Onward

I think the only things that are keeping me rising in the morning during this kind of loneliness are:

-I can't wait to see who I'll become next;
-I'm excited to know the people who will be here once the smoke clears, those who weathered this too, and did it because they too were excited to see me bloom out of it.

Small wonder, the number.

Write on.

So This Guy Falls Into a Hole, See

There’s great writing and there’s hokiness and what I’m about to relate will probably fall into the second category.

It’s still a great story, though.

One of my favorite television shows of all time, no secret, is “West Wing.”  The second season’s Christmas episode is one of my favorites of the series:  Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lymon is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and has to see a shrink when he starts breaking things in private, but on purpose.  His direct supervisor, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, meets Josh after the session, bathed in the Christmas lights in the lobby.  Josh is on his way to recovery but embarrassed at his own behavior, and Leo, who is a recovering addict, tells Josh a story.  I’ll paraphrase.

So this guy is walking down the street and falls into a hole.  He begs people who pass by to help him out, but none of them can seem to help him.  They throw all kinds of junk down into the hole that don’t help the situation.

Then his friend sees him in the hole and jumps in.  “What are you, crazy?” asks the first guy.  “Now we’re both down here.”  “Yeah,” answers his friend, “but I’ve been here before, and I know how to get out.”

I don’t know what made me think of that.

*****

I am probably writing the most that I have ever written in my life since college; even more than this past spring when I quit, even more than NaNoWriMo.  The writing grounds me.  While my family rots in front of video games, television, and web surfing, I pull up to my typing table and push the pen across the page, or compose blogs and reviews.  All of it, all of those words, are written for me.  I could tell the world I’m lonely, like a dried bone along the road, and I could express it in half a dozen status messages and posts and tweets but it would fall into the abyss and never hit bottom.  So I write for me.

This weekend it began to rain.  I was so lonely that I just sat and listened to it after the television had been stilled.  The rain sounded like a friend, whispering secrets in the dark, telling me to listen, shut up and listen, Jo.  I finished reading a book this weekend and moved about my room, restless for a story to soothe myself.  I found that what I wanted I could write.  

This past summer I met a vacationing writer from Leeds, England who made friends with me immediately, no questions asked.  There seems to be no way to scare her off, regardless of what I write.  She likes my blog “Notes From Sea Level.”  I love her taste in books (Armistead Maupin), artwork (photos, sculpture, and pottery), and travel (she loves my City as much as I do).  She knows I am missing my writing groups, and she wants to stay accountable to her writing.  So every other day or so we meet on Facebook, call the gunshot from the horse-race, write like fiends for 90 minutes, and get back on Facebook to check in.

By the end of each session I’m FLYING.  But then, I’m writing the book I would read to heal right now.

Write on.

The Reason I (Am) Here

(Yes, this lovely little ditty is showing up at 5 am.  I wake up at weird hours and use the time to write.  The fun side of being a creative.)

Present and future tense.  I've snatched at it lately, like music.  I am here.  I have a reason to be here.  When I get married.  It's shadings like this that make a girl hopeful.

I'm working on my novel more and more right now; with the holidays the job search and inquiries can pretty much be wrapped up in 90 minutes a day and then I sit down and work on being productive, in any sense possible.  I blog about customer service finds and frustrations.  I read.  I write on what I read.  And then I work on the novel.

My character in the novel is a woman with a lot of similarities to me.  She's a baseball fan.  She works in an industrial setting.  She suffers a workplace injury.  She spends about 60 percent of her free time alone, and, in the off-season, 100 percent of her free time alone.  (To be fair, she has differences from me as well.  She doesn't think women should play professional baseball.  She's thin.  She's of Irish descent.  She has no siblings.  She's not a writer and she doesn't read fiction.)

The one aspect of her that is easiest to write is her solitude.  My protagonist is the definition of "If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"  For some odd reason, I always think of Isak Dinesen's accounts of Africa when I think of that phrase..."will Africa remember me?"  Was I really here?  At several points in the novel the protagonist does the incredible--she has batting practice with the San Francisco Giants before each of their home games, for FOUR YEARS.  As they say on the social networks these days, "Pictures or it didn't really happen."  But she agreed not to take pictures.  She agreed not to tell anyone.  And her love for the men she plays with is strong enough that when another character asks, "How am I supposed to believe that?  Why would I believe that?" her answer is, "Then don't."  Alone, sitting on everyone else's more credible and documented side of the world, more people have doubted her, and contributed to her self-doubt, than these 25 men in a batting practice that she can't prove.  They not only believe her life but they want to be part of it.  Her loyalties lie with those who think she exists, and who acknowledge her existence.

