James on...New Years Resolutions

I hate to admit it but I am not a man that sees things through to the end. Just compare the dates between my posts if you don't believe me. I didn't even have enough "Stickwithitness" (A word worth noting if you've never heard it) to thank my one new follower after posting a blog about needing a follower. Thank you Victor. Sorry about the delay.

But this is a new year, right? I can turn it all around in 2010. This might be my year.

But probably not. I'm just being realistic. People can change and I'm a person. That doesn't make me feel any better about my chances. People can build space shuttles and go to the moon. That doesn't mean i can. But this is not going to be a bitter post of feeling sorry for myself. This is a new, exciting, and very realistic approach to the dreaded and often laughable NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION.

This is the time of year everyone wants to change one thing that they didn't like about how they lived last year. Some people will be spending less money on clothes or going to church more often or making a bigger impact in their community. Or at least they'll try. Or maybe they will just say they're going to try. Or maybe they'll fabricate a great story about how they did stick to their resolution and you just didn't notice because you're not a very good friend and that should be your resolution for next year.

However these people don't accomplish their resolution, it still comes back to the basic reason why New Year's Resolutions often fail. You probably did or did not do the thing you are out to change because doing it or not doing it was easier or it made you happy. We live in a time when satisfying our self even in the smallest way is hard to do. We work eighty percent of our lives away and spend the other twenty percent thinking of how we still don't have the things we think would make our lives better. That's why the habits we have get formed. Fifteen hundred calorie hamburgers made to order, a twenty pack of cold beer, and some guy at the bar that messed his life up worse that you ever will are the things that make the world go round. If you love something a new year is not going to change that. So what do you do? You change the way you make New Year's Resolutions. My Three Step Program will help you accomplish your goals and feel better about yourself.

Step One: Be Realistic

If you hate working out, don't make your resolution to "hit the gym" this year. The people with the sculpted and toned bodies in those magazines you read like working out. They may not love it but they also don't hit the ab machine once and walk around for three days hunched over like somebody punched them in the gut.

Since this is my blog and very few people will read this anyway, I will explain my standings with this Work Out More resolution. I love the way exercising makes me feel. That pumping burn you get with a good upper body workout makes me feel ten times better about myself the next day. My shoulders are sore. My arms are sore. My chest is sore. Still in all, I roll up in the convenience store bowed up like I'm about to knock the cashier out just cause I'm so tough lookin'. But like i already told you, i don't stick with anything. I payed out an 18 month contract because i just knew that if i was paying for a gym membership i would have to go because only an idiot throws money away on something they don't use. Me=idiot. One problem is none of my friends like working out and they few guys i know that are into it are in such good shape they make me feel bad when i have to keep taking weights off the bar before i go. On top of that i don't like people watching me work out. I look funny when i do it. It's the same reason it's hard to shit with someone watching. I have casually left the gym when a band of ripped up college kids get right next to me and grunting and rooting each other on. Sorry to carry on in the wrong direction, but like i stated earlier, this is my blog and i need as much material as I can muster.

But back on the subject, Know yourself. If you have been a certain way for the majority of your life, you will most probably be that way in 2010. Stick with something you picked up or started doing more or less often in the last few years. If you go out drinking every night, cut back a night or pick specific nights. If you wanna spend more time with your kids, set up something small you can do once a week or once a month and see what grows from that. If you could just quit this or fix that you wouldn't feel guilty enough to make a resolution about it, you would've just done it.

Step Two: Improve Your Odds

If a boxer fights one fight and losses and retires, he is a loser. He could have pushed the champ to the final round, but all that people are going to see is the failure. Why not improve your odds but making a shit load of resolutions? Are you overweight? Why not list the whole gauntlet of things that could solve that? Work out more, eat less, eat healthier, no fast food, no high fructose corn syrup, less drinking, and stay away from sweets. Are you broke? Spend less on this or that and work more and invest your money and on and on and on. Throw so much shit out there you have to hit on something. People won't be able to keep up with it all and you just play up the one you feel you actually accomplished. You'll see this at work because list is the grand finale of this post.

