7:59 am - Tues 5/17/05
Time Does Its \"Marching On\" Thing

Mon 5/16/05 (11:58 a.m.)

I guess the big "news" is that I had a birthday yesterday (And thanks to everyone who called and emailed their good wishes).

Number forty-four...I'm not exactly horrified by that number (That would be overstating things a bit), but by the same token, there's absolutely no aspect of my life where I see getting older as a good thing (Particularly when I have no money, no career, no romance, etc. and so forth. And I don't see acquiring those things becoming easier with age). I find myself thinking "How did I get this old this fast?", which I imagine puts me in a big club, a club with a lot of formerly young people who thought they had forever to get the job done.

So there you are. But anyway...

Spent a good chunk of the day with Cary and Kay and young Donovan (From around 10:00 a.m. till just before 4:00), hanging out and chatting.

At one point, there was Wendys takeout, and honest-to-goodness birthday cake (In my humble opinion, if it ain't white or yellow, with white icing, it's not "birthday cake". It's just "cake").

I got to hold Donovan, and play with him a bit, and that was great fun. He's pretty friggin' adorable. It's great to watch him scoot around, a beautiful little bundle of energy (But that said, watching this perpetual motion machine do his thing made me realize that, my various emotional dysfunctions aside, I just wouldn't have the juice to have a child of my own. In fairness to a child, I don't think child-rearing is for the old or infirm, or those of us with untreated obstructive sleep apnea).

Cary showed me the dvd he was working on with all my commercials. Very cool, and once again, it felt good to see that I have, for whatever it's worth, an actual "body of work" out here (And once again again, it made me think, "If it feels good to see this stuff on dvd, how cool will it be when I've got real stuff, like tv shows and movies?").

And Cary did the coolest thing with the menu screen (I wasn't even expecting a menu screen): There's a list of the commercials, as a movie projector projects "scenes" from them on a "screen-within-a-screen".

(My "Inner Movie Star" loved it.)

Nice to have the opportunity to talk to Cary at some length�At one point, Donovan was down for a nap, and Kay was doing some work on the computer for school, and Cary and I just sat at the table and talked about politics, and movies, and tv, and my career stuff, and so on and so forth. It feels good to do that, because I don't really talk to people very much anymore, since my life basically consists of being at work, then being by myself at home (With the all-too-infrequent commercial audition for variety).

I left around 3:45, loaded down with half a cake, the fifth and six seasons of Buffy, the first�and only�season of Firefly, and all my commercials (Cary has them digitized on his computer now, and wants to keep working on putting them on one dvd; on the dvd he played for me, the sound was a little out-of-synch with the picture on the "Dish Police" commercial, and for some reason, there wasn't any sound at all on the Incubus video, and he wants to fix that).

I also left with a birthday card, and a generous cash gift , a gift I think I'm going to use to buy a new boombox: The one I've got now has the bad habit of randomly stopping in the middle of songs, which I'm finding more and more annoying as time goes by.

All-in-all, not a bad birthday at all.

And the birthday fun continued today: I got a card and a $25 check from Margaret Z., and a big box from Mark and Jane.

M & J gave me a card, a $50 Target gift certificate, four dozen or so homemade chocolate chip cookies, and all the stuff I need to start having real, honest-to-goodness coffee in the comfort and privacy of my own home�A big multicolored mug, a grinder for beans, a coffeemaker, creamer, and a box of Splenda (I drink instant at home, but have always felt embarrassed, on the rare occasion I've had company, to not have "real" coffee to offer).

There was also a little brush in the box�a basting brush?�which I guess goes with the thing Jane referred to in a recent chat, the thing that got left out of the box that she said she'd be including along with some tapes she'll be sending me next month.

I think it was in Thursday's mail...Anyway, I called the 800 number for the National Notary Association, and ordered my set of supplies (The "Professional" package), then went to a nearby print shop and faxed them one form they wanted, then went on to the post office and mailed off, via registered mail, another form they wanted.

So now I'm waiting to get my stuff. Then from there, I have to register at the County Clerk's office.

After that, I get some business cards, get an ad in the next Yellow Pages, register on some online notary websites, talk up my newfound interest in stamping my name on things, and let the games begin.

And I have to find out where that loan class is available near me (Talking with Anita awhile back--Anita is my Notary friend--she said it's hardly worth it without the loan signing gigs. A fact I wished she'd shared with me a little sooner).

I guess that's "the next order of business" after I register with the Country Clerk, since I'll want to put the fact that I "specialize" in loan-signings on my business cards, in the Yellow Pages ad, etc.

I imagine this all seems quite boring, but for me...well, while there's nothing inherently thrilling about being a Notary, there is something "inherently thrilling" in me being unusually "pro-active", and trying to come up with an workable plan to "get the job done" out here.

I want this to work, to be a piece-of-the-puzzle, to be the walkway between where I am and where I want to be.

It's not about getting out of Borders. That's the thinking I've fallen into, because I'm unhappy with my current situation.

What it's really about is moving forward. If I focus on that, Borders is just going to "drop away" as part of the natural evolution of things. I won't have to expend any energy on that--It'll just happen.

Focusing on this shitty job as if it actually means something is an example of how easy it is for my energies to be misdirected, for my thinking to be way too small.

Time to start directing my thoughts towards things that really matter.

And this Notary thing, small as it seems, is a definite push in the right direction.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens...

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