I often wonder if I exist, living as solitary as I do.  Social networking responses to my work often shock me not for their content but for their appearance.  I was speaking with a friend yesterday about this, and he was patient and kind enough to explain why it was so rare to connect with others on social networks, and what other factors are involved when the tree falls.  He didn't lecture, he didn't instruct, he just posed considerations.  There's a small chance I'm heard.  There's a minute or no chance that I'm acknowledged, and I'm looking in the wrong place for that acknowledgment.  It was good to have that kind of weighing in, and then go to writing group afterword, where others were grateful that I had hosted the group and made them comfortable.  I could see my contribution to the world reflected back for an afternoon.  There IS a reason that I AM here.

Present tense.

I hear leaves rustling in the forest.  :)

The Knot, Part One

I'm going to take this in parts.  It's easier to unravel one thread at a time.

Things you should know about my current mood:

• Not the product of hormonal cycles.  I have two weeks until that.
• Not due to the weather.  Sun's out.
• Not due to money issues.  Yet.
• Not due to current events.

I have spent the weekend, and will probably continue to spend the coming week, trying to determine what causes it.  I do know this much:

• Whenever I walk away from the internet for entire days, the feeling abates.

And what is that feeling, you ask?

• Loneliness
• Hopelessness
• Uselessness
• Lack of ambition (on my part)
• Lack of creativity (on my part)

Why do I pick on the internet?  Because:

• My relationship with the Internet/Social Network feels like I'm married to a Yankee shortstop
• Said Spouse treats everyone else so well, and supports the kids (the "kids" here being my blogs) for free
• Everyone else loves the Spouse for the money they make, the sexy look they have, and the way they can do EVERYTHING
• Well, everything but create fulfillment.  

Why doesn't the Internet/Social Network bring me happiness?  After all, I explore all of the recommendations I get, I try all of the latest Network options, I follow all of the advice and check in at every interval possible.  I worship and completely support the Internet/Social Network.  Why do I feel like I'm one giant nervous tic, expecting my Virtual Spouse to fix "it?"  I don't even know what "it" is.

And why, when I walk away and think for a whole weekend, do I feel like I might be normal again?

Someone needs to get an amicable divorce.  I don't think counseling will work here.

Write on...while I call my lawyer. 

Step 1

Renovating my writing practices so that I can grow means that I have to prune things, like some of the showiest bushes and trees, so that new growth can occur or so that I can see the street signs. These are the steps I've taken so far:

• Set all blogs to be written once a week, including this one
• Removed all bookmarks, history, and computer and mobile notification to Facebook

The second bullet point means that if someone sent anything to me on Facebook after midnight Pacific time Sunday night, I won't see it. Oh, now, Jo, you'll see it SOMETIME, right? Yes, semantics. I will see it sometime. You ask me for a timeline, though, you're out of luck. My brother follows a good practice--the last time he checked his Facebook was May of this year, and the last time he checked it before that was September...of 2009. I envy him, unnecessarily. I could do that. I'm just afraid of being forgotten.

But Facebook isn't the only way to connect, and if I'm forgotten by those who think it is, then maybe that's better. I'm not closing my account--it sits there wide open, a plasma-screened canvas for those who want to say hello. I received correspondence from someone in the list of friends once a week. Not a note from each of the 87, but one person a week. But with a list of only 87 while most others have a list of over 150, I imagine my priority ranking doesn't sit very high. A friend that I discussed this with over the weekend told me I have the wrong motivation for writing. I was offended--I wasn't writing for the wrong reasons, I was networking and marketing that writing for the wrong reasons. To her, they were one and the same...and on Saturday I thought maybe I shouldn't be a writer.

The biggest distinction in this whole mess is the difference between effect and recognition. I would have been happy to think I was having an effect, which, when you're a writer, looks like you are asking for recognition. I don't want applause--I just want to know I've touched the reader. And I'm not reaching very many people on Facebook or my blogs, so why not redistribute that writing to writing something that will reach someone?

Even if it's me?

Write on.

Rotten Tomatoes, Via Apathy

Here's an excellent story idea: fiction writer from the past is forced to grapple with modern writing networking tools.

