I'm slowly catching up on my unread NEWSWEEK magazines.  I got very behind while doing other things.  Now that I'm taking the time to notice things, I can't believe how much it seems like they tried to kill the magazine.

As a matter of fact, I can't remember an issue I haven't shaken my head at, wondering the same thing.  This is not the magazine you remembered reading just ten years ago.  This is a whole new level of incompetence.

But it gets worse.  I was reading the last print issue, from the end of December.  (I said I was very behind in my reading) when I noticed five pages missing.  It's probably four, but the page numbers jumped from 38 to 43.  Crazy!  I contacted customer service and... well, you know how to tell if a company knows it's going under from the inside.

It's where the employees hide from complaints.  No response, no messages, no nothing.  Seriously, it's been almost a week. 

I canceled the remainder of my subscription.  Even if they couldn't fix it (being so far out of print), they could have at least acknowledged me.  I paid for a print subscription, they changed to digital.  It was annoying me anyway.

Good riddance NEWSWEEK,

- Jim

I'm awake because I am sick.  Don't worry, nothing serious - A bad cold or a mild flu.  Surprisingly, it hasn't slowed me down much.  I'm sleeping more, or trying to, but I've been using the remaining waking hours more efficiently. 

I've made such statements before, I know.

The truth is that work is what I make of it.  It's structured activities rather than the random stuff I would otherwise do.  Reading becomes work when I feel I have to do it, for whatever reason.  The reading in between those sessions is still considered free time however.

I feel like I've explained this before.

Anyway, because I'm interested in a lot of things and because I'm a human who can't prioritize to save my life, I am perpetually behind.  Reading more merely means I want to read more. 

Hmm... scratch that analogy - watching enough television only makes me want to gouge my eyes out.  It's true that I can watch television for a while.  I watched Game of Thrones in a little more than two weeks.  However, when combined with the stuff I record on my DVR, it often meant three or more hours of television a day for quite a while.  I'm sure that it sounds like fun for most people, but for me, it really began to be like work.  Since I finished watching the series a week ago, I think I've watched one show on my own and my nephew and nieces and I watched a couple cartoons the other days.  Seriously.

Anyway, I've been looking at the growing piles of stuff I've meant to do for years with growing disgust.  I've finally started working on those nearly exclusively.  It took years to get like this and it will take years to fix it, but this is how it's going to be for a while.  Mostly. 

Truth be told, as I've said before, I will never truly catch up.  There will always be something I want to do, just around the corner, over the hill, or beyond my reach.  There will always be something to read, something to watch, something to learn.  Still, I'd like to get that list a little more current than it is now.

- Jim

It's been longer than I thought it would be.  My Nephews and Nieces are still staying with us and because they're kids, I spend less time on my computer than I used to.  Don't worry, there's nothing wrong, except perhaps that they play too many computer games.

I continue to work on the whole concept of "catching up", which is flawed from the very conception.  Still, it keeps me busy.  My knee has been giving me more trouble of late, so I have more time to watch shows I haven't watched, movies I haven't seen, and read books I haven't read. 

Aside from that, everything is pretty good. 

- Jim

This is probably painfully obvious, but I can manage to fill my days with whatever I have at hand.  I haven't been bored in a long time, unless I'm specifically waiting for something, like a doctor's appointment, and am unable to do the things I normally do.  As a result, I can suddenly metaphorically look up and realize that six months have passed or six years.  Time doesn't mean much when I'm in my own world doing my own thing.

It's been even more like that over the past few years.  After the so-called "Year of Hell", life stopped.  Work, such as it was, was little more than a collection of tasks I set for myself.  Yeah, I distantly noted the passing of days and months and years, but only in relation to those tasks I've previously mentioned.  I could keep going like this until I died - the list of movies, books, writings, ideas, thoughts, magazines, blah blah blah are growing exponentially.  I suppose that in some way that growing list is something to be proud of. 

But it's not.

