So my cat has disappeared. We’ve not seen him for 9 days now. He’s an indoor/outdoor cat, but he always returned each night to sleep inside.

Every conversation I’ve had about the situation has had a similar thread. Not always so blunt, but the root of it has always been, “Well, it’s just a cat.”

People who say that suck.

I’m sorry if you’ve had bad experiences with cats. I’m sorry if you had one as a kid and it didn’t like you. I’m sorry that you’ve seen enough cartoons with mean cats that you’ve become convinced that they’re all evil. Even if they ARE all evil, I happen to like mine, and him not being around sucks. If you want to use this as evidence that I am evil by association, fine, but even the evil should be allowed to mourn. (Well, maybe not…evil people being really sad tends to end with world domination schemes.)

I’ve owned 4 cats in my life. All but 1 of them have been so awesome people couldn’t refrain from telling me that I have an awesome cat. Is that pure coincidence? Maybe it’s that you’re crappy cat experience has more to do with you than the cat. That sounds like a pretty cat thing to do. To be annoying to those that annoy you.

The one non-awesome cat was still a decent cat.

So, tirade aside, just nod your head politely when someone is lamenting about their lost animal that you have no affection for. They don’t need your input on pet quality.

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Can you guess which stack was folded by a grand master and which was folded by a puny mortal?

Note: Is it irony that I’m so proud that I know how to spell the word braggadocio?

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I managed to make it through another year alive. I wasn’t too sure after getting hit by a car and nearly killing myself on the side of a mountain, but it looks like I’m still in one piece.

29 years old. That’s a decent bit of time.

Funny/sad story. Two weeks ago I looked at Tree and said, “Dang Terese…I’m gonna be twenty eight years old.” She looked at me, with a sort of “Oh you poor thing” expression.

“Baby, You ARE 28. you’re going to be 29.”

I was a little taken aback. I had never internalized being 28. Seriously. The thought just never took hold. No sarcasm here. Here’s proof: Here’s a comment I made at the beginning of July, clearly saying I was 27 years old. And I’m not vain enough to just lie about my age.

I lost a whole year. I had 12 months to enjoy being 28, but I squandered it thinking I was lame old 27. I just googled “28 year old” and all I got was stories about 28yo guys murdering people. Imagine if I had taken hold of my 28′ness. I could have changed the world’s perception of 28 year old men.

But maybe it’s not too late. After all, I’ve got 12 more months of being 28!

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Our local mall has a soft indoor play area that we frequent on rainy days. Today I had Noah and Desi there while we waited on Tree getting her hair cut.

I noticed early on a kid, maybe 7 or 8, maybe older (I’m a bad judge of age) who was fiddling with his ear as he walked around the play area. I watched him a little and decided it was a tick of some sort. No big deal, whatever, just noticed. Noah is playing, climbing, jumping, having fun. All is well.

Then I see a couple boys, also around 8-10, start to follow the little boy with the tick. This is when I notice he’s also sort of moaning. A third boy joins in, and I hear one of them say “He’s like a zombie!” I start to grow concerned.

A few times the boys try to get in front of him, to get his attention, but he’s kinda got a thousand mile stare. At this point, I decide that if they pass by me again, I’m going to say something to them along the lines of “Leave him alone guys.”

I notice the guy next to me stand up, with a big smile on his face, and approach the boys. He kneels down and looks the three boys right in the eye and begins to talk to them. You can tell they sorta want to disperse, but the man, out of ear shot, seems to be encouraging them to hang around.

He returns to his seat and his wife joins him. We chat a little bit, Desi tries to scratch at them, nothing out of the ordinary. Then one of the three boys approaches the man and asks him something, and the man encourages him to count on his fingers in front of the boy. He then gets up and walks over to him and shows the boys how he can count. They’re pretty far away at this point, so I can’t quite tell what’s going on.

His wife turns to me and says, “He’s autistic. He’s not very verbal.” I can only respond with “Oh. OK.” ‘Cause I truly don’t know what to say. “They don’t know how to speak to him.” Then we just sorta sit there, watching the kids play.

