Lunar Obverse

“Snake Moon! I thought you were dead!” The man’s voice, from the far end of the bar, cut through whatever conversation Terry and I were having.

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A post shared by Brian Moon (@lunarobverse) on Aug 30, 2019 at 5:11pm PDT

I looked up from my pineapple hibiscus margarita (oh, Portland!) and felt surprised, complimented, and nostalgic all at once. Someone tell young Brian that he had lived long enough to experience seeing, and recognizing, a face he had not seen in two decades or more. Someone I worked with, closely, for two years, Clyde, walked over and we caught up.

Is it so weird to have old friendships? After all, the person sitting next to me at the bar was a man I had known since we were children in middle school. Regardless, it was an out of body kind of experience to talk to Clyde and to try to catch up on almost a quarter-century of happenings in the span of a brief bar conversation.

I told him that he had not changed a bit. I was lying, but more to myself. I felt the years in my skin and bones and brain and so I felt that I had changed much more than he had. He was still married to the woman he married when we worked together. He was still doing the thing he had always done. He still had hair on his head and a warmth in his voice and a twinkle in his eye, the smooth bastard. I felt weighed down as if by rocks snuck into my pockets. The rocks were bad decisions, disappointments, betrayals (mine of others and others of me).

There was a party, it would have been Christmas 1995? Can that be true? In a big Victorian house in NW Portland. I have tried and failed, to put it into words. Clyde was there, and he was dating Amber, a woman I thought I loved. “Dating” may be too strong a word—all I really knew was that they had arrived together. But my romance-and-entitlement-filled brain had cooked up a heady stew. Two people: one a man I considered a buddy, who had given me support during a hard time, someone I had bantered and laughed with; and a woman I had spent time (trying to) get to know, young and beautiful, who had felt safe enough to allow me my friendship for her. Together, in a festive house full of cheer. And me.

Amber kept talking about the Luxor Hotel, in Las Vegas, which had recently opened. A black pyramid with a laser light shooting straight up into the night sky. As I loved road trips, I proposed one. The three of us, in a car, to Vegas and back. I still feel the push and pull and ache of friendship and love and jealousy and hope. I still feel it.

If Whit Stillman had made a movie of that night it could not have been more perfect. Amber would be played by Kate Beckinsale, or maybe Winona Ryder. Clyde, tall, Southern charm, dark-haired, would be… Chris Eigeman? Me, I’d be… Bobcat Goldthwaite, but, y’know, not nearly as manic. A subdued, serious role for young Bobcat.

Of course we did not go on that road trip. Of course we did not. The energy of that night, of that season, never left Portland. And apparently neither did any of us.

I’ll have to tell Amber I ran into Clyde the next time I see her.

Once again, no idea what words are going to come out of my fingers now. I’m just writing. Am I doing it right? I sure hope so.

My morning routine goes as follows.

My alarm is set to go off sometime between 5:45 AM and 6:05 AM. It’s actually an app that runs while the phone is on the corner of my bed and it’s supposed to keep track of my sleep cycles and wake me up at the perfect point in my cycle. That’s the theory. In practice, I either wake up just before 5:45 AM, disable the alarm, and go back to sleep; or I get jarred out of sleep at 6:05 AM, where I disable the alarm and go back to sleep (today was the former).

Going back to sleep isn’t disastrous because I have a secondary alarm that is set for 6:15 AM. It’s supposed to be a hard line: wake up now or Bad Things Will Happen. Today, I did not ignore it, but the mornings where I have ignored it are getting more frequent. Twice this week.

Once I’m out of bed, I get my slippers and robe and go downstairs, where I start some coffee, and turn on the oven, pre-heating it to 375° F. I put some aluminum foil on a cookie sheet and lay out some strips of bacon.

While the coffee is perc-ing, I go back upstairs, weigh myself. Today I weighed in at 213.8 lbs. I actually weigh myself naked (because of course) and I do it three times and average the results. Just seems more… scientific? I don’t know. Then I get in the shower and clean myself, brush my teeth, and shave my face.

After all that, back downstairs, where I put the bacon tray into the oven and set a 12-minute timer.

Back upstairs, where I get dressed, then back downstairs. While the remaining 12 minutes are playing out, I get my oatmeal ready. I buy instant steel-cut oats and they’re great if a bit boring by themselves. I add a pat of butter, some honey, and some crushed almonds, along with a pinch of salt. I’ve been trying to cut down on sugar. This is my normal breakfast.

