Starting Over

// Is it in you? Really?

By Jordan Childs .
06.28.09 // Starting Over

View Comments / Jun 28.09 / Starting Over / by Jordan Childs

// Starting over is a big, sharp knife

By Tristan Smith .
06.27.09 // Starting Over

The last few weeks have been spent loping between tall buildings and puddles of garbage water, trying to look cool so that the thousands of evaluating strangers I pass will think I’m cool.  They’ve also been spent thinking, thinking about me and you and the rest of the world, and how we all relate.  And I believe I’ve stumbled on to why Twitter is popular.

Even if you use Twitter, I can hear the bafflement in you voices every time you send a message into the void.  “Why am I doing this?  Because a lot of other people are doing it.  But why are they doing it?”

They are doing it because they are lonely.  And because they would rather give up the power of being alone in exchange for the comfort that comes with not.

Loneliness and self-serving independence are actually two edges of the same knife.  When you are alone, you are unconnected to everyone.  All your actions cease to exist- if I am alone, and none of my friends know where I am or what I’m doing, I could be at a really fun party, or eating sushi off naked models, or I could be reading a book about reading books.  It doesn’t matter what I’m actually doing- the void is all possibilities.  And while this lack of connectivity is disconcerting- the feeling of not existing, despite clearly existing (the garbage water smells too real to not be) is soul-crushing- it’s also power.  When there are no judges, you can do anything, anything, without fear of being judged

Twitter allows us to give up that power.  By blasting the world with what I am doing, thinking, getting ready to do, reading, watching and wishing I was doing, it becomes easy for others to construct a framework of what my life is like.  This makes me feel real again, but it also creates the anxiety of expectation.  If my peers know more about my life, I worry that what I’m doing isn’t sufficiently interesting, and so my own agency decreases in the service of my insecure ego.

A lot of people are going to read this and think, “oh, well, that’s only for people that give a shit about what other people think.  I don’t, because I’m awesome”, and that’s fine.  Keep believing that.  Just don’t tell anyone else.  Because then you’re turning the knife around again.

View Comments / Jun 27.09 / Starting Over / by Tristan Smith

// I Wish It Made Me Sad

By Charles Hodges .
06.25.09 // Starting Over

If he could have started over, Michael Jackson would have done it differently.  He would have quit after Dangerous.  He would have sold Neverland.  He would have gone into therapy.  He would have laughed at his former self in a revealing E! special.  He would have had a couple of reality television shows where he capitalized on his fame.  He would have had an aquarium where he had fish that he could stare at and say, “that one, that one right over there, is my favorite.”  He would have actually fallen in love and that person would have changed everything because finally, finally, finally someone understood him and knew what he wanted for breakfast on his birthday – that it wasn’t everything, that it actually was frosted flakes with strawberries or something normal like that.  He would have gone fishing in the mountains, and gone into a bait n’ tackle shop where people kind of recognized him, but no one was really sure.

He would have started over, which is completely different than trying to forget.  He would have started over, which is completely different than getting away.  He would have started over, which is completely different than restarting.

But he didn’t.  Because he couldn’t.  And because he couldn’t, he died.  And, for some fucked up reason, I feel that, now, he is finally happy.

View Comments / Jun 25.09 / Starting Over / by Charles Hodges

// Diary Of A Maverick

By Joey Camire .
06.25.09 // Starting Over

12/7/08

Well, Diary, it’s been a month now, and a whole lot has changed.  My life has relaxed quite a bit, at least as compared to the year leading up to the election.  Oh sure, everyone is so supportive, “You’ll be able to focus on the things you love!”  they say.  Well, my friends, you can’t spend every waking hour of your life focused on prune juice and Vietnamese hookers.  Trust me, I’ve tried.  It leads to regular bowel movements and regular shots of penicillin, and at my age regularity really isn’t that important.  My friend, I’d rather shit my pants in public just to get back on C-Span.  Regularity doesn’t make headlines. Look at Sarah Palin. There isn’t a regular bone in her maverick body… Although, there was once, but that was during the prune obsession and I’d rather not discuss it. She tried to give me an “Alaskan Pipeline” look it up… I don’t know what they are doing up there in the great white north, but I can tell you if I had been elected president I would have sold that thing back. Gross. That’s all.

Well, anyway, I figure it’s time to start over again.  You know.  Stick a spur in my maverick and make some slightly non-conformist decisions. I don’t want to go too far fringe. All I need is Sean Hanity poking around with softball questions.  It’s like being interviewed by a middle school newspaper reporter. For that reason, I’ve started taking yoga classes.  Coincidentally, my friend, this is why I had to quit the prunes.  There is a lot of stretching in those classes.  But, the class is taught by a cute little Korean girl.  Namaste.  I’ll tell you what diary, that would have been the war to be in, forget ‘Nam, send me to Seoul.

