realizing a few things as i settle into something nearly maturity - gasp perhaps.

i mean now i have to work to support myself. my mother was a lovely patron, turning 60 this april. i'm not nearly extracted from the safety net, but i buy my own groceries and pay my own tickets and electrical bills and water bills and phone bills and all that stuff that makes me a man

so it's a good feeling i think to have some control over your destiny. last night i was pulling up to my domicile in my car - amy's period is coming on and she wanted chocolate chips so i went to the store late at night to get them - and i turned the car off and stepped out and said, man, i live in a house and drive a car and i worry about work and money. and i don't really mind - it's fun almost. it's like a whole other playing field. a new challenge. more responsibility somehow maybe.

february 21

so now i can only update my website weekly, it seems, sunday updates while amy's at the art studio and monday's cacaphony of phone calls and bitz are not yet arriving.

today i entertained some delusion and thought that maybe, in a throwback to more pimply years, that this website is my attempt at creating a new meaning for myself by representing the world as i see it, and to roll that back in favour of commerical writing is giving up on the one truly creative thing that i do. but that doesn't go very far - i somehow can't handle begging like i used to.

and the things i do or may do or i'm auditioning to do for money are opportunities for further growth and development:

(don't worry, deep stuff about my personal relationships should follow this further rehash of this epoch's career prospects and concerns)

I'm writing game reviews. I've already written some classic game reviews for my site. This gig gives me an opportunity to write a few game reviews on recent products that have been thoroughly reviewed elsewhere, but fortunately for me, not on this new web site. What's the web site? Not yet live. Will it be a catalog? Will it matter? They pay me from $100 to $150 per review, which is nice too. I could write game reviews all week and feed my family. and break my wrists.

I'm auditioning to talk about the web on some radio show. I have to write a piece or two around 400 words, take you on a trip to an undervisited website. Perhaps it's not hard to find something rare if I broadly consider a radio crowd. On the other hand, most web stuff seems second hand to me now - I'm too saturated. So I need a fresh perspective. I've got a great place to watch the web go by, I'll have to be sure to give proper credit and receive proper permissions.

and I'm auditioning for a gig at the sf bay guardian online, thanks to carl who recommended me. So far this is my most challenging assignment - I'm trying to write about AOL Instant Messenger and I'm having a hard time speaking in electric tones. The wham pizazz ain't there quite yet. Someone is editing me and telling me as much!

so today I was thinking, man, these contemporary game reviews, they come out of me so fast and fun. I mean it ain't that hard to write a good lede (first sentence) when you're talking about "Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now" a game that rewards you for creatively squishing pedestrians.

I worry that to be a columnist of howard's ilk or calibre I'll have to read thick books and digest articles and stay up to date on all sorts of detached ruminations concerning the online world so i can quote Sven Birkerts when I'm discussing the language-shift in online correspondence, etc.

That's nothing I didn't do for my thesis (technology and citizen choice: priorities and responsibility for tool selection). That busted my ass, and I got an A- (from sheer professor overwhelmedness? "the first, and i hope the last [thesis on the web]" - p.weinstein)

But maybe I should do what I'm good at and comes out of me smoother than vegan bowel movement? i mean to write like the wind is some kinda great high. and I'm participating in a new culture d00d! one that bucks the rules of discourse straightjacketing our predecessors, what kept them from expressing the true nature of the human soul in its yearningest!

i surf the web and chat and check slashdot a lot so i know what's up, and i play games, so i must be qualified to write some things quite well since as amy can attest i'm constantly commentating, so maybe instead of trying to rework ailing prose i should find more appropriate subjects to scrape!

i gotta have the low down motivator I guess, the stuff that grounds me and teaches me and makes me read and rewrite and edit my stuff tighter. and always there is this, my refuge, my art, my dangerously addictive appreciation for computer games. my aching wrists.

and my relationship. listening to my brother colin try to balance some moderate amount of physical exercise, work, play, relationships, I feel lucky to at least be able to cook for myself and my friends, engage a serious long-term relationship, visit howard in marin every two weeks, work on fun projects.

amy continues to school me and challenge me and join me elegantly and gracefully. she graciously attended Howard's Mom's 90th birthday party at the nice northern california rest-home today. I feel like a surrogate Rheingold, and she's been full-well willing to put up with that, even going to far as to enjoy it and develop her own relationship with them! and I feel honoured to have such a wise and loving woman around me so much. (of course now I type and she sleeps and wanted me to curl up behind her like soft silverware but i have to do this work for tomorrow i said to those cute eyes just above the red quilt).

Boyfriending Blues

Posted by Fusty on Sunday February 21, @02:24AM
from the went around, coming around dept.
When I first met Amy she had a boyfriend and though I was very much taken with her, one might even daresay smitten, I tried to restrain my total presence in her life and penetration of her vagina until she had resolved things with her partner in my favour. It seemed appropriate to me at the time, she seemed to prefer my company to that of an old long-distance relationship and if things were going to break up I wanted to see that the breakup had at least a little honour in it from my end.

Amy broke up with him and we commenced our affair that continues to this day. She did have sex with him once after the breakup, a few months later. I don't have much feeling either way - I hope he's found happiness. It appears however, that he's got some bitterness residing (as I might have in a similar situation), judging by their correspondence they continue to this day. It seems he writes her these incredible wraught emails incorporating Marx and Augustine and Ovid and bowls her over with her part in the global conspiracy to live in ignorance of the kind of atmospheric inconsideration and systemic injustice that renders him unhappy. something like that - I'm not really involved. She hasn't told him anything about me I believe. Anyways, tonight he had her crying and sad and upset because she realized that she was talking to him because she loved him and loves him and appreciates his stuff, you know, his brains and dialog, and wants to keep in contact with him, not just drop him, but he is so bitter and twists his bitter words in her side, leaving her stupid-feeling and mostly guilty. This has happened before - every few weeks I find her upset at her keyboard and I see very long paragraphs in her telnet window and I know she's trying to decode and rebutt this guy's feelings he's projected at her in latin.

Tonight over dinner, the chicken soup i'd made too bland we sat across the table mostly in silence. I knew why she was sad and there's some distance for me over that, so I read my "Have Gun Will Travel" book (from wilner|ellen) while she dilutes laotian shrimp paste in her bowl to flavour the broth.

finally we break through to talking and I realize that to pause sex was a noble gesture but nonetheless to realize happiness with a person whose happiness is already in progress is to have years of unrealized baggage checked on your flight.

either way these days i love living with amy. i think she's a fucking genius.

i do get a little maladjusted when she yells - recently she's been responding to my typical nagging with a rapid escalation in volume that makes my nerves do a sad shimmy. maybe it's all that work and money worries i was celebrating above.