Please?

This American Life on NPR is doing a show for William S. Burroughs 101st birthday, and I got all excited when Jen (wife-Jen) said her father was a big fan of him.

Turns out she meant William F. Buckley.

Small post for today. I'm electing to go to the gym now rather than write for multiple reasons. The main being that I can feel the bare tickle at the back of my throat that I always get just before a throat cold/thing. This is something I DO NOT WANT as I prep for Japan. So? Time to beat up my body in a good way and get to bed early.

That said, I didn't want to not post anything, so here's a mini update:

Got a good day's work in. The boss will be happy. Found a new issue with the system that I need to report, though I think it might be an oddity for just my car. (Storage drives not showing newly added sessions despite having recorded them. Rebooting the laptop resolves this. Happened twice. Tested twice. Resolved twice.)

Throat thing. Fraaaaack!

I listen to a crap-ton of podcasts. A large number of them are 'self help-y' enough that I'm embarassed for folks to learn of them. (Though obviously not that embarassed if I'm going to mention them here.) One of those is Michael Hyatt's "This Is Your Life" podcast. While I don't mean to badmouth the man, it's not really my bag. He's a religious dude (I'm not). He's high up the proverbial 'ladder' (I'm not). And he tends to look at things from a vantage point that I don't.

But every once in a while... Like today. Since I took some time away from podcasts (and was listening to audio books only) I have some catching up to do. Today's episode was Season 3 Episode 1: How You Can Better Control Your Time. Given my recent frame of mind / planning efforts, this is an episode I'm likely to listen to more than once. The big thing I took away from the first round: Creating an 'ideal week' in Google Calendar (since I use that anyway) to use in my planning/scheduling of things. Seemed like a Really Good Idea.

There's probably more that I should write here, but I really do need to get my ass into the gym so I'll queue this up and come back to it if there's time.

* * * * *

Back from the gym. 1/2 hour on the hard setting on the elliptical. 60 x 20lb reclined butterflies. 30 x ... curls? (It's a cross chest curl thing that I created.) 30 seconds (in 10 second chunks) of isometric arm extensions with 20 lbs.

Not quite as "Rar!" as I was with Sunday's workout, but good. Now? Shower.

I was trying to type the sentence, "I swept the slush outside," and instead got  "I swept the slash outside."

Yes. Jesus, there were giant piles of pages of poorly written fan fiction all over the sidewalk and steps! It was horrible. They were falling from the sky! One of them stuck to the windshield of the car and I couldn't scrape it off at first. Something about The Tenth Doctor and Sherlock being completely exhausted from a rough battle with Helen A and her pet Stigorax Fifi, and needing to relax in the TARDIS' jacuzzi with a couple of shots of Sentarion rekkar. 

I SWEAR I DIDN'T READ IT. 

Edited to add: I watched The Interview. I expected it to be on a par with Anchorman or worse. I may have been in a mood. 

It was better than I expected. I actually laughed, really, really, really hard at the climax. I can also see why North Korea was a bunch of pissy little bitches about it, but that just proves how dumb they are. 

All the things.

All of them dammit.

Looks like I'm getting a jump start on the whole "Write a Crap-Ton in February" thing some of us are doing with L. M. Lopez. 

I want to accomplish a lot. Not just with the writing. With life. When I look back over my lifetime, (yeah - pull up a chair - it's like that) I see a lot of wasted time. I'm not here to make excuses or anything, I just want to fix it. I like to think of myself as a problem solver, and not a 'problem talker abouter'. Sure, I appreciate some good planning, but...

Anyway. I think that I've figured out the reason. Call it ADHD, call it ping-ponging, or call it whatever you like - I don't finish things. All my life I get really excited about some new project or some creative concept, I start it, and then a few things happen:

1. I get bored with it. Really bored with it. And I drop it.

2. I think of some other new project/concept, get really excited about that thing, and drop the current thing.

3. I tell everyone about what I'm planning on doing, feel like I've done it, and say "Ahhh - eff it." and drop it.

Before you say anything - I know that I'm not alone here. The world is chocked full of peanuts. Errr... of people who do the same thing. (Peanuts just goes with 'chocked full'. I had to.)

But that's just it - it's long past time I do something more. It's time I started to accomplish some things. This has been a large part of the end of my last two serious relationships, and each time it... built in intensity. I've made steps since then, but not enough progress for my liking.

