Category Archives: Thoughts

The Process, Thoughts Leave a comment

Work on What Interests You

by

I am interested in so many things, almost everything, but not interested enough to put time into it. I have the sense constantly that my time is slipping away and so I must find out the most effective way to use whatever time is right in front of me. It’s not worthwhile to do some task for ten minutes today when it won’t get completed until two years from now, because clearly I’ll be dead in two years. And then two years goes by and I am staring at a wall thinking how to best use my time that day. And wouldn’t it have been nice if I had done that thing two years ago. And that other thing twenty years ago.

So how to fix? Do the thing that you would be happy you had done two years from now? But I can’t. Why not? Because I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in other things. Like what. Like whatever will be the most effective use of my time right now. So you’re interested in the effective use of time, so you should make an app for helping people to keep track of what would be the most effective use of their time at any moment. Yes that would be good. First I have to learn to code. But I won’t learn for like I don’t know a few months right? And I’ll be dead in a few months.

So how to fix?

Thoughts , , Leave a comment

Movie Reviews Part 2

by

I was thinking more about The Banshees of Inishiren.

Does this need a spoiler alert? When I wrote my term paper in high school and read criticism of John Updike’s Rabbit Run, did the critics say spoiler alert? I guess that was before the internet.

Anyway there’s a scene where Colm is confessing to the priest. The priest sails in every Sunday. And Colm is clearly an atheist but still a Catholic. So he goes to confession every week. I think there are three confession scenes. Maybe two. Two of the scenes are pretty funny because in one him and the priest start yelling at each other and telling each other to get fucked and stuff like that. But the other one is the one I’m talking about.

Colm stops talking to Padraic which is the inciting event for the whole movie. Well I guess I don’t have to tell you how the plot goes if this is literary criticsim, right? I guess I have to read some literary criticism and stop just going off my memory about it.

Anyway Colm finds out Padraic’s donkey chokes to death and Padraic now wants to murder Colm because it was Colm’s fault to a degree and next thing you know the asshole policeman comes into the bar and starts to insult Padraic and his donkey and Colm punches him in the face. It’s a great scene but that’s also not the scene I was thinking about.

I was thinking about the scene with the confession and the priest says doesn’t Colm have anything else to confess about? And Colm says no and the priest says, “punching a police officer isn’t a sin?” And Colm says, “If punching a policeman is a sin, we might as well pack up and go home.”

I was going to say some more about what I thought about the movie or whatever but it has taken too much time and effort to get to this point. I guess I rather watch the movie with someone and then be like, “Did you see when he was saying punching a policeman is…that part? Ha that shit was awesome. So true.” And pretend we both understand what it means.

Thoughts , , Leave a comment

Something There Is That Doesn’t Love a Wall

by

I don’t know what the fuck to do. Have a vision. Don’t have a vision. Plan for shit don’t plan for shit. Follow your interests. Don’t have any interests.

That’s why I’m working on these paving stones.

I swear to God that is my life right now. Paving stones.

I decided on paving stones because sometime in August, four months after I began attempting to ‘open’ the above ground pool that came with this house, my wife said, ‘for my birthday, it would be cool to have a pool party.’ So for two weeks I fully committed to getting this damn pool open which had hitherto been a struggle for reasons I don’t want to get into right now but at some point I might.

So I fully committed to getting the pool open and in two weeks I did get it open. I thought I was the shit. Then it got fucked up again and I really had to learn all about pools and shit.

But two or three weeks later I knew damn near everything about pools. Like the ten percent of things about pools that you need to know in order to make the water clear. That’s what I know.

So then I swam in the pool and it was awesome. And then I sat in a chair in the sun after the three minutes I was in the pool, since, as Mitch Hedberg pointed out, that’s exactly the amount of time you can have fun in an above ground pool. And I realized it didn’t matter that you can only have three minutes of fun. And I realized I didn’t figure shit out by realizing that, it’s just that three minutes is some amount of time and having fun is some amount of good so it turned out to be some amount of worthwhile.

And I said fuck man I’ve never been able to do shit in my life but I got this goddam pool open. How did I do that?

And I literally spent weeks thinking about that damn pool ahead of everything else.

Now it’s silly as shit. Because I got kids and a job and all of that to think about so who gives a fuck about a pool. No point in really focusing all my energy on a pool.

