skepticlysm

Category: Blerg

  • Elevator Doors

    Elevator Doors

    • Yesterday …
    • Okay, maybe it was Saturday.
    • Yeah, definitely Saturday.
    • We went to Mi Tierra for dinner.
    • Had fajita leftovers.
    • They were not my leftovers, but I was told I could have them for lunch today.
    • Which is nice.
    • Nice to not have to worry about spending $17 for lunch downtown, you know?
    • I had my bag slung around my chest, my coffee in one hand, the styrofoam container with the fajitas in the other.
    • (Who still uses styrofoam?)
    • (Well, lookie there. Apparently “Styrofoam” is a brand name like Kleenex or Xerox.)
    • (No, you environment killing thing, I will not give you a capital S.)
    • Scanned in, went to pull open the big glass door to the 14th floor …
    • Which slipped.
    • And caught the fajita container and my arm, flinging it from my grasp.
    • Fajitas everywhere.
    • Everywhere being mostly the floor.
    • And my hand.
    • Which after multiple washings still smells like fajitas.
    • Sigh.
    • Apologies to the cleaning staff.
    • My fault.
    • How’s your Monday?
    • Mini fiction:
    • He nodded to the woman behind the security desk as he entered the building.
    • “Good morning,” she said.
    • He echoed the greeting, lamented for the moment he did not know her name. Well, if it were really a she? It looked like a she, but he knew it was one of the latest bots from Boston Dynamics. Probably had a model designation and not a real name like Sally or Veronica. Maybe he’d give it a name. Later, though. The timeclock waits for no one, however, and he needed to get upstairs for a meeting … which started in four minutes. At least it was a Zoom meeting.
    • He stopped in front of the elevator bank, mashed the Up button with the pointer finger on his right hand while the rest clung to the coffee tumbler. His other hand held a small square box of “gourmet” donut holes.
    • The button’s yellow-orangish light lit up.
    • He leaned around his left arm to check the time.
    • Two minutes.
    • Ugh.
    • The elevator beeped. He fought the urge to step forward, reviewing stock footage of all the times he tried to rush onto the opening elevator while people tried to get out. All the awkward apologies to people he didn’t know.
    • The doors opened.
    • No one got out.
    • He stepped on, looked at the bank of floor buttons and the card scanner.
    • Oh, right.
    • He fumbled with the ID lanyard, snaking his thumb behind the ribbon to extend the card toward the scanner. He wondered how ridiculous he looked if the security guard happened to be watching from their console.
    • Card mashed against the scanner. The light turned green. He dropped the lanyard and thumbed the button for his floor, then stepped toward the back of the elevator, started to rehearse what he might need to say in the Zoom meeting.
    • Then realized the elevator had not moved.
    • He glared at the floor buttons. None were lit.
    • He sighed, loudly.
    • “Work, you stupid thing.”
    • He repeated the card scan/button process. Why did they even have to scan a card still? Couldn’t they code these things with biometrics? Or even scan your card in your pocket? Why the old school tech? Maybe the building supes spent all the money on Sally.
    • He refocused.
    • Again, all the proper lights lit. Again, he stepped back, this time keeping his eyes on the buttons.
    • The lights, which lit for a moment, went off.
    • “Seriously?”
    • He repeated the watch dance.
    • Late.
    • Officially.
    • He stepped forward, tapped the “open door” button.
    • Nothing happened.
    • “C’mon, you dumb thing. Work!”
    • Talking to himself on a Monday morning while trapped in an elevator …
    • The elevator dinged, lurched upward for a second, then stopped, bouncing.
    • He struggled to keep his coffee in his hand as his arm whipped out to catch the wall for balance.
    • He glanced around, looking for a camera.
    • “Help?”
    • Again, it lurched upward, stopped. Lurch. Stop.
    • He crouched back against the wall, waited. Counted to 100. Why he counted to 100 he didn’t really know, but it seemed a reasonable amount of time to make sure everything was … stable.
    • He stood, stepped toward the buttons, then repeated the card swipe process and reselected his floor. The buttons lit up like they were supposed to. The elevator began to climb.
    • “Thanks for nothing, dumb elevator.”
    • He felt an increase in upward velocity in his knees, which flexed a bit. He flicked his eyes to the floor indicator as his floor came and went.
    • He gritted his teeth.
    • The elevator stopped at the top floor.
    • He waited for the doors to open, visualized the door to the stairs.
    • The doors did not open.
    • He leaned forward, mashed the “open” button.
    • Nothing happened.
    • “Open the doors, you piece of junk!”
    • He stomped on the floor.
    • Which opened. He slipped into the dark of the elevator shaft, coffee and donuts flying from his hands as he flailed. As he fell, he looked up and watched the yellow light of the elevator vanish.
    • Mondays, he thought.
    • …
    • End.
    • Yeah, I dunno. That’s what popped into my head this morning getting on the elevator here at the Arvest Tower.
    • I have never written list-based fiction before now. Nor let anyone read that kind of thing without massive edits. That’s a first draft. Heh.
    • Also, that was before the Fajita Fiasco of March 2025.
    • Also, I have to go read the comments from the Millennials in Friday’s list. I see there are new ones, but I have not gotten there yet. Been a busy Monday, even without the fajitas.
    • Also, this was all written to Iron Maiden’s Somewhere in Time (album, not just the song.)
    • Dunno, man. I listened to another of their albums over the weekend, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, which is one of those concept albums.
    • I have memories of the day that came out when I was in junior high.
    • Sorry. Middle school.
    • I really haven’t listened to Maiden since seeing them in Tulsa a handful of years ago.
    • They played too much of their new stuff, which stinks.
    • Purged them from my system for a while.
    • Okay.
    • I’m out.
    • You have a Monday.
    • Try to keep a good grip on your lunch, right?
    • Stay safe!
  • info dump

