Defeat

Defeat. Defeat, defeat, defeat.

Here are the things I was going to do this evening and did not:

• Get birthday card written for cousin, to mail first thing tomorrow, which will anyway make it like 2 days later for her birthday which is on Wednesday, and the main reason I'm sending it is I forgot to get her anything for Christmas but did get things for her mom and step-dad
• Write a big explanation of what I think philosophers are doing when they propose definitions of words and then talk about my metaphysical theory of the nature of emotional states and why it is reductivist but not determinist - I owe this as a response to a friend of mine
• Actually work hard on guitar and try to get some chops back - was a horrible, stiff-fingered mess of an experience instead, and as my ear gets more sophisticated I am less and less satisfied with my amateurish skill level (plus I think I was strung out on too much caffeine, too much sugar, not enough sleep)
• Start knitting sample patches with the new yarn to work out what kind of scarf to make
• Print out some blog entries to take to read at the poetry group, which I think meets at the bookshop tomorrow night - for which I will miss yoga but I am kind of excited about the poetry group, as long as they let me read blog entries instead of poems because that's what I have
• Cook
• Eat vegetables
• Get car washed (too cold for that, actually, I keep seeing cars, mostly Ford Tauruses for some reason, driving around encased in like an inch of ice, with icycles hanging off all around, people who couldn't wait and wait ahead and went through the car wash when it's 10degF. I worry that I will get trapped inside and won't be able to get the doors open. Until spring.
• Pack for the gym
• Get to bed, sleeping by 9ish so I can get up tomorrow at 5, get to the gym by 5:30, get showered and to the Dr appointment by 7:30, then to work on time-ish.
• Go by the Scirocco tapas bar and pick up some tickets for the Cory Chisel solo show that is Thursday evening. He's a local musician made good, actually nationally touring and has a band and he actually comes from Appleton, and I'd love to take this opportunity to go see him, but as ever I have no one to go with. Could buy a spare ticket and try to round someone up. All but two of the possibilities are married, so maybe I could buy two extra tickets. But starting on Tuesday, and with my usual success at this kind of thing, how likely is it I could get anyone to go? So maybe I should go by myself. But what if it's a restauranty, datey kind of place where being by yourself would be supremely weird? Maybe I won't go. Or maybe I will. Or drop by and see, on the night. Or go, and pretend I'm a rock journalist there to cover the gig for some important publication, and just listen and have the experience and not be self-conscious. Or just skip it and go to the student coffee shop down the street which also has live music on, on Thursday. Or skip it and go to yoga, which I'll miss tomorrow to go to the poetry thing. Or skip all of it and just stay home, in bed, head under the covers. Covered in a sheet of ice and icycles. Blah.

What did I actually do instead?

• Went to the mall and got a watch battery, on the very day that the battery died, from a shop that is an authorized reseller of the very brand of watch I have.
• Got a gift card to put in cousin's birthday card if I actually get it mailed.
• Went to the drug store and got a prescription refilled.
• Wove in the loose ends of yarn from a very crazy "fun fur" scarf that I was working on all Christmas and is now done. Finally a finished knitting project! Although it's weird - black, light blue and dark blue stripes, really really fuzzy, really fake-looking, the yarn purchased at Walmart and last time I was at Walmart I saw quite a few women in similar fun-fur scarves. So maybe it's dumb. But it's done, and I did it.
• Watched John & Kate Plus 8, in which they announce to the kids that they're moving.
• Caught up on Facebook, XKCD, Fender.com, Cute Overload. All these communities are full of people. I can't tear myself away because I'm lonely. I wish I had someone to tell me goodnight at night.

And now I am up too late to get up that early to get the gym visit in, first missed appointment of the new year (I bought myself a pack of foil stars to put on the calendar for each gym visit and am aiming for three per week, and it's only Monday night so there's time, but bah). How will I get into a routine of gym-going when I keep staying up too late not doing the things on the list but interacting with virtual people online and so not able, really not, to manage the 5am starts that fitness requires? (And did I mention that the sun comes up after 7 at the moment? Hm?).

I want to just stay up now, keep surfing, keep virtually interacting with virtual folks, get some practicing encouragement from the Fender.com guys, read the whole Guitar Handbook book and memorize every music theory thing in it and then learn all scales, all intervals, all popular melodies of the past few centuries, deconstruct them, work out how the work, be able to improvise and express the music that's inside me, be able to play bar chords well enough to play Ramones songs. I scoffed, but Ramones songs are really fucking hard. Stupid Ramones.

Or just watch YouTube videos of all the guitar heroes - Ramones, Spazzys, Jimmy Page, Jack White, all the ones I'm only just learning about, all the ones my guitar teacher lists as influences on his bio page on his band's website. Or just look at photos of my guitar teacher in concert, or that video of them in Menominee. Or find some more tabs of things I like, and try to puzzle them out, and listen to all my records and triangulate on the sound I want so I can work out the guitar I want and the amp I want.

Guitar is actually what is keeping me up late, I think.

Anyway, and then this. Wrote this. So I suppose all of that is something. My back hurts, from being up too late last night. My eyes will be red again tomorrow. I will try the gym again on Wednesday morning. It's just the end of vacation, I will get back in the routine. My job is not hard, now. My job is strategic. Everything is cool.

I've been mantra'ing some positive phrases lately, stolen from the 2008 media:

"Yes, I can!" (from the Prez-Elect, of course)
"You can DO this" (from a cheesy commercial advertising cheap homes saying you can save tens of thousands on a new home by acting as your own general contractor, just write away for this easy instruction book)

I can do this. I can do some of this. I need to work out which of the thisses I can do. And then do them. Or something else. Which becomes the new this.

Anyway, let's see if this whole bed thing works better tonight. Goodnight, blogosphere.

("Goodnight, Ellen.")