the january update: second edition

The year just keeps rolling right along and I've gotta say, hallelujah January is over.  Under normal circumstances I would probably limit that comment to my readers in Wisconsin but I think this year we can ALL agree it was a horrible month for weather.  Even you southern states out there.  I mean yikes, really?  How many days of negative temperatures can someone take before they just decide to pack up and get the hell outta dodge?

The answer is probably a lot of days because most people aren't sissies like me.

Never in my 17 years in Wisconsin (oy, shit, it's been that long) have I experienced such miserable cold.  When the aptly named "Polar Vortex" came shooting down from the butthole of the north pole earlier in the month (and a couple more times throughout) I was lucky enough that my car started up just fine each morning.  Well, I'm sure it would have the morning the garage door chose to not open because the opener-motor was frozen from the -55 temperature, but that's beside the point.  Thank god for @klreynol for a ride to work and Miss T for one after (when the door opened just fine.)

Other than mentioning the cold outside, there really wasn't much that happened throughout the month.  It was just really, really cold.  In case you didn't hear me the first time, natch.

I got the flu (read about it here) so that just sucked.  Do you know anyone who is high-functioning when they get sick?  Like, they get nailed with puking and a fever but they still manage to do things around the house and keep themselves entertained?  No?  Me neither!  How about that!?  I was bummed my house still looked like a dookie after sitting around in it for three days and it's funny how you make yourself so incapacitated while being sick.  Even though I was about 98% alone during it with only the cats to witness my actions, I still felt like I had to look more sick than I really was because that's just what you do.

Keep the frown on your face, leave your hair looking like a pair of squirrels got in a fight in it, and don't bother putting on jeans or a t-shirt because your hoodie and sweats will suffice.  I probably would have felt better a bit sooner if I had been able to open a window or something but to do so would mean the life-force I so desperately clung to would be sucked out of my body.

I'm not dramatic.

There is so much that I want to write about my book right now but I won't let myself do it.  There are two (2) blogs about what has been going on that I've got in the works and I just can't spill the beans quite yet.  I CAN say I finally finished episode III of my series!  I'd finished the big edit of it back in December but when I wrapped it up, I just felt like the ending was lacking.  Plus I had a ton of notes for the book I'd ignored during the editing process and I knew I'd have to wiggle back in there and fix whatever they needed me to fix.

So yesterday I printed the final three chapters out and went to ye old stomping grounds at Starbucks to re-edit them.  Spent seven hours doing it, was pleased, and then today I made the changes to the digital copy.  What surprised me the most today (in a fantastic way) was when I had to start writing a small bit of dialogue between two of my characters.

Let me preface this by saying I haven't felt much of the writing bug lately so it was a chore to do this at all.

Anyway, I start this dialogue and my note on the page says "make Banning feel helpless."  So I think okay, sure, add a few bits to dramatize his situation that he has found himself in.  And as I start typing, something just... clicks.  This idea hits me out of nowhere and I suddenly couldn't type fast enough to get it out.  And I'm laughing and smirking and then eventually choking up because it got reallllll heavy real fast, but I finally solved the riddle of why the ending of my book sucked.  I had to bring it all back around to the beginning, full-circle so to speak, and that was a wonderful realization because it took so much pressure off my shoulders.  The constant thought of "this isn't very good but there really isn't a way to make it any better" is never a good bedfellow.

I'll wrap this up with what my new motto is starting to be.  It took a large part of last year to get over something that I by all means should have gotten over very quickly.  But I didn't.  And for all of the thinking and stewing and festering I did on the situation I didn't really even come out on top of it like I thought I would, nor how I wanted to.  I've always had a problem in being comfortable telling things how they are to a person's face (not a specific person, just in general.)  And not things like "Where was I last night?  Oh, I was at David's house." Or "No, no, no, you look great in that shirt.  Honest injun."

It's more of things like "Hey, here is where my head is at.  I like you, I always have, I think we should get married and live happily ever after."  "Hey, this is my book.  It's long, it took 14 years to write, but it's good and you'll think so too."  I spend too long worrying about what consequences my real feelings will have and I need to stop doing that.  So like the picture says, I need to tell the truth.  And run if need be.

I think it's a healthy form of expression (c:

So, what else happened in January?  I continued my winning streak at Karaoke (...), had a great time at game night @klreynol's house, discovered I'm the shittiest player in the world at Werewolves (I think that was the name, I dunno, I never was one and they kept killing me anyway,) and realized I can roast veggies as good as anyone else.  I started to diet again (and subsequently look better in my own skin,) went back to blond and grew the beard back out to go with my new hairstyle.  I wrapped up the best year my store has ever had, decided I am going to buy a house instead of looking for someplace else to rent, and took the final steps necessary to securing the fate of the Onyxus Chronicles.

