Diagnosis?

So, last week I wrote about how something that I wasn't quite sure of had effected my ability to post. Well this week I think that I've figured it out: summer.

Today I really began to notice that over the past two days I've been filled with this insatiable desire for new information, and, simultaneously, a desire to synthesize this information and come up with a beautiful creation of my own. I have been feeling this crazy feeling of desire to create something meaningful, profound, and really cool lately. It's really been pretty strong, the only problem is that I really struggle as to what to create. This frustration gets me upset and leads to my aforementioned insatiable thirst for new information. Somehow I have convinced myself that if I take in enough information, perhaps somehow it will leave my brain like a brilliant, stream-of-consciousness runny nose that the whole world will clamor to see and then stand dumbfounded in awe. Sadly, it never quite happens that way, but it's the way I feel.

So while I was feeling this and not really being creative I tried to locate the source of this feeling, and I think I found that too. I also mentioned it already, I think it's the summertime. I now have a job where I get summer vacations a la the school days, and I think I'm regressing to my teenaged outlook that anything is possible. Albeit I'm a little more realistic, jaded, and beholden to bills and such, but the summer still fills me with restless energy that I want to turn into creativity or learning. My first desire is to travel to cool places in the world where I can pretend that I'm not weighed down by all of the accoutrements that accompany a professional, married guy who's nearly 30.

Which segues nicely into my second point; I'm nearly 30. Yikes. I think this also has something to do with my mild regression and outlook. I say mild because it hasn't affected my work or social life yet, just left me restless. I get restless fairly frequently, but this is the good restless that awakens in me the curiousity to better myself, to learn more, to create, and to enjoy. Hopefully I'll enjoy this little personal renaissance for a little while longer. Until then, I'm off to try and find some cool new information on the internets.

Something happened...

I'm just not sure what. Obviously I'm trying to resurrect this little tome of mine, then I sputtered, but I'm back. The reason for the sputter is the typical boring mix of laziness and crazy lack of time, but there's also something else I just can't put my finger on yet.

I think part of it is that my mind is semi-dead most of the time due to a lack of sleep and subsequent overindulgences in coffee (especially bad coffee from work). I also think that my mind is also working overtime on certain things, which would seem a direct contrast to the previous statement, but somehow it isn't quite. It's very strange, but I'm on the case, and with this little 'vacation' I have coming up hopefully I'll have time to investigate all possible leads. It's going to be awesome to spend the summer outside again, see the sun, complain about the heat, squint my eyes even behind sunglasses, and realize once again why I switched to 40 spf sunblock (cause I'm a casper-white cracker who gets sunburnt easily, duh). But I'll find it and correct it. The good thing is that, professionally at least, I'm on the right path. I think that I have to work out some kinks, and learn from this first experience that is just wrapping up, and make the necessary changes. That will have a huge impact, and I can't wait to enact it.

Well, actually I can, and the end of the summer seems like the perfect time to enact. In the meantime, on with the bathing suit, sunblock, and sunglasses. I'm at the pool for the summer.

I am Tired

Man has it ever been an exhausting couple of weeks. I have been working a lot trying to catch up, and I have somewhat! Today I walked in to a nearly spotless desk, which is very exciting to me. But I digress, I have been trying hard to catch up on work stuff, while also building up my workouts so that I don't die during my race, which is in a mere two months. As a result, I am totally exhausted.

This weekend capped off a particularly difficult couple of weeks, although I was unable to run this week due to a potential injury (it turned out to be nothing, thank goodness), I still put in some decent time in the pool this week. Then this weekend, after some rudimentary math, I realized that I spent nearly one quarter of it on my bike. Yikes. So anyway, that's why I'm exhausted today, and I spent all day yesterday on my couch dozing off. It was very nice, and exactly what I needed.

More Revelations

But this is a revelation of a totally different kind than the last. This one is positive. So, I was hanging out somewhere today and did something that I don't normally do; I took time to really notice how a room is set up. I looked at the decorations on the walls, the bookshelves, where things were placed and tried to decipher why they were placed there, all in an effort to better understand the feeling I was getting when I was there. The feeling I was getting was one of wonder and possibility. I really like that feeling, and I get it very infrequently, so I guess I was partially trying to figure out its equation.

I think most everybody has met at least one person in their lives who kind of personifies this feeling. That one person who's partially crazy, partially delusional, but always interesting. When thinking about this person you get this feeling deep in the back of your mind that maybe, just maybe they could pull off some of the things they talk about, because they talk about them so candidly and with such confidence that it almost sounds easy. That type of excitement where you actually find yourself wondering; is there ever the possibility I could drive a Ferrari? Move to Tahiti and live in a beautiful beach-side shack and be happy? I wonder...

