COUNTDOWN TO 60!

Wednesday, January 15, 11:15 am

27 DAYS UNTIL I'M 60!

Uh, yay.
Okay, let's just cut to the chase.
I've been simultaneously thinking about (and obsessively so) about doing this comic strip/comic book idea called DREGS, a sci-fi fantasy concept featuring a trio of friends, especially a heroine named Stellara Ultranova AND really not doing anything constructive at all, at least not in any meaningful way, just dragging my ass around to work and then back home and being glued to the internet pointlessly. So: I'm obsessed with accomplishing one thing and yet, mind-blowingly, doing NOTHING to accomplish this goal. And... that's where I seem to be in life right now.
But, Time waits for no man, and in less than four weeks, I'll be sixty fucking years old.
Dude, what the hell.

I need to get serious.
If I want to start accomplishing the various creative goals I have, if I want to start accomplishing the various household goals I have, I need to GET OFF MY ASS AND START WORKING ON IT!
Okay.
I have to go to work today at 2:30 pm. So, I have a couple of hours to get some shit done at home before I leave. I'll be back.

12:15 pm

- Fed the birds.
- Cleared the sink, washed the dishes.
- Put two of the comforters in the washer.

1:51 pm

- Put the Christmas stuff back up in the attic.
- Re-set the two mouse traps in the attic.
- Dried the comforters and put them back on the couch.

...And, time to go to work.

Friday, January 17, 10:34 am

25 DAYS UNTIL I'M 60!

2:15 pm

Man, I wanted to do a bunch of stuff today- hell, I NEEDED to do a bunch of stuff today! - but I'm getting off-track. Okay, I just stuck a bunch of clothes in the washer and I called Excelsior Orthopedics about a prescription that I thought was going to be waiting for me, but my pharmacy had no record of it. So, I'm waiting on a call back for that. But, there's litter boxes and etc. that I have to do that I'm desperately putting off. So, I'm going to INCENTIVIZE!

If I do the litter boxes and etc., I'm eating that damn donut I bought last night. SMALL CONFESSION: I bought TWO donuts last night after work and ate one on the way home. I don't care! It was fucking cold working outside yesterday and I came in two and a half hours earlier than scheduled to help out and I WANTED A DONUT AS A REWARD!

So... nyahh!

4:19 pm

Half-way there, dammit.

I cleaned up the cat shit, but still have to do the litter boxes.

Did some incidental moving and cleaning while sweeping up all the crap in the various spots and nooks on the floor the cat found to crap on.

C'mon, Kimmel! You're almost there!

(Man, what a lame-o for these ridiculous "self-pep-talks"..!) 

(But, on the other hand, if these goofy, mundane self-pep-talks somehow get me motivated, even a little, even partially (to be accurate), well, who am I to say anything..?)

(but seriously, what a lame-o!)

Tuesday, January 21, 3:11 pm

21 DAYS UNTIL I'M 60!

I have the day off and I'm just not accomplishing as much as I'd like. Trying to get my focus back here. Okay, okay, okay.

First, let's tackle the kitchen sink upstairs. At least I've been doing some of the laundry (thank god for machines who actually do the work...).

Sunday, February 2, SUPER BOWL SUNDAY, 11:21 am

9 DAYS UNTIL I'M 60!

Alright, I'm not really a big football fan, but I do know today is Super Bowl Sunday.

Meanwhile, this week has been eventful: I found out I have a hernia so I'll be having an operation to correct that later in the spring AND my car had to go in the shop because the brake line went. Yes!

Thursday, February 6, 8:24 am

5 DAYS UNTIL I'M 60!

OMG, I'm tired!
I have to work today from 3:00 until closing.
I got up early though to clear off Amy's car from snow. It snowed last night, and we knew it was coming, but it didn't come when we thought it was gonna, so when we went to bed, the ground was snow-free and nothing in the air.
This morning, there was snow on the cars and ground, and the plow came at some point and cleared the best he could of our driveway, even though I didn't park behind my wife's car like I usually do.
Well, I cleared the car, I fed the cats, I fed the birds and now I'm pooped.
The hell. My life is too damn exciting.

Alright, I'm gonna eat breakfast. Try and stop me...if you dare!

