Tuesday June 30

Social networking....

I often wonder how good this whole social networking thing has been for me. I have the whole shebang, myspacefacebooktwitter. A good way to keep track with my friends, but my worst fears have come true, they have become an obsession. I haven't always had them and as I recall, I was much happier w/o them.

I'm not quitting social networking, but as part of my bigger life plan, I plan to phase out the social networking. First up, is the one I go to considerably less than I used to, myspace.

July Reading List

After two months w/o it, I decided to bring back the reading list for July:

Young Stalin by Simon Montefiore

I Survived Cancer But Never Won the Tour de France by Jim Chastain

Sunday June 28

I think I'm having a motivation problem...

Lately, particularly at work, I'm starting to make mistakes that I had never made before. I got written up the other day for selling something below cost, I was critiqued for missing some things in the magazine rack at closing the other day and last night, some parts of my job were a little less than stellar.

It's not that I don't want to do well, I just wonder if my brain is functioning at full capacity. Generally speaking, it's not in my nature to half-ass things, even when I don't think they are particularly important, so I find these recent slips a little disturbing. Like my ability to pay attention to detail has gone totally out the window.

I don't think it's deliberate, but perhaps deep down I know that 90% of the stuff I do at Hastings doesn't matter. Some part of my brain, deep, deep down, is causing parts of my body to fail at the most basic of tasks.

I guess it's not surprising that it would eventually happen to a big picture guy like myself.

Wednesday June 24

I had another good day today. I had my doctor's appointment and, as expected, he said my blood work and CAT scan were good and that I'm still cancer free. What I didn't expect, however, was the bumping of my follow-up schedule from every 3 months to every 6 months. I didn't think that would happen for at least one more cycle.

I was kind of in a funk for a while, but things are started to happen again. Things are starting to go well again. If only it ever stayed that way...

Tuesday June 23

I don't know if I've ever had a day take such a complete 180 degree turn. I woke up in one of the shittiest moods I've ever been in. I've had a fairly brutal few days at work and frankly, I sometimes think too much is expected of us lowly Hastings employees. My close also got criticized a bit, which I happen to take a bit personally. I have very thin skin. I need to work on that. My body was also just achy. From what, I'm not sure.

At around 1130, however, I got the strangest text message that I've ever gotten, from a long lost old friend whom I thought had forgotten me. There's a very long back story here, and most of the people reading this blog know who I'm talking about, so I won't re-hash it, but suffice to say I was shocked. She wanted to have lunch. I went, and it was actually really great. We got caught up and the door was left open for a re-building of the relationship.

I know now what I need to expect from this friendship. Whatever we had, whatever we were, is all in the past and I would be more than happy just to be her friend. Never have too many of those, right?

Monday June 22

You know what grinds my gears?

People who don't understand the book business and then take the frustration stemming from that ignorance out on a lowly retail employee. We first had the book signing on Saturday which was a total fiasco since the author didn't seem to understand that corporate and the publishers are the ones who mark-up the prices, not me. You also aren't going to be able to get 20 bucks for crappy Kinko's produced binder full of genealogy garbage.. to do that, we'd have to price it at well over 30 bucks and I don't see why anybody would pay more than 10 bucks for it, to be honest.

Then there is the issue with the paperbacks... No, the paperbacks do not come out as the same time as the hardback. It could take as long as a year for that to happen if the book is popular. They do it for the same reason you are asking, because if they put the paperback out at the same time, everybody would buy that one and they wouldn't make nearly as much off of it. Is it somehow wrong for the book business to be concerned with the bottom line? Why? They make a product that people want and, especially in your case, isn't an absolute necessity. Why shouldn't they be able to make money off of it?

Seriously...

Saturday June 20

It's really a bad habit to go a whole week w/o writing something in the blog. Like my brother just said about studying for the PCAT, miss once and it just becomes easier and easier to skip all the time. Then, eventually, you quit altogether. The blogs I've tried to maintain are really a great metaphor for my life, start something w/ grandiouse intentions only to eventually get bored with it and quit. It always happens exactly the same way; I start out great, eventually slow, skip a few times here and there, but then eventually quit. Wonderful eh? I'm actually surprised I have been able to maintain this blog for as long as I have.

But then again, unlike some of the other things I've started, the blog is about something. It's about my post-cancer life and whatever comes P.C. (post cancer). Having purpose is important. If you don't really know where you are going with a project like this, it's easy to get discouraged and quit.

But that is a great segue into what I really wanted to say... on my myspace blog, I set out a list of certain goals I had wanted to achieve this summer. Most of it is stupid stuff, a movies list, a reading list, but other stuff is more important, like a weight goal. This stuff may not be meaningful in the strictiest sense, but in a way it is, it gives me a certain measure of accomplishment. It gives me a way to look back on this otherwise idle summer and say to myself, at least I did something, regardless of how important.

But so far, the list has been an epic fail. May was a pretty good month for it, but I don't think I've crossed anything off of it in June. I really need to hunker down and renew my efforts to get this list done. I may even bring back the monthly reading list idea I tinkered with in April, but never really followed through on...

More on this later...