I thought about all of them and wondered what my [something] is.

Am I a camera person? I think I was once. I don’t even quite consider myself a photographer — amateur or otherwise — as I haven’t picked mine up in five months. Five months!

Am I a web design person? Well, I do it for a living, but I don’t eat, drink or crap design either. You won’t hear me extolling the endless uses and virtues of Helvetica anytime soon, though I regularly use the font and enjoyed the documentary.

Am I a cinephile? I enjoy movies. I’m currently disappointed that I missed the Film Forum’s retrospective on Kurosawa. However I have yet to see Citizen Kane. Also, I couldn’t name for you more than three Michel Gondry films. Well, I can now that I’ve looked him up on IMDb.

Am I a blogger? Haha, clearly not.

Anyway, I thought about all of these things wondered if I’m missing out on something because I can’t categorize myself. And then it occurred to me: I wonder if all of those people I’d categorized would think of themselves that way. I’d bet not. We’re not all just one thing that defines us; and if we are, that’d be pretty sad I think — your career notwithstanding, of course.

So I guess it’s all right.

. . .

Sarah: When you plug the head phones in and then take them out you have to pop the battery out to get sound again.

That’s all! :)

So, I rejoined my bar pool league tonight. That said, I brought my pool cue to work, eventually to the bar where we had our match tonight, and home with me afterward. After the final game of the World Series, I decided it was time to walk home. On the way home I decided to stop into a burger joint here in Williamsburg, and grab dinner.

As I’m standing there, there’s these four hipsters sitting eating their burgers and drinking their cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Finally one of them turns to me. He’s scruffy and wearing the filthy red baseball cap.

Red Baseball Cap: Nice pool cue.
Purposely Ironic Mullet: Yeah, is that a ninja sword?
LittleBill: If it were, I don’t think I’d tell you.
Red Baseball Cap: Why not?
LittleBill: Because a ninja would lie to you.
Purposely Ironic Mullet: And you’re a ninja?
LittleBill: There’s no answer that would satisfy that.

After a few minutes they come back about the pool cue.

Red Baseball Cap: You can’t hustle with that. As soon as you walk in, you’d be marked.
LittleBill: What’s to say I’m hustling? I’m in a pool league
Red Baseball Cap: Well…
LittleBill: Also, what’s to say I need or want to hustle?
Ironic Mullet: To make money

I look at myself.

LittleBill: I make plenty of money, do I look like I need to hustle? What’s to say I’m even any good?

This is where the hipsters decide to judge.

Red Baseball Cap: You’re saying you don’t hustle with that cue?

(bear in mind I haven’t even removed it from the case)

LittleBill: No… why?
Ironic Mullet: I bet we make more than you do.
Red Baseball Cap: Yeah, how much money do you make?
LittleBill: Well that’s awfully rude.
Red Baseball Cap: Why’s it rude? Are you embarrassed?
Ironic Mullet: I bet we make more money than you.

(pause)

LittleBill: Individually or cumulatively?

(pause)

They go on for a few more minutes about me, about how I’m some obnoxious prick who won’t say how much money I make, so therefore I’m embarrassed.

Finally, my food arrives. I’m ordering to go.

LittleBill: By the way, I make $XXX thousand per year.

I wiped the smiles off their smug obnoxious faces.

LittleBill: Don’t ask if you’re not prepared for the answer. G’nite fellas.

…and walked out the door.

Perhaps I’m coming down from having broken up with my girlfriend, which is never fun. Even though I wasn’t feeling any romantic interest in her anymore, there’s still a bit of a hole in my world which a person once filled. She was a fantastic companion, and in that respect I miss her horribly.

I’m only now starting to feel restless. It’s definitely a byproduct of my loneliness, coupled with the fact that I’m finding myself suddenly with an incredible amount of free time. This restless of spirit is good though; it’s reminding me that I am — first and foremost — a creative being.

I’ve come into a little bit of money due to a freelance project. Perhaps I ought to replace (or upgrade!) that favorite lens. Maybe it’ll serve as the impetus to get me off my feet, to get me moving again. If nothing else, maybe I can get back into the habit of carrying my camera with me wherever I go.

It’d really be nice to be excited about making something again.

ADDENDUM:

AND FINALLY:

I just spent ten minutes on “story ideas” websites, trying to get my creative juices flowing. I have some limitations I’ve got to put into place. I see limitations as creative challenges, more than anything, but still — I need an idea. My limitations:

- The story needs to be upwards to 10-15 minutes long. No longer.
- It has to be within my means to film, either in Upstate NY or New York City
- Two to three characters MAX.
- Up to five scenes MAX.
- Nothing that requires extensive (or any) special effects.

