Why are you doing this again?

Yes, I know, I do this every few months. I spent six years or so writing five nights a week and while I can't say that I actually built up a readership I at least had people and more than a few robots who would glance at the words I wrote and occassionally write a comment on either my brilliant insight or how they wanted to kick my ass because I described their band as "a downgrade from the background music that they were playing before they took the stage." Then, a little over two years ago I simultaneously got married, switched jobs, moved and found myself living in one part of the country, working in another and spending much of my life in the fourth row, window seat of Southwest flights.

(Seriously, that is the seat I always take. Fourth row is the first row where the chairs are as wide as they get, I like the window because it is easier for me to sleep and the fact that I know all of this just shows I fly way too much.)

So basically I've spent the past two years doing everything possible to, as Patterson Hood of the Drive By Truckers elegantly put it, keep it in between the ditches. Everything in my life had a higher priority than my writing and given I was screwing up my non-writing priorities royally I just couldn't carve out the thrity minutes a night I needed to write. Sadly, those minutes were usually wasted online but that was just another of the many mistakes that I've made. Again, I'm just happy I kept it in between the ditches, barely.

But a few weeks ago I thought about the fact that I am turning forty in less than four months (start shopping today) and thinking about what I am doing about it and where my focus is. It is not a case of mid life crisis yet but I did some reflection on what it is that I want to focus my attention on. I also thought about what I have been doing in my life, how much I have grown over the past few years and about all the stories that I wanted to tell. Everything just came back to ideas that I wanted to write down and share and how just sitting at a keyboard and letting my thoughts out helps relieve my anxiety. Hence, back to blogging.

Don't know if this is going to be good or not. Not sure if anyone is going to bother to read it. I'll probably put some effort into promoting it and I might finally break down and get on the twitter machine though given that I am someone who still uses an AOL email account I don't think that I will ever be cool enough for Twitter. I just want to see if I can grab those thirty minutes a day, look at a blank screen and try to use that time to make some sense of the world. Explain what I want to do in the second half of my life. As scary as those words sound that is where I am. It is going to be quite the journey.

(Oh, and the reviews of Gatsby seem to have proven my fears right. Though they say Dicaprio gets the sliminess of Gatsby right. So that is a plus.)

Tiger mothers and other thoughts

Have a few more random notes for the night.

1) I’ve already achieved one of my New Year’s resolutions. Last Sunday this blog received over 200 hits completely shattering my goal of breaking 100. For the record, I was not one of those hits as I took the entire day off from the blog. I assume this means that I was linked to by something though I have no real clue what it could possibly be. Still, great to know that I have readers out there.

2) Here is one of those strange stats I found out while trying to figure out how I go that much traffic. If you use google this site is one of the top links if you a) search for “strawberry shortcake’s enemy” or b) images of Rolos candy. I have no idea why either is the case but I get a surprising amount of traffic from it.

3) I also did find proof that I am still listed as a blogger who supports Funkhouser for mayor of Kansas City and I guess that I will now officially state that I am fully behind keeping the Funk in Kansas City. No town is in more desperate need of funk than KC. Hey, he brought the Chiefs a home playoff game. What more could you want? Plowed streets? A sports arena that actually showcases, you know, sports of some kind?

4) I am glad to see that the Biggest Loser is now letting us know a little more about the level of workouts that the contestants are doing and how we might measure up. As in last night I was slightly slower doing my 5K on a treadmill than two morbidly obese people running a tag team 5K on a treadmill. I’m not sure what my response to that should be. I guess I am roughly as fit as two really fat people put together. That doesn’t sound nearly as impressive as I would like.

5) There is a lot of press around that Tiger Mother book that basically states that the proper way to raise a child is by forcing them to be successful at everything, do not have them participate in sports, and grow up friendless which, now that I think about it, sounds surprisingly like my childhood. Actually, I’m pretty appalled by what I’ve read in the media about the parenting technique because it just sounds like the perfect way to have a kid burn out at 16. I actually wasn’t pressured into being the top student at the expense of everything else. It just happened to be the way I am and I found that my competitive streak was better suited for academics than sports. My parents didn’t push me in any way; they were amazingly supportive.