Friday, February 7, 3:36 pm

4 DAYS UNTIL I'M 60!

Oh, man, what a lazy day.
I have today and tomorrow off. And it turned out to be a snow day for my wife!
Anyway, I stayed up late last night. I closed yesterday at work and when I got home after 11:00 pm, I finished watching THE LAST JEDI on Disney+, and then I impulsively watched GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY in its entirety, too. So, I went to bed LATE, like after 4:00.
So, I was a little tired when I woke up at 9:30 this morning. And I haven't really done too much of anything. About the only constructive thing I did was take care of some financial crap. I put some money in the savings and also gave some money to my wife to pay for my video camera I bought over the summer. Now that I'm back to working more like 35 hrs a week (after having my hours reduced over the holidays because more college students were home, so they were looking for hours, if that makes sense), I'm trying to focus on building up our savings, especially since the last two weeks has been: a plumbing bill, having a new sump pump installed, and fixing my brake lines.
But, now... I'm going to try and see if I can clean out our utility room and put in some new shelving units. We bought two new sets from Sam's Club and the new shelves are twice as wide as the old ones, so that should help our storage and organizing issues in the utility room considerably.
Okay, I'm off. We'll see how well this works out.

4:27 pm

Let's just try to work through this.
First, I have to clean the litter boxes downstairs. I've been putting this off for days. Ugh.
And then I have to drag those two boxes with the shelf units out of the car. They're a little heavy and we've left them in the car for a few days. UGH.

So, to re-iterate: GOALS for today:

1. Clean downstairs litter boxes. YES
2. Clean utility room to make room for shelving units.
3. Install at least ONE shelving unit.
4. Take BOTH shelving unit boxes out of my wife's car. YES
5. Clear off my bed so I can sleep on it tonight (I've been sleeping on the couch in the TV room for a couple months now, at least).
6. Fold underwear.
7. Wash darks.
8. Clear the sink. YES

I'll be back.

Saturday, February 8, 10:41 am

So, I have this new comic book obsession... even though I haven't done ANY significant work on:

1. My ACC story.
2. My DREGS idea.
3. Updating my portfolio.

Anyway, the new obsession is ULKRYN, PREHISTORIC CYBORG!

But, back to my list of crap to do from yesterday...

2. Clean utility room to make room for shelving units. YES
3. Install at least ONE shelving unit. YES
5. Clear off my bed so I can sleep on it tonight (I've been sleeping on the couch in the TV room for a couple months now, at least).
6. Fold underwear.
7. Wash darks.
8. DRAW.
9. Watch WILL O' THE WISP VERSION 4.

Sunday, February 9, 10:13 am

Well, That's a long list and I only did a couple things off it. Although, I actually set up BOTH shelving units and at this point right now, I'm in the process of re-putting stuff on them from the original, skinnier, wooden shelves that my dad had originally erected on the utility room wall, and also re-organizing the items that were stacked impulsively on the two smaller shelving units we happened to have that were stuck back in this cubby area of the utility room.
I put the second new unit in the cubby hole and I set up a work light as a semi-permanent light fixture for that area (because it is dark in there, let me tell you!, even when the general overhead light is on).
So, this morning I'm trying to wrap this re-organizing venture up before I have to go to work...
And speaking of work, it's snowing again! Oh, boy!

Also, I'm going to try and cross off a few more items on that list, if possible, before I leave today.
We'll see.

5. Clear off my bed so I can sleep on it tonight (I've been sleeping on the couch in the TV room for a couple months now, at least).
6. Fold underwear.
7. Wash darks.
8. DRAW.
9. Watch WILL O' THE WISP VERSION 4.

Friday, March 20, 3:33 pm

Holy FORTY DAYS later!
Much has happened since then. Well, not in terms of the above list...
Okay, at some point I did do laundry (items 6 and 7, natch!), and I watched WILL O' THE WASP.
But, I never reviewed it, like I said I was going to.

Sunday, September 13, 10:22 am

And much HAS happened but I never got around to saying anything about it.

So, I'll try to catch up a bit and then, make a point of wrapping this up and publishing it so that I can, theoretically, move on.

But first, breakfast! And blueberry waffles!

(Oh, I know how this goes... the next time I write it'll be after the election..!)

12:06 pm

Or not.

Yes, I'm back. For a little while. I'll probably be ping-ponging back and forth between here and various chores and activities.

Anyway, some catching up on major events...

