August 1st,
huh. That only marks five years since I set sail out upon the great
ocean of entrepreneurship because it was the best of all options that
had been available to me. Five years of sitting in the same chair
(No, really. This chair has been in service at the Dominion for at
least eight years) and doing the same routine on roughly three
hundred-sixty days out of the three-sixty-five of each year.
I feel that I should be
more accomplished than I am. Maybe it's because I sit in this chair
most every day and don't have customers milling through the store on
a nonstop conveyor belt, so there's plenty of time to goof off on the
internet, reading Fark or watching Youtube or browsing Wikipedia.
When it's slow I fire up The Binding of Isaac or Dungeons
of Dredmor or FTL and pass no small amount of time doing
that. Christ, I've got over 500 hours in Isaac since I picked
up the game. Unfettered access to all the tools of procrastination
and absence of a boss to chastise me? A most delicious recipe for
distraction!
Oh, I've accomplished a
few things, don't get me wrong. There are my attempts at
self-improvement, my arbitrarily-chosen self-taught languages and
nuggets of popular science, but these are of minimal practical value.
My April forays into ScriptFrenzy (RIP, but I'm still dedicating
every April to the cause), participation in NaNoWriMo each November.
These projects are begun, some wind up finished, but none ever reach
a level of quality which I feel is worth sharing with the world.
This weblog, you say, is
it not writing which I share with the world? Yes, but it is different
in a respect only other writers can really grasp. The various
Chronicle entries are, for the most part, declarative and possess
their own ontology. Yes, Fernando puts his twist upon the scenarios
which are described, but they are all external to him (me?) and,
therefore, safe. Even the rare opinion pieces are crafted as a
response to some stimulus, an irksome pique or some lame and abrasive
counter-commentary on whatever has the world in a tizzy at that
moment.
The Chronicles are not
artistry. They are not shining examples of the craft of writing
(perhaps of the techniques of writing, but that I leave for people
other than myself to determine). They are kitsch word-vomit. They
have no literary merit. They don't seek to explore any of the deep
and penetrating questions and concerns which plague the human psyche.
They are only in the broadest sense a window into my own psyche, in
that they show I am a person who does not brook inadequacies or
failures or hypocrisies.
And yet I maintain them.
I have my reasons. They are all selfish reasons.
The Chronicles are a
psychological catharsis; they allow me to rant and rave about the
abjectly stupid things I encounter, to get them out of my system so
they are not a poison building up inside until some harmful, critical
level is reached, mercury for the soul (Now there's an unsalable idea
for a series of self-help books!). They entertain those people who do
visit and read what pithy word-offerings I throw together. They give
me an excuse, nay, a deadline which goads me to put words to paper (a
schedule which, I will allow myself to admit, I have kept to quite
rigorously).
I am the Keeper of the
Dominion of Movies. Not many people my age can claim to be their own
boss and to own a business, not without having had ample financial
assistance or meaningful connections to smooth the path on which
entrepreneurship directly lay. To paraphrase the immortal words of
Li'l Brudder, I made it on my own. I do not regret my decision. I do
not dislike my decision even in the slightest. After all, who else
has a boss that permits a day on the job to be barely more onerous
than an extended coffee break, who allows the employee's friends to
camp the supply room and spend the day playing Dungeons and Dragons
or Munchkin, who could care less that the day's take in the till
doesn't go directly into the money bag for safekeeping and deposit if
it has been independently determined that it would be better-kept in
the wallet for use on burgers-and-beer night?
Yet, I still feel I
should be more accomplished than I am.
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