    info dump

    Here’s the kinds of conversations I get into with Kaia, just don’t ask me how they get started.  

    Out of the blue yesterday, or perhaps the day before, she said, “I really don’t like first-person.” 

    I said, “Some of my favorite books are written in first-person, but I’ve always thought about it as a cheat.” I think one of my writing profs in college called it that and it stuck. Or screwed up my brain. I do not like writing fiction in first-person. Always third-person limited.  

    And then we went on from there for a good 10 minutes. 

    Here’s the thing. Everyone has opinions, right? But opinions don’t make you … right. In terms of writing, I default to calling my opinions preferences. Because I am not a published author. What the hell does my opinion amount to?  

    If you ever want to have a fun time as a reader, get into some of the forums and subreddits about writing and publishing. Lots of unsolicited advice.  

    Some of the fun stuff that always makes me chuckle … how long do you give a book before you bail on it? As a reader, if you know, you know. I’m apt to bail on a book even before I finish Chapter 1, and I can’t always tell you why. The kid has this mental mandate to finish any book she starts. She’s young. She’ll get over it. 

    Sometimes, the story does not hook me. Sometimes, it’s the prose. Sometimes, it’s how they handle internal monologue, which ultimately is why we’re gathered here today. 

    There’s a trend it seems in modern fiction for authors to include huge paragraphs of internal monologue in third-person. Paragaphs that span pages of tell, but not show. I have no patience for it. 

    For instance, Olivie Blake’s The Atlas Six. I made it through the first book, but by the second, I could not handle it anymore. I want things to actually happen in the stories I read. I do not want to spend the majority of a chapter sitting there watching a character think. Shit should be going down, man. Set the scenario, give your character something to react to, and then show us how they react. Simple stuff, really.  

    Show, don’t tell, is one of those subjects in writing that’s talked about all the time, and it sure feels like many modern published authors are not getting the message, or not being taught about it properly, or something. I hate it. I skim/skip pages, which even a decade ago I would’ve thought was one of the worst offenses a reader could commit.  

