Day 3118

Often when I'm at the gym, I'm reminded of Andy Warhol's desire to be a machine. I feel like a machine sometime. So many aspects of my life are repetitive in nature. It's not just my time on the treadmill that is entirely predictable. Almost everything is entirely predictable. It wasn't always this way, but increasingly I find familiarity comforting. I like knowing what is going to happen before it happens. The good thing about this kind of life is that you really start to notice little things. If there is any change at all in Dash's behavior, I'm instantly aware of it. I can tell if this week's peaches and strawberries are different than last week's, and can feel if the temperature in the house is one degree warmer than is was yesterday.

The bad thing about predictability is that anything new seems ominous. I will stare at a menu forever before ordering something new for breakfast. I almost never take a new route to a destination. Forget about new friends. If I haven't known you for thirty years, I probably never will. I think about these things while I'm on the treadmill. Exercise is so predictable. That's the one thing I like about going to the gym. I can tell you what my heart rate is going to be at any given time and can predict within ten seconds how long it takes to walk a mile. I still don't know how long it will take to shoot ten free throws on the basketball court, but I'm working on it.

Maybe weather forecasts are frustrating to me because they aren't predictable at all. Yesterday, I thought it was going to rain all next week. Today the forecast has changed. I think it is only supposed to rain on Tuesday. I wish I really knew for certain when we were going to have seven days of clear, dry weather, so I could insist that the roofers come out and finish their repairs. The roofers know that the weather is their friend. The threat of rain is always a good excuse to postpone things.

It's amazing that they are actually getting those boys trapped in that cave in Thailand out alive. The threat of rain is really serious there. I can think of few things worse than being trapped in a flooded cave. Why do people even go in caves? My Dad was a zoologist who studied bats and he would take me in caves occasionally. Caves are wet and claustrophobic. I was always worried that a rock was going to fall and trap us inside. I frequently have dreams that involve being lost. When I was a child, I was usually crawling endlessly through a cave in these dreams. Now, I seem to be lost in a huge hotel. I guess that's progress. Hopefully, all the Thai boys will be extricated safely. I bet it will be a long time before any of them go inside a cave again.

Our house is becoming filled with cheap throw rugs again. Dash's rear legs keep getting weaker and I keep having to bring additional rugs home from the storage warehouse to keep him from slipping. The kitchen and dining areas are filled with rugs now, so Dash won't fall while he is eating. There are carpets in the bedrooms, so he is OK there. I hope we can keep the area where he typically poops on the floor free of rugs for as long as we can. It's a lot easier to clean up poop when it lands on the bricks.

I wish I could predict what was going to happen next with Dash. This is the one area of my life where I've got to stay flexible. He's getting old and frail, but so far, we've been able to adjust so that his life remains enjoyable. All that being said, I hope he lets me get some sleep tonight. I'm getting older too.

Trevor is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1645

I've got to come up with a new game plan. Much of what I do these days doesn't even matter. I still like to think that I'm clever and essential, but I've become much more of a convenience than a necessity. If I didn't get out of bed tomorrow, few people would even notice. This bothers me. Shouldn't I be following my dream? I don't know. Following dreams has become a tricky business in a world where dreams and passions have become synonymous. I am a dispassionate person. I like to do useful things. Appealing to your emotions? Not so much. Unfortunately, advertising is all about appealing to your emotions. I probably should have been a physicist or a mathematician instead. Years ago, I used to be a good documentary filmmaker. I didn't have an agenda. I just took pictures of what I saw. Documentaries have changed like everything else though. Most current documentaries are all about emotion. The filmmaker wants to win you over to a certain point of view. Even street photography has an agenda now. I find the only thing that's safe to photograph these days are flowers. Ironically, people seem to like these photographs because they evoke some sort of emotion in them.

So here I am. By rejecting the world of emotional persuasion, I am left with some pretty boring tasks. I don't have to do these things, but I like to stay busy. When I'm busy, I don't have time to think about the nature of existence. I hate questions like "Why am I here" and "What was I meant to do." Maybe that's why Andy Warhol was one of the heroes of my youth. Andy wanted to be a machine. He approached things very mechanically, yet he managed to have a rich and interesting life in the process.

If you have read this far, you already know that I wasn't busy enough today. I didn't question my existence though. I went to the gym. I still can't figure out why the gym is so much busier on weekdays than on weekends. It is counterintuitive. The weights and machines I like were still open though, so I had a good workout. On the way home, I went to the grocery store instead of the guitar store as I had planned. That's where my head is at these days. I can't think much further than dinner.

Dash goes back to the cancer center for a monthly checkup tomorrow. He's just getting some routine blood tests and possibly a chest x-ray, but I'm worried about his tail. Dash got his bloody tail at the cancer center in the first place. He is so happy to see the other dogs that he wags his tail constantly in the doggie day care area where he stays until the staff is ready for him. Since the area is relatively small, he is always banging the tail against a wall or a door.  Now that I'm finally getting his "happy tail" injury to heal, I'd hate to start all over again. Hopefully, he'll be a bit calmer when we drop him off for his exam tomorow.

I could probably go to the gym every day this week if I wanted. That's how slow it has been.

