I Can't Stand Still

“I feel the frustration 
In this funky old city tonight. 
There’s a pack of dogs on the lawn 
And they’re hung-a-ry for a bite.“ 

Ah, the new year.  Time for reflection on what’s transpired and rumination on what is to come.  What did I do last year for my pseudo-contemplative musings? 

Oh, right.  Nothing.  I was going through the cold-soon-to-be-pneumonia with the side trip of “Does cancer run in your family?” and “Whatever happened to that blood clot in your lungs?“  I wasn’t blogging much then. 

The year where I got fired from a place I no longer wanted to be and took the reins on a bunch of Linux servers just to get smacked around with how great the gap between what I know, what I want to know, and just what precisely it was I thought I knew in the first place.  You know? 

The year I turned 40 and realized that I still think of my father in terms of him being 30.  The year where I drove a honest-to-ghod race car and set my best time on a lap I made from a standing start.  The year I met my goal of 100 cache finds.  Wait, I didn’t quite make it yet.  Next year.  The year I discovered the sweet intoxication of a Blackberry (my precioussss) Curve.  The year I recovered the photos of the kids I’d lost two years ago.  Remind me to back all those up to archival DVD’s, okay?  Heh heh..

I get the impression most people are happy to see 2008 fall behind them.  For me, it wasn’t all that bad.  Once I got past that really lousy few months.

I haven’t been doing great on the Couch to 5k programme, but I’m significantly stronger in my lungs than I have been.  I took a hit with the cold weather and Christmas, but it’s not about being perfect, it’s all about improving.  There was a reason I gave myself six months to finish.  It’s the year I got back into curling and I’m having the time of my life.  I genuinely like all the guys on my team, I’m learning how to be a better player and I’m adapting from the “player who doesn’t fall coming out of the hack” to the “player who can adequately find weight about 50 percent of the time.”

After a couple years of blah I’ve been more in touch with the music I love again.  I’ve actually got a little bit more than just the podcast of Dispatches on my iPod.  I need more blues, funk and jazz in my life especially after Iceberg reorganized again (sigh).  But riding home on the bus my mind flips over using one of those more obscure axes it likes to use, and I think of Danny Marks.  Damned if I don’t dig up his website too!  Looks like birthday 41 is going to include some great music.

Thinking of Danny makes me think about this one time back on the Hum Line when someone called in and asked about a song that contained the phrase, “It’s hot and it’s sticky / Think I’ll get myself a mickey / I’m so parched and dry.“  And, in my mind at least, Danny shot out of his chair and said, “That’s a song from a buddy of mine, _____ _______.“  Now, I liked the song and hadn’t heard it for years at that point and I was giddy to have a handle on who did it and what the album was and I rushed right out and searched for a couple of years and managed to dig up a casette tape (title and artist long since forgotten) which is probably out in Mike’s basement right now.  And riding home on that bus, I dug out my trusty ol’ Crackberry and spent the next 45 minutes chasing down the song, failing miserably.

Today, I’m messing around on youtube and I find it.  The Extras with “Can’t Stand Still.“  And he’s got the video for “Jealous Girl” up there too!  Ooooooh, eightieslicious!  By the way, Danny’s friend was Leon Stevenson who will also be getting a visit from my credit card in short order.

So yes, I still feel like I have too much to do and not enough time or brainpower to get it all done.  Yup, I’ve got a pile of clutter and hell stacked around me that drives my Lady-love crazy that I can’t seem to get a grip on.  Runescape time has dropped from a couple hours a day to a couple hours a week on a good week.  The year I planned on shrinking my consulting business saw expansion.  I took a couple financial hits that I’ll have to work on and probably won’t see much improvement for a couple more years now.

All in all, the biggest plus in my corner right now is that I’m not standing still.  I still feel a lot of frustration, I can feel those dogs nipping at my heels, and it may be hot and sticky and on the edge of something nasty ready to break out, but I feel like I’ve gotten traction regardless of everything else around me.

The idea of keeping a finger on something from my past while looking forward to the future appeals to me.  Don’t forget who you are and what made you the person you are.  Now just dig in, change what you can to keep moving forward and don’t worry about the costs, focus on the benefits from your effort.