The reason I say this burns kids out is something I learned in electrical engineering and saw a ton of people suffer from in my MBA program, which is the higher the level of education you go the more likely you are to become average. When I entered EE I went from being one of the smartest people around to being pretty typical. Some classes I was above average, some I was below. That is a huge shot to your ego and not everyone can adjust to it. I was prepared for it in grad school but others weren’t. It is amazing to sit in a room filled with brilliant people during orientation and realize that from this moment on half the people here are below average.

The other thing, and a few commentators have brought this out, is that this whole parenting method is presented as a Chinese thing when in reality it is simply an immigrant thing. All immigrant groups place a focus on their children becoming successful and academics is the easiest path to success. The pressure to do your best is not new to society at all. I was raised to understand that school was important, that college was not expected but required and that the biggest thing at the end of the day is not how well you did but rather that you did your very best. If I was raised any other way I don’t think I would have turned out nearly as well.

Six Years and Counting!!!!

It's my birthday! I'm a ninja! It's my birthday!

(I might as well immediately state that is a Sifl and Olly reference because no one is going to get it. To be honest, no one is going to understand what I mean by "Sifl and Olly" either. Sigh.)

Yes friends of the blogosphere tonight marks the six year anniversary of the launch of Battling the Current. I am not making this up; you could peruse all of my past entries by searching the archives on the right column going back to my November 10, 2004 post where I try to explain what a blog is to people. It's been an amazing ride. Let's review some stats.

Number of posts: 1,483

Number of words written: If I take a low estimate and say I average 500 words a post that would equate to 741,500 words. If I guess 600 words a post it equals 889,800 words. I am somewhere in that range. At 60,000 words for a novel that means I have written the equivalent of between 12 and 15 books over the past six years. Yet I still cannot finish my novel. Astounding.

Country that I am most amazed that I get page hits from: Iran. Every year I get a few hits from Iran. I always imagine that this results in some poor censor having to check out this site and try to figure out precisely why I have such an interest in Lindsay Lohan.

Country where I have suddenly become popular: Brazil. Over the past month almost 4 % of the people who read the blog came from Brazil and if you look at the map they are spread across the entire country. I've had nearly as many views from Indonesia. Anyone who wishes to explain this to me I would love to know why.

Number of laptops used: Three. Julie (still operational and the founding computer of the blog), Natalie (wonderful though tempremental machine whose screen imploded on me) and Beth (who I just had diagnosed as suffering a motherboard failure.) I'll be getting a fourth, name to be determined, in the near future. And as I said before I will not name a laptop Lindsay because that would just doom the machine to virus infections.

Number of times I was physically threatened in the comments: Once when I said about a singer songwriter in Lawrence that "the show improved when he broke a guitar string because at least now he had a reason for sucking so badly." That did not go over with the fans.

Bands where my blog has been promoted on the website / primary fan page: Tift Merritt, The Polyphonic Spree and The Frames. The last one is still probably my proudest moment and easily gained me the most traffic. They are my favorite band and people loved the reason I posted the video.

Television shows on the air in November 2004: Joey, My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss, Method and Red, The OC

Number of CDs released under the Battling the Current label: Three. I should probably start that up again. People just don't make enough mixtapes.

Distance I must keep between myself and My Beloved Lindsay at all times: 500 yards thanks to a rather humorless judge.


All in all it has been a rather amazing run. I never anticipated writing like this for six years but then again I never imagined anyone reading it either. And the fact is I have gotten comments and readership and even followers (or at least that is what Blogger calls them) so in my mind this has been a pretty successful venture. I know that the past year or so has seen a decline in the amount of posts mainly due to the fact that my schedule is not as constant as it once was but I still love getting to sit down at night and just write whatever I feel like. It really is a highlight of my day.

I still don't know when or if I'll ever stop this site. I'm still trying to figure out its new tone as it was started as a way for me to vent about my failings in my search for my dream girl and now I've, well, now I'm getting ready to marry her. But I have a feeling that just means that my adventures won't stop; they are just going to change shape. It's been a fun ride so far and I doubt it is going to stop anytime soon.

Just how popular am I online?

I’ve been writing a lot recently about the idea of privacy in the internet age and just how once you open yourself to the internet the entire world knows everything about you. Since I just received a new set of yearly visitor stats on my blog I thought that it would be neat to examine them. Remember, I have never really promoted my blog outside of people I know. Even that has been low key (except for those of you who haven’t blocked me on the Facebook feed.) Here are the stats.

