The Gentle News

I’m a homeowner. I’m a husband. I’m a successful employee at an exciting startup company. And I’m broke.

Ok, I’m not really broke, but I really don’t have the excess cash flow needed to continue buying toys and being the lazy bastard I’ve been in the past. There are so many things I want to do with my spare time, and many of those things are activities I would consider crucial to becoming the Guy I Wanna Be.

So I’m making an effort to be more active. Any time I’m sitting on my ass thinking about watching some horrible television show that I hate, or considering buying some new gadget, I want to work on my ever-growing list of Stuff I Wanna Do:

- Become more organized. This includes finances, workspace, livingspace, internet hosting and every other area of my currently disheveled life.

- Get rid of junk. We had a garage sale and got rid of most of the bulky crap we had sitting around collecting dust, but there is still plenty of stuff sitting in boxes, drawers and corners just waiting to be offloaded onto some other packrat who has yet to figure out that life is really too short to treat every little trinket as if it might someday be just the right tool for some stupid job.

- Record music. ‘Nuff said.

- Take care of my home and lawn. We don’t intend to live in this house forever, and we want to make sure the next family who looks at this house with thoughts of buying will fall as deeply in love with it as we did. This is going to require quite a bit of work, and unfortunately a bit of money. We need new carpet, probably new paint, and definitely some scraping to get rid of this awful popcorn vomit on our ceilings.

- Get fit and healthy. B and I are going to get up in the morning and jog. Hopefully this will be a new trend and I’ll start going to the gym again. I miss the feeling of wanting to wake up and attack the day with vigor. Lately it seems like I don’t want to go to bed at night, and I don’t want to get up in the morning.

- Comedy. The Show has filled a huge void in my gut, and I’d like to step it up a bit. I want to do more stand up gigs and I want to do more production bits. I want more people to join in the fun and hear how hilarious my friends and I are. I take a lot of inspiration from this guy, believe it or not. I love his comedic style and feel it’s very similar to my own. Yeah, yeah, 75% of his stuff is pointed, slanted cynicism at an almost polar opposite of my own political opinions, and sometimes it’s tough to watch, but the guy really is a witty mofo.

- Financial independence. I’ve got a shitload of debt, and I don’t want to be a wage slave for much longer. I’ve got ideas and motivation, but I need to get on the ball to start planning what I’m going to do when this particular stage of my career is over. I think it’s quite likely that I’ll be able to remain employer-free for at least a little while after this job is gone, but it’s going to take a lot of work.

I sat down to write this thinking it would give me some goals and a bit of direction, but now I feel even more overwhelmed by the things I want to achieve. I pity those of you without 24/7 support lines. Mine has been, and hopefully will continue to be, an invaluable source of confidence. It’s boring and cliche, but there’s no doubting the fact I’d completely lost without her.