Hemingway would be great with Twitter's format. But he would hate its audience. The Great Gatsby would have never been published by marketing on Facebook.

Here's dangerous mettle for you...silence. Perhaps you've experienced it. You call someone, and your call is never answered. You write something, and the publisher never even bothers to reject you (an ironic form of rejection). Or, we can go more subtle...you post things on vast, virtual walls, and they are greeted by...

SILENCE.

That's been happening to me for three days. It's on par with the unkind self-assumption that others have given up on you, or are rolling their eyes at you (dumb c***, who does she think she is, doesn't she know how to do that in this age and with this kind of communication, etc), laughing at you...

By the middle of the afternoon today I had been ignored long enough. I shut off the phone and the computer. I picked up a paper book and finished it. When I turned the phone back on there was a text message for me, from a guy who had ignored my texts the first two months after I left my last workplace, someone who I thought was a friend, after all that silence. His message was simple--to sneer at me for the Giants' performance in Cincinnati. He wasn't just teasing--his message was to rub my face in a dirty diaper.

[I don't own the Giants. I love them openly, which I guess, in the words of "The Franchise," puts "a target on my back" too. Everyone hates the Giants and hates Giants fans, so I'm either going to get ignored...or insulted. That's after three days of being ignored trying to play the networking game on Twitter and Facebook. That's after trying to mingle in the "virtual cafe." I sent him back a two-word reply.

I'll let you guess what it said.]

The last three days have reminded me, very pointedly, that I need to remember why I write. I have to write for me. I have to write regardless. And I have to write quality stuff for my sake, not write just to stay in the game in hopes of keeping people interested. I don't monitor my "views" and try to increase them or weed them out. I am balls-out, accelerator to the floor. Every time I try to do that network/stats stuff I just feel like slitting my wrists. Hell, I didn't even check the stats today...I knew that NO ONE WAS READING. So I have to go back to writing stuff I would want to read, and sail back to the water in between for a while.

There was hope, though...Becky Levine, a children's author on Twitter, posted the following message to the world:

"Think. Write. Repeat and rinse."

So simple and so helpful. So I re-Tweeted it.

And she thanked me for doing that. Not everyone thinks I'm invisible...after all, she knew what I needed in the smallest of gestures--a thanks for the shout-out.

You're welcome. Write on.

Honing

I get tired of constantly starting over. It makes it hard to hone the sword.

Two weeks ago I spent a week in Carlsbad, which kept me away from most of my writing for that week, and then last week my dad was in the hospital, so even though I had time I felt I shouldn't be writing...

And Tuesday my brother is coming to the South Bay to stay through Friday. So I have to pre-write Tuesday's blogs and then drop them in the morning on Tuesday before I take off, taking me out of the loop on the blogs for the day AGAIN...

Hemingway used to say something about how no one will disturb you writing, but you have to set that up. My teacher Natalie Goldberg talked about making time for writing regardless, so that if an atom bomb goes off while you are writing, then, dammit, you'll go out writing.

THAT'S where I want to be. Going out writing when the atom bomb comes.

Oh, and I found out last Thursday how much I missed free-writing. Have to work that back into the schedule that I can't keep somehow.

It will improve. Without me having to be stubborn or cruel. If I can find a book lost in the environmental city, I can find writing again.

Write on.

Hide and Go Seek

I'm in San Diego this week (well, Carlsbad...I get liberal and start incorporating myself in that San Diego curtain pretty freely), and not writing much. The only writing I get done is my morning pages. I got in four pages of free-writing yesterday, but that's it.

But I'm okay with all of it.

What I am doing down here is a lot of living, or watching the living. I've got the pace almost down, but I don't need to--I just watch and talk to people and listen. Listening is the big thing. I had one hang-up yesterday; our neighbor is high drama and took her high drama on her cell phone down to the hot tub in the courtyard to share with the whole complex. She's the only one I've had to drown out with the iPod. Everyone else I listen to.

Either I'm at peace, or people have better articulation skills down here in Carlsbad. In SF most Muni conversations are peppered with the word "like." I know the scientific study behind that word's abuse but having that knowledge doesn't make the abuse of the word any easier to bear. When I get back the new goal is to leave the iPod off first and see if I can find pockets where, like, you know, like, they don't, like, talk like that.

