Alone in a crowd

Back when I worked in downtown Chicago I would take the train to work every day. It was actually a rather nice way to commute. Drove ten or fifteen minutes to the train station and then had around a thirty minute train ride downtown followed by a ten or fifteen minute walk to my office. It sounds like a horribly long commute and I guess from the time I left my office to the time I actually got home was probably an hour and a half. It just didn’t seem that long at the time because I wasn’t really doing anything. Or at least, nothing of importance.

I was one of those who would sit on the train and read. I can’t even think about how many books I plowed through on all of those trips. I never read anything to difficult on those trips (it just isn’t the right venue for classical literature) but I read constantly. That and listen to music on my discman. This was pre iPod and really pre ubiquitous cel phones. I wasn’t carrying one at the time so it was really just me and my thoughts. It was like having an hour of meditation time in your schedule every day; if a noisy, crowded train car was considered a perfectly valid spot for meditation.

What struck me most is how everyone was a creature of habit in their own world. You rode the train with the same people every day and we each chose our own individual train car to sit in. Leaving work I would always sit near the engine on the top level of the car. This gave me my own seat even if it was less comfortable and noisier up there. After a day in the office I just didn’t want to have to share a seat with a stranger. I still remember the woman who sat on the other side of the car from me. I don’t think we ever spoke a word to each other but we knew each other. We both just sat down in our seats after work and watched what everyone else was doing.

I don’t know if that is strange or not, knowing someone without actually knowing them. It’s probably a sad statement on the world. No matter what anyone states we are all living in our own little worlds and most of the time we don’t have our world intersect with someone else’s. When I was grocery shopping this afternoon (yes, unemployment allows me to do that on a Friday) I don’t know if I really noticed anyone else around me. I’m not talking about starting a conversation I mean really noticing and acknowledging their existence. No one did it to me either. We were all just doing our thing, trying to stay out of each others way.

There is a quote in Waking Life about not wanting to be an ant. That’s what being on the train was like. We were all ants in our little ant world waving our antenna but mainly trying our best not to get stepped on. I hope as I’ve gotten older that I’ve tried to break that habit. I don’t want to be an ant and it really bothers me that I occasionally view others like ants. The world is too interesting a place to let that happen.

Yes, I hang out at coffee shops now. I'm so arty.

From the Oddities of Modern Life File: A few days ago I saw in a strip mall a store called Simply Amish. What other options for an Amish store would there be? Extravagently Amish? Pimp Your Ride the Amish Way? Also, does the store have electricity? That would really seem to go against the entire theme. At a minimum they should use the old carbon sheets for credit card payments as opposed to an internet connection.

Should I be ashamed at how interested I was in the final episode of The Biggest Loser tonight? Or the fact that I think that I watched every episode this season? Not every moment of every episode, given that it often broke down into watching grown men cry for five minutes at a time followed by an in show ad for Extra Sugar Free Gum (It’s like eating but it’s not!). Hell, even the finale featured a blatant plug for Subway, which was promoted as a healthy eating option for little kids because they need foot long sandwiches at their age.

As much as I was hoping for it, none of the contestants actually gained weight over the four months they were on the show. Not that I was hoping for anyone to fail miserably; I just wanted to see how the producers would try to spin that one. For the most part I was incredibly impressed by what the contestants accomplished. I think the lowest percentage weight loss was 20% and a lot of them look really good. The winners lost about 45% of their starting weight, which is insane and requires them to get to a weight that I still don’t know if it is healthy. They aren’t skinny but I’m of a belief that you need to have some weight on you. Back when I was six one and weighed 150 pounds I was officially within the normal weight range for my height. But trust me, it wasn’t healthy at all.

On my current weight loss goals on Monday I weighed in at 193.5 pounds just 3.5 pounds shy of my overall goal. See, once I get to 190 I can tell my doctors to screw off because I will no longer officially be considered overweight. True, I’ll still have all of my medical issues but at least I will not be deemed a fatty per a chart. This is down from my max of 215 (when I really did feel as if I was fat) so I’m proud of what I’ve done. Been doing runs of three and a half miles on the treadmill recently with minimal issues so I actually feel like I have some stamina once again. Nice thing about having free time; it is much easier to work out now.

(Oh, but I should remind myself to not go out drinking immediately after running three and a half miles. I did that on Friday and let’s just say that the beer hit me much quicker than I expected it to. Not particularly fun though it did get me playing Dance Dance Revolution, which is also something I should not do after running. Given my rhythm it is probably something I should never do in the first place.)

Anyway, time to explain the picture at the top of the page. As my goal of completing a massive jigsaw puzzle has been, uh, sidetracked for the time being I decided to keep my stalker happy by getting focused on the novel. (Given that the novel is #2 on my list of things to do and the puzzle is #6 I should have tackled them it that order to begin with. Learning to juggle still tops the list though.) Since yesterday taught me that working in my home office can be a bit of a challenge I decided to be the bohemian slacker that I am and go to a coffee shop.

So I have moved from a cube to this. Armed with a rather massive cup of coffee I am joined by Julie the Laptop as well as Julie the Zune. Yeah, I still have the whole Julie Delpy obsession going. For those who remember, Julie is my old laptop who spent nearly six years as my daily companion. We’ve been through everything together; moves, promotions, storms, all faced side by side. That is of course until I turfed her last year for a newer model. But like all guys I have come crawling back hoping for forgiveness.

More accurately, Julie is smaller than my current laptop and is a lot easier to carry. Plus six years of daily use means that I am just innately used to the keyboard even if the letters have actually been worn off of the keypad. It also has a great laziness protector as she predates wi-fi so I can’t even get online when I use her. It is all business when I fire her up.

That’s what today was. Four hours of working on the novel at least in terms of setup. I ended up with a two page synopsis of the entire story, an outline with about 60 preliminary chapter ideas with the first seven or eight set in stone ready to get started, and a full cast of characters. Including a brand new character that I only thought up today who might end up stealing the entire novel. She’s already worked her way into the opening chapter and I’ve had that planned for four years. Writing will start tomorrow, let’s set a 45 day goal on this, and I’ll hopefully be done by the end of May. Anyone willing to bet me on my ability to do this (with all proceeds going to autism research) please let me know. Game on.