floorpie

Growing up, my mother would force-feed me 10-15 vitamins a day…every day. In addition, we ate fairly healthy food (though more meat than I do nowadays), vinegar juice with every meal (a diluted solution of apple cider vinegar in water), and I didn’t have soda until well into my teens.

This is not a complaint, just a factual re-telling.

In that time, I really didn’t get sick all that much. Maybe a half a dozen times, really, and only for maybe 3 days or so. It is possible that I am remembering through rose-colored glasses, but what I am sure of is that I didn’t really get sick very much.

I then went to college. Of course I barely took my vitamins, drank a ton of soda, stayed up really late, etc. I still ate pretty well, though, and have never really developed a taste for sweets or junk food (except chips and salsa…I do love the chips and salsa).

I also got sick a lot.

In truth, I probably didn’t get sick a lot as compared to the rest of the population, I just got sick more often than I was used to. Coincidence? Probably not. Just because of the vitamins? Probably also not, in truth.

I still get sick more than I’m used to. I’m on to my second cold this year, and I’d really rather not have one at all. I do take my vitamins more than I used to, and if anything I eat healthier than I ever have (except for the McDonald’s breakfasts from time to time)…but my stress level is higher, my sleep is less…and I’m old(er). The sleep part is, in my estimation, the main contributor to this problem. More so even than the vitamins, they being supplements and me eating fairly well as I mentioned. I go pretty hard all day and into the night, get very little sleep, and then do it all again. By the time the weekends roll around, I’m exhausted. Where other people go out, I crash. I go out nearly every day during the week, but almost never Sat/Sun…which I like, actually.

Lifestyle notwithstanding, though, I need to get more sleep. And less sick.

I recently returned from my first trip to Japan, and I thought that the late nights of solitude would be filled with blogging. Instead, they were filled with uploading pictures to Facebook and Flickr. I took over 1,600 images in 10 days…though only uploaded 515. Is a third “good” images a decent percentage? Who knows. The point is, I told my sotry through pictures instead of words. Check it out.

Here are the things that are better about Japan (Tokyo specifically) than the United States (Los Angeles specifically):

1. The food
2. The food
3. The food, dear god the food! I’m not saying that there’s no good food in LA, because there absolutely is. I AM saying that everything (EVERYTHING) I ate in Japan was fantastic. My travel companions may disagree on the “EVERYTHING”, but they would not disagree that on a whole the food was amazing. Even the most ghetto fast-food place was better than most analogous US places.
4. Public transit. This can be said of other US cities in comparison to LA, as well, of course. Trains people. It’s what’s for dinner.
5. The respect. I understand that the Japanese respect and pride of work is a cultural thing; but, what I don’t understand is why. They don’t have the typical religious guilt to guide them into obeying so why are people there so respectful? Why is the guy with the crap job pushing elevator buttons SO respectful and with no attitude? It’s fantastic.
6. The products. Anything I could ever want at my fingertips. In 10 different colors.
7. The girls. This will be an unpopular opinion, but it has to be said. LA has amazing amounts of beautiful women, to be sure…but every girl in Tokyo is running around in mini-skirts and heels. I mean, c’mon, you have to give credit where credit is due.
8. No fat people. ‘Nuff said.

And in stark contrast to #5 especially, the pizza delivery dude asked me if I happened to have a pen to sign my credit card receipt. Again. That would never happen in Japan.

…this is what I look like with a mustache. Ladies, line forms to the right

With which to twiddle. I am technically on my first vacation in as many years as I can remember.

Actually, even that is a but of an under-exaggeration, as I can really only reliably remember maybe a year or two. I haven’t been on a real and significant vacation for at least 7.

I mean, I’ve taken the odd day off here and there. Long weekend, few days for Christmas, that sort of thing. But real significant time where you don’t stay at home and the email REALLY piles up? That I haven’t done in a long long time.

I think everyone around me would agree that I need it. Time to calm down a bit, come back to terra firma, breathe both in and out. Day 1, though, and I have as yet no sense of relaxation. Bored, a little stressed, considering going into the studio before my plane leaves.

I don’t think I’m doing this right.

…especially Monopoly, in which I am particularly skilled. Based on a survey of one.

I played Monopoly with a friend tonight; and, it was themed around the company that I work for. Meaning that the pieces were related to our business, the money had our company president’s face on it, and the properties were named after the different offices. I don’t remember this from the real Monopoly, but rents got super high. I won based on one of my red properties with 4 houses on it earning $925.

$925! Has Monopoly adjusted for inflation?

Tonight I decided to forego spending all night in front of the TV or on the computer and engage instead in my first and most endearing love, reading.

Make no mistake, I definitely spent a lot of time on Facebook or Flickr or tripping through one Internet and then the other and watched at least one Netflix movie via xBox on TV and then transitioned to killing aliens on the same xBox and then made this spectacularly grammatical monstrosity of a run-on sentence…but after all that was done I read. From my best recollection I read for two hours and didn’t really want to stop.

The only reason I DID stop was because it was midnight and I had these grandiose plans of going to bed on time and NOT waking up exhausted tomorrow morning, especially as I know already that I will be out until the wee hours tomorrow.