· I had 5,388 unique visitors last year or an average of 14.8 readers a day. This is down from the 17.6 readers a day I averaged the year before primarily due to the fact that I posted a lot less and didn’t get linked to from the Frames fan blog like I did in January 2009. The drop bums me out but life got in the way of writing this year
· The breakout of visitors by country is as follows: US: 83.9%, United Kingdom: 4.1%, Canada: 2.8%, Germany: 1.1%, Australia: 0.6%, Norway: 0.5%, Spain: 0.4%, Brazil: 0.4%, Rest of the World: 6.2%. For the record, I don’t know anyone in Norway and can’t recall if any of my friends are living in the UK at the moment.
· So who is in the rest of the world? Such fascinating places as South Africa, Latvia, Cyprus, United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Ghana, Belize, Malawi, Iran, Bahrain, and Guernsey. Do you know where Guernsey is? It is a channel island between England and France with a population of 65,573 people. One of them visited my blog.
· Google has let me know what search term has brought the most people to my blog. That term? “Strawberry shortcake enemy”. I am the first link on Google for that search and it links to a post of mine that doesn’t even answer the question. It’s the Peculiar Purple Pie Man by the way.
So when you put your life story online just know this is how far it can travel.

There has never been a better metaphor for life

I have an announcement for the proud residents of Berwyn, the rather roguish inhabitants of Cicero, the bland denizens of North Riverside and the arrogant pricks who live in Brookfield. Dustin Shuler, the man who created the Spindle, has passed away. Yes, even though our iconic cars on a spike that sat in the parking lot of the strip mall that you never went to other than to go to the Lens Crafters was taken down several years ago we should still remember the man who provided us with the one landmark of Berwyn that people actually remember. As in I have met people from around the world and when they ask me where I grew up I go, “Did you see the movie Wayne’s World? Remember the cars on the spike while they are singing Bohemian Rhapsody? That is my hometown.” As silly as it is people will remember it forever.

(By the way, were there ever any stores in that shopping center that anyone ever went to? I know some of my old cohorts read this. There was the Service Merchandise back when that was still a store and a Coconuts music store and a rather shady Walgreens but otherwise what did we actually buy there? I truly can’t remember.)

Switching gears a little most of you know that I work on a trading floor which provides me with an excuse to look at televisions all day because we need to be kept abreast of the market conditions. Or the local news if someone doesn’t change the channel in the morning (I’m not trusted with the remote for good reason.) Anyway, at lunch we had the local news on and they were heavily promoting an in studio performance by the Crash Test Dummies which obviously made me go, “Oh my god, those guys are still around?” They even showed a video by the band as part of a commercial outro and it had to be from the one video they made that wasn’t their hit song. Apparently they have just released a new album and the lead singer has cut his hair. I’m still trying to figure out how a lunch broadcast in Philadelphia acts as if they pulled off the biggest coup in all time by booking the Crash Test Dummies.

(That said, I just saw that Toad the Wet Sprocket is playing nearby in a few weeks and I’m really thinking of going. I actually had a ticket to see them in KC a few years ago and had to skip to see another show. Still better than going to see Queensryche, a show where they could have saved us all two hours by getting on stage, playing Silent Lucidity, and then have all of us slowly head towards the exits.)

One last note that some people might find interesting. A few days ago I posted my 1,400th blog entry and have been doing this for five and a half years. If you assume 600 words a post that is 840,000 words in that time span, which is rather mind boggling. I know that my writing schedule has been a bit wonky the past few months for reasons that I won’t bother getting into but I am really going to try to keep this going. I seriously never expected it to last this long nor find out that someone in Malawi has read something I wrote. And at the end of the day writing is my therapy and my release and right now I need that more than ever.

Pi Day Parade!!!

I need to find out who I can complain to about the following. By having Daylight Savings Time start today I lost one hour of my favorite day of the year. I mean, who the hell steals one hour away from Pi Day? It is the most wonderful time of the year. There are so many days that could use one less hour, like any random Tuesday in February, but do you have to take it from Pi Day? That is one less hour spent drawing circles and it made my attempt at reciting the most digits of Pi on Pi Day completely moot.

