I Know, Right?

Where the hell have I been?

Short answer:  really frikkin’ busy.  An excuse? Not a good one.  But I will say the one I have is probably the best of all possible excuses.  All of my creative energy has been going into entertaining the Nugget.  She’s such a little sponge; everything I throw out there she soaks right up, and then quickly gets bored & wants to go back to watching Cinderella or Lion King – which she can soak up repeatedly, apparently without EVER getting bored.  That fact comes with the implication that maybe I’m the one getting bored with my own Nugget-specific creations, or at least bored enough to not want to repeat the same material over & over… but then I remember that I’m not a DVD & it’s actually normal to want to keep things fresh.  So all my fresh stuff, which is in high demand by my highly loyal audience of one, is 1) skewed very young; B) performed live and not captured on video; and 4) usually accompanied by a slight poop odor (usually hers).

I’m also in the middle of consuming the “Song of Ice & Fire” series by George R.R. Martin.  If you’re not familiar, it’s currently a five tome series, of which I’m almost done with the third, with each tome weighing in around 850 hardback pages.  This is also the series that HBO has turned into “A Game Of Thrones”, an awesome new drama series titled after the first book in the series.  Political intrigue, war, dragons, sex, incest, dwarves, wolves, accents… this series really does have it all from a fantasy perspective, but I’m almost done with #3 and there really hasn’t been a whole bunch of wizardry or supernatural involved; shapeshifting, dragons born from rocks, yes – but Martin isn’t really elaborating on those as vignettes.  He spends more time describing each character’s garb than I’d like, and I also suck at visualizing gates & keeps & towers in castles, so he doesn’t rank in the top five of my sci-fi/fantasy authors list… but this is still a FANTASTIC series, and I spend whatever free time I have reading it.  I’ve been swimming through Lannisters & Starks’ family trees since Christmas, and probably won’t grab a towel until Cinco de Mayo when I climb out to swing drunkenly at a piñata, inevitably miss, and hit my own nuts.

All this is to say I’m sort of intentionally quiet with Shower Sandwich, which, when I return to MAKING things, will be my primary channel for distribution.  I’ve had a few strangers post a few comments, and plenty of folks watching, so I feel like it’s not a complete failure; hence I’m not discouraged, I’m just … distracted, as I mentioned above.  Also – thanks to all of you who’ve watched & given your honest feedback.  It’s a process, but the process doesn’t get me very far without the commentary.

Now… back to the nerdery.

Jungle Gym Jitters…

… is probably the coolest name for a kid’s book I’ve ever seen. Alliterative, descriptive, and anxiety-inducing! C’mon, we’ve all had them… whether the jitters came from being the fat kid who couldn’t even run TO the jungle gym without wheezing (Bad Jitters), or whether they came from being the popular kid who always got to make out with all the girls who wanted him to be their first kiss (Good Jitters), we’ve all been somewhere on the jitter spectrum with regard to jungle gyms. That, my friends, is what we call a common point of reference. It’s what Jung would qualify as a collective memory. And it’s what red states call bullshit.

I saw that book in a book store on my way to get coffee this morning. I went to a new coffee place. It’s like six blocks farther to that place than my ‘normal’ coffee place. Why, you ask? Because I could. Because I just made it happen. Because my big-ass time-sucker of a project at work is FINALLY over. Because that project was the last major to-do item for me for 2008. Because, my friends, I have now been brought back from the brink of the corporate chasm, and I have learned a thing or two.

Thing One: Owning a big project like that, when you’re ready for it & you know what you’re doing, is frikkin’ AWESOME. The only thing that would’ve made this one better is having another set of hands/another left- and right-brain duo to share in some of the work. But all in all, I’ve discovered that the level of responsibility that comes from managing a shit-ton of work for a lot of very well-respected business people is something I can handle. This time, I was ready for it, and it worked out very well. I made it happen.

Thing Two: I need to get way better at owning stuff like that if I ever want to see my wife, family, friends, blog, or NA sponsor ever again. Not only did I not have time for you, dear reader, but I didn’t even have time for Jesus. And we all know how important it is to make time for Jesus. (This is different than “making time WITH Jesus”, which is the old-timey way of describing the act of copulation with the deity.)

In the last… oh, maybe 8 months, I’ve sacrificed a LOT of the personal stuff. Comedy/improv has just completely fallen off, podcasts have been canceled & rescheduled, races have come & gone without a decent performance, and even my ‘happy-go-lucky’-ness (is there a less pansy way to say that?) has seen better days. Just ask the wyf – I’ve gone through all seven Dwarf namesake emotions in as many months. (The month as “Doc” was weirdest – somehow I drew the proctology card on that one. What’d I learn in a month as a proctologist? Every guy has an ass-rope braided between his cheeks after years of wiping, so I’m not alone. Note: not all ass-ropes are created equally; some smell worse than others. If yours is uncomfortable or causes an erection lasting more than 4 hours, see your therapist/professional waxer/non-proctologist doctor.)

But when you ask your next question, ‘Was it worth it?’, I’d say yes. But I think that has to do with my need for validation. See, this project came out well, and a lot of congratulatory emails of recognition & appreciation have come my way. And it’s been a LONG time since I’ve gotten many of those that actually felt like I earned them. Or maybe this is just the first time I’ve been mature enough to know that it’s okay to accept compliments/appreciation without feeling they’re unwarranted. But in any case, it was this project that has made me feel the most validated in my ‘career’ since 2005. Worth it.

What’s next? Not sure. Definitely moving out of my current roles & responsibilities, either to a level higher in this group, or to a level higher in another group that’s got more of a consumer/customer focus to it. It’s great that there’s probably some permanent validation on its way, as I anticipate a promotion, AND I’ll get to move into something I’ll probably enjoy even more.

Here’s the “…but”: I haven’t TOUCHED my stand-up material in ~3 months, and haven’t had an improv session in even longer. Hell, the only creative juices I have flowing right now leak right into Twitter, where they just get soggy & start to smell like ass-rope after a few hours. S-U-C-K-S. But I could wallow in that sacrifice, or I could recognize that it paid off professionally, and then challenge myself to use my time better & employ both sides of my personality at the same time. Ideally, this would be done for me by having a job that required both sides – but as I don’t see that happening in the near-term, I’ll have to make it happen.

So here’s to making it happen. Oh, uh… so here’s where I might’ve tried to weave this back into the Jungle Gym Jitters thing, but give me a break – it was a moderately weak headline to begin with, and I just made two ass-rope jokes laced with a Viagra reference. That’s enough awesome for one entry.

PS – Thursday is Turkey Day! Come back later this week for a Turkey Day Tribute! It’ll be awesome! I promise! Meanwhile, I have to go learn how to trace my hand on a webpage so I can make an electronic hand-turkey. (Now you’re really excited! Me too! I’m four!)