I'll Add Pictures To This Later

The thing that bothers me about some forms of internet communication is that it's made it so much easier to just collect, collect, collect.

See something you like?

Level 1: Like it.

Level 2: Comment on it.

Level 3 (and this is the ultimate commitment): Re-post it and act like it's some new thing under the sun

It isn't. It never is.

It is like those National Geographic photo spreads where some white man ventures out into the wilderness with his camera and his loads of rations and decides to take photographs of some far-flung and heretofore undocumented tribe of people. Maybe they are so fresh that they don't even notice the interloper.

It's not the crazily pale and funny talking human being that is amiss. It is this thing he is using to document every step of their daily lives as if it is something worth mentioning. It is the camera. Or maybe it's a tiny tape recorder or a notepad that he scribbles on like a maniac every five seconds.

Meanwhile they may be thinking to themselves something like

"Jeez louise. I'm just celebrating my son's 13th summer, dude. We do this on the reg. Chill out."

But then here is me being egotistical enough to suppose I know what any of that means, after all.

And I do not.

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I only come here to claim things I at least try to know. Things I will at least go on record having an opinion of.

But does that make me holier? Or more talented? No. It's the privilege of having access to words. It's the false assumption that I can string those words together in a way that actually resonates and gets my point across.

And really. Haven't I collected all of my words from other people? From far-flung places?

Why yes. Yes I have.

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So scratch that first bit. Take that second bit with a grain of salt.

Here is what I can actually lay claim to:

So you go through these phases when you make things for public consumption. At least in my industry, when those things are made specifically for this whimsical and testy fucking environment that you and I are in right now. You go through these phases and on first through seventeenth passes it's a bit unnerving.

By moment eighteen you're kind of a veteran. Internet time works that way. What used to take years to evolve within a person now takes just weeks. Time has telescoped, just like that famous philosopher dude said it would. Our cycles have shortened so that we can try, test, fail, try and test again in a matter of days, if we want to.

So by moment eighteen you are thinking you have this shit down to a science. But then some new bump in the road is invented. Or a new mobile device is released. Or Mark Zuckerberg makes up some new fake assed arbitrary rule that throws whatever you are currently doing way away from what it was supposed to be when you started it.

In those moments you realize you can never nail it.

All you have nailed (and this is if you are lucky) is who you are and how you react to a change in plans. These are the only things I can count on from one day to another.

And as I've said before: this isn't saving orphans. This isn't rescuing battered women. This isn't brain surgery.

No lives are at stake. But yes. The landscape and pitfalls and obstacles are changing by the minute and a person has to be prepared for these things.

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And one thing I was not prepared for was becoming randomly besotted with a person I had no right to even knowing in the first place. And you may not have asked this question just now but yes, that is throwing me a bit off course as well.

Plus making every day feel a little bit bluer, hazy and turquoise. Heart shaped. Hopeful. Warm and a little lonely at the same time.

I am filled with anticipation.

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Tomorrow evening I Work. It's going to be a big long night and I've marbled my nails especially for the occasion. Tomorrow I Shop. And then I shall Nap. And then I go to the club to Smile and Count Dough in equal measures.

Nights like this when I am coming down off of the landscape shifting and coming up on actual human interaction find me in bed just like I am right now. Writing you a love letter from the comfort of Pinkie Lee to make sure you know that Everything is Gonna Be Alright.

I promise. G'night.