There's a Reason Twisty Straws Seem Unnatural

I can't even begin this post. Seriously, I've written several opening lines and all of them have since been shot into oblivion or reduced to factured pieces of what I thought would be immediately recognized as greatnesss. But they're not great. Hence the fracturing oblivion.

Isn't it terribly amusing... the things that we hold up in greatness? Does it ever occur to us that greatness is in the eye of the beholder and after a while, our perspective is bound to change? And if you haven't noticed, that's sort of been my theme for the past few blogs. Not that I'm looking for some monumental shift in my way of life, but all in all I look around and things --- well, it's not greatness anymore. It's fractured.

Don't get me wrong -- life itself... the family, the girlfriend, the friends, etc. ... that's all good. It's the little things. Like my house. First off, can't complain. But as some of you know, I'm now living in the same house I grew up in -- only now I'm grown up, and what that's done is create this odd hybrid home where my childhood and adulthood have to repeatedly come to terms with each other. On a subconscious, and almost neurotic, level -- it's amazingly distracting.

Take the wallpaper in my office. It's beige with a myriad of colored stripes that look like yarn pulled taught and glued to the wall from floor to ceiling. There's a some deep red strands, a blue one here and there, and some other colors that are forgetful. They vary in thickness to make it look... you know, not sure what it was going for. Point is, it's so... 1984. And here's the thing -- as a kid, that wallpaper never bothered me. It made sense. As did most of the interior decorating choices that were made as we moved into this house, twenty-two years ago. Now though... it's tired. It's not "great" anymore. It's not bad... that's the point here. Things aren't bad. They're just not as shiny as they once were.

It makes me feel stuck. Like I took a step back maybe, but not completely. Like I'm dancing around something; not really sure what that something is -- but overall, I'm craving an overhaul. Something to make everything feel fresh. A redesign.

And so it begins. You might have noticed the new header at the top of the page. I have to thank Jen for inspiring me. I recently found her blog and upon seeing her title header I was struck with the sudden and overwhelming sense that my previous header wasn't cutting it. I consider my new look as an homage to her creativity.

And that makes me think about my friends and how lately we've all come to this place where it sort of hit us that we're not living the lives we'd planned -- things just aren't cutting it -- and we can see that change is on the horizon and if only we'd do something about it, we might get a little closer to it (an irony that J.Vlo will wholly appreciate). I feel like I'm making New Year's resolutions when it's only October, but then there it is. Why wait three months for an arbitrary date? I think it's all happening anyway -- the move towards the horizon. It's all happening.

Zubov and Keaton and I have plans to being working out in the not too distant future. Which is funny to some because me... not so much with the physical activity. I'm not a sloth by any definition of the word, but I'm the guy who drives to the gym when he should've biked or jogged, you know? But this time, it's different. It's like little battles in a great war with complacency. Getting in shape, keeping the blog fresh, finding a way to rid the office of that yarned wallpaper and getting myself unstuck from my quasi-hybrid existence... finding a job that fuels me and not, as Lucidity once said, sucks my soul out through my feet with twisty straws... bringing my creative endeavors to fruition and realizing a dream...

The other day I took a step. Today, I took another. And tomorrow... it's a lot of steps to that horizon, but as long as it keeps getting closer it means I'm going somewhere.