On We

Well, hey there, look what the web dragged in: Me.

There. That wasn't all that hard, now was it? Well, yeah, actually it was. The hardest part about not posting for a good long while is figuring out how to get started when you get around to writing an entry again. Reflecting on what the web dragged in (as though it were a sentient, thing-dragging-in type being, yeah right) is a lame-ass start, sure, but it's about all I'm capable of at this juncture. You -- and I -- may not like it, but hey, at least it's there for you to read.

Something has changed in me since my last entry. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it's characterized by an overwhelming sense of apathy toward all things Internet and I think it ties in with my accident last month and my perhaps too subsequent trip to New York with Steve. I just don't -- can't -- care right now. Little glowing phosphors on a TV screen in the upstairs room of my house... Feh. Lately I'd rather plug into meatspace, get into watching bad sitcom reruns and going to movies and lying in bed talking with my wife and playing with my little girl after school and just about anything that doesn't mean parking my ass in a chair up here at the top of the house and staring at a 19-inch screen.

I still spend time up here every day, just not nearly as much, and on very different things than I used to. One change, obviously, is that I haven't been spending even my usual meager time writing journal entries. But I'm not reading them, either. Oh, sure, I check out a select few favorites every 3rd day or so and read maybe half an entry, but I'm not reading my usual suspects with anything near the regularity or depth that I did before. I'm just not interested all of a sudden. Nothing against those writers or the course of their lives; theirs just isn't mine and so isn't so interesting to me anymore.

How does this tie in to my getting whacked by a car and then spending a week in New York? I haven't a fucking clue, especially about the New York part. It's just that I feel different somehow. I think the accident has affected how I look at my life, and the trip had an effect on how I look at my place in the grand scheme of things.

Now, I'm just about the absolute last guy in the world to go all touchy-feely on you, but what I'm going through does have elements of that to it, uncomfortable as I may be about it. I'm not going to say I have a "new lease on life" after getting whacked or something hokey like that, but getting whacked has had an, ahem, impact on me.

Frankly, dramatically, I half wonder if maybe I'm having some vague manifestation of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder over it. I had to cross a busy street with Zoe the other day and we had to wait in the middle turn island halfway across, and I was really uncomfortable about it. Kind of scared, actually. I was driving home the other night and saw a dog out roaming in traffic and my first thought (as it's always been in such situations) was to stop and coax the dog off the street and maybe into my car -- but then my chest tightened up and my mouth went dry as I suddenly imagined myself getting creamed as I stepped out of the car. I was scared. Me, scared. What the fuck?

So there's that. And then my experiences in New York -- where, for the record, I had a great time -- maybe dovetailed into the mortality that was on my mind at the time, especially since I was still all gimpy from the accident while I was walking all over the Big Apple. The sheer mass of humanity clogging the byways there sort of highlights the concept of how small one man is in the Grand Scheme Of Things, especially when that one man is still, in the dark of night, lying awake and replaying getting hit-and-runned two blocks from home.

So I've been thinking lately, reflecting, maybe even obsessing a little bit on weird stuff, mortality stuff, future plans stuff. I've had something of an epiphany that makes all things seem possible, a dawning of the idea that you can accomplish anything you want if you want to badly enough. Now, that may be obvious to some of you, but it's sort of a new concept for me. I've spent my life being kind of penned in by fences that now don't seem nearly so substantial, so I'm sort of basking in this new way of thinking and trying it on for size. So far I think I like it. All things seem possible to me right now, I feel ... hopeful. Weird. For me, really weird.

And so I haven't been writing entries or reading other journals or really doing much Internet related ... and surprisingly enough I don't miss it. It feels a little strange to be stepping back like this, since I've been so jacked in for so long, but I don't mind it. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm quitting my journal or going Luddite on you, but I am taking my journal and all things Internet at a different pace now and that's just going to have to be okay.

In other news... I'm on the verge of losing a job just as I've started a new one. If you follow financial news of the dot com revolution, then you know that one of my employers/clients, www.drkoop.com, has become the poster child for all that's wrong with Internet startups. They've been hemorrhaging money and analysts keep saying bad things about them and the stock price keeps plummeting and now they've laid off 30% of the workforce ... but they kept me. Illustrative, perhaps, of the management issues the analysts keep carping about.

In the meantime, I've signed on with a big name investment firm as a -- what the hell is the corporate-speak job title? -- Rotational Microsoft Office Training Specialist. Or something like that. Basically, I'll be going from branch office to branch office and sitting down with stock brokers and their assistants to help them "leverage their time" by teaching them tips and tricks about the Microsoft Office suite. It'll be primarily here in the LA area, but I'll apparently be doing a little traveling along the way. I'll spend a week in New Jersey next month, and there are likely to be similar junkets in the future.

Much to my own horror, I seem to be stumbling into a career as a corporate trainer. Who knew that decimating your fear of public speaking by telling awful stories about yourself in front of roomfuls of strangers in AA meetings could turn into a job skill? And who EVER would have known that at the tender age of 38 I'd finally knuckle under and take a job that requires the wearing of suits? Take care, kids, for the end may well be near.

And as a sad final note... The Booth is apparently no more. It seems Pac Bell teamed up with the US Forest Service and tore it down. All that's left is its concrete foundation, a dangling wire that now connects to nothing, and the lonely echoes of its ring pealing out across the empty desert. Farewell, (760) 733-9969. We'll miss you.

Thank you! Good night!