So I have been doing a few things consistently lately that I’d like to tell you about.
I’ve been exercising almost daily: stretching/yoga, cardio via elliptical or skating, getting enough sleep, and eating really well.

The food thing is what I’m most excited about right now. I’ve discovered how to make really hearty salads taste really good.

Secret: finely chopped greens that are normally steamed or sautéed like collards, kale, and chard. Add the usual other favorite salad ingredients (for me it’s cucumber, some sort of colored pepper), shaved or grated carrots and beets. Dressing: squeezed lemon or lime, and braggs or soysauce. I also love balsamic and oil. Then the real tasty piece of the puzzle: A topping of sautéed nuts and raisins or dates, with salt, and brown sugar or honey. Sometimes I add minced onion to caramelize with the nuts and dried fruit.
Basically put that in your body and you will crave your next salad. If I’m wanting that to be my meal I can throw on top some complete protein like Quinoa or small slices of chicken, or seasoned fried tofu slices.

Add the fitness to that, and poof the body feels good. I really like the imagery of putting good quality fuel in the body and then working out and knowing that good stuff I just ate is what is being used to turn to a healthier body…

Body = check. Now to figure out the heart and mind.

I just finished a couple single page sites. Here are the descriptions and links:

Tired of being yelled at by sisters, brothers, distant family, angry strangers, naive emailers? ‘Don’t YELL at Me!’ is a simple and fun way to reformat pasted text from screams to a civil tone with a push of a button. Making your read a more enjoyable experience.
don’t yell at me

Tired of reading dry, boring, flat text? Do you feel like spicing up some otherwise mundane thoughts? Let Freak Out On Me help you out. With a simple click of a button you can make any thoughts have more punch!
freak out on me

enjoy
~

So I need to let you in on a little secret. Actually it’s not really a secret but something I am currently pondering and am not really sure the best solution yet.

I’ll start with the end result I’d like and work backwards:
I want a simple single source place to put all my output that in someway is deemed to be viewable by the public.
This includes everything I create whether it be programming related, personal rants, photographs, drawings, stories, music, collages…whatever.
The obvious solution is to just have 1 blog where all content is posted.
Simple enough right? In theory I really like that idea and I suppose I am working up to that but what happens when I am in my current situation: Seeking full time coding employment. How would a song about drinking shit through a curly straw fly when I am also presenting myself to the world…professionally? (No I don’t have a song about that but you get the point).

So if I put everything on the same site, my life is easy: I have 1 place to put stuff, find it later, move around, etc. BUT then all my split personalities are in one place and it makes for my own PR being compromised.

Really I am back to a dilemma I’ve been wrestling with for a while.
My motivation in my earlier days was more for the purity of my art. I felt like keeping myself anonymous was the only way I could ensure what I was creating was not compromised.
To repeat myself in a different way: I didn’t want the expectations of others creeping into my mind while creating stuff and then affecting my behaviors and thereby fucking up the art.
Or to simplify it even more: I didn’t want to be a sellout. But that doesn’t capture the nuances of my problem.

So now, after …all these years… I am confident and comfortable with the honesty of my creativity and general ‘output’. Being in an anonymous cave or in public I create pretty much the same way.

That is good. Yay. I’m proud of myself. I no longer need to hide in the shadows to allow myself to barf my inerts instinctively. The conditioning on this brain of mine has been overcome and the body and mind can behave as it intuitively wants.

But I digress…

Now my problem is: How do I be my own PR agent without that becoming my full-time job.

I figure this posting is a good thing. My general rule for this site as the titles suggests is ‘civilized me’. This includes problems like this. So as a reader you may say, ‘Fuck it. Just do what you want and let the cards fall where they may.’
And I say to that, ‘I’m working on it.’

…
Band names are good.
Author pseudonyms are good.

But I’d like to easily be able to show all content somewhere without revealing the source of the rest of that type of content.
And by the nature of open web searches on sites, if some text is here and somewhere else, with a cut and paste and a couple clicks you can be at the other site.
…
Hmm.
Any thoughts?
Feel free to email me or post here.
Thanks

Just a quick note to mention I am available for web development while looking for full-time employment.
Ruby on Rails, fancy web 2.0+ (whatever buzzwords you know that sound cutting edge), AJAX, Javascript, CSS, HTML, Photoshop.

