How Does It Feel?

"To be on your own with no direction home? Like a complete unknown. Like a Rolling Stone."

Probably kind of how I feel at this moment I suppose. Odd weekend this one, and for the most part, not in a good way. I'd write more but I don't really want to put my thoughts into words. I'd prefer to just not have the thoughts in the first place. Too many reminders this weekend. Too many questions. Too many answers to hand out. With all due respect to Bob Dylan, Alejandro Escovedo correctly comes up with the appropriate lyrics...

"And the sadness will come, when there is no one."

It's as simple as that. Oh well. What else is new?

Pete "Butterfinger" Townshend.

"And men not fit for marriage took their refuge in the oil.
No one respects the flame quite like the fool who's badly burned.
From all this you'd imagine that there must be something learned."

Not sure what I'm going to be learning from this Pete Townshend song, but I'm pretty sure that I'm not fit for marriage. Thought I was for a long time, but not any longer. At least not until I can find that elusive quantity known as happiness. You know...the kind you're supposed to be able to find inside yourself, not the kind you get when you slowly suck the life out of someone else in order to stay afloat in your own life. Anyway that happiness wasn't found in the Butterfinger candy bar I just ate. Oh sure the first few bites were pretty tasty, but halfway through I started to question my reasoning for buying it in the first place. Impulse buy I guess. Sometimes great ideas aren't so great after all.

Upon Waking...

Pillow flipped, then tossed aside. Wet from sweat. Roll over. Turn from side to side. Tired eyes complain inside. Sleep seems unlikely yet I still give it a try. Blanket pulled aside but not before my whole self is wrapped in a damp wetness. Another pillow pushed away. Knees pulled up near my chest until seconds pass and they're stretched out again. Alarm is set for any minute now. Should just get on with it and remove myself from bed. Turn over again and close my eyes. Time and comfort laugh at me.

One Hour + One Half Hour

That's the amount of time that I have left here at work. I've been here for 9.5 hours so far and it's been pretty draining for the most part. I've been running a very long job all day long so I have to sit and babysit the press for the most part. Unfortunately I've been having some sort of feed issue which has caused me much frustration over the past couple days. 90% of the sheets feed fine and 10% have some sort of dog ear/crease/tear in the left side of the gripper area. Fortunately, I think I finally fixed the problem. I knew it wasn't the paper, but couldn't figure it out. I'm not going to tell you the answer, though I imagine you're dying to know. And by the word you, I guess I mean me, because as far as I can tell I'm the only one who reads this blog. However, I know the answer already, so...well, I guess now I'm just confused as to whether you know the answer or not.

Anyway there's not much time left in my work day.

Ink can magenta empty.

All taken care of, no need to worry.

I think I've pretty much assured myself that no one will read this blog if this is the first entry they happen upon. Perhaps I should start up a blog specifically geared toward professionals in the printing industry. God that would be boring. Good way to cure my sporadic bouts of insomnia.

Doldrums

Not sure what happened this morning, but I'm having trouble shaking this feeling of mediocrity and disappointment. Perhaps if I had a decent Halloween costume, or any Halloween costume, I might feel differently, but like the costume itself, it would just disguise what's actually underneath. And right now I'm not really feeling all that great about what's underneath. I don't even feel like a person at the moment. I'm moving and I'm breathing and unfortunately I'm thinking, but it's more surviving than anything else. There's nothing behind my movements...just going along to go along without any sense of direction. Actually that's not true, I do sense a direction, but it's backwards and that's not the direction I want to be heading. Progress comes and goes I suppose. You take some steps forward. You take some steps back. In the end you hope to be farther along then when you started, but I feel like I've taken many steps in life only to end up at essentially the same place I began.

In My Weakness, I Shall Find My Strength.

No one was put on this Earth to be a printer, except for Gutenberg (not Steve...it's spelled differently) and Bi Sheng and Franklin and millions of others, but besides those few...nobody. Okay well at least not me in my current capacity. Work is all fine and good and I do the best I can, but it's still work. It's nothing more than a weakness of mine. I appreciate the job and all that comes with it and I'm not looking to move on, I just need to expand and do other things. You know...other things that enhance this life experience. I don't want to die with more regrets on the plate than adventures. I don't want to realize someday that I made so little of my life that I'll be forgotten faster than (insert bad joke about failed relationship here) new thoughts can be remembered. That last sentence makes no sense to me, but you get the point. There's more to this here life than what I've contributed so far. 

Melbourne's Luna Park

I like this picture quite a bit, otherwise I probably wouldn't post it, but you probably already knew that.