I'm Going Straight To Heaven
Recently I've started to put some money aside. Rainy day money to have just in case. I figured that maybe, just maybe, I could take one hundred dollars from each week's paycheck and put it aside. I used to do this a few years ago and it served me very well when I moved to Washington. Of course, that's back when I used to make a lot more money than I do now. One hundred dollars less a week is really straining my financial comfort level. But I hate the fact that every month, come rent time, my bank account is almost completely empty. It's like I have nothing to show for getting paid and creates a great feeling of insecurity. What if I suddenly had to travel somewhere or move? So I started up my own private savings account... and promptly spent the two hundred dollars I saved up.
I bought a laptop computer. I've really wanted one for some time now. Why? I'm not 100% sure. I've just wanted one. I've been cruising craigslist for a while looking for laptops under two hundred dollars and not been very lucky in finding one, or not being fast enough when I do spot a decent one. I finally got lucky and was quick enough to get a deal from the ultimate seller: the well-to-do businessman. Ah, the well-to-do businessman, the apex of business partners for ambitious call girls and bottom-feeding consumer scavengers like myself. Apparently this man had half a dozen laptops and was just clearing out the clutter. This one was $175. Nothing too powerful, but in good shape and packed with a few extras. I met the businessman at a Krispy Kreme. This was the first time that I'd ever been inside a Krispy Kreme. I've never actually seen a Krispy Kreme except from a distance when I was in New York City. I bought a donut and took a paper hat. When I got back home I ate the donut while wearing the paper hat. Maybe they make those things for kids, because it didn't fit. Maybe I have a big head.
Funny thing about walking home from the Krispy Kreme, which was near the Seattle sports stadiums; the things that littered the ground could immediately tell me where I was. Along the stadium district I saw fliers for sports-related things, like events and beer. Walking through the business part of downtown I saw a pile of assorted business cards that seemed to have been dumped, perhaps accidentally. One of them kind of made me mad. It had a cube for a logo. Excuse me? A fucking cube? That's your logo? How can anyone do business with a company that uses a cube for its logo? I think that even if I ran a company that made cubes I'd come up with a better logo than that. Anyway... the business district had business cards scattered on the street. Walking up Capitol Hill I saw... about ten feet of spattered blood along the sidewalk. I was like “Yep, that's Capitol Hill. Home.” I loved it. I felt like I was out in the wilderness and that I could find my way home just by observing my surroundings. I felt like a mountain man, but with less dead animals attached to my body.
Buying this laptop has removed one of my excuses for my creative slothfulness. I'm one of those people who fancies himself to be a potential writer. I have all of these ideas swimming around my head, but I haven't solidified any of them in an actual story. I used to dabble a bit back in Boston, and looking over the scraps that I wrote back then made me realize that they were, in fact, not absolute crap. I actually had some good phrases and lines, just not any full-fledged narratives. I haven't written anything since moving to Washington, except to edit a friend's story, and even when I did that I was proud of my efforts. I've had a series of excuses to not write; the latest one was that I didn't want to spend so much time at my computer. My computer is my only real source of electronic distraction. I don't have a television or a radio, and I'm not so much of a phone person in that I can spend long times just chatting on it. So if I want to communicate with people, see what's going on in the world, play a game, watch a television show or movie, or anything else along those lines I have to do it at my desk. Therefore, I have less of an incentive to sit there for hours more, trying to type something up. In my mind I imagine that if I could type at other places then I would have more motivation to be creative, keyboard-wise. I am not typing this entry on my laptop. My hypocrisy exposed so soon? We shall see...
I've been a bit more motivated to do things to improve my life. I recently stopped procrastinating and signed up for health insurance via my job, although this job almost makes it difficult to do so. I've been going out some more and seeing art exhibits and movies and such. Hopefully I'll write some more. And I've made up a little to-do list to keep me focused. You want to know what motivated me to kick myself in the ass and do stuff? Fight Club. I finally saw the movie Fight Club for the first time last week. Besides being a great movie, there was this one scene that actually inspired me. There's a scene where Brad Pitt's character pulls out a gun and threatens to kill a man. He asks him what he really wanted to do with his life. When the man answers, Brad Pitt takes the guys driver's license and says something like “Now I know who you are and where you live. If in six weeks you aren't making some serious progress in living out your dream I'm gonna come kill you.” I thought to myself, what if that happened to me? What if someone threatened to kill me if I didn't get off my ass and do the things I want to do with my life. I'd probably do it to save my life. I shouldn't need such a drastic motive. I should act like I need to live my dreams within six weeks. So that's my mantra right now, Six Weeks. Six Weeks. I'm dead in six weeks if I don't do something with my life. I feel like it's working. Now I need to get a better job; I'm starting to seriously dislike my current one, plus I need some real money. “A useless life is an early death.” Goethe said that. I read it on the back of juice bottle cap.
Today I did something that I've been wanting to do for a while. I went down to the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library, a library for the blind, and signed up to do some volunteer work. I'm a big aficionado of audiobooks and I've wanted to work in a recording studio for a while. So I volunteered to do some audio post-production on the audiobooks that get recorded at this library. I wasn't sure if my hobbyist level of knowledge would be good enough to do the work, but I got a tour of the facilities and a run down of the program that they use to edit their recordings. Piece of cake. I think that the program I use at home is more complicated. They're going to get back to me in a few weeks, but I think that I'll qualify. Hopefully I can do this and learn more about recording studios and broadcasting, which I have a genuine interest in. I think that this can be a very good thing for me, plus I'll be earning some karma points.