Bali is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1628

Sometimes I wonder what is going to happen on Day 2000, or Day 5000. On any given day, what I write is trivial, but I keep on writing for the same reason I keep doing a lot of things. I always think that if I just continue doing what I'm doing a little longer, it will eventually add up to something. Maybe it will in this case. How many people have even attempted to document every single day of their life? Probably not many. I've only been doing this for about five years and I'm already starting to see subtle changes in the way I think and act. Maybe you are too.

Aging is a tricky business. At first you deny it. Then you fight it. Finally, you embrace it. I spent so many years in advertising that I probably held on to my youth for much longer than I should have. It's a business where youth is worshiped and age is discarded. In my early thirties, we always used to wonder where they put the 40 year old ad guys out to pasture. We never saw any. If you wanted to keep your job and prosper, you needed to figure out how to stay young.

I find that I no longer care what people think of me or how old I might appear. I've become one of those people who talks back to the television, drives slower than the rest of the traffic, and feels no shame in wearing the same shirt for days at a time. In the beginning I briefly thought that having a blog might help my business. Later, I entertained the idea that I was a humor writer who always saw the glass as half empty. Now, I realize that what I'm doing is accurately describing the aging process, one day at a time. If you only read the blog sporadically, it probably seems like an Andy Warhol movie. Nothing seems to happen. If you started reading on Day 1 and continue reading until the end, you might discover something quite remarkable. On the other hand, you might discover nothing at all. Like I said, aging is a tricky business.

Today, I opened a check from a client and discovered that it wasn't all there. I'd been shortchanged. Either this client is having money problems and couldn't send me any more this month, or they're just fucking with me. Either way, it's not a good sign. I wish money was no longer an issue, but I'm afraid it always will be. Globalization has changed everything. A few people have been able to make the transition and everyone else is fighting over table scraps. The way I see things, if you don't lose your job to someone in a third world country who is willing to work for pennies, you will be replaced by a robot.

I will never be replaced by a robot, but my writing and photography efforts have certainly been marginalized by a sea of people who have turned my profession into their own hobby. Everyone is creative these days. It's hard to compete with that. I shouldn't complain though. I'm much healthier than I ever though I'd be five years ago. I've got two great dogs. Janet seems to tolerate me. And even though the market is terrible, my financial advisor tells me that I still stand a reasonable chance of outliving my savings.

I don't believe him of course, because I know he always sees the glass as half full. Who knows what will really happen? It's all a crap shoot as far as I'm concerned. I guess you'll have to keep reading to find out.

Amy is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day

Day 1540

Has anybody else completely burned out on social media? I used to post something new and original to Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Instagram every single day. This was in addition to writing my daily blog post. After about a year of this, I realized that I had completely run out of ideas. I had nothing to say. I had already shared every story I had ever written, uploaded every picture I had ever snapped, and dug up a lot of old stuff that probably should have remained buried. Social media is insatiable. No matter how much you feed it, it always wants more.

Clients sometimes ask me what they can do to maximize their social media efforts. I feel like telling them to just forget about it. For most people it isn't worth the effort. Unless you are Ellen DeGeneres at the Oscars, your photos are never going to be re-tweeted millions of times. Your earnest efforts to promote your business on Facebook are never going to garner one tenth the attention of a single cute cat photo. No matter how exciting you think your company is, there is only so much you can say about it. After you've said your piece, you just become another spammer.

It's kind of a shame that nobody really cares all that much. I know dozens of bloggers and photographers who pour their heart and soul into elaborate online creations that might have 25 genuine fans worldwide. I have a lot of followers, but that doesn't mean they actually read anything. I bet I don't have more than 25 people who actually read everything I write. It probably wasn't that different in the analog era. Back when I played in a band, they used to say that only one in a thousand good bands ever got signed to a record deal. A similar percentage of writers and poets ever saw their books in print. Most people were just throwing notes out to sea in glass bottles.

Andy Warhol was right. Today everybody actually is a star for thirty minutes. What happens after your thirty minutes is over though? The media machine still expects to be fed. I don't think it matters whether you're a guy with two Dalmatians like me, or a giant corporation; eventually you get to a point where there's nothing more to say.

I've totally run out of coherent things to say on Twitter and Facebook. Luckily, this blog has a format that I can sustain forever. I just tell you what I did today. Tomorrow I'll do the same thing all over again. Reading this is probably an acquired taste. Maybe it's a bit like watching an Andy Warhol movie. Very little happens. Things do change over time though. You can call the changes growth, decay, or whatever you want.

Today, Dash's regular vet was very impressed with his progress. It was the first time she'd seen him since his surgery and she agreed with the other vets that we were very lucky to have detected the cancer so early. We still haven't received the pathology report, but we should know whether Dash will require further treatment by the end of the week.

Work was slow today. Ordinarily, that would have been a good thing, but Tuesdays are usually busy and I was prepared to put my nose to the grindstone. It threw my schedule off when things didn't turn out as I expected. This is when people say it's good to be spontaneous. I'm not spontaneous though. Never have been and never will be. When I'm off my schedule, I usually just drift aimlessly.

Tomorrow should be focused. Dot has her weekly physical therapy session and will get in the underwater treadmill again. There are bills to be paid, so a trip to the post office is on tap as well. I need to renew a prescription and I suspect that there will be things to write as well. The day will be just like a hundred other Wednesdays I have already told you about, but I still hope you find it interesting.

Orion is today's Dalmatian of the Day

Watch of the Day