For the past few days, I’ve been house-sitting and part of the arrangement is access to a car. So, just to check out how the other half lives, I’ve been driving everywhere.

It’s quite a shock to see how much it reduces the time between acting and doing. “I should work out at the gym” goes from thought to fruition in under 5 minutes. I am cheating slightly, though. In San Francisco, the biggest enemy of drivers is parking, and I’ve been going to places that have on-site parking, and there’s a garage on this side, as well. So, not getting the *real* experience, or at least what it would be like if I had to park near my current apartment. Even today, I cheated in that regard, driving over to my apartment in the middle of the two-hour street cleaning zone, knowing they usually do it in the first hour, and parking directly in front of my apartment door.

But on the other side of the equation, I don’t think I’m saving much time. Usually I listen to specific podcasts on my way to and from places, as I walk. I’ve still been listening to them here in my friend’s loft, just not walking at the same time. So, the car didn’t really free me up very much overall. Just increased my Donkey Kong/Ms. Pac Man playing.

Main objective of the house-sitting is watching my friend’s cats. I’ve cat-sat before for people, and each time, I’m missing the appeal. But here’s what I don’t understand. Cats are largely indifferent to the people around them, and that’s part of their charm. Yet, if I’m indifferent to cats, that’s seemingly negative and I’m an animal hater. Seems like I should get more props for my very cat-like attitude, no?

I recently went to the Great Big Book Sale here in SF, which is basically an airport hangar-sized room where people spend hours of self-inflicted scoliosis digging through something like 400,000+ used library and donated books, looking for gems.

I walked away with a few choice samples, but the first one I opened and tore through at a rather brisk pace was: Woody Allen on Woody Allen. I always think of him as sort of an artistic template. He works in a variety of genres, has an amazing work ethic, is a brilliant writer/director, and has amassed an amazing body of work.

As I read the book, whereby Woody (prompted by an interviewer/friend) walks through his career on a film-by-film basis, I was rather startled how few of the movies I recalled, knowing I didn’t see many of the flicks he considers his best work. For someone I cite as an influence, this seemed shoddy. I mean, sure, if he was a novelist with 40 books to dig through, that would be one thing. But a filmmaker? That’s easy.

So, as soon as I watch Orson Welles’ The Third Man, my Netflix queue is literally the Woody Allen filmography, in chronological order, save for one unavailable title (I am sad to report that Netflix offers no one-click button to add a director’s entire filmography in order to one’s queue, but I got it done).

The goal is to just tear through them pretty briskly, and re-read his comments before each viewing. So, if I start quoting more Woody Allen in the short term, now you’ll know why.

The best thing about the book was just seeing how unencumbered he was about his work. That is, of course, my idee fixe: making the work enjoyable. This whole notion of the put-upon novelist in a world of construction workers, dim sum rollers, and animal agriculture gut pullers is really something that needs to end. I’m not saying I don’t understand it, but it is really something that can and needs to be disconnected from the work.

As I read, whenever Woody would talk about his work process, I’d fold the corner of that page down. Here’s what I found on those bent pages…

ON WORKING REGULARLY:

“I’ve tried very hard to make my films into a non-event. I just want to work, that’s all. Just put the film out for people to see, just keep grinding them out. I hope I’ll have a long and healthy life, that I can keep working all the time, and that I can look back in old age and say, ‘I made fifty movies and some of them were excellent and some of them were not so good and some were funny…’ I just don’t want to get into that situation that so many of my contemporaries are in, where they make one film every few years and it’s a Big Event. That’s why I’ve always admired Bergman. He’d be working quietly on the island and would make a little tiny film and put it out, and then he’d be working on the next one. You know, the work was important. Not the eventual success or failure, the money or the critical reception. What’s important is that your work is part of your daily life and you can live decently. You can, as in my case, do other things I want to do at the same time. I like to play music, I like to see my children, I like to go to restaurants, I like to talk walks and watch sports and things. When you’re working at the same time, you have a nice, integrated life.”

ON ACTING IN A BROADWAY PLAY:

“There is no easier job than being in a play. I mean, you have the whole day off and you do whatever you want. You can write, you can relax, whatever you want. You just drop over to the theatre at eight o’clock at night. I would walk over there with Diane (Keaton). I lived within walking distance and we could take a nice stroll down Broadway. Then you go in. There’s no nervous tension. The play is running. You’re onstage with your friends. Curtain goes up. You play it. It’s about an hour and a half. And two hours later you’re in a restaurant having dinner with your friends. It’s the easiest job in the world! So it was very pleasurable.”