I'm not going to pretend that I have suddenly become much more industrious.  I am busy in my own way, doing my own thing.  That's different though, and may be related to OCD.  It certainly feels that way.  Still, there have been marked improvements in the way I handle new tasks and the way I prioritize.  Some of this began a few months ago.  Some of it began over the last few days.

Life is too short.  There is so much I want to do, so much I've missed while being in my own world.  Tomorrow may not come, so it's up to today to do what I can.

But life is also painful.  In some ways, I suppose it might be another way of procrastinating.  I don't have to deal with those thoughts if I'm buried in mindless work.  But I do dwell on those thoughts because many of the tasks I set for myself are mindless.  It's a trap I've made for myself. 

I don't know.  I probably not making any sense right now.

- Jim

One of the advantages of my position here is that if things get out of hand for me, life can stop.  No, not in that way, but seriously - I have all the time in the world to dwell on anything I so desire.  Of course, that leaves the obvious disadvantage - I have all the time in the world to dwell on anything I so desire.  It can be both a comfort and a blessing to deal with things at one's own pace.

Well, it is what it is.  I have to make do with what I have.  It's not as bad as it could be, but the process is not yet entirely complete.  Still, things are going back to normal.  Such as normal is. 

- Jim

This is probably completely obvious, but I don't deal well with death, especially the death of my peers.  Lately however, it seems as if people I'm distantly connected with, more or less, are dying all the time.  I'm sure there's a lesson there, but my mood is too dark to grasp it.

Ah well.  I'll be fine in a few days.  This just seemed more random than most.  Life may be like that, but I don't have to like it.

- Jim

Sorry about that last post.  My nephew came in to talk to me and I don't want to worry anyone.  The problems I have are serious, but not serious enough to worry a little kid. 

Anyway, I've been keeping busy with research and writing.  The research, of course, isn't wholly relevant to the writing itself, but I find ideas in the weirdest of places.  I'm still technically doing some catchup from the internet thing from last month as well.  It's a process that will technically never be finished, but the pile should shrink over time.  I hope.

Anyway, I've got to go.

- Jim

I took a big break from everything for a couple days.  Suddenly, my health became a big issue.  I don't know the whole story, but that's sometimes the way things are.  Honestly, I have no particular fear of death, but I have no wish to begin dying.  Too often, the process is protracted and painful.

Will write more soon,

- Jim

Yeah, I know I haven't written in a couple days.  I seem to have picked up one of the bugs that have floating around lately.  However, as far as being sick goes, this is pretty good.  A headache that comes and goes and body aches.  My stomach isn't right either, but could be worse.  So, I guess I'm lucky.

I finished watching my Transformers:  Complete Series DVD collection.  Yeah, I know.  It's been three years.  But it was bugging me, so I've been working on it lately.  The fact that my nephew has been staying at the house helped too.

Aside from that, there isn't much to talk about. 

- Jim

So I'm back, more or less.  As I said before, I was never really as away as I could have been, though I was never really online as much as I usually am or needed to be.  There's a period of catching up to do and I'm doing it as best I can.

It'll take time.  I'm interested in all sorts of things and there never really is any end to it.  "Catching up" is technically impossible, but being current probably is a bit more realistic.

- Jim

Truth be told, I was never really away.  Due to circumstances mostly out of my control, my internet presence became unreliable.  In my opinion, it became easier to just assume I couldn't post than to post during the random occasions when I could.  The internet was both more and less reliable than I'd planned, but neither was enough to change my plans for what I could do. 

But that's over.  I'm back and everything is working normally, or as normally as such things work in my world. 

While I was gone, work continued.  I'd like to think that I did more work in the last two months than I did for the previous twelve, but it's hard to tell.  Like writing, you can write a hundred pages and then save only two.  I played less games than I usually did and actually did things I'd been planning to do for years.  That's pretty good for me.

Anyway, I look forward to posting more.

