Jimmy’s in Minnetonka

by G. Sax

It was all white people at Jimmy’s in Minnetonka. They were wearing various uncool shades of gray and had this year’s jacket style slung over their chairs. John Mayer played overhead. She ordered water with no ice. The other, a salad with a light pasta. They cared not for cheese. I felt the walls closing in around me.

I need to relearn how to play the game. I used to not mind mingling with white people in pseudo-fancy restaurants. Now, I burn disdainfully within, which is not healthy.

“Don’t ever settle,” goes the deep, internal mantra, but have I already? Why am I even here? Need to stay positive. Need to keep the attitude up. But I am feeling a need to check the bread crumbs I’ve scattered behind me before the squirrels eat them.

Oh, the Little Background Noises

by G. Sax

I have this new habit at the workplace cubicle farm. First thing in the a.m. when I’m inspired enough, I’ll hit up the Interweb for a representative image of what’s on my mind. I have a rule where I have to Adobe it in some way, usually a quick Photoshop mashup.

Bad traffic? I’ll head over to MNdot and mock up my experience.

Celebrity curious? Gary Busey meets the mark. Fuzz him up, add a filter, and you can almost see his iconic value.

Man of Action III

by G. Sax

So last time I wrote about procrastination, which is something I’m very good at. But the point of the exercise was to slap myself in the face with it like a cold fish in a cartoon or a gloved feminine hand in a 1950s romance. I don’t want to be good at procrastinating anymore. Let’s time capsule these things and move on:

• Delivering Sunday newspapers at noon to old people who wake up at 5 a.m.
• Arriving in high school homeroom at the bell…everyday…for four years.
• Nearly missing high school graduation.
• Blinking at the dawn with 4 pages more to write for the big college paper. Doing it again. And again.
• Showing up for the game in the 3rd inning, the 2nd quarter, the 2nd period.
• Arriving late to the job, to the party, to the wedding, to the…you name it, I’ve been the last one there.
• Doing my taxes on April 14th.

This year, I did my taxes by April 8th. Federal and two states. It’s a start.

Today, I’m writing in the morning. Writing before I do anything else. Writing fresh, rather than only at the ass end of the day, when I’m spent and my voice is cracking.

And I have a full-time job that I must go to now. On time.

Man of Action II

by G. Sax

Springbok
Last night the air smelled so good. Rain pure, washing away the last bits of dirty air from an overlong winter. The weekend was grand and not even an early case of the Mondays followed by nearly 11 straight hours of deskwork could wipe the smile off my face.

I’ve officially been in Minnesota for a year now after about 10 years away. The way I used to feel about springtime as a kid on my way home from school was the same way I felt last night as I locked the garage and wobbled toward my apartment after a long day. Youthful, full of a certain thrill that an incredible summer lay before me, unrepentant in my zeal for the tastes of life.

I’m not so young, of course, though it feels good to be regularly mistaken for a twentysomething. I have my hair and my hair is brown. My wallet remains empty, but maybe this is what makes me lean more toward 18 than 38.

With spring and summer here and now, I’m going to get me some of that green real soon.

Posture

by G. Sax

Hump…Back…Get It?
I may be getting a hump. At least Carly says there’s a humpy angle at the base of my back neck. I’ve always been angled odd. If you look at me close enough or at straight-on photos of me, I lean left.

Let’s call it a permanent pimp lean rather than what it really is—an underdeveloped newspaper boy carrying too many Sunday papers over one shoulder for too damn long.

I’ve been waking with neck and back pain of late. I don’t sit right, which isn’t good because I sit at a computer all day. If you ever come to this spot for a G. update or a laugh and you have seen very little on either front of late, it’s because I’m pretty sick of sitting at a computer by the time I get around to playing with whaletime.net.

My current job doesn’t call for as much getting up out of the chair. At least one of my shit tasks at the last job involved pretty constant trips to the printer and all the things associated with printer operation. I was miserable doing it, but at least I was moving.

I’m also an excuse maker from way back, so take this entire entry with a shaker of salt. I have a sack full of excuses to explain my lack of writerliness…

I work too much. This would be a great excuse if I really needed to put in the hours that I do. With a few tweaks of some time-eating tasks, I could open up more time for the tipple-taps that make for a worthwhile “Key of G.” column.

I have a life. This one’s true, thank goodness. But being a writer-dude is kind of a big part of my life, so this excuse gets a big WTF.

