Sunday
Jun152008
in which our protagonist explains himself
Sunday, June 15, 2008 at 12:03PM
Hello again internet. It's been awhile.
My old blog, thoughtpeachdotcom, went down in a hail of hosting provider transfer errors and apathy, with the latter rising up to bully away any notions of keeping that once venerable institution of nitpicky self-indulgence going. Things, as they say, were not so good for me, or at least they appeared that way from the inside.
The last post I truly recall writing was about my job, how much I hated it and how much I wanted to quit, but how much I was afraid of sinking down to the lowest strata of past jobs, like washing CPR dummies or driving supplies all around Missouri and Kansas, or jockeying desks, or moving giant pallets of stuff even though it wasn't in the description. And to be honest, the job ended up winning, crushing my soul just a bit more than usual. I saw a therapist about it, I had long talks with the head of HR about it, I made up my mind to quit a million times. Keeping a blog was about the last thing on my mind - a document of how much I hated everything, of how stupid the people I worked with and for were, of how we should all share everything and no one should have to work and we could all just paint in a big, grassy field the rest of our fa la la lives. Nothing you haven't seen before.
So I took a sabbatical from the internet. I let the blog choke and die, I shut down my flickr, I wiped away my list of usual sites. All the noise and none of the signal was getting to me and, while it was pretty much in my head, I had to blame something, I guess, and the Internet was prime suspect number one. I figured some time away from it would, if nothing else, clear up an hour or two a night to do those things which would keep me from going mad.
And, long story short, the job went away, I started freelancing and immediately felt the sun rise warm and happy on my face every single day. And now I didn't want to go on the internet because I had too much to do, and all that free time I thought I'd have proved itself to be pretty mythical. Screw the internet, I thought, I gotta make rent. And so I did that for a time.
Now, here in year 2 of life as a joyous experience, I'm living in Kansas City's first post office, working for myself, freecycling my sleep schedule to ridiculous extremes, shooting pool in my living room, riding my bike around the front room and laughing every time Wednesday comes around, knowing that the people I used to work with were suffering just then, a burden I no longer shared. And things are, dare I say, good. So why not return. I think it'll be a neat trick to blog without whinging, to exercise a bit more of that self-editing that should go hand-in-hand with a publicly disseminated journal, and to, perish the thought, have fun.
I could go on (oh, believe me, I could) but I'm eager to start blogging on a regular basis. So, with scant explanations out of the way, it's onwards and upwards. If you know me, then you're probably aware of what I'll be blogging about (rock music, drive-ins, radio, piano playing, photography, brains, parasites, etc.). If you don't, well, guess now's as good a time as any.
My old blog, thoughtpeachdotcom, went down in a hail of hosting provider transfer errors and apathy, with the latter rising up to bully away any notions of keeping that once venerable institution of nitpicky self-indulgence going. Things, as they say, were not so good for me, or at least they appeared that way from the inside.
The last post I truly recall writing was about my job, how much I hated it and how much I wanted to quit, but how much I was afraid of sinking down to the lowest strata of past jobs, like washing CPR dummies or driving supplies all around Missouri and Kansas, or jockeying desks, or moving giant pallets of stuff even though it wasn't in the description. And to be honest, the job ended up winning, crushing my soul just a bit more than usual. I saw a therapist about it, I had long talks with the head of HR about it, I made up my mind to quit a million times. Keeping a blog was about the last thing on my mind - a document of how much I hated everything, of how stupid the people I worked with and for were, of how we should all share everything and no one should have to work and we could all just paint in a big, grassy field the rest of our fa la la lives. Nothing you haven't seen before.
So I took a sabbatical from the internet. I let the blog choke and die, I shut down my flickr, I wiped away my list of usual sites. All the noise and none of the signal was getting to me and, while it was pretty much in my head, I had to blame something, I guess, and the Internet was prime suspect number one. I figured some time away from it would, if nothing else, clear up an hour or two a night to do those things which would keep me from going mad.
And, long story short, the job went away, I started freelancing and immediately felt the sun rise warm and happy on my face every single day. And now I didn't want to go on the internet because I had too much to do, and all that free time I thought I'd have proved itself to be pretty mythical. Screw the internet, I thought, I gotta make rent. And so I did that for a time.
Now, here in year 2 of life as a joyous experience, I'm living in Kansas City's first post office, working for myself, freecycling my sleep schedule to ridiculous extremes, shooting pool in my living room, riding my bike around the front room and laughing every time Wednesday comes around, knowing that the people I used to work with were suffering just then, a burden I no longer shared. And things are, dare I say, good. So why not return. I think it'll be a neat trick to blog without whinging, to exercise a bit more of that self-editing that should go hand-in-hand with a publicly disseminated journal, and to, perish the thought, have fun.
I could go on (oh, believe me, I could) but I'm eager to start blogging on a regular basis. So, with scant explanations out of the way, it's onwards and upwards. If you know me, then you're probably aware of what I'll be blogging about (rock music, drive-ins, radio, piano playing, photography, brains, parasites, etc.). If you don't, well, guess now's as good a time as any.
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