Those really aren’t much for limitations. So why is it I just can’t get myself to crank out a few story ideas? The ones I start are interesting scenarios but offer very little in terms of character development or theme. Or they’re just outright depressing.

For those writer friends of mine, how do you break out of a block? Or, better yet, do you have any stories you’d like for me to film? :)

Simply put, I was lied to by someone I never expected to lie to me. My friend could argue till she’s blue in the face that she had no idea she was offending me and hurting my feelings, but I know her better than that. She is a person who places a great deal of weight in appropriate and proper behavior and knows that what she did was uncool. To say otherwise or to claim ignorance on the matter would be a blatant lie from this particular person. A lie told, incidentally, to my face. In doing so, she betrayed a few other lies to me, some of which may have been designed to spare my feelings; but they were lies nonetheless.

I don’t care if my feelings get hurt. I can get over that. I do care when I call someone on something so obviously rude (details are unimportant for this entry) and I’m lied to by the person saying they had no idea it would be interpreted as such. It not only insults me, but it insults my intelligence, the liar’s intelligence, and it insults the trust I hold in my friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m by no means a perfect person and I make my share of mistakes. But never would I tell an outright lie to someone I counted among those I cared so deeply about.

I’m left questioning my judgment in naming a friend as such. And that, more than anything else in recent memory, makes me feel very lonely.

LittleBill: y’know how I was complaining about photoshop’s tools randomly disappearing on me?
Aaron: yeah
LittleBill: ever just press TAB?
LittleBill: TAB turns the tools on/off
Aaron: haha yes
Aaron: that’s what you did?
LittleBill: *hangs head*………. yes
Aaron: haha
LittleBill: Art Director FAIL

6:00 – Found an amazing parking spot on the street for my car.
6:30 – Meet up with Will, Meredith, my best friend Mike and his lovely wife Kate, and other new friends for drinks in Manhattan. We all tweet while there. Will calls us nerds — via twitter, of course. I finally meet Xopchipili, whom I’d seen in and around the blogosphere, tweetscape and social networking world, who is also good friends with other friends of mine.
7:40 – Chat up a couple of nice girls at the bar. Their names were Nicole and Alison. They’d just moved to the neighborhood.
10:00 – Slackmistress‘ cousin John and his lovely girlfriend invite us to a birthday party at a bar in Williamsburg.
10:30 – Drinks in Williamsburg.
10:45 – Open Invite to LA from Will to visit his wife, The Slackmistress and him — (hope he told you that, Nina)
11:00 – I meet a “burner” girl. I forget her name. I guess she’s one of those Burning Man types. She’s flirty. Turns out all she wants is free drinks. Drink/flirt FAIL.
11:30 – We all bounce to another bar in Williamsburg so I can achieve my final goal of the night: to meet up with the lovely Tiffany. I’m a sucker for redheads, and women with beautiful smiles. She happens to have both.
11:45 – We meet up with Tiffany as she heads out. No worries, we head in for a glass of scotch. I buy a round of 21 yr old Glenfarclas for the friends.
12:00 – We all head to my apartment 2 blocks away. Will crashes. The other friends leave.
12:15 – One-handed instant messaging Mlle. Wang on my iPhone. I think we decide we should meet up for drinks sometime. This morning she tried to tell me that I drunkenly came on to her via IM. Chat logs refute this statement! Don’t mess with me, yo!
12:30 – SLEEP WIN.

The scotch was too much. That was definitely the final nail in the coffin. I may have not spent the entire day in a painful hungover stupor all day had I not had that glass. Or if I’d done what I know to do: prepare with lots of water before bed.

Also, having someone shake you awake is really jarring. Never had anyone do that to me before, that I can recall. Will needed directions to the subway to get home.

All in all, a good time. It’s too bad Will and Nina aren’t closer by, they’re good people to spend time with. I’ll have to take them up on that LA thing sometime. Will seems to think he can hook me up with some beautiful west coast ladies. We’ll see about that!

And that’s okay.

It’s okay because you’ve been processing. You’ve been piecing thoughts together as if they were building blocks. No, better. As if they were Legos. Snapping together, piece by piece you find yourself with a towering structure. But you need to be careful how high you build; after all, it will topple.

And then you’re left with the pieces back on the floor. Ready to be built up again.

At some point you have to declare it finished, even if it’s not so. You have to declare success and move on to the next towering structure. Perhaps there you’ll learn from the first and apply your failures in design to the next.

And again.

And again.

Until you’ve got something worth showing the world.

Soon I’ll have something worth showing the world.

This is an analogy for many, many things.

