Category Archives: General

General, Uncategorized

Back on the Move

Leave a comment
Photo by: Christopher Koppes – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

So, I’m moving out of another apartment at the end of this month.  This will be my 15th move ((456-A High Ave, 456 High Ave, 6140 S 18th St, 3520 Shangri-la Rd, 4415 Johnstone, 606 Nelson Story, 2716 Woodridge Ln, 2080 Dickinson Ave, 470 N Main St, 661 Division St, 6524 W Wright St, 4121 N Ardmore Ave, 2131 Effingham Way, 5327 Westport Rd)) since the spring of 1999.  I’ve written from time-to-time about how good I’ve gotten at it.

I definitely haven’t aspired to this transience, but that’s just the way things have gone.  Even though I’m just getting started with packing, I’m confident that I’ll be able to get things boxed up and ready without a lot of teeth-gnashing.  I’ve got a whole weekend without any other obligations coming up, and a fine storage facility to start stashing my stuff.

It never hurts to get rid of some things when you move, though.  I eliminated a mess of books the last time (predominantly from grabbing public domain digital versions instead), and I might cut out some more on this go-’round.  At various times since I moved into my current place, I also thinned out my wardrobe, sold or stored more DVDs, and dumped some bulky electronics.  I could see CDs going into semi-permanent storage this time, and ditto for all these old toys that are rapidly losing their sentimental value.

Some of those who know me will try to point out that I still have lots of stuff, and don’t want to part with a good portion of it.  My attachment to those sorts of possessions, though, have more to do with lifestyle and income than sentiment, though.  Of course I don’t want to lose or get rid of my computer(s), TV, cameras, and other favorite gadgets; they are how I make myself seen on the Internet, stay in touch with people I know, and enjoy my hobbies.  Any of them could replaced, if they had to be, some at substantial cost.  I have, in recent moves, made a habit of cutting loose from things that might be considered highly sentimental.

There are times that I wonder, then, if making snap decisions about my sentimental attachment to “things” has dulled my overall capacity for sentiment.  “Stuff” that I own doesn’t really affect me that way very often anymore.  My desire to reflect on the past and dwell in warm memories seems to be reduced.  Is this change attributable to my detachment from certain possessions, a by-product of my brain–altering pills, or a simple matter of getting older?

In a way, the technological times that we live in have made preserving memory so much easier.  What are my most valued possessions?  The photos that remind me of the people, things, and places that I’ve experienced hold that distinction.  I’ve got 90-ish percent of those tucked away on a hard drive the size of a deck of cards.  I just need to keep good backups.

General, Uncategorized

A Helluva Year

1 Comment
By: funkblast

I know, I haven’t been here in a while.

2013 hasn’t gone exactly as I expected all the way through.  I’ve had to focus a lot of time and effort on my mental and emotional well-being, and reconsidering goals and aspirations for the future.  Part of me is starting to feel like I’m too old to have “future goals.”  I know that’s not the case, but thinking about it too much can bring a person down.  I’ve struggled through some poor habits, poor feelings, and poor decisions this year.  I want to get things back on track, but I often feel like I don’t know where to get started.

I am going to give more grad school another go-round.  This cycle I’m going to put forth more effort on applications than I have in any one year in the past.  Hopefully, that will mean a fruitful result, and help me to feel more like goals and aspirations are worth having.  Some way or another, I’ve got to bust out of this rut and push ahead.

General, Uncategorized

Martian Dreaming

1 Comment

Had a really odd dream last night.

An old friend and I were the first humans to go to Mars, although the mission wasn’t initially planned that way.  The deal was, we’d stay in the lander, and deploy a number of robotic probes from our craft.

Once we got there, it became pretty clear that I hadn’t trained for the mission at all, asking my buddy what I should be doing, where my spacesuit was, and generally just watching him take care of a lot of the heavy mission-critical lifting.  At one point on that first day, a few of those probes malfunctioned; their wheels didn’t deploy, and we couldn’t move them around.  Even though it was night, and I’d have trouble locating the probes, I went outside, found them, and manually popped the wheels down.  Problem hopefully solved.