They struck me as such amazing people. I wanted to say something to her before her husband returned, but knew I wouldn’t be able to without crying. I wasn’t going to say anything like “You’re so strong for dealing with this” or anything else that could so easily come off as condescending. I just wanted to tell them that what they did was awesome, and that they taught me something. I was going to tell the boys to “leave him alone” which would have admonished the boys for being curious, and left the other boy by himself, with no one to play with. Instead, these parents decided to teach three little boys how to communicate with their son. It wasn’t their son that had the problem. He was just autistic. It was the three boys who needed to learn how to play with him. Instead of driving away those who don’t understand, they took the chance to TEACH them. The patience to take the time, the will to put their boy out there as an example, the faith that the boys would even listen…it pretty much blew me aware.

I can’t figure out how to sum up this point. I’m just glad I got to learn something so important today. I hope I told the story well enough that you did to.

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Yesterday I posted about working on my “50,000 foot view” and coming up with a list describing where I wanted my life to head. Last night I looked it over and added a couple things, but I think it’s done for now.
Now, don’t get me wrong. This list will probably not impress anyone. I have no plans to climb any mountains (Oh crap! I just thought of something else to put on my list!) or live with only 10 items, or walk across the country. Looking it over, there’s little on here that’s revolutionary. But that’s OK, cause I’m not looking to change the world right now (talk to 18 year old me for that diatribe.) After all, while I admire those who run off and live out fantasy adventures, I’m still a dad and a husband, and I have no respect for those that choose themselves over their family.

Enough with the prehashing…lets get to the list. I broke it up in 3 sections. Personal, Activities, and Work. Personal deals with things directly about myself, whether physical, or emotional, or personality. Activities is how I want to spend my time. Work is for the way I want to spend my time while getting paid. So here goes:

Personal

Have more sex.
• I imagine any guy who does this kind of list would put this on there. Teresa asked that I specify “with my wife” but I told her that was implied. Sorry ladies, but it totally is.

Lower body fat percentage.

• Nothing earth shatteringly original here. I’m fine with my weight, I’m just not happy with what weighs how much.

Help more around the house.

• No, I don’t consider this an activity. It’s really more of a mindset. I didn’t develop a real work ethic until my early 20′s, and Teresa does so much around the house it’s easy for me to let her do too much. I need to start pulling my weight. This one is really “be a better husband and father” masquerading as something basic.

Activity

Adventurous Bike Trips
• A week long bike trip across some states by myself is on my bucket list.

Camping

• I want to be a camping family. Preliminary tests have produced good results.

Make music with other people

• This is something that I truly, deeply enjoy. We should all try and do things we truly, deeply enjoy.

Record Bands

• After all, I did drop a SUV’s worth of money on that education…might as well use it right?

A vacation with Teresa

• No kids. This is obviously several years away.

Volunteer

• I’ve wanted to do this for a long while. I really enjoy helping out, but when you already feel like you don’t have time for yourself, how are you supposed to find time for others? Hence the planning.

Climbing

• I’ve loved rock climbing my whole life. I’ve climbed an actual rock once.

Work

This one is a real work in progress. But I’ll jot down what I’ve got for now.

Work should be independent from location.
• I’m no longer a widget maker. My work shouldn’t require I go to the widget factory every day.

Reduce Stress / Constant sense of urgency

• This one is going to take some real thought.

Create a learning friendly environment.

• I want everyone to feel free to educate themselves and find opportunities to learn more. When you feel like your work is making you better, it drives you to make your work better.

So that’s my list. For now anyways. You’ll notice the kids aren’t really mentioned on it at all besides me not wanting them with me on vacation. That’s not a reflection on my feelings for my family. It’s just that right now I’m pretty damn happy with my family life. My kids are awesome, and most of the things listed in the Activities section will include them. I mean come on, if you like something, why WOULDN’T you want your sons to like it too? This list isn’t a complete picture of the life I want. It’s really a list of the things I feel are missing from the life I have.

All that’s left now is to figure out how to put this all into action. Simple. Right?

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So last night I sat down and did my “50,000 foot view” as described by Getting Things Done author David Allen. Actually I can’t remember the exact altitude he called it, but that’s not important. The idea is you sit down and look at your life in whole and figure out where you want it to go. What you want it to be. You write down everything, no matter how outlandish. You create a clear picture of your desires and goals. Maybe even some you didn’t realize you had.

