lazy.

I’m not somebody who’s not very good at doing nothing.  I find it difficult to simply sit in front of the tv and watch it, preferring to always multitask with a book, ipod and laptop to hand.  I feel guilty if I stay in bed past 9:30 in the morning, because I could have done things with that time, and I genuinely enjoy the mornings (like now it is 11:20, I only got up 20 minutes ago after another fantastic dream involving Jessica Simpson being a house guest who instructed another house guest how to flush a toilet, and involving my hair becoming fluffy of its own accord and changing from blonde to brown at will).  I don’t understand people who have no apparent aspirations or drive, because ever since I was little I wanted to be a pop star, so I’ve always been singing and making music (though this is an ambition I don’t tend to reveal in public, so it’s possible that people think of me as a bit aimless – who knows); I also want to be a Youth Adviser for Connexions, which is the goal of my university course starting in September.  I want to write books (on what, I haven’t quite decided, but this blog is a good start I guess!  I haven’t been so passionate about writing in such a long time, and somehow I keep coming up with things to say so I will try not to repeat myself too much!) or at least newspaper columns, and I also want to do something with perfume or clothes (that’s the fashionista in me – btw. Coco Before Chanel is a fantastic film, and Audrey Tautou and Alessandro Nivola do a wonderful and “elegant” job).  I have a huge creative drive, and so I can never imagine being lazy – even though my album is now ‘late’ (but I swear it’s nearly done!!!), I’ve been making lots of music during my period of unemployment which is about to hit 2 months, but is nearly over because am due to start at the hospital any day now.  Any day now.  Come on hospital, call me for my induction.  The phone is waiting!  And of course, I have started and been keeping up this blog, which is actually a proper thing now and it’s rare that there is a day that I don’t write.

So I don’t understand why, near enough every morning, the thought runs through my head that goes “urgh, another day? I can’t do this today”, even though today I have absolutely no plans and could stay in bed all day if I really wanted (something I would never do).  I guess it’s the fact that I am still waiting for my life to really “start” that makes every day feel a bit like a mundane trudge, even though I do my best to still enjoy myself.  After all, we never know but this could be as good as it gets, right?  I could be determined to make something of my life, but a car could hit me and that could be the end.  So I guess I must try to appreciate every day as much as I can, because you never know if we’ll get another.  I suppose that is why I can’t stay in bed into the afternoon, and why I make myself go to the gym even if I’ve only had 5 hours sleep and I’d rather not exercise when I’m tired only to make myself very tired.  (That, and the thought of impending obesity, of course)  And why I got tired of waiting for a record company to discover me, so I decided to make my own records (as amateurish as they might sound, I think I do a good job with what I have).  Actually, I’m gonna take that last bit out of brackets: I think I do a good job with what I have.  I was talking to my friend Nick yesterday about life, and the fact that we are 24 (well, I am nearly) and not high-flying executives nor family men (ha!) so we are made to feel we need to “hurry up” before we miss our prime, and “do something”.  I mean, what?  My life is certainly not over at 23, and I’m making moves.  It’s not like we sit at home all day playing Xbox.  We work hard and I feel that for someone to try to make me feel as if I’ve been wasting time is a little disrespectful because I have worked damn hard in my life to get where I am, and I am working hard right now to keep making it work and moving forward.  I am the farthest thing from lazy, so please don’t get it confused: if I had my way, I would have been rich and successful 5 years ago without even needing to go to university.  But life doesn’t always go the way you want, so we have to take our lemons and make lemonade; in other words, do the damn best with what we have.  So I find that life is basically living somewhere between the area of what is realistic to us right now, and pushing to make that reality a little bit better so that we can ultimately live our dreams.  It takes time and it takes effort, but that’s ok, because I’m not lazy.  I may not be where I want to be right now, but one day I will be.  And hopefully I’ll be doing at least a couple of the things that I listed at the top, because right now that is what gives me the drive to keep going and move on past the thought of “just another day”.

positive speaking.