On our second day at the Red Planet, we realized it was awfully strange that I hadn’t needed my helmet to go out the day before; clearly, there was a lot more oxygen in the Martian atmosphere than was initially reported.  I had even gone out in bare feet, for chrissakes.  I decided I would wear shoes on day two, because you sure don’t want to cut your foot on a Martian rock, and get infected with some alien bacteria you’ve never encountered before, right?

So both of us head out in the morning on Sol 2, now with the bright light of day making the surrounding terrain easy to see.  In the distance, there was a strip mall and a Target store.  That seemed weird for Mars, too.  Looking up in the sky, we saw the Moon, and thought that perhaps we weren’t on Mars after all.  Turns out my friend Ben wasn’t very good at steering our rocket.  Despite his best efforts, we hadn’t even escaped Earth’s atmosphere, and after taking off from Cape Canaveral, we landed our ship in western Wyoming, thinking we’d reached Mars.

It sure was a fast trip.

General, Uncategorized

Reunion

Leave a comment

Had a nice visit yesterday after work with an old buddy from E.R. who I haven’t really been in touch with since we graduated from high school.  Both our lives afterwards went on different trajectories, and it just so happens that we have landed, at present, living just a few miles apart again, and more importantly — we landed in very nearby seats at a recent Brewers game.

IMG_1967.jpg
Chatting with Clint for a couple hours over beers was a good thing.  It sort of made me realize how much we’ve changed (and probably, everyone from those days has changed) since then, going through unique paths of experience, and forming new world views around them as adults.  But, at the end of the day, there are things about us personally that made us friends before, and they still remain.  32-yr-old me is drastically different from 14-yr-old me, but there must be something essential that stays the same in certain ways.  Ditto for my friend.  Looking forward to rekindling an old relationship whose history is strong and important to me.

General, Uncategorized

A New Venture

Leave a comment

A colleague of mine at work took a continuing ed photography class here in Madison recently.  We’ve been carpooling the last few weeks, so there has been ample time to chat about it.

IMG_0891.jpg
One of the things that she mentioned was that the instructor has a store on Etsy where she sells prints of some of her photos.  I took a look at a couple of them and said, “… OK.  People are buying this?”  I guess art is one of those things whose quality is fairly subjective.  What I look at as a very average photo, someone shopping for low-cost prints might think is just outstanding.  It dawned on me that if this person is selling these photos and doing so successfully, I could try my hand at making a few bucks on the side.

So anyway, I’m going to start a shop, but I need to take the time to choose which pictures to list.  Listings are twenty cents apiece, so I figure I’ll spend five bucks or so to get started, and see if any of them sell.  If not, I’m only out five bucks.  I figure if I can sell one or two, that would at least cover the cost of the listings.

Any ideas for which pictures I should try to sell?  Obviously, I’ve got many more than those on this site, but maybe you’ve got some ideas.  Take a look if you want and let me know.

General, lists, Uncategorized

Rethinking the Agenda

1 Comment

Had a nice weekend full of baseball, friends, movies, and much-needed housework.  When all was said and (mostly) done, I had a list of about five things that I wanted to accomplish, computer- or website-wise, that were left undone.  I managed to plow through a couple of them (including my first photo uploads to this site in almost a year – check out the Storyhill pics from last Labor Day), but some were only half-finished.  I had to try pretty hard to not be disappointed with myself, even after a nice June weekend.

DSC_0136
Clearwater Lake, Deerwood, MN

Not having had a summer like this in over a decade, it’s hard for me to let myself roll with the proverbial punches and take advantage of the nice weather and low-obligation without a plan.  I feel like if I don’t have a list, I’m going to miss out on something I should have been doing.  But, I guess if the last ten years should have taught me anything, it’s that there will always be more time to get your list done.

