Happy birthday! To me!

Now I'm older, just like every day, every minute. But today we get to mark this aging in a meaningful way. Today I am twenty-three years old.

I've got a fair amount going on--a move to a new state in a few weeks, a reasonably new income-source, funky medical diagnoses that have hopefully stopped rolling in (still waiting on results from the endocrinologist, who ran over a thousand dollars worth of tests on me based exclusively on my family history of hypothyroidism).

But this is a critical moment. In a rather abrupt fashion the moving will come to an end, and my medical care will become routine once again. Poker, being the fickle beast that it is, can surprise me and become as ordinary as the weeds. I could suddenly wind up with dullness in place of vivacity, giving in too readily to my reclusive tendencies when I have no close friends nearby but Danielle. That would be a drag.

So I must act now, dear hearts!

Watching some old episodes of The Show (see L'Awesome in the sidebar), I was reminded of the evils of brain crack: the insidious good ideas that fester in your mind, the ones you always refine and dream about, but never implement. I am a brain crack fiend, sadly. I think this is in no small part due to my personality. I am very adept at starting interesting little projects and letting them fizzle out after spending very little time on them. I suppose that isn't pure brain crack since I do start actually working on the ideas, but the real rub is that I'm not letting my plans truly see the light of day--whether they're just in my head or very barely begun in a place where only I can see them, I still imagine the perfect, finished product, with rainbows and waterfalls, and paparazzi and dancing clowns and complete strangers all celebrating this beautiful project I have completed. (Here's a link to the episode in question, which explains brain crack more eloquently, and which I rip off not-too-subtly.)

I think I need to wean myself off of this brain crack. It'll be good for me, especially since the stuff is most pernicious when you have nothing better to do.

So what ideas do I have? Not many, to be honest. I think the most promising one is to try some stand-up comedy. Sure, it might wind up completely sucking, but I definitely have the skills to write and memorize a routine. The hard part will be writing it well. And the timing. My timing is pretty atrocious in day-to-day life, but I think that when I have everything scripted out and practiced, and I have an audience to feed off of, I'd be funny.

The second-best one is to really unleash nowedidnt.com upon the world. Buying the domain name was my silly little way of embarking on a project but otherwise leaving it unfinished. Finishing it would be very sweet indeed, but I worry that it may be impractical. I have little interest in actual reporting, and I'm having trouble figuring out exactly what I'd write that would look much different than Hasta la Byebye. Sure, nowedidnt.com might actually do well if I polished up, wrote about things other than myself and actually marketed the site, but doing it that way seems kind of cheap. One thing I will absolutely need to make it work, though, is help. So I ask again, if any of you 1.6 readers might want to join me in this project, the project might actually start rolling.

The third-best idea is to go in an even more derivative direction: video-blogging! This actually could be the format of nowedidnt.com, or it could be a new site altogether. The biggest obstacles to this would be technical: I'd probably need a better camera, I'd definitely need some decent editing software, and I'd have to learn how to edit. And let's not forget the creative element. What the hell would I talk about? Politics? Would I try to count on some magical Ze Frank effect, where I find direction in variety and quirkiness? The initial difficulties in at least developing some skills with editing and technical aspects of framing, lighting, etc., will be difficult to overcome. But something cool could come of this.

I think I had other ideas too, but I don't know what they were anymore. All I know is that I can't sit here simply sharing ideas. I have to actually put them to work. As the great Mr. Frank said in another one of his shows, the biggest challenge is that first push, from zero to one.

Hasta la Byebye, honey-bunnies.

I AM CRANKY!

No, really, I am. I think most of it has to do with being up too late and being really hungry. Solving one problem will exacerbate the other so naturally I have chosen the third, crappiest way: postpone a decision and blog!

First: Thank you kindly, Cathy, for commenting. It is always good to see you come by, especially when it means my little comment box gets a morsel of joy. I did indeed know about Dear Old Craig's list, and am hoping very much to find a magical car and other, cheaper magical things with it.