    An argument can be made for exposition, I guess. They’re using these huge internal monologues to convey information about their worlds and their characters history.  

    I’m in the William Gibson school on that. Throw your readers into the fire and let them figure it out as they go, like a constantly unwrapping present. Don’t explain it, let the world and narrative show it to them. It creates that feeling of anticipation and discovery far better than a goddamn info dump. Show them your world.  

    I’m reading like … six books … at the moment. Mostly because I’m having reading a.d.d., maybe?  

    • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,  Hunter S. Thompson (haven’t read it since ‘94?) 
    • Servant of the Shard, R.A. Salvatore 
    • Burn to Shine, Jonathan Maberry (just finished that one) 
    • #NSFW, Tosca Fasso 
    • The Third Rule of Time Travel, Phillip Fracassi 
    • The Gate of the Feral Gods, Matt Dinniman 

    The difference in styles is crazy. One of those is a work manifesto, so not fiction at all, but I find myself studying and comparing … writing styles? Makes me wonder what doing an MFA in creative writing would’ve done to me. At the very least, it would’ve taught me how to finish writing a goddamn book. Probably. 

    (No, I cannot write these kinds of things without swearing. Also wtf am I going to do with this when I’m finished with it?) 

    Anyway, this morning, I made the decision to leave my phone in the bedroom on the charger. I’ve spent too much time on my Spring Break looking at the damn thing. I trundled out to the couch, sat down, talked to Steph a bit, and then noticed Kaia’s copy of The Deathly Hallows sitting next to me. She’s got the whole thing marked up, colored post-it note tabs sticking out all over the place. 

    Picked it up, opened it to a random spot, and started reading. The spot turned out to be where Harry, Ron, and Hermione (almost left out my Oxford comma right there, which is another conversation the kid and I have had recently) are going in to question Olivander about the Elder Wand.  

    I have not reread the Potter series in at least a decade, and my memory of Rowling’s prose was slippy. Adverbs and the like. What I just read this morning? Not bad at all. I’d even go so far as to call it pretty good. Sure, it’s book seven. But in this particular scene, she’s info-dumping wandlore, but it’s not a whole page of anything. It comes out through conversation in the midst of scene demanded by the story. It’s … well done.  

    I mean, Rowling? Really? 

    I may sit here and read this freaking book today. Harry Potter and the Properly Written Prose.  

    Happy Spring Break, y’all! 

  • F.

    F.