With my new found energy from the the yoga I’ve also started experimenting in new vocations.  Now listen, my friend, I’ve never been the most eloquent orator, but where does that get you?  Other than the white house?  Nowhere.  So I’ve decided to use my words for good.  I’ve started writing a series of children’s books called “Johnny The Maverick”.  They’re, of course, loosely based off of different mavericky escapades of my life.  It can give that working man something to read with his boy, over a cold Schlitz, something that they can both aspire to.  I’ve decided to publish them under a pseudonym, after much thought, I’ve settled on “Reynold the Writer.”  Of course all good books need to be illustrated so I’ve enlisted the help of “Arty the Artist.”  Before you know it, this country is going to be brimming with Mavericks, just you wait.

My friend, I know this probably all sounds so crazy, but I know what I’m doing.  You don’t get the name Maverick without taking some chances.  Trust me, I’ve eaten at Hardee’s and devoured the Monster Thick Burger.  Not even the prunes could make regular that cube of cow flesh, but that’s where my little Cambodian nurse comes in.  My friend, she filmed the procedure and titled it “Enema Of The State.”  But I digress.

Next week I’m going to try sushi. If you’re starting over, what better place than your diet?  Plus I hear they have some little Japanese waitresses… Sake it to me my friend.

Your Friend,
Johnny Mav

View Comments / Jun 25.09 / Starting Over / by Joey Camire

// Redo

By Alex Aloise .
06.24.09 // Starting Over

This week is all about Starting Over. So I thought about the topic for a bit and then thought about this very site. We’ve been doing this, literally every day, for the last 8 months. We’ve got a decent following. We’re slowly growing. But it seems to me like we’re not reaching as many people as we can. Then I realized, we’re just not for everybody. So I decided to take it upon myself to recreate the website for a whole new audience. A bigger audience. So please click the link below, and experience

The New Blommit

View Comments / Jun 24.09 / Starting Over / by Alex Aloise

// Long Posts Are Foolish

By Jake Dubs .
06.23.09 // Starting Over

I am writing this to you untouched and unchecked. The result of a last minute experiment to try something new. Starting over is something I became familiar with about a minute and a half ago, sitting up in bed, reading a book. I glanced over at the clock and a twinge of regret spread across my back, telling me how stupid I was to mistake my night to post to this wonderful little wsbesite of ours. Oh look. I just misspelled webssite. Ooops. Did id again. Fuck me this is hard.

Anyway, I sat up in bed and realized that I had wasted a day away not thinking about what I was going to write this evening. In fact, I had entirely forgetten (sic) that I had something due. Even as I write this, I am trying to somehow get myself out of this ridiculous situation I’ve gotten myself in. These stream of consciousness things, (and actually publishing them as is) is a scary thing. I think I may have messed up the verb-noun agreement in that last sentence. Forgive me.

So I got up out of bed and came over to the computer, pulling ovpen the sscreen (sic twice, double sic) and begrudgingly began to write what you now have in front of you, a moment in time between checking gaewker (sic) or new york times or twitter, wondering what this babbling idiot is talking about. And the asnwer (sic) is things need to change. No longer should we leave things to the mlast minute and crap them out as if they didn’t matter. No longer should we not care. This is it. This is the time to actually realize we can do everthing better. That we can, inessence, (in essence), start over.

*the delete key was used only once in this post. and it was by mistake.

View Comments / Jun 23.09 / Starting Over / by Jake Dubs

// Welcome to the neighborhood, Mr. Clark!

By Ben Cheney .
06.22.09 // Starting Over

Mr. Clark,

I’m your new neighbor and I hate azaleas.  But that has nothing to do with this.  Before we pretend to like each other, I wanted to mention something that concerns me based on some issues that have arisen with past inhabitants of your house.

I’m a man of great patience and supreme understanding.  I understand that you may want to restart your Sunday morning maze if you run into a dead end or that you may want to start the dishwasher over if it doesn’t get all the pie crust off the plates from that Memorial Day family reunion during the first wash.  But you will never be able to start over if you shoot my dog in the paw or if your son pulls my son’s pants down to his Keds and ties his shirt to his penis.  I will not stand for this.  And if it happens, I will have no choice but to take action.

You can always enter the witness protection program like the last family that lived in your home.  But I wouldn’t recommend it — I hear it’s a drag.

Ok.  Enough with the negative possibilities.  Let’s look forward to a time when our families can enjoy some lemonade or white wine spritzers on the back porch.  How about the next time the sun comes out to play?

All the best,

Mr. Jeff

View Comments / Jun 22.09 / Starting Over / by Ben Cheney