{"id":250,"date":"2002-02-24T13:43:12","date_gmt":"2002-02-24T18:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=250"},"modified":"2002-02-24T13:43:12","modified_gmt":"2002-02-24T18:43:12","slug":"coffee-dust-and-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=250","title":{"rendered":"Coffee, dust, and me."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Coffee, dust, and me.&nbsp;  What the hell am I doing here?&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This&#8217;ll do,&#8221; has become my motto, even my personal <i>vision statement<\/i>.&nbsp;  It has applied to boyfriends?that&#8217;s whoever is currently sleeping in my bed.&nbsp;  There have not been many.&nbsp;  It applies to whatever the waiter actually brings, as opposed to what it was you ordered, because you never decided what you really wanted anyway.&nbsp;  It applies to bad jobs, to stagnant lives, and to any event that you don&#8217;t want to be bothered changing.&nbsp;  &#8220;This&#8217;ll do&#8221; is a universally useful utility for settling and stilling, which is the opposite of stirring and agitating.&nbsp;  Neither extreme is better than the other, they both have their advantages.&nbsp;  Only, I never choose the latter.&nbsp;  <\/p>\n<p>Lately, I have been getting an eerie sense of things.&nbsp;  Once or twice, when talking idly about unimportant things?office chatter?and reference was made to specific geographic locations, I got the distinct feeling that I won&#8217;t be going to them.&nbsp;  Not with any particular forboding, just a sense that the limits are closing in and the possibilities diminishing, as they do in everyone&#8217;s life eventually.&nbsp;  <\/p>\n<p>Some things are relatively certain without the aid of clairvoyance.&nbsp;  NASA is not likely to enter me in its astronaut training program, for example.&nbsp;  I&#8217;m never going to enter the military (not that I ever wanted to, except for the men), so I&#8217;m never going to fly an F16 or drive a sub.&nbsp;  I don&#8217;t seem to be in proximity to any opportunities that would take me to other continents; a stint as foreign correspondent seems unlikely now (not that it ever was likely).&nbsp;  There are not even any stints as a foreign tourist on my horizons.&nbsp;  A career as a celebrated chef is less than likely.&nbsp;  Same with surgeon.&nbsp;  And airline pilot.&nbsp;   An acting career is a little different; I&#8217;ve survived my whole life by acting, and it just wouldn&#8217;t seem right to make it a career.&nbsp;  No such possibility is imminent, anyway.&nbsp;  A future as an olympic athlete is out, too?except maybe for curling.&nbsp;  The sweepers and the throwers in that sport seem to be in awfully good shape, though I can&#8217;t see why they need to be.&nbsp;  <\/p>\n<p>Careers aside, many untried pastimes (and even former ones) seem unlikely now to start (or resume).&nbsp;  Skiing was my absolute favorite thing to do, up until high school when my mother stopped me.&nbsp;  She thought it was dangerous.&nbsp;  And when I resumed it in my mid-twenties I was sure my legs wouldn&#8217;t take it and I&#8217;d fall, make a fool of myself, and have to repeat my fourth grade ski school as a remedial.&nbsp;  After so much time away from it, my first run was absolutely fucking fantastic, and I didn&#8217;t have any time to worry about falling.&nbsp;  Riding a bike.&nbsp;  <\/p>\n<p>Speaking of riding a bike, sex?which is often compared to that activity?seems to have been over for a while.&nbsp;  It is problematic for me, anyway.&nbsp;  Intimacy is just too much work, and sex with strangers, while it has not lost its appeal, is simply not allowed anymore.&nbsp;  Sigh.&nbsp;  There is fantasy (or memory) and, of course, latex.&nbsp;  I&#8217;m refering to latex in its solid, cylindrical form, not the thin, sheath-like form which is slightly more acceptable to talk about.&nbsp;  Despite its comendable silence after the act, the solid form leaves a lot to be desired.&nbsp;  Now that I think of it, both forms?the dildo and the rubber?leave out an awful lot.&nbsp;  Or maybe I&#8217;m just wanting something from sex that I shouldn&#8217;t want.&nbsp;  Sigh, again.&nbsp;  <\/p>\n<p>Today, I&#8217;ll go to work.&nbsp;  Supper will be a pizza or a sub, and more coffee.&nbsp;  Tonight, I&#8217;ll come home and reread this, and like parts of it, and wish I spent more time rewriting other parts.&nbsp;  But I won&#8217;t rewrite anything.&nbsp;  Then I&#8217;ll visit some favorite sites, maybe tweak Greymatter some more, listen to the BBC, have a snack, brush my teeth and go to bed.&nbsp;  I might clean my apartment someday before I die.&nbsp;  <\/p>\n<p>I might not.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coffee, dust, and me.&nbsp; What the hell am I doing here?&nbsp; &#8220;This&#8217;ll do,&#8221; has become my motto, even my personal vision statement.&nbsp; It has applied to boyfriends?that&#8217;s whoever is currently sleeping in my bed.&nbsp; There have not been many.&nbsp; It &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=250\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[475,477,394,481,249,479,482,478,476,483,480,181],"class_list":["post-250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-airline","tag-astronaut","tag-bbc","tag-celebrated-chef","tag-curling","tag-foreign-correspondent","tag-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration","tag-olympic-athlete","tag-rubberleave","tag-skiing","tag-surgeon","tag-waiter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}