Drum and Bass Requix

In which our Hero finds a windmill with a lance hanging out of it.

Thank you for the questions/suggestions left on the previous entry. I’ve been somewhat stunned by how brilliantly precise some of the questions have been and how dumb I am for not having raised some of them myself given how relevant they are to my current set of complaints.

But before I start digging into that, I need to admit that I had an accidental moment of self-discovery. I got a question from my cousin Moonbeam, in real life, who asked me why I didn’t go to my high school prom. Thinking that I’d mentioned the answer here, I was doing some searching, and couldn’t find it if I did talk about it.

But I did find this: A list of Things that I would like to do, fresh from the brain of 25-year-old me. (Entry is friend-locked so let me know if I’ve missed you, or else you can just thank me for keeping you from reading a perspective on relationships that I hope so much has evolved since then for me to wince as much as I did rereading it). And here is the list:

Write a NovelStill haven’t done this. Best I’ve ever done is get about 15000 words into one. I can’t take it on yetWrite a Self-Help book for people new to the workforce. I think that I have learned some useful things that I might share.Goodness, wasn’t I ambitious. Nope. I think that if I dig into the archives, there *might* be a page or two towards this, but as far as I can say, this isn’t just undone, this is a dead project.Learn to Dance.Still want this.Write an intelligent movie screenplay and get the bloody thing made.Reality check: I don’t think I have the connections to get a screenplay to someone in a production capability. And even the web-film folks who might be able to do something with a script are also spilling over with their own ideas. So this is probably dead too, I don’t know that I feel any interest in this, and even if I did, I’d rather write the novel firstRun my own company.This is the one that floored me. Partly because within months of writing this, I’d set up my first shell corporation, but mostly because I read the list, thought, “Yeah, it’d be cool to run my own company” and then the voice in my head pointed out that I’ve been a self-employed contractor for the last 4 years. My empire may be tiny, but damn, it’s good to be a gangster!Ride a Horse.Around a month after writing this, I skipped off to Chile, and rode a horse through the Andes. Not well, my ass points out. But that was awesome too

Sail a boat.I’d still like to sail a boat. Nothing fancy, just on a lake. But I have been on a smaller boat in deep ocean for a few days. So I’m not done, but I’m not doing badly either.Redecorate a house.Redecorate? Man, that’s curiously specific. I haven’t redecorated a house, but I’m fairly sure I meant renovate, and I refinished my basement, floor to ceiling. Can’t say that I’m without regrets, I mean, I wish I’d gone with hardwood floors just for aesthetics, and I wish I hadn’t gone with thinner wood panels because they warp a little with the seasons. But I’m still fairly proud of the outcome, and more important, I’m not afraid of doing it if the need arises again. Which I’m trying to cause to happen because I think I’d like (and it would look good) to rip out the carpet on my parents’ upper floor and replace it with hardwood.

(Seriously, I am so painfully done with carpet. Can’t entirely explain why, but one day I woke up and decided I hate it.)Learn to draw.Oh my gosh, I think of myself as someone who can draw now. I can’t draw well, as my forthcoming response to a challenge on the previous entry will show, but I can draw enough to think of it as a skill of mine and enough to enjoy the process and result.

So… out of nine ambitions I set out for myself some fifteen years ago, I’ve managed to achieve four and a half of them. I’ve got stories of odd adventures I’ve had over the years… how do I simultaneously manage to be so egostistically self-confident and yet think of myself as boring.

More and more I think I need to take some time to meditate. I’m starting to notice that I don’t spend much quiet time anymore, and I wonder how much that correlates to my current feeling of being pressed.

A nap would kind of be nice too. 🙂