So I was getting this feeling, though not quite the same type of feelings I was describing above, but those same feelings of wonder and possibility. While I didn't really finish the equation, I think I might have stumbled upon the beginning part; and that, for me at least, is putting forth an appearance of organization. I find that I really begin to think things are possibly if I can plot a path to completion. This path is usually best when it is organized and logical, at least for me. Thus organization is necessary. The second part is that I need constant motivating stimulation. That's all I have for now. We'll see how it comes together over the next couple weeks. If it comes together.

Cry for Help

Whereas I will state that this blog is primarily for myself, in that I am using it as a gimmick to make myself keep writing. If there really is anybody out there reading... if you could, I'd really appreciate a little shoutout. Just to see if this is reaching anybody, or if it really is just going out unnoticed into the vast void that is cyberland.
Thanks,
StaleB

Revelations

I had a revelation this weekend. Well actually a couple, but there's one that I really want to share. Classes that you're not interested can very easily be so boring that you might just want to poke your own eyes out with an icepick. This is a bit of a revelation to me because it's been a little while since I was in a class that met both criteria of not holding my interest at least a little bit, and being unbelievably boring. That hot streak ended this weekend as I was sitting in my lifeguarding class playing read-around from the lifeguarding textbook with a group of 15-year-olds. Now, an astute reader might think that I mention the ages of my compatriots because I am going to blame part of the boredom on them, but that is not the case. Perhaps I'm showing my greenness at writing by adding in a modifier that I have no plans of following up on, but the problem really was with the lifeguarding textbook and not my fellow readers. In fact, they were kind of funny at times.

But I digress, (a phrase I use all too often, perhaps because I am constantly digressing?) and would like to get to my real point; which is that "best-teaching" practices aren't always the best. As somebody who knows a little bit about education (a VERY little bit), I am aware that reading aloud is viewed as being one of said best practices because it calls in to play more of the senses therefore increasing the likelihood of retention, as well ensuring that all members of the class were, at the very least, exposed to the material in some way. I understand and appreciate that, I guess. But the problem is that it's insanely boring and can produce just as many negative effects such as nausea, heartburn... oops, sleep, wandering attention, and anxiety at reading aloud.

I'm here to focus on the boredom aspect today because, on Saturday, we spent a minimum of four and a half hours reading aloud. Now, I'm prone to exaggeration, a fact that I'm well aware of, but that is no exaggeration. And let me tell you, the experience was just as awful, if not worse, than you could imagine. Quite literally, the entire first chapter - which we read in its entirety - consists of detailing how much sleep, nutrition, minimum spf suntan lotion, and what kind of sunglasses, among other minutiae, a "good lifeguard" needs in order to be a "good lifeguard." I was definitely thinking that I had unknowingly been sentenced to eternity in the seventh ring of hell for some heretofore unknown crime against humanity I had committed. But alas, it finally ended and I get all this crappy workweek to look forward to another weekend in the seventh ring. Hooray!

I'm only doing this because I feel I have to

I hate to sound like just one of the crowd here, but I'm ENTIRELY over the democratic primaries. And I'm a pretty damn staunch democrat! But this has just plain gone bananas. It's been so damn long and drawn out and, as a result, stupid and catty with an ever-quickening spiral into ludicrous absurdity. Are we seriously worried about whether Obama was a professor or "just" a lecturer? Or whether Hillary was firebombed or whatever on a diplomatic mission nearly ten years ago?? I really don't care, but I do think it's absurd that she's trying to claim as international policy experience a jaunt overseas that included Sinbad and Sheryl Crow. I mean, really?


That's the problem though, because this is so drawn out there's really not that much more to talk about. So now we see the lowest common denominator style of political campaign where they just trade halfhearted jabs and pretend to get angrier each time they speak. Blech. This is so stupid, please stop the insanity, stop making your party look like idiots, and end the campaign already. Please.

Here's the problem

Yesterday I had this great idea for what I was going to write about in my second triumphant entry in my return to blogging; but it's gone now. Like a Zen Buddhist sand painting, it has blown away in the winds and empty spaces of my mind, probably never to return. That's the problem. I really do think that I have some good ideas, the problem is that they never stick around long enough for me to make anything of them. Another frustrating aspect of this phenomenon is that these days, I actually have some of the energy and drive to live some of these ideas out. Or at least investigate their real-world viability. Which represents a huge change from my previous selves, but only serves to further anger me when I remember that I forgot what I thought was a really good idea. Grr.

On a completely different note, and I know I'm behind the times on this one, but I'm watching a UEFA cup match that Tivo'ed, and it's a great game. Based on my very limited (not to mention antiquated now) knowledge of English soccer I never would have guessed that Liverpool vs. Arsenal would be a terrific game; let alone that Liverpool would be the favorite, but here it is, a terrific game. And, no, this post is not some type of "look at how worldly and alternatively cool I am watching soccer" type of thing. I'm not even really sure why I signed up to put this game on my Tivo, but I did, and now I'm happy about it. Perhaps I will now become one of those douchey guys who always talks about soccer in an effort to make myself sound more cosmopolitan and pretentious than I really am; but I doubt it.