Step Three: Apply Loopholes and Stipulations to Your Resolution

Life isn't fair and people are not always upfront and honest. You can't do anything without fine print being squeezed in there somewhere. Just listen to the tail end of any commercial for a car lot. It should be like "Hey, I'm giving you what I make in a year for a product that won't last long enough for me to pay it off before it gives me trouble." Why isn't that a good enough deal without sneaking in the part that you need so much down and approved credit and you have to finance it for twenty eight years to get the monthly rate the commercial said. Why didn't the commercial say "Come try to buy a car and we will tell you how much to pay each month"? Because loopholes and stipulations make the world go round.

Now apply these to your resolutions. Example: Say you used to go to Bar A every weekend because your buddies were there. Now all of your buddies have switched to Bar B for one reason or the other. Henceforth, you prefer to go to Bar B also. Instead of saying "My New Year's Resolution is to not go to bars as much as i did last year," change it to "I will not go to Bar A as much as I did last year." You have a winner now, because this something you already have on track and if the mood strikes you, you can still go to Bar A as long as you go less than you did last year.

If you've read this various what-not i want to thank you for sitting through it. Now it's time for ..........

James' s New Year's Resolutions (Hold All Applause)

1. I will eat less than someone that gains more weight than i do over the course of the next year. (Unless that person is pregnant or has a thyroid problem)

2. I will be a better husband and father this year. (Unless my wife and son see through my plan to accomplish this by just dropping comments like "I sure have been an excellent husband and father today haven't I?")

3. I will be a role model to someone who would otherwise not have a role model if they are willing to seek me out for this service and aren't annoying or unsavory in some other way. If no one seeks me out, I accomplish this resolution just by having the offer out there.

4. I will either smoke or use nicotine patches and gum this year.

5. If I go to a fast food restaurant, I will ask the person making my food to slow down so I can give up fast food and still enjoy MacDonalds.

6. I will tell my friends that if they get a gym membership, I will get one too if they like it. I probably won't do it, but if they go once to try it out, then they will have worked out more than they did last year and if they took my resolution advice then they can check one off the list.

7. I will celebrate the success of others, especially if there is alcohol related to this celebration. If I happen to not care for the person celebrating their success, I will be a good sport and still celebrate, only somewhere away from them.

8. If this blog makes any money, I will donate it to a cause.

9. If someone begins a statement with "You know what we should do?" I will be nice and not say "I don't think WE should do anything. If I felt like doing something I would be doing that instead of what I'm doing right now." This is how some people open up conversations about ideas and they aren't really expecting us to do anything at this moment but listen to their idea. If it gets out of hand I'll walk off though.

10. (Drum Roll....) I will write more this year than I ever have before! (Because I don't want to be the only douche bag out there that lived up to all of his resolutions.)

James on... Catching a follower

Yes, i am finding myself at a loss to gain followers. I suppose i figured things would be easier than this with so many people viewing blogs these days. I thought it would be like the old saying " If you throw enough shit against the wall something is going to stick."

I understand that the market is flooded with blogs right now and I have yet to post anything of any real value apparently. I need some direction from readers on which way I need to take this thing to have a successful site. I need to hear from people on what they would like to read. I'm really a pretty open guy as far as topics are concerned.

Maybe it would help if everyone knew a little bit more about me as a person. As stated in my opening blog, this site was a brainchild of mine to have a place to write so that i could work on my dedication to putting words in print. Anyone that has ever aspired to write knows that it's a million times easier to just say you're a writer than to actually write something.

In reality I am a twenty eight year old construction worker, a scaffold builder to be precise. I came to the conclusion that I should pursue this career around ten years ago because you could make decent money with little or no organized training. If you know anything about the industrial construction world, then you know that despite the physical demand of our job and the risk of death or injury, we are highly unappreciated by other craftsmen on the same job site.

As far as my home life I'm married with a seven year old son. My wife's name is Crystal and she divides her time between college and taking care of me and Micheal, who seem to have about the same grasp of maintaining a clean and organized house. My main problem with house work is remembering to do it. As far as cleaning a room or doing dishes, I have faced some mighty obstacles since we got married, but left left to my own devices I will let it get out of hand before I act.

My ultimate goal in life is to become a published author and own a bar so that I can write in the morning and work the bar by night. The two should feed off each other, since human interaction is the best way to become inspired. I must admit that unlimited access to alcohol doesn't seem like a bad idea either.

