losing my edge

Somehow I don't feel much like a blogger anymore, only finding time to post twice a week lately. As if real blogging means that my blog IS my life. There are different kinds of blogs, some dependent on the blogger finding interesting links or other blogs to recommend to readers, some dependent on having a life-outside-of-the-computer upon which the blogger reflects (or simply reports), some simply dependent on the blogger thinking self-generated thoughts on which the blogger expounds incoherently. Call it self-flagellation, but it seems to me that twice a week is not enough for me.

On the other hand, I've only managed to get to the gym once a week since I started working, and that seems somehow more worth beating myself up over.

I'm getting used to the working routine, even getting out of the house early enough to get me "punched-in" (swiped-in, actually; do people say this?) by quite close to 9am, following a drive of about 40 minutes. The weeks are starting to go by quickly (3 already!) and I'm less tired in the evenings, but this week's evenings were no good for the gym, although I did get as far as packing up my gym bag on Tuesday and throwing it in the trunk, where it's still sitting unused. Tuesday night I was too tired; Wednesday I went straight to my monthly Philosophy of Film lecture (two left), and last night all I could think about was coming straight home and putting my feet up, to celebrate the end of another week by watching a movie.

Oh, yeah -- remember that rant over the local movie rental business? I don't want to mention any names, since it generates all kinds of free advertising for them, but well, it seems "somebody up there" heard me, and they're now selling annual memberships, much like gym memberships, with a monthly set fee for 12 movies. This works well for us, since we have no problem taking out 3 every weekend, and the membership makes them much cheaper (about US$2.50 each). I'm not going to go on about all the extra benefits I'm also going to get by now being a member; suffice it to say the guy at the counter completely charmed the pants off me and I was beaming as I handed over my credit card while patting myself on the back for giving myself another reward for being a wage slave. That's the part of being employed I REALLY appreciate!

So I started with 3 movies I've been wanting to see for a while: Wimbledon, the Manchurian Candidate, and Spiderman2. Yeah, very Hollywood, but I need to catch up. And it's a much better way to veg out after a week of work than channel-surfing the TV.

Unfortunately, I couldn't immediately go into weekend mode when I got home last night, because, after failing a test, 12-year-old daughter was having a very bad day, which devolved into a meltdown with prolonged tears and a litany of everything wrong with her life (mainly surrounding school, her grades, and the skanks that make her miserable and are "trying to steal her only friend"). Life may really get increasingly complicated, but even at 12 it all looks like tragedy, so subjectively things don't appear any easier when you're a child. So at least an hour was spent hugging on the couch and going through half a box of tissues. I knew there wasn't a whole lot I could actually do about the problems paining her right now, so I just told her the grades would sort themselves out eventually, and that I'm not concerned about them, and that everything else would look better soon as well. We all go through these phases, even the popular girls who she thinks have everything going for them. "You think they don't have problems?" I told her. "Trust me; they've got problems too -- but different ones than yours; it doesn't make their lives any easier. Their lives may even be harder. You've got the most important thing in the world going for you: parents who love you more than any treasure and take very good care of you. Not everybody has that."

Even with all that 12-year-old angst, she knows it's true, and she knows she's got it pretty good. After a while, the tears dried up, she got on the phone with "her only friend" and she told me she felt a little better. Then she spent the next hour and a half on a homework project on her "roots" -- looking up the meaning of her name on the Internet (was very surprised and delighted to learn how "special" her name was with many meanings), and finding old photos of herself in our many albums and writing the stories behind the photo. It was the perfect way to remember what a good life she actually has.