Category: general

I walked to work today. It was sort of surreal, listening to Biohazard and twisting through all the skyscrapers and highway overpasses and crap to get here. It took about 45 minutes. I made it but my walkman didn’t – it is a real piece of shit, and maybe the batteries are dead or the tape is all tensioned weird and running slow, but it is fucked. Anyway, it was a decent walk and very strange, because I used to walk so much when I was in school and didn’t have a car. I walked an hour and 15 minutes each way to work on Sunday night, and almost every day walked an hour from campus to my apartment, sometimes each way. I spent a lot of fucking time walking, listening to a walkman, watching the terrain move at one or two miles an hour, wishing it was a hundred. But I walked so damn much that I could eat anything and never gain weight. At the time, I thought I was a little heavy, and lifted weights, ate salad, did sit ups, walked more on my days off, all of that stuff. I think I was about 25 lbs lighter than I am now, which is about right. In high school and my first year of college, I probably weighed about 50 lbs less than I do now. I hated it back then, because I was a major geek and wanted to put on 40 lbs of muscle or something. I was a walking fucking skeleton, and I ate Chips Ahoy by the bagful. I think I had a tapeworm. Anyway, all of this lithium and prozac and everything else has fucked my metabolism, plus I never exercise. I drive everywhere. I am nowhere near being the size of the average Jerry Springer audience member, but I wish I had the metabolism I used to have.

And I usually don’t work out. But sometimes I get on a kick. There’s a gym in my apartment building, and I convince myself – “All I have to do is get on the treadmill, at 3 in the morning when I have the place to myself, and run while I listen to the first Black Sabbath album, and do that 3 times a week and I’m set.” I go up there, and run for 40 minutes or an hour or whatever and come back and drink a gallon of water and take a shower and think “fuck! That was great. All I need to do is keep this up and eat better and I’ll be able to wear all of my clothes from high school.”

Of course, three days later, I will be in bed watching some assinine documentary about Nazi hot air balloons from World War II and eating Doritos. I can’t stick to a regimen like that, because it’s useless. It’s useless to sit on a piece of machinery and run for an hour and waste an hour of my time, just so the little readout tells me that I almost burned off the calories from one of the 16 Cokes I drank today. If I had to run for an hour to win some cash prize, or if I was at the Miss Nude Everything World adult theme park and I had to walk 16 miles over the course of the day to see all of the exhibits, I would do it. If my car broke down and I had the choice between the Metro and walking to work, I’d walk. If the walking is mixed with doing something, seeing something more than a rubber belt spinning around two rollers, than I would do it. But right now, I don’t have anything like that in my life. I don’t walk to classes, or to work, or to whatever. I sit in a chair and write. So maybe if I had something creative to do, I might be in better shape.

And before anyone says anything about hiking, climbing, rollerblading, distance cycling, or any of the other hip and trendy thirtysomething hobbies of the Pacific Northwest: NO. I am not going to participate in any sport where step one is buying five grand in equipment. Also, in all of these sports, there are people who would make me look like a complete idiot. I know fifty year old men that could kick my ass in mountain climbing. I couldn’t climb the rope in gym class in 9th grade. That was about 50 pounds ago, I know I couldn’t now. The reason I write and work with computers is because that is my gift and I was given that gift in lieu of any physical ability. It’s no secret that I’m no good at sports. Shawn Kemp can’t write WinHelp. Michael Jordan can’t program in C. I can’t run a single lap around a gym without getting shin splints. It’s something I’ve learned to accept.

I’m reaching some weird point with the manuscript, the point where I usually bail and forget about it. But I need to stick with it, and I think I’ve identified the problem as a problem with the voice of the whole book. I’m trying to be too serious, too wordy, and it makes the whole thing drag and doesn’t make it too interesting. That sounds too simple to just say that, the hard part is going to be fixing it. I have some ideas, but nothing I’d like to mention yet.

I finished reading Bukowski’s _Post Office_ last night. I love that book. I almost went back to page 1 and started reading it again. Maybe I will. I think I will read _Women_ first, it is the logical continuation.

At least today I feel okay sleepwise. Karena was over last night, and she had to leave at like 6am to get to work. I stayed up with the headphones on, trying to write, while she slept. When she took off, I slept for another 4 hours. I guess I woke up and started saying a bunch of funny shit, but I don’t remember. I was pretty out of it – the sleep felt good. I’m looking forward to a good 3 or 4 hour dive through the writing tonight.