I think I'm reaching that point in life where I just doesn't want to have a boss over me. I imagine a great deal of people feel that way. My problem is that though i excel at what i do for a living, other people who know how to suck ass better get advancements before me. On top of that, most of these people that surpass me in position don't understand our craft nearly as well as I do.

I guess I'll post this before i start to sound bitter. I should be back during the week with more off kilter observations so that the reader that eventually finds this place will have a stockpile of what not to peruse.

james on... snuggies, making it harder when things are hardest

I personally consider "The Snuggie" a perfect example of how our world has willingly ceased to evolve. I think it is how we tell the inventors of the clapper "Oh snap, we're even lazier than you." I like blankets and books. Maybe I'm some kind of alpha male in this situation but I have some enjoyed some two on one action on more than one occasion. But no one ever talks about the other side of "The Snuggie".

Yes, a blankets covers you to keep you warm. But what else do people want to cover? Maybe their shame? I mean come on people, we were teenagers once. If you walk in on a teenage boy watching a late night cinemax flick under a cover, there is still a benefit of the doubt (Mainly for those who do not want to know that their sibling masturbates). But if you walked in on a teenage boy with no hands showing in a "Snuggie", there would be no comfortable level of doubt. The word 'busted' could be used in so many ways here.

But do you know who should buy a "Snuggie"? The parents of a teenage girl who has her new boyfriend over to watch a movie. They think they're so smart. I only say that because i thought i was so smart oh so long ago. Still, could you imagine being a father and having some punk kid laying on your couch with your daughter. You know she complains because you keep the thermostat on 73 to keep everyone almost comfortable to save on the electric bill, yet she still insist on having a blanket despite the additional warmth of that little pervert laying by her. How cool would it be to say "Why not use the Snuggie, so when i give you that 'Are you having a great time look', all four of your hands will be able to give me a silent thumbs up so we don't interrupt the movie."

But until the day i have a teenage daughter, I will frown on anyone that is too lazy to reach outside of a blanket to grab something. I have been lazy on occasion, but never that lazy.

James on...... Mondays

MONDAY!

It is the cruel calender maker's worst prank ever and he still manages to catch all of us with it at least four times a month. It has been described as both "manic" and "blue" in popular music titles. It is the sad, silent roadie that sweeps up the stage after we've lived out the climax of Loverboy's song "Everybody's working for the weekend". It is the point in time that we sober up, return to our respective jobs with broken noses, and realize that despite Elton John's opinion, Saturday night was not alright for fighten'.

What is it about this day that we find so hard to swallow? We know it's coming up and we still can't find a defense against it. Even the Lord himself set it in writing that "resting.... resting you stupid, sinning, imperfect humans", is a pretty good idea when you've been working all week.

My first observation on the matter pertains to the natural course of events. With Monday being the first day of our week, it has a one hundred percent chance of being the absolute worst day our week for twenty four hours. No other day holds that kind of daunting statistic in its corner.

But most people don't look at it like that. The general work force of our country can be divided into two kinds of regretful Monday partakers. To simplify things we will call them "Dreaders" "Regreters" , and "Realizationist".

The normal working stiff generally hates his station in life as a rule. As children, we are born with this ignorant, carefree nature that allows us to embrace the idea of spinning around in circles until we're almost sick or eating paint chips in our grandfather's tool shed. We start smoking and listening to music we'll all laugh over ten years later when we're teenagers because we're free and that's what we're going to do. We tell the managers at part time fast food jobs to do whatever sexual act they can do to themselves when they ask us to work late because we are free. Then we get married, have kids, go through cars, and pile up bills. Now, just as nothing is free, we are no longer free. For a set amount of time each week we have to go to a place we hate and deal with a mixture of people we can tolerate and people we absolutely loathe with every fiber of our being, while performing a menial task that makes some of the people we loathe much wealthier than us. This is work. This is what we have to do because that is the way of the world. But then it's all over after that forty hours is logged and we clock out on our way out the door. We are free again! Let's see who wants to take the boat out or grab some beers or watch the Travel Channel and live vicariously through someone else. Whatever it is, we have what's left of our freedom and we are out to live it until it kills us. When this type of person, "The Dreader", hears his Monday morning alarm clock, it sounds like a prisoner's shackles being put back on after yard time. To return to the job he hates, in his mind, is a fate worse than death. Though a large majority of Dreaders return on the upswing as early as Tuesday morning, some stay in their slump up until lunch time on Fridays.