That’s because there are lessons taken away from, that can — and will — be taken away from this. The lesson, this time, is to not compare myself to you. Any of you.

It’s the same as what they say, making mountains out of molehills. If you feel you’ve dug yourself into a hole, it’s not nearly as deep as it seems. The very effort to save yourself, no matter how hard it feels, is the first step.

What’s better, is that my molehills aren’t even that steep.

I’ve got this, this is no problem.

And anyone who wants to leave me in their dust are now severely lacking in something wonderful. I may be up shit creek, but I’ve got a paddle.

- – -

I’m okay with the cliché abuse in this entry. Ha.

- – -

Addendum: After talking to my good friend Rachael, it turns out that the shit creek I thought I was in might just be shallow mud. Excellent. Crisis potentially averted.

A week later and it’s all come crashing down. I’m finding myself in the lowest place I’ve been in a long time — perhaps ever — not just emotionally but physically as well. I’m restless, lost, confused, guilty, at fault, and certainly not a victim.

I don’t know who I am anymore — and no, I’ve never based self-worth on the validation from others. I just don’t know who I am anymore.

And yet there’s still a few pluses, if you can call it that. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s a silver lining. More like life saying to me, “lighten up, you’re only knee-deep in shit, you’re not wading in it.”

I come home and I see what a real nightmare can be. And I’m reminded that, as bad as my life gets, and as bad as life can be here, there’s always someone worse off than me.

And I keep going. I just wish, for once, it wasn’t alone. That said, I’d rather be alone than be with someone who doesn’t want me.

Still, it doesn’t mean there’s no pain,— even if I’m the guy who drove the knife in the first place.

It’s hard to explain but there’s a difference in the way a car drives down the street in the winter than in the other seasons. I’m not sure what it is. The pitch is higher, the sound of the tires rolling down the street more crisp, and there’s a quiet solitude towards it.

No one is out yet on a Sunday morning at 11am. It’s too cold yet.

The sound reminds me of home — where I want to think things are simpler, easier, slower. But really there’s no difference between here and there. People can find themselves stagnant, stubborn and selfish there just as anywhere else. People can find themselves just as difficult, or fun, or full of zest.

You keep thinking there’s always something better out there. When I lived in my hometown it was here.

Now that I live here I want to point my finger elsewhere. Another neighborhood, another subway stop, another borough, another state, another coast. Something better is only found within. And that’s the most frightening part. Changing requires taking a hard, honest and critical look. Not with the aim of self pity, nor self destruction, but with self-improvement.

So, as another set of tires comes rolling down the street, I take a deep breath and realize that I’ve already arrived. Now it’s time to make my move.

But with her, she’s really there with me. Even from a couple hundred miles away. And, despite the fact that she’s physically absent, there she is.

And I don’t know what’s going to happen. After all, she is a couple hundred miles away.

Bud I’d like to find out.

I was really starting to feel better, and had begun to notice some differences in how I looked. Already I’m beginning to feel a little bit lethargic, though that could be the beginning stages of Seasonal Affective Disorder — not that I know if it really does anything to me — now that the sun’s setting before I step out of the office.

Though not quite sure why it happened, I really need to step up my game again. I’ve only gained three pounds back which, considering how I eat, is surprising. Starting tomorrow I’ll have to make up a grocery list for dinner, since that’s when most of my bad eating habits show up. It’s difficult with pizzerias, Chinese food, tacos, burgers and fries are all within walking distance from me. Also I’m just too exhausted after work (let alone after the gym!) to cook. Still, it’s got to be done.

So I’m back on that. And I’m also going to revisit my workout and try and make it more enjoyable. After all, if I’m not going to enjoy it, I won’t make it into a habit. Simple as that.

And those things are the sounds of New York City. It’s where you’re forced to hear drunken people shuffling down the street. Cars and cars pass by. And what’s not expressly identifiable becomes this low hum of white noise which is the cumulative sum of every siren, junkie, broken bottle and subway train crossing town.

I’ve found silence again by coming to my hometown. Here, in the beginnings of autumn, not only can I find peace and quiet, but I can discover — I never fully appreciated that which I took for granted growing up here — the incredible beauty that are trees, spanned across the horizon, peppered with greens, browns, oranges, reds and yellows. Here I can find twilight with a dark landscape, indigo sky, orange sunset with the very rims of the clouds overhead painted a delicate red-violet.

Here is where I can find dew crystallizing in the middle of the night to greet the morning as frost.

I may never again belong here, but I’ll certainly never forget that I still call this place home even though I live two hundred and fifty miles away.

Productivity was at a high level, which could be attributed to being home — despite not feeling well — or maybe it’s simply that things needed to get done.