(I’ll aim for the record in 2015. You know, because it will be 3/14/15….)

Yeah, I know that I missed a few more posts last week. Life took a few shots at me and I had to deal with those over writing. Actually, that isn’t really accurate. Kim was the one who had a string of bad luck including a hospital stay and while she is perfectly fine now and is tough as nails when it comes to anything health related I was a nervous wreck made worse by the long distance nature of our relationship. It is bad enough when someone you love is in the hospital; the fact that you can’t be there with them if even just to be there is really tough. I’m just glad that she is home safe and sound.

That said, I am getting sick of my lack of posting. I know that I’ve needed a bit of a break from writing, which is why I’ve taken some days off recently, but the fact is this blog is an outlet that I need to keep going. There is a reason why I’ve been doing this for over five years now; writing is my release. It keeps me from remaining stuck in the land of numbers as my job is basically one big spreadsheet. I get to keep up my dream of considering myself to be a professional writer (all I need to do is finally get someone to pay me for doing something that I gladly do for free.) And I get to find that my writing is being read by people across the world. But by not writing as often, and not as well, I’m not really achieving those goals.

So I am going to redouble my efforts at being creative once more. It’s not going to be easy as between work and real life my schedule has become jam packed but I know that I can do it. Plus, I just need a bit of a challenge right now. Increasing my readership is a fun one that I can measure. Expect to see a few changes to the format and a return of some old favorites. Time to make this space a must see attraction once again.

Best of 120 Minutes: Speaking of an old favorite I am returning to posting of music videos. Tonight I am going to feature someone who goes unacknowledged when we speak of Gen X and that is Dave Grohl, which is amazing because between Nirvana and Foo Fighters he may be the most successful rocker of my generation. Even more remarkable, I’ve never heard anyone offer any negative criticism to his music. The songs are just damn good and I’ll have to admit every time I fly I think of this video.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Mekons “Journey to the End of the Night”
2) The Frames “The Cost”
3) The Jayhawks “Hollywood Town Hall”
4) Drive By Truckers “Decoration Day”
5) Various Artists “Saturday Morning Cartoons Greatest Hits”

And, because I forgot to post it, the five random CDs for last week:
1) Jump, Little Children “The Early Years, Volume 1”
2) Cathy Richardson “Live at Park West”
3) Liz Phair “Juvenalia”
4) The Corn Sisters “The Other Women”
5) Nina Simone “Live at Village Gate”

Oscar, Oscar

One of my daily tasks at work is to hit the blog so that I can look at my statistics on how many people visited the site the previous day. It is one of those thirty second breaks from spreadsheets that I enjoy. Today I clicked on my bookmark for this page and saw that the corporate web filter had blocked it and listed it under the category “sex.”

Ok, not only have I read everything on this site I have written every word of it. I have no idea how in the world they decided it fit that category. “Nonsensical ramblings written in improper English” sure but the last thing that I would consider this place to be is adult content. Immature is more like it. (Later in the day I wasn’t blocked so I don’t know quite what was going on.)

Anyway, I didn’t live blog the Oscars last night because I couldn’t bring myself to stay up past midnight but I have some comments on the proceedings. Here they are

1) Last night marked the first time that I ever cared when someone mentioned who they were wearing because Meryl Streep was wearing Chris March. Yes, the guy from Project Runway who was famous for making drag queen outfits and won a competition to make an outfit for a WWE diva. Obviously he and Meryl are a perfect combination. He was easily one of the most talented, funniest and coolest people ever to appear on that show so I am happy to see him get a big break.

2) Whoever decided to let Kathy Ireland be a red carpet interviewer deserves to be fired out of a cannon. There is a reason why she never had a career outside of appearing in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issues. The woman simply cannot speak.

3) Now I am not one to ever question having Neil Patrick Harris appear in anything. In fact, I would put him on every show if I could. But wasn’t it just a little odd to have him be the first person on stage singing a song about the fact that there were two hosts? No fault of NPH there because he went for it with gusto and I love the fact that it cements him as a top tier personality but there seemed to be no point of it.

4) Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were surprisingly unfunny. The monologue went on much too long and had a few too many dead spots. The problem with two hosts is unless they are a comedy team it doesn’t really make sense to do a monologue. They had no timing with regards to passing jokes on to one another and it seemed to be a poor showing by two incredibly talented people.

