Sean's Journal
Write Me

Yah, okay, it wasn't a good Beatles song. I turn 31 on the morrow and a deepening sense of dread creeps over me.

I finished a great book by James Carvelle and Paul Begala, the title being too long to worry about, but they harped upon a few things that have really kicked me in the nads hard: 1- Not quitting, ever. Know your goal. Pursue it. 2-Set out to win and do whatever it takes to win, choose your battles knowing what you will do AFTER you win, and avoid the battles that you don't know what you would do if you won. Sometimes the cost of winning is too great to pay. The example they use is the dog that chases cars. What will he do when he catches it?

This hurts me because I'm still looking for that BIG GOAL, my OBJECTIVE. I'm 31 still trying to figure out what to do reading books telling me to take risks - not doing anything is the surefire way of guaranteeing nothing will get done, but I don't want to waste my time doing something that doesn't help me reach my OBJECTIVE, whatever the hell that is.

Did you know you need roughly $60,000 to start a coffee shop, that doesn't include the lease - just equipment, employee, and decorating costs. Damn. Some guy will help set up an 'Espresso service' coffee shop for 3 to 6 thousand plus travel costs minus the cost of his $139 book and video tape which teach you how to make proper espresso drinks. I bring this up because I considered opening a coffee shop a while a go and friend (Dan) mentioned talking about doing something similar recently. The kicker is I don't think I'd be too happy working in a coffee shop 6 days a week 18 hours a day. Sure, I could set up an internet connection and play games and surf between rushes, but forget about taking a weekend off or going on vacation - as if I would trust someone else to run my business...yeah right.

A friend of mine's boyfriend is a manager at Denny's. I always kind of fantasize about looping him into the gig, let him take care of the 'managing' let me be the Boss and Janitor, and hire some cute coed to work the cash register and some hip-hop Busta Rhymes wannabe to be the barista. Yeah...that'd be cool.

Meanwhile in the real world, I'm sitting here at work waiting to see if the automatic database rebuild I scheduled will actually fire off correctly this time instead of crashing horribly. The only thing that is preventing me from forcing it to fire early is some goody-goody upstairs staying late filling in notes into the database. I have a life people! Oh, wait, Enterprise is a rerun. Nevermind, I don't have a life, go back to whatever you were doing.

Am I rambling yet? Who cares?

I need to go places and see things. If I don't do something fun and outrageous in the next two months, someone will die. Hey, maybe that is the fun and outrageous thing I could do! No, jail doesn't sound like the kind of adventure I want right now.

In the great tradition of Thumbdog, I've decided to make a webcomic. It is about a guy who wants to be a writer but works at all these other jobs and meets interesting people and goes on wild and crazy adventures, sleeps with all the wrong people, has drama in his life, and eats CAKE whenever he wants. Yeah, cool, that's it. When will I do this? I don't know, haven't a clue, and probably never will. Yep, could be one of my many procrastinated projects that dies before I even start. I know, some pragmatic soul out there will say "Hey, Sean, don't quit, don't ever quit, keep going for your goal." My goal, however, is not to be a web cartoonist. I can't draw. My goal is something ethereal, I think. I think I want to be respected as an expert in my field. What is my field? Damnit, there is always a catch. I want to be an expert in politics, philosophy, media, public relations, arts, sciences, and balloon animals.