The biggest thing I was alluding to was, well, of course, the Covid-19 pandemic. My wife stopped going to school the week of St Patrick's Day and she started teaching on-line from home around the same time. Shortly thereafter, I also had my hours at work reduced, by request (prompted by my wife, who said I was in the age range of people susceptible to Covid (young people and older people, natch!) so maybe I should take it a little easier work-wise). So, from working 35-40 hours a week, I went down to 24 hours a week. Specifically, I worked Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, starting in late March, I think (definitely by April) and I pretty much stayed on that schedule until mid-August. It was a nice surprise, too. Initially I changed my availability from five days to four days, but they (Amber, actually, who was writing the schedules at the time) was a real sweetheart (with front end manager Courtney's consent) decided to throw in a regular 3-day weekend, and boy, let me tell you, I got used to that schedule real fast! But, now we're back into "school season" and a number of the "Helping Hands" crew (NOTE: I mainly pull shopping carts at a major grocery store chain) is going back to school, so they asked if I wouldn't mind working some more hours to cover the lack of manpower, and I said, sure. So, I've been wotking 40 hours/week now. It kind of gradually worked that way up by circumstance, first 29 hours, then 32, and then the last couple weeks I've been at 40, and man, I'm definitely an old dude. After work I'm pretty much useless for a while when I get home. But, I also like the extra money again. And let me be clear, I'm really NOT complaining, because some other departments are actually cutting back on hours for some employees. I spoke to a guy in the produce department and he normally did 30 hours a week and now he's at 15. He said some people are at five hours! Holy crap. So, I'm just figuring the store is trying to deal with the way Covid has affected shopping and keeping things in stock and all the other factors that's affected business. So, due to my very specific circumstances, I'm very, VERY fortunate.

12:53 pm

I told you I'd be ping-ponging.

Actually I had to go to the bathroom, and then I went upstairs and I decided to wash the frying pans that were in the sink. So, I did that, and emptied the recycling and then discovered two pizza pans and a baking sheet that needed to be washed, of course. 

Anyway...

More ping-ponging...

2:00 pm

Hurrah.

I washed those pans, etc. and then did some much needed vacuuming of some stairways and the kitchen (ATTACK OF THE CAT-HAIR DUST-BUNNIES!) and then Swifter-mopped the kitchen. Alright!

I have some other chores I want to do still (like... I still never fully cleaned my bed, but I did finally clear a bunch of the crap off it (books, notebooks, art supplies, etc.), like recently (like, VERY recently)(like, last week, man, okay??? Cripes!), but now it has to be vacuumed because my cats have been partying on it over the several, several months, grrrr!), but at least that's off my back.

Oh! And while re-reading this and also doing some editing and adding on, it occurred to me that despite this blog-post's title, I didn't even acknowledge my turning 60 back in February. 

Well... I did! 

And I am! Still, even!

So, as I mentioned, I think on my other two blogs, or at least one of them, or maybe I mentioned it but didn't actually publish those posts yet... anyway... yeah, so I'm 60. And I'm going to refer to myself as a SEXAGENARIAN, because I not only am one, but man, it sounds way more cooler than "I'm a sixty-year-old."

But, holy crap. I AM sixty years old.

And, though I've done some things worth noting (I think) that I've accomplished so far in my six decades meandering along and about on this planet, there are so many creative plans and ambitions that I've thought about and even obsessed about at times yet, I never followed through on. So... what the heck???

Yeah, so in my mind, I'm declaring my sixties, my "sexagenarian years," as an attempt to reclaim some of my creative youth from my 20s. 

Meaning what?

Well, simply, I'm hoping to create more, actually follow through on some ideas. That's it.

Now, having said that... holy crap. So far this year I've got dick to show for all that "declaration."

I had more spare time... and I didn't create more artwork. 

I had more consecutive days off... and I didn't write the first draft to a screenplay. 

I've felt more mortal than ever not because of age but because some friends I knew passed away over the past few months, people I thought I'd see face-to-face again, let alone communicate in some way, via phone or e-mail, whatever. And even those terribly sad reminders of how freaking and abruptly finite our life is hasn't been an adequate motivator yet to kick my ass into producing ANYTHING.

So, I'm kind of feeling miserable, pathetic and desperate today.

I HAVE to move forward on something.

Like, maybe I'll publish this blog post finally.

Okay, let's go with that.

And then, ooh! THEN, I'll annoy you with my preoccupations about writing a book(!) (of all things!) mostly due to my creative envy.

Yay!

To be continued...

PS. For anyone actually paying attention... I was supposed to have that hernia operation at the end of June, but I decided to postpone it, figuring what with the pandemic going on maybe going into a hospital right now isn't the best timing. So, theoretically, depending on how the pandemic landscape develops and transpires, I'm thinking I'll try to have this operation in 2021. We'll see...

Dear Diary 2018 - #1: A Blog Post of Miscellaneous, uh... Stuff

March 2 - 10, 2018

Friday, March 2

Dear Diary,

Well, yesterday was a pretty good day.