The only issue preventing me from following through with this plan is that…I’m not tired. I have this thing where I’m one step from physical collapse at about 10:30, power my way through it enough to get ready for and into bed, and then be wide awake until 2 or 3.

Lately I’ve been falling asleep to half-watched Conan episodes on Hulu at 3 in the morning. Tonight I was hoping the reading would tire me out.

Back to the xBox…

Literally and figuratively? The world will never know.

I have so many projects going right now, most of which I’m spectacularly under-qualified for. In most cases that would make said projects “hobbies” or “interests” that would result in no real consequences… but these are responsibilities that I choose to actually take on for myself. A short list:

.: a photo-book honoring the design studio I work at (must learn to actually take photographs first)
.: organizing a party/art gallery opening
.: shooting, organizing, editing a video featuring a bunch of friends wishing congrats to another friend…with Japanese subtitles
.: putting together a baby gift for my boss…which entails herding cats in the form of getting money from my co-workers

Then there’s my actual job. Then there are the projects that I need to get to that I’m actually decently qualified for…like the TV stand I want to build, or performing at a local venue…or getting around to blogging.

It’s funny the things that I take enjoyment in my life from. Not funny ha-ha, though that’s sometimes true as well; funny, like it’s odd that I would like something.

For instance, today I’m changing the shocks on my truck. With the jacking the car up and taking the wheels off and wrestling with bolts and ruining my clothes with grime and grease it seems, from all outward appearances, that this would universally be labeled as a pain in the ass.

And, make no mistake, it is. It’s a simple fix, and I’ve done it a half-a-dozen times before, and I’ll probably swear more than a usually do, be exhausted by the end of it from lifting and pulling on things, and maybe even get a headache from sitting out in the sun and not drinking any water; but, it somehow makes me happy as well. Happy may not be the right word for it…I’m not going to smile and pump my fists into the air when I’m done. Throughout the process I’ll be thinking of all the other things that I need to do; in many cases the things I’d rather do. But it leaves me feeling content for some reason. One less thing.

Things seems to break on me in waves…and I don’t mean that as a pun. Things around me will be fine for months, and then all pile on at once. Recently it’s been electronics: external harrdrive crashing, and then it’s back-up, and then my laptop (THIS laptop, in fact). So fast and so quickly that I “had” to go get a netbook just to pay my bills on time. (yes, I have access to plenty of other computers at work and my surrounding environs, but I needed to get a netbook, you see. For like emergencies or something? It’s best not to think about it too deeply).

Then there were the car accidents a few years back. Being rear-ended 4 times in 3 months, all of them while just sitting quietly at a stop-light.

And there was a fire.

And lately, it seems like my expensive furniture is proving that you don’t always get what you pay for.

I would think that these cyclic rashes of habitat failures would get to me; and, maybe in unseen or unnoticed ways they do. Upfront and in my head, though, they are opportunities for me to be the creator of my own contentment. I like fixing things, I like making things better and improving on what was once ruined.

That it might be better if nothing ever went wrong in the first place doesn’t seem to occur to me. Time to get dirty and frustrated.

I’m not a real photographer but I play one on TV. Back in the day, I used to shoot my friends hardcore band(s) mostly for the hell of it but mostly for the art of it. I landed some shots on their 7-inch and a mention in the liner notes and that was pretty much the penultimate for me. Since then, it’s been shots of flowers and sunsets until recently again when I shot Jonneine Zapata at the Troubadour… One of, by the way, if not the most incredible artist I’ve ever run across. If my pictures could have shown even half of the energy she creates, you’d nary be able to gaze upon them.

A photo pass means little more than you can bring your DSLR into a club that otherwise frowns on anything but camera phones; but, for me, as I angled for shots and poured through hundreds of frames of virtual film it gave momentary pause. This could have been my life if things hadn’t gone the way of product design. I may have been truly great at this with a little more bravery and a little less love of paying my rent consistently and eating three squares a day. This was the Troubadour, this was a kick-ass band, and I was the guy that I often wanted to be when the night was late enough to not think about responsibilities and schooling and other passions.

And it may still be as life is short in the long term and long in the short. I might be that guy after all, on tour and behind the scenes. I’ll say this, at least: it was a great time.

The world is full of people just trying to continue their own flow. Like the guy on the beach cruiser trying to go through the McDonald’s drive-thru at midnight. All he wants is a Big Mac, maybe some fries, to keep his flow going. He was denied, though, and his flow was messed up for not being a vehicle. My flow was momentarily perturbed by him shouting, “Well fuck you then!” before slowly riding away.

I work on houses a lot. Never my own, but my much more successful friends’ houses. I could go on a tangent about how if I work on multi-million dollar houses, my skills must be legit, but I will instead relay the tale about the time when we were putting arched pass-thrus in a friend’s kitchen. We hit a snag where we weren’t sure what to do next, had a bunch of options, and were kind of stuck in a loop when Tim put together the most nonsensical group of words that happened to somehow make perfect sense.

Keep doing what you’re doing while you’re doing it

Simple. Elegant. A little confusing. And all together perfect.

I live by two credos:

1. What goes around comes around, and
2. Keep doing what you’re doing while you’re doing it.

And that’s what I have to do.