As of 30 minutes ago, I’m 39. If I really wanted to push it off, I wasn’t born until 8 p.m. ET, but we’ll stick with calendar day and not split hairs.

I’ve always told people when it came to the abandoning the corporate job to write, as well as the weight loss, that part of my motivation was that I wanted to get all that stuff resolved before I was 40.

Which means, the clock is officially ticking. I have less than 365 full days to have a finished (if not already sold) book, and to hit goal weight.

The official 3Bs were always: book, body, and boyfriend. Had I known I would be so literal about banging them out before turning 40, I should have just used, like, 38 as the goal. I would have been done by now.

There is really nothing in the way of all three from being knocked off by this time next year.

Of course, there is nothing preventing them from being done well in advance of August 9, 2008.

Been applying for jobs lately and one of the common bulleted requirements is “ability to multitask” or somesuch.

I guess I’m just perplexed why companies advertise their desire to demand their employees use what has consistently been proven to be an inefficient means of getting work done.

Even when I was at Macromedia, where people would have proudly trumpeted their ability to multitask, I would always shut down every application except Microsoft Word and give one document my undivided attention. I do the same when i work at home.

The other upside to being a luddite unitasker is you actually complete things during the day, instead of have eight things being sequentially nudged toward their goal.

So, typically, in job interviews, I play it by ear. Sometimes, I’ve said I don’t believe in multitasking (and found places that agreed with me), but sometimes I get the sense that saying you multitask is the *right* answer, so then it depends if I want that particular job. If I think I’d like the job, I’ll go along with it (I think that as long as multiple projects across multiple deadlines are getting completed, the means by which that is occurring will never be questioned).

I suppose, if a company wants me to be less efficient, write less coherent text, complete fewer tasks during the workday, and call it a job — well, if that’s what they want to pay me to do, I guess I could learn.

This isn’t in relation to any job for which I’ve currently applied, just found a few openings tonight that all included that phrase.

This blog post was written in one sitting, with no music, no instant messages, no e-mail checking, or any other distractions.

I alluded to this a few days? weeks? months? ago… that there was a tonal shift ahead.

I was about to just start, but that wouldn’t be a very drama queen move.

So, from here on out, the goal of this blog is going to be less armchair quarterbacking of my life and more about things that inspire me. Seems strange that I keep a document on my computer with interesting quotes and links to things, and when I come here it’s always just me whinging about things more often than not.

It reminds me of a metaphor I often use from Wayne Dyer, although I think I’ve only used it on Oasis before and possibly not on a public post at that. Ok, found Dyer recanting the metaphor in an old Web chat (thanks Google!):

“Don’t live in the wake of your life. The wake of a boat is nothing more than the trail that is left behind. No matter how hard you try, you can never drive the boat with the wake. It is just a trail left behind. So, too, is the wake of your life. It is just a trail left behind. It is an illusion to believe that it is what is driving you life today. What drives it is the same thing that drives the boat - the present moment energy that is generated by the engine and nothing more.”

I’ve heard him tell it better than that on his podcast, but you get the idea. All this looking back (albeit significantly less than in years past) is still useless. So, I’d rather spend my time online looking off the bow than the stern. Just switching gears.

Been dating a lot lately, mainly coffee dates from boys I meet on Craigslist. The romance section, not that other more heavily-trafficked area. And still coming to the conclusion that I meet genuinely nice guys without fail, except we don’t have much in common.

On this week’s Wayne Dyer podcast, he seemed to think match.com and such pursuits are a waste of money, and it did strike a chord. He said (paraphrasing) that when you are living your truth, you’ll be in the right place mentally, emotionally, and even physically to let the people enter your life.

I think once you get past the eating out, hiking, walks on the beach, movies, music, and everything else everyone says they are into… the biggest thing we all have in common on online dating sites is that we’re sitting on our computers instead of living our truth (he writes from his computer).

I’ve been thinking about that and it makes sense. It is definitely something I’ve been trying to do with the book writing.

A lot of people do ask what the hold-up is, and it honestly is trying to crack the code of writing blissfully. There are so many writers who seem to build up this angst about the writing process, and come up with rules and structure and everything else. And, you know, that would be fine, except I don’t want to live a life of angst. I don’t even know why the angst exists, just that it does.

So, a lot of my time is spent messing around with schedules, and approaches to writing to try and find whatever magic combination there is for just sitting down, writing, and calling it a day. Because the end result for me isn’t a published book. The day I finish this book (in this calendar year), it isn’t going to be a party. It isn’t a victory lap. Nothing. The following day, I want to start in on the second book, and on and on. So, if writing books isn’t going to be a rare twice-a-decade thing once I get off the ground, I don’t want it to be some tortured existence.

That said, I do subscribe to Camille Paglia’s quote that happy people are slugs who don’t move society forward.

I’m just looking for something a little less polarized.

And with that, I give up my post back here on the stern, deciphering the wake, and I’m moving up to the bow.