Once the bacon is done, I enplaten it and carry it, my bowl of oatmeal, and my travel mug of coffee upstairs to the computer room, where I sit down and surf, or, as I’ve been doing for the past week and a half, write 500 words. Somewhere in there my “Leave for work” alarm goes off, which I’ve been ignoring lately. For instance, today the alarm went off 9 minutes ago, while I’ve been writing this.

Once all that’s done, I carry the plates and remaining coffee downstairs, put the plates in the dishwasher, top-up my coffee mug with whatever’s left in the pot (if I accidentally made too much), grab my messenger bag (my work badge and phone are in there), grab the faceplate for my car head unit, my sunglasses, and get in my car and drive to work.

I’ve made it this far. Double digits. And as I develop the habit, I can feel the urge to write more, and by that I mean more than just the 500 words a day, returning. I don’t know if I’m writing anything interesting yet, but at least I don’t feel discouraged from even sitting down and typing things out.

That’s the goal. Maybe, somewhere in the back of my head, I talked myself out of writing anything at all. Maybe that’s what fear looks like, or, rather, feels like. I don’t know. All I know is that previously, when I would think about writing, my attention wouldn’t stay on that topic long enough for me to find a keyboard somewhere and tap something out. I’d just… drift to something else. Checking Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, repeat ad nauseam. Find a video on YouTube. Play Sudoku. Anything but writing.

How many times a day do you find yourself poking at your phone and wondering why you picked it up? I do it so very often. I’ve written about this before. It’s an empty feeling. I don’t like it. The phone should be a tool to help me get things done, and to stay in communication with people.

I can even write on the phone. Or I could be reading. My friend Steve Libbey wrote a book and tossed it up on Kindle. I bought it the other night, and I could be reading it. That’s what I used to do when I felt that empty bored feeling. That empty bored feeling is why I read a lot of books when I was younger. Now it’s a shiny colorful glass screen, and I feel much less enriched and entertained than I remember feeling.

So here I am writing. It’s very stream of consciousness. I can’t imagine it’s very interesting for anyone. Adding interest will come later, I hope. I just want to get back into the habit. The habit of writing will help carry me past the inevitable lulls of motivation.

I’ve always been very bad at motivation. Again, I’m sure I’ve written about that before. I had a teacher in high school tell me, “If anyone ever figures out how to motivate you, you’re going to be an unstoppable force!” Which, if you think about it, is a really shitty thing to tell a kid, even a teenager, from a position of authority. But it’s stuck with me, and not in a good way.

Maybe a better thing to have told me would have been this idea I’m working on now: habits are better than motivation. Maybe what young Brian should have learned is that it’s OK to be bored sometimes but if you have something to create or do on a regular basis, like reading, or writing, or drawing, and you do that whenever you’re bored, you’ll eventually build your skills and portfolio up, and you’ll have something to show people, to share with other people.

Because that’s the best next step for that empty feeling: sharing your work with others can help you connect. I’m pretty sure that’s why I did, and still often do, feel empty inside. I have always wanted to be noticed, to be invited, to be included. That, however, is a whole ‘nother topic.

In my Notes app, I have 32 notes with the title or phrase “Story Idea”. A few of them have more than one idea, but the majority are just a single sentence or paragraph.

On my laptop, buried and scattered across many different folders, I count 35 unfinished stories, notes, first drafts, and projects that could be called story ideas. I’d need to actually go through them to determine how many unique ideas are in there, though: some of them are duplicates from having multiple backups copied into one directory.

On my desktop computer, I did not find any notes or story ideas.

(The Voice In The Back of My Head smirks and snorts in derision.)

That’s 65 or so notes that could become stories. OK, sure, that’s not as many as I thought. But it still ain’t nothin’. But wait! There’s more.

I have 101 posts saved in the same editor I’m using to type this post, the WordPress editor, that are saved as Drafts. There we go. These are all distinct from the previous notes. In large part, they’re posts I started writing and then abandoned for one reason or another: probably a lack of mental energy; or depression; or not having any idea where it could go; or realizing I needed to think the idea through some more; or more research, before I could continue. But, again, that ain’t nothin’.

Baby steps. Now I know the scope of what my past self thought was good enough to at least write something down. Here’s Future Brian, taking a look.

More to come.

When I have a story idea, I nearly always write it down somewhere. Usually, these days, in the Notes app on my phone, because my phone is always with me and Notes can be read on any network-connected device. Prior to the introduction of smartphones (let’s face it, iPhones – I’ve never been an Android person) in my life, I would write them on pieces of paper and then transcribe them into an electronic form at my earliest convenience. So buried in folders on the hard drives of my computers, those story notes sit, idle, waiting for the day I pluck them out and try to build them up into actual stories.

