plotting a way out

At work, sitting at my desk, staring out the window. the only view I have through the vertical blinds is of a building that has the same vertical pattern. everything from my desk to the window and out to the building is gray, although the small piece of sky I can see is blue (in the late afternoon). I'm really tired and have been working on this project going on 4 weeks now. Not complaining I do the work and am very grateful to have it. BUT.... as grateful as I am to be employed and have the ability to provide for my family I can no longer pretend to go along with the Script. It's no longer getting harder and harder to put on that charade of wanting to drive 2 1/2 hours, sit at a desk and do what I'm told through the silence of my boss who gives her directive through long pauses and miscommunications. It's no longer getting harder because I am beyond that point of trying to conform to it. and while I'm at work I keep staring out that window and ask a simple question. I do this every morning when I sit down before anyone else gets in. I ask "how do I get out of here?" I never have an answer to that question I just simply day dream about living in the mountains spending the days drinking coffee and writing my next novel.

Something interesting happened this morning, I caught myself asking that very same question and drifting off to that warm and soft daydream. I took the time to analyze what I was doing. And I realized my little ritual was taking me further from getting closer to my dream. This is what I found my self doing:

1) asking a very non specific question that had no constructive answer 2) not answering my question and just using it as a lubricant to 3) slip into my little warm dream state where I could stay as long as I wanted

and as harmless as this all seemed I realized it was causing more damage in the long run (obviously) because I was building an internal environment that was satisfying the "now". there was no plan to actually do anything about my situation because I wasn't giving myself the opportunity to really identify the problem. I was merely stating my opposition to my life's current situation by reflecting "how do I get out of here?" well, shit I don't know, maybe you could come up with a fucking plan.

I'm a big proponent of minimalism and so not knowing how to come up with a plan right then and there at my desk, I realized I needed to take some sort of action that would get me a step closer to my dream. and so I through away everything on my desk keeping only my laptop, monitor, notepad and pen. it was quite a spectacle and I hadn't realized one of my coworkers was watching me. when I was done he came up to me cautiously and asked if everything was ok. I told him I was just cleaning up a little. to which he asked "are you 'leaving'?"

Needless to say, I believe that was a step in the right direction.

mutable objects - getting from here to there

as The Cure would put it "jumping someone else's train"
a start, although an incoherent one: a list of the insoluble condition that no longer mixes with my reality. legend:

1) I want to go (From Here ==> To There)
2) Time frame = curiously accelerated and sudden

living in l.a ==> living in north west / north east (just f'ing north)
unpublished writer ==> published author
208 lbs ==> 180 lbs
broke ==> very unbroke
9to5 pos job ==> writer/author/professional weirdo
stressed, zombified, corporate asshat ==> passionate, transient zen'd, hypercreative artist writer who makes inapporpirate remarks about lolcats at very inappropriate times
always have to be somewhere ==> dude, was I supposed to be somewhere?
the most unfunest person ever ==> yeee-haaaa I'm wearing a turtle neck!!!
paint a picture hang it on the wall ==> paint a picture hang it in a gallery (or Big Jon's Beer Hut...)
clutch to the hem of life believing that is all there is ==> I don't know, but definitely not that
no beard ==> occasionally people confuse me with Moses

Was that 6 years that just went by????

well, well, well...look what I found, my old blog! wow I have absolutely no idea how I came across this. I was clicking on an old bookmark and viola I was somehow magically logged into Blogger (which I didn't even know still existed!). But what's even stranger is that for the last couple of months I've been seriously thinking about working on a major transformation in my life (again) and had no idea where to even start. I figured having no direction in my mind I would start documenting everything until things became more clear. well, I guess this is the place to do that. A good thing for sure.

so what have I been up to for the last 6 years? Oh, I dunno - just stuff. been working in the same field and around the same neighborhood, although I've moved twice since the last posting. I guess 1 small success is that I've only gained 7 lbs during that whole time:-) I weighed myself this morning at 208.6.

I'm back here because this blog is more pertinent now then it was then. before I was focused on losing a few pounds. Today is a much different story. the reason I've come back to perform a hat trick on my life is because I was wandering through the Salvation Army thrift store on a saturday night, 8pm, holding a 7-11 coffee in one hand and a used (and very broken) Nerelco razor in the other. I walked through the furniture section and came across my image in a mirror on a hutch. now depending how you look at this, I was either at the top of my game or that bottom of the barrel (from my perspective that night, it took longer to figure this out than I'd like to admit) but there I was in the mirror. a middle aged, fat, bald, dude drinking a 7-11 coffee in the salvation army listening to Bruce Springsteen's (ooh ooh ooh I'm on fire) song. and thinking 'hmmm - apparently I'm having a momentous moment here' and epiphany of sorts. what raced through my mind, simultaneously, was 'well, here I am living life on my terms doing the things I enjoy doing' & 'aw shit - it's happened hasn't it? I'm That Guy hanging out in the Salvation Army on a saturday night because I have no idea....' and you can guess which conclusion surfaced.

So here I am again, at the helm of my transformation. I will say this though, that after 6 years not much has changed. In some respects that's awesome (ie, I'm not homeless). In another regard, this stagnation has been terrifying because I was supposed to be in a much-much different place than where I am today (financially, spiritually and creatively). Since I have no idea as to how I'm going to get to where my dreams keep telling me to go, then this blog will be the catalyst until I can figure some shit out.

And to my future self, when you sit down 6 years from now to look back on how you pulled this all off, well you can read this knowing that you are now where you are today because of this exact moment. You're welcome.