Six weeks.
I bought a laptop computer. I've really wanted one for some time now. Why? I'm not 100% sure. I've just wanted one. I've been cruising craigslist for a while looking for laptops under two hundred dollars and not been very lucky in finding one, or not being fast enough when I do spot a decent one. I finally got lucky and was quick enough to get a deal from the ultimate seller: the well-to-do businessman. Ah, the well-to-do businessman, the apex of business partners for ambitious call girls and bottom-feeding consumer scavengers like myself. Apparently this man had half a dozen laptops and was just clearing out the clutter. This one was $175. Nothing too powerful, but in good shape and packed with a few extras. I met the businessman at a Krispy Kreme. This was the first time that I'd ever been inside a Krispy Kreme. I've never actually seen a Krispy Kreme except from a distance when I was in New York City. I bought a donut and took a paper hat. When I got back home I ate the donut while wearing the paper hat. Maybe they make those things for kids, because it didn't fit. Maybe I have a big head.
Funny thing about walking home from the Krispy Kreme, which was near the Seattle sports stadiums; the things that littered the ground could immediately tell me where I was. Along the stadium district I saw fliers for sports-related things, like events and beer. Walking through the business part of downtown I saw a pile of assorted business cards that seemed to have been dumped, perhaps accidentally. One of them kind of made me mad. It had a cube for a logo. Excuse me? A fucking cube? That's your logo? How can anyone do business with a company that uses a cube for its logo? I think that even if I ran a company that made cubes I'd come up with a better logo than that. Anyway... the business district had business cards scattered on the street. Walking up Capitol Hill I saw... about ten feet of spattered blood along the sidewalk. I was like “Yep, that's Capitol Hill. Home.” I loved it. I felt like I was out in the wilderness and that I could find my way home just by observing my surroundings. I felt like a mountain man, but with less dead animals attached to my body.
Buying this laptop has removed one of my excuses for my creative slothfulness. I'm one of those people who fancies himself to be a potential writer. I have all of these ideas swimming around my head, but I haven't solidified any of them in an actual story. I used to dabble a bit back in Boston, and looking over the scraps that I wrote back then made me realize that they were, in fact, not absolute crap. I actually had some good phrases and lines, just not any full-fledged narratives. I haven't written anything since moving to Washington, except to edit a friend's story, and even when I did that I was proud of my efforts. I've had a series of excuses to not write; the latest one was that I didn't want to spend so much time at my computer. My computer is my only real source of electronic distraction. I don't have a television or a radio, and I'm not so much of a phone person in that I can spend long times just chatting on it. So if I want to communicate with people, see what's going on in the world, play a game, watch a television show or movie, or anything else along those lines I have to do it at my desk. Therefore, I have less of an incentive to sit there for hours more, trying to type something up. In my mind I imagine that if I could type at other places then I would have more motivation to be creative, keyboard-wise. I am not typing this entry on my laptop. My hypocrisy exposed so soon? We shall see...
I've been a bit more motivated to do things to improve my life. I recently stopped procrastinating and signed up for health insurance via my job, although this job almost makes it difficult to do so. I've been going out some more and seeing art exhibits and movies and such. Hopefully I'll write some more. And I've made up a little to-do list to keep me focused. You want to know what motivated me to kick myself in the ass and do stuff? Fight Club. I finally saw the movie Fight Club for the first time last week. Besides being a great movie, there was this one scene that actually inspired me. There's a scene where Brad Pitt's character pulls out a gun and threatens to kill a man. He asks him what he really wanted to do with his life. When the man answers, Brad Pitt takes the guys driver's license and says something like “Now I know who you are and where you live. If in six weeks you aren't making some serious progress in living out your dream I'm gonna come kill you.” I thought to myself, what if that happened to me? What if someone threatened to kill me if I didn't get off my ass and do the things I want to do with my life. I'd probably do it to save my life. I shouldn't need such a drastic motive. I should act like I need to live my dreams within six weeks. So that's my mantra right now, Six Weeks. Six Weeks. I'm dead in six weeks if I don't do something with my life. I feel like it's working. Now I need to get a better job; I'm starting to seriously dislike my current one, plus I need some real money. “A useless life is an early death.” Goethe said that. I read it on the back of juice bottle cap.
Today I did something that I've been wanting to do for a while. I went down to the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library, a library for the blind, and signed up to do some volunteer work. I'm a big aficionado of audiobooks and I've wanted to work in a recording studio for a while. So I volunteered to do some audio post-production on the audiobooks that get recorded at this library. I wasn't sure if my hobbyist level of knowledge would be good enough to do the work, but I got a tour of the facilities and a run down of the program that they use to edit their recordings. Piece of cake. I think that the program I use at home is more complicated. They're going to get back to me in a few weeks, but I think that I'll qualify. Hopefully I can do this and learn more about recording studios and broadcasting, which I have a genuine interest in. I think that this can be a very good thing for me, plus I'll be earning some karma points.
Six weeks.