Musing about Myself

1. Thinking about my current place, I could be unhappy with it and realize how much I didn't want to be spending my time there.

2. Thinking about a potential new place - basically something like my current place but in a better location - I could envision sitting there for an evening reading and listening to music and knowing that if the mood struck me I could go out to one of my favorite haunts on the spur of the moment, rather than contemplating what else I should be doing if I'm going to make a 20-to-30 minute drive. (I could even look forward to moving, except perhaps for the part of moving my largest furniture.)

3. And then, after thinking about all this, I could realize that, gee, I have newspaper listing, I could go phone about an apartment right now and set up an appointment to go see it. And I'd just freeze and start to think about something else, feeling intimidated by the prospect of calling someone, and thinking about what a waste it would be to spend 45 minutes driving around to see yet another unsuitable place.

I've mentioned several times before that I mostly have avoided the "on-line journalling community". A lot of it is because I've found a lot of the infighting and endless nattering about what makes a good journal to be ridiculous and a big waste of time. (I've given up on subscribing annually to DIARY-L after my last foray; all noise, no signal.) I also find the notion of giving awards for journals to be kind of degrading.

On the other hand, to some extent I think I also avoid it because I often feel like my journal isn't very "good". What really makes a journal "good" for me as a reader is the writing. Yes, the content helps, and no not every entry is a winner in any journal, but I read something like these entries by Eleanor or Pamie (whose journal I just started reading), or a variety of stuff by Rob Rummel-Hudson or some of the well-reasoned entries by Stephen Leigh (who, to be fair, actually makes money from his writing skills), and I think, "What the heck am I doing?"

I don't think much of my humor comes through in my writing, I don't think my journal has much of a "train wreck" quality to it (it's not like my life is disintegrating before your eyes). I mainly spend a lot of time talking about my hobbies and my smallish neuroses. I don't use much flamboyant of clever imagery or writing techniques. It hasn't spurred a whole lot of discussion in my Forum, though admittedly I haven't been posting lots of topics there myself.

It's just... a basic journal.

I keep plugging along at my journal partly for my own purposes, and partly because I know there are people out there who read it, which is enough. But damn, I wish I could write a journal as enjoyable as some of the ones I read.

I didn't feel like sitting around at home last night, so I went to Borrone and was joined there later by Lucy, who talked about her trip to CorFlu over the weekend. Sounds like everyone involved had a good time! She also said that she got frustrated with the second volume of Thieves & Kings and put it down. Dang. I'm trying to convince her to give it another try, to see if she enjoys it more after that volume (which I admit is somewhat uneven).

I did feel like sitting around at home tonight, so I bought my comics and here I am. Spent a couple of hours reading them (among other things, like doing laundry), enjoyed having the cats sit on my lap, etc.

Which reminds me: Last night I gave the cats some catnip. I usually sprinkle it on the floor, and Newton licks at it and rolls around in it. I also sprinkled some on the scratching post, and Jefferson went nuts, scratching and grabbing the post and rubbing his head on it. And - I got photos! (Click on an image to see the full-sized picture.)

Lovely cat-butt shot there, huh? And notice how many damned toys they have! And yes, that's a copy of David Bowie's Sounds + Vision and of 20 Years of Jethro Tull in the background of the Jeff photo. You can also just see the row of Sherlock Holmes tapes that CJ lent me in the first photo.