- Jim

I'm a little late in posting this, but I've had it done for several days now.  My internet connection just isn't good enough to post something like this.

A couple notes first.  The list has been slightly edited for public use.  There are, for example, specific bills that need to get paid on the list that have been truncated to "Bills".  As far as the books go, I'm at the point where the next step is to finish them off and send them to the publisher.  I would like to see them published, of course, but at the point I send them off, they're out of my hands.

The rest are more in the line of my usual yearly To-Do lists.  I've tried to concentrate on the important stuff instead of just adding stuff at the bottom.  Still, it's likely that I won't finish everything on the list.  Writing, for example, has taken far longer than I have ever thought it would.  Still, I want to make an honest effort here.


2013 To-Do List

1) Bills
2) Bills
3) Send book to publisher
4) Send book to publisher
5)  R. A Game of Thrones
6)  R. A Clash of Kings
7)  R. A Storm of Swords
8)  R. A Feast of Crows
9)  R. A Dance of Dragons
10)  R. Tolkien and the Great War.
11)  R. Popul Vuh
12)  R. Flowers for Algernon
13)  Lose weight
14)  Beat StarCraft
15)  Beat Twisted Metal:  Black
16)  Beat Final Fantasy 7
17)  W. ThunderCats (80's Cartoon Series)
18)  W. Star Trek:  DS9 series
19)  W. Star Trek:  Voyager series
20)  R. Legacy of Ashes
21)  R. Eagle and the Sun
22)  R. The Stand (Revised and Uncut)
23)  Catch up on current periodicals
24)  R. Don't eat this book
25)  Buy Discovery Magazine Archive DVD
26)  R. Gamemaster Law (Rolemaster)
27)  R. Arcane Companion
28)  W. Fraggle Rock DVD collection   (Finished 1/5/2013)
29)  W. Heat DVD set
30)  W. Back to the Future DVD set 
31)  W. The Stand DVD
32)  W. Transformers DVD Set


One final note, as my Sister's kids are still staying at the house, it becomes easier to watch things like Fraggle Rock and Transformers.  I got the Fraggle Rock DVDs done already because they were on Christmas break.  When they come home from school, I tend to work on the Transformers stuff.

- Jim

I'm a news kind of guy.  During my early post-college years, I had subscriptions to Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, and Discover magazine.  As the internet destroys such things, my collection keeps dwindling.  I just cancelled my Newsweek subscription today.

Funny thing, they seemed to have anticipated this when they announced the switch to digital.  Their phone lines were swamped, their email addresses were closed, and their website changed so that you couldn't cancel online.  Convenient, huh?

Well, hopefully I thwarted them.  It may only have been a few dollars at this point in my subscription, but at least they're not getting them.

Now I just have to finish reading the ones sitting around here.

- Jim

First of all, Merry Christmas Eve!  I don't know if I'll be able to post again before then, so just in case I miss it, Merry Christmas as well. 

Way back... several months ago, I decided I was too far behind to get everything done by the time I wanted it.  That's not really all that surprising.  I don't schedule for patience, and as I've said many times before, I'm interested in everything.  On my work table sits a pile of index cards with sixty or so books I want to check out of the library.  I have twenty or so books sitting around my desk that I want to read.  Then there's the book list I have online of those I want to buy.  Add in the books I've collected and downloaded in digital form and I could stay busy even if I lived for a thousand years.  Well, maybe not.  It might only be like six hundred. 

Well, I've done what I could with the annoying distractions I suffer.  I'm also working harder than ever during the last days of the year.  It's always been like that.  Nothing new there.  I bite off more than I can chew, and then I spend the rest of time in a futile rush to catch up.

That being said, it's time to start working on the Master Yearly To-Do List, formerly known as my New Year's Resolutions.  I've got a preliminary rough draft and am working on adding things to it. It'll look familiar; there's a lot of stuff from last year.  And the year before.  And the year before.  And so on. 