HIS WORK PHILOSOPHY:

“I’ve always kept my nose to the grindstone. All I do is work, and my philosophy has been that if I just keep working, just focus on my work, everything else will fall into place. It’s irrelevant whether I make a lot of money or don’t, or whether the films are successful or not. All that is total nonsense and superfluous and superficial. If you just look at the work and try and keep working and striving and setting ambitious goals for yourself, the rest is unimportant. You find that, if you do that, everything else falls into place.”

ON WRITING RITUALS:

“I felt that anything that distracted from the work and minimized your effort on it was a self-deception that was going to be detrimental. So to avoid getting caught up with a lot of writing rituals and time-wasting, you’ve got to get there and just work. Art in general, and show-business, is full to the brim of people who talk, talk, talk, talk. And when you hear them talk, theoretically they’re brilliant and they’re right and this and that, but in the end it’s just a question of ‘Who can sit down and do it?’ That’s what counts. All the rest doesn’t mean a thing.”

ON KEEPING WRITING HOURS:

“When I’m writing, it’s easy. When I get up the day when I’m going to start the actual writing, I can celebrate. Because that’s the day when everything is over. The day I put pen to paper, it’s all over. Because all the agonizing work is done before that. And to write it down is pure pleasure. And I write it fast. I will be as fast as I can write, because I’ve done the work already. Once in a while I’ll get huing up on some special thing, but very rarely. And I can write in any place, under any conditions. I’ve written in hotel rooms, I’ve written sitting on the sidewalk. I’ve got scenes written on the back on envelopes. I don’t need all that nonsense I’ve seen purported writers do. They have to have nice white paper and sharpened pencils. I don’t have any of that, I don’t care about any of that. I can write something in longhand and then thype the next few pages and write the next thing on the back of a laundry bill. The script can look like anything at all. It doesn’t mean anything to me. But once I’m writing, then the pleasure sets in. Writing is a complete pleasure for me. I love it. It’s a sensual, pleasurable, intellectual activity that’s fun. Thinking of it, planning it, plotting it, is agony. That’s hard.”

So, there you have it: Woody on writing. I’ll check in after the Woody Allen film festival to see if I have any new favorites.

I wasn’t pleased when, one year ago, I renewed my TIVO subscription to find out that it is now an annual contract, with a cancellation fee of $150 making it cheaper to keep it for the duration of the contract. Not sure if I blogged about getting TIVO and why last year at this time, but I was very clear that, having recently made my 12th monthly payment, I would be leaving TIVO behind.

The goal was to switch most of my video watching to a video iPod, with a simple mantra: Watch as much video as you want, as long as you’re on a machine at the gym doing it.

I had been eyeing the new 160GB iPod, which costs less than my current 40GB did when it represented the high-end way back when, because it would allow me to store everything on it without having to manage my content. But, mainly to watch video at the gym. I’d helped my friend Eriq install a lot of Apple stuff the previous day (two machines, an iPhone, and a wireless network), and was on the Apple site checking out the new iPods when he called to say he needed to go back to the Apple Store to upgrade his desktop machine and needed help carrying it.

I joked that it must be a sign I’m supposed to buy this new iPod, and told Eriq about my new “video at the gym” policy. He surprised me by saying he had a 80GB video iPod that he had received as a gift and I could have it, since he only needed the iPhone and not a big iPod.

So, since then, I’ve gotten skilled at converting video to iPod format and taking it to the gym. It takes a WHILE to convert the video, probably because my iMac is getting up in years and low in the memory/RAM department (and it is maxed out), but usually I just set stuff to convert when I go to bed and it is done when I wake up. so, just a sync to get the content on the iPod and then I take it with me to the gym.

Yesterday, I watched part one of the Turner Classic Movies biography on Marlon Brando, and part two will be today. I do 45 minutes of cardio on the elliptical and the “rest” on the exercise bikes, which is also a good balance, as the ellipticals get my heart up to cardio levels, and the bikes bring it down to a nice, slow fat-burning level.

The breakdown is that my home TV is mainly a DVD-watching thing, and the iPod will be for whatever shows I end up watching from TV and such. It also has some back-up content ready, too (Bill Maher and Ricky Gervais stand-up comedy specials, Fight Club, The Matrix… you know, the essentials).

