Look, here’s the thing: Keeping this site was fun for a long time, and I think some good stuff has definitely come out of it. We’ve made friends with some terrific people, and that’s by far the best by-product.

But clearly it’s just not doing anything for me anymore. It hasn’t been doing anything for Erin for several years, which is why she called it a day long ago.

So I’m hanging it up. Life is short, and while it somewhat pains me to state it outright, more often than not, I wrote here when I didn’t have anything in particular to say. Writing like that doesn’t make you a better writer. It gives you something to halfheartedly point to when you’re trying to make yourself feel better about your own lack of productivity. I’ve been fucking around for far too long, and I sure as hell am not getting any younger. So it’s nothing personal, but I’m gonna use my words a little more carefully, and for a purpose.

But!

I’ve started writing at This Land, a web site about Oklahoma life, which is funny since I haven’t lived there for four years and don’t plan on returning. I’m enjoying it so far. Perhaps if you go there and read, you will enjoy it too.

Sayonara, persons. Thanks to you all.

Me: (silently nodding in agreement, secure in the knowledge we do not have to worry about saving for retirement.)

I mean, seriously, think about this.

1. Who doesn’t love chocolate?
2. Who doesn’t love immortality?

To those who discount the public school system I say piffle.

Me: “You’re really good.”

Henry: “I trained.”

“I’m on a horse.”

It’s just an incredibly fucking well-written story, is what I’m getting at here, and the bonus is that Esquire links to Ebert’s response (also good) and a profile Ebert wrote of Lee Marvin in 1970 that Ebert considers among his best work (it is). I am now compelled to read Chris Jones’s other stuff from Esquire; if it’s a tenth as good, it’ll be worth looking into.

And look, technically these things are true. Or at least not untrue. But none of them are probably going to change any time soon, and I’m certainly not getting anywhere feeling shitty about them. Plus, there’s a shitload that’s awesome about my work life, currently. Examples:

• I do not technically have to leave the house almost ever, at all.
• I more or less set my own schedule.
• I do not have coworkers who bug the living fuck out of me.
• The money’s not terrible.
• I’m working for organizations I believe in.
• Okay, look, I’m not saying I don’t shower very often, but let’s just say you can get away with it for a lot longer when you work from home.
• That last one probably could’ve stayed off the list, in hindsight.

Let’s be realistic here, though, for the record: This is by no means the first time I’ve had this conversation with myself, and by no means will it be the last, barring any sort of miraculous psychological breakthrough or traumatic head injury. But I’m frankly of the opinion that the day I stop trying to slap myself into appreciation of the good things I’m constantly surrounded by is the day I may as well pack it in, find a ditch to lie in, and wait for rain.

So yes. Stop your fucking whining, self. For real. See you tomorrow for the repeat of this conversation.

Friday

Friday was The Day I Started Reading an Actual Book Instead of Playing Goddamn Video Games All the Fucking Time. Perhaps it’s best I didn’t use that as a post title, as it’s kind of long and unwieldy.

Yeah, so I’ve been in this infinite loop lately where I work all day, pause for dinner and loafing with the kid, and then play Modern Warfare 2 until it’s time to go to bed. I’m almost positive it’s made me a less interesting person, and I guess I’m getting old enough to start constantly asking myself, “Is this the person I wanted to be when I grew up?” That question invariably leads into an inescapable logic vortex, as clearly someone who spends 3 hours a night shooting his friends on the Internet can not, by definition, be all that grown up.

But let’s not dwell on this. After I read Henry stories on Friday I saw Regeneration by Pat Barker on Erin’s nightstand, saw that it was a historical bit about Sigfried Sassoon (I knew it was about World War I, but hadn’t realized it was about him), started reading it, and was instantly engrossed, which if you read the heaping mounds of praise on the book jacket is perhaps not all that surprising. Before I knew it, it was 11:00, I’d missed the opening clusterfuck ceremony of the Olympics, I was 50 pages into the thing and clearly hooked, and it was time to play video games anyway. Good stuff, though, is what I’m saying.

Saturday

Saturday was The Day I Did No Work on Purpose, which sadly makes it a rarity of late. (This stands in contrast with The Days I Do No Work Despite Mostly Meaning To, which are in fact not rare at all.) Henry and I caught Fantastic Mr. Fox a second time, which I was stoked about for the obvious reasons, but also because the first time we saw it he had to go to the bathroom and I missed the Whack Bat scene.