Next to me at this cafe there are two women talking intelligently about education plans at the local school for the coming fall. At the table on the other side of me is a mundane conversation about what one of the party should have ordered, but, despite the subject matter, it's easy to listen to. Other things pop up to fuel my writing idea pot. On Tuesday night a woman in the complex across the lagoon tried to jump, and was carted off by the paramedics. My sis-in-love called it "Rear Window, Revisited," and asked me what I had to write about since I didn't know the circumstances or the aftermath. I grinned. "See, those are the parts I get to make up," I said with relish. Earlier in the vacation my brother gave me an idea for a modern twist on "The Old Man and the Sea, Revisited." So I could write. But I'll do that when I get back to lonely.

There are inspirational places to write as well. A suggestion made to me didn't pan out because that location has been closed for about a year, but the suggestion got me exploring downtown. I wrote a little in a french bakery, the local libraries (two of them), and the cafe here. I get words down. To paraphrase Picasso, they don't look like me now, but they will. And I'm losing my fear of deserts. Or, I should say, the fear isn't so acute.

This may be my last post until I hit the Bay Area again on Monday. Meantime, write on.

Rain, And Distractions

So I woke up this morning to rain, which made me grumpy. Ok, I was kind of grumpy already--lots of dishes in the kitchen today that I didn't need to do, but I do them every day so I did them today. Grumpiness out of the way, and then it rains. Grumpiness renewed. I was going to go to the grocery store today. No dice. Eating the last of my food.

Ok, mood reset.

The only thing I have to do today is write. When the holiday is over I probably have to go back to work--which means I'm going to have to do some crappy job that has nothing to do with writing, or nothing to do with managing or teaching...holy criminy, Jo, just STOP. I keep forgetting to take one day at a time. Yes, it's raining today. Yes, there were a boatload of dishes. But one frickin' day at a time.

I'll learn it. Just watch me.

Meantime, Giants have scored one against the Cubs and I'm getting my writing done. And I don't have to go to the grocery store.

Write on.

Hardly Workin'...

I've been working on a blog today and that is just about it...and not even this one. I sort of spill a mess here so my back-channel people can be in the know, but I got a bit behind a couple of times this week. No matter. The sun still came out and I finished that blog entry and I threw away all of my expired health care products today, so something got done, regardless.

Tomorrow looks like an ambitious writing day--I have a lot to do before I just cut loose with a short story in Saturday's writing group.

This is the song that's been playing all afternoon on the iPod to push the words through and out of me. It's from Treme, of course, since I'm obsessed, and I know Steve Earle isn't always the most desirable, but I love this song. "Like a second line steppin' high, raising hell as we go along." Nice.

Write on...

A Wonderful Life

Last night I wrote a post on the impact of three teachers on me...and when I woke up this morning the first thing through my head was the line, "You see, George, you've had a wonderful life," from the Capra film. That line scared the shit out of me--I think the last time I could use it would have been 2002, and even then it was during my mother's illness. Once she died, my opinion mattered little in how my father, brother, and I would proceed in terms of legally and ceremoniously.

2002. Imagine being expendable for 9 years.

Read on, dear reader.

Gift Horse Oral Analysis

I have been in a good funk for nearly two weeks now. What gives?

Best not to look too closely. :)

But it may have something to do with the fact that I haven't broken any resolutions yet...and have no plans to.

Read on, dear reader.

To the Asian Advertising Hopefuls

This post is specially dedicated to the cluster of people who keep trying to advertise Asian girls in the comments section of my blog, and keep trying to do that advertising in Chinese--I'm now moderating my comments. No one could read them before because they weren't in English, and no one will have the chance to read them now.

I'm sorry that I couldn't help you more in your endeavors. You've annoyed me long enough, and I don't date women. If I did, your girls look like a lovely option, but I don't.

Spam someone else, dear reader.

Inconsistent Success

Here's a quick, abbreviated list of what I shine at:

• Cooking
• Writing
• Teaching
• Listening

And here's what destroys the above list and calls me a liar:

• Focus

So lately everything has been crap, because I don't allow myself to focus. And when I don't allow myself to focus and develop focus through meditation, then the list shuts down and it looks like I don't know how to do anything at all.

THAT'S what I learned this week.

Herein ends the lesson, dear reader.

Go For Launch

And this blog is no longer on Facebook. Now I can develop my writing and improve it. Not to mention hopefully having more of it.