Second: Nowedidnt.com has now planted the tiniest of roots, acknowledging its own existence to the rest of the world and tentatively hoping to become something more than a one-page greeting to passers-by. If you're feeling frisky, link to it on your site (better yet, ask your friends to link to it) and watch as the hits stimulate hopefully-interesting responses from the nascent webpage. A link is available in the sidebar if you don't feel like entering the URL yourself

Third: I am irked. There were like seventeen things I wanted to say and now I'm stuck on three. Perhaps increasing the numbers will make things come to mind.

Fourth: Nope. Nothing yet.

Fifth: Oh! Here we go: I'm not depressed after all! I'm bipolar (type II with rapid cycling)! So now I'm taking new drugs and recognizing my hypomanic episodes for what they are. Sweet! Note, though, that if somehow keeping this knowledge out of the public domain means an easier and cheaper life for me, I will take it away. But I don't think it will matter--and even if it did, these pages are archived in Google's memory so that there will always be an original copy of this entry for those who know how to look. I wish I didn't have to worry about these things now.

Sixth: Both Mike Huckabee and Nate Silver have recently misused the word "infer", writing it when they meant "imply". This is a very, very bad thing. Do not fall victim to this spreading plague.

Seventh: Related to the fifth, health insurance is going to be a bitch. If I want the barest possible insurance, which provides me with nothing but a $5000 deductible for medical expenses (with 0% coinsurance--the amount I'm responsible for paying--above that) I have to pay $100 per month. The price barely changes if coinsurance above $5000 is increased to 20%. And these are the prices without bipolar disorder. These prices would be much lower if not for the fact that insurers know that people who seek insurance are more likely to actually receive payouts than people who don't seek it. Self-employment is a bitch.

Eighth: Self-employment also sucks because it prevents me from financing a car and causes trouble for anything where I have to provide proof of income. Tax returns would normally be valid for such circumstances but I don't have any returns that show a decent income. Putting costs upfront like this is a severe strain when your income is feast-or-famine like mine. It upsets and stresses me.

Ninth: I got a new cellular telephone, but I got it from a semi-shady company called Wirefly. Everything is all right so far except that I had trouble activating my first phone--because I was being an idiot, as it turns out--so I had them debit me $250 so they could send out another phone before they received the old one. The money will be credited back to my account upon receipt of the phone, which will probably happen. Unfortunately, at least one person in the world had Wirefly tell them that the return box came empty, so they did not refund his debit. This makes me nervous. And stressed.

Tenth: The hardest part about playing poker is having to remove yourself from it when you start to run hot--also known as going on tilt or playing badly. The problem isn't so much knowing when to leave, but suffering the emotional drain of leaving and waiting. And while knowing when to leave is easy, knowing when to return is very difficult. Emotional resilience means better play within matches and allows for more of them, but the façade of resilience feels very similar and can crack in the right situation, meaning at the least that I must once more detach, wait and reattach. This leads to yet more stress in my life, which I try to relieve by focusing on other activities, which decreases playing time, which decreases cash. To combat this problem I think I need to play more large tournaments instead of the one-on-one matches.

Eleventh: It's looking like the date for going to New Hampshire will be between April 7 and April 15. I'm sad that I won't get to see Eric before then, as he's spending his Spring Break working in Lubbock. It used to wrack my soul to think of Eric, John and Travi gradually drifting away. Somehow we seem to click in a way that I don't think everyone will experience in their lives, and that I worry I won't experience again without them. Something was inherently right about our little coterie. I hope I can see John at least once more before I go, and I'm fortunate to have Travi and Tae here--though that fucking Korean never bothered to call me while his girlfriend was in town. I still feel an intense melancholy when I think about the distances that grow between us, but I still harbor a few fleeting hopes and I know that the situation is hardly improved by lamenting.

Twelfth: To reverse the progressive darkening of this entry, I saw Watchmen on Saturday, and enjoyed it very much despite not having read the comics. It was long, but it was tight. If you ask me it could have used more length for character development, but I doubt that would have made very many other people happy. I also saw The Wrestler with Travi a few hours ago, and that was also a very nice film. Few characters are so bluntly poignant as Randy the Ram. Oh, and I thought it was based on a true story. Evidently it wasn't. Shoot.

Thirteenth: <3 Danielle. Also, <3 goats.

Hasta la byebye, ladies and gentlemen. Don't forget about the website-that-may-be, nowedidnt.com.