    Things I did NOT write for work

    • What do you write about when you’ve already done ~900 words for work for the day?
    • Did you use up all your good material?
    • Some of it I’ll cut-and-paste here.
    • Maybe.
    • Oof.
    • The kid had a bad day.
    • Started off with me telling her to hurry up too many times.
    • In too loud a voice.
    • I apologized.
    • Because that’s what you do.
    • Even when you’re the parent.
    • Her day didn’t get much better.
    • She heard about Neil Gaiman and all his bullshit.
    • Neil’s been one of my favorite authors since I was 17 years old.
    • Now I find out he’s likely a fucking creep.
    • What do we do with his books?
    • Do we hide them?
    • Separate the author from their art?
    • I have autographs from that guy.
    • I’m leaning toward cramming them all in a box and sticking them in a cabinet.
    • The news made the Teenager bawl.
    • She believes the world is an awful place.
    • The Wife said, “In the midst of bawling her eyes out, she said she hated the news and she remembers going to someone’s house and hearing people had been shot in a church.”
    • Honestly, she should hate the news.
    • Because the shit on TV isn’t really news anymore.
    • It’s Shock-for-Profit.
    • I have not watched the news … well, basically, I have never watched the news.
    • Sure, overheard it from time to time, but I don’t turn it on.
    • Not any of it.
    • If it’s on the local news, it’s too short to tell you anything.
    • If it’s on one of the 24-hour “news” stations, it’s littered with pretty assholes who spew half-assed opinions from moderately educated mouths.
    • And that goes for both sides.
    • All those stations are for profit.
    • All the talking heads are biased.
    • I have said this before, and especially to all my friends on both sides of the aisle:
    • Stop. Fucking. Watching. Your. News.
    • No CNN.
    • No NBC.
    • No Fox News.
    • None of it.
    • Get your news from the AP.
    • READ IT.
    • READ, DAMN YOU.
    • Check the source on the media bias chart.
    • People keep sending me shit that’s patently untrue.
    • Stop it.
    • This is one step away from the political arguments none of us want to have with each other.
    • And that shit makes everyone miserable.
    • And it is crushing the kids, especially ones like mine.
    • Again, she believes the world an awful place.
    • Who wants to be a grown-up with the bullshit they’re having to see and hear?
    • I wouldn’t.
    • But the biggest problem with all of it.
    • There’s a lot of the world and modern life that’s pretty great.
    • And astounding numbers of good people.
    • Those are the stories that need to be shared.
    • The good, and the belief we can always make the world better.
    • That there are more people that reflect good values than not.
    • Yeah, there’s a lot that needs to be fixed.
    • But you gotta believe to do the good work.
    • You have to believe you can make a difference.
    • Your children count on you to show them that.
    • They don’t count on you to fill them with bias against the Different.
    • How other people live their lives is no business of yours.
    • You have power only over yourself.
    • Stop working to tell others who they are, who they can be, what they can do.
    • None of it affects you.
    • Not one bit.
    • Stop judging.
    • Start helping.
    • Listen.
    • Be there.
    • I mean, I’m lecturing myself as much as any of you, and you’re all people I know anyway, so you don’t need to hear it most likely.
    • Stop letting fear rule the world.
    • Ugh.
    • Signing off.
  • An Old Frontier

    An Old Frontier

    I’m increasingly dissatisfied with my internet addiction, in no small part because of how it has changed. It’s probably never good to be addicted to anything, but this … it’s stealing my life from me in hours-long chunks.

    When I graduated college, the Internet had just begun exploding. Sites popped up for everything. If you had an interest, someone made a website for that, and that thing specifically. And then companies began building websites for their businesses. And then people tried to figure out how they were going to make money off the deal.

    That was a good decade before social media really blew up. Before Facebook. Before Facebook became the internet.

    Now, my entire internet experience is … Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. That’s almost literally it. I don’t go hunt down blogs from authors I love, or websites for games I like. If I do seek out a website, it’s usually one selling something, like Grafton pens at Everyman.

    I never pull up Medium. I don’t have a blogroll I follow. I somehow lost the habit of pulling up Penny Arcade every day to see what Tycho and Gabe had cooked up.

    Instead, it’s hours wasted on posts chosen for me by algorithm. Posts I don’t remember not 30 seconds after seeing them. Shit I don’t really care about. Things made to manipulate me. Invasive advertising. Inflammatory political rhetoric. Thirst traps.

    I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. – Tyler Durden, Fight Club (film)

    What’s the point?

    I used to start these kinds of posts with a “social media is the worst thing that has ever happened to mankind” type of hyperbolic statement. And I think I still agree with that in general, but these days, there’s this feeling with it. This feeling of irresponsibility on my part. Of passiveness. Gullibility.

    I let this happen.

    The internet used to be fun. Exciting. Finding a new site that expounded upon a new interest was, not thrilling, but at least felt kinda good. It bolstered your enthusiasm for a thing. I remember digging into cyberpunk and Shadowrun and the early days of fantasy football. Into gaming. Art.

    I let social media steal my interests from me and replace them with bullshit. I did a journal entry yesterday and made a list of things I’d still be into. I should be into. I’m into them in my mind.

    I hate going to one app (well, three) and scrolling. I do it.

    But more and more, I’m resentful as hell about it. Things are about to give. The question i have for myself is … can I go back to the old ways of surfing? Can I be my own algorithm? Will I have FOMO not visiting social media?

    There’s only one way to find out.

  • Lost Words

    Lost Words

    Sometimes, I think about all the stuff I’ve written that’s lost to the ether.  