5) How do you have Michael Jackson in the “applaud for dead people” segment but not Farrah Fawcett? If you don’t consider Farrah a movie star then how could you consider Michael? I’m not a fan of that segment to begin with as it really becomes a popularity contest amongst the deceased but it just shows how poorly done it can sometimes be.

6) No real surprises amongst the acting winners though I still wish that when they hand out the awards that they would mention the winners lesser accomplishments like “Miss Bullock also starred in All About Steve and Speed 2: Cruise Control.” Also, props to Sandra for winning a Razzie and an Oscar in the same weekend. Jeff Bridges deserved an award for lifetime achievement at least so I have no problems with his victory either.

7) Speaking of lifetime achievement awards, how the hell could you not let Roger Corman and Lauren Bacall speak? I mean, it’s Lauren freaking Bacall. She would have thanked Humphrey Bogart in her speech. It would have been an amazing moment. The honorary Oscar is one of the cool moments of the night and they took it away from us.

8) The totally unexpected moment was the tribute to John Hughes. I did not see that coming at all. While he was a great director and essentially created his own genre his style typically does not result in such a posthumous honor. It was amazing to see all of his former stars on stage providing memories of his influence on their careers, which in Judd Nelson’s case appears to be working the late shift at a 7-11. But do you know what this segment really brought home for me? It’s the fact that we are old now. I mean, Hughes films were about teenagers that came out while I was a teenager. Now I look at Anthony Michael Hall and Matthew Broderick and go, wow, they are old. Which means I am old, too. Ally Sheedy may still look great but the fact is that are youth is over. We are adults now and John Hughes is gone so we have no idea how adults are supposed to be.

We can enter kindergarten now!

Break out the cake and streamers! Put on the fanciful party hats! Prepare a plate of the finest meats and cheeses in all the land! Battling the Current has turned five years old!

Yes, in an accomplishment that even I have a hard time believing I have now been running this blog for five years. That encompasses 1,290 posts, somewhere around 800,000 words and an obsession with Lindsay Lohan that has seen her go from starring in Mean Girls to getting arrested in Hollywood to being unable to get arrested in Hollywood. She has gone from a hot young starlet worthy of a crush to someone who even looking at her picture online makes you wonder if you need a shot of penicillin. Just shows what five years can do to somebody.

I, on the other hand, have aged rather well. As I’ve said on many occasions I don’t think I ever expected the blog to turn out the way it has. I didn’t exactly start it as a lark (as I knew precisely what I wanted to do with it) but I never anticipated having enough material to write about night after night after night. Sure, I kept a writer’s journal but I didn’t expect anyone would actually want to read it. Now over the course of a month I have hits from every continent and a surprisingly large fan base in Norway. (Shout out to my Norwegians! Johann Olav Koss rules!) I look at the hit map daily and I am amazed by it every time.

I find it fascinating to look back over the archives and see just what I was writing about at any point in time. You can get a glimpse into what was on my mind, what was going on in the world or just get a sense of time and place. That is the wonder of writing every day; it does provide you with a record of your life. True, most people don’t share theirs with the entire world but it is very worthwhile.

I will say that it has changed over the years. I really feel that my writing style has improved and that the humor flows a little easier now. I have increased the multimedia aspects and would still like to do more of that. But most of all I think I have found my voice. I know what I want to write about and how to make it work. I always dreamed of being a novelist but in reality I think what I am best at is precisely what I am doing. I know how to write short essays filled with self-deprecating humor that expose some facts on modern life. I may not have written a novel yet but I have this to my credit.

There is one change that has occurred over the past year and as always Glen Hansard explains it better than I do. I read an interview with him today and he mentioned “When you are sad you write pages in your diary. On your happiest days the pages are blank.” Some people may have noticed that the blog has had more than a few blank pages over this past year and for good reason. I am happier with my life now than I can ever recall. I am dating the woman of my dreams, I have a job that challenges me and my life finally seems to be in order. That wasn’t the case when I started this. In fact, it was pretty much the exact opposite. It is amazing what can happen to someone in a few years time and it is nice to know that this site documents it.

To everyone, thanks for reading this and commenting and just taking a second to check out my little corner of cyberspace. I’m going to keep on writing until I come up with a good reason to stop. But I figure I have to hit a million words now. Too close to stop.