Busy as hell, though.

I worked from 8:30 am – 2:00 pm and got there on time, too! (Day 11-in-a-row!)

Afterwards I went to our old house and did some more cleaning. Managed to bring home my drawing table and bulletin board.

And then I finally finished editing the chat about the Rolfe Zanefsky flick, THE BLACK ROOM (2017), between Mermaid Heather, Zombie Dawn, and myself and posted it to my film blog.

Also cleaned one of the litter boxes and put away some more books on my increasingly crowded and double-stacked bookshelf.

Alright, I need to go to bed. I have to be at work at 8:30 am and it’s been snowing. So, tomorrow’s drive in is going to be a non-stop party, dammit.

But, again, the most important thing is: yesterday was an EXCELLENT day.

Saturday, March 3

Holy crap! It’s 1:25 am! What am I still doing up???

Okay, so it definitely snowed last night. I thought maybe all the doom and gloom weather forecasting about the incoming several inches of snow was going to be a bust. Which would’ve been fine because my wife had to stay late at work (9:30 pm) which meant she was going to be coming home in the middle of the predicted snowfall (it was supposed to start around 7:00 pm Thursday night and continue until 1:00 am Friday).

As it is, due to the persistent weather announcements, the school where she works postponed the event and she came home early.

Still, I thought the snow was supposed to be preceded by rain, and that didn’t happen (not that I’m complaining), so when I went to our old house, it was still relatively good weather.

But it did finally snow and this morning I had some digging to do.

Also, at work I had some digging to do.

It was a good day at work, but physically exhausting. The majority of the snowfall we’ve had this winter has been fairly fluffy snow, so even large or extensively accumulated snowfalls haven’t been too bad to shovel. But today’s snow was wet, slushy and heavy.

Ugh!

It was a workout.

So, here it is 1:32 am now, and I have to be at work at 7:30 tomorrow, so dammit! I need to go to bed!

But let me finish this post first.

So, let me do some thinking out loud.

This particular blog is supposed to be my (arguably/theoretically/supposedly) “introspective”/catch-all blog and I’ve yet to post something on it this year.

So, a sporadic “Dear Diary” post seems fitting for this blog.

With regards to blogging more frequently I’ve also been thinking of setting an ambitious goal of trying to match 50% of my friend Mermaid Heather’s blog-post output. Heather is a writing machine and I… am definitely not that. So, I thought maybe I should use her persistent output as in incentive to produce more content myself. Hell, I’m usually starting posts, just not finishing them. So, it’s not like I’m arbitrarily thinking of writing in the first place. I’ll just try to finish some of these damn things.

Anyway, this “50%" is based on the number of reviews she posts at her own self-named blog, Mermaid Heather, and NOT including her Top Horror Movie Blogs reviews, etc. Even with this narrowing of her output, that’s an ambitious if not impossible goal already. Well, for me, that is. I mean, hell! She’s already at 16 posts this year!

So, we’ll see how this works out…

In general, I’ve been slowly trying to initiate some other incentives this year for myself in order to accomplish more besides writing/blogging as well. Although one of those incentives also involved Heather and my blogging. I asked her if she’d be interested in doing a movie club sort of thing with me as a way to get me to write more. So far, it’s working. You can read more about it here.

But, now I’m trying to crank up the pace a little, hence the “50%” idea.

Saturday, March 10

Well, it’s Saturday, 8:49 am and I’ve been up for almost 2 hours. I fell asleep on the couch after watching this month’s Netflix Connection selection picked by Zombie Dawn, THEY LOOK LIKE EVERYBODY. I liked the film, and I have to write a review and post it before the end of tomorrow. I actually liked it a lot and hope to watch it again, but I think writing the review will be a challenge. Well, it usually IS a challenge, but in addition, this is one of those films where I think the less revealed the better. The complete OPPOSITE of one MY reviews, dammit! Holy crap! I’m like, throw in the kitchen sink and then look for more stuff lying around in the garage when it comes to my latest reviews, cripes! From that perspective, I’m envious of Dave B.’s film reviews at 2,500 Movies Challenge. His reviews are economically written word-count-wise, but I love reading them. They're informative but don’t give away too much, and I know exactly how Dave feels about the movie. I’m TOTALLY envious from a wanna-be writer perspective. And on an additional envious side-note, Dave’s goal of reviewing 2,500 movies almost up! As of this writing, he’s at #2,487!

Anyway, that’s going on this weekend.

