On Things And Such...

It's been an interesting couple of weeks, and by "interesting" I mean mostly shitty with a side of pretty cool. I'll go with the cool first, then get into the shitty, then leave you with some more cool (if you're into gadgets, that is).

Cool.1
Kaia's getting bigger. I feel that were I able to sit and watch her for 12 hours straight, sans blinking, I would actually "see" her grow. I think she's grown out of her preemie stuff entirely, and she's about to outgrow the N size diapers. Her head used to fit in the palm of my hand; now it's as big as my hand. It's crazy. I'm speculating, but she's probably over nine pounds now. Double her starting weight! Woooo.

She's found her smile, and it is one of the most beautiful things in the whole world. I can see why parents do baby talk. When you're rewarded for your tardedness with something so awesome, it's hard not to walk around making silly noises incessantly. I think outright giggles are just around the corner, so we've that to look forward to.

She's also started sleeping longer at night. This past week, she had nights of 6hrs, 15 mins, 6hrs, 38mins, and over 8hrs (Friday night). How awesome is that? Now we just need her to start going to sleep before midnight so we can have some us/decompress time at the end out our day.

Which leads me to...

Shitty
While I've been doing my daddy sleep-deprivation thing, I've also been trying to get a magazine out at work. How best to describe this? Remember in college when you'd have a term paper due? Imagine a term-paper that's a group project and four times as long as a normal term paper. Now imagine that most the people in your group could give a shit about their grade and have no intention of turning your paper in on time. Got that in your head? Good, now repeat it six times a year.

That's what doing this magazine feels like. People don't do what they say they're going to do. I have people trying to lean in and tell me what should be in the magazine, how it should be done -- meddlers, basically. So as we flew past the deadline two weeks ago with no hope of an actual print-date in site, I said fuckit and stopped caring if we even got close. It's out of my hands.

I have no actual authority over these people. I have no means of making them do anything, so why worry about something I can't control?

But it pisses me off. Just sitting here thinking about it now pisses me off. And every day the past two weeks has been another day where some reason came up where we couldn't get something completed. I've been in a perpetual state of agitation.

When you top that with sleep deprivation ... it's bad. I feel like a ticking time bomb.

But more than that, it put me back in that state of mind I was in a year or two back. It's never really gone away, it's just been sort of buried under a fresh coat of paint. I'm about to share this because I've been described as a "private" person lately and it caught me off guard.

I'm going to preface this part with a personal historical anecdote.

When I was in the fifth grade, I decided I didn't want to do my SRAs anymore. SRAs, for those of you who didn't have to do them, were these little cards with a story on them. You'd read the story, then answer some multiple choice questions. I hated them. Thought they were boring. Subsequently, I didn't do them. The consequence of that, as these weren't for grades but were required, was that I didn't see the surface of a playground from about November until the end of school.

Not even not getting recess could get me to do my SRAs. I didn't want to do them and I'm more stubborn than you.

Fast forward to today. Today, I would do my SRAs, because as an adult, I understand responsibility. I get up every day and go to work. Most years, I have really good goddamn attendance. I think last year, I used two sick days, and I'd wager both of those were to stay home and play Halo, not because I was actually ill.

I go to work because I have to. That is the only reason. Were it not for financial obligations...

It's not entirely that I hate what I do. Sure, OSU sports are interesting, but not enough to make me want to cobble together an 84-page magazine about them every two months, and certainly not enough to put up with all the bullshit I have to endure to get the damn thing to press.

The truth is, aside from the juggling of resources (which is more an endurance project than a challenging one), the job is goddamn boring and I don't care about it. It is a paycheck, nothing more.

Never in my career have I had the opportunity to take a job that actually matters to me, that I could personally invest myself. The closest thing is the movie column, but that pays $160 a month -- fiscally, it doesn't factor in. Every job I've taken since I graduated from college has been about getting the next bigger paycheck. that's it.

I haven't ever been mentally challenged by a job. The shit I write for a living... a monkey could do it. Gather up some quotes, fix a couple mental images in your head of your subject matter, sprinkle in some concrete adjectives and provide a bunch of smooth segues. Viola.

Now, equate my boring ass, no-challenge job to the SRAs. An outside observer could tell that I've matured because I now do my SRAs like a nice, little obedient wage-slave.

But make no mistake, I hate that portion of my life. Hate it. If I stop to think about the future, I become overwhelmed by hopelessness and despair. IS THIS ALL THERE IS?

Magic Eight Ball says signs point to, "yes," especially when the people I usually end up working for are quick to put a box around me. Ah, Cory, he's a "writer." Dude, I was a "gifted kid" in grade school. If you think all I'm capable of is writing, you're a dumbass.

But that's the way the professional world works. I understand why entrepreneurs do what they do. It's the thrill of risk taking and the freedom of answering to no one. That i have thus far in my life been incapable of taking those kinds of actions says more about my perception of self-worth than it does about the system.