But more about that next time (c;

Until then, toodles gang!

when it comes to the flu

As I sit down to write this it has been 72 hours of near isolation, locked in my apartment for the great fever of 2014.  I say that in a "hopeful" sense because in years past I typically get sick once ever 365 days and I'd like to keep it that way.  Oddly enough, the last time I was so sick was a year ago this week, and coincidentally down to the same set of days.  Funny how that happens, yeah? Let's blame Australia.

By this point I am starting to feel like Ariel in the Little Mermaid as I look out the window at the people coming and going from my building and mumbling the words "I wanna be, where the people are.  I was see... wanna see 'em dancing."  You get my drift.  You get my drift even better if you imagine me singing that in a deep (incredibly deep) gravely voice nearly identical to Benedict Cumberbatch.  

It's very sexual.

When I get sick I really get hit hard.  I might have a couple small colds throughout the year but they are never anything noteworthy and certainly nothing I'd complain about.  While I love attention I don't love it for my ailments.  That ship sailed in 7th grade with the galbladder incident and all that bullshit.  When I get sick now it's usually an awful fever, throwing up, the works.  With my fever now gone and my head reattached to my body, I figured I could share a few bits of perspective and a story or two to help me pass the time.  Because while the fever is gone, mama still feels like she got hit by a truck.

This Sunday was the worst day of the fever.  At one point it got up to 104.2 and when that happened I couldn't do anything but sit motionlessly on my sofa with only music playing verrrrry quietly.  The slightest adjustment in my posture and my head would start pounding.  Mom swung by with a load of supplies for me which was incredibly nice of her, and brave, I might add, but when she came in she did say not to go near her so I kept a healthy distance.  I mostly sat on one edge of the couch with my middle and index fingers planted firmly against my temple to keep my head upright.  I couldn't really sleep, it was more like this weird form of stasis.  Only in hindsight do I wish I had been recording it because it was probably hilarious.

Sweating so much I could almost feel it coming out of the pores in my scalp, my sweatshirts kept getting soaked completely through, and my feet were cold as ice.  Because why stop at one thing, right?  I love how when we are sick we do things that make sense to us at the time but in hindsight you kind of shrug and laugh about.  The positions I was in and the clothes... I should have just gone and sat in bed to lean up against the headboard but that would be too easy, and of course I could have shed the sweatshirt for a T-shirt but no, not this guy!  I imagined my brain boiling in my head like a egg dropped on a hot skillet.  Ding ding, order's up!

I know I faked being sick a lot when I was a kid; anything to get me out of school was fine by me.  One time, after we had moved to Wisconsin, I remember chewing up my cereal and I just kept shoveling it in and making my mom think I was swallowing it.  Then I got up (I'd already laid the ground work and said I was a little queasy feeling (despite no fever)) and ran to the bathroom to make the required awful vomiting sounds while spitting the mashed up cereal into the toilet with some milk.  I don't remember exactly but I'm sure she just rolled her eyes and called me in for the day.

That's what I would have done to my own kid, too.  If you're gonna work this hard for it, whatever, go nuts.

I've been wracking my brain for sicky-poo stories and I can really only think of two for you guys.  One is classic and a lot of you know it, but one is just a memory so I'll start with that instead.

I remember all sorts of things from my childhood but there is a lot of it that I don't recall when it took place.  I remember images and sounds but not really the year, mostly because I was too young to know the difference/importance.  Most of the memories I have of the first house we lived in on Lanfair are limited to "birthday" or "that one movie night," because I was 5 when we moved away to the house on Knightsbridge and the bulk of my memory comes from that home.  I do however remember being sick once at the house on Lanfair.

I spent the day on our ugly as sin plaid grey couch, but from what I can remember it was super squishy and comfortable (the way most super ugly couches are, am I right?)  I remember lying face down on the thing for most of the day and I couldn't tell ya what I was watching on TV (probably soaps with my mom) but I remember it was very sunny outside and I was eating a lot of Oyster crackers.  Anytime I see a box of them now I am instantly reminded of that day.

This was the house I was born in, 1333 Lanfair St.  I Googled it.  No, it's not creepy to do that.

I said it's not!

The other memory is from 2010 and it's when I humiliated myself in front of a long standing crush.  I don't think I've told this story in the blog before but if I have, forgive me.  And then get over it.

This particular incident was probably the worst bout of sickness I'd had in years and then it subsequently kicked off the yearly arrival of the same.  I'd made it through Black Friday 2010 at Express and the day just whooped my ass, and as happens now and then it wore down my immune system.  I just didn't know it at the time.  I ended up having the weekend off following that big day and I started it by helping with a family portrait for @caitcd and her family.  It was a gift for her mom but it was a surprise and seeing as I LOVE surprises, I had to be in on it.  I felt fine through the whole thing, did my styling like I was supposed to and then I went to meet my dear friend Jillybean for lunch.