I took a couple positive steps in the last week that I hope will lead to maximum summer enjoyment: I moved the BryGuy show back to the latest possible part of the evening (we’re starting at 9PM beginning this week), and I set all of the ‘to-do’s’ on my RTM list to be due no earlier than 8PM on any given day.  Moreover, instead of insisting to myself that the tasks on that list get completed on the days I set them due, I opted to be satisfied with a little progress, and a revision of the date and specifics of the goal.

Summer’s too short around here.  I need to make sure I’m enjoying it.

General, Uncategorized

Twelve Months and Holding

Leave a comment

I went through some Evernote notes while I was on lunch today, and added some tags so I would be able to sort through them easier in the future.  I found one from January that I titled “Countdown to Burnout,” where I was tallying up the amount of time I had spent in each of my full-time financial aid jobs to date.

This most recent gig at UW Colleges is not the best paying or the most interesting job that I’ve had in this field.  But it is probably the best fit with my employment sensibility at this stage.  It has positives like extremely low (i.e., never in-person) student contact, easy-going management, and reasonable workload.  As I think back to how my other financial aid gigs ended, I can point to specific markers that made me feel I had to go:

  • Oshkosh, Round One: I had grown tired of living so far away from Michelle, and wanted to find a job that would make my personal life a little easier.
  • Milwaukee: I had completely burned out in a high-stress, low-reward position with minimal opportunity for change.
  • Oshkosh, Round Two: While I might have been ready to be a manager on a personal/professional development level, I was not ready to succomb to financial aid as a long-term career, and had some personality conflicts at work that were extremely stressful.

I was probably disillusioned after the holidays, and thinking about how I wasn’t making any tangible progress on my thesis at the time that I wrote this note.  As of today, having finished my master’s degree and feeling more like I get to be in control of how my life progresses than I have since 2002, my work situation is not as bad.  Do I love it here?  No.  Do I want to stay long-term?  Also no.  Do I realize that, in the grand scheme of things, I could do a lot worse, employment-wise?  Absolutely.  I guess I just don’t feel as trapped in financial aid as I did before.  I feel like I have qualifications that I could sell to other people, and do other things.  For now, though, it’s pretty comfortable.  It’s respectable work.  The flames aren’t creeping over the horizon just yet.

General, Uncategorized

Back to It, Then

Leave a comment

In the build-up to the end of my grad school career (at least for the time-being), I was asked contiuously, “what are you going to do next?” and I was simultaneously flattered that people thought I had done work good enough to continue writing, and angry that the completed goddamned thesis still didn’t seem to be enough to placate them (just kidding about that last bit).

I had initially felt like I would need some time to rest; a few weeks at least, or possibly the whole the summer, to enjoy the lack of responsibility and obligation that plagued my brain lo these many years.  It was only a week ago today that I had that defense, and already I’m feeling like I need to keep up at something in order to keep my skills sharp and my mood intact.

I looked at the blog that I used to write in quite regularly, but which in recent times has become little more than a depository of podcasts and twitter digests.  Not that there is anything wrong with either, but I remember enjoying the feeling of satisfaction when I wrote something in here on a daily basis.  I decided I would make some modifications to this system, and the change in look on the site is Part One of that process.

So, for those that are curious:

  • The Drama Jocks show will be relocated to its own site.  Josh, Joe, and I will continue to bring our fans the soft-hitting sports commentary to which they’ve grown accustomed.  It will be happening at BKOradio.com.
  • The BryGuy Show will make its presence principally known at the Facebook page.  I hope to occasionally share some items from that program at BKOradio as well.
  • If and when we witness the return of The Original Podcast featuring Kyle E. Geissler, you’ll find that one in its entirety at the new BKOradio site.
  • This webspace is returning to its blogg-o-riffic roots, and I hope to return to featuring some photography as well; realized the other day that it’s been nearly twelve months since I uploaded a photo onto this site.  Yikes.

Enjoy the rest of your day, and if you live in the upper midwest, try not to melt.  Hot as hell AND rainy today…