2001-06-25 - 5:30 p.m.

oooh, pretty colors

so i'm killing time at the end of the day, because if i leave work now traffic will slow me up by twenty minutes, and if i leave in twenty minutes, i'll get home at the same time. and my car doesn't have internet access (yet).

on saturday i had this really hopeful and self-empowering entry about doing stuff and regretting the stuff you don't do and getting off my ass and living my life, and blah, blah, blah.

you know what i did yesterday?

nothing.

a whole big truck-load of nothing.

i didn't step foot outside of the house till eight last night, and that was just to move my car so it wouldn't get towed this morning (they're re-surfacing our parking lot).

i sat inside and played guitar, played playstation, and played diablo.

that's it.

it was absolutely beautiful outside yesterday. i know because i kept peeking through the blinds.

there are so many reasons i should have gotten outside and done something active, and i just couldn't muster up the energy or will to do anything.

you see, there are two ways to shut up the SmogMonkey. the first is to engage in self-improvement activities, or to do things that are active, or outside, or cultural. or exciting, or essentially come out of some book by the male equivalent of Martha Stewart. (i think his name is Biff Lugnut, and the book is called "Living a Beautiful Life Through Belching".)

anyway, the second way to shut up the SmogMonkey is to bludgeon him into silence with mind-numbing activities. anything that is at least somewhat fun, but is also mindless and repetitive (like video games). if i do enough of that SmogMonkey stops throwing his own feces around the inside of my skull and settles down into a semi-catatonic state, lulled into passivity by the pretty colors and soothing music. that was the approach yesterday.

what's the take-home lesson here, kiddies? well, first that whenever i get myself all riled up about improving myself, i'm just as likely to derail myself as see it through.

second, don't believe everything you read. i exaggerate the goods and the bads to a certain extent, and for every resolution i keep, there are five i break.

third, oooh, pretty colors. (drool, drool, belch, drool)