We ate at Buffalo Wild Wings (crucial to the story, trust me) and gorged ourselves on boneless wings and beer.  From there we went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I (though we had both seen it a few times already.)  I don't remember exactly if I bought candy or not but I know I bought a soda; I remember sitting through the movie and thinking "Holy Christ am I full!  I shouldn't have bought the soda.  Oof it's just too much."  So the movie ends, Jillybean and I part ways, and then I see I have a voice mail.

It's from my high school crush Josh.  

Now, Josh had "come out" to me earlier in the year (after about four years of us not having any contact) and after he did, we liked to flirt a lot.  There was an attraction there, always had been, and I didn't see any harm in it as we were both in relationships at the time and he lived in Madison on top of it all.  

Josh wanted to get together for coffee because he was in town for the holiday, and would I like to do so as well?  I called him up and said yes of course, and then drove to my parents house to clean myself up a little before going to meet him at Starbucks.  At about that point I started to really wonder why I still felt so full, as I didn't REALLY eat that much at lunch and even if I had, it was now several hours later.  So what the fuck was up?

I get to Starbucks, meet Josh, get my coffee and we sit to start talking.  We tend to have these very fast-paced, blink-and-you-miss-it types of conversations and this was no exception, but after about half an hour he stops what he's saying and goes "Sean, I can't help but notice you're not drinking your coffee."  And then the haze of bemusement in him washes away and three things quite instantly dawn on me: 

1) He's right, I'm certainly not drinking it.

2) I suddenly feel really full.

3) My mouth is getting dry.

So I look at my high school crush with his big brown eyes, sexy shaggy hair, white collared shirt under a sweater and pea coat, and staring him dead in the eye I say "Will you excuse me?  I have to throw up."  

I didn't even wait for an answer.  Starbucks is notorious for having someone in the damn bathroom right when you need it so I instead took off out the front doors, sprinted across the parking lot and ran into the white rocks surrounding the perimeter.  I crouched, pulled my trench coat away, and started heaving.  The highway off ramp was right there and thank god it was dark outside otherwise EVERYONE would have seen me.  The icing on the cake, however, was yet to come.

Finally satisfied I'd gotten it all up, feeling the stringy drool of vomit still on my chin, I look up to see Josh standing not five feet away.  Watching me.  Instantly my stomach wants to drop out of my ass because I am mortified.  He doesn't even laugh, he just says in the most charming and convincing voice ever "Well if it helps this doesn't make you any less attractive to me."  I hardly smiled before I turned and threw up more.  That's why it's important you know what I had for lunch and subsequently why I veered away from BWW for a year or so after.

Anywho, that's all I've got for the sick talk.  I try to only reveal embarrassing stories every now and then so I hope you enjoyed THAT gem.  Someday I'll tell you about the poop in the fitting rooms at Express.  I'm feeling a lot better now; I'm ready for a shower and bed so I can go back to work tomorrow, and that's all there is to say about that.  Check back in ten days for the monthly update!  Ciao!

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a new resolution part III

I wonder how many people sit down on New Years day to write a blog about resolutions?  I've never been one to think I'm original when it comes to that, so it's not like I think I'm the only person in the world doing this.  But is it in the hundreds?  Thousands?  Slap-my-ass-and-call-me-Charlie-millions?  I dunno.  What I DO know is this is the third year in a row I have sat down to sort of hash-out what happened last year and subsequently plan for the year ahead.  Ready?  Good.  I'm not.

2013 was not a great year for me.  I think saying that pure and simple is the best way for me to illustrate it.  In "scrub" terms and for some of you commoners I'll say 2013 was kind of bull shit.  It was one of those "pick me up, knock me down" types of years.  What I'm realizing as I write this is maybe each bad year skips a good one?  For instance, 2011 was an awful awful year but 2012 was damn near perfect.  So maybe you win one and then lose one?

When the year started I knew I was in some sort of trouble but I didn't really know what kind of trouble it was.  You know the feeling when you've maybe... I don't know, boasted a little too highly about yourself and then had to put your money where your mouth was?  For example:  "I know EVERY lyric to EVERY Beatles song EVER written!" "I can eat two ENTIRE medium pizzas from Pizza Hut in one sitting!" "I can run four miles WITHOUT getting tired!" "I can have a fulfilling year without planning ANY of it out and still think it'll be as AMAZING as the previous one!"

I'll let you decide which applies to me although the pizza statement may not be too far from the truth on any given day.  So like I said, when it comes time to shit or get off the pot, often times we spoke too loudly right from the off.

I started with four resolutions in 2013: get published, move out on my own, get in the best physical shape I've been in, go back to my roots of what I'm good at.  I achieved three (3) of them.  I moved out into my own apartment in March, started getting into better shape in June and July and sort-of maintained it (still look better shirtless today than I did a year ago (boom)), and as far as roots go I did get back into writing new material, my form of photography, and cooking.  Some of those fell by the wayside for a while before I moved out, namely the cooking.