Let me know if you or anyone you know needs some help with anything tech related. Preferably involving programming of some sort.
Thanks
Vincent

Do what you don’t normally do. Say what you want to say in a way you may not I initially think.

Pretend English is your second language; and the words that first come to mind cannot be said. Look for another way to say it.
Think about what you say as you are saying it. Notice the intonations.
Say it consciously. Slow down, pronounce differently. All the while always saying what you mean. Always expressing what you intend, just
in a new way.

This is the thought that can turn day-to-day life into the neverending adventure, vacation.

Coming home, denial of where I am is no solution. But if I can harness all that longing for more vacation-like good times everyday while in
my ‘normal’ life, i’ll be able to live the neverending holiday and as a great side-effect everyone around will get to enjoy that spark of freedom and fun too.

(Sent from my iPhone–fyi)

This evening I was in a ‘dime store’ to buy some semi-disposable
leftover containers and noticed the alcohol section:

A display of gallons of Gallo to be precise. Then bottles of better
wine, liquors, liqueurs, cheap and decent qualities.

I didn’t drool. Not that I ever really do at the sight of booze.

But this time the first thought that came to mind wasn’t, ‘hmm maybe I
should buy some to have around when I’m in the mood.’
It was complete aversion to the idea of pouring rotten liquid into my
body. There are worlds of decadence in the consumption of fermented,
rotten, decayed, simpler life forms’ fecal matter: Death. And we
living humans continue to consume large quantities of this substance
that can be seen as the opposite of life. We season our lives with
death. Like seasons keeping the year interesting.

I could go on….ok I will.

Our culture accepts this as an acceptable way to relax after working
all day….but be sure to jack yourself up with some acceptable crack/
caffeine every morning….

Weekend/evening drinking began as fun times. The kids enjoy the dive
bars’ grit. Years go by and soon the divide between you and the old
crusty regulars that gave the place its unique character suddenly
doesn’t exist anymore…you become that regular.

What started as a few drinks with friends, somehow turns to drinks
home alone. Or maybe you are not that weak: You go out. You only drink
with your friends, in your bar, almost every night.

Not me of course. Really. Not me. I’ve teetered on that life style.
Enough to get a taste and to have that image painted. I teetered in so
many areas. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been on the outskirts for so
long have finally started looking around and realizing there are a lot
of others in the same place. Walking the ridges, walking the valleys,
swinging on the pendulums of entertainment but never staying on any
side too long. I guess I’m normal after all.

The coveted contentment, balance, middle ground that so many strive
for by living completely pure and opposite of what was described
above, comes easier and easier as time goes on. There is no need to
work for balance and enlightenment. It comes naturally when you stop,
take a breath, look around, absorb everything around with all your
senses…and die.

Yes folks. I’ll let you in on a little secret. I have an email alarm
remind me to post thoughts a couple times a week. As you can tell I
usually ignore it.

>>February 10, 2009 8:00 PM : post thoughts

So tonight I wrote a lot. I have a lot to say, unfortunately the
subject matter that occupies my mind most right now can’t be written
here.

I want to open up, spill my guts, use this public venue as a means to
cathartically release some of my … inner turmoil…That is kind of
fun saying without any teeny bopper angst.

Part of me would like this site to be solely composed of civilized
thoughts BUT this is, after all, my own personal space. If I can’t
freely write here…where can I write?

There is something therapeutic about writing to another. Have you
noticed lately how your tone changes depending on who the recipient of
your email is? Of course you have. The slack dialect to friends, vs
the polite tone to elder relatives, to the more formal tone in a
business correspondence. Then there is the world of writing to
yourself for yourself in a personal journal, vs a posting like this
one to you; an audience of unknown composition. I guess you are
primarily friends and family, with an occasional random who
accidentally lands here from some sort of Internet Search Engine
Results fluke.

“This isn’t the metaphysical site, about alien rat poo tinctures!?”

