I wish I had known

Cruise Control buttons should have a skull and crossed bones on them. Anytime I think a part of my life is okay enough for me to set the Cruise and relax, I slam into something solid. Constant attention, constant focus. I suppose the pressure that is crushing me probably inspires some. I may have inspired me at some point but I am worn down. Worn and dull.

Joy is becoming harder and harder to find. Survival mode sucks. I am relegated to headphones and coffee. There is no place for me to be. There is no peace. It is all beach and no shelter.

The real problem is not the stress but the lack of payoff. I have never been in such a zero-sum game before. There are no points, there are no finish lines, just more race.

None of this is new to this world and I suppose instead of dying of diabetes at 47 I could be suffering of mercury poisoning at 20 like some fireworks assembly worker. I can put this all in perspective quick enough but that somehow doesn't make me want to trot on with a smile.

I grew up with almost zero exposure to country music. In high school I was forced to listen to Garth Brooks and Randy Travis thanks to my brother and I hated it. Anything with a slide guitar or banjo made me cringe.

Two things happened to change my mind about country music. First and most importantly I started playing guitar. The more I play acoustic the more I respected the country guitarists. Secondly I looked around for something unfamiliar to quiet the noise in my head.

In the last six months I have dunked my head into the sobering outright common sentimentality of ballad country music. I like the happy songs too but if it smacks of a bar song or a sing-a-long then I have to pass on it.

I have been caught off guard by some songs like "Allisya Lies", "Better in Color", and just tonight the song "November 8th" blew me away.

I am not saying that I know the artists or follow discography. I am still a Demon Hunter, Emery, and King's X fan. I have just opened new avenues of musical appreciation.

Another odd facet of my music enjoyment is the joyous phenom that is Kingdom Bound Quartet. They are like the Lil' Wayne of regional southern gospel quartets. Chicks dig them and they sell t-shirts. They are awesome.

Phoney

Well, you would know that within weeks of my Tilt purchase I learn of the AT&T no-camera version of the Fuze. I can't win.

One day I won't care if my phone has a camera in it or not but for now I am stuck with this restriction.

Frozen and Broken

My memory is sometimes too good for my own good. I can sit here and bury my mind in heavy bad memories from years ago. It is like having a radio playing in my head. I can't turn it off. Mistakes, missed opportunities, movies I've watched, songs playing at full volume. It will drive me crazy one day.

I finally jumped off into the world of 3G. I bought a no-camera HTC Tilt. I am not supposed to have a camera at work so I will play the game. I would have just kept on waiting for something better but the battery cover keeps coming off of my HTC Star Trek(Cingular 3100). It is very annoying.

I have high hopes that this Tilt will be as if my HTC Star Trek and my Dell Axim met at their cousin's wedding and hit it off big time and went to Vegas that night and was married by Elvis and then had a baby named Tilt then put their baby on Ebay with an 8gig micro SD card and case. That is what I am hoping it will be like. Just like it.

How could I forget?

Ever feel like you are in the bottom of the mostly empty medium Icee cup? It is cold at your feet. The color has all been drained from the beverage and you are left with small mountains on either side with dozens of little holes from repeated straw pokes. I liked the old wax covered cups with the Icee Polar Bear on the side. It is hard to get an actual Icee brand beverage but the fake ones are at Target and Burger King.

I feel anxious. It is like walking through that shark tunnel at the aquarium. I am not worried about the sharks but think about that plexiglass giving way.

Drop Dead List

I thought the term "Drop Dead List" was something already in common usage. I update my list each year around Christmas and this year I thought I would google around to see what others out in the wide world were doing with theirs. So far, all I can find is some band and a brand of clothes. The band is serious hardcore metal with a demo grade song for free and the clothes are a cross between Hello Kitty and The Monster Mash.

The concept of the "Drop Dead List" is easy to grab. If I were to DROP DEAD right at this second, what would my family need to know. This is not a replacement for a secret public journal or a list of children you fathered and never told your wife about. I am talking practical stuff here.

The Drop Dead List should answer questions like "where are the birth certificates?", "what is the password to get into the 401k website?", "where did we put those savings bonds we bought 8 years ago?". These are all good questions and they are easy for me to answer but my wife probably would not know the answers.

After my Mom died I helped to locat bills, contact creditors, and lookup other important info. I don't want anyone else to have to go through that for me and hence the Drop Dead list was born.

I have a problem with keeping detailed sensitive information in Word or Excel. I don't like keeping this sort of thing just laying around either. I have been using a program called eWallet by Ilium it is not ideal for a Drop Dead List. The print features are clearly not designed to be used. I don't have an answer for this.

I may do some sort of form or template that I can just write in my information. This keeps the format clean and the answers aren't recorded without encryption. I could put this form in the safe deposit box.

I don't know why I am thinking about this. This is not plesant to think about this close to the holidays.

Flies and Blue Skies

I was given a package this weekend with most of my school report cards. That was a trip and a half. I have not thought of that junk in a long time. How did I get out of Jr. High school? I barely passed everything. I would make a B and then an F and then back to B. That kind of swing should show my attention span.

This blog is a study in why I did so very badly in English class. BLOGS are usually just a published first draft. I make a habit of going back to my old posts and doing a little rewrite here and there.

In addition to the flood of inadequacy and self doubt that accompanied the realization that I was retarded in school, I decided to go through some old floppy disks. I found backed up artwork, letters, clip-art, and photos. I found copies of the first web site I ever coded in HTML back in 1994. That was funny. I found old landscape paintings I did with Corel Draw 3. I also found some of my college writings. This was bad!

The funniest thing I found was a power point presentation that I had sent to my father-in-law to ask for his daughter's hand in marriage. Yeah, don't ask why.

I should have went to art school or clown college. Instead I clowned around at a liberal arts college.