30 Before 30: The list

Here is a list of goals I hope to achieve by my birthday at the beginning of April.  I decided to keep a few ground rules: I wanted to stick to specific goals that I am completely in control over both starting and finishing, and with a quantifiable way of counting whether it has been achieved or not.

1. Get my learner’s permit.  I still don’t have a driver’s license yet for a number of different reasons, including living in a college town for five years where you could walk everywhere, as well as all the time I spent in cities with (admittedly subpar) public transit.   I’m also a little wary of the expense of actually owning and driving a car, but being able to drive is a good skill to have, and for someone that likes to travel as much as I do, it would be worth looking into.
2. Apply for my passport.
3. Restore my internal clock from “night owl” to “early to bed, early to rise”.
4. Set up a new layout for this blog.
5. Finish my stack of unread books.
6. Create a page on Existentialist Weightlifting for quick access of all my SNL reviews and essays; fix any typographical errors in previously posted reviews.
7. Finish reviewing the 1980-81 season of SNL (There are a grand total of 13 shows to review.  I’ve already finished four reviews, and am working on the fifth).
8. Watermark my photography and set up a true online portfolio.
9. Take at least 10 new pictures of friends for my “simple portraits” series.
10. Go through my clothes and get rid of any that are in too bad shape or that I just don’t want.
11. Send 30 letters to friends through snail mail.
12. Complete all those drafts of letters I’ve started in GMail.
13. Write 30 proper e-mails to those I don’t have drafts in my e-mail folder to.
14. Do not buy a single DVD, CD or book unless it is a present for a family member’s birthday between the day I post this and the day I turn 30.
15. Watch all unwatched DVDs purchased before September 2010.
16. Have a completed piece of prose or poetry (as oppose to a more quickly written blog post) to post online.
17. Have a completed drawing scanned and posted online.
18. Spend my 30th birthday (or thereabout) in Halifax or another city besides Miramichi.
19. Go without internet or computer access for one whole weekend.
20. Transfer all my remaining ’97-’05 original broadcasts of SNL from tape to DVD.
21. Go without fast food for one whole month.
22. Go to one restaurant or bar in Miramichi I haven’t been to before.
23. Sit down at my computer and free-write for one hour five times.
24. Have 100 applications for jobs completed at the very minimum, unless I am hired by the time I hit that number.
25. Go out for a 30-minute walk at least 30 times.
26. Go to the library ten times.
27. Go somewhere in New Brunswick where I’ve never been before.
28. See at least one live music show.
29. Plan and cook all my meals for one week.
30. Post the results of my 30 before 30 with annotation, and post my 35 before 35 on that same day.

Let the words come through my head and pour out

When I write, it’s with a spirit of nobility.  It’s to extinguish some form of fire that’s threatening to gut me and let your soul collapse on itself like tinder.  Or perhaps I just seek some form of recognition that the ideas bouncing around in my head aren’t just giving me a headache.   I let the fire and the headache keep going until it gets to a point where I have to lock myself in the room and let my fingers lose control on the keys, guarding the noise so that it doesn’t bother anyone and invite curiosity.

There’s always a hesitation though.  When I sit here typing, I get wrapped up with trying to get the post done and published that I often feel like what I post is not my best work.  And when I let everything build up, and I edit things over time, I wonder if there’s too much disconnection between the individual segments of what I write about.  I’m too critical of what I write and need to let myself trust my instincts before I can really make any use of them.

In 2004-05, my friend and I co-wrote a screenplay that was loose Don Quixote with college basketball players still clinging to past glories.  I always loved rereading the script because I had gotten to know and love these two people we built up and took from Duluth to New York.  My friend has written a few more pieces since then, and I loved reading and rereading every one of them, all full of detail and life.  He is the one who restarted the spark in myself that made me want to write again, and has encouraged me to keep at it all this time, but I wish I had a completed work to send him.

When I try to brainstorm and create a world, they all feel hollow, echoes of characters I had found before.  I’m afraid to know who these characters are, and I don’t know what world they really inhabit.  I wonder if I even have the ability to even know the characters and recognize the unspoken language between them.

Enough waffling, though.  I have made this my goal: I will have something complete to send out for feedback instead of the aimless scraps that I abandon or ignore.

Creativity and old friends

I wrote a thought on my old blog very early in the year about how so many of my friends happen to be amazingly creative people.  I’ve managed to run alongside some fine writers, photographers, artists and composers in the past few years.  Back then, I asked if it was an example of me specifically seeking out this quality, to try and live vicariously through them, and to maintain an image for myself.

I think there is something in myself that deliberately seeks this quality in people, but I also feel like we bond over common interests.  I love music.  I love art.  I love to read even though I obviously don’t do that enough.  Whenever I listen to an amazing piece of music, there’s this otherworldly aspect that I connect to.  I When I write, and others recognize what I come up with as good, I do feel a little pride.  There’s this drive to create: I honestly feel a little down every time I miss a five-minute free write or realize I haven’t written or taken a picture in a while.  Is it just that I want to be seen as prolific or is it that I know I need to keep at things to develop my skills and discipline?  I wonder if I have it in me to follow through on actually getting my work good enough to the point where it is published or exhibited.  Am I just afraid to fail?

I’ve been thinking about old friends lately.  I was reminded of a friend who died a few years ago when reading the Guardian’s Tom Waits article on that Facebook app that blabs what you’re reading.  I’ve been thinking about another friend who is working on her PhD in England.  Another friend in Calgary working as a lawyer and writing a novel.  Another working as a curator in St. John’s.  Friends in Dartmouth and Minneapolis each raising their new daughters.  Friends in Fredericton building lives together and for themselves.  Friends in Miramichi working to enjoy the day to day when they can.  Friends making things, travelling, struggling, and generally moving forward.  I go for stretches when I feel like I can’t break out of my stasis.  I wonder if I would be inspired by spending some time with old friends.  Somehow, I managed to cross paths with these amazing people.

This is delving into a little too much solipsistic self-deprecation with a little too much indirect name-dropping.  “Look how cool my friends are!”.  I kind of am wary of the vaguely spiritual, feel-good tone I was starting to get into as well.  Bah.

 

Four fourty four, two twenty two (Brief thoughts on friends and music)

I am amazed and incredibly fortunate to realize how many of my friends are creative people.  Is it that I consciously seek out the qualities I admire in other people?  Is it an attempt to live vicariously through these artists, writers and musicians?  Perhaps it’s merely my own attempt to project a certain image, but still I can’t help but suspect there’s a hidden force that’s drawing us together.  I don’t know if it is a spiritual thing or just the random machinations of chance, but there has to be something that clicks between us.

One of the reasons why I collect so much music is that I’m always searching for a certain state.  Whenever I fully commit to an old Miles Davis album I feel transcendence.  I far too often tend to use music as mere background noise for my web-surfing or other activities but one thing I enjoy most is being able to listen to an instrumental album without distraction, lose myself and find escape.