Oh, and my gift to you is I am opening the blog again for questions or post ideas. Any lingering questions on your mind? Do you need to know how a thermos can keep coffee hot and lemonade cold? Just send them my way.

Surprisingly, things have changed in 4 1/2 years

As has probably been obvious I have been struggling for topics the past few weeks and I have finally figured out why that is the case. Pretty much everything that has existed in my go to well of blog ideas is no longer accurate. Lets run through the list…

1) Make fun of Kansas: Still done occasionally but now that I no longer live there I have much less material. I could theoretically spend time making fun of Delaware but to be honest the state is so boring that it really isn’t worth the effort of making fun of it. The posts would be along the lines of “For some reason people in Wilmington feel that jaywalking is a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Not just a quick dash across the street. I mean a leisurely stroll across a four lane street with people driving forty miles an hour. Last week I saw four people (including one who was using a cane) amble across the middle of the street, against the light, on a road that has an expressway on ramp. I slammed on my breaks and I was already stopped at a light.” Just doesn’t seem nearly as interesting.

2) Make fun of the ruling party in Washington: There are many reasons why this blog is called Battling the Current and one would not be apparent unless you have been around since the beginning. I started this site the week after George Bush won reelection and it was my dislike of the current state of politics and the mood of the country that I was battling. Well, now my guy is in charge and anything that I would like to complain about (a rather silly health care plan, the seemingly endless press conferences that ruin my TV schedule) are now my own damn fault. It takes all the fun out of writing about it when all my rants have to start with “I know I voted for the guy but…”

3) Talking about concerts: It is rather surprising but I have not been to a single concert since I moved here. That wasn’t entirely the plan; there have been a few that I have wanted to see but just did not get around to attending. Part of this is good because after doing forty shows a year for four years my ears could use the break. But I do feel a bit out of the music scene. The biggest issue is that opposed to KC where the shows would literally be minutes from my apartment now I have to drive an hour, often to a different state, to see a show. I just can’t pull that off on a school night anymore. I’ve gotten too old.

4) Stories from nights out at the bar: My nightlife routine has drastically altered from my days in KC. Again, most people, particularly my medical staff, would consider that a good thing. It is one thing to know everyone on the staff. It isn’t even a bad sign when they start pouring your drink before you even technically order it. But when you walk in and the bartender tells you that you are late maybe it is a sign that you are spending a little too much time in the place. I would go out more except a) most of the cool bars are a drive from my apartment and hence make me be extremely cautious about how much I drink and b) now that I have a girlfriend my need to be out at the bars is greatly reduced. This leads to the final one.

5) Complaining about my bad luck in relationships: Yes, I know we all loved my bad relationship stories. We all laughed as I had a librarian dump me because I didn’t pay for dinner. Or when the girl I was talking to at the bar ran off with a guy in a penguin suit. Or even the blind date when I asked about her parents only to find out that they had both died when she was in high school thus resulting in the most awkward silence I have ever experienced in my life. Such great memories. Now I find myself saying every day how lucky I am as I find myself living in what can only be described as a movie script, possibly starring John Cusack. I do see myself writing more about my new found good luck in relationships, especially as I still have a few of my bumbling moments, but it might take a little while for me to get there.

So with that out of the way I’ve decided that I will need a few more major topics. Based on the reaction to my post last week I think that documenting my progress on getting in shape will be a big one. Just to level set everyone here is my workout from Saturday, my first time working out in about three months. Three miles on the treadmill, no incline, forty four minutes, and various parts of my body hurt like hell today. Not exactly the proudest moment of my athletic career. Still, this is the start to my goal of losing twenty pounds and breaking 190. Let’s see how long it takes me.

Best of 120 Minutes: I actually heard this song while shopping this weekend. It is still one of my favorite songs from the late 80s. I didn’t even know it was a cover song for a good decade.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Paul Burch and the WPA Ballclub “Blue Notes”
2) Jay Farrar “Terroir Blues”
3) Richard Thompson “1,000 Years of Popular Music”
4) The Subdudes “Street Symphony”
5) Lisa Hannigan “Sea Sew”

And now, a word from our writer

And I’m back after a short but well needed break. Apologies for not giving a head’s up about how long I would be away from the blog but my plans for this weekend were changing constantly and I never knew when or if I would be near a computer or whether I would be in my best interest to write if I was. Sometimes the best move I can make is not to write.

