I’ve been overdoing the going-out lately. Which is surprising because that is not something I have ever overdone. I’m a hermit, I’m resigned to my quiet little fortress of solitude but somehow I’ve managed to expand this fortress outwards and my world has grown a little bigger. Now I’m out most days of the week.

I had to stop and think about this last night when I went to see a movie with friends and we just kinda sat in silence next to each other and immediately parted ways afterwards. Super lame. I must resolve to stop going out for the sake of being out.

I found I’ve been getting a little pushy lately. I’m not sure yet if this is a good or bad thing but I’m certainly a little more aggressive in some aspects. I tend to pursue people I like hanging out with, maybe get a little clingy. I quickly dismiss people that are too negative or too depressing, mostly because they remind me too much of myself. I’m instigating my own social occasions and inviting people along, I no longer wait to be invited.

Mostly, I think I’m on to a good thing. I’m figuring out how to kick it as a single person living alone. But I need to juggle my priorities a little. I’m still way too hung up on girls. There’s a whole novel I could write on that. There’s this crazy need for me to let a woman run my life, I blame this on my mother.

I need to figure out my work situation. I’m still feeling very unmotivated but I have gained motivation to actually examine this and work it out. It’s a whole lot of navel gazing but I think I’m on the right path. My old co-worker last night said something to the same effect, it is good that I’ve realized I need to change.

I’m also stubbornly refusing to blame this on the recent break-up. The break-up was a catalyst but I was already broken and lost before we parted ways. The relationship was a comfortable place to hide from my problems and now they’re all staring me in the face. I’m too damn old to still be blaming my problems on one relationship.

So one thing that the ending of a long-term relationship does bring to mind is the temporary nature of things. I’m only coming to realize that our twenties are supposed to be this time of transition and change. One decade ago, I was dependent on my parents for everything and one decade from now, well, I don’t know. Climb the career ladder? Marriage? Paternity leave? Race a hot air balloon around the world?

My point is, things are all very temporary right now. My living arrangements will change every year. My friends will change. My job continues to change whether I like it or not. I might fall out of love with Seattle. People are all moving in their own direction and it’s only through dumb luck that our paths continue to cross. Everyone’s a nomad and it seems that it’s precisely the wrong time to put down roots. Now’s the time to demand a sample of every flavor of ice cream.

It’s been 3 years in Seattle and I think I’m running out of excuses to remain stationary.

Mike Davidson wrote about the P-I and reflected on the future of long-form writing:

• Our attention spans are shrinking below even the levels caused by the television explosion of the ’80s and ’90s
• We are consuming more and producing less (no, sharing or reblogging does not count as producing)
• We value timeliness of information more than depth of coverage, or even truth in some cases
• We are driving most kids completely away from journalism as a profession
• We’re uncovering more of the who’s, what’s, when’s, and where’s, but less of the how’s and why’s

I think we all know who is to blame. The iPod and it’s fancy shuffle and letting you listen to songs in whatever friggin’ order you want. I remember the days when you had to listen to the entire album at least once. Mixtapes took some friggin’ effort. The “skip” button was never worn down to a faded nub.

Seriously though, these aren’t new concerns but for some reason they hit home a little harder when you see newspapers crumbling. I complain that I can’t crank out a decent blog post on a decent schedule but the real problem is that I don’t have the attention span to read it, let alone write it.

I really hope there’s some sort of counter-movement. Not a revolution but a band of advocates that help these twitchy children of tomorrow to find balance before we all die of heart attacks at age 30.

Merlin Mann at 43Folders is doing some really cool things. He’s just a schmuck that loves to create. He used to be obsessed with all sorts of productivity systems for managing his life but now he just wants to know how to tap into creativity and make something new and worthwhile without getting so involved in the meta of it all.

I’ve gotten busier at work and it’s given me new focus so I ignore a lot of the social chatter going on in my mailing lists. I’m skipping a lot of blog posts in my Reader. I don’t read every single Twitter message that is posted by the 40-odd people that I follow. I’m getting some momentum in this direction. I feel like I’ll have to make a big sacrifice soon if I want to keep any kind of attention span.

Cut to this morning when I see an invitation to very important review meeting. An invitation that was sent at 11am. For a 12pm lunch meeting. What the fuck, people. First, give me a little fucking notice here. Second, this is like meeting #9 in a review that should have only taken 2 hours. People need to stop letting reviews turn into week-long, fucking training sessions. Argh.

Deep breaths. …Six, seven, eight, nine, and ten.

I’m actually feeling ok today, thank you for asking. I took yesterday off and I mean off. I didn’t stop by the office, I didn’t promise to do any sort of work and I only checked my email twice. I spent most of my day concentrating on wearing this illness away.

I tried really hard to sleep in but I only managed to nap until 8am. Instead, I headed over to the grocery store and stocked up on some fun things. Top of the list was two cans of Campbell’s Chicken Soup, orange juice, ice cream and ingredients for the beef stew I like to make. Then I settled in for the day with the Friends DVDs that I’ve been borrowing from my girlfriend. In my memory, it was always such a superficial and saccharine show but I’ve been proven wrong. It’s actually very enjoyable and not at all as painful to watch as, say, Seinfeld DVDs.

Around dinner time, my sore throat was really starting to bug me and I came up with the brilliant idea of making a ceviche. I went back to the grocery store and picked up a quarter pound of Chilean sea bass (you can slap me here for being such a yuppie), a lemon, some white onion, tomatoes and coriander. By no means is this some sort of authentic recipe but it’s something that’s very easy for me to throw together in fifteen minutes and the lemon juice does wonders for my throat pain. Simply amazing. I’m going to make it again tonight.