Now the Regreter is a different kind of beast. He has accepted his station in life as a means to the the all important end of survival. This is the guy that works three month turnarounds or comes in on the weekend to tie up loose ends for the upper management. People hang around with him after work in the evening long enough to realize he either isn't going to shut up about what's happening at work or he runs them off because he has a long day ahead of him tomorrow. It's on Monday mornings that he realizes he's still making the same money as the jerk off at the water cooler that never works weekends and a lot less than the even bigger jerk off that went fishing with the boss this weekend. Then he starts thinking about the soccer games he's missed and how he feels like he's sleeping next to a stranger every night. Why are his stories about the new filing system that he over hauled not as good as some punk intern writing his phone number on his social security card at a bar and giving it to some college chick? The things in life he missed are the things he regrets.

However, the third division of people come from living their lives as either Dreaders or Regreters. It comes along more often for some, but the majority of people go through the realization state of some particularly bad Monday. These are the Mondays that it sets in that not only do you not enjoy what you do for a living, the people you do it for do not appreciate you nearly as much as they should. Your significant other wouldn't be able to have a part time job while raising kids and maintaining the house if you weren't at this job. Your kids wouldn't be living it up in public schools and reading books from the library if you weren't generating revenue through your income tax. And potential. You used to have so much potential that your fifth grade teacher would cry if she saw you working away at a job that a monkey could be trained to do. These are the hardest Mondays to swallow, and sometimes lead to nights of hard drinking, drug use, stealing a cop car, crashing it into a nursing home and abandoning it, streaking past a day care, stealing the day care bus, and driving it off of cliff only to wake up days later in a full body cast to your boss calling to see when you're coming back to work because that report on the McMillan account needs to be in by .......

MONDAY!!!!!!!!!

James On.........James On.........

This is my first post on my first blog. I missed the whole blog boom and often wondered why anyone would ever subscribe to another person's web log. Now I have thrown my hat in the ring and came to blow all of the millions upon millions of blogs out of the water with my ability to very slowly type somewhat humorous and mildly insightful sentences into a very user friendly interface. In some circles I am considered the second greatest source of potential energy in the world, coming in right behind a giant boulder on top of a mountain.

"James On" is a very hard idea to describe to someone that doesn't know me. I am a writer. I am a writer like every other white person on Earth is. I have written. I like to write. I do not write often enough nor do i finish anything that becomes difficult. The word lazy comes to mind when asked to describe myself as a writer, but you'll never hear me say that.(Unless you have one of those programs that read text documents out loud and you have somehow acquired samples of my voice to implement.)

"James On" is my plan to fix that problem. Just like an athlete with all the skills he needs to compete that never exercises or takes care of himself, a writer that doesn't write will not be able to write well. A writer that cannot handle criticism will not make it far either. Through this blog i hope to get used to the idea of writing something for others to read and hope to do it often.

Now, what's in it for you the reader?

Sex, Money, and a Lifetime Supply of your Favorite Alcoholic Beverage!!

That's right folks. I will sometimes discuss sex and money in this blog, despite the fact that I have probably have less of both than most of my readers. On top of that, I would not put it past me to proclaim how happy I would be if I somehow acquired a lifetime supply of my favorite alcoholic beverage. Hell, I'd be tickled shitless if I had a lifetime supply of your favorite alcohol too. LAUGH OUT LOUD! (You must keep in mind that falling victim to Internet abbreviations will not help me as a writer)

But seriously, I hope to be able to provide an entertaining place for people with a lot of time on their hands to go when they've sucked Youtube dry. You might get a few laughs. You might learn something new. You might become terribly offended and try to get this blog shut down for the betterment of human kind. Why not just come along for the ride and see what happens?

I would greatly appreciate your comments too. Since I don't even have a concrete plan on which way this thing is gonna go, you could help me build something to keep you entertained. Wouldn't it be nice to have something made just for you by a complete stranger across the world for free? (You always have to throw the word free in to hook some people.) On top of content suggestions, any advice to make the place look or run better would be helpful. I am not computer illiterate, but maybe more along the lines of that guy that took seven minutes to read a two line paragraph in your freshman English class.