One maxim that I try to live by, wherever possible, is that of “if you can’t say anything nice, then don’t say anything at all”.  Of course, it’s natural that we aren’t 100% happy and sweetness and light all of the time, and nobody is a perfect saint, but I try never to be deliberately nasty or spiteful towards people if I can at all help it.  If I feel resentment towards somebody, it is something that I try to channel in a constructive way, or keep to myself so that they won’t know how I feel.  I believe that it is classier not to diss people, and although occasionally I can’t resist the urge, most of the time I can.  Instead of wasting time hating on others, I try to step my own game up – that’s my response.

After my video singing Whitney Houston’s new song was posted on Thursday, I received a barrage of comments on my youtube account, as well as some comments on a Whitney forum.  Some people were positive, some people were critical, which is fine.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  What really irks me (and what I am always prepared for, because I’ve been doing these youtube videos on and off for 2 years now) is the senseless hateful comments that I get.  I understand that if somebody covers your favourite artist’s song, you may be a bit disgruntled because you like the original version.  But it doesn’t mean that nobody else is ever allowed to sing that song.  I’m not trying to be Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston or Chris Brown, I’m just having fun singing a song.  And I try to separate the genuinely valid comments from the ridiculous (for example: “Whoever told you you were good has mental problems” O RLY? I feel sorry for my friends, for the entirety of my school and its teaching staff, for the students of Oxford University, for a couple of Oxford journalists.  We’re all crazy! Bish please.) and improve upon what I can.  I know I am not the consummate singer, and I am not perfect.  Of course, you can’t please everyone.  But if you have nothing constructive to say, or nothing to back your criticism up, then please keep your mouth shut.  I make it a rule never to reply to comments on youtube because I don’t want to dilute anyone’s opinion, nor enter into a slanging match with any deranged fans.  I sing the song, I make my video, and then I let people say what they want.  It’s freedom of speech.  But if you can’t be nice, at least be classy!

It’s not just me, obviously.  There are plenty of comments on youtube saying Beyoncé is a fat whore (um?), Mariah Carey cannot sing (The Voice? yeah right), that singers who are legitimate superstars are rubbish at their craft.  And while I don’t like every famous singer out there, I have respect for their hustle and appreciate that it is not easy to put yourself up for criticism and hate (as well as adoration and love 😉 ) night after night and day after day.  You have to be incredibly thick-skinned  to keep on going – to give her her due, Paris Hilton made her album and records her tv shows and doesn’t give a fuck what people say and think about her.  If it’s negative, they’re still wasting their negative energy talking about her, so it’s all promotion and job done.  That is something I have a lot of respect for.  But these armchair critics who think they are Simon Cowell are only feeding into these people’s fame, and if you don’t wanna hear from them anymore, then you have to go one better.  If you aren’t willing to do that, or you’re not capable of it, then you should sit your ass down and keep your mouth shut.  If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

I wanted to also congratulate my friend Hannah on her family dog sitting job she’s netted in September – she’s getting £500 for a week’s work!  Of course I am slightly jealous, because I could really do with £500 myself.  But instead of criticising her or being unsupportive, I congratulated her and am genuinely happy for her, not just because she is one of my very best and closest friends, but because I don’t believe I am a negative or spiteful person.  If somebody does something well, has a great stroke of luck, or is talented, I congratulate them and express my appreciation.  You get what you give, and I believe in passing out positive energy instead of negative.  It all comes back around to you, ultimately, even if it’s a long time in coming… But I never understood the point of hating on people who are luckier or more talented than you in a specific area… instead of wasting your time hating on them, you get your game up.  I am hugely envious of models and guys with better bodies, but instead of commiserating at home eating Ben & Jerrys, I get my ass down the gym and watch what I eat because I want that body and my determination to get it will one day pay off (even if it could hurry up. please.). That will be the sweetest victory.  As Blu Cantrell says, “Revenge is better than money you seeeeeeee!” (“Hit ‘Em Up Style”)  So don’t hate; appreciate, and step your game up… because when the time comes that people are hating on you, you must be doing something right!

vulnerability.

Yesterday I wrote about façades and what people see on the surface, how we portray ourselves and what that says about who we are as a product for public consumption.  Today I want to explore underneath that surface, and let you in on what the façade of fashionable confidence that I try to display is hiding.  So I guess this entry is a little more personal, but I’ll still try to keep it light and brief (as much as I can, y’all know me by now!!!).