They weren't extreme goals to set (apart from the publishing (I'll get to that later)) but that's never the intent for me.  I would never want to set a resolution so high it would be unattainable, nor would I want to set it so low as to have it fall in my lap.  I found a meme the other day and liked it so much that I made my own version of it with a picture I took this summer on one of my runs.

I think the problem with resolutions is our uncanny ability to make it all about fixing ourselves.  Dropping a bad habit, adding more exercise into our routines, whitening our teeth, taking better care of our hair... they are all about fixing something usually outwardly wrong.  What if it wasn't about fixing it but instead examining it, determining the best course of action, and then granting ourselves a do-over?

You might say that's the same thing about fixing it but eat shit, it's my blog and I'll romanticize it how I want to!

Ugh, I just realized I have to go to the grocery store today.

There are all kinds of things I want to do this year but I now feel writing most of them down would be shooting myself in the foot.  I feel like saying some of these things out loud would be to jinx myself.  Last year I decided I was ready to fall in love again, and in a lot of ways I did.  It wasn't full-blown IN love, but I was definitely on the way to it... when it ended in June, it put a damper on the rest of the year.

That's the honest truth.

I still miss Scout, I still think about him a lot and what things might have been.  What they maybe should have been.  But then maybe it being a new year now means I can move on the rest of the way and let the hurt slip off my shoulders.  Being able to say "last year" rather than "a few months ago" seems to put so much more time between myself and the event.  Do you agree?

I want to get into even better shape and I'm not opposed to joining a gym, and I know it takes 21 days to start a routine but I just need to get the determination to commit to those 21 days.  There is a reason gyms get crazy this time of year and then resume to a normal pace by February, and I don't want to be one of "those" people who join just to feel better about themselves.  To that, I suppose we'll see?

So you're probably asking yourself "Well what's the fucking resolution then?  Does he even have one?" And yes, I do.  And while it will be relatively easy once I get off my ass and do it, it is still the most ambitious thing I've ever attempted.

I will be published this year.

Stop the press, holy cow!  I alluded to it in a blog a month or so back but I didn't want to claim I'd get it done by the end of the year because I knew I wasn't giving myself much time to do it the way I wanted to.  My brother has aways been a big proponent of me self-publishing through Amazon and my biggest holdback was the fear of once I published digitally, that would be the end of my book.  An e-book, no less, which is something I never wanted.  I think I speak for most novelists (or self-proclaimed authors) when I say there would be nothing better than holding a physical, bound copy of my book.

After all, I started writing Episode I of the Onyxus Chronicles more than 13 years ago.  13 years.  By now the book would be a teenager entering puberty and having sexy-time thoughts about other people!  I would never want to throw it out to the world to merely be a digital blip on the internet.  But then he told me you can still get your book printed (on demand) and self-publishing does not make you release your rights to the book, you still retain them.  If anything it just makes the book more visible were a REAL publishing company to see it and say "Hey, this is neat, lemme throw money at you."

So yes, the resolution for 2014 is to be a published author.  Doesn't mean I'll change the title of the blog or stop putting myself down for all of my shortcomings as a writer, it just means I'll have a little more street-cred.  That's what the cool kids say, right?  Depending on how it goes, maybe I'll publish Episode II.  And while I'm at it, who knows, maybe Episode III will see the digital light of day as well? Rest-assured, there will be a release party and a subsequent blog of me squealing from the rooftops in excitement.  Stay tuned!

2013 was a year of changing it up.  Taking the proverbial bottle, shaking it as hard as I could, and busting off the top to see what would happen.  Falling in love, experiencing another broken heart, feeling literally broken (thank you busted ankle in March), losing a loved one, and moving along on my own.  It was rolling with the punches, licking my wounds, and just getting back on my damn feet to face whatever came next.  I've never felt that way before.  I've never felt like I had to just keep going because it was certainly going to get better, only because it sure as shit couldn't get any worse.

It's a great drive to bettering yourself.  It's a terrific guide to learning how to start over and rebuild from the ground up.  I've done it before, I spent a year perfecting the art of it, and now I just need to do it again.  Can't be that hard, right?  I'll do what Edmund Lee says I should do.  I'll surround myself with all of the dreamers, doers, believers and thinkers that I know.  And because I fail to see it in myself so often, I'll also surround myself with the people who see greatness within me.

Because if they see it, there surely must be some kind of spark lighting their way.  Have a safe and happy 2014, everybody.  Thank you for getting my fan page past 100 likes, thank you for pushing the blog views over 6,500 last year, and thank you for just listening to what I have to say.  Or reading, as it were.  You are the unofficial family that gives me all the support I need.

Ciao for now (c:

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