Today’s soundtrack: a red house over yonder
Today at 6:32pm: teaching one of my last



iTunes seems to know of my recent breakup and has been rubbing it in. How the fuck does a music player set on “random” spit out Lauryn Hill’s “Ex-Factor,” Al Green’s “What a Wonderful Thing Love Is,” Caetano Veloso’s “For No One” and a Ronnie Dove track whose title is too embarrassing to print here, all in a sitting? I’m getting hassled by fucking computer applications.

Not a fantastic week. In addition to the girlfriend pulling the plug I just found out my martial arts school is shutting down. Not permanently, and not the Brooklyn outpost, but there is some problem with the lease and after November there will be no more Manhattan dojang until we can find a new location. So my regular Thursday teaching gig evaporates come December.

Must think positive, there is an upside to everything. Well, not everything, I mean I can’t think of an upside to accidentally inhaling mustard gas or driving a motorcycle into a farm combine. A Kawasaki jockey getting his face ripped off by a wheat thresher is not something you can put a positive spin on. But wait, I’m losing the point--problems are opportunities, right?

Maybe this will be better for the writing, at least in terms of output. Longtime followers of this blog know the amount I write is inversely proportional to my contentedness. If you are a fan of this blog it’s in your best interests to sabotage my relationships, steal my things and get me fired from shit.

Getting dumped under deadline is no fun. One of the reasons I haven’t been writing here much lately, aside from contentedness is because the first draft of my book is due next week. Next week! I won’t say it’s close to finished, but I do have a stack of paper in a folder that’s roughly shaped like a book. I have been working on it for some months and that’s the good news. The bad news is, I’ve looked at what I have so far and I’m afraid it’s simply not very good.

I wouldn’t mind if it was really bad, like if I tried to go for something new and failed, but I have a bad feeling it’s just mediocre. Hopefully this is just jitters talking but time will tell.

So right now I’ve just got my head down and I’m trying to power through this thing. Writing, writing and rewriting while trying to ignore the fear. Fear of mediocrity is much worse than fear of failure. In the report card of working life I’d rather get an “F” than a “C.”

Anyways the book will eventually be on sale in some capacity, because I’ve decided that even if publishers hate it I will try the self-publishing route. And if that goes nowhere, at least I can get the "F" and move on to some other shit.

I’ve also been editing a shitload of articles for Theme Magazine, the next issue is nigh. But I’ve decided tomorrow I am going to take a break and do something nice for myself, which is to go see Serenity. I got hooked on Firefly a few weeks ago and have now seen all the episodes. I know that by getting addicted to an obscure sci-fi series I’m not doing myself any favors, socially speaking, at a time when I need it, but me and the series have something in common: Cancellation.

Unfortunately by tomorrow Serenity will only be playing in one theater in all of Manhattan, and it’s in Times fucking Square. I’m still strategizing the best time to see it so I can minimize my exposure to fuckery.

There is one more little mini-disaster that befell me this week, but that one won’t make the blog because it’s turning into one of those calamitous entries and I’m sick of complaining. Anyways Nietzsche said “Adversity breeds strength.”

Then again, sometime after sending Ecce Homo off to the publishers he apparently went bitchcakes and started talking to horses. Nietzsche, you little scamp!