It’s my dad’s birthday on Monday, and I have bought him just a couple of small gifts that he asked for (swimming goggles and a blues CD he saw advertised on tv), along with a juvenile pop up card “For my Daddy” that I appreciate more than he probably will.  But anyways, normally on a Monday at the moment (i.e. when I’m not working) I go to the gym before going to my nan’s for lunch.  Tomorrow however will be different: my mother has the week off work, my father has the week off work, it’s his birthday.  Not only will I not get a lift to the gym, but I’m probably going to stay home just in case we end up doing something “as a family”.  These “family outings” invariably involve my father driving us to a pub, where we have a quick drink, make awkward conversation with his friends at the pub (while I go on twitter / msn / text on my phone) and wait to go back home all while promoting our “happy family” façade.  It’s not particularly enjoyable, and it’s a bit fake because we rarely spend time together as a family, apart from at the dinner table, and only 50% of that is in conversation if none of the three of us happen to be annoyed with anyone else.  So I am unsure whether to stay home tomorrow because of my father’s birthday (which I know is what I really should do) or just do what I would normally do, i.e. go to the gym and then visit my nan.  And here is the crux of the matter, and the first example of the titular vulnerability:

I’ve always known that my father never really loved me.  He paid for me to go to a private school and he’s supported me financially on the rare occasions that I’ve had to swallow my pride and ask for money (3 times that I can remember).  But the early part of my childhood, up until maybe 16 years old, I spent quietly hating him for his absence, for the way he would boss me around and try to make me cry in order to make himself feel more powerful in the face of the close bond between me and my mother, for the pain he put my mother through, for the rows he would instigate because he would come home drunk every night, for the nights I spent in tears in my bed or on the stairs or crouched behind the door listening to them arguing and throwing things and praying it would stop (another reason why I stopped believing in God).  This is perhaps more than you want to know.

Nowadays, he has improved a lot and I am glad my parents stuck it out, but if it were anyone else in that situation, I would have told them to split up because to stay together through what my parents did took incredible strength and also perhaps a lack of sanity.  It’s hard to ever move past that, because that was my life for the first 16 years, and as much as I have tried to forgive my father and appreciate the changes he has made, something like that never leaves.  Truthfully, I think about it most days.  A couple of people tried to psychoanalyse my “daddy issues” and explain my sexuality thus, but I don’t really know if that’s connected (IMO, possibly but probably not).  But these days he acts as if I don’t exist half the time, which gives me the freedom that I cherish but also makes me feel semi-left out because as much as my mother feels hard done by because my dad is now always picking fights with her (or occasionally vice versa! nobody is completely innocent… I have inherited a little bit of a temper from them both too, I must confess), I see it from the other side because at least that’s where his attention is focused.  If he is always trying to upset one person, if he always looks for one person when he comes home, then as much as he causes that person pain, at least that person exists to him.  Sometimes I wonder if I am a ghost in my own home, only visible when the telephone rings or my dad needs me to do him a favour or he needs to pride himself on my Oxford degree.

Honestly, I don’t hate my father.  I love him and I appreciate how much he has tried to change and improve.  But I can’t forget what he put us through, and I can’t turn a blind eye to the fact that if he’s not trying to compliment me nor enrage me the way he does my mother, it’s got to be because I am just less important to him.  I don’t really see any other explanation.  And I guess it does hurt to know that you are second best, that you’re not who he perhaps hoped you would be (I’m not a usual drinking buddy, which is what my mother told me was his primary excitement about having a child at 30, because when he was 48 I’d be 18 and we could go drinking together – I can count on one hand the number of times that has happened) but I am lucky that me and mother are extremely close (when we argue, it’s blazing but usually short lived, and usually because we are so similar that we know exactly what ticks each other off), me and my nan are really close, and I have some really wonderful friends.  I don’t lack for love, and I feel that I give love in return.