This morning I changed the title of this post. I decided not to make it specific, because I feel that there’s no one subject to this post other than impulsively describing what’s going on in my life on a certain day.

But, if there were any unifying theme, or if I had a desire for a unifying theme, it would be a unifying theme, but not for this post alone, but also for my life in general: How I’m Trying to Take Specific Steps to Become a Better Person (whew!).

Originally, I wrote “…to Improve My Life,” but saying I want to be a “better person" makes me accept more responsibility.

And what does that exactly mean?
Uh... okay... 

I’m trying not to react but to act through my daily life, being more assertive about my goals daily and in life.

I’m trying to follow through on my various creative ideas, which I think are usually worth following through on or exploring. Hell, some of these ideas I think are outright awesome.

I’m trying to consistently establish new daily habits or life changes in order to yield better, positive results towards my quality of life. For instance, getting a job as a parking lot attendant at a grocery store. This was a two-fer: 1) I got a job after being unemployed for over a year and 2), I walk so much at work during a shift, I’ve lost weight. 

So, re: “new daily habits/life changes” brings me back to those “incentives" that I mentioned about earlier in this post. One such incentive includes building on a relationship with a colleague at work to do more drawing. That’s been proceeding very slowly, but I think it is happening. We both seem interested in doing this, now it’s just a matter of both of us finding the time to sit down and do the actual drawing. Tim is younger than me and has an ambition to get into tattooing, plus he’s a big fan of anime and turned me on to Crunchyroll. NOTE: And yes, I’m still meeting Pam semi-regularly as part of the Apple Corps Comic Book Club, which has been going on for over 15 years (at least) with no real comic book, whole or in significant part, to show for our efforts, but we’re not giving up, dammit!

And as I’ve also mentioned above, I’ve started this monthly movie review “film club" with Mermaid Heather and Zombie Dawn in order to methodically increase some of my writing/blogging, and so far, that seems to be actually working. But, I’m also trying to step on the gas with my posting ambitions with this new “50%” idea. We’ll see how that works out...

But, my biggest challenge currently which started months ago when we moved is getting our old house ready to sell. That’s a MONSTER task. More on the specifics of that later [NOTE: We moved into our new house last August. And no, we still haven’t finished wrapping things up with our old house.]. But, in a nutshell, what makes this task so daunting is that I have to address some self-destructive personal behavior in order to do it: 1) stopping my disorganization as I continue to move my personal possessions to the new house and do so in a way that isn’t just shifting a massive amount of clutter from the old place and simply installing clutter in the new place and 2) also attempting to neutralize my hoarding tendencies as a default lifestyle. Yeah, right. I’m attempting to undo/change 58 years of deeply ingrained behavior, and that is not a pleasant process. That’s still a wide-open issue for me and source of incredible stress (for me and my wife), but the bills continue to mount for maintaining two houses now so I really need to do this.

Okay, that’s enough for now. These topics and themes will continue throughout the year.

Oh! And also coming to grips with my mortality!

I mean, I’m old enough now that that’s a real consideration in terms of career and life goals. I mean, we’re talking math now, not philosophy. If I lived to be as old as my dad did - 90 - that means I have only 32 years left. That’s not much. I mean, okay, that’s a lot of time, if I don’t waste it(!) but it all goes so fast. SO fast. But if I’m serious about wanting to create comics and movies and write..! And, of course, 32 years is only IF I live to be 90..!

Alright, I’m going to get depressed or freak-out if I talk more about this.

But... more to come.

Some sad, terrible news... and beyond (7/312)

A day that I’ve been dreading for the past several years (but doing very little in terms of preparation for) occurred on February 7, 2007.

My mom unexpectedly passed away.

The dread I speak of wasn’t because she was severely or terminally ill for a prolonged period of time. Although, my mom’s health did take a sudden turn for the worse more or less out of the blue on December 7, 2006 and for her it was all downhill from that day on. But my secret anxiety at the inevitable passing of one of my parents came simply from a few facts:
I’m an only child;
aside from my parents, all my blood kin live outside of North America;
and we all succumb to death at some point.

For the last several days I’ve been thinking of various posts I wanted to do relating to my mom in some way, but the most important, initial information of her dying was a stumbling block for me. So, I’m just blurting it out here and I apologize for that.
Understandably, this event has made an impact on me, and in true blogger fashion, I hope to share-- well, process is a better word-- that impact with the “world” via my puny posts.
Yeah.
Anyways, more to come.

Love and kisses,
Elly’s kid


7/312
Project 365: first / previous / next