Rough Start

When I publicly committed myself to posting something new every week, I really did not take into consideration the banality of my day-to-day life.  

Unfortunately, it looks like my buddy Brian really called his shot back in 2008 when he wrote;

“Of course, if you got out of the Navy and weren't in Iraq, on the Ike or dealing with hinges, I could see you quickly running out of material.”

All of those things have come true; I work in a pretty basic cube-farm, we have pictures of eagles on the walls with cute sayings about innovation.  The carpet is gray; the walls are pale blue.   The soothing chorus of clacking keyboards over the labored breathing of the severely overweight is only interrupted by occasional polite laughter in response to a sterile, unfunny joke.  There is usually a cake when it’s someone’s birthday, which, statistically is pretty much every day in a building of 400 people.  

It’s a nice enough place to work, but nobody drove a truck into a wall or nearly went blind drinking wine they made under their bed, so it sometimes can feel a little humorless.   It certainly does not offer up a weekly premise for a blog post of any value.

Alas, weekly is the commitment that I made right here in front of God and everybody, and while I’m sure my determination will eventually give way to other interests (baseball season), vanity alone prevents me from defaulting on my very first, post-resolution installment – in short, this is a blog about nothing.

1,103 Days Later

Bless me Father, for I have sinned.  It has been 1,103 days since my last post.

Technically that isn’t correct; I’ve had a smattering of failed projects along the way and had a short, but fun go of it over at droppingletters.com.  While I am still holding out hope that we can pull our hats out of our collective asses over at officesharks.com someday, it is high time that I return to the scene of my original failure, where I first discovered my gift of mediocre story-telling and poor grammar.  

Welcome back to The Augmentee.

I’ve never been big on New Year’s resolutions.  Lord knows I have enough bad habits but I’ve settled into a comfortable cycle of fat-drunk to fit-sober and back that operates on about an 8-month wavelength.  This year, the fit-sober just happens to fall in a January – it’s like an eclipse. 

In times like these, it’s important to seek inspiration from venerable sources such as Cracked.com’s David Wong, who offers this gem to the newly resolved: 6 Harsh Truths That Will Make You a Better Person

I won’t bore you with a full review of the article (although it is brilliant and I encourage you to read it) but I will cite one brief passage:

Being in the business I'm in, I know dozens of aspiring writers. They think of themselves as writers, they introduce themselves as writers at parties, they know that deep inside, they have the heart of a writer. The only thing they're missing is that minor final step, where they actually fucking write things. 

But really, does that matter? Is "writing things" all that important when deciding who is and who is not truly a "writer"?

For the love of God, yes.

I cringed a little when I read that, and I couldn’t understand exactly why.  After all, I have NEVER presumed to introduce myself as a writer at a party and I have the heart of a slightly-overweight, 33-year old cigar smoker, but I felt exposed anyway.

Because I would say “I like to write.”  I would list it as a hobby if I were filling out the kind of questionnaire that asked me to list hobbies.  Which is all well-and-good except that I don’t actually fucking write things.  I enjoy writing the way I enjoy golf, exercise, and reading books – I remember a time when I used to do all those things, and now just whimper about how I don’t have time but still list them as my hobbies on theoretical questionnaires. 

So, in honor of the challenge set forth by David Wong in the pages of Cracked.com, I’m throwing open the shutters of The Augmentee and I’ll endeavour to post something weekly of some value, to somebody.  I’ll see you chumps on the message boards. 

For those of you not interested in clicking on the link, here's the embedded photo of Lenny Kravitz wearing a gigantic scarf:

Via Upscalehype.com