A couple things I want to mention though.  Unlike previous years where the beginning is meant to catch up on all the stuff I didn't do last year, I'm going to work on new stuff.  Well, it's not new.  I've always meant to write, but that task will no longer be subordinate to anything else.  If it's on the list and it's not writing, then it's secondary, meant to either fill the cracks when I can't write or meant to be after I finish writing.  I will send a book to a publisher this year.  I'm close enough, I think, to make that promise.

There will actually be a couple days when I won't write, in the beginning of the year.  I'm going to wait until my Sister's kids all go back to school after their Christmas break.  I'm motivated, but I'm not crazy.   It's hard enough to just read or watch movies with them around.  As a side note, if I ever win the lottery or come into insane amounts of money, the first think I'm going to do is build a cork study. 

- Jim

Lots has happened, though little in the way of blog-material.  My Sister and her family moved back in with us after having money problems.  It makes finding time to work more challenging, but it's nice to have the kids around during the Christmas season.

I'm finishing up what I can for the end of the year and continuing to work on other things.  I've found new reason to write and new motivation to finish.  I'd like to believe that's enough, but I'll be honest in admitting that I'm mostly talk in this regard.

In any case, I'm still alive, still mostly... more or less, away from the internet.

- Jim

It's been nearly a week since I wrote last.  Nothing major has happened really.  My computer chair finally died.  Not too surprising, since I spend so much time in it while I'm doing the things I do that I try to call "work" with a straight face.  It'll be a week before the new one gets here.  In the meantime, I have a chair that is hard on my knee, which is why I don't otherwise use it. 

That's not too bad though.  As I mentioned in my last post, this is the time of year I rush to finish all the stuff I can.  Well, this year I'm rushing to try and finish stuff that has been lingering on various to-do lists for multiple years.  Mostly reading and DVDs really.  There's no way to finish everything I'd like to finish, but I'm trying. 

Anyway, it's still going and it's going pretty steadily overall. 

- Jim

I'm sure no one was losing sleep over this, but I figured I'd let people know.  If you've been keeping track at all of the Seti@home numbers on the right of this blog, you'd have seen that my progress has essentially stopped and my recent credit has plummeted.  Being off the internet will do that.  I'm sorta on the internet now, in a very limited way, so the numbers should improve eventually.  Unfortunately, there was some kind of technical glitch at the Seti@home headquarters, and they've temporarily shut down. 

Yeah, even I wasn't real worried about it, but I haven't posted in a few days and I figured I needed more posts that weren't simply saying that I was still alive.

Just for the record, I am.  Still alive, I mean.

Anyway, I've been keeping busy.  The end of the year usually means me pulling out my New Year's Resolution List/To-Do List and trying desperately to catch up and finish anything and everything I can.  And so I have.  In that way, the internet thing has been a bit of a boon.

Anyway, hope to have better news soon.

 - Jim

Just a short note, I'm not dead.  I'm mostly offline for the immediate forseeable future.  That may change eventually, but probably not for a while.  In the meantime, I hope everyone had an enjoyable Thanksgiving and I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas, regardless of whether I'm online to wish it again.

Take care,
Jim

At the risk of sounding bitter, it's not like I don't try.  I'm not all that far away from making things right, but there you go.  Five hundred dollars would fix the immediate.  So close, yet so not close.

Ah well.  Nothing I can do about it now.

- Jim

So, I was walking in to the use the computer and I hit my toe on a large plastic file box.  I have 10 toes, and the only one I seem to hit is the injured one.  Well, it's damaged again, though not as badly as it originally was, I think.  Anyway, it's been twenty-two hours or something, so it is a real injury though.  Dammit.

Circumstances have become more imminent, so I will be taking a break from the internet for a while.  No worries, unless you read my name in the paper, I suppose.  I imagine I'll kill myself eventually, even if I do it one toe injury at a time.  But really, I don't feel any signs of approaching mortality, so I think I'm good.

Take care,

- Jim