A breakdown of the trip thus far...

Friday February 6th, 2015

Left northern Florida (JAX) via Southwest. Stopped in DEN and then on to LAX where I was met by my buddy Jason who swept me off to his place to crash. The slight headcold / congestion did very little to dampen the experience.

The Denver stop was a bit of a tease. I have some really great people in Denver and I've been wanting to go for a visit for some time now. So being in their city and not able to visit was a touch frustrating. I, of course, find this to be one of those scenarios where "If that's my biggest problem in life..."

Saturday February 7th, 2015

I had breakfast with Jason and his family at a place called Country Deli in Chatsworth CA. Delightful family place which serves a yummy sausage breakfast burrito. After breakfast we visited local fish/reptile shop because they were looking for some things to fix their aquarium.

Post pet store, I had a planning session with Mark via Google Hangouts in order to go over some of our plans for the first adventure one I'm in the country. First up? Tropical jungle camping/hiking on one of the southern islands of Japan - Iriomote.

Chilled out with Jason and his son while his wife and daughter were off having some girls only chill time. Then the boys made their way to a swanky steak house for a really satisfying meal.

Funny side note: I'm planning on using Japan as a jumping off point to improve my diet. Content of my diet, sure, but the primary focus is portion control. To that end, I was proud of myself for ordering 'only' the six ounce steak. Of course, the the portions on everything else about the meal were so ginormous as to render my herculean effort null and void. C'est la vie.

At the end of the night, Jason and I watched John Wick starring Keanu Reeves. Stop laughing - it was surprisingly entertaining. (And not in a "I can't believe how awful this is..." sense.)

Sunday February 9th, 2015

Woke up fairly early and reduced / repacked my bags in order to get rid of some of the 'excess' that I had collected. Yes, I felt like I had too much stuff with my two bags loaded.

I explained to one adorable little girl and her very awesome brother that "That Boy" would come back soon.

Jason and I made our way to brunch with some dear old friends (Patty and Mike) at a place called Pann's just outside LAX. Patty and Mike are great human beings. They scratch a very specific itch I have for chatting with crazy creative people who also have more than enough brains to support that creativity. While I'm really blessed with so many folks of that particular mix in my life, Patty and Mike have a different flavor to their creativity that I feel like my life would be greatly reduced without. A chance to hang out with them is something I will never pass on. I also got to  consume one seriously yum Louisiana Omellette. 

Once Jason dropped me off at the airport, my check in went easy on a ridiculous scale. My only objection there was the fact that they forced me to check my backpack because it was a couple kilograms over the weight limit. Not the end of the world, certainly, but I work really hard to keep it to carry on only, so this frustrated me. On the plus side, the woman who checked me in and made the request couldn't have been more gracious. I suspect that's a taste of things to come, and frankly, I'm looking forward to that.

My take off was a different story altogether. My flight was originally scheduled to leave at 2:20pm. Due to some technical issues with one of the engines, and the need to replace some component therein, we didn't actually take off until 6:30pm. End of the world? Far from it. It was  a little bit stressful, but mostly from the fact that my brain wouldn't let go of the idea that "there's something wrong with one of the engines". Still - they fixed the part, the staff was gracious and responsive, and eventually we were on our way.

A side note about the staff of Singapore Air flight SQ011 - I don't know if I simply 'lucked out' or if they have some sort of attractiveness requirement for their staff, but pretty much every crew member on this flight is of model level attractiveness. The men are handsome and the women are beautiful on a 'my chest aches just looking at this human' level. None of this really matters for anything, but as it's a first in my air travel experiences, I thought it noteworthy.

More soon from this Aimless Drifter...

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously ruled that people who are of competent mind and have a terminal illness and consistently have indicated their desire to end their life should be able to employ the assistance of a physician in doing so.

This, this is hard.  The autonomy aspect of this is crucial; we don't believe (much) (yet) in this country in sentencing people to life in prison without parole, and if someone has decided that life isn't worth living, that's a kind of life sentence of possibly a very, very long duration.  It also has to be said that without legal assisted suicide, people will end their lives earlier, as they'll have to do it themselves, when they are physically more well than when they'd need to rely on assistance. 

And yet, it's really hard to listen to this whole narrative and wonder why it is that we as a society have made getting old or disabled so unappealing that people want to end their lives, and why it is that we don't devote more resources to fixing this problem.  (Instead, we have wars.  Yay.) 

In particular, a friend pointed me to this article on Facebook, and it notes something that should be obvious in the midst of this whole stupid measles outbreak: the people who are not vaccinating their kids (because they incorrectly believe that the measles vaccine causes autism) are valuing the possibility of their kid getting measles (measles!) over the (incorrect) fear of having someone autistic in their family. 

The narrative goes on and on.  There's the late Harriet McBryde writing one of the best articles I've ever read, about her arguments with Peter Singer about the validity of disabled lives.  There's an almost infinite amount of research that shows that community living makes old people's lives better and makes their decisions about end-of-life care ones that they are more satisfied with.  And so on.

I do think that on balance, letting people make decisions around their own lives is the only reasonable choice.  But the context of our society in which they make that choice?  It's pretty dreadful.

Well, I have a cool job now. And I go dancing when I can. And that leaves... not a metric ton of spare creative energy.

Creativity strikes, but I rarely come home eager to write something epic outside of work. I tend toward the bon mot; the long-form stuff tends to flow at work. This is not uncommon for people in creative jobs.

But, when I read some of my past LJ posts, I am flabbergasted by the outpouring.

I was hungry, and angry, and excited, and amazed, discovering and rediscovering things. Right now I'm in a different sort of place.

That's okay? I guess? For now.

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.