So there. To be honest (without saying what’s really reAALLy going on
for me right now), the tone for these posts isn’t really set in stone
yet.
I guess depending on my mood I can be talking to a specific person,
the entire human population, or myself. I think the unwavering tone I
hold dearest to my…heart, is that I will be honest here. I may not
say everything on my mind but what I do say, will at the very least
make some sort of honest sense…to me, and for the most part I will
keep some sort of external audience in mind to keep any sort of
artistic or creative tangents at least slightly palatable to others.
If this entry had a tag it would be a meta-tag.

Hmm. I’m not too sure about this posting upon a read-thru…it is
revealing and pointless simultaneously. I guess that is a worthy
phenomenon to share with…you.

[I am doing my form of prayer and well wishes for a positive
resolution everyone is happy with]

I just noticed my last full posting here on october 31st…man that
was quite a while ago. So a lot has happened since then. I am not sure
how forthcoming I want to be about all the little gory details. I can
say that it has been an interesting ride. If I were to draw the path
of the ride it went up after Halloween, then further up around the
evening the election results were in, then gradually came crashing down.

I’ve had this health mantra for a while: If you feel like shit, do
SOMETHING that helps your basic needs (eat, drink water, sleep,
exercise, socialize). If you can’t do one of them do what you can. I
guess this could backfire for the overeaters out there.

So I have that knowledge yet…somehow I still felt pretty bad. I
don’t want to sound all cheery now that I’m feeling better, because
I’m actually not. I’m alright. But there are still a lot of external
stressors that I feel pretty powerless to. I have to wait. I put
things in motion, then wait for others to reply. In the mean time I
guess I’m learning how to leave looming things around and still find
out where the areas I can enjoy are.

So let’s see. Halloween Night: One person showed up to that drum
invite on the streets; one of the main drummers from the farmers
market circle. He’s the metronome. We played a while but I wanted to
wander around while playing and he seemed happy sitting in one place.
So that didn’t last more than 20 minutes or so. The trash orchestra
people were going through a break. The 2 friends that sort of
committed flaked for various reasons: one for getting swept away in
other things, the other for having a serious case of the runs.

So no one showing up was pretty sucky. I guess having motivation to do
something I normally don’t, doesn’t mean everyone I know will have
that same enthusiasm.
I made the best of it. I swam around the crowd, I played loud hard and
got out whatever impulsive sonic ideas i had. People danced, screamed,
rapped, joined in, etc. It was fun. Fuck friends. There is a world
around us full of people excited about what we are. All you have to do
is…it. And poof you’ll be surrounded by other like minds.
Spontaneously a few days later more cheering and mayhem erupted on
Pacific Avenue. But this time the excitement and release of tension
wasn’t a scheduled holiday but a building moment since long before all
of us existed. (Obama was elected)

That was nice. I’ve been to too many shows where I’m not all that into
the band. I see hardcore fans and feel their excitement but feel like
an impostor. Yeah I like them, but clearly not as much as the ones
drenching their shirts in sweat…..But that night somehow I was as
into it as everyone else. I could feel the roar of the crowd.
Everything I could do worked. Random noise, erupting to chants, to
solid simple beats, to whatever. I was on the same page as the crowd;
effortlessly.

That was a blast. No melancholy about no friends showing up. I saw a
few new friends there…….
that was fun…but short-lived.

That bright torch I loved to burn ran out of fuel. So where are these
friends? My new found lovers of crazy noisy good times? I guess they
will reappear when I reappear.

–

So I’m feeling better. Not on ‘top of my game’ but enough to fix this
blog and write these thoughts.
I think exercising 3 days straight is doin it. That was the one area
of my ‘basic needs’ I was neglecting.
I MUST run around more. Ok I’m gonna go.
I think I have thoroughly redeemed myself with this post.

(oh I don’t have any photos of those good times because my hands were
too busy making the good times. Feel free to email me any you have.)

Well I had a slight problem with this blogging platform. I tried to log in one day and couldn’t. I was still able to post via email but that isn’t quite as rewarding all the times I want to include and image, audio or whatever.

thanks for listening….