I'm Michael Goddam Jordan

Well, it's the new year. The ritual of informing the public of your future failures has never held a lot of interest for me, but one can't help looking down barrel of a new year, fresh off the showroom floor, and feeling that better things are afoot.

Everyone is gifted in this life…. At least that’s the touchy-feely crap I tell myself. My gift is inactivity. Throw some moving pictures and light intoxicants into it, and I’m the Michael Goddam Jordan of ass-sitting. Long swaths of concentrated effort have always had to have a stern taskmaster on my heels – and the refreshing thing is that I’ve been doing just that. Yay, problem fixed, right? I’ve been in this place before, but have never managed the gumption to really finish anything to be proud of. Well, sometimes…

I can wrap my fingers around the energy… it’s obsession, really, but in my mind, that’s a good start. If I get into a project I end up throwing my entire being into it - to the exclusion of all else. I reach deep down inside and feel the switches on the inner control panel. Apparently it only has two settings, ‘masturbation’ and ‘obsession.’ After six hours of continuous wrestling with 3D animation software the other night, I remember looking up and thinking, ‘oh, yeah… I started a blog.’

But frankly, I can’t remember the last time I had a project that I wanted to do so badly that I’d spend that kind of time on it.

Nine times out of ten I fool myself into thinking that wheelspinning is progress, that frustration is the end, that my ambitions are beyond me… that I’m the only one with this problem. Who knows? How many times have I flipped through a sketchbook or a diary and run across something that was just so engrossing and consuming, only to have forgotten about it completely? More than I’d care to say, but certainly less now that depression is not scattering my brains…

The frozen air feels like opportunity, the blank screen makes me want to dive in… and poverty is a gentleman’s challenge. I know my own recalcitrant brain can be motivated, and that my deteriorating body is still strong. I fan out my fingers and close my eyes… don’t you feel the crackling energy? It’s a flowing pulse, a swelling, shimmering field with all the familiar signatures of life... my perception of teeming humanity? The boundless energy of the Earth? My simple, monkey imagination? Perhaps all three.

The sky has never lied to me. Tonight, I liked what it was saying.