The World's Longest Posting: Procrastination In Action

I don’t want to go to work. I’m procrastinating. I have loaner hearing aids ‘cos I’m getting mine repaired again just before the warranty expires, and these loaners aren’t worth shit. I hate them. For now, I’m making my living off my hearing, and this leaves me pretty bitter. I’m tempted to pay the $70 rush fee just because this hearing-30%-less thing’s a real fucking thorn in my side. But it’s a stupid thing to spend money on.

I’ve been enjoying work until now. Something in me has changed, and sitting still for hours and tapping out captioning has been almost Zen-like. My months and months of anxiety are starting to wear away. Soon, I’ll feel more like writing and stuff, but right now I feel like doing the bare minimum. It’s like I’m recalibrating. But the funny thing about work is, I’m somehow churning out 20% more work at, I believe, the same quality as ever. My sound effects are getting more creative, though, too. (I close caption for a living these days.) I think I’ve just got more focus. Probably more determination than I’ve had before, and it’s presenting itself in things like getting things done better and being more adaptable to the happenings in my life.

(I have work guaranteed now until mid-November, at which point I’ll finally have accrued enough hours to be eligible for employment insurance, in case anything should transpire. There may still be work, though, and that’s what I hope. Fingies crossed. If not, though, my ass will finally be covered again. It means I can sleep a little better now. My dickhead old employers have still not provided me with a record of employment. On Monday I talk to the government and see what my recourse is, as one month would have passed since my dismissal. Fucking people…)

I’ve started a new book. I guess I’m beginning to read a little more. I’ve read Truman Capote’s Breafast with Tiffany and a few other short stories. I’ve also read the Bobby Gold Stories by Anthony Bourdain. Tiffany was obviously brilliant. Bobby Gold was a puzzler. See, I’m always dubious of books where they claim it’s short stories but it’s all stories about the same character, all in chronological order, all about the same facts. Well, it’s a novel without the dots connected is what it is.

I can’t help it – it just seems like the easy way out. You can cheat a little on character development, eliminate the silly things – like the silences between the words. The things that are hard for writers. Lesser writers can conjure brilliant stories in bits and pieces. It’s melding things together without creating waste that reveals brilliance, right?

Or maybe not. When I “write”, it’s in short stories. I do some flash fiction. I’ve got some pretty decent stories tucked away. A writing teacher described one as Denis Johnson (Jesus’ Son) meets Margaret Atwood and Graham Greene in a dark alley. How fucking flattered was I, huh? That was a definite high point.

Still, I enjoyed the Gold Stories. He’s a good writer. I wonder how much people realize he’s really gleaned from Hunter Thompson, but I think there are few “edgy” writers under 40, or even under 50, that don’t steal from Hunter. God knows I do. Bourdain’s very up-front about it, though. His borrowings are obvious and he does nothing to hide them. He’s honest about his influences, whether he puts it in words or not. As am I.

Ah, sigh, my edge. My edge, though, has become dull I fear. I’m lacking something. I don’t care if others can see it, I KNOW it. I’m disappointed my punk-pop gig got cancelled last Monday. My week was probably better as a result of it, since I’m 33, but I know my pulse would’ve gone through the roof, and I’d have had a high that’d have lasted days. Certain gigs promise that, and that one certainly did.

So, I’m still… this. I’m not sad or depressed or anxious. I’m pretty decent. But I have no edge. Is it my anti-depressants? It can’t be. That part of me could never get medicated, I don’t think. It runs a mile deep, like Death Valley, or something. It’s at my core. I’m choosing instead to blame it on not exercising and reading things that are too “nice” and watered down (or completely disconnected from my life, like Bobby Gold). There’s an element missing in my brew, like a lack of salt in a stew, and it’s growing irksome.

At that job that I hated, I had to watch everything I say. Now I’m practicing podcasting, and I’m watching what I say. Fuck, I’ve had to watch what I say in friendships and everything these past few months, and I’m just not used to needing to be tactful or diplomatic. I wonder if it’s just a combination of all these things. Less exercise, meds, watching words carefully, and so forth. Probably just all that damned anxiety, too.

A friend once told me that I likely couldn’t write the novels and fiction I’d been trying to write because my life came with so much conflict packed into it already, and trying to write more conflict would be adding insult to injury. Maybe that’s part of what I’m enduring right now. The last year has been, easily, the most tumultuous of my life. I think that some decade down the road I’ll reflect on the last year and lump it into the bunch with when mother died and the folks divorced. A bad, bad time for me, no doubt.

But I know I didn’t get a big readership from being all nice and fluffy, and I don’t give a fuck what anyone says. I think some of my appeal comes from the fact that I am indeed nice and fluffy, but that I really know how to throw down a rant, too. Thank god for PMS.

So, now I’m reading Go Now by Richard Hell. Yes, Richard Hell of Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the seminal punk band from NYC’s golden era, famous most for the track Love Comes in Spurts, I suspect. It’s a heroin tale, probably of the Irvine Welsh ilk, and I’m curious about it. Just started it, so we’ll see how far I get.

I WANT MY FUCKING EDGE BACK, MAN! Y’know, I was wandering about my pad and I saw, through an ajar cupboard door, the mug that my jerk of a former employer gave me, and the thought of taking it down the street and hurtling it against a brick wall made me laugh and laugh. Sounds like an amusing time. I mean, I don’t get to break enough shit, you know? Destruction is good for you! Everything I ever needed to learn, I learned from Graham Greene’s Destructors (which I read years and years and years before it was featured as a backstory in Donnie Darko, thankyouverymuch). I’m trying to remember the last time I deliberately broke something. Look at David Letterman – he breaks shit all the time, TVs hurtled down to 53rd Street, that sort of thing, and he’s not only a very happy, content looking guy, but he’s paid millions of dollars to do it, too.

I wonder what the hell it is I need to do for my edge. What in god’s name do I have to do? You know what it is, though? Everyone I’m friends with is fucking old now. I still wanna be 26, but everyone feels fucking ancient. Married. Settled down. Or just too damned conservative. And I need a car. I need a car so I feel safe driving around the city at 3am (because I sure as shit don’t enjoy it on a scooter). I want to hit up the beach, go to the top of Cypress. I want to get the hell out of the city. I feel BORED. BORED, BORED, BORED!

But there’s always concerts. Maybe I’ll swing by Zulu and see what the best-looking gig might be and go solo to a show sometime. I’ve never done that, you know. Well, once, I did. YEAH, that’s right! (Way back in the day – the Hip at Seabird Island with Husker Du, World Party, Hothouse Flowers, and Midnight Oil. I met folks who shared their rye and beer with me, and we hung together for hours. And it was fucking awesome. So, why don’t I do that? Yeesh.)

All right. Heh, heh. Find out what the kids are listening to, and get in there. Fuck it. Age is a number, man.