But then again the pool was beautiful. I had made something beautiful. Just the water. The outside of the pool looked and looks like shit.

Maybe if I focused on something similarly complex (that is to say simple as fuck), I could make that beautiful. Maybe that would be a worthwhile thing to do.

So I decided to get the weeds out of the front walk. I thought it would take five days or so. I’m still working on it 9 days later and probably have 3 to 4 days of working on it left.

And I keep forgetting that nothing matters but that goddam front walk. As long as I make progress on that shit every day I am allowed to go to sleep at night. Fuck it all. All except the pool and the front walk. And my kids. Maybe my wife. But definitely the paving stones.

Thoughts Leave a comment

Movie Reviews

by

Last night I watched The Banshees of Inishiren for the first time. It was a great movie. I love Martin McDonaugh. If you like this blog you probably like or would like Martin McDonaugh, too. He is always having some outlandish shit happening in his stories. His work is sad and funny and true.

I went online afer the movie was over to get some idea of how people reacted to it, as I often do. I found that I couldn’t really find a movie review that made sense to me. I probably just don’t understand the idiom of film reviews.

I don’t know what I’m looking for exactly. Something like a literary criticism essay.

Anyone know where to find that?

Thoughts , , Leave a comment

Are Diaries Killing the Earth

by

If I’m not going to publish what I’ve written, should I not then delete it, since I won’t likely read myself what I don’t see as valuable for others to read?

Sometimes it’s good to have a diary. Like if you want to look back at what you were doing a few years ago and all. But what if you have too much diary? Like I have hundreds of thousands of words about how I was feeling on whatever particular day. Similar to how I have thousands of pictures that I have yet to look at. I guess for most people writing a thousand words is not something you would normally do but for writers with computers it’s just too easy to type shit and store it. Like if I was surrounded by stacks of notebooks I’d be like ok some of this shit’s got to go, I guess. I wouldn’t do anything about it but I would see that it was a problem.

Back in the old days, writers would write letters to each other. Then sometimes if the writer was really good some of those letters would get published. But the original intent of the letter was to communicate with someone else. What is the purpose of writing a shit ton of words in Evernote that you are never going to look at?

On the subject of taking photos that you are never going to look at, I saaw something recently that said, “For Tammy, photography was the way she saw the world.” Or something like that. So looking at the photos afterwards wasn’t the point it was framing life in some kind of…frame. But I also remember watching Exit Through the Gift Shop and Mr. Brainwash was just filming and throwing the tapes in a closet. That can’t be healthy. But then Mr. Brainwash made a lot of money. Money is always a good indication of value. Every time.

ChatGPT says:

Remember, the essence of diary writing isn’t always in the reviewing but in the act of expressing oneself. Whether you ever read it again or share it with someone doesn’t diminish its value. The fact that you’ve dedicated time and energy to reflect and document your life has intrinsic worth.

ChatGPT

Maybe so. But what about all those server farms full of all those notes. Wouldn’t it be better for the environment if I expressed myself and then deleted the note, or expressed myself over the old note? But I can’t even delete anything even when I’m editing. I have to copy and paste the whole damn thing into a new note before I can bear to delete it because I’m a hoarder in every sense.

Thoughts Leave a comment

Different Things Are Different

by

A walkway covered with moss in the context of a forest house may be beautiful while a walkway covered with moss in town might upset the home owners association. The degree to which we should interfere with nature in our lives depends on the effect we are trying to produce, or the context, or location where we are. How manicured should your lawn be? Should it be able to host the PGA tour? Well then, will kids not want to play on it? But perhaps kids are not meant to play on it. If you want a lawn kids will play on you make it nice and you don’t pile sharp rocks around on it. Sometimes you want a place for kids to play and sometimes you want a Zen garden. One thing can’t always be another. For some reason, I don’t know why exactly, a screwdriver that is one size feels better than a screwdriver that uses interchangeable bits.

Journal, Thoughts , , , 3 Comments

Night Call

by

Dude. Shits crazy.

I’m in love with everyone. Just want to go out all the time. Hang out. Can’t stand being home the only one awake late at night. Need somebody I can text all kinds of crazy shit. Need a day job. I ran all day, did all kinds of shit, had fifteen moments of transcendence. Get home and it’s not enough. Staring at splotches of color on my lovers face under the harsh subway lights.