    Last week, I thought of a short story I’d written for the Tulsa Library Adult Fiction contest way back in 1999 called No Kisses for Darla. It was about a bartender with a cursed ankh necklace. I threw it together in a couple of days, entered it, warts and all, and got what amounted to third place out of 100+ entries.  

    It was my first fiction submission ever. 

    It would take another 18 years before I’d try again. 

    I didn’t get to attend the awards ceremony because I had to go to a wedding in Vegas, but they assured me it would be bound with the other winners and set upon the shelf in the Tulsa Central library. I always assumed I’d get by there and check it out, but I didn’t. 

    Over the years, media storage has changed. I’m pretty sure I had the original stored on a Zipp disk, but the disk is gone.  

    Last week, I tried to find out if the story was still in the library. I’d like to have a copy, after all. As it turns out, it likely isn’t. They only keep those a couple of years.  

    So that story is lost. I remember being kind of proud of it. I had a lot of match cuts between scenes, and played with two concurrent (past/present) narratives. Alas. 

    And then there are my movie review columns. Eleven years at 1500-2000 words a week, times 50 weeks per year equates to somewhere between 825,000 and a million words. I probably have saved maybe 20 columns in my cloud. I didn’t keep clips (back in the day when you cut your stories out of the newspapers or magazines with scissors and kept them in a fancy manila folder in a cheap metal file cabinet).  

    All those words, lost. 

    Some of them were even good, too.  

    I am somewhat lackadaisical about bylines. Had a few, am not personally impressed by having done so. 

    Still, it does sorta bother me that they’re gone. Urban Tulsa went out of business, its website shuttered alongside it. We tried to save the archives, but couldn’t come up with the funds.  

    All those lost words, all that lost work. 

    When I’m dead and gone, all that remains of me will be the words I’ve committed to “paper” and to the hearts and minds of those left behind. Maybe I should’ve taken more care to preserve those things, maybe it’s a more realistic view of our place in history. Fleeting. Dismissed.  

    I would’ve liked to have read that story again.  

  • The Toddler Dance

    The Toddler Dance

    • Yesterday, on the Internet, I saw a video of a mom coming out of a 10-day COVID-19 self-isolation.
    • Waiting for her was a toddler doing what can only be described as a happy dance, arms raised, feet and legs pumping up and down.
    • When she saw her momma, she ran to her and threw down a whole-body hug.
    • Which made me remember when the Teenager was a wee lass.
    • Those whole-body hugs toddlers dole out are literally the best feeling in the whole world.
    • And remembering them made me sad.
    • Because she doesn’t do that anymore.
    • Now days, I get that side arm, half-hug/half lean away thing.
    • I’ll take what I can get, obviously.
    • There are a lot of teenagers who want nothing to do with their dads.
    • But … hugs recharge your batteries.
    • Or for me they do, anyway.
    • Did I just admit to being a hugger?
    • Strike that from the record, please.
    • A friend of mine has a couple of daughters, one in college, one at Booker T.
    • He likes to say, “These days won’t last.”
    • Life is melancholy, sometimes.
    • For all the chaos and frustration, it can still be deep, meaningful, and beautiful.
    • You don’t get the good without the bad.
    • So savor …
    • Ugh. I just turned into a self-help meme.
    • Suck the marrow out of life, kids.
    • I read that somewhere.
    • In a book.
    • With pages.
    • And speaking of pages, I’m at about 160-ish in To Kill a Mockingbird.
    • I’m reading it slowly, trying to savor it, I guess.
    • No more than a couple chapters a night.
    • I admire her patience as an author.
    • Giving over chapters and chapters to character building with the plot just kind of slowly building in the background.
    • I don’t have that kind of patience. More of a pulp writer, I suppose.
    • I’m getting into the weeds.
    • Need to be deliberate about finding more ways to slow things down a bit.
    • Here it is Friday and all I can remember about the week is homework with the Teenager and the condensation drain line on the A/C stopping up and flooding the bedroom.
    • Have I told you guys the saga of my move?
    • No?
    • Well, best not to start now.
    • Thematically, it’s akin to Tom Hanks’ The Money Pit.
    • Kinda.
    • “These days won’t last.”
    • Okay, let’s link out on a high note.
    • The benefits of running just one mile every day.
    • Today’s working/writing soundtrack.
    • Plan your Halloween-season reading list accordingly.
    • Eight ways to improve your mental performance in the morning.
    • Also, still savoring Ted Lasso.
    • Roy Kent is my spirit animal.
    • And that’s all I’m gonna say about that.
    • Try to enjoy your non-90-degree weekend!

