Blogs

It’s been a hell of a run since tax day. I think I spent $300 on parking (including tickets, natch), got a glorious weekend in NYC, found an actual place to lay my head for the next few weeks I’m in SF, and am on my way back home to Humboldt tomorrow.

Lots and lots to say. I really want to get the writing habit back in gear, but the spare energy is hard to come by these days.

Sorry if it sounds pretentious, but sometimes I just love the archive:

I’ve grown to love this kind of egress from civilization in a way that makes me miss my estranged father, even though I suspect the image of his Only Son splashing around bare-assed, drinking beer and shooting dice around the campfire with a bunch of tattooed outlaws like some kind of second-generation dirt-worshiping hippy would probably put him even further off. He maybe gets hung up on appearances though, and would really appreciate the spirit of the thing if he could perceive it, so I think about writing a fathers-day letter (and maybe I still will), but mostly I just drink up the earth and do my level-best to be Present. It’s good. Much glory all around.

There’s a pretty neat video taken while driving on Salmon River Road too.

Note to self: retain freewheeling sense of outlaw Fun even as aging/maturation progresses. Alternatives, unappetizing.

Spent this past week at this little get-together called Drupalcon. I’ve done a poor job in general explaining what this “Drupal” is to my non-nerd quadrant of friends, and it’s a pretty long story with a lot of angles and beautiful idiosyncrasies. And also now kind of a big deal on these old internets. Like, 3000 people showing up for a conference we organized, with major sponsorships from technology heavyweights and a presentation from the White House.

Yeah.

The first wave of my professional life was very startup-oriented. Silicon Alley from ’98 to ’01. I never made any money of course, but as a 19 to 22 year old kid it was amazing experience both on technical and business fronts. The second wave was all about politics, but definitely had that scrappy startup kind of vibe, bootstrapping an insurgent campaign and then getting the non-profit equivalent of venture financing to try out some totally unproven ideas, including building a professional space around Drupal and participating in the dot-org boom. After that I took some time off and freelanced, then started a company. While starting ones own company is an integral part of being an entrepreneur for real-real, the first few years of this were a lot of hard learning curve for me, and to be honest it was a lot harder than I thought.

Now, exhausted from an excessively busy week and battling a devilish low-grade cold, I still feel like, once again, the buzz is back. It’s a new wave. I’m back to sleeping six hours a night and waking up jazzed.

And with this new momentum, I want to follow it up in my personal space, get healthy generally and re-initiate “Operation Get Very Hot.” My pre-professional background in the theater gave me a decent base physique, and more importantly a deep and lasting appreciation for the connection between mind, body and soul. I’m a confirmed believer in mystically ecstatic states and peak performance, and for me the base for all this is the physicality. I am, at my very best, an acrobat of the heart.

However, to be honest the past few years I’ve been sort of wasting away. Fits and starts in the gym, but more sitting on my ass (at work and at home) than anything else, eating great food and drinking tasty tasty beers. It’s immediately pleasurable and I don’t plan to deny myself any of that, but I’m really starting to notice how the infrastructure of my being is in decline.

This goes beyond simple gutfat and buttsag — some of which, let’s face it, is probably inevitable — and more to things like flexibility, stamina, posture, and how I respond to stress. Five days of conferencing shouldn’t have made my back hurt so badly. I shouldn’t had a cough that lasts six months. I should have more energy and zeal over the long haul, and not just the nervous spikey energy that comes from high pressure and big potential.

I’m a lucky son of a bitch, and if I’m going to make the most out of all this good fortune that means starting to take better care of myself in general. In a few weeks I’ll be turning 31, and where I wind up in a decade depends on choices I make now. It’s time again to take the initiative, push forward on several fronts in a dazzling display of personal synergy and virtuosic coordination.

Blog-radio silence lately. I’ve been deep in the throes of nerd-dom (as the old tweets would attest) and haven’t had the energy or will to come up for air and put it all together.

And this isn’t me doing that either. This is me apologizing and promising Better Things To Come™ in the not too distant future.

I love Brad Neely. When I feel uncertain about my future as a capitalist, there’s a song to cheer me up:

Creased comics.

Thanks to the magic of the internet, you can watch some relatively in-depth coverage from Russia Today:

Now, you can take it with a grain of salt — this is Putin-approved news, even though the tone is on par with CNN or the BBC — but the broad outline of events is consistent with other reports, and it’s another data-point from a different perspective.

It’s also interesting to see how Russia Today supports the change in power, and drops in that there may have been Latvian, Georgian or Chechen “mercinaries” involved in defending the ousted president and using deadly force against the protesters (near the end of the video). I dunno about Latvia, but Chechnya and Georgia are definitely on Vlad’s shit list.

I have a sort of heady blog post brewing from the drive up to Humboldt (back for a week), but I’m low on sleep and dopamine, so it’s gonna have to wait. In the mean-time, here are some links:

• Matt Taibbi puts the smack down on David Brooks.
• Krugman on building a green economy.
• War makes monsters of us all.

• Excellent RadioLab on randomness.

Word.

Headed to the east bay to have a cocktail with my man. Just in case you forgot. This is the man.

“I think America is ready for a man-hunting intergalactic space monster.”

Revolution in central Asia. Just FYI.

Couldn’t sleep last night. Partly because I got all het up on Saturday and split a bunch of wood giving me a sore back, partly because I am — in the words of Phife Dog — stressed out more than anyone could ever be, and partly because the air mattress in Zacker’s front room has a slow leak and deflates overnight, waking me back up at 3:30am for round two of the toss’n‘turn.

But beyond the work-stress, familiar ghost that it is, there was something else flickering through my mind and keeping me awake, something born of contemplating the move away from Westhaven and reading The Savage Detectives and wondering anew about love. I started thinking back to the hot heady Summer of 2001, which is nine years ago. What it felt like to be a free man in Brooklyn, artistic pretensions and honest poverty and beautiful people every which way you looked. Potential unlimited. We did theater in backyards and hit up illegal dance parties in warehouse basements. It wasn’t even all that early, but it was before things are like they are now. And I was young. Innocent even.

It started me thinking about what the hell I’ve done with my life, how it all happened. Obviously there’s 9/11, and probably even more importantly all the shit that came after. Falling in love as war unfolded, hearbroken on the Dean Campaign with the summer of the hassle, some spiritual cleansing, the long march with Music for America, Vagabender, back to Brooklyn and finally ejecting to The HC.

More recent California history is I marinated in the woods for a year or so while starting a bidness with some cool dudes, learned a bit about being be my own man, didn’t have sex for a long time, and ended up employing 15 people, traveling more than I ever did when I lived in a metropolis, and through a mix of talent, will and happenstance, standing on the precipice of being some sort of successful professional.

Which isn’t really where I thought I would be. I feel like I should be hiding out in Uruguay, or something. That’s the Bolaño talking, but it feels that way. My default idea of growing up was some sort of weird offbeat bohemia. Being able to cut it in the square world is unexpected.

Anyway, I’m throwing down all these links because that’s sort of what my night was like. Thinking back over all these things I’ve done, the feelings I’ve felt, the sunrises and sunsets, the feeling like I’m someone special and at the same just another face in the crowd. Wondering where this current iteration is leading.

I’m not suggesting I’m worthy of any biography other than my own little digital diary, but it’s been if anything an improbable life. What happens next is really anyone’s guess.