Without actually going and doing an inventory of them, I’d hazard a guess that I must have… a couple of hundred? Yeah, that sounds right. More than a hundred, at least, but not a lot more. I’m not saying they’re all good ideas. They may be, like dreams once you’ve woken up and are no longer in your subconscious, just random words thrown together with no structure or coherence. Still, though, a hundred story prompts would make up a fertile ground for creativity, with a little effort and attention.

That being the case, why does the voice in the back of my head tell me I have no ideas? That I’m an empty well? “Look,” I say to the Voice In The Back of My Head, “I’ve got a hundred ideas, and I’m making more all the time! I’ve got plenty to work with!”

You can probably already guess what the Voice In The Back of My Head is going to say, especially if you, too, have to deal with that particular demon. Or maybe this is just me. It chuckles, leans back, and raises an accusing finger. “You may have those ideas, but you sit there and don’t use them. When was the last time you even looked at one once you were done capturing it, pinning it to a board like a precious butterfly and then sticking it away in a digital drawer, far from the eyes of yourself or anyone else?”

It’s got my number. I don’t do anything with those scraps of paper, those text files. I am a hoarder. I do the minimum amount of work to save the fruits of my brain, and then I give up and go on with my day.

I did not know that today’s 500 words were going to become a call to action, but here it is. I’m going to do an inventory of my creative seeds, pick some out, and try to write the story behind them. Scary stuff. And probably a lot of work. I don’t know if the reward is going to be worth it. I can feel my own inner resistance pushing against this. My brain is trying to make the locus of control external rather than internal. However! I can do this.

If not for myself, then at least now I can have another argument, take another step, against that fucking Voice In The Back of My Head, that fucking bastard.

I added the Moon and the Earth image yesterday, after posting my post. In case you’re reading these in reverse order and got confused. I was building it up into a whole thing, having to comb NASA’s website for royalty-free space images and having to put it all together in a photo editor program and making it look right, and psyching myself out of actually, y’know, doing it. Then I went on the Wayback Machine and found my old site design and just stole that image and put it up here.

It’s a little short and probably at a terrible resolution for modern screens and browsers but I’m satisfied with it and the continuity it brings to my home on the interwebs. I’ve finally got bamoon.com decorated how I want. This page, finally and once again, feels like home.

My hosting bill is coming due in a month or two. It’s close to a hundred bucks and I don’t get much, so I went looking for other options (man, I hope my current host isn’t reading this). Here, I don’t get email, I don’t get an SSL certificate, I’m only allowed one domain, I don’t get a lot of storage space. Turns out (it turns out!) that for $30-40 less a year, I could get IMAP email, HTTPS, multiple domains (in one case, unlimited domains!), and more! I’ll be switching. When I do, I’ll probably also move the Uncasting page from where it’s currently parked (did you know that my nephew Max and I did a podcast? We’re currently on hiatus but enjoy our back catalog!)

Futzing around with domains and DNS and email and WordPress feels productive, but this is all just a platform for my writing. And here I am, writing. It’s early in the day and I haven’t left for work yet. I’ve eaten some bacon and a bowl of steel-cut oats (with honey, crushed almonds, and a little pat of butter) and a danish. The neighbor next door is out on their porch coughing (I think they’re a smoker) and I just got a text from my friend Tracy about a bumper sticker she just saw (“I believe in Dog”, to which I replied with a gif of a flying dog)

via GIPHY

(That one, actually)

I should go to work but I’ve only got (checks the word count) 393 words at this point. Pretty close but no cigar yet.

What else can I say? Today is Taco Tuesday, where I normally meet my friends after work for tacos. I suspect Terry is going to suggest we move it to Wednesday because there’s a great new bar that has fancy tacos that isn’t open on Tuesdays, but I can’t do it tomorrow because I have another commitment: a birthday dinner / going-away party for my sister’s mother-in-law and my nephew Max, respectively. I suspect that means I’ll be taco-ing alone tonight. So be it.

At this point, I’m just stalling. Writing words just to fill up space. But I need to shut off the guilt because that’s just what this whole exercise is supposed to do: get me to turn off the inner critic and write like the wind. I can edit later (I mean, I’m not going to edit these posts; they’re just free consciousness writing without consequences (thank you for reading them, by the way. I’m not really doing these for you, but I appreciate you all the same.))

