4:32 pm - Mon 2.22.2010
What's My Story

Sun 2/21/10 (5:17 pm)

For some time, I�ve felt I need to get better at �finding the story�.

I�ve become increasingly frustrated in recent years by my journal writing. For some reason - fear of really �revealing myself�, frustration at my inadequacies as a writer, who knows? - at the same time I�ve improved by leaps-and-bounds stylistically as a writer (If you don't believe me, you should read some of my journaling from the 80s), I�m doing an increasingly piss-poor job writing about the things I really need to write about.

Cause who cares if you can string words together if you�re not saying anything meaningful or interesting?

I�m starting to bore myself. Which is probably why, increasingly, I worry about boring you.

For example: I�ve been off-line for the better part of five days now, and I�ve been writing about it (offline), preparing for the glorious day I will be back online, posting the entry in Diaryland.

I wrote about how I couldn�t get online. Then how I got back online for a time (Just long enough to post a Facebook entry...which I thought was an interesting priority, by the way). Then how I was offline again. Then how I got back on (Long enough to post my last Diaryland entry and pay some bills). Then how I lost the connection again.

I wrote about the calls I made to Time Warner - At first there was an �outtage� in my area. Then that was fixed, but I still didn�t have a connection. So I called to set up an appointment with a repair person. Then I canceled it when I got back online for a time on Thursday night. But the connection didn�t last, so I had to call back and reschedule the appointment (For tomorrow morning).

I went on and on with this minutia.

And that�s not the story..

The �story� was hidden in one paragraph, to the effect that being offline was making me feel �cut-off�, but that I imagined �the Internet was somehow managing to soldier on without me�.

(Perhaps a bit melodramatically, I likened it to death - Someday I will �go offline� for good, and like the Internet for the past number of days, the World, and everyone in it, will somehow �soldier on� without me. Which I have to admit, I find upsetting.)

The �story� isn�t �I�m having problems with my Internet connection� - That�s the set-up.

The story is that, take away my online world...and I don�t have much �world� left.

It�s not exactly a secret - that I don�t have a life - but having my Internet go down (For the longest time I can remember since first going online) has put it into pretty sharp relief.

Mon 2/22/10 (9:23 am)

I assume I�m in the waning hour/hours of my offline-ness - The cable guy is due anytime within the next 2 � hours - and will be back online looking at porn and updating my Facebook status before the clock strikes one (pm).

(My upcoming Facebook status: �Back online. Looked at some porn. All is well.�)

Can't imagine there�s a good time for my Internet to go down, but this seems like a particularly bad time, at least in terms of having other distractions - There�s nothing happening on the acting front, there isn�t much in the way of good movies out (This time of year being a traditional �dumping ground� for crappy movies), and the Winter Olympics, which I couldn�t care less about, has wreaked havoc with my tv schedule.

Like I said yesterday, I know I don�t have a life, but to lose my Internet this long has really thrown it in my face.

I do much of my business online (Both in terms of paying bills, and getting emails about auditions/downloading sides/getting info about the jobs I've booked).

I get almost the entirety of my news online (via CNN, The Huffington Post, Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, The Onion/AV Club, etc.); about the only news I get outside the Internet these days comes from the LA Weekly, scanning the newspaper headlines when I walk by a newspaper box, and �the word on the street�.

I get almost the entirety of my porn online (Sadly, the Internet is my longest-term �sex partner�...by far).

(With so much free porn online, I have a very minimal porn collection, consisting of 4 dvds, 2 videos, three sexy movies on my dvr, and a handful of still pictures on my hard drive).

My �social life�, if you want to call it that, is pretty much entirely online (Basically consisting of emailing back and forth with Jane, periodic chats with a handful of other friends, and updating my "status" on Facebook).

(He did a lot of testing on my modem...but it turned out, near as I could tell, to be the cord plugging into the modem that was the problem. But anyway...)

I want to address the title of this entry, and how it relates to my recent disconnected-ness...

I've been journal writing for a long time now (Starting sometime in 1980, at the suggestion of the therapist I was seeing at the time at Catholic Social Services).

After awhile, I noticed three things kept coming up in my journal writing (Three "I am"s, if you will).

1. I am tired.
2. I am bored.
3. I am lonely.

Once I noticed that, it became increasingly hard to write about "The Triumvirate", as I started thinking of it, because I started feeling like I was "repeating myself", to no good purpose (Though my feeling about "repeating myself" in here has gotten a bit more nuanced over the years - If the point of keeping a journal is to be more "connected" to myself, there's some value in noticing what "themes" keep surfacing. But anyway...).

Over time, "The Triumvirate" became a "given" - I didn't just feel tired and bored and lonely...I was tired and bored and lonely; it wasn't just my physical/emotional state at a given time, it was my identity.

I haven't specifically thought about "The Triumvirate" in years.

Till earlier today.

Initially, I put "I'm tired"/"I'm bored"/"I'm lonely" on the back burner in my journal, as I said, because it went from being "news to report on" to "just the way things are".

Or "Just the way I am".

But in part due to the Internet, things changed, and I didn't really notice.

The Internet didn't do anything about my tiredness, of course, but it definitely had an effect on my boredom and loneliness.

I wouldn't say I never feel that triple-whammy of being tired and bored and lonely since the Internet, but I would say it's comparatively rare.

But in the past number of days, even while bemoaning being unable to get online, I started to feel like the Internet is not really a "solution" to boredom and loneliness but a "patch" on it, if that makes sense.

And I think I'm going to leave it at that, for now, because I am - you guessed it - really tired, and I think I would very much enjoy a nap.

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