If you're me you may notice that after sitting for a couple hours your knee will stop working. In fact, when you stand up it's so painful that you can't stand on it, can't bend it, and tears come to your eyes if you try to do any of those things.

Even if it's a weather thing, it's still embarrassing. I intensely dislike being old.

...I got some flack about yesterday's entry...

Okay, I admit that there's tons of drinking going on that I don't see. How else to explain the Girls Gone Wild videos? Still, it isn't the same thing and my take on what I've seen in the past few years only serves to reinforce my idea. Lots of craziness *does* go on, but the huge majority of it is of the structured type and not the spontaneous celebration of life that I miss.

Getting plastered during Spring Break or on Jello Shot Thursday just isn't the same. That's still doing what you're led to do and still puts you in the audience.

And, no, the idea is not to go through life hammered. Losing control of yourself that way is the symptom, not the cause, and I still maintain that kids nowadays are way too structured. Maybe it results from having to wear helmets when they bicycled, maybe not.

I wonder what's coming next and figure it's at least twenty years out...

Went out to a club the other night and it's true: things aren't the way they used to be. I've been noticing it more and more lately, the difference between what I remember it being like when I was twenty and what I see now. Maybe the wildness is restricted to raves (I've never been), but nothing I've been to in the last few years approaches the clubbing of my youth.

Nobody is getting drunk any more, and everyone is passively standing around listening to kick-ass music with an "entertain me" attitude. Are people now less capable of being part of what's going on around them and content with phoning and messaging each other about what they see? When did life become a spectator sport?

If going out and dancing and getting crazy is off the table, if traditional entertainment *has* become something only to be enjoyed from the outside, then something new will have to come around. I hope to hell that something will emerge that can get people back into living instead of watching. The clubs of the seventies and eighties may well have run their course and a new form of entertainment is needed. I just hope it isn't a computer-driven electrodes in the brain virtual reality thing since I think that will drive us further from each other.

While I can't do it myself any more, I long to see someone stand up and fall across the floor into a wall.

I made a mistake yesterday when I was talking about being a misanthrope.

I think what I meant was lycanthrope. Pretty common error.

When I was out and about yesterday watching people buy coffee and walk around I had to admit that I didn't hate anyone, no one at all. I don't think I honestly hate anyone (except for myself at times), but that's probably a character flaw more than a virtue. I mean, lots of people do things that annoy me, and there are plenty of assholes out there, but I don't hate them for it. Maybe I just don't know what "hate" is.

Also, it's hard for me to be mad at people who do the same things I do (or have done). It would be easier get pissed off at that guy who cut me off if I hadn't ever done that to someone.

Still, that's not to say I don't still get short with people who strike me the wrong way. I think I have less tolerance for ego than I do for anything else. That and honesty. I have trouble taking seriously those who believe their own bullshit and who can't see how lame we all are and laugh at themselves.

Oh my.

My self-loathing may be getting out of control, and I may be in danger of becoming a misanthrope.

Maybe it's just age, and I'm just turning into a crotchety old fool. Or maybe a lifetime of sarcastic cynicism is catching up with me. Yes, I'm genuinely interested in people and have little or no desire to move to North Dakota and begin writing my manifesto, but some of my earlier patience is eroding. I'm increasingly dismayed by how serious so many people are about things that I don't think matter.

Am I missing something? Am I wrong?

Enthusiasm. That's what I lack: enthusiasm and confidence.

No, I don't feel like going through all the pop-psych stuff to gain confidence. A succession of baby steps won't get me where I want to be, which is an entirely different, better-functioning personality, mostly because I won't let it.

No longer despairing, which is good, but still extremely cynical and, perhaps, smug. It's easy to have everything work out the way you expect when you refuse to see any other outcome. The blinders of self-determination are strong, and I would guess, there for a purpose.

I think the thing that bugs me the most is that I totally believe in the whole "the world is what you make it" idea. Since we live in the world we want, how fucked up am I to want this?

I've spared writing for the last week. When you can't say something good about someone, I was taught, it's best to remain silent. Since the subject of this blog is me, I've been quiet.

