Greetings once again. Events have been interesting of late. Well, not really interesting. Just different. Delbert has had to move out. He lost his job last summer, and his unemployment runs out this month. In the interim, he has not found a replacement job. I look upon him with scorn for that, which is extremely hypocritical. . . . Delbert should be paying his own way, Garldamnit! Anyway, because he cannot pay his way, he has decided to be a transient and alternate between his mother’s and his sister’s until he finds another job. Which I doubt he’ll do any time soon.
I considered moving back in with my brother, but decided against it for several reasons, most of which are due to my own convenience. I like it better in a small town, for one. I feel more at ease. There’s less crime, so I don’t spend so much time worrying some ne’er-do-well will bust in with a gun and demand my Xboxes. Second, there’s the floozies I mentioned in the previous entry. If I moved back in with Bro, both he and his roommate Jackie would be bringing them around, and there would be the whole awkwardness combined with shame at my own appearance and jealousy . . .
Finally, Jackie’s schedule is very weird. He works on three nights, off three nights, during the night shift, so with Bro’s weekday daytime schedule means I’d rarely (if ever) have time alone to myself. The thing about me is, I prefer to have long stretches of alone time (in which to pursue my extremely asocial hobbies) interspersed with brief periods of interaction.
So we’ve concocted this half-assed plan. So long as the landlord drops the rent back to $250 out of the kindness of his heart, and doesn’t demand that I sign another year’s lease, I’ll stay here. Delbert will keep his stuff here: bed, bookshelf, clothes, etc. while living like a gypsy with his family. I’m waiting to hear back from the landlord about these conditions today. If he doesn’t agree, it’s back to Floozyville.
Today I thought more about my situation and decided I would be happier if I spent my time on a wider variety of activities than just videogames. For one thing, videogames aren’t a very fun subject to talk about with friends, because unless they’ve played the game they have no idea what the details you describe are referring to. It’s much more interesting to watch a good movie or, even better, read an excellent book and bring it up with each of my friends next time I see them. Books especially tend to provoke fascinating discussions. This way I get the best of both worlds: solitude and interaction.
As a result, I’ve decided to go back to my original daily task list that I was following up until Delbert lost his job. This is in direct contradiction to what I said in the previous entry: I’m going to start taking computerized Spanish lessons again and write a bit, both in my journal and noodling around with various fiction projects. I called my Aunt today and arranged to go with her to a gym every so often as well, I think I’ll even try to change my diet . . . and . . . stop smoking.
All of these things will be good for me, and although I’ll still have accomplished practically nothing with my life, at least I will feel like I have. Which is important.
Today, though, has been something of a failed experiment. Part of my regimen involves the popular “brain training” games they have released for the Nintendo DS — each of which consist of a few simple logic and math puzzles to keep an aging brain sharp. The problem is there are lots of these games. There’s Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, Brain Challenge, Brain Assist, Mind Quiz, Brain Boost, Ultimate Brain Games — I could go on. I can’t seem to settle down to just one, so I’ve been playing them all. A lot of them are quite similar to one another and it ends up eating several hours of my time. That means what should be a quickie brain exercise ends up being the major focus of my day. I need to prune this game selection down to the best one so that it serves its purpose more effectively. But I have such a hard time making decisions (even inconsequential ones) that I can’t decide which games to let go forever. I guess I’ll take a stab at it tomorrow. Ideally, I’d like to spend about an hour a day on this stuff. I think today I spent about three hours doing it.
The morning was spent talking to Erin and bro on Yahoo! Messenger. That wasted several hours, but it serves as a surrogate for actual conversation so it’s kind of necessary. The only thing of any consequence that I did today was start a new book: The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene. It’s about string theory. Erin has been trying to get me to read about string theory for years, and it looks very interesting. I’ll probably be able to discuss it at length with her whenever I finish it.
I also started reading Ronin, a graphic novel by Frank Miller. However, in the midst of the first issue I realized I hadn’t done my brain games yet and fell into that pit of oblivion. I doubt I’ll finish all the tasks I set forth for myself today. I’m kind of tired of doing stuff I don’t want to do and would like to switch back to stuff I do want to do, like play through Dragon Quest IV (again). I think I’ll get to it.