Gold Finger

I miss your kiss oh heaven’s bliss, how listlessly it lingers

The flaxen champagne gilded cage you effortlessly tingere

What you’ve left bereft of breath, a hallow have you seen her

Desolate forsaken fate, untouched by golden finger

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde

I haven't posted in a while and some people have noticed and asked about it.  Truth be told, it's mostly out of embarrassment that I've made effectively no progress in selling the house or moving on with the Colorado plan.  Per the quote above, I feel like I'm very much just existing, not living.  There are certain things that are out of my hands, but I hope to make a deliberate effort to live, despite my specific distaste for going places and doing stuff.  So what does that look like?

1.  College Gameday is coming to my beloved hometown for the first time in history and after 15 years of begging them to.  Since that is my method to get the ladies as well, I feel like I should be there.  https://www.sbnation.com/college-football/2018/10/13/17969236/washington-state-college-gameday-flag  Growing up one of my life goals was to get a sign on Sportscenter.  That show no longer displays fan's signs (thanks a lot Twitter) but College Gameday still embraces them and with the Ol' Crimson connection making me wake every Saturday before the games to make sure the flag made it, this would be even better.  So an expensive trip to the craft store and an apparent investment of time later I have some sign ideas I hope land me some sign-time (like face time, but I'd rather nobody saw my face, the sign is where it's at).  

Here are some of the sign ideas that didn't make the cut (to see which ones did hopefully you'll just have to watch the show).

"Duck, Duck, Lose."
"Ugly Duckling's Swan Song"
"Fare or Fowl?"
"15 YEARS!!!"

Game of Throwin’s 

King of the North!  (This is for first place in the Pac-12 North Division)

BEND THE KNEE!

I'm sure that if I successfully make the signs and show up there will be some sort of photo op to share with y'all and you'll get to see the signs I decided to actually make.

2.  Hoping to spend a little time hunting, potentially both on the Palouse and one last time at Washington based Elk Camp with my brothers.  I stopped going because I prefer spending vacation time somewhere I'm not cold and miserable and choked by fire smoke for a week at a time; however, growing up all the really silent and still time that hunting provides (with literally nothing happening anywhere around you, frankly it's mostly boring) I really got some of my best thinking and life-planning intensive sessions in.  Hopefully that can be useful getting me out of where I'm stuck now.

3.  My sister Maria has asked for my help putting some siding on her house in Oregon.  A project that could take up to a couple weeks of really pleasant distraction and production rather than sitting around fretting and feeling sorry for myself.  :p

 

My brother Mike is going to let me borrow a car for a bit to get between all these things.  I'm pretty concerned about the amount this might all cut into snuggle time for Smalls, but I guess we all have to make sacrifices.  Plus she'll be going with me to all of the above (despite he hatred of riding in cars) so we'll just have to adapt and adjust on the run.

 

We'll see if going places and doing stuff is a good catalyst or a huge mistake, but if living is the rarest thing in the world than, at least for a little while, I'll see what it's like to take my existence raw.  

 

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Chuck

For those of you who are aware of it, this is clearly a play on words referring to the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck which I recently read (and by read I mean listened to on Audible) after a good friend, Will Swanda, recommended it to me.  Spoiler Alert:  It's philosophical Buddhism littered with gratuitous obscenities (so way better). As an insight into my current paradigm and doubtlessly a catalyst for my decision to make this rather dramatic change in the direction of my life I thought I'd share some one of the points that resonated with me.

You have a limited amount of f*cks to give (before you die); focus and prioritize your values on what truly matters to you. 

I've heard this 'wisdom' expressed in a lot of ways, "don't sweat the small stuff" comes to mind, or more personally I recall when Mr. Madole asked our class how as young people we dealt with adversity.  Travis Baldree said something typically profound for him; "If I'm going to live a short life there isn't time to dwell on setbacks, if I'm going to live a long life this is such an infinitesimally small part of it that in the big picture it won't really matter."

It has become both sad and literally laughable to me how aggressively and manipulatively virtually every conceivable cause is trying to recruit, rally, incense, and mobilize 'troops' to their cause.  This will be such an interesting and absurd time in human history to study in the future.  I'm very carefully and deliberately simplifying what I allow to take my time an energy.  Thanks to not caring about much or many my list is extremely short and simple (like my dog, the snuggling of which is one of the very few things on said list).

It's not specifically from the book, but one of the themes I've taken from the work is 'simply,' "simplify."  Is what is taking your time, attention, and industry worth any of those most precious and finite resources?  If not, don't (give a Chuck). 

Procrastiduction

Procrastiduction: n. (or something) the state of being extremely productive, but only as to justify procrastinating doing something more important, pressing, and/or time sensitive.

Man am I getting a lot done.  Is it what I SHOULD be doing?  No.  Am I doing the hell out of it so that I don't have to work on what I should be doing?  Absolutely.

I have been known to accomplish great feats, working tirelessly, to avoid doing work that was far more necessary.  No one in the history of time has accomplished more in the pursuit of not doing anything that needed doing than your humble blog author.

This morning I managed to volunteer with the PNA Village for a little old widow lady who wanted some windows calked.  (On an aside, I'm pretty sure this little old lady plans on trying to steal my dog, but that's another story.)  She was of the impression that the reason she could feel a cold draft from her windows was because the seal around them was no good.  Because it was what she requested I did fix the caulking and washed away the black mold thriving there.  A lesser practitioner of procrastiduction would have called it a day and felt like a "big damn here, sir."  - Zoe, Firefly  I, on the other hand, couldn't help but ask what she was trying to accomplish with this task, because who knows how many hours of justifying not writing this gold mine of a widow-lady might pan out to be!?  A few hours later and a trip to LOWES and Elana no longer has drafty windows next to the bed she sleeps in (the caulking of which served no actual functional purpose btw).

Those of you whom don't know me very well may mistakenly think I did this out of the kindness of my heart.  Whereas those of you whom know me best are aware I'd gladly stab anyone in the throat over a 4th round draft pick 2 years from now in fantasy football and are suspicious of my actions.  In addition to the procrastiduction, I'm also actively trying to bribe Karma into selling my home at or above asking price by dogooding.  Do I literally think this is an effective use of my time and efforts?  No, but I also don't think it's effective to be nice to women you want to date you, but I still do it in hopes it is.  :p

On a very pleasant positive note the walk to/fro, and no small amount of harassing little old lady's cat, my co-author is exhausted and leaving Dad to write to his little heart's content:




If you're wondering how I'm going to tie this all together in a neat little bow, writing this blog is in no way the most important thing I should be working on at this moment!  #procrastiduction!