So last night I sat down and made a list. I’m pretty sure it was only half a list, as once I got started my mind began to wander like crazy. It was a little like opening the flood gates. Then, as if by plan, when I fell sleep I had a vivid dream about the company I work for being bought out by a charismatic European guy who basically told me I was free to have my job the way I wanted it.

So this morning after I woke up I started typing up my dream, in an effort to record as much info as I could before I forgot it (You know how dreams can be). I wanted to remember everything, so I could look back on it and figure out what I needed to do to make the dream a reality. Wow. That sounded really motivational speakery.

That, after all, is the mission behind the 50,000 foot view. Once you’ve got your list of where you want to be, you come up with your plan of how to get there. The details of that process are in Getting Things Done and too elegant for me to poorly boil down here.

I’m debating whether or not to post my list. Certainly not until it’s done. We’ll see. I haven’t sat down to start planning yet. I can’t decide if I should keep going with my list, or if I should try and start figuring out what I have now. Either way, I like where this is going. Wheels are turning. Lets see what comes out.

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I’ve come to despise those that have free time during the day. Stupid work week happening during the day.

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And after all that, I’m back. I’m sure assuming I was missed by a great deal of people is a delusion of grandeur, especially when this week has been my most blogiest in forever.

I spoke about why I took time off, but I never spoke about why I participate in these social networks in the first place. Social Networking as become so ingrained in our society at this point that most people don’t even feel they need to explain why someone else should be on Facebook. You just do it. Don’t listen to Christina Hendricks, just do it. Whatever reason other people do it, here are my reasons.

I enjoy my friends. It sounds pretty obvious, but this is my main motivator. One of the first things I had to overcome when I went on hiatus was the nearly involuntary clicking of the Facebook link in my toolbar. Even without that, typing in “fac” into Firefox’s Awesome Bar is a quick way to get there. This muscle memory action is directly tied to my mind (my heart? awwwww) when I think about my friends. Juan had mentioned in his post that we all crave attention, which is no doubt completely true about me, but I think I would still use Facebook even if I wasn’t able to share my thoughts with the world my friends through it. I read through my Facebook news feed not just to see what my friends are up to, but to do as much socializing as I can given the little free time I have. Even if I couldn’t respond with comments, or give ‘thumbs up’ or otherwise feedback to my friends, I’d still go just to be able to see what’s going on in their lives. These are people I care about, and seeing them grow and change is an important part of my life. (Sappy.) Seeing them doing things together, even if it doesn’t include me, is enjoyable, just cause, well, despite how cheesy it sounds, I just like my friends being happy. And even if I can’t be there as they do whatever it is that they’re doing, them being able to share that information with me is a way that we can have a shared experience despite my absence.

One thing I really didn’t like about the hiatus was not being able to share things with my friends. While sharing things on the internet isn’t a new thing, the proliferation of Facebook has made it incredibly easy to do, to a lot of people. Heck, the origins of blogs was the weblog, which was nothing but a link of the cool things you found on the internet. It was literally a log of what you found on the then wild west internet. Now-a-days most of the most popular sites on the net are just better, cleaner, more widespread versions of just that. So I’ve had my blog for almost 10 years (OhMyGoshThatIsRidculous), and had plenty of chances to share stuff with anyone who reads it, but not until Facebook came around did I really feel like linking something was really getting it out there. People use Facebook, which is why the notes on Facebook of this blog have (hopefully?) gotten more comments than the actual blog posts themselves. Bringing my links to Facebook is more likely to find viewers than expecting them to come to me. But I really do enjoy finding a good video, or a comic, or something else, and knowing that some of my friends will see it and enjoy it themselves.

I guess none of this is quite revolutionary. Perhaps this post was kind of a waste. Maybe I should talk less and go waste some time on Facebook.

See you at internet.

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Yesterday Juan Baez III (He makes us call him that…we have to pronounce it “eye eye eye.”) did a guest post about my current Facebook / social networking diet.

I had feared that my posts talking about this issue weren’t very clear (Who would have thought my incessant rambling would not be easily understood?) as to exactly why I was doing it. So, here goes attempt number four.

