IV: Wait a minute to pass

Some nights, not always the right ones, I just want to stay awake. I just want to sit at this keyboard and keep at it... I want to keep interacting with internet people, want to keep listening to music, want to keep writing, want to be, want to keep experiencing things. Some nights I am very, very happy to retire and head to bed. Some nights I don't even want that. If that makes any sense (it doesn't.) I thought for half a second I had something profound or at least wracked with ennui. I don't even think I have that. I'm probably just bored.

I can't believe I've run back to this blog to fill it up with the same irrelevant shit I obsessed over back in the day. I was feeling that way and I put on an album from late in my university years and suddenly I am back in time. I'm not even in this basement, I am at Robarts after class killing ten minutes before I have to catch the train. It's a windy, slushy winter's night on Robarts, the populace of the University tromping through the puddles with their heads turned down to watch their step............... music being the ultimate time travel device. After I realized that was true I started listening to a lot of music, even before I started blogging about it. You start thinking about where you were a specific time you heard a song - not the first time, maybe not even the best time - but somewhere hearing that song you knew you would never be exactly again. Sometimes, you're lucky enough that a song can bring you to multiple places, but not often.

But, no, I am here in this basement. It's early 2013. This has been a very, very strange few days. There was a weird minor incident at work where I overstepped my authority (what little I have) and I think it led to a moment of tension. I don't know, things can be hard to read and anyway it seems to have dissipated over the last few days but for a shift and a half it seemed tense in the otherwise peaceful workplace. I'm sure if I read this over many months or years from now I'll remember exactly what I'm referring to. And if I've forgotten I'll be happy. But for the moment, I lost a bit of sleep, literally awake from 6-8 AM the other day just thinking "Oh man, what if it comes up again, how should I play it, how can I arm myself." And all that stress came to nothing.

Of course, that's far from the headline at the store, and I'm thinking now of a Cracked article I read recently that says that other people remember your fuckups less than you do and let's hope that that's true. After a tumultuous beginning to the year when public misinformation has run rampant concerning our former parent company's financial situation, the main gossip around the store concerns one of our co-workers, whose future is up in the air. I'll admit that there have been tense times between he and I over the years, but we mostly get along now and I've considered him a pretty solid part of the environment. But all this is a culmination of things, some of which were in his control, some of which weren't.

It's been interesting to watch, in a drama junkie kind of way... I won't comment until it's over (and maybe not even then) but there are certain thoughts I've had in the past that might be relevant, if I could see my way to revealing them. I keep typing half a post about them, then I imagine what if he found this blog, like right now. How would I feel about him knowing what I had to say. I used to feel invincible here, unreachable, barricaded. And it never really did bite me in the ass but you never know. You really don't.

Is this what I am, though? Some pleb thriving on gossip related to an audience of none? That's how boring it is around here? All the good stuff I already said elsewhere. This is just the leftovers. I was just stalling anyway so I could feel like I did something, anything at all, tonight.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

III: No promises

It's cold out. It's the kind of day that reminds you what it means to be a Canadian. In these times of uncertain climate, during the warm weather, I sometimes fear the cold will never return. It needs to be something I can count on, my constant. If it's cold in January, the world is all right.

I didn't sleep great last night. Maybe all the delving into my past, flipping through the pages of this blog at random, got me too keyed up. Some posts I have read many times. there are probably huge spans I haven't re-read since I wrote them, but if I did I would be instantly transported back to that place and time. I want to tell you something about my life in January 2013.

I am sitting in my basement listening to the REM two-disc retrospective I bought not long ago, feeling it was a good deal and realizing there was a great deal of their material I had no familiarity with. I've become very absorbed by their IRS recordings. I buy so many CDs, many of which I haven't even listened to, because I never know which one is going to become my obsession. Last February I acquired the Eels' El Hombre Lobo. I didn't end up listening to it until September and it became my big thing for a while. I still need to see my way to writing it up on the blog. In part I'm earnestly searching for great music. And in part, just like in 2008 or 2009, I secretly hope the greatest CD in the world is going to be something I heard before anyone else. There are a few CDs I feel that way about, and the disappointing side of that is that it might just be my own mind giving them more credit because they are obscure and personal, not because they're excellent... but it's a sign of growth for me since starting SOTW that so many of my favourite CDs are ones that many people I knew got to first. Forever playing catch-up.

I'm listening to it on my third iPod Nano, a 16Gb with a touchscreen. Sigh, so modern. When I started this I only had a barely-used discman! I found it during the move, you know, and considered reviving it for kitsch value. But the batteries, left inside when I abandoned it for my first Nano at Christmas 2006, rusted out and I left it to the garbage.

I'm sitting in a new chair, which I got in exchange for helping Ross sell his old treadmill on Kijiji. To combat the cold I have a Nirvana hoodie, only my third ever piece of band merch. I went to an Aerosmtih concert back in November - by myself because I'm my own best friend - and only briefly considered getting an official tee. It's getting harder and harder to explain my love for that band, and when they released that new album I thought for half a sec that I'd outgrown them at last... but it has its moments, and the back catalog is still rad. Can't fight it. I wonder if this will be their last stand. That album wasn't going to be good, but there's half a chance - I don't like the odds but I'd peg them at higher than they were in 2012 - that if they record one more album it will be better. It could be really good, if they used that last album to wring a decade of expectations out of their systems. Of course I could be way off base. It wouldn't be a huge seller either - not a chance. But it stands that fraction of a chance of being that much better.

