There may come an evening, soon, when you will log on and see the following post:
Concurrently, heretofore, durr-durr-durr-durr-durr-durr-durr-durr-durr…
And pursuant to the final “durr” will be a string of B’s, written by my forehead when it hits the keyboard, and here’s why: I’ve been noticing that sometimes, during moments of intense focus, I’ll forget to breathe.
I’ve probably killed countless brain cells already, and it’s a miracle “already” was spelled correctly. You’ve heard of breathing, I assume? That vital gas-exchange thing? Back when I deludingly planned on being a neurosurgeon, I sat in wonderment as a prof explained how the medulla oblongata controls all those important involuntary functions. Well, medulla oblongata, you really fucked the dog on this one.
It can’t be completely blamed, however, and I should take some responsibility. Here’s the kicker, though: ensuring I’m breathing regularly requires focus in and of itself, which puts us squarely on a carousel from hell. I was trying to file this one into the right folder. “Self-Improvement” was my first pick, but then I figured “Basic Human Survival” was the better choice.
In case Superbad and Arrested Development didn’t do it for you, and you’ve still got the taste, here’s your next fix. That’s the penultimate episode–my favorite episode–so narrative purists will want to forgo the ass-backwards approach and start real proper-like on the first episode. Best as I can recap, the series is a fictionalized paean to the Hollywood writing process, which these days apparently involves doing absolutely nothing.
The strike couldn’t have happened at a better time, though, because I’ve been making full use of my property tax dollars with repeated trips to the local library. Now, I’d say roughly half of these writers don’t care about new media residuals, some because such technologies weren’t mainstream at the time, but mainly because they’re, y’know, dead. The books they’ve produced, however, along with the whole reading thing, are the exact opposite of this–energizing, wholesome, fulfilling.
Consuming gobs of electronic media, all in one sitting, seldom leaves a pleasant aftertaste. When my evening is measured in DVD chapter stops, the post-mortem is easily described with a few key words. Sluggish. Dumber. A kind of greasiness of the soul. Maybe it’s from the all that LCD radiation, I don’t know. But books feel different, and after finishing The Catcher in the Rye and The Forgetting Room recently, with The Autobiography of Mark Twain lodged in my couch and A Confederacy of Dunces on the docket, I’m still running hot, and the will to read endures.
Cooking well is a pursuit I’ve dismissed for a while now, conveniently prioritizing it behind one new distraction after the next, but the excuses are running thin. It’s that time of year when the earth’s axis is tilted at entirely the wrong angle, bringing with it earlier sunsets and colder nights, and as much as I enjoy running around in the freezing dark, outdoor activities are basically limited.
This final pillar of self-improvement is a tower surrounded by an instant oatmeal moat, which once crossed will only lead to another obstacle: the things I enjoy cooking aren’t necessarily the things I enjoy eating. Burritos, sandwiches, and cheeseburgers, delicious as they are, don’t exactly call for deep culinary skill, and the deck seems to be stacked more toward assembly rather than creation.
There’s the oven or the stovetop, then, each of which powers a different kind of mindset. The oven demands all that deliberate upfront work, but after you pop your invention onto the rack, it’s more an issue of managing the situation and avoiding scorching. Now, the stovetop runs more on immediacy and, when things go wrong, improvisation. It just seems more exciting. The main goal, though? To make something that doesn’t require irradiating for 90 seconds or less.