And they did.

Two top tattoo artists rejected the design, calling it too intricate for such a small area. It’s unfortunate but it does make sense, so it’s back to the drawing board… kind of. The I-Ching will remain. But what will go inside? That’s the new challenge. And being told one cannot do something often times provides opportunities to approach from another perspective. And perhaps something even more beautiful will come from it.

It was a good day.

We can live beside the ocean,
Leave the fire behind,
Swim out past the breakers,
Watch the world die.

—Everclear

I can’t get this song out of my head. It got so bad that I went to YouTube, loaded the video up, and every time the song ends, I hit replay. Then I hit stop, grabbed my neglected guitar, sung it a few times until my fingertips went raw, and then hit replay on YouTube again. I don’t know what it is about this song but the chorus, which hits me from time to time out of left field, leaves me with a sense of longing.

What it is I’m longing for I don’t know. It’s certainly not material possessions, I’ve got enough of those.

Replay.

Is it love? Is it a sense of purpose in life that often seems fleeting, as if trying to grasp a fistful of water? Is it simply a computer chair that doesn’t leave my ass completely numb after twenty minutes of sitting in it? Maybe my stir-craziness is simply that.

I don’t know… but it’s gnawing at me. And so is this chorus. Replay.

- – -

In other news, I’ve been thinking about my tattoo more lately. I’ve nailed down the design, which you can see here.

Replay. (Yes, I’m typing these when I replay the song)

I’ve been calling around to some of the better tattoo shops in the city, as reviewed by others. One of the top tattoo artists I e-consulted with said it’s too difficult for him. Another one wants $300/hr at 15-18 hours. Um, no. Just because you tattoo celebrities doesn’t make their rates my rates. Other ones that I’d like to do the tattoo are booked into 2010. No kidding.

The tattoo features two visual elements. The first are the eight trigrams of the I-Ching, each one representing points on a compass, or the element pairs Heaven/Earth, Mountain/Lake, Fire/Water, Wind/Thunder. Four trigrams will go down one forearm, their corresponding opposites on the other. This is to represent to me balance. It’s a visual reminder, etched in blood, for me to strike a balance between play and work, between spending and saving, between being withdrawn and being gregarious.

The other element is The Great Wave off Kanagawa, a print by Japanese printmaster Hokusai. It’s one of my favorite pieces of artwork um, ever.

The thing is, for a tattoo that’s supposed to remind me to strike a balance (I am a Libra, after all) this is awfully expensive. That kind of goes against the whole save money/spend money thing. And believe me, I’m a champ at spending money.

So I’m left here thinking…

I don’t know what I’m thinking.

I do know that I’ve stopped hitting repeat. though.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I just don’t think that it’s a good idea to put a Muslim in the Oval Office.”

I was aghast. “What makes you think he’s Muslim?”

“Well that’s what I heard…” she replied.

“Did you do any research to find out?” I asked.

“No, but isn’t his middle name Hussein?”

“Well, yes. But how does someone’s name make them a Muslim? Also, what’s wrong with a Muslim?”

“Well, aren’t they all anti-American and everything?”

This is where I had to stop her. First off, I told her, just because his middle name is Hussein doesn’t make him a Muslim. That his father was African, and had a son with an African name — but left him with his American Mother to raise him in Kansas and Hawaii — doesn’t make him a Muslim. Also, the name Hussein in Africa and Arabic nations is probably about as common as Smith is here.

Secondly, I explained to her, just because someone’s Muslim doesn’t make him or her anti-American.

“But aren’t the Muslims the ones who attacked the Trade Center and are terrorists?”

“Well, yes. They were Muslims. But they’re Muslim Extremists. They’re to Muslim what the Klu-Klux Klan are to Christians.”

“What?”

“Do you consider the KKK to be good Christians?”

“No…”

“Think of these guys to be about the same. They have taken and twisted the religion, which also teaches tolerance and peace, and twists it on its head.”

“Really?”

Again. Dismay. Here is a 24 year old undecided living in Florida, a swing state, receiving all this misinformation. I implored her to please please do some research on the candidates before November.

“But they’re all going to tell us what we want to hear.”

True. But facts and track records can be researched. Let their actions speak louder than their words. At least she’s in agreement that Palin’s inexperience made for a bad choice for McCain.

That said, I’m trying to figure out if there’s ANY way we can spread the truth about the candidates in the midst of this horribly horribly frustrating campaign. You know when Karl Rove, of all people, consider the McCain campaign to be going “one step too far” that’s a sign of how rotten this has become.

So how do we counter the misinformation that’s being spread in places that aren’t friendly to Democrats?