My computer is slow. True again, but it’s not that slow. Another hole in this argument is the fact that I own a wireless-ready laptop. I can write from anywhere! I don’t even need to be sitting and increasing the size of my hump. I could stand like a cool guy at the Chipotle window bar or at a Panera Bread or a Starbucks or a Caribou Coffee or wherever dudes who wear ties and real leather shoes and have real leather daily planners stand with their earphones and Blackberry jams. But…

I’m fat and lazy. I almost started my old “Weight Journal” again to try to shame the pounds off like I did back in 2002. But then I remembered that it didn’t work before. I actually gained 5 more pounds on the Shame Diet.

So this brings me to what I know is the truth of all truths, damn the excuses…

I’m into procrastination. Oh, if only it weren’t true. I procrastinate so much that it’s crazy, really. I don’t want to brag or anything, but I’m a pretty smart and capable guy when I put my mindgrapes to it. I can take charge when I need to, but the problem is I don’t seem to go for it until I’m in a time crunch or the problem has reached a level that requires a fire extinguisher (quite literally, in one famous case).

I have a lot of interests, which is part of the problem. I fancy myself a Renaissance Man, but please. A man shouldn’t have so many interests that he is unable to have a true impact on the world because of his lack of action beyond the dabble of “interest.” I stretch myself thin rather than focusing on one or two career endeavors, hobbies, or life tasks.

At work, it’s not enough to be a good writer/editor type. No, I’m not satisfied until I also learn page layout, photo editing, mapmaking, font design, color processing, database management, website development, public presentation, and so forth.

At home, I partake in far too many stupid TV programs; I like to get out of the house and explore; I follow most of the major professional sports and attend several sporting events during the year; I play sports; I join social clubs; I read as much as possible; and I recently went through a serious jigsaw puzzling addiction. Closer to the bone, it’s not enough that I “blog” like millions of others with some degree of webbish know-how, but I have to write a “column” and I have to build an online pseudo-magazine where writerly friends can express themselves, too.

That’s just the surface of my spaz. Throw in the chores (including an obsession with clean dishes), the fantasy football (which has become an all-year “lifestyle choice”), the driving to and fro (so many freeways in the Twin Cities), and I’m too thin for the number of friends I like to keep, the kind of father I want to be, and the sort of loving partner I hope earns me a lifetime of joy.

But, see, I’m not thin. Just thin on time, and there’s only one logical reason for that, given that I’m not any busier than you are. I suck at time management. I think I was good at it once, but that’s a delusion. I delivered newspapers late when I was a paperboy. I was late for high school and college classes all the time. I rarely see the first pitch at a baseball game. I consistently find jobs that allow me to show up later in the day. I’m late on website updates. I’m late for dinner.

I’ll point to my last column entry about strengths and weaknesses—the one that was up for far too long because I was procrastinating on this new entry—as my first serious realization that I have to approach my weaknesses differently. It’s not so much that I need to fix what makes me weak, it’s that I need to focus on my strengths.

Everything that is negative in my above statements can be manipulated to read more positively. I have a full and enriching life with many interests and wonderful people in it. I have smarts, my health, and a few less luxury items than the others but luxury items all the same. I have learned to make time for a variety of endeavors, now maybe I could stand to learn how to harness time with better quantitative and qualitative results. Whoa; that’s deep, yo.

And with that, I point to this column as my first step toward better time management. So if you’ll excuse me, it’s nearly 11:00 a.m. and I have to get to my 9-to-5 job. Okay, I clearly have a ways to go, but I promise to sit up straight today.

Woo

by G. Sax

So I took the test that goes with the book pictured, and I came out a “Woo.” I’m not exactly thrilled about it. I take it as a more of an “All Woo, No Action.” My other so-called strengths include Adaptability, Ideation, Stretegic, and Activator. I’m cool with all of those except Activator. It doesn’t really seem to grab at what I’ve been as a person over the years, at least not consistently.

Let’s explain these definitions as given by the book, Now, Discover Your Strengths, by Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton, PhD.

Woo: Love the challenge of meeting new people and winning them over; drive satisfaction from breaking the ice and making a connection with another person.

Adaptability: Prefer to “go with the flow;” tend to be “now” people who take things as they come and discover the future one day at a time.

Ideation: Fascinated by ideas; able to find connections between seemingly disparate phenomena.

Stretegic: Create alternative ways to proceed; can quickly spot the relevant patterns and issues in any given scenario.

Activator: Can make things happen by turning thoughs into action; often impatient.

All well and good, but I would have enjoyed the addition of Command, Communication, or Achiever. I would have thought that Arranger would come up. Then again, these are the things I think I am, and then I look over the frosty plains of the last 20 years or so, and I begin to understand. Who I am now is so different from what I expected to be at this age back when I was 16. A lot of that kid is in me, but it’s good to know that I’ve been, as the test says, Adaptable.