"Smoke" Ben Folds Five

This song is from 1997. I have memories of Newport Beach and of Christmas that year. I also remember being very nervous about film school. During orientation, we were made to feel special. The 45-or-so of us that got accepted, they said we were part of an elite group. They used words like legacy and history. I have few friends from film school now. None of us has any interest in it. And we think people who talk about movies need to find better things to do, like get a job.

I was ironing my shirt tonight and I flashforwarded to my living in my own apartment. I did not like the feeling.

A friend from work talks about his big plan to sail around the world when he retires at 55. "It's the only thing that keeps me going," he said over lunch. He got pad thai from the C-graded joint at Grand Central Market. He took one bite and threw it away.

I don't understand why people work. I understand how work starts out as a game in which one feels compelled to excel. And then I understand how work becomes a means to gain small luxuries like a car or Ecco shoes or a Yonex tennis racket. And then I understand how these small luxuries turn into a "standard of living" that one feels compelled to maintain. And then I understand how work is no longer a game, or a means to an end, but a tether. I don't understand why people sign up for this. Is it because there's nothing better to do?

I said, "Houses, wives, work, cars--these are all distractions." My friend, who is married, agreed.

I believe most of us keep ourselves busy with work or play or following soap operas and the football season or waiting for the upgrade or next year's promotion because if we sit still we'll discover that underneath all these accessories, we're really very dull. Most of us are creatures of context, not substance.

I wonder if we've already made our choices.

"I Was a Kaleidoscope" Death Cab for Cutie

I was reading through some of my finished chapters.

The person in these stories is not the same person who wrote about him is not the not same person I am now. The guy who capped the cost of accommodations at $25 is not the guy who lived off his Citibank Mastercard for months is not guy who struggles to save 5% of his salary for his Roth IRA.

There are moments that sneak up on me when elements from these incarnations are misfiled and I'm thrown off for a few seconds. I looked up last week at the sky. I was waiting for the train to Union Station. It was dark and I knew I was really crossing the Bolivian border at 4 in the morning.

I like my lives. I like this one that I have now. But my lives are not like some mother's children. I can choose which one I love most. And it isn't the one I have now.

"The Ocean" Dar Williams

This is what a rejection looks like:

Thank you so much for your patience and for sharing this sample of [title] with me.

I apologize for the unusual delay in response! We've been so swamped with submissions.

Unfortunately, I felt that I would not be the right agent for this manuscript, but I have a feeling you may have already found representation.

I wish you the very best of luck and success, and thank you again for the opportunity.

Sincerely,
S.

"Got Carried Away" Trashcan Sinatras

I woke up this morning thinking I had caught the virus floating around work, a tricky sucker that slides into the body and produces few symptoms until it fully matures into a full-body cast. I couldn't get up. I was dead tired.

And then remembering that my immune system is that of a vulture's, I thought, "I couldn't be sick, so is it because I haven't been eating enough protein? Is my stomach eating up my muscles?" But I had a burger last night. "Oh, was it all the jumping and screaming, my silly reclamation of youth at last night's Green Day concert?"

And that's what it was. I am tired because that's what happens now.

"It's because he's getting old," my dad yelled from the kitchen early yesterday, as my ex-brother-in-law stopped by to pick up his kids and noticed my thinning hair.

This morning as I got my haircut I told the lady, "I usually get a 2 on the sides, but I'd like a 3 all the way around. Is 3 still good for me? I know the theory is that as you lose your hair, you're supposed to keep it short."

She said a 3 is perfect for me and then eventually it'll be a 2 and a 1 and when I'm ready, it'll be bald. "But don't worry right now, you have plenty on top. You should see the other guys who come here. You're just doing the receding thing." She traced my brow. "But it's different for men. You guys are lucky. When Bruce Willis shaved it off and was very public about it, it liberated you guys. For women it's different; we have to buy wigs."

Aging is weird because, like that virus at work, it sneaks its way into you and you don't notice it until one day you realize there's something very different about the way you feel. I enjoyed Green Day's concert not because of the music--once you hear one Green Day song, you've heard them all-- but because I was fascinated by the audience. There was a kid at his first concert and his dad explained, "We're clapping now for the encore. So they come out." And the kid clapped and stomped on the metal bench and eventually played his air-guitar and banged his head with not as much self-consciousness as when he first tried. Behind me was a very fat Mexican teenager who screamed every garbled and politically-charged lyric. Hell no, he wasn't part of a redneck agenda, or the moral majority. In fact, fuck George W. Bush. Not his president.

I thought, I was this kid for Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation tour in 1989 and the fat Mexican for Radiohead 10 years later. And there I was in between, smiling at them in recognition, as I cradled a cup of merlot with one hand and rubbed my sore right knee with the other.

"A Call to Apathy" The Shins

First thing's first: "For somebody who doesn't seem to understand the point of blogging" I seem to have created no less than half-a-dozen separate online journals. As an American, I'm entitled not only to changing my mind, but doing so unapologetically. I won't apologize but I will explain: These blogs have all been thematically organized and devoted to different phases of my life:

• Phikle Phiktion: Self-conscious musings and artsy mumbo jumbo that defined most of my early 20s
• Pretending Not to be Lost: International acts of idiocy
• Unemployment Life: The idiot comes home and commits himself to writing a book.
• Business Casualty: The musings, the traveling, the book are all done. Having carefully nurtured my soul in the garden of self-edification, I've decided to sell it to one of the largest investment management companies in the world.

Business Casualty will track the changing priorities of a yuppie sell-out, his desperate rationalizations as an unpublished author, and the daily annoyances he suffers at work.

Thanks for your time and consideration. I hope to see you again.