Bagel Press

one thing that i’ve felt slipping away from me is my ability to write. it is literally as though i am forgetting words, and forgetting them in such a way that i know that i once knew certain words but can no longer remember them: typical ‘tip of my tongue’ syndrome. i blame it on my brain cells dying. well, that and the fact that life outside of college is really a life in which writing and writing well are entirely unnecessary.

blogging once filled the void, but let’s get serious here and call a spade a spade; blogging is hardly writing. (or rather, it is hardly necessarily writing, since there are tons of people who are rigorous and structured in their blogging, and yeah yeah, kudos to them)

anyways, in the interest of not forgetting the english language entirely, i am going to try in earnest to write more again. and hopefully write thoughtfully.

A friend was talking to me about the idea that all that is required to gain expertise in a particular subject is approximately 10,000 hours of requisite practice. The idea, whatever its actual merits are, has gotten stuck in my head.

I guess I’ve begun to wonder whether I’ve managed to gain expertise in anything. Day to day, i feel proficient at what I do, for sure. And yet I have difficulty shaking the feeling that expertise is constantly moving away from me, and that, day to day, I don’t allow myself to focus in on particular tasks in such a way that I am improving myself in any substantive or lasting way.

I’m reminded of the fact that they say you can’t forget how to ride a bike, and yet I have managed to do exactly that.

i’ve been working at night from home lately and have decided that it just does not work. i end up going to bed around 3 with less accomplished than i could have cranked out in half the time from the office.

i’ve decided that this is in part due to the fact that as long as i stay in the office, the incentive to finish what i’m doing is that i get to go home. at home, there is no such incentive (aside from sleep, i suppose) and so the urgency to complete things just isn’t there.

A while back I had decided that it was daunting, stressful and depressing to try and complete large creative tasks in the face of work commitments, personal life and tivo addiction. As a result, I decided that smaller creative tasks for which I could allocate small chunks of time each day would be more reasonable and as a result more fulfilling. Perhaps through sheer laziness I didn’t stick to that plan very long.

This year I hope to stage a return to small things, in the hopes that they will become the building blocks to larger things down the line. Fingers crossed.

• is watching fountains of Wayne at the wiltern and pining for the mid 90 s. #
• Can always be convinced to sob by aimee Mann. #

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• @mpiedlourde uh oh. Stay genki man. Do you need to revive your "leave me alone" desk sign? in reply to mpiedlourde #
• expects to see carnage if the freeway is going to come to a dead stop. disabled vehicle? pssh. #

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• is imagining singing 'bossy' by kelis but using 'gassy' instead. #

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Into week two at the new job and I think things are going well. Some sketches I did made a good impression and I’m on to comping my first site in a while.

dvg baked a pie tonight and the apartment smells a little burnt at the moment. Also, I’m gassy. Wishing that it would decide whether it wants to go up or down instead of just sticking behind my waistband.