This one, I’m tapping out on my phone, while sitting in my car in the shade on my lunch break. I didn’t get a chance to write this morning before going to work, and I’ve been busy all day with work stuff, so this is the first chance I’ve had to write. This project (or experiment, whatevs) isn’t about doing the writing at the same time and in the same way every day; it’s about just getting it done no matter what. Here I am, doing the thing.

It’s a pain in the ass typing long things on my phone. Don’t care, though, as long as I can get it done.

I changed my blog theme over the weekend. I still have things to add but for now it looks about 90% of what I want. Very simple, clean. Sorry if you don’t like Dark Mode but it’s my blog and I’ll do as I please.

My last name is Moon; so I am going for a space-inspired theme. Might try to add stars in the background later, I don’t know. Definitely want to add a Moon somewhere, like I had in the old days.

I got help with this from Steve Libbey, a very helpful person whom I have never met face to face. We just know each other in that cool internet kind of way that people can know each other now. I contacted him because I wasn’t 100% sure I could make the changes I wanted on my website, and Steve was offering help with WordPress. But in talking to him, turns out (it turns out!) I know more than I thought I did. I just don’t have any confidence about it. Once I sat down and paid attention to what he was telling me, though, it all mostly fell in to place. I just needed my attention to be pointed in the right direction.

Other than adding a Moon somewhere up there (waves vaguely at the upper left corner of the page), I also want to add a Picture of the Day/Week/Whenever in the left sidebar. The page is too plain without some color or images, I think. I tried some widgets but none of them let me right-justify so they looked weird. I’ll figure it out, though.

Now that my home on the internet is working mostly as I want it, I should have less resistance to writing than I used to. That’s the hope anyway. And that means more regular writing, which builds the habit, which leads to me being happier. Again, that’s what I’m aiming for.

I have about 20 minutes left on my lunch break. I’m struggling to come up with anything interesting to say. But that’s the point of pushing through this, isn’t it? I haven’t been writing in part because my inner filter is telling me I don’t write anything worth reading. By giving myself permission to write whatever, I’m lowering the barrier and retraining myself to a habit. I’m not out of the Writer’s Block Woods yet. Just gotta keep showing up.

Like I just did. (521 words)

Just re-watched All The President’s Men (1976) because, hey, impeachment is still topical. Watching young Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman slowly piece together the evidence that Richard Nixon was running a criminal organization out of the Oval Office was fascinating, both from a historical context, from the context of story-telling and writing. and from the context of what journalism used to be and maybe, in some minor areas, still is or can be.

First from the historical angle… where do I begin? Nixon was using the power of the presidency for explicitly political gain. At the time that was incredibly taboo. I mean, it was illegal, but it was also considered morally off-limits by people regardless of party. Nixon’s actions were not seen as practical or business-as-usual, they were scandalous. But a funny thing has happened over the years: the people behind those actions never really went away. Their ideas for “rat-fucking” their opponents and for gaining, and holding on to, political power infused the leadership of the Grand Ol’ Party, the Republicans. Nixon may have fallen out of favor and eventually died as an outcast, but the prevailing opinion isn’t that he was a crook—it’s that he got caught. Or, rather, caught too soon, before he could consolidate his power.

Republicans today have moved so far from that moral center that they aren’t even afraid of getting caught. Time and again they have done Nixonian things: extreme gerrymandering, whisper campaigns against political opponents based on lies and slander, illegal surveillance of reporters and politicians to suppress stories. As they’ve gotten away with it, they’ve upped the ante, to the point of taking outright bribes from foreign governments in order to win elections. There may be some cries of foul play, there never seem to be any real repercussions for those actions, and that, to me, is baffling. That’s a whole ‘nother topic, though.

Looking at All The President’s Men as a piece of story-telling fascinates me, too. The overall arc starts with some Cuban burglars breaking into the Democratic National Committee HQ in the Watergate Building and ends with a teletype machine printing out the story that Nixon is resigning. How does it connect those dots? By following the research, interviews, and discussions two reporters have with their sources, the subjects of the stories they write, and their editors and publishers. You’d think it was a very dry story, and yet each step in the path is clearly, and dramatically, explained. There is a sense of dread building up over time as you see everyday office workers clam up and act like they’re in fear for their lives. Over and over, in response to what seem like simple questions, they proclaim that they’re good Americans, good citizens, even as they know they’ve done rotten things, and display the reactions of knowing they’ve done them and now those actions are coming to light.

