Stuff On Top


Dec 13, 2000 - 4 a.m. 

   It's 4 a.m.  I have been lying in bed for the last hour or so just thinking. I don't do this. I don't do this ever.  I usually just sleep.  A lot of this is becuase i like to sleep and i don't have problems doing it. I am not sleeping now for a couple of reasons.  One of these is that at about 10 o'clock tonight i fell asleep on my couch and woke up at 3 and moved to my bedroom.  When i got to bed i decided that i should go to sleep.  Then i decided that i should just get up and go to work.  Then i remembered that i can't go to work until 6 because that is when the sea bus starts running.  So instead i thought i could read.  Or sleep.  Or read.  You know, one of those dilemmas.  But i didn't do either. I lay in bed and just thought. 

   What did you think about you might ask.  I don't know for sure. i lay there and thought about life, mine and others and how they were treating each other and i have just come to a conclusion.  No, wait, not a conclusion, but a CONCLUSION, yeah, one of those.  So as i was coming to this conclusion i decided that i should hop out of bed and write about it so that i can remember it in the morning (hopefully a morning that comes soon so that i keep with the impetuous to get to work early).  But i did hop out of bed and instead of just writing it to myself i am writing it to all of you.  And let me tell you, sitting here in the dark in my not warm at all apartment at 4 o'clock in the morning is damned cold and i think that i am going to have to get this done soon before my nipples fall off.  

   Right so the conclusion.  I am beginning to lose respect for myself.  It isn't gone yet, but i just realized tonight that there has been a slow erosion of myself over the past year or so.  Which is a little bit amusing to me.  I mean i have only really encountered such a thing once in the past, when i was up north working for enough money to pay off bills and get on with my life.  Well the job was not one i was fond of but even worse i didn't like much at all about living in the north, so i began to find my feeling of self dwindling.  Well, long before it could really sink in up there i moved.  Stood up and moved to Vancouver.

   Here it seems to have started again. Why.  I am not sure, i mean i am doing more with myself now than i was back then. I am writing almost every day. I write this journal, i write articles, i write for work and other work.  But i am not writing for me so much.  i haven't sat down and written fiction in months.  I think i started off all good and happy and working for myself but that has been shrinking.  I am watching too much TV and not working as much as i used to when i had the TV on.  I am, so to speak, shrinking...as i have been gaining some weight.

   So i need to make some changes.  Do i know what they are? No.  Not at all.  But for one, i am going to either cancel or reduce my cable.  I am going to go back to a rule i had only a couple of months ago in the summer that seemed to vanish.  The TV doesn't go on until prime time....you use the time between work and prime time or writing or exercise.  I am still glad that i haven't picked up any must see shows but i feel the needs to have them growing...the need to be home on that particular night of the week to see that show growing.  You know how it is...that Shangri La that all TV networks want from a program...appointment TV to use their term.

   I need...i need to go back to fiction...i am not sure where this is going to go or come from though...we shall have to see about that.  i have to return to writing for me.  I have not been keeping up with my movie reviews....why...becuase i didn't think people were reading them.  But i was lying in bed thinking...you didn't start writing them because you thought people would read them, you wrote them because you enjoyed them.  Time in front of the computer doesn't have to be spent there only if people are going to read it. 

   Ok. i am getting really cold here.  And i am drifting. You would think the goose bumps running up the backs of my legs to my butt would be an incentive to maintain focus.  Apparently we were both wrong about that.  

   So here it is.  A quest...a quest to not only halt this erosion of respect but to regain it.  At least this time a change in jobs isn't a requirement as i still enjoy my job and don't disrespect that part of my life but i have to reduce how important that is (that and i can't afford to quite as i find that another symptom of disrespect has been a lack of discrepency in money...must reduce that debt i have worked up...know what i mean Vern?

   Damn it all. i am going back to sleep.  To...sleep...to think...perchance to dream.

Things I need to look after to be gaining on the erosion...

Start eating healthy-ish at least sometimes again.
No TV before 8 o'clcok.
I was going to say more writing each week, but that's not fair i do write a fair amount...
3-4 hours a week of me writing.
Exercise.
Return to an actual schedule for going to and getting to work.
Stop sounding like a Tim Robbins Infomercial...(i am going to get this one done in another 7 lines)

This will start me off....

Thanks For Listening.  You get a gold star if you ask me in February if i the erosion has halted, or what i have written lately and then mock me for lack of progress if none has occured.

Night.

brrrrr....no...actually i am not cold anymore....i knew i would acclimatize to the cold if i gave myself enough time.

Is it too early to go to work still?  Yah...4:19....ah well...i'm going back to bed then.