tenuously is spelled weird

me: "Does it bother you at all that after 11am comes 12pm and after 11pm comes 12am? I have always thought this was retarded."  that is a question on the funbag

me: i can't decide if i absolutely disagree with the person asking the question, or if i just disagree with them
Jason Quist: its weird, yes

Jason Quist: but its so ingrained in me that i dont find it that odd anymore

me: well, in my mind how i have always understood it, 12:01 PM is after noon, or post meridian, so why would you call it ante meridian? i realize that my fealty to latin makes me a crazy person that believes words should have meaning and we should stick to them, but come on, we can't go around just flaggarantly breaking all the rules

Jason Quist: well saying anything is before or after something on a circle is just patently ridiculous

me: not when we all agree to believe there are breaks, we have a finite cycle

me: whether or not that takes place inside a longer cycle is moot at that point

Jason Quist: i mean, yes and we did that we just chose weird breaks

me: but we did choose, all that english and language in general is a man made supposition onto an inherently indescribable world

me: the word apple and an apple are completely different things, apples are all different and in a constant state of decay, they are not all the same and even one thing is not the same as it ever was in the past

me: and i realize that i just got super aesthetic philosophy on an idea that one person on the internet disagrees with even though everyone else already does it the way that i think they should

me: but i am trying to exercise control over a world that i can feel myself losing grasp on as i flounder in a sea of uncertainty regarding my own personal situation

me: and i attempt to cling to and reinforce ideals that i need to be in place because while i do not know which tentpoles are still holding this world up i feel as if i must protect them all

me: and if that wasn't the greatest tenuously constructed diatribe in this history of gchat, i will quit right now

Jason Quist: it was. quite good

It Felt Like School Outside

When I walked out of work after what felt like a 12 hour day (I, in actuality, had only been there for eleven hours and forty five minutes) the first thing that hit me was that it felt like School outside.

Playing SPUD in the driveway, or ghosts in the graveyard on the block.  Sitting out by the pool, the cover just put into place at the end of summer.  Putting off papers and classes to read the Death of a Salesman in my favorite spot on campus.

School has a season.  Even though the bulk of school happens in the winter and spring, 68 degrees signifies school.  A moderate breeze that gets you too cold if you sit in one spot too long, but bounces off of you if you are moving, or deep in thought.  The streetlights trademark hue soon to be reflected off of the leaves that add their own autumnal yellow and red to the Orange that is the season.  Those very same leaves which add the rustle which is the only soundtrack now that people have retreated inside until spring.

It hit me harder than i thought.  This is first true September I will have without back to school.  Last year I was unemployed and couch surfing, a time out of the linear progression we need to understand time.  There is a time to sow and a time to reap, a time to be in school and a time to work.

The confusing part is that school is tied to a cyclical pattern, and work is tied to an overarching series of years.  I was apparently not ready for this time to come while I am so heavily invested in work.  I want to be smoking outside of Gries, not stumbling home, hoping for a bed.

Work has become something I do without thinking about.  A vacation came and went, but I was not shocked that I had to go back to work, it happened without my overt acknowledgement.  Now, I am forced to acknowledge and attempt to file away what it means to need school and neighborhood friends while seeing my friends so sparingly and working.

Would/Will

I just wanted to call someone to make it all better. I knew that she couldn’t actually change the outcome, but she could maybe put it in perspective, or let me know that I don’t have to tie my worth to my job. After all, she was there, she saw my worth with or without the job, and then she became my worth. How bad of a guy could I be if she saw something she liked, I often thought people would say. She would coo in her own special day, and then she would be stern because she knew I would wallow if I had the chance. By the end of the phone call I would be ready to attack the afternoon; I would get past this hiccup and move on to another opportunity, another chance to prove myself. She would even spur me to get two to make up for one. When I got home, she would see in my face whether or not her pep talk worked, whether I managed to get another account to make up for the one that I blew, whether I was riding high off of new conquest. If I was, she would have some celebration in her head, something planned so that we could lament the end of one, but even more so exult the new. If I hadn’t, if the punches had landed instead of rolled off, she would have a revised version of the speech she gave in the morning, taken a little time with it and tweaked the words for an in person version of her daytime consoling. She would have a movie ready that was too faced paced and zany to leave myself time in my own thoughts, or maybe a game of Risk all set up so we could feign world domination while the real thing dominated us. I know I would feel better as soon as I forgot myself and managed to sneak a joke out, something that made her laugh. I could lose 10 deals but as soon as I made her laugh it would be all forgotten; I just sold the best product of all, because it helped me as much as her. Her, drinking white wine while I sipped on a 7 rocks, I would look across the table while she screwed up her face, trying valiantly to defend the Ukraine against the westward rush of my invading Asian hordes, hoping to see 6s and sticking her tongue out at me when her 3s beat my 2s. We would retire to the balcony for a break, the drinks settling back down upon us like so much smoke exhaled into the night sky. The deck chairs weren’t made for two, but you could fool us as she curled up on my lap, head on my shoulder and softly whispering, “It’s ok”. We would still make rent, but we would have to delay buying a new couch for a month or two. I would take her to bed, lay her down and tuck her in, then wonder back out into the living room. The game would be easy to put away, but I tried my hand at a few more rolls, conquering Europe before carefully dividing the different colored army men, red for me gray for her, although I never understood why. I would polish off my drink; and then hers too while I walked back out on the balcony to look up at the few stars visible in the city. The smoke would escape my lips like the commission I threw away on a stupid clerical error, and I would think about how tough going back into work tomorrow would be, some eyes filled with pity and others anger at the mix up that cost us quota and a new office TV. None of it would matter though; she would call at lunch to see how I was doing.

There was no one to call though. I haven’t found her yet. Maybe for lack of trying, maybe for lack of me, but I had to sit on the failure all by myself. I couldn’t face the afternoon, and hid behind updating applications and sneaking a read at a few basketball columns. Every time I looked at my call list, I saw failure staring back at me, each one taking on the look of the hundreds of ways I could screw it up. When I get home I will have nothing but a drink to myself, and I will have it straight up, I never managed to get around to buying ice cube trays. The deck chair designed for one will hold what it was built for, and I could not bring myself to think, “It’s ok”. And when I got in tomorrow, the pity and the anger would hurt the same. None of it will matter though, because at lunch, there will be no call.

The Miseducation of John Warmuth (also, everybody under 25)

The saying should not go, "You could be a doctor, a lawyer or an indian chief" it should read, "You can be only one of these, Doctor, lawyer, indian chief, or any other thing, but really only one other thing".



This is the problem i think that i have had so far in my life. This base lack of any type of singular drive. Just as recently as december, before i got the job (that i am currently slacking off from to write this, so note that i have no changed my ways) that i have now, every show i watched sparked a train of through that would start with me working in that field and then take my adventures every way from there, every time i talked to an aquaintence about what they do with their lives, i could see myself in that field. When i walked down the street, whoever i say, be they a window washer, CEO or transient, i thought to myself, "i wonder what it would be like to do that" i gave myself permission to keep all of these strings alive, to never narrow it down to a profession, or a field, or even a possible occupation on this planet.



Now i realize that i cannot live this way. It took me until today, virtually, to realize that i cannot give credience to my idle mind wanderings. Which is not to say that i can no longer think about being richard castle, but that i must relegate that to imagination, to fancy. I must dedicate my time to being the best that i can be in my chosen field, regardless of how it was chosen. I need to wake up and give it my all. It was not laziness that held me back from this before, but rather