I’m an Imaginary Explorer!

I have invented a new term: The Kanye Meridian. This is the boundary line between exuberant self-confidence and outright hubris. There is a place for bold self-confidence, a Kanye West-like swagger as you approach your metaphorical microphone. When you choose to create anything you should undertake that endeavor like it’s your destiny to do it and do  it well. Don’t hum and haw and make pre-emptive excuses for not succeeding. Instead, assume you are about to rock the house, and then step up and do so.

But, and this is a big exception, try to keep your bravado restrained to an internal monologue. When you broadcast your awesomeness to everyone who can hear you, you start to wander into jerk territory and you encourage people to daydream about your possible failure. I wonder if Kevin Smith is crossing the meridian now. He’s just shown a movie at Sundance film festival, and in the lead-up to it he has been promoting it enthusiastically on Twitter and on his own website. On the one hand, a man has a right to be excited about his art. And he also writes about the perspective he’s gained from his years making movies, giving motivational advice, which is fine and dandy. But at some point, being loudly proud of your work and badmouthing the ‘industry’ that won’t do business the way you want them to creates a situation ripe for comeuppance. Hopefully,  his movie doesn’t suck. The real pitfall awaiting the over-confident is the loss of your own internal critic. You need to be able to turn your critic off at the beginning of a project, but that sour little fella is invaluable when you go to edit the work. You have to be able to notice that, after the first blush of new creative love fades, your new work of art kind of stinks. And jeez louise, do that before you show it to anyone.

Focus is for guys in good moods

And I am not one of those guys, so you are going to get a big scattershot of topics. Do I have single topics that could easily fill a full blog post? I have one. Am I going to use it? NO! YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!

That is point number one: I am pitching a tiny teenage rebellion in my mind. I don’t want to do anything productive, I don’t know how to fix my problems but I’m vaguely angry at the whole world for them. This is why I didn’t post yesterday (I’ve even lost track of my blogging schedule. gasp). I think I need this cold to go away, and maybe I need to hide under a pile of blankets for a while until I regain a sense of optimism.

The boy has been a whirling dervish of energy and mischievous behaviour. (See, here we are at a totally different topic). My best guess is that he is hopped up on a) self-confidence and b)a week full of non-standard activities, so he is testing the rules to see if they are still in place. Add in my lack of leaving the house due to the cold, and you have a good case of crazy cabin fever. Hopefully tomorrow is the chill out day everyone needs.

We all went to a wake this afternoon, so that’s another gristly piece of emotional meat I’m trying to chew through. I absolutely abandoned my normal process with Max, where I explain what’s happening and why we’re doing what we’re doing. I could not tackle the subject of death today. I sure did cringe every time he mentioned the deceased in the present tense, because I was letting him say something factually inaccurate and I was too chicken to correct him. But he had a good time, better than the other boy his age there who staged a demonstration in passive resistance by lying on the floor in the basement and doing nothing. For a three-year old, that’s quite a feat.

I am a poor househusband. Not poor in the sense that I don’t take care of the house-I manage well enough to keep things sort of clean, kind of. Nope, I’m talking cash-poor. It is such a difficult situation to be a negligible source of income for the family. I like to spend money. There are things I would like the family to have, like “savings”, “vacations” and “cat pee-free carpets”. So far, adding donation buttons to my blogs has brought in….let me check the tally board….add in the last-minute donations…SWEET DIDDLY ALL.  (Please note this is not a harassment aimed at you, my loyal readers. I am complaining for comedic effect. You are all breathtakingly attractive and I wouldn’t change a hair on your heads).

I’m going to package up the WitchKids story into an ebook in the next few days, complete with minor revisions. I’m going to put it up for sale for hopefully around 5 bucks, with this tantalizing incentive: if I sell 500 copies, I will instantly begin a new blog story set in the same universe, maybe even a direct sequel. Will it work? Oh, probably not. 500 is a big number, that’s why I picked it.

I’m wearing fleece-lined pants and they’re making me sweat, but my other pants are 2 floors away. That’s the last complaint I can muster right now, but if I think of anything else, I’ll add it in later.

 

Sour old man, huddled under blanket, sniffling

I’m in the throes of a cold, which has thankfully not exploded into a crippling malady, but it’s making me very tired and grumpy. Not the perfect state for a man watching a wild 2.95 year old, but we’re making due. I’ve probably skipped a scheduled blog day, and this one isn’t going to ring the bell of excellence, but it will deliver another buttload of commas. Commas!

Another true fact that I am now happy to have proven: ice cream DOES make a sore throat feel better. Does two bowls of ice cream make the sore throat doubly soothed? Probably not,but that didn’t stop me.

You may not know of the Canadian singer Keisha Chante. She’s not a bad r&b singer, but she cannot dance. Stiff wooden arms, tentative steps, just awful overall. Her latest song? ‘Table Dancer’. Why would you agree to sing a song that brags about something your just no good at? WHY KEISHA WHY?

I’m going back to the couch to sip some tea and quietly lament my unproductive ways.