The striking thing is how little it seems to matter that I’m watching things on this tiny 2-inch screen, and I’m finding that most of the stuff I like is more about the language than the visuals anyway (probably not a surprising insight). So, that is the balance, I can watch grey’s Anatomy and whatever else I want from the new TV season… just as long as I’m pedaling when I do it.

“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” — Robert Burns

I should be in my second hour of sleep. I finally got up since laying around trying to sleep is boring. My alarm is set for 5:20 a.m.

The only reasoning behind my not being tired is that I did too little on Sunday, the majority of which I just read Harry Potter 7. I intentionally didn’t have any tea, only water all day, didn’t want any chemicals in the system keeping me awake.

At around 8 or 9 (no clue which, all my clocks are taped over), I was nodding off reading Harry, but kept pushing through, but when I went to bed, apparently I had missed my window, sleep would be elusive now. I listened to a 75-minute interview with Larry David, expecting to nod off at some point, only to hear it end…

It’s sort of like when you have a flight in the morning, and know the alarm will be banging off early, only nothing can make you sleep.

I am very particular about schedule, which makes no sense. When I go out to clubs, I need to come home and unwind, whereas most people seem ready to pass out. I pad my schedule with hour-long increments now, as opposed to 15 minutes when I had a job. So, if it takes 30 minutes to get to the movies, and the movie starts in 40 minutes… too rushed, catch the next one.

It’s very strange.

But, seeing as how I don’t anticipate working on the novel at 6 a.m., as intended, I think the real goal is to stop blogging, and do the work on this side of the sleep cycle now.

So, au revoir.

Just popping in to write an update from Chicago. This is being written from the “Center on Halsted” gay community computer lab.

For those that don’t know, I’m here visiting my friend Emmanuel and seeing Chicago. I’m back home in SF on Tuesday morning.

So far, we toured the downtown area. Saw Millennium Park, went to the Field Museum, saw The Color Purple, did some high-end vegan fare at Green Zebra (though they could stand more vegan options), going to meet (some? one?) people at Chicago Diner for dinner in a bit. Emmanuel is at a concert and doesn’t like Chicago Diner, so we’ll sync up after his show tonight. In between all of the above events have been alcohol, pounding dance music, and boys.

Tomorrow is the last day here, so we’re trying to keep that one a bit more laid back. We’ll see if we succeed. I want to grab lunch at a veggie soul food place, but that’s already a decent train ride away.

So, just a quick update to fill both my readers in on my activities.

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.

… but they say, “No… no… no.”

Oddly enough, the position they have open is nearly the EXACT job I did for 5.5 years at Macromedia, but they said none of their openings was a “strong match.”

Go figure. heh.

If people are really concerned about Barry Bonds juicing up and breaking Hank Aaron’s home run record, umm, just walk his ass. Every game. 4 Balls. Walk. 4 Balls. Walk. Until he leaves baseball… I’m not saying he ever juiced, lots of men go from a size 10.5 to 13 shoe as an adult. But this sort of thing taints the purity of the… oh wait, I don’t care about baseball.

So, been replying to a lot of personal ads on Craigslist (and if any of you found this site: hello!). My take so far is that aside from the over-specific ones, the vast majority are too similar. If everyone was able to line up and date purely based on what we do with ourselves in our free time, there would apparently be a lot more couples out there.

Eating out. Cooking. Working out. Yoga. Movies. Music. Dancing. Exploring the neighborhoods. Going to the beach.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing, and I guess you could whittle the list down a bit if a lot of those don’t line up and the picture didn’t do much for you, but once you meet, it’s not like you have a lot of specific stuff that intersects. “So, you like restaurants, huh?”

Not saying I have any intention of stopping, but one thing I have sort of noticed:

Very few people read.

And I guess that sort of reminds me of the line in Terence McNally’s “Love! Valour! Compassion!” when one of the house guests says: “I’m puzzled. What kind of statement about his work do you think a choreographer is making by living with a blind person?”

I mean, I don’t know that I need a voracious book reader. Even someone who mainly reads non-fiction (as most of the world does these days) would be OK. But it seems like there needs to be some connection on that level, no?

I mean, my mother and stepfather seem to have few overlapping interests. They rarely read the same books, want to see the same movies, watch TV together, but beyond all that, there is enough shared to keep it going.

So, am I making too much of my bad batting average finding readers here? Should I be going to the gay book group every month, if that’s a big thing? Should it even be a big thing? Does any of that sort of overlap even matter? I rarely care what sort of career they have, as long as they are happy with it and such. So, why do they need to line up with what I do?

Anyway, just been tossing that around, figured I’d toss it up here.