Happy Easter, dear reader.

The Latest Notes From Sea Level

{Poster's Note: The following was taken from a longhand journal entry during a Meetup "Shut Up and Write" session on Sunday, March 28th, 2010.}

I miss writing when I don't get to do it. I love everything about it. I am even enamored by the materials--papers in different weights, different bindings on cahiers, different pens (the only thing I won't write with is a ballpoint pen, blech), different coffee shops, differing light, the music that gets me started. Then there is the font when the second draft is typed, whether it is generated on paper or on-line, the package, the typeface, the binding. Pages--even or uneven, and the texture of the paper. Everything creating a tome thrills me.

I thought about such things last night during Earth Hour. During Earth Hour I had shut off the lights, the computer, the phone, the iPod, the Kindle--anything electronic or electric. I lit candles and sat next to their light with a glass of wine and started to read from a paper book, Isabel Allende's "My Invented Country." Soon, however, the lowering wax and untrimmed wicks created some very active flame in the candles, and the flickering was too hard on my eyes. I closed the book and did some stretches on the floor, breathing evenly to inspire meditation, but couldn't get in the zone. I blamed the wine and moved back to the couch with said wine and had a dialogue with God about what I love about writing.

I have been writing a long time--in one form or another since I was six years old. I even love the psychology and sociology of writers. Where they write, how they write, how alike and how different they are within countries and continents. I love the ironic fact that I love Dostoyevsky and hate Tolstoy, but that I think both Allende and Garcia Marquez are magical. I love any history of writing. I love any language, even though the only two that I understand are English and some French. Every moment that I reached an answer God came back with a deeper question.

What would be better, that was the ultimate one.

Most of the authors I can name are classic authors--I know very few up-and-comers. That is something I would like to change. I would like to be more well-versed in publishing. I would like more structure in my blogs. {Poster's Note: I'm sure my readers would like more structure in my blogs as well.} I would like more consistency in my postings. I would like the writing to improve. I want to be better at editing. I want to say more of what I mean rather than just get the idea down on the blog and then walk away from it.

That question of what would better stumped me last night during Earth Hour, and I'm finally answering it the next day. I was afraid to answer it last night for fear that I wouldn't get or give the right answer. Now I realize that any answer is a better one than waiting. The answer may change, and I have to be ready for the answer to change--that's adaptability in motion.

Now, to act on it. I want a blog. Seriously. One with a continuous line of plot, you might say. And so here we go, with a line. Creating a continual line in a long-term blog strikes me as the same kind of challenge that the Apollo 13 astronauts had in keeping to course when they used the moon's gravity to slingshot themselves back to Earth. Most of the course is determined by that gravity, but at one point they had to correct the trajectory so that they stayed in within the narrow window of re-entry without bouncing off the atmosphere when they return. The astronauts couldn't fire up the instrumentation due to a power shortage, so they had to find a fixed horizon point--in their case, keep the moon within a certain window. Trouble is, when they fired up the boosters the thrust pushed them all over the place, and not just in a straight line to the course. They knew this would happen, but they knew that they could get the correction needed if they could manage to straighten it out in the last ten seconds of the thrust and keep the moon in that window for the last ten seconds. So the first ten seconds of the thrust were quickly learning stabilization--the last ten were for the actual correction. It was a harrowing 20 seconds, but they accomplished it, and made their narrow window.

To give you an idea of how narrow the window was at that time, newscasters of the event described it as trying to put a basketball through a space the thickness of a sheet of paper.

That's the kind of narrow focus that I have to get myself to. Sooner or later, I have to master the 20 second booster power.

The moon's gravity I already have.

Rubbing Elbows

So a couple of weeks back I wrote in here about my New Year's Resolution and the blog that helped me set up my resolutions this year...and today the author of that blog has a book that is #2 on the New York Times bestseller list! The fact that she has commented on my blog makes me feel important just knowing that she reads my stuff, and, as a fellow writer, I'm so excited that the author that I follow on my home page (er, the first site that pops up when I log on the internet, if that is a better explanation) is so successful.

I have to say that I completely admire Gretchen's style--her humility and curiousity about her subject matter make her observations real to me. As I mentioned when I talked about the devotionals a little while back, I can add her to the soup, too, and did tonight when I added her book to the Kindle.

Her site, my friends...and her book. Congratulations, fellow writer, and take a peek, dear readers...