This morning, my throat feels a little better. I think my sinuses are aching more and this will probably lead to headaches and drowsiness later in the day but I’m back at work anyway. Maybe I’ll take the afternoon off if it gets bad.

One thing, I am a very emotional eater. It takes a lot for me to start being rational about my food. In my mind, I think about my next meal and healthy food tastes like cardboard whilst deep fried crunchy food is like being hugged by a unicorn. Reality rarely matches up with this – junk food just makes me feel lethargic and guilty – and yet I continue to do it! Thankfully, I don’t fit the single white female cliche and I don’t medicate my problems with a tub of Ben and Jerry’s but I will eat steak and burgers. Yum.

The other thing is that I’m emotional about work. I have to feel it, you know? If there’s some task that is shit-boring, it will take me five-times longer than the average person to complete. And it’s not some passive-aggressive thing to prove to my boss that my skills are being wasted, it’s just that I need to be entertained like a five-year-old. If something is going wrong at work, it’s soul-crushing.

The same thing applies to all my creative tasks. Like this blog re-design, I was aching to do it for a while and I got so wrapped up in it but as soon as I let myself relax at home, I ended up spending hours playing my Xbox. And it wasn’t even a good game, it was just an exercise in numbing the mind. I sat there and I thought to myself, I’d be so much happier creating something right now than pissing my time away but I could not drum up the willpower to do so.

These irrationalities of mine work against me. One makes me crave junk food when really all I want is tasty food. The other makes me lust for shiny distractions when I’m really aiming for some sort of self-accomplishment.

The problem here is that discipline was never my strong suit.

When I’m tired, I have that fucked-up sleepy logic. I tell myself, Oh, I’ll just lay my head down for a few seconds then I’ll feel better. Then I fall into a low-grade coma. I was probably snoring too. For those that are interested, there’s like a 16-hour time difference between Seoul and Seattle.

When you think about it, traveling 16 hours into the future and then back again would make you pretty tired. How come time travelers never get jet lag? Someone needs to include this detail into the next time travel movie.

I woke up with a jolt, realized where I was and straightened myself out. Thirty seconds later, my roommate walks in like nothing has happened. I think he’s just come back from a meeting and wasn’t around to see my trip to Sleepytown. Also, I’m pretty sure I have lines on my face from resting my head on my arms.

Anyway, that was just a short update. I’m still working on sorting through all these damn vacation photos.

Tonight: drinkies. Anyone else want to come out with a drink with me? I will buy the first round.

Otherwise, email me with stories about bad days so that I might not feel so alone. It is kind of depressing to be upset about work and realize that it’s the best thing I have going for me here.

I am back at work today; 26th of December 2007. This is a new thing for me because my Decembers are usually spent on school holidays or forced annual leave. Never had I ever had to go straight back to work.

You know what? It’s kind of nice because the office is empty and I’m getting lots of work done without people pestering me about deadlines, dependencies and the veritable minotaur’s maze that is our company org chart. Today, it’s not my problem. I have my work to do and it’s getting done and by 5:30pm today it will be did.

This morning I was actually having fun. I woke up early, got to work very early and got more stuff organized for my Japan trip. I was also planning to leave work a little early so I could rush home into the arms of Guitar Hero 3. But I guess all it takes is one little thing to sour my day.

And to be honest, I don’t know why it is souring my day. There’s no rhyme or reason. It’s a tiny little thing but it just echoes about inside my head and I just start getting worked up about it and it’s my fault but honestly how can it be my fault that someone decided to be an asshole today?

Enough of that. I’m still going to leave early today. I get to fly to Japan this Friday. I’m doing good things. Good things that should lead to good days of nail-biting anxiety, staring at the wall clock and wishing I was already in the middle of Osaka staring at all the crazy things that happen in a city that big.

I have:

• my Japan Rail pass
• my travel insurance
• booked my vacation days

I have not yet:

• packed
• exchanged my currency to Japanese Yen
• told my apartment manager that I’ll be gone for 3 weeks (do I need to?)
• played Guitar Hero 3

Maybe young people in Australia celebrate it too because it is an excuse to dress slutty. I do not know any people who want to be slutty so I have never attended such parties.

So my first Halloween was utterly underwhelming. I did not wear a costume because I do not know the cultural appropriateness of wearing one to work nor do I have a costume. As it turns out, it is very appropriate (as long as it is not slutty or gory). The corollary to this is that I have not been invited to any Halloween parties. Thus, there is no pressure to learn this American custom beyond what I’ve seen on re-runs of Friends.

At the end of the day, it’s a holiday for the children. For one thing, while Halloween has religious roots, it is not a religious holiday because pagans smell funny. It’s not a holiday that preaches any particular morals. It’s really just an excuse for children to delight in candy and adults to delight in gore and wearing revealing dresses in the midst of Fall.

The children are great. People brought their kids into work and everyone had a little candy stash outside their office and there was a lot of “happy Halloween” and “thank you” and “I’m a turtle!!!”. There were a few teenagers there and the cynical teenager in me just wanted to shake them. You guys are full grown teenagers now! You should have mastered how to say “pfft”, “meh” and “whatever”. You should be able to roll your eyes in your sleep. Yet you willingly follow your parents into work, dressed as some ridiculous mockery of a copyrighted character and beg for cheap, surplus candy! You are too old to be a cute kid anymore, you should be hating the world.