my celebrity gossip habit is OOC. every day, as my treat and wind-down after work before todd and zane come home, i read, in order, the superficial, perez, tmz, and X17. seriously!

i suppose it's a better vice than the booze i used to guzzle or the boys i used to…chase, but it's probably just about as unhealthy. do i really need to speculate on celebrity pregnancy, check out nips slips, watch clips of C-listers getting denied at hyde, view pictures of britney in a public gas station/behind the wheel/at starbucks?

the answer, of course, is yes.

When I was home at Christmas, I cleaned out boxes. It's a habit now, one that I do every time I go back to my parents. I have found that I can usually get 3 or 4 boxes worth of crap unloaded in a couple of hours — a rewards that easily justifies the task.

Slowly, the items left at my parents are dwindling; a combination of trash, giveaways, repacking and moving things out to California. And slowly, but surely, the boxes coalesce into more organized items: the box of undergrad papers from w&m, the other drawer of undergrad papers from VCU. A box of bits of paper. The dozen boxes of cassette tapes. And, then, of course, the box of Star Wars books.

For one summer, 1998, right after college, this was my world. Not entirely, mind you. But they were my junk books, read inbetween "real" books. That summer, I didn't have a job yet, a real job. So I set a goal for myself: 100 pages a day. And on the day I finished a book, I got to round up. (When a book had 201 pages, I lucked out. Though I think I just plowed ahead in those cases.) I was reading something like 3 books a week almost. It was a glorious summer.

But every third book or so was a Star Wars book. And now they are in the basement, packed away with other Star Wars books, in a small box, labeled correctly. I'm honestly not sure what to do with them. I'm not quite ready to get rid of them, though I feel that time approaching a little. My Star Wars collection is a little absurd, thanks to yard sales over the years.

But I have come to the realization that it is probably one more box of items, of stuff, that no one is going to care about in the future.

building on this post, i think some of the feelings i have come from time management. there must come a point in life where it isn't fun and games and a little homework. where you realize that the daily grind is a daily grind and you have to fit work in along with hobbies and whatever you consider your second job.

the things we do to stay sane — a night at ugly's, video games, reading, drawing, writing — whatever it is, these things are very different than the job we all wish we had.

my second job? writing. matthew's? bassoon. bitzao does a lot of video. ray writes. kurt photographs. these jobs are there. and none of us would consider them true hobbies. they are more than casual. they are things we want to make a living off of.

and at some point, you realize how limiting 24 hours is. you have to juggle a lot of things in a day to keep yourself happy, sane and productive. as we get older, as we live with someone else, time becomes harder to manage. i can't lie — living with a girl takes up a ton of time, just from the fact that she is around. giving someone attention and love takes a lot of time out of a day.

nick — 'getting things done' is in my bag as i type this. i'm getting there. i'm going to figure it all out. but its still a surprising change to me. a completely different life than the one i have known for my previous 29 years.

Witness the evidence of my advancing age: I've recently taken up pottery. It's relaxing and lets me put my mind elsewhere, even if that other where of which I speak is the rapidly spinning wall of compressed, wet dirt. I suppose, for me, it's almost meditative. I even checked out a book on the subject at the local library. Oh. That's right. Still got the same President, so I guess I meant to say 'libary.'

Anyhoo, I'm reading through The Art of Throwing when I come across this quote:

"You are interested in pottery; do you know what that means? Do you know that to have the whole world's pottery to look at is like having the whole world's food to eat? Can you digest it? Can you find a way of judging what is a good pot, whether it is made in twelfth-century Cina, in Persia or Greece, in Europe or by American Indians? How can you come to say with conviction to other people (and yourself), "That is a good pot"? Are you prepared for that? It means a whole life's work, and it means that you must care about it tremendously."
Bernard Leach, The Potter's Challenge, 1976

Now, I point this out because, well gosh, this has to be one of the most arrogant things I've ever read. I mean, how seriously do you take yourself?  And this is coming from an arrogant guy who takes himself way too seriously. Wow. So, I suppose if you're interested in it, you shouldn't do it solely because it relaxes you and lets you focus on something other than shit diapers or serving others. Heaven forbid you do something just for the fun and creative magic of the act. No, no, no. You must commit. You have to study pottery throughout history and know everything about everything.

Now, I don't pretend to know Mr. Leach. I'm sure he's a fine person and an amazing potter. Great. But what a great way to make someone just enjoying the creative nature of it…not.

(Friends of mine will notice my refrain of excessive cursing in this post, which I have to say is a lot of effort, given my tempremental nature and the general consensus that I'm often prone to telling folks to shove shit like this back up their fucking arrogant assholes. Oops….whew! That felt GREAT! Thanks!)