Chemistry Set

Suffering a renewed passion in cooking lately, due to a whole list of enablers:

• My father sent me a NuWave for Christmas. I know that no one in the Food Network cooks with this thing, but it makes me far less scared of large cuts or whole parts of meat
• Julie & Julia--the movie, the book, the phenomenon. As a thank you gift for cat-sitting I am receiving Julia's two-volume cookbook--and while I'm not so ambitious as Julie Powell to squeeze all of the recipes into one year, I'm daring enough to make them a regular appearance
• The meat department at Andronico's. The one in the Inner Sunset has RABBIT, for Pete's sake. Time to go wild...
• Food Network--while I can't watch it all day like I used to, I can watch with acute interest when they cook some strange and wonderful blends, and then get the recipes on-line.

With all of these things in my chemistry set and a desire to eat healthier, is it any wonder that I should look forward to this year?

WOULD-n't It Be Loverly?

I have the blog "The Happiness Project" on my home page for my home internet, and this week I was particularly drawn to a post about resolution-making for the New Year. Given the list, here are my updated resolutions that I have posted to my vision board in my room:

To Look In the Mirror
· Physical balance
· Work/Life balance
· Nutrition

To Look to Others
· Church
· Meetups
· Travel (Obtain passport)
· Volunteering

The One
· Shuts his cell phone off when we’re together and doesn’t make me feel guilty about the communication he missed
· Doesn’t get tired of my mind or my body
· Spends the night
· Is curious
· Makes me laugh
· Lets me—no, asks me—to tell him what turns me on

To Look to Life
· 3 pages per day of writing
· 12 books read this year
· Work/Life balance
· A job that I define
· Read The New Yorker weekly—and write on it

You'll see that work/life balance is on there twice. It's twice as important.

And if I can keep more than one resolution this year, then you'll see a lot more of me on here, writing about what I read in The New Yorker. Or, three handwritten pages worth of nothing in particular.

Have a wonderful holiday season, dear reader.

Mind the Gap

On weekends in particular I am acutely aware of how little I have updated this blog from the daily posts of last year, with gaps of days or sometimes weeks between postings. My original goal was to write in here on weekends and at the Wednesday night Meetup, but some of the Meetup magic has faded as of late (I'm hoping to get back into it in a couple of weeks when work calms down, and I want my writing class to be a bigger focus at the moment), so everything falls by the side of the road and my life spells itself out instead in short snippets on Facebook and Twitter. For my fried-out attention span it seems to be all I can handle.

Sooner or later though I miss writing in this blog so much so that it creates an ache, and I also think to myself, "Ah, the posts are so rare, perhaps we should re-think what we want the theme to be." The original blog at Yahoo 360 and the beginning days of this blog were about healing from the onslaught of culture shock from the Midwest to California, but now I am drawn to writing of California as though it were the constant and progressive adventure. I focus now on how the title of blog is defined in terms of keeping enough of my Midwestern-ness without losing the spirit that enabled me to know myself here, too. Sometimes I feel that's lost--I go all black and white on the world (defining myself as only Midwestern and/or only Californian). I find myself (more so recently with what is once again an unrealistic workload) stopping unexpectedly and remembering that I live in San Francisco and being dazzled by that. A million things could strike the spark, but mostly working in a building you could find anywhere across the country (ah, the joy of working in a "chain store") and then stepping out and seeing the Transamerica Pyramid in the distance. I'm shocked back into grace there. It's a tourist moment that hasn't died after five years and, because of where I'm from, probably never die.

There are curiosities and events occuring right now that I can only discover on the web (Facebook, Twitter, news feeds, You Tube), but trapping myself in the voter booth box of a laptop doesn't gain me much in real experience. To paraphrase Shania Twain, "Okay, so you know how work the web...that don't impress me much..." Not that I do things to impress others, by any means. And not that a better working of the web isn't needed on my part (there's still much to learn, grasshopper). But at the end of the day in the dark I'm on Facebook and Twitter feeding the beast, or learning Google applications like Latitude and Reader and Notebook, or checking out Quillpill, and then that bleeds into the weekend, what with podcasts and all, and pretty soon the sum of my days is on a phosphorus screen. And it tain't quality--I miss pushing whole adventures out and my thoughts on them, particularly here or in my other blogs of environmental or artistic note.

I'm working out a system to do better.

Balance, my dear reader, is a measure of constant awareness.