I'd like to be optimistic, to think another door will be opening, that all of this is a great opportunity for me and that something more marvelous than I can imagine will soon pop up. I think that's a pile of shit. I am, and have been, struggling for the last month trying to ride a life without goals. I don't want to write anything negative or maudlin, but I have no hopes at the moment and it's been a lot going through the motions, but without really going through any motions.

I've blown off friends, meetings, events and things with depressing regularity this last week, and what concerns me is the ease with which I've done it. I should feel worse about it, if not for their sake than for mine. I'm in no mood to receive encouragement, either.

"A shell of his former self," one could say. I've lost, I feel, most of what's accompanied me this far in life, and I have little incentive to even try to get it back. A lot of things just don't matter, not now.

What a sad and sorry excuse for a blog this is.

Last night I had a pretty good idea for my novel, but didn't write it down and today it's lost. Maybe it's stuck somewhere in the back of my mind, where all the good ideas happen, and once I begin writing the damn thing it will come out. I think it had something to do with an atagonist, although where I would put one and what he or she would do is a mystery to me.

Dragging myself through household chores and stil relying on miracles to save my sorry ass. I missed a reading with Tim O'Brien (didn't find out about it until too late), symptomatic of my life. Need to check my e-mail, but am afraid of having to write back.

Last night a good ballgame, but the result sucked. I don't like the Marlins, the Cubs are the ones I'm rooting for, and they began the game with two triples and four runs. I can't remember ever seeing a game with two legitimate triples in one inning.

All for nought, though, since the Marlins won.

Bastards.

Had trouble falling and staying asleep. I'm alive and awake on no more than five or six hours sleep. Coffee tastes like crap, and I have a headache. It's a nice day outside, though.

Today I'm supposed to play with my car and the laundry as well as finish up a chapter or two of TRE. I'm okay with what I have to do, but not in the mood to do anything. Why does that sound so familiar?. I keep thinking about fixing this blog thing, too, and may end up messing around with the scripts and ruining the whole thing. I can hardly wait.

Only two or three days in and already I've missed a day. This does not bode well for the future...

Yesterday was one I could do without. I accomplished nothing, which is one thing, but didn't want to, which is entirely different. I'm getting upset at myself and mad at the world. Everywhere I look there are people being productive, people who matter and who are doing things, and I'm just coasting along. True, most of what they are doing doesn't matter, but maybe it matters to them.

I wish I could just give up on corporate America, but it pays well and is about the only thing I feel qualified to do. I really wish I'd spent more of my youth learning something more meaningful than how to shove paper around.

I'm rested today, which may account for my better mood, and I'm happy that both the Cubs and Bosox have won. I can't see the Green Monster without remembering Dave and Callie.

A lot more baseball yesterday.

It's one thing to have added Division Championships into the game merely to increase TV viewers and to get added revenue, but it's quite another for the broadcasters to be wrestling with trying to bring that travesty in line with the teams' history. I mean, really. There's no justification for celebrating the Cubs' first "post-season series victory" in ninety-five years when they've won the pennant several times since then, but failed to win the World Series of Baseball.

And people wonder why I cringe at marketing.

Good grief. Create a new category, a new prize, to hype someone who wins it.

So that has me disturbed.

Feeling headachy.

Spent entirely too much time today watching baseball but didn't want to miss anything potentially historic.

Yes, the blog now has a title thanks to a blog-naming site, and I think it fits well into whatever it is I plan to do with this.

I'm in that disliked attitude of feeling old, feeling spent. The things I'm seeing or thinking serve more as remembrances than as anything new, and with the memories come regrets. I hate getting stuck in this rut. I like it much more when I don't greet everything with the flavor of my past.

Oh, my. Aren't I maudlin?

There were no elves, so it looks as if I'm gonna have to work on the emoticons myself, as well as screwing around with the scripts to make this look more like me and less like an example of a blog.

Slept poorly, worried or thinking about my book, my finances, my future, my past.

Lots of things to tackle today. I wish the coffee was done brewing.

Okay.

I gotta work on the smileys.

I gotta change the name and colors and stuff.

I gotta get some reading done before sleeping.

Tomorrow is another day -- somebody in that famous book about the South

I have now joined the 21st Century and tens of people can see what I'm doing whenever I can be bothered with typing it down.

So far, I'm not doing much.