I've always felt like my life's dream was to quit my job and spend all my time online. I wouldn't only do that, of course – if I won the lottery and quit my job, I'd also travel and take classes and throw parties and do other things – but let's face it, I'd spend a lot of time working on this site and talking to people online.

Last night I dreamed I was a ghost, recently passed. I was free of the demands of life: no job, no need to buy things, no need to eat or sleep. I could still interact with a computer, writing an email to my mother telling her not to mourn me, or changing some code on this site that I never found time to work on before. But I didn't really want to do it. All I wanted to do was rest, to succumb to that peaceful eternal slumber.

Maybe if I got the thing I want most, I wouldn't want it any more. Or maybe what I want is to check out of "life" entirely, shirking all responsibilities once and for all. Or maybe I was just having one of those dreams where I'm still awake and very tired. I hate those dreams.


One Reply to Spirit

Amy Austin | November 6, 2008
Sounds like the last option to me (but what a weird dream!) -- and, man, how I sure hate those, too!

(At least I hope that's what it is... aside from being the simplest explanation, it's also the least depressing. Sort of. ;-D)

Get some... rest. Or something. I'm sure not one to dish out advice on this subject, so... buck up, little camper... ;-DDD


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Fossil

The soap says Cambria & Taylor. "Is that trilobite soap?" "What are you talking about?" Go »

Thorough Performance Reviews

I'm not around much this week because it's time for the annual performance reviews at work. I'm staying up till the wee hours each night writing the reviews so that the two-day marathon of face-to-face chats at the end of the week will go well. It's a win-win: For the employees doing a great job, it's my chance to offer serious praise without it sounding phony or arbitrary. Go »

Windbag

I don't know what Polaroids he has of whom, but somehow Tom Skilling has elevated himself to some kind of all-important weather-broadcasting god. When I grew up in Chicago, I watched him gradually get a bigger and bigger budget for his animated graphics, and gradually get a larger and larger timeframe to deliver his dull reports. By the time I left town, he had a whole 20 minutes of the hour-long midday newscast for the fucking weather, and boy did he find trivia to fill it: Average dew points across Cook County on this day in 1854, theta-e temperature predictions for every Cubs home game next season, you name it. Go »

Give Me a Little Credit Here

Today's junk-mail pitch from Visa: "Most credit card companies know you as a number. Sean, we know you by name." Go »

Not in My Back Yard

I love Unsolved Mysteries. The show told such interesting stories in perfect bite-size pieces, and knew how to make the hair on your neck stand up. I wish they were more objective in their reporting and didn't rely on pseudoscience as evidence (using psychics to prove ghosts and polygraph results to condemn criminals), but damn they put on an entertaining show. Go »

Crash

Some days are so bad, you feel like you've been the only driver in a demolition derby without a car. Go »