  • First Draft

    The first draft is a hollow thing, thin of detail and light, full of desperation. You rip it from yourself without pause, only barely breathing.

    It’s fear that provides momentum. And you hate it. Look at what you’ve done, the amateur quality of the things, the offensively ordinariness of it all … the words. They aren’t the right ones, but you’re never really sure which are, given the moment.

    Dare, but do not dare to stop. But too late.

    As it slows, the panic doesn’t so much creep in as kick down the door with thick black boots, knock you out of your chair, and sit on your chest. Its red eye bore into your soul, skeletal hand (because you did not give it flesh) extending from a dark nothing, opening, grabbing, empty.

     

  • I’m All Out of Love

    I think probably since I saw Deadpool 2 two weeks ago, that goddamn Air Supply song keeps popping up in my head, and mostly at the …

    … I’m so lost without you …

    … worst times. Brushing my teeth. Trying to write something at work. Riding my bicycle. Driving the …

    … I know you were right …

    … car.

    Ugh. But it got me thinking about music from that time period. Song came out in 1980, genre was “soft rock.”

    Soft rock? The fu …

    Anyway, while I was thinking about it, I was trying to imagine the whole Air Supply thing, because that was a huge band at the time. I don’t get it. How did they attract a following? What were those concerts like? A bunch of people in pastel polos swaying with their big permed hair …

    … believing for so long …

    … You know, when I put it that way, it sounds like some sort of 80s cult gathering.

    Okay, but seriously, I know soft rock was a huge thing, I just can’t wrap my brain around the cultural conditions that led to that. There was good real rock at the time, and you were only a year from Kill ‘Em All. I can’t imagine a world where 20 and 30 somethings would be into Air Supply. I mean, it’s funny now in Deadpool, but it’s being used …

    … I’m all out of love, what am I without you …

    … ironically. Those people would be today’s Hipsters. … Ooooooh. Now I get it.That makes perfect sense.

    The past couple of weekends, the wife and I have been in a lot of restaurants and a disproportionate number of them were playing ’80s music. There were some good songs from that decade, but mostly, I think when people remember it fondly that’s just nostalgia fucking with them. Fuck nostalgia. It always hurts, never helps.

    … I can’t be too late to say that I was so wrong.

  • Think Piece

    Saw this quote again last week:

    “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Crack-Up”, Esquire Magazine (February 1936).

    That’s one of those off-the-cuff quotes from a known thinker. Someone who sat around and actually spent time with an idea, got cozy with it, learned its quirks and likes. You can’t do that without putting in the time.

    Can you stay with an idea long enough to refine it, to examine it from all sides? I’m not so sure I can.

    The lack of an ability to focus and stay there for a time frustrates me. I can’t stand it that I sit at my computer and have to chase my brain down like a curious toddler. It takes me longer to do work than it should because my brain can’t sit still.

    squirrel

    I started a short story around the holidays about two kids breaking into a wizard’s house. It’s half finished. Got Squirreled, then I started lamenting the fact that, again, I got squirreled, and then it became this monster clothed in a word doc and it sits there undone. Every time I open it, I start revising. Fucking revising …

    Part of the problem is that it’s going to require me to spend some time thinking. I need to think about the characters and let that inform what happens next. But maybe I didn’t do that earlier in the story because the plot idea sounded good …

    And there you go. Squirreled again. I didn’t come here to write about writing, but thinking. Our brains are already like a sack of cats, mine is anyway, and then we drag decision fatigue into it.

