Morpheus: captain of the Nebuchadnezzar and life coach

Let me start by clarifying how much I love my life. I very much do. The big three are covered: family, friends, professional fulfillment. No problem.

There are, however, days that getting up and duking it out in the world is exhausting to even think about.

Today was one of those mornings. I woke up with an odd combination of happy and frightened. Not quite paralyzed, just periodically having that sinking sensation that reminds me of big drops on a roller coaster. (I hate roller coasters, by the way. Excitement is great. Fear of plummeting to my death is not.)

Anyone with variable income surely knows what I'm talking about. It's a blast to do what you love, but going it alone means taking care of all of it alone. It's all so overwhelming sometimes. Even with a business partner (mine is incredible), the freelance life can challenge my sanity at times.

So after dealing with a couple of figurative fires this morning, I decided I needed a laugh. Off I go to my Google Reader to see if the blogs I read have anything to offer. And there it was. The title read "I'm exactly like Morpheus (How to turn your life totally backward in six months)."

I didn't care so much about the part in parentheses (not today, anyway), but the Morpheus comment got me reading. Keep in mind I was looking for a laugh. This blogger is nuts, and that's why I like him.

"I’m totally like Morpheus. Planet overrun by sentient machines, two hundred years of underground oppression, shirtless and covered with data ports. But after two hundred tenants who won’t pay their rent and two hundred late client payments and two hundred bogus $400 citations from the city for not mowing grass that was actually mowed, I AM STILL HERE!"

I'm still a bit freaked out, but now I have a mental image of standing on that rock platform in an underground cave, a sea of freelancers and small business owners before me, and all of us shaking our fists intensely at the powers that be!

With several sentient creatures complicating my life, deals put on hold, projects suddenly dropped, and clients that are months late on their payments, I AM STILL HERE!

So you know what? Bring it on!

Blogs I Read

Back in January I posted three of the blogs I read. I can't believe it's already September. Time to share.

I've since weeded through my blog list--it got way too long. At one point I had something on the order of 200 unread posts. Clearly, I wasn't going to go back and read all of that. So I axed the stuff I seemed to skip a lot.

There are still too many blogs on my list. For now, here are three more.

mnmlist.com

• This is a blog by Leo Babauta. I've been a Zen Habits reader for I good while now. I guess two years or so. Anyway, mnmlist is a useful blog.
  

Yoga for Cynics

• The title alone is worth a visit! This guy is fun. He's my kind of Yogi. While not aggressive toward others, his vocab is not always rated G, so if that offends you... I can't bring myself to warn you against him. Visit anyway, just ignore the wirty dords.

Conversational Tangents

• This blog is brand new. What's the attraction? It's written by someone called Eloquent Mime.
  

Bright Star

Almost forgot to mention! We saw a screening of Bright Star on Wednesday. It's the story of 19th century poet John Keats, played by Ben Wishaw, and his love affair with Fanny Brawne, played by Abbie Cornish. It's a visually beautiful and very moving film.

Here's a review from the NY Times by A. O. Scott that I agree with. The projects on my desk demand my attention, so I have to pass on writing my own review. That said, it's definitely worth seeing.

My favorite quote by Scott in the review:

"Ms. Campion, with her restless camera movements and off-center close-ups, films history in the present tense..."

A Good Writing Week!

The last couple of weeks have been big time writing weeks for me. I started out typing a little report of sorts on business networking. The idea was to market it at Las Colinas Online, one of the sites I write for. Of course, in an effort to save time, I went ahead and outlined it keeping in mind that I might be using it for a short presentation I'm giving in the next few months.

Well, that little report that was planned at about 10 pages has turned into a (so far) 30-page ebook. Two readers and one editor later, I'm still tweaking. Happy days!

More on this at my translation blog, Mark it Right.

Revisiting Adolescence

So it's year three of regression day! To recap: every year, my long time friend ET and I play hookie. We run away from our lives for an entire day.

The first year, we hit the water park. After running around soaking wet, screaming our heads of on the Texas Tornado, picnicking under a tree (eating nothing but junk), we decided it felt so much like being teenagers again that it deserved to be a new tradition.

So year two came along. We almost had a teen-like fit when we drove the half hour to the water park only to find that our favorite ride was closed for repairs. But tradition is tradition... even if it's brand new. We did exactly as we would have done had we actually been sixteen: we hunted down another pool play area.

This year fate tried to mess with us again. After carefully planning around our complicated lives, we had identified the perfect day. That morning we were awakened by the sounds of thunder--sounds the whether forecasters had promised would be no more. But regression can't and mustn't be neglected!

Instead we treated ourselves to an indoor day of putt-putt golf, mall loitering, bowling (regular and our new speed version), salty pretzels, and other such roaming. Though it was an excellent day of uselessness, we were left with sad longing for the water park. There's something about the sweet smell of tropical sun block that just takes us back, you know?

Well, I guess the universe sensed the teenage angst we had managed to muster because ET won Hurricane Harbor tickets at work.

And this year the Texas Tornado was open! We even made friends with two girls in line who shared the second ride down the Tornado with us. I say "second" because the Tornado demands at least three turns. It's a 7.5-story drop into an enormous 60-foot diameter funnel--possible the only scenario in which we can still laugh and screech maniacally in public without alarming others or being shipped to the funny farm.

The day ended with Chinese take-out in front of the TV and hours of talking and drinking way too much soda.

Regression is so satisfying! I highly recommend it.

pic by Valerie Everett

Schwartzenegger in Japanese Commercials

Jill at Musings of an Overworked Translator posted this hysterical video. I'm so disturbed! LOL.