I originally touched on how Facebook consists of a lot of posturing. A good bit of preening happens before you post something on Facebook. Sometimes it’s as simple as only uploading the pictures of you that make you look good. Other times it’s spending a couple minutes figuring out the best way to say something in a short, concise manor so you look more smarter. As I said before, this creates an idealized image. And heck, anyone who doesn’t do this and whines about being unhappy all the time, those people are ‘hidden’ from view, furthering the pristine aesthetic. So that’s Facebook.

Another portion of the net I’ve stepped away from is my RSS feeds. This is something that I myself have preened to perfection. I’ve found all the sites I like, and I’ve assembled them together in Google Reader to make some sort of Tony Entertainment Nexus. A portion of this is idealized visions of other people (their blogs). Other portions are made up of funny videos, good music, pretty pictures. What it ends up creating is this world view perfectly tailored to my ideal life. It’s all good, and no bad. If any bad gets through, I skip past it, or I’ll eventually remove that RSS feed.

So here’s the basis of my problem: A very large portion of the “good” in my life, is coming from a glowing screen I sit at all day. When I’m NOT looking at this constant flow of good stuff, I’m in my car, or on the bus, or at home raising my kids. Much of that time I can’t do anything to create my own good stuff. Now don’t get me wrong, I love my family, but right now we’re in a tough spot of having a newborn and a temperamental 3 year old. That means a lot of my time at home is spent managing Noah, and once he’s in bed, Teresa and I are so tired we can barely manage to do more than fall asleep on the couch watching TV. So externally, the world is great, my friends are having fun, creative people are being wonderfully creative, and life is good. Internally, I have the stress of a job and life, a self loathing at my own failure to be creative, and a sense that I have no free time to do anything I want to do. THIS is the essence of my problem. Right now I feel like I don’t have control over making my own happiness, and while it may not be true, the Tony Entertainment Nexus is telling me that everyone else has a great handle on theirs.

All that aside, here’s the truth of this situation. I do have control over my own happiness. While it may be difficult sometimes, it’s my job to remind myself that, despite their Facebook pages, other people don’t have perfect lives either. I have no plans to permanently disconnect myself from the social web, and it’s not going to change itself to my liking, so it’s on me to figure out how to deal with this external/internal dilemma. But if learning to deal with that includes cutting myself off for a while, or maybe every once in a while, then so be it. When I “come back” on Thursday, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to dive back right back in and go back to where I was. Perhaps I’ll try to trim down that enormous RSS list (which will be very long after not looking at it for a week). Maybe I’ll limit my Facebook use to certain times. Who knows. All in all, I’m glad I’ve done this so far, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I can. I never claimed to be addicted to Facebook, but anybody can say “I’m not addicted. I’ll stop right after this.”

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This morning, on the train, I a guy sat down across from me. I looked up at his face, and instantly saw the Facebook page, and thought “Holy crap, Ben Kingsley’s body double is on MARTA.”

So I guess I haven’t washed the thought externalization out of my head completely yet.

Then again, it has quieted down up there a bit. In a good way. Not in the “man there’s a lot of fumes at this gas station” way.

It’s funny, this week has also probably been the most social I’ve had in a while. On Saturday Tree and the boys and I (still testing out how to say that kinda stuff) went to Grant Park for some art fair thing, and we met up with a former band mate of mine, Andrew Asher (of JATO fame) while he visiting from Tampa. Although if it weren’t for Teresa reading Andrew’s post on my Facebook wall, we wouldn’t have known he was in town. So it’s good to know I have a curator while I’m away.

Then last night I went to Kennesaw to practice with UVM for an upcoming show that I’m subbing in bass guitar for. Twas nice to see my friends again. Moreover, it was great to play live music with people again. It was awesome. I don’t know if any of the other guys picked up on it, but I was trying to hide a giddy smile the whole time. There’s nothing that beats the energy of individuals coming together to make a synchronous racket together. I could gush about it for 3 more paragraphs, but I’ll spare you.

I also found another way to avoid looking at my phone every 30 seconds. Just leave it at home. That’s VERY effective.

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