    Read this article yesterday about that, decision fatigue … I just went to look up the article, got distracted by my Discord tab in my browser and caught up on chat reading, then I looked up and couldn’t remember what in the hell I left this … column … for in the first place. Oh yeah, it was to review that article about decision fatigue.

    God. Dammit.

    Found the article. Read it (again), but this time, I followed some of the research links, and they are fascinating. One of them suggests breaks are vital to staying focused. Another even suggests the perfect work/rest formula (52 minutes on, 17 minutes off).

    Wait, so not staying on mental task is vital to staying on task? The hell … thinking without thinking? Did we just transition to Eastern philosophy?

    I have this need for the breakthrough. Ideas excite me. Coming up with a creative solution to a problem is probably my favorite thing to do. Can you get paid for that? …

    Perhaps, at the end of the day, it’s about your connection to and your level of interest in the thing you’re thinking about. Maybe your ability to think is directly tied to your (sigh) engagement with the thing.

    I get frustrated with my lack of time to explore the things that energize my brain. I’m frustrated with the fatigue I feel when I do have the time to think about better things (though fatigue is allegedly good for creativity). My days, like yours, are wrapped up in being “productive,” and I’m still not convinced that’s the best way to spend a life. I’m not convinced we’re doing this right.

    Something to think about, I guess.

  • Aversion

    My 10-year-old kid cannot stand being bored, but has not yet really mastered the art of scratching the itch. We’re working on it.

    She’ll say, “I’m bored.”

    “Find something to do.”

    “There isn’t anything.”

    “Draw. Make something. Go run laps around the back yard.”

    “I don’t want to do any of those things.”

    “I can’t help you then.”

    I get it. I do. I can’t stand being bored either, but there are a million things to do, and I always find one. I mean, I know I’ll never get to retire, but if I do, I’m not one of those who’s going to miss going to work.

    My default state is one of reading. I read incessantly. I read news, blogs, books, reviews. I soak up the internet like it’s my stream of consciousness. I know random shit about random shit because I read so much.

    All day, every day. If I’m not writing, which is what I do for a living, I’m reading. At home, I read some more. I would say, 60-70 percent of my waking time is spent reading. Most of my “disposable” income is spent on reading. Kindle books, mostly, but I have a subscription to Medium, because the part of me that is invested in self-loathing likes to read all those self-help, motivational stories Medium is so good at. The ones where they tell you how to be more creative, boost your productivity, and look good in your selfies.

    I know people are getting paid by Medium. I haven’t really looked into how deeply enough. Probably should, given what I read today.

    There was this article about how you need to stop being bored at work, to risk stability and find your next job. It was this story about a comedian who was so afraid of the 9-to-5, he turned to stand-up before killing himself.

    That was it. That was the whole post. TAKE THE RISK.

    And sure, I get it. Being risk averse is professionally … awful. Trust me. But what the shit, dude. There was nothing constructive in the article. Dude got paid to write it. It’s, I dunno, 300 words long and offered no actionable information. Just … take risks or kill yourself?

    I think the thing that bothers me, apart from the fact that it was basically a total waste of time to read, is that this is what’s going for quality content on the internet. That the headline was a bait-and-switch, peddling hope and offering the PT Barnum exit.

    I try to read better than that. You are what you eat, after all. And technically, I paid for that, I think (trying to remember if it was part of the members section of the email …).

    A good friend of mine tried to convince me to make a go of making money blogging. Just last week, as a matter of fact. I’m not sure I could do any better than the guy who writes clickbait headlines for cash, and that bothers me. I’d want there to be some, you know, substance to my bullshit.

    As it stands, I’m only very proficient in writing rants … like this one, which is maybe all bullshit and no substance.

    But my point is … I’m annoyed a brother’s getting paid to say nothing. Maybe I would’ve thought of it first were I not so risk averse.

    #suckless