It was kind of awesome, too, because we saw it at The Logan (in Logan Square, y’see), which I’d never been to, and which is super duper second-run but also super cheap, and it’s also from this generation of movie theaters still operating here in Chicago that has somehow avoided closing despite having seriously none of the amenities whatsoever that we’ve come to expect from modern moviegoing. Amenities like sound or picture quality, or screens larger than a beach towel. (Yes, I know it’s got character, which new places don’t. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t know that.) The Davis, closer to us in Lincoln Square, is very much of the same generation, and gets a whole lot of leeway for its convenient location right next to the Brown Line, and lots of restaurants and bars and whatnot; truth be told, the sound and picture quality are significantly worse there than at The Logan.

Seriously, though, this Yelp comment and the ones that follow it sum The Logan up magnificently:

• “Ok, sure, it always smells like piss in the place. But seriously, it’s $4 to see a movie.”
• “No self-respecting person pays $10 to see The Proposal. But $4 on a Sunday afternoon? Well, I’m in.”
• “Everyone’s covered the basics — I’ll just add this: Ladies should be sure to wear pants and closed toed shoes.”

I do love this town.

Sunday

Sunday was The Day I Found Out We’re Probably Getting Money Back From The Man This Year, a day I was absolutely certain wasn’t going to come, since I’d been doing contract work for nearly all of 2009 and hadn’t exactly been in a financial position to sock away extra cash for the withholding that wasn’t getting withheld.

Lucky for me, I was drawing unemployment for several months! Which isn’t taxed like regular earnings! Also Daddy’s Little Tax Miracle bumped us down into Earned Income Tax Credit territory! (LOVE that kid.) Nothing’s final yet, but wow, I would’ve been happy just to not owe anything. Thanks, America!

Well, not suddenly, it turns out, but soon enough, unfortunately. Jim was, I guess, planning to retire soon anyway, and then found out he has inoperable cancer.

The news hit me really hard. While I wouldn’t say he and I were particularly close, he was a really important person to me as a student, and not just because he was the English department chair. I’d been a pretty crap student across the board ever since roughly the 8th grade, and by the time I wised up and changed my major to English I was near the end of the fourth of what was to be a six-year undergraduate hoo-hah. I’d taken every possible non-major course I could, especially considering that my former major turned into a minor once I switched majors the fourth (and final) time. This meant that, for my last five semesters of college, literally every single class I took was an English lit class. My emphasis was modern American literature, which was Jim’s area, so he taught the majority of my courses.

I started into lit taking the same approach I’d taken to most of my earlier studies, which is to say I half-assed things to a disappointing degree. At that point I think I was expecting B’s or B-minuses in return for this lack of effort, which is a broader reflection of how I thought the world worked at the time. Yet for some reason my papers in Jim’s classes kept coming back with grades starting with C on them. After several of these bouts of honest grading, I started to get resentful, and eventually got determined: I would learn how to get A’s from Jim The Hard Grader.

This did not happen quickly, but eventually it did happen, and by the time I got there I’d become the kind of student who actually kind of deserves good grades. This was not a Rudy moment, when it finally happened. There was no charging into a packed football stadium with 20,000 English majors chanting “Bri-AN! Bri-AN! Bri-AN!” There was no running of stadium steps. There was no Charles S. Dutton. But there was a tremendous and lasting sense of satisfaction, the kind that comes with applying yourself to something you secretly suspect you can be really good at, the kind I sometimes think people rarely get, or at least the kind I certainly don’t get that often. I had made myself into a good student, and I had Jim to thank for that.

I still can’t believe he’s dying. I really did think he’d be shuffling around wearing seersucker and drinking Wild Turkey for a very long time, and learning that this will not be the case is, I guess, yet another reminder of how good life is at delivering things that do not match your expectations. It stinks, is what it does. There’s shit any of us can do about it, and it stinks. And I guess that’s all.

And suddenly I was speechless with rage and horror as time after time I was unable to restore from my Time Machine backup — you know, the one Apple’s constantly making? So I’ll never lose any data? yeah, that one — and now all I can think about is five years’ worth of photos, and 75 gigs of music, and every goddamn bit of my financial information, and passwords, and I am quite possibly gonna go pass out in a snowbank if this doesn’t work, people, seriously.

UPDATE

Okay, breathing huge relief sigh thing. Got all my stuff back. Time Machine did, in fact, after several increasingly convoluted attempts, finally work like it was supposed to. Thanks for appealing to your higher powers on my behalf, if it came to that.