Friday at lunch, I broke down to Steph about it. Cried, even. That's how much hopelessness I have inside. I can't foresee a future where I enjoy my career, and it nearly makes my knees buckle.

I'm thankful for her and for Kaia. Were it not for them...

It sounds like I'm whining, and in light of something like Boone's health travails, I have no right to say these things. My lot, rather than speaking up and out, is to wake up and push the boulder back up the hill.

Steph provided me with two courses of action: 1) find the 'dream job,' or 2) go back to school. I'm thinking I'm going to go back to school while I look for the dream job. I honestly feel that I chose the wrong major in college, that I made irrevocable decisions when I was 20 that neutered my professional aspirations. I should not have changed from pre-med. I should have followed Francis into architecture and gotten a minor in creative writing. I should've done something difficult, because the challenge of doing something difficult provides life's sweetest rewards.

Should've, could've, would've.

What i know is that for me, making these huge, sweeping lifestyle changes are difficult. I gnash and rage against the bonds I've tied for myself while blaming society and ultimately doing nothing. To begin, now that would be a grand adventure. It's something I have to do. Take that first step. I cannot continue down this path. Hell, it's not the example I want to set for my daughter.

This is not another declaration of change. This is a venting. Were it not for my wife and daughter, my family, my friends, my clan, I would be Peter from Office Space.

"So is today the worst day of your life?"
"yeah."
"man, that's messed up."

interest and passion in what I do are no longer on the wish list. They are the requirements. if I'm going to continue to do this "journalism" bs, it has to be about something I enjoy personally, or I won't give a fuck about it and the cycle will continue. If not that, I've gotta go back to school. Engineering, industrial design, landscape architecture. Something for my brain to eat.

I've taken steps. Last week I applied for a job with Blizzard. This is the beginning. I hope it doesn't end in Stillwater, OK.

Cool.2
When I turned 30, I think i officially became a gadget enthusiast. I'm going to go ahead and blame Steph. She's the one (along with Mark and Candice) who bought me my first Xbox, after all. I've gone downhill since.

Remotes, video game consoles, hdtv, surround sound headsets, laptops, bluetooth headsets, programmable remotes, PMPs, cell phones....

It's the last one on that list i'm talking about right now. I actually drug my feet getting a cell phone. Steph had one before I did. She conned me into getting her one from a Cingular kiosk at Wal-Mart. it was one of those big, ugly Nokia candy bar phones. She still uses the damn thing as an alarm clock.

My first cell was a Samsung flip phone. it was dog poop, really. it was so lame looking, I had made decals for it at work. But the Razr is what got me to thinking cell phones were actually cool. it was hella thin and had those kick ass metal buttons. it was fine, but as a gadget freak, i'm well-conditioned for psychologically-engineered obsolescence. I tire of things and need new ones.

Such is definitely the case with phones. I got tired of the Razr and after a weekend of watching Boone mess around with his HTC 8125, I needed it. I needed that smart phone, if only for the full keyboard that slid out from under its face (I blame the writer in me; keyboards are my stylus, after all). Ended up buying that brick off him when he upgraded to the newer, thinner model.

Still love the full keyboard. I even kind of liked Windows Mobile. But the goddamn thing weighed five pounds, and let's be honest, I never used half the shit it was capable. Never used the wifi or the bluetooth. Never set it up with an MS exchange server. Never really took pictures or notes, nothing that made me bust out MS Office mobile.

so other than the keyboard, why carry that gargantuan turd around in my pocket (and no, I sure as fuck wasn't going to use the belt holster).

And then here's the other thing. One of the moments in my life i really enjoyed was cutting off our landline and telling AT&T and their $49.99 all-in plan that cost $80 a month -- to take a flying fuck. They had the last laugh. They bought Cingular.

The day AT&T bought Cingular, I checked to see when my contract was going to expire -- something like 13 months. Goddamn you, AT&T. Goddamn you.

So I waited. Started checking into the competition, comparing prices, plans, looking at phones. Then I heard of Helio. Basically, their service packages are awesome. All their phones have GPS, unlimited texting, unlimited data, music player capabilities, etc, et. al. blah, blah, blah.

And not only are the phones loaded, they're pretty cool.

April 7, I became emancipated from AT&T, my contract expired. Two days later, I'd signed up with Helio and ordered the Mysto. The software (for your computer) could use some fixin, but the phone is pure gadget sex. It weighs nothing, has kick ass sci-fi sound fx, sounds great, is easy to navigate and just looks fucking cool. I'm pretty sure Steph wants me to get her one. She'll have to wait for emancipation day.

Since 1999 and The Matrix, I've wanted a slider phone. Mine's a helluva lot cooler than neo's. Eff you, Morpheus.

Out.