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I don't know if that is the case for everyone, but for me, that is the secret of life. When I feel stuck in a rut, I'm down. This can be destructive when it comes to things I can't control. As a result, or perhaps coping mechanism, I've become amazing at ignoring things outside my power. Over the years, after painful breakup after painful breakup I've applied this to my dating and social life. Not on purpose, it's just sort of crept in through cracks in my mental armor. It's easy to look back and see that whenever I've consciously gone about courting a girl I liked, it has never worked out. I spend so much time focused on formulating the perfect setting, atmosphere, mood, etc... that I forget to be myself and just have fun. All the long term relationships I've been in have sort of caught me by surprise. I collect girlfriends the same way I've collected my guy friends, common interests making two lives take the same path. My best guy friends right now are all people I met in college. Same mindset, same career goals, same nerdy senses of humor.
This is all very stream of consciousness because I'm quite tired. Time for the Nightwalkers to rest.
The overarching thought behind this rant is that I've invested an amazing amount of time into social dynamics, without ever evaluating the reward. It's almost as if by studying and improving my social habits, the reward, while larger in quantity, is much lower in quality.
Just some personal introspection.

And here's an update on my latest practice project:

The best education I ever received with relation to my professional career didn't come in school. No, it came from an account manager at my first real job, Sam Rabinowitz. He showed me that a little bit of kindness and a warm smile can go a lot farther than beating yourself into the ground with hard work. You still have to do the work, but with the right attitude you'll get so much farther with people, in life, and in your personal goals. Sam was a natural networker. A people person through and through. He was never the dynamite sales person, but he was friendly, consistant, and ultimatly blew past all the hot-shots.

In addition to my little stroll through personal memories and insight, here's a little compairason I put together on my most recent project.

I recently heard the phrase, "Man plans, God Laughs." Dark, yes- but insightful, also yes. Like a seasoned parent I imagine God looking on the decisions we make in life, knowing full well the outcomes of the paths we commit ourselves to. Sometimes we are so intently focused on getting through the door in front of us, we forget why we approached it in the first place. More common still, the longer we wait outside, the greater we built the inside up to be.

This isn't a rant about social entropy, or submitting to outright apathy. Rather, a personal reflection on the roads behind me, and the meandering paths they've taken. I once saw 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' right after a breakup. The overarching theme is along the lines of, "The pains of loss are proof positive the value of the experience." Expanding on the idea that if you were to wipe out all your painful memories, you'd lose even more happy ones.

Suddenly the whole concept of Religion, and repentance specifically, begin to make more sense. Wipe away the guilt and remorse from your memory, while retaining a fullness of the joy and happiness wrought in life.

I wrote a long letter to a friend recently. It was a sort of soul cleansing confession, letting go of a lot of things I held in. Not guilt or anything, but finally acknowledging how much I've come to rely on their influence in my life. I feel like delivering it would be unfair from a friendship point of view though. If you had the opportunity to know what your close friends really thought about you, good and bad, would you take it all in? Is this the same situation as in 'Eternal Sunshine..." I'm in a sort of half dazed state of inner reflection. That feeling where you can't tell if you're about to burst into laughter, or tears.

I look at my life, and goals as suffering from the Coriolis effect. I've always charged straight ahead through life with as much effort and force as humanly possible. However, with the ever changing landscape of life, I always seem to end up in a different place than predicted. Never bad, but never completely fulfilling. When I look back at the adventures of this summer so far, this year so far, I can't help but marvel at the amazing things that have more or less fallen into my lap. More importantly, the amazing friends, new and old, that have joined in my adventures.

I've been consumed, self destructively so, with starting a real career. I've avoided job after job that wasn't going to lead my towards that goal. Not until recently have I stopped to take a larger view of my actions. I feel like the Coriolis effect of life has this time left me in a better place than I originally set out for.

In the grand perspective of things, the very worst problem in my life is cash being tight. While other people are battling debilitating diseases, wondering where they are going to sleep for the night, or where to get their next meal, I'm upset because my cell phone is broken. That is seriously my biggest complaint. Even though I say that I'm broke, with a few phone calls I managed to spend yesterday up in Ventura with friends, watching my favorite bands, rubbing elbows at after-parties with mini celebs, and meeting cool new people. Oh, and Skullcandy paid for the trip, and is sending out top of the line headphones for myself and the friend that joined in on my adventure.

If this has been a lesson in gratitude, I'm glad for the perspective now, rather than after suffering the pains of loss. I don't know what I ever did to be born in the time and place, under the amazing circumstances I did, but thank you. I was born into a stable family, with every opportunity open to me. If I'd wanted to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or anything, I could have. Probably still can. But, I chose to be an artist. A laughable profession an any time but the Golden ages of humanity. The very fact that it exists is a testament to the affluence and excess of our time. Still, my family has been there, supporting my dream all along. Even in the face of financial disaster. Words can't express the gratitude I feel. I'll have to take action and attempt to show my feelings.

It really no secret to me that I thrive when I have order and structure in my life, and I flounder without. Oddly, ever fiber of my being rebels at the thought of any regimented activity. I imagine what my life would have been like had I enlisted in the armed forces. Instead, I took basically the polar opposite approach, and became a fine artist in the digital age.

I'm sitting down today to commit all the ideas floating around in my head to digital paper, so that I can stop thinking about them.

I'm not a spiteful person, and prefer not to speak ill of anyone, even ex-girlfriends. I have nothing negative to say about my most recent ex, in-fact, she's a great person. Just not for me. Now- with that disclaimer in place- Earlier this week a friend told me that he'd heard my ex was looking for dates via personal adds on Craigslist.com. I couldn't help but feel that somehow I was winning. At life.

I have an idea floating around in my head about taking micro-blogging more seriously. I twitter fairly regularly. This isn't going to be a post on the virtues of twitter, suffice to say it fills a vital role in my perceived online presence. I see on the near horizon an era where your online persona is more important than your real life one. It appears Google is doing everything in their power to usher in that age.

I know I have the ability to blog from my cell phone, I just need to familiarize myself with the process, and then set and alarm or something to remind me daily to post. Like, drop what I'm doing for 5 minutes and report on the day. This is a procedure very much for myself so that in the future I'll be able to look back and recall my own adventures.

I need to devise a label system to organise the events of my life. So far I have the following:
#Art - for posting updates specifically related to my creations
#DailyAdventures - to chronicle my day to day experiences, a sort of mini-journal
#Rants - for obscure ponderings and, as the title implies, personal rants.

I'm using hashtags (#) becuase of their application in terms of metadata. If none of that makes sence to you, you may not be a nerd. Congradulations.

I wonder about the permanence of the internet. There's not promise that I'll wake up in the morning and my Gmail-Beta account will still be functional. Losing all the content therein would be a huge blow to the personal archive that is my life. The same goes for the online dialogue woven in the many threads and photo albums of my facebook profile. These are literally intangible digital constructs that I place a great deal of trust and faith into.