Also, I just feel like explaining something about the nature of the blog and some of my posts recently. As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions there are only two subjects that I consider to be taboo: my job and my relationships (except in those cases where my failure in said relationships is extremely funny. I don’t write about my job because I like remaining employed and I have found that most major corporations are lacking in a sense of humor. I don’t write about relationships because I really try to draw a line between EC (who writes the blog) and Chris (who is who I really am.) My personal life does not need to be shared with my fans in Brunei though I am very grateful for their readership.

Now back in the Kansas City days this wasn’t much of a struggle. Taking out work and relationships reduced my possible topics by about 2% and left me with plenty of time to make fun of Kansas, stalk Lindsay Lohan and watch television. But now that I have moved and have a job and a steady relationship what I want to write about and what I can write about have become two very different things. Not that I am complaining in the least. My life is precisely where I want it to be. It is just that when I sit down late at night to write sometimes I have to struggle a little more than in the past to come up with an acceptable topic and I have a feeling that it shows in the writing. It might take a little time but I will find a happy medium soon enough.

It is strange when you think about the struggling artist, which sounds like a cliché but shows up so often in the historical record that you have to wonder about the validity. Writers tend to be drunken, depressive louts or suffering from so many neurosis you wonder if they actually can get out of bed in the morning. Dorothy Parker is one of my favorite writers of all time and she was as messed up as they come. It just seems to be part of the job. You don’t seem to find writers who are happy, well adjusted and creating incredible, mind altering art.

I’m not sure why that is or why I tend to believe in it. I in no way consider what I do to be anywhere close to art but I just have more creativity when I have more angst. When the world actually is rainbows and unicorns there really isn’t much of a desire to sit down at a laptop and write for a few hours. Real life takes precedence.

Want to end with a Wilco song in honor of Jay Bennett who passed away over the weekend. He’ll be missed.

It's my (blog) birthday! I'm a ninja!

Woo hoo! It’s all party hats and streamers and those little noisemaker things that never work here at Battling the Current headquarters because today is a most momentous day. Today marks the fourth anniversary of the launch of Battling the Current and the fulfillment of my original goal for the site. Within the first year I had given myself the goal of continuing this site for four years writing five nights a week every week until completion and I have done it. For those who are wondering, here are some stats about the whole endeavor.

· I’ve made 1,042 posts over the past four years.
· By my estimate that would entail over 600,000 words with a surprising number of those involving Lindsay Lohan.
· If my count is correct I’ve received 629 comments over the past four years and I appreciate them all. Well except…
· I’ve received one slightly veiled physical threat in my comments when I apparently insulted someone’s favorite musician by saying “when his set ended we weren’t clapping because we appreciated his performance. We were clapping because it meant that he was getting off the stage.”
· Thanks to my Google tracking gizmo I installed last month you can see that I truly get traffic from around the world. For the life of me I have no idea how someone from China comes across this site or what they make of it when they do. Even better is that I have received comments from around the world from people I have never met.
· And in what is still the coolest thing that I can ever claim, according to Facebook’s Blog Network application Battling the Current is the number one blog in both the Notre Dame and Sprint networks. That rocks.
· And the true sign that you’ve made it: Google “Battling the Current” and I’m the top link.

Not bad for something that was done as a lark because I had grown tired of emailing my friends with whatever was on my mind and decided to post it for the world to see instead. As I’ve told some people if I didn’t blog I would still write. I’ve been keeping a writer’s journal for ten years now (though the blog has morphed into it for the most part) and I cannot imagine not keeping a record of my thoughts about my life. What the blog does is provide me with a schedule and a guilt trip if I decide to try to skip a day. And I have to admit that having an audience is a nice thing.

Given that I have reached my goal some of you might ask the question, “So what is next?” Well, on my first post I listed my goals as a) write every day, b) have people actually read it, c) have people I don’t know read it, and d) do something significant so that I can truly say that I am a writer. I’ve accomplished all four of those goals and then some. But that doesn’t mean that I’m through. Now my goal is to improve the site, add in more multimedia and work to bring in more readers. Since my side blog that focused solely on relationships is on hiatus I might bring some of that material over here. Oh, and yes I do want to cull through all of the posts and put together a “Best of Battling the Current” book that I’ll self-publish. That is, if I can get my editor to sign on .