I need to keep myself on track. It's way too easy to fall to the side or be distracted by some new shiny thing.

Okay, okay. Shut up already and tell us what you plan to do about it.

You may not have actually said it, but you were thinking it.

So here's the deal: I'm going to re-focus myself. At first, my intent is to do this three times every day. Those times will not be specific hours in the day, but after specific events:

1. First thing in the morning. Before I head out to work every day, I will review my list. Then I will meditate. (Duration TBD.)

2. When I get back to my hotel room, I will review my list. 

3. Just before bed, I will review my list.

So what's on my list?

That's actually what I'm here to discuss. I'm looking for broad categories to put things under.

The format that I'm currently picturing is this: Separate sheets in a spreadsheet. Physical Health, Financial Health, Creativity, and Work/Career. Something like that. Then on those sheets I can do the breakdown of tasks and goals. The details aren't too important for the purposes of this conversation though. I just need to work out the basic 'infrastructure'.

Simplicity is key, of course. I want this to be about doing things, not spending time working on the spreadsheet. I do, however, want to be smart about this start.

So what do you think? Have I covered all the 'primary categories' with Physical Health, Financial Health, Creativity, and Work/Career? If not, what do you feel I'm missing?​

So, this is a big deal: 

The Relentless Award. 

TL: DR; a playwright can win $45K. That's forty-five-thousand US dollars. No playwriting contest has had this big of a cash award. 

But wait! THERE'S MORE! 

The winning playwright also gets a week at an artists' retreat in upstate NY, which they can attend alone, or, bring a director, dramaturg and/or actors. They have the option of having the play published by Dramatists' Play Service (a very big deal) and the play gets a reading at regional theatres across the country, including The Wilma and The Goodman. As far as opportunities for playwrights go, it is a Golden Ticket. 

How can such a lucrative, prestigious, and useful thing exist? 

So, here's the tragicomic part. 

When Philip Seymour Hoffman died, his friend David Bar Katz was the first person to find him. In the days that followed, The National Enquirer published a story claiming that Katz (or is it Bar Katz?) a) was Hoffman's secret lover, and, b)was supplying PSH with drugs.  Neither of which were true.

Katz is a playwright, best known for his collaboration with John Leguizamo on Freak and House of Buggin'. In Philly, he's mostly known for being the fortunate son of a really rich guy. He did what any smart fortunate son would do, and sued the crap out of the Enquirer. Actually, he just signed a libel suit, there was a settlement, and Katz, wisely, used the money to create this playwriting award. 

I can't think of a better way to memorialize (?) a friend. or to get revenge. 

Details here: Truth and a Prize Emerge from Lies About Hoffman. 

Last night I started playing some songs from Sweeney Todd for Archer, and he discovered that one of the lullabies his mother has been singing to him since he was an infant is actually from a show about murder and cannibalism.  Boy was he surprised!

Also, I asked him who he thought wrote Sweeney Todd, and he immediately said, "Stephen Sondheim."  If you hear enough Sondheim, you know when you're hearing Sondheim - there's this witty recetative that he puts in a lot of his songs that's a fingerprint, you can't miss it.  I love the word 'recetative'.

Here's NPH singing it to Patti LuPone (eeee!).  I can't wait to show Archer this one when he comes home from school.

No news is good news?

Yeah, so I've been negligent for a while now. Sorry about that.

Things have been good. Really good. I'm going to Japan. I keep having to tell myself that because it hasn't really sunk in yet.

For those who don't know - this is huge for me. I started looking into ninjutsu as a martial art when I was young. Maybe when I was... 15? Anyway - that sparked a desire to go to the land of the rising sun that wouldn't leave me. Ever.

Thing is, I'm not a guy who really expects to be able to do much. My financial resources have always been woefully stretched, I spent most of my life pretty solidly planted in a single locale, and I just always thought of Japan as a kind of dreamscape - a place on the map labeled hic sunt dracones.

And now I'm going to go. For a month. With my best bud.

While I'm still 'in town' (even that has come to mean something entirely different for me - currently in Jacksonville Florida) I've been training a new recruit - Tanner. He's not going to be doing my job - he's going to be supporting it. I'm showing him the ropes so he knows what it's like for us out in the field before he starts supporting us.

Kid's smart. He's funny as fuck. He's 'our people' - completely our people.

