athlete, a writer like me should practice every day.

…

Whoa. My intelligent train of thought was just completely derailed by Sir Mix-a-Lot making an appearance in my random mp3 playlist. My brain is now filled with images of a big black guy in shades dancing on a giant peach, surrounded by black chicks with much booty.