It's 2:40A.M.

It's 2:40 in the morning. It's June 24th. I'm awake. If you're reading this and halfway sane and not going through some health issue or life trauma right now, I imagine you're asleep as I type this--or maybe in another time zone.

This is the first summer in a while where I haven't taught XLT (that's Summer School to you non-NKCSD folks... and NKCSD is North Kansas City School District--for you same folks). Also, my life is so different now, I find myself living it a little differently.

I didn't have cable television for several years. I didn't have decent access to the web (I was a dial-up dude up until the end of November, 2008). I wasn't on facebook when I only had dial-up; everything is SO slow on dial up, which used to be just fine back in the day.

So it's summer vacation time. I watch a lot of television. I spend time on facebook. I surf the net looking for recipes and books and music and information about authors and read about friends and wonder what wonderful things humans will come up with long after I'm gone, and reflect on the things that weren't around when I was 16 that I have trouble imagining living without now.

And yeah, they're just things. Trust me, if Mark Riggs can live without cable for over five years, Mark Riggs can probably live without just about any modern convenience.

Except functioning toilets. Oh, I could live without them, but I'd really really really really rather not.

I'm also spending this summer getting my house put together, and training myself to mean "my house" when I say "my house". Making the first payment helped a lot. I'm pretty much there at this point, but my "Don't get settled in" attitude from... oh, 1985 or so up until this past May... is hard to shake off. And at the same time there's this feeling of, "This is your house! When you put up the pictures, you need to get it right!"

But this isn't what inspired me to write. I saw The Wilders on Saturday night, and it made me wish I was doing something more than what I'm doing. Sometimes I think I might be a huge amount of wasted potential... not that I have a huge amount of potential, but I'm huge, and I have potential, and it's wasted... oh, you get the idea.

And it's not from a lack of projects... I've got a friend who wants me to finish writing something I started several months ago. I've got another thing I want to write. I've got... rhythm...

Wow. That cursor flashed for a while.

I'm realizing I don't really have an excuse right now. Maybe that's why I sat down to type this. I'm a person that has to process thing through communication, I guess (maybe we all are; I don't know). I originally was feeling all philosophical about how I was born in the morning, yet I feel like such a night person, but now I'm thinking I need to take that crack-down attitude I had about working extra jobs to try to get life back on track, and use that to start getting things done I want to do.

Which will admittedly be difficult, because I'm not very good at doing things for myself. That's not to say I'm not a selfish jerk, because I am. I'm saying I'm more apt to DO something for someone else. For me, I'm more apt to let me relax and hang out.

Well, I'm glad you could all be here while I worked that out.

Also: Isn't it strange how I'm a night person, but was born in the morning? Or is that how it's supposed to work?