It’s been an odd day. Karena is gone, so I am here in Seattle alone. I slept until 2, bummed around, at 2 dinners’ worth of food at Denny’s, and then lost my Big Bertha model rocket. I need to stop putting so much time into rockets I lose.

I’m reading more Bukowski, getting ready to write, and eating Doritos.

Hangin’ out, eatin’ junk food, readin’ Bukowski. I better get back to it.

I guess I forgot to write stuff for today – it’s like 11:37 at night and I’m getting ready to fuck around with some other writing before I go to bed. I’m also trying to put too-old cheese onto triscuit crackers with marginal success. It could, however, show more results than the writing.

I guess I feel somewhat better about my writing right now. I have been reading Bukowski again; I got through almost all of _South of No North_ last night and today. It’s good to think about him – how he wrote in college and then didn’t write for another 25 years. He spent all of that time chasing women, drinking, living in roominghouses, and pawning off his typewriters. If I don’t write now, I’ll write later.

Speaking of writing now, I better get to it.

I almost forgot to write anything today. Hate when that happens.

Life’s been more of this really low-level thinking, planning, trying to figure out why I feel so weird and why I’m not accomplishing anything. I don’t feel like I could just sit down and write a novel or anything, and I get really restless that I’m not in front of the typer all night, or driving across the country or planning something big or whatever. I realize I talk about this every day, but it feels like such a rut. I haven’t been underway on a book-sized piece of writing in over a year now, and I don’t think that dinking around with minor (or even major) edits on my first two books would satisfy the urge.

Maybe I just need to read more. Usually when I read a bio about somebody who starved and wrote a masterpiece on the back of used index cards, I get enough energy to think of a new project and get things going. At least it gives me the energy to think again. I did see this special on D.B. Cooper last night and thought it would be cool to do some piece of fiction about him. It’s a cool story.

It’s pouring rain in Seattle again – a good reason to stay inside, do nothing. The weather’s supposed to stay gross for the next few days, so maybe I can crack out a book and get some reading done or something.

Memorial day weekend was pretty lax – we mostly stayed at home and watched movies, and I did get to launch rockets on Sunday. But it wasn’t very outdoorsy, mostly clouds. The sun broke through here and there, but it stayed pretty dreary.

I wish I had some money right now, to buy some more rockets, and maybe get some other modeling supplies. I am really getting into it now, I like to kill time while building. I want to get some more kits and maybe start some sort of custom job. We’ll see.

I’m getting more and more freaked out about my lack of writing. I am sounding like a broken record about all of this, but I have completely panned out any creative writing at this point, and don’t know how it will restart. It’s just a strange feeling, like I am an athlete who isn’t exercising anymore, just thinking about mowing the lawn and stuff. I’d like to get back into it, but I have no motivation. I guess as long as I am doing other things, it will work out. We’ll see.

I haven’t been writing at all lately – I think it is from spraypaint fumes, but I’m not sure. I just haven’t been overly ambitious with journals or writing or anything. One day this week, I wrote like 5 pages in my paper journal (I usually just write 1 a day), but then I also skipped days. It’s just been one of those spells.

I have been building model rockets though. I don’t remember if I said it, but I got a starter set and launched the Alpha III rocket 6 times and then lost it. I built 3 more rockets and bought one of those Estes blast-off kits with 24 engines. So maybe I will go launch some more this weekend.

Building rockets has been very hypnotic. I sit on the bed, with a large drafting board turned workbench, and build away while a CD or maybe CNN drones in the background. When I was building 3 kits at once, an entire night flew by before I realized it. It’s very tranquil. My only two regrets were lack of more models and lack of space. It would be nice to have an entire room to build rockets, but now I have to juggle stuff around in my studio apartment. Spraypainting is a bitch – the first rocket, I tried it on my patio. Instantly, about a pount of Seattle airborne soot and pollution stuck to the paint, giving it a really fucked up appearance. I painted the next two in my kitchen, inside of a microwave oven box, with newspapers everywhere. It worked OK once I got the hang of it, but after I cleaned up, I did find a few spots of paint on the tile. I was able to clean it with nail polish remover. But as I get more organized, I am finding more ways to make the building easier. And I will keep buying more new kits…