I drifted in and out of sleep at intervals last night. Waking up in silence and darkness and not even wanting to acknowledge my situation by rolling over to check the time. I just gutted it out, lying there for moments or ours, I don't know. My dreams, when I slept, were messes, tangled fragments of half-imagined reality. I think the silence tortured me.

Every night - nights before work anyway - I try to go to bed sometime between 12 and 12:30. I set a DVD to play for 45 minutes or an hour, lately Seinfeld. This is the way it's been since I used a VCR for the same purpose. I usually fall asleep before the sleep timer goes off, or if I don't think I'm going to make it, I extend the deadline, since silence is the enemy. The alarm is set for 7:30, with a 10-track playlist (roughly 40 minutes) of random songs set up ahead of time. This is a trick I've been using since Sheridan, because I realized I simply could not stand drive-time DJs. When I was in University, I would listen nervously for a few songs before finally deciding it was time to get up. Nowadays I let the whole damn thing play through. The timing works out. I wake up and the music is over and I know I'm on borrowed time. Usually it's around quarter after 8. If I'm working at 9:30 then I need to be out of bed at 8:32. This is give or take a few minutes, but I've found 8:32 is the number I can cling to. That gives me, if I'm lucky, 20 minutes to roll back and forth in bed savoring the comfort of my bed. This is key. I tried to tell Amanda about this strategy but she didn't get it - why not just set the alarm for the time you need to get out of bed? Because waking up when you're supposed to wake up is a hassle and it leads to more hassles and leaves very little room for error. But that breathing room... oh my, that's bliss.

The time it takes me after 8:32, to pry myself out of bed, dress, come downstairs, turn the computer on, use the toilet, and shower to my satisfaction is 20 minutes, almost exactly every time. Since it started getting cold I gave in and started taking the bus to work. Like my 8:32 wakeup habit, the time I need to get off my ass and get to the bus stop is 9:05. This was after an unfortunate period of trial and error when I kept pushing it back to see what happened (what do you think) and I realized that I'd rather wait a bit too long at the bus stop than miss it. Call it the result of years of commuting to Toronto, this fascination with timeliness, punctuality, knowing exactly how long things take. Routine. Not a bad routine. And when the weather gets nice it will be changed. And you forget routines, once they're gone, they're gone. Over the years, the various semesters, I've had so many different routines I wish I'd written this much about.

The bus gets to the mall sometime between 9:15 and 9:20, maybe even a smidge later. I hate myself for eating breakfast there, but there's that gap before I have to be at work that's more convenient for eating breakfast than the one between shower and bus.

The day passes. I help people find the newest Maroon 5 CD. I try to upsell them some Pure cards. I nod along to Kyle's stories. I talk about the Walking Dead with Meg. If I can I play some decent music (shhhh don't tell anybody.)

I come home, eat dinner... watch TV. Write if I can. This routine has been locked in place for months. I keep wondering what if anything is in the future. But things change, sometimes on purpose and sometimes not, so I wrote this. I wrote it all down. There it is.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto

II: Nearer the last than first

It would be a mistake to say nothing happens in my life. I leave the house every morning, I interact with people, I have co-workers. I was, briefly, dating someone (our relationship was cancelled due to low ratings.) I have a family that influences my life this way or that.

Here and there there is still dialogue coming out of my life, whether they are the focused anecdotes I post on Tumblr or the stray thoughts I have on Twitter. I got to thinking about SWP again today and as always am given cause to how things have changed that I no longer spend night after night outpouring into this thing. Partly, there's a lack - not a complete absence but a deficiency - in material. I can't spill my guts because I guess now I'm just always saving up, waiting for the long game. All my immediate observations go in a timeline and are forgotten the next day. There are now huge stretches of time I can't remember, which wasn't the case as much when I was SWPing it up. It's also a little sad that I can't post here without writing about writing here. It's like the last album by a band that's been around for 40 years.

Because those few things that are going on with me right now - at work, with family, with women - are dumb. They're dumb things! My problems are dumb problems! I angst about family dinners and subsurface work drama that only indirectly concerns me. I dream of women I can talk to about Game of Thrones. I wonder if I'm going to go on a trip next summer. I revise and restructure my theories about how I'm supposed to blog about music. I cram in a scrap of creative writing here and there. I do write. I swear, I am. Is it serious, is there any money let alone any future... I don't know. I don't. I know what I am doing right now is not permanent. I know it's less temporary than you'd think. I sigh. I feel more like glue than ever.

This post is quite the treadmill... a bit of a workout but I know it's going nowhere. I can't tell you what's happening. Nothing is happening and all I can do is imply the nothing. This is life.

It's... weird.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto