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Youth or Adulthood?

Youth: impulsiveness, restlessness, and enthusiasm.

Adulthood: resignation and stability.

Why am I never sure which one’s in charge of me?

Sometimes I feel very grown up, like this morning when I’m sitting here drinking my coffee and listening to Nat King Cole, having just completed a breakfast which centered around leftover cubed steak from last night. Hell, I feel positively middle-aged.

But most of the time, I don’t feel like much of an adult at all. I don’t see a 36-year-old face when I look in the mirror. When I see other people my age, I almost always guess them to be older than me. Especially if I’m not in San Francisco, where Peter Pan Syndrome is as ubiquitous (and as annoying) as the smell of marijuana or the sense of moral indignation.

I don’t really want to be Mister Average Suburban Guy, more concerned with the state of my lawn than with having an interesting life. But sometimes I would like to HAVE a lawn, as well as some of the stability and routine associated with it. Yeah, I’d hire some cute 16-year-old to cut the grass and all, but it would still be mine.

I get restless too, though. I want to go places and do things and never have to commit to one house or one city or one job or one lover. I wake up some mornings a bundle of restless energy, wondering what I should do or where I should go that day. It borders on anxiety, as if I die a little bit by not coming up with some exciting way to pass the time. And I often invest more effort in deciding what to do than in actually doing it.

It’s a little taxing sometimes, but I guess it’s a little better than waking up knowing what I MUST do or where I HAVE to go.

I think it comes down to the fact that I’d like to have a nice little routine to fall back on, but that I don’t want said routine to control my life. More ominous is the fact that I don’t seem much inclined to put in the level of work and commitment necessary to get me to this point.

I hate it when I’m feeling neurotic and self-obsessed on Sunday morning. This wouldn’t be happening if TNT were still running their “In the Heat of the Night” marathons…

Jury Duty III

Happiness is:

  • Hearing a judge say “We’re going to have to excuse you from this trial. You have now completed your jury service for this year.”
  • Finding that three additional parking spaces on Seventh Street no longer have a two-hour time limit.
  • A Red Baron microwavable pizza and To Sir with Love (especially the song, but the movie too) in the middle of the afternoon.

A trip home (and maybe here and here) will be scheduled as soon as all this is over. Get ready, east coast…

Jury Duty II

Look for an exciting entry soon on how much jury duty bites. Or is that too obvious? I have to go back tomorrow for jury selection. As it happens, the defendant is a supermarket chain, and maybe this will get me excused. I may at least wear my Piggly Wiggly T-shirt (thanks Sarah). But if not, this one will still be better than the month-long trial I narrowly escaped…

It’s too bad life is not a TV sitcom and that I probably won’t be put up in some spiffy hotel for the duration. One with heat, for example…

Jury Duty

At age 36, I have to report for my very first round of jury duty in the morning. You can’t imagine how much I’m not in the mood. Especially since I don’t have an employer paying me to sit there doing nothing all afternoon.

Civic responsibility sucks…

Randomly Sunday

So my friend Duncan is finally moving about 2000 miles closer to the west coast at exactly the same time I’m seriously thinking of moving back to the east coast. Bad timing again; I seem to make a habit of that. But them again, I’ve been seriously thinking of moving back east for a good year and a half with no discernible action.

Speaking of no discernible action, last night was the last straw. I’m never going out on Saturday night again. Nothing but idiots out, which might have been OK if they hadn’t all been such UNAPPEALING idiots. It is easier on the self-esteem, granted, when the problem is that you’re not interested in anyone you see rather than no one ine being interested in you. But the end result is pretty much the same.

Had lunch with Sarah yesterday; we hadn’t seen each other in months, so it was a good thing. As was the “buy one get one free” sale on Rubbermaid at Walgreen’s. That the aforementioned drug store is listed among the highlights of my Saturday should give some indication of how uneventful my life is this week.

Five Years of Planet SOMA

Planet SOMA was born five years ago today.

Dang.

I didn’t think I’d still be working on this one little website after all this time. Or that this one little website would turn into four not so little ones. But I was wrong. And now I can’t seem to stop. Even though I probably should. Help me.

And thanks for coming by, too…

Annoyances and Discoveries

Today’s date is dedicated to Mark.

Annoyances du jour:

  • Can anyone offer me any explanation why cluster tomatoes grown in a hothouse should cost 50-75% more in winter than they do in summer? Am I missing some crucial issue here?
  • It’s freezing in my living room, 58 at my last check. Yes, I still have no heat. No, I do not blame my landlord (whom I actually like and trust, believe it or not). It’s all but impossible to get a contractor to do anything in SF right now; they’re all too busy building live/work lofts out of stray pieces of corrugated cardboard. Ahh, San Francisco. Where it’s always “jacket weather”. Inside and out.
  • Has anyone else noticed that everything on TV (networks, cable, and independents alike) has just plain sucked for about the last month or so?

Happy discovery du jour:

New Domain

My new domain for Bottles finally went live sometime yesterday, it seems. Took long enough. And it seems like the DNS lookup is slow too; that would mean that it takes a long time for the site first to start loading, but then everything’s OK. Is anyone else having this trouble? Does anyone else care?

Back to working on other people’s sites now…

Erroneous Assumptions

PJ said: “and the really shitty part? the “gay community” is just as bad. this community that’s supposed to be about supporting diversity? augh, sorry, i’m not even going to start down that road.”

OK. I’ll start down that road instead. Who didn’t see THAT coming?

Things Sodomites and non-Sodomites (erroneously) assume about me because I like to suck dick:

  • That everything I do is somehow related to sucking dick.
  • That I will be interested in what made for TV movie happens to have a gay character this week.
  • That I really give a flying fuck whether or not any given celebrity is gay.
  • That I really want to see naked pictures of complete strangers the first time they email me (especially when they’re ugly).
  • That having a “very active gay community” or a “big gay scene” is a top consideration in where I choose to live.
  • That I am, God forbid, a “spokesperson” for the “gay community”.
  • That I believe there is such a thing as a “gay community”.
  • That I ever use the acronym “LGBTQ” in everyday conversation.
  • That I don’t laugh at people who DO use it.
  • That I ever read The Advocate or visit Planet Out.
  • That I find the statement “I never would gave guessed about you” to be a compliment (or an insult, for that matter).
  • That, by definition, I have loads of shared interests with every other Sodomite on the planet.
  • That I know about all the crappy music (movies, books, jargon, etc.) that I’m “supposed” to.

Glad to get that off my chest…