Month: January 2003

I am realizing that what’s missing from my recent life is any encouragement. I don’t mean the attaboy kind. I mean the actual positive feedback you expect when you change things in your life.

For instance, people go on diets. They expect to see results. Even if they don’t see it in the mirror, they regularly jump on scales and measure their various parts until they can proudly exclaim “I lost 25 pounds and 4 inches.”

Normally, I like that kind of evidence, material proof, something more than the vague notion that something is different. Most of time I distrust any “instinct” because most of the time that seems to lead to bad results. People tend to bring their own bias and filters to their perceptions. However, in an attempt to simplify my life, I have spurned validating each personal conclusion. That seems to be biting me in my ass.

My job is usually just a job to me. I do stuff and they pay me. It is a good bargain. Any personal satisfaction comes from knowing that I have done a good effort. I can find my own encouragement from that I moved from the beginning to the end of a job. However, right now, due to circumstances, I find myself swimming in circles. I feel like I’m making progress but I look up and don’t see anything different.

Homelife is the same. I have undertaken an exercise program and modified my diet. I have been exercising fairly consistently for over 4 years after a 5 year lay off. I pat myself on the back for that longevity. My physique, level of endurance, strength and flexibility haven’t really changed much of late. There was the initial success of going from zero to something, but that was so long ago. At least, none that I can sense nor measure.

There are a few things that I don’t seem to have time for. One of them is music. That has always been something that I did and simply enjoyed. I was unjudgemental about it most of the time. It is hard to engage even it right now.

This will pass. I just hope that I can keep a modicum of sanity until it does.

I have become fascinated with the word dude. The actor on SNL who used to play to copy guy, Rob Schneider, does a bit about the utility of the word dude. I don’t want steal his material but he details the incredible utility of the word dude. It is not nearly as useful as the word fuck, which as some of you know, can be any part of speech.

Dude has fascinated me as an interjection mostly. It is a very expressive word, but its use at the beginning of a sentence is the most interesting. By prefixing whatever you say with dude, you have license to interrupt and proceed with your own thoughts.

Albert Einstein himself could be delivering a talk on the theory of relativity and someone in the front row could say, “Dude, your fly is down.” and it would fine.

Some snob in the second row would nudge his friend and say, “can you believe it? He interrupted Einstein.”

His friend would shrug and say, “He said dude.”

“Oh, right.”

Even in the midst of a gaggle of surfers, it is completely appropriate etiquette to interrupt the height of any story to say, “Dude, you left your lights on.”

“Oh, right. Thanks, dude.”

Two paramedics are frantically performing CPR on a dying victim, someone in the crowd around them can say any of the following:

“Dude, your mom’s on the phone.”
“Dude, did you fart?”
“Dude, I’m gonna need to stop for gas.”
“Dude, that guy looks like a monkey.”

All of those would be met with tacit approval.