When you’re dead, that’s when.

When is it time to stop chasing your dreams? When you’re dead, that’s when.

Life is compromise, relationships are compromise, but hold onto your ideals and keep struggling toward them at whatever cost, or you become boring, or worse: bored.

Far too many people ‘settle’ and far too few of us keep up the struggle for their ideals.

But just as bad as settling for something that isn’t one of your immediate goals is to set your goals in stone and never reevaluating them to see if they are attainable/realistic/what you still want. I mean, what would happen if you reached all your goals and/or ideals? Someone asked me a question recently that got me off on a tirade about this. Basically they asked: “What would it take for you to reach a point in your life where you were satisfied with what you had and where your life had taken you?” My answer was nothing, and everything. Nothing because I believe you should always make the best of what you have, and try to be happy with what you have, and nothing because if you are ‘satisfied’ with what you have, then you stop growing. You stop moving toward the next goal, and that stopping is death.

They used to think that sharks had to keep swimming to stay alive, and that would have been a good metaphor here, but they discovered that sharks do stop swimming sometimes, when they sleep. So maybe it still is a good metaphor. I never want to sleep. I want to keep moving until I die.

[I posted this yesterday in response to a blog entry over on myspace. I think it’s important, and also something I’ve been thinking about quite a bit lately, hence the repost.]

my new favorite site

After you’re done ogling the newly announced Opera browser for Nintendo DS, take a look at this other article I ripped off from slashdot:The Top Ten Sci-Fi Films That Never Existed. Yes, I was pissed off that they copped out of writing 10, and combined 8-6 and 1-2, but it’s still a well written diatribe about how sci-fi films generally suck, and could be SO MUCH BETTER. Plus, after reading it, I started following the other article links at the bottom of the page, and have decided that A Pointless Waste of Time is my new favorite website. I haven’t found a source of geek humor this good since discovering Penny Arcade back when it was still funny.

Other wastes of time I heartily recommend:
A WoW World – I’ve been saying this for years.
One Trilogy to Rule Them All – Quantifying the suckiness.
The Great Porn Off – Porn is addicting? Who knew?
The Gamer’s Manifesto – What games should, and should not, be.

relationship redux, effort and compromise

Relationships are fucked. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. I prefer to err on the side of “do” myself, but it’s not always up to me.

I spent the last hour or two reading through a bunch of Home Detention Lady’s posts, (thanks for the comment!) and thinking about relationships in general.

I would like to think that any two people in the world are a potential match. Any two people could “make it work” with enough compromise and effort. I think those are the kickers. These are the deal breakers.

With 100% effort and 100% compromise, I could date anyone in the world. But I’m not about to do either, and especially not right away. I’m probably not going to make more than a 5% effort in the first month of a given relationship, and screw compromise in the early stages… if we can’t find common ground, then it’s just not worth it.

But I think the longer you stay with someone, the more of both a relationship needs. The more you know about someone, about their habits, about their “flaws”, about the character traits that you don’t immediately adore and admire–the more compromises you are going to have to make in both principal and your vision of that “ideal relationship” that everyone has floating around in their heads. And also as time passes, more effort is required to maintain an acceptable relationship for both parties. Effort to stay in synch with the wants and needs of your partner. I think this is absolutely a natural state of affairs.

But of course, as the levels of effort and compromise required to maintain a relationship change, people re-evaluate. I think all too often, “people” (not talking specifics here, ha!) think that they’ll find the perfect person, with whom they never have to make any compromises.

bad poetry barrage

sick and insistent words, incessant
eroding my padded brainitarium walls

crumbling my fruitcake mind-ache

they’re cumshot words,
got an ‘e’ stuck in my eye
tear falling from the sting

dictionaries are the only real poetry
prose poetry, thesauruses
the good stuff — strings of

same-meaning words
combining intentions and ambitions
symbolism in synonym