So really, this has been like hanging out with one of my beloved PhilaDel pholks and getting paid to do so. He understands when I explain things to him - the first time. He can repeat it pretty much flawlessly after the second.

While I know that isn't all that goes into being a good support person, I'm happy to know he will be supporting us.

Did I mention that I'm going to Japan? For a month?

Which brings me to another point: I'm nervous as hell.

Those of you who know me can appreciate that I don't get nervous much. You might say that I'm too much of a buddhist, I guess. I figure there's not much point in worrying about what might be. Just prepare as best you reasonably can and go with it.

For the record, it's not really true. I do stress. A lot. I just usually manage it - at least on the surface. I've seen what happens when person A is stressing out and person B fuels the fire by also stressing while in close proximity. It's the wildfire with a tank of gasoline. I would much rather be a calming influence when I can.

But in this case? I'm openly freaking the fuck out. I've been doing a lot of homework. I've been polling friends and family who are in the know about Japan (despite the fact that Mark will be there for a large portion of my time). I've read countless web pages. I've learned about flight plans and rail schedules and cities and towns. I've studied for this more than any other single adventure in my life.

And I feel like I know nothing.

I won't speak the native language. That's a hurdle. In the end though, I will probably pick up enough to survive (generally speaking). The real thing that is worrying me is that I won't be able to read the language. That's a problem since I don't like interacting with people when I need help.

It's not the 'typical male' thing. I'm not a proud man. I just really like to understand my situation as best I can, and that happens (more often than not) by reading.

Reading the nearby signage. Reading the expressions and body language of the people around me. Reading... anything and everything.

I won't be able to do that as a stranger in that strange land.

I've grown too comfortable in my travels thus far, and I know it. When I find I don't have something I need, I can just 'stop somewhere and pick it up'. Difference in Japan? I'll be a giant. A fat giant no less. Who can't read the signs. I'm actually a bit fearful that I will be a perfect example of a fat dumb gaijin. I do not want to be a (bad) archetype.

I recognize that at this point I'm just rambling on about my stress, and that's not productive, so I'll stop.

Suffice to say: I'm only bringing my two bags of worldly possessions and that feels a little like grabbing the first backpack you see and jumping off that nearby cliff - hoping that the backpack holds a parachute.

My editor chose two of the articles I wrote for the weekly newspaper, Bethlehem Press, to send to the Keystone contest. It's a contest for local papers of all sizes - while I write features (and cover the occasional meeting), it's rare that I generate a ton that are deemed "recognition-worthy" but I'm super proud because one article featured Migraine Awareness and the other featured a great school, Mercy Learning Center, which works with differently abled kids.  

Anne Mollo recently posted an entry including the "What Taking My Daughter to a Comic Book Store Taught Me" link, and the ensuing snottiness of person B. And it's also popping up in my feed in that other social media site. (Aside: I sometimes think comments are the bane of all happiness. Still I read them, even when I know better.)

And it has me thinking - in the shower of course, where I do my best work - I see a lot of stuff lately about girls needing more female role models/heroes they can identify with. And across the years, posts on <insert socio-ethnic-racial group here> needing more <insert socio-ethnic-racial group here> role models/heroes they can identify with. 

And I think to myself: do I want my kid picking only female role models/heroes? And only nominally white ones at that? No, I don't. What am I missing here?

Ideally, I want a pantheon of role models available, representative of all the cultures, creeds, orientations, for kids to choose. I don't want the kid pigeoned holed into choosing only ones that are most-like-her. But life isn't ideal. We work to make it better, but we play the cards we're dealt. Possibly I have this mindset because I didn't have any Half-Paki, Half-German Female Engineer role models in my life?

My shower musing turns to: there is usually an incumbent (cue dissertation on privilege). Railing at that fact doesn't do much to bring more light. Denying that fact is generally ignorance or assholery.  Adding more options, that is a path I support. Meanwhile, I will tend my own garden. 

“There is a concatenation of all events in the best of possible worlds; for, in short,

• had you not been kicked out of a fine castle for the love of Miss Cunegund;
• had you not been put into the Inquisition;
• had you not travelled over America on foot;
• had you not run the baron through the body;
• and had you not lost all your sheep, which you brought from the good country of El Dorado,

you would not have been here to eat preserved citrons and pistachio nuts.” “Excellently observed,” answered Candide; “but let us take care of our garden" -- Voltaire (bullets added by me for readability)