For all of you who have stuck with me this far, and for those who have just recently come across the site, I have a special gift for you. Consider this my way of saying thanks for paying attention to the words I put out into the ether every day. To anyone who wants one I will be producing Battling the Current: Volume 4, the latest in my set of CDs that was once described as “the soundtrack to the best Cameron Crowe film never made.” The playlist isn’t entirely set at the moment but I guarantee there will be tracks by Laura Cantrell, the Drive-By Truckers, Josh Rouse, and a special live Swell Season track. If you have ever been interested in the music I discuss but want a sampler before you make the full plunge this is your chance. Plus, just let me know and I’ll send you the first three volumes as well.

All I need from everyone is an address. I’ll take care of the rest. For those of you who are friends with me through Facebook you can message me there. Otherwise you can email me at whatever your favorite email address for me is (or barring that, the fabled kcgatsby dot aol dot com will do for those who don’t know me in the real world). I really do want to thank everyone who reads this. It is incredible to think just how much I look forward to sitting down at the laptop and writing every night knowing that someone out there will read it.

Four years down. Everyone up for another four? Alright, let’s go!

I knew Ted shouldn't have trusted Becky...

As some of you have noticed I now have this little gizmo on the blog that tracks where my traffic originates. It is a rather fascinating little feature especially when it shows that someone in China has read my blog. That just amazes me. I know that with over a billion people the odds of one of them coming across my website is decent but I can’t imagine any of my usual topics interesting someone in Beijing. Maybe there are a surprising number of Lindsay Lohan fans over there.

(And I can’t believe that they’ve decided to cut My Beloved Lindsay’s role on Ugly Betty. I will now officially boycott the show. True, I wasn’t watching it in the first place but now I really won’t watch it.)

The reason I mention this is because I got the biggest smile today when I saw that the circle representing London grew today. To whoever is checking out the site from merry old England a whole load of thanks. It made me feel like I was an international superstar or something.

Completely random TV note: After seeing Sheldon wear one on The Big Bang Theory I’ve decided that I need to get a t-shirt that features the logo from The Greatest American Hero. I think I would wear that shirt every day of my life. I would also carry a boom box playing the theme song, assuming that boom boxes actually still exist. “Believe it or not I’m walking on air…”

Anyway, I’m just in a television mood at the moment and since I am now caught up on How I Met Your Mother I need to discuss what we learned in this week’s episode. As I felt all along, Ted and Stella’s wedding fell apart with Ted essentially being left at the altar. This made sense given that the entire premise of the show is Future Ted telling his kids how he met their mother and you would think they would put the pieces together given that if Stella was their mom they would have a half sister. But it was a little bit of a shock when they actually had Stella in an imagined future scene mentioning that she was their mother.

The more important thing is that this was the first show in ages that felt like a show from the first two seasons when it was actually good. Barney was at his best at the whiteboard calculating precisely how to score with Robin. Robin finally got to do something by arguing with Ted about how he was going way too fast and “that this isn’t the Ted I know.” That is pretty much what all of us fans have been saying as the Ted of the past year has been unlikable and given that he is based on me that is a rather sucky view of my own self. And Marshall and Lilly are funny as always, which is what the show needs.

There was one interesting point raised on the show that I truly want opinions on. The plot hinged on having exes at the wedding and how you don’t want to have them there. While I haven’t come to a wedding question I am really intrigued by how people treat their past relationships. There are some that claim that no guy is friendly with an ex-girlfriend unless he is hoping for their status to change. While I agree that that is initially true with time and distance things can change. I’m friends with people from my past and despite some awkwardness I’m really happy for it.

My question is should I tell a woman that I’ve just started dating that I still talk with an ex-girlfriend? Is this a horrible no no? That even though someone may live states away, that she has moved on her life in such a way that I might as well play Powerball than hope that she will take me back because my odds would be better, that the mere fact that it is known that I care about someone else puts me in a bad spot? Or does it show that I’m mature and understand that not everything works out? I’m really curious as to what people think about this. It would never stop me from being friends with someone from my past but I might change how I present it.

That is all for tonight. Have a great weekend everyone.