Ah.

What to do. Get a different job. Keep this job. Drink all night. Sleep all night. Calm down, you’ll be asleep soon enough what’s the big deal? I don’t know but it is a big deal. Never want anything to end. Except this interminable loneliness at the end of the night. 

Wife is asleep. Wife wake up. Let’s be together now. Don’t wake me up, she says. Don’t make me not asleep, she says. If you stare at me too hard she says it wakes me up. 

Nah. 

Maybe jerk off. Maybe I should try some pills. Maybe I shoulda smoked some weed. But no, tried that before. Came home the oven light wasn’t even on. Brother’s down the street. What’s good? Could try it out. He’s only 66% as old as I am, what does he know? Maybe if he was a girl I wasn’t related to. Need to work harder apparently. Work too hard to sleep. 

Probably figure I’m looking at porn right now. With the bathroom fan on. The only room I can be alone in. I suppose I could write at the table, who would know? I suppose I could try that after all. 

But then again I need my rest. I must go to bed. I must go to sleep. It’s only a few minutes of restlessness. Just push on through to the other side. 

Journal, Love and Relationships, Thoughts , , , , 4 Comments

Righteous Anger Isn’t an Oxymoron

by

I used to think that if Molly got mad at me I had to fix it right away. Stop everything, find the source of the problem, make it right. Sometimes I would do all that and she still wouldn’t be happy and then I would get frustrated. Especially if we were on vacation or something. It felt like the vacation was being ruined, that we would remember only that time when she was mad over some insignificant thing.

Today she got mad because her plan didn’t really work out and we wasted two hours driving around. Instead of trying to fix it with words or touching, I just drove around acting normal. I didn’t try to pretend that it didn’t suck that we were wasting time. I didn’t try to make it into a joke to make her see how trivial it was to worry about such things. I just let her be mad about it as if that were a reasonable response, which it is, really. 

I guess I used to think that you could die at any second so you might as well not worry about dumb shit like the fact that you’re wasting time because shit didn’t turn out like you had planned. I also used to believe that nothing really mattered, so I couldn’t see the point in getting worked up about anything really. I said I believed in that kind of shit, but I would get worked up about shit, too, just much different shit.

So now that I am allowing for the fact that things have value, I can see that being all mad about some dumb shit has its place, and maybe the reason Molly used to be mad for so long was that I was just quietly acting like she was an idiot for even bothering to be angry.

This time I let her be mad and I didn’t pretend it wasn’t frustrating and she got over it quickly and I didn’t get all stressed out that she didn’t like me or something.

I think a big part of why I built up so much resentment towards her over the years is because any time she would get mad I would blame myself and then slowly I would get mad at how unfair it was for her to think that it was my fault when I hadn’t done anything. So all this dumb shit was going on inside my head that didn’t have any basis in reality and should have been handled externally.

Any time I start to say something passive aggressive, I’m now trying to stop and instead say something more direct and constructive. And if Molly says something passive aggressive to me, I try to swat that shit down aggressively so we can fight about it instead of internalizing some made up bullshit. It’s not always easy and I don’t succeed every time but it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. 

I used to have these revenge fantasies, not against Molly but against other people, strangers mostly. So someone would do something I didn’t like and then I would fantasize about beating the shit out of them, some disproportionate type shit. But in reality I wouldn’t do anything, probably be even nicer to them the more I hated them because then slowly I would start to feel bad because I hated them so much and they hadn’t really done all that much shit to me.

So I have this darkness inside but I try to lock it up and pretend it doesn’t exist and it comes out in fantasies and in a growing resentment towards humanity. Instead it would be better to integrate the darkness into my personality and react to things I don’t like by making sure people know that I don’t like those things. Even get mad sometimes. I used to think that even getting angry was a sin. And then after I stopped believing in God, I thought getting angry was a sign of weakness. But I think now that getting angry is necessary for having a healthy relationship with the outside world. People should know when they’ve made me angry. I don’t have to hurt them with words or actions, but if I don’t indicate the fact that I’m unhappy how arethey  supposed to know to change their behavior? And besides it becomes so much worse when I just resent someone quietly. Instead of just snapping at someone and apologizing for it later maybe, I end up smiling at them and wishing they would die.

It’s important to have a healthy relationship with anger instead of just trying to avoid it in myself and others.