Between Deadlines

Our spare room is a little bit of everything. it's an office with a desk & computer. It's a guest room with a full-size bed. Unfortuantely, it's also purgatory for things that have no other proper place to go in the house. Although I wish the room was far less cluttered than it is, it's probably better to clutter one room and spare the others.

This morning, I was trying to de-clutter a bit and found some old notebooks. So, of course I couldn't just stack them up and put them on a shelf or throw them away. I had to flip through them to see what gems I might find inside. (This is why it always took me sooooo long as a kid to clean my room. I couldn't just clean. I had to sort, read & analyze everything. I'm better than I was as a kid, but I still have room for improvement.)

Among the pages of one of my reporter's notebooks, I found this:

"We fill the gaps of other people with our own insecurities."

Ain't that the truth? I've certainly been guilty of that myself a time or two (or a hundred). However, as I've narrowed the pool of voices that I trust over the last several years, I think this is one particular trait I've improved on greatly. Howewver, promoting at work has allowed me to see how big of an issue it is for others. It has become intereresting to see how many people who constantly have negative feedback do so because their subconscious is looking in a mirror.

"There is no witness so dreadful, no accuser so terrible as the conscience that dwells in the heart of every man." -- Polybius

You've got your ball, you've got your chain

tied to me tight, tie me up again

Whose got their claws in you my friend

Into your heart I'll beat again

Sweet like candy to my soul

Sweet you rock and sweet you roll

Lost for you I'm so lost for you

You come crash into me

And I come into you

I've been awake for 43 of the last 50 hours. I'm back at work in eight.

Time for a nap.

So I was bored.

One of my Facebook friends took a brain quiz.

I clicked the link.

This was the result.

Interesting...

A couple of weeks ago, I came in from work and decided that something had to be done with our computer room. We call it the computer room because it's where the computer is and because "the 'where everything goes to die' room" is entirely too wordy. So, I spent about 12 hours sorting, filing, shredding and trashing. I should have weighed the stacks of papers that went into the trash and recycling.

Of course, not everything that had accumulated was trash. I found a few gems along the way, like an envelope with this scribbled on the back:

"I didn't think I could have a relationship with Jessie without dating others first. And I couldn't legitimately date others because I had Jessie in the back of my mind. This is one of my regrets."

That original sentiment reminds me of a quote from the movie High Fidelity (which is quite autobiographical for me despite the fact that I've never owned a record shop):

"I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments."

I preach the "no regrets" philosophy to others. I do my best to live it myself. But like Sinatra, I've had a few. Without stopping to think of any one specific regret, I'd bet you $500 that every single one of them can be traced back to a lack of commitment in some form or the other.

The bad news? I've screwed some things up along the way. The good news? I know why. I like to think that puts me ahead of the game.

89 degrees at 9 pm with air so heavy and still you can drink it. Driving through an undeveloped darkness -- night as it was originally intended. The black of night consumes the glow of the headlights and the world relies on the bright green glow of the dashboard and flashes of heat lightning on the horizon for illumination. The hum of the tires on the asphalt is overpowered by the rain-like cadence of bugs dying on the windshield. This is a summer night in The South.

I always knew the Griswold family had "the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye." But until tonight, I didn't really have a benchmark for that sort of happiness. Thanks to Netflix, I can now check "White Christmas" off my list of movies to watch. It wasn't too bad... for a singing picture.

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