And Happy Mother's Day, too.

Okay, I'm lazy. I admit it. I'm not good at balancing time. I'm also at a point where I'm frustrated with life. I can't tell if I have it so good or something is internally going of the rails. I'm just unsettled, antsy. I caught myself reaching for some sort of cosmic do-over switch, a symbol of wanting to begin this perennial jihad to re-sort my life, starting with taking a trash bag to my closet and throwing out everything in the house not nailed down.

Maybe I'm unfulfilled in where I want to go with my life, so I seek to throw out anything that might be a distraction. Out you go, Xbox, and take that quaint Gamecube with you, too. I only need two pairs of shoes, so my ancient black dress shoes and battered brown ones can take a hike. Old suits in the back of the closet haunt me with pledges that I'll shrink to fit into them. But should I ever do it, they are stylin' in the way costume party outfits are.

All this purging, along with my occasional nosedive into my local herbalist shop to pick up a detox kit of my own, makes me feel as if I'm actually doing something, going somewhere with my life. It's an illusion of going forward solely based on the appearance of change, and since change means progress and progress means going forward, I have a by proxy method of achieving something when in fact, I'm only making my closets look bare. It's a sad fact of life...you beat up on the smaller kid, blame the intern at the office for your screw up. My closet can't move, so it bears the brunt of my mad lemming urge to simplify to I can have some clear notion about what I'm up to.

Meanwhile, I'm getting sucked into a SOUL, a Story Of Undetermined Length. It's a project different from the novel, something currently laughed by my copies of "Neuromancer," "Jennifer Government" and anything by Charles Dickens. The story’s inspired by my friend Cori, and I at least want to nail down the opening before the end of the month. It's a story about vision quests, religion, tribal order, legacy and holy war. It has squirrels in it, too. Have no idea where it's all going, but I want to at least prove I can get it started.

Not enough time in the day. I understand that now. Between work, driving, spending quality time with the wife and cats and whatever else comes at me, it's hard to find time to sit and write. Plus, then there's the blog. While I'm spinning plates over there, I missed out on updating this real-time window display. And I wasn't the only one who went into limbo. I noticed some bloggers whose virtual porches I frequent go into stasis, coming out of hibernation just now. So, I figure I should, too.

I've been going stagnant, too, by falling back into my old trap of reading political blogs. I need a patch or something to modify my behavior...a rolling v-chip for political blogs, taking control my figures and directing me to One Word or some kind of creative destination. I need to get out of the tar pit of political posturing and slogan shouting. As usual, I just can't observe. I have to OBSERVE, sit in some virtual post and watch for hours on end. At the very least, I should have a fat folio of observations, but no. I'm hypnotized into read the comments, on-the-fly opinionated postcards. There's a voyeuristic thrill there, as if you're watching a kind of proto-movement building from the ground up. But like me, nothing ever builds...instead just idling until it devolves into a circular action of snapping dogs or an ideological pile-on. It makes me wonder if we make anything in America anymore or if we just go into work, to our blazing fast Web connections, to argue, bitch and moan. Nothing ever moves. And I feel myself being dragged down, too.

A few weeks ago, I met this barista named Claire who was going into a physical therapy job. She had that kind of personality that was vibrant, a daredevil in Capri pants and a company pullover. She’s a freelance acrobat, often practicing her routine using a metal hoop stationed 30 feet in the air. For fun. She works with a local troupe, not performing but stage managing. In some sort of agreement, she gets to play on the equipment. She even had a tattoo on a ring dancer, a body twisting like a rainbow against the cold confines of a steel hoop.

Granted, she has the pre-requisite fears any young twenty-something girl has about making ends meet, but there was a surge in her veins, making her not afraid to try, to move, to be creative, to make meaningful momentum. Bruce Sterling viewed the sensation of young energy and termed it "Holy Fire," and I hope I can grab an ounce of it, the real thing. Sometimes, I feel too passive, too analytical. I shouldn't of majored in Journalism. I should have gone into English, a good malleable field where you can taste a lot of passion and wildness of life and still get a day job if you had to.

I also understand the phrase out of touch. I don't touch enough. Rather, I don't feel invested or part of anything. I miss that tactile sense, something I think I had too much of once, but in a junk mixture. All hopped up and serious, wildly careening between passions, but not having the Holy Fire sense of fun and wide-eyed artistic sprees at my teenage fingers. Yet, what do you do to get it back, if you even had it in the first place? Can you trade your possessions for it? Can you make a barter? I throw out this and get how much fluid amount of Holy Fire in return? Can I pawn something and rush down to my local dealer on the corner for a hit of inspiration and just a little bit of Type-B pixie juice for a Type-A body?

Dear Gawd, don’t tell me this is what happens when you grow up.