Indeed

February started today to my great surprise, and along with it, FWAM - February Album Writing Month...which would make it FAWM but pressing backspace is just not in me right now. I'm still not sure if I'm up to the challenge (14 songs in 28 days), but I got off to an OK start today. I have one mostly complete song, and a bunch of short melody sketches. I figure I'll try to write roughly one a day for the first 14 days, and then edit and record during the second half of the month. Yes, good plan, I agree. Hopefully it will be the second half of this month.

I've been trying to be more aware the last couple of days, and it has been roughly impossible. 99.99% of the time, I'm aware 0% of the time. And when I do pull myself into awareness, I can only be completely aware for precious seconds. If I'm not busy doing anything, if I'm just sitting around, I can collect more of those moments per minute - maybe 1 or 2. But if I'm doing something, anything at all - thinking up melodies, reading, eating, writing this sentence, it's hopeless; I'm a complete zombie. Every word you're reading right now, except the word "now," came out of some programmed state of being. I hope you're as disgusted with me as much as you should be with yourselves.

I'm sad to say that 30-day trials aren't going so well. Water, no cursing, and meditation are still cruising, Chinese is as well, but crunches have been all but abandoned for the last couple of days, and "writing for an hour" hasn't shown its face for four days-ish. I am at least a tiny bit ashamed.

Hmm. Sleepy.

Enable Adult Content? What A Terrifying Thought

In order to get this French movie I wanted, I had to download a piece of software called Graboid. It's pretty worthless, much like the short-lived Veoh player, but I've managed to squeeze some drama out of it. When I went to Preferences to see where it was putting the downloaded file, I saw a checkbox that said "Enable Adult Content." It was unchecked. I've been staring at it for two hours now with a consistent 120-bpm heartbeat. Is it just talking about the movie I'm downloading? Or is it talking about my life? Do I dare click it? How do I know I'll be able to unclick it if I find out that I'm actually an immature kid inside? Am I really that sheltered? Eh...I don't know, I'm pretty sure it's just for movies. ...But I wonder if it enables it for any movie... then this software wouldn't be as useless as it so wholeheartedly pretends to be. Then maybe I could even be pursuaded to watch The Visitor again. Deep breath. Click.

The 30-day trials are moving along nicely. Crunches are probably the easiest part of the deal, as they take up very finite periods of time to complete. Drinking water is the hardest, especially when your newfound friend in France has a fridge full of Cokes and is willing to email you one duty-free. Not cursing is not too much of a challenge, being as I don't talk to myself outloud, and I spend most of the day alone. Nevertheless, every now and then I fail, though I usually catch myself in the middle of the first syllable.

On a happy note, someone managed to read my novel! A guy I met through Natasha, whose name I will keep to myself for fear of tainting him with my reputation, read it and gave me some comments and pointers. Very exciting. This motivates me to edit it, and perhaps add. It also reminds me that February Album Writing Month is imminent. In the translated words of Song A Day For A Year Superman, "j'ai peur!"

Tomorrow, it's back to NJ for me. I'm stopping for a couple of hours in Boston to wave my hands, and then home.

On consciousness:

Madelyn: hehe, i didnt think much before that sentence
Madelyn: well, like most
Madelyn: of mine
Mark: yea, most of everyone's
Madelyn: you're too optimistic
...
Mark: did u think before that one?
Madelyn: not really
Mark: ur consistent