Would people react the same way today? It sure doesn’t seem like it. Shame, fear, and guilt no longer seem to be a motivating factor for the everyday bureaucrats in our government, particularly at a Federal level. How far we have fallen.

I was worried I was going to end up at the strip club last night. Friday, happy hour, peer pressure… my friend T. has an inheritance that he’s burning through, and he’s spent a lot of money at a particular club. But since I’ve overspent a bit this payday, I didn’t really have enough to spend and also make it through the next few weeks. So for the past couple of days, I’ve been practicing, in my head, saying “no, I can’t do that this week.” Trying to set boundaries, with myself mostly, but also with my friend, who means well but can’t really help himself.

So when he sent a text about a new bar in our favorite neighborhood as a suggestion instead… I jumped at the chance. Strippers are great and all but if you’re on a budget, cheap street tacos and margaritas are a nice way to unwind from a stressful week, too.

The bar, Bar Espiritu, is a great space; long and narrow with a very comfy lounge in the back, big leather overstuffed couches, and a giant projection TV. And the cook is someone I recognized from a coffee shop I used to love, so it was great to see him back in the neighborhood! The bartender was friendly with a dry kind of wit, and the owner was welcoming and appreciative of new, excited customers. I will be going back.

Then a third friend showed up. We bar hopped to another couple of places and walked around on a nice summer night with just a bit of a buzz (OK, maybe just me) and it became a very chill night of just hanging out with people I care about and drinking and catching up. The perfect Friday night. I didn’t overspend, I got to fill that internal hole that makes me feel like I don’t connect to people, and I had a nice mix of new experiences and comfortable ones.

That stupid internal hole. That’s where this story is going. I’ve been so dejected—I was going to say lately, but it’s been going on for at least a few years now—and wanting to hide, to not seek out new experiences, not push myself. The opposite of having no boundaries, I was setting the firmest boundaries, boundaries that were basically walls that I couldn’t get through and wouldn’t let anyone else in. I wanted to do the same things I always did, in exactly the same way, at the same time and at a pace I set for myself that did not account for anyone else’s wishes.

Putting myself on a path to healing from that depression, however, has made me recognize the internal emptiness, the hole inside, and figuring out that I have better options for filling that hole, or at least living with it and working around it (silly Brian, there’s no filling the hole; just can’t be done, my good man!) Options like spending more time with people who care about me, and about whom I care.

Good morning. I probably don’t have the 30 minutes it would normally take me to write out my 500 words; I should be leaving for work in <checks time> 3 minutes, actually, but I’m starting this post anyway. My normal Friday doesn’t leave a lot of energy at the end of the day, since I usually go out for happy hour, and drinking always defocuses me and leaves me a bit tired.

In fact, many Fridays I end up at a strip club, but for this entire week, I have been of two minds about that possibility: first, I really really want to unwind in exactly that way, and B, I’ve been worried about spending too much money and leaving myself high and dry for the next two paychecks. My next paycheck goes almost entirely to my rent, and I get paid every two weeks, so if I spend everything now, it’ll be three weeks on short rations.

I’ve set aside money for my normal bills, and I’ve got some food in the fridge, and I should be able to afford gas for my car, so I’d be OK there… but what if something comes up? What if, what if, what if?

I’m a little mad at myself for having bought some things on my last couple of paychecks that have turned out to be useless, since I’m speaking about money. I was at Free Geek a couple weeks back and they had an enterprise-level network-area storage (NAS) unit that normally goes for $500 new, for just $49. I have been wanting to put some network storage in at home, for backups and streaming movies, so it seemed like a deal too good to pass up. It didn’t come with drives, though; just the box. But I had a spare drive I could install. Or so I thought.

But when I got home and installed the drive, the damned thing wouldn’t boot at all. The box is Seagate, and the drive was Western Digital; I decided that I needed Seagate drives. Next payday rolls around, I buy two more small drives, a matched pair of Seagate 1 TB drives, another $40 total. And those don’t boot, either. It just sits and blinks and doesn’t do anything. I can’t see it on the network, it doesn’t get an IP address, it’s just a black hole.

Money wasted.

What’s funny, or maybe what may seem funny to you, the reader, is that I’m mad at buying that hardware, but not upset at all at spending money on strippers. That’s because I feel the money spent on strippers and alcohol to be money well-spent. I get something of value from that experience. It’s worth it to me. But the dumb NAS and hard drives don’t. They’re useless. I’d feel better about it if I could get some utility out of them.

And now all I can think is that I’d rather have that $89 I spent on the NAS to cushion the next couple of weeks until my non-rent payday. Is that so weird?