Talking of love, I finally met Brett (guy I’ve been chatting to who is referenced in this post) last night at a club, and we spent hours together. It was really fun, his friends were open and welcoming to me, and I had a good time. We flirted a lot, got on really well (as far as I could tell) and were quite touchy-feely.  No kisses until the very end when we said goodbye (and that was only v brief), but then it was the first time we’d met in person and it would be too much too soon.  I want to have fun and to keep things light, because the last relationship I had was far too much too fast (despite my attempts to put on the brakes) and ended in disaster (and I must admit, relief for me).  But at the same time, I can’t help but hope that it will work, because I’m tired of dusting myself off and trying again.

Life being single is certainly fun, and as I said above, I don’t lack for love and I don’t lack for friends, but there’s a little part of me which hopes for something more, and needs to prove to myself that I’m not some kind of unlovable leper.  That the longest relationship I’ve had thus far has been 5 weeks is depressing to me, at 23 years old.  I don’t think I am unlovable, and it scares me that perhaps I am not aware of how repulsive I might be to potential dates and mates… in other words, I can’t fathom what is wrong with me to not have had a more successful love life.  My sex life has been average I guess, but it’s holding someone’s interest as more than a friend that I seem to have trouble with.  Maybe it’s not my fault, but if I’m the common factor in all these cases then I’ve got to shoulder some of the blame.  So right now, I am feeling vulnerable because I am scared Brett will lose interest just like all these other guys have, that he will suddenly stop texting me (the balance of power so far is pretty equal, I believe, and I’m not keen to tip it in his favour) and not want to take things further.  The last thing I want to do is jump into a relationship again, but I want one to slowly blossom in a fun, healthy way, and I can’t help thinking that this is a chance for that to happen, and I am scared that it might slip away.  I got home at 5:30 this morning, so I am waiting until tonight to text him and say hi (he will be awake, sober and hopefully by himself and in a space to talk) and quietly hoping he will beat me to it (it has happened!).  Because at the heart of it all, I’m feeling vulnerable because I guess that I like him and I don’t want to feel a fool one more time.  These are things that Prada and Armani don’t tell you.

façades.

Driving home on the way back from my nan’s (oh, conundrum solved; we decided to choose a picture of my grandad for the funeral plaque after all), i catch glimpses of myself in shop windows, in the wing mirror and in people’s faces as we drive by.  I have big dark Prada glasses, a vaguely tanned face, black hair and a fitted black Zara top on, and we have a black Hyundai coupé.  I love the way it looks (everything matches!) but at the same time I see people looking and I wonder what judgment they make.  Most people who look just look away, occasionally you get the odd stare but that could tell you more about their own temperament than about what they think of you.  It’s the occasional extra rev of their car at the traffic lights, the look-look away-subtle double take that gives away someone’s competitive nature, their arrogance or insecurity.  You can never be sure which one it is, but the fact that I can elicit a reaction at all makes me feel a little bit powerful.

I’ve always been someone who can elicit reactions, since at school.  Praise from my teachers, makeups and breakups with my peers, hotly-debated criticisms of my voice / sexuality / fashion choices… I don’t know why, but I’ve never been able to blend in and I’ve always been a topic of conversation and rumour.  Without even doing anything on purpose half the time, I was noteworthy.  And I would much rather that, as someone with aspirations to fame, than to blend into the background – but at the same time, I was never desperate for the gossip, it all seemed to happen by accident.  I have not worked at the Perfume Shop since June 4th, but when I last went in 2 weeks ago to see everyone, there was a barrage of news for me, and also criticism of my bag and of a couple of things I had done wrong a month and a half ago.  I guess I play on people’s minds.

I realise that by this point I sound incredibly conceited, but what I have always been hyper-aware of is image. I remember a long time ago reading an interview with Christina Aguilera, and she said something very true: you have to conduct yourself as a product for consumption.  Every single thing you say, do, wear, don’t say, don’t do, don’t wear, listen to, don’t listen to etc. becomes a part of your persona.  Anything that is done in public becomes a part of your image and the conception of “who you are”.  So you need to be happy with yourself, because if you’re not happy with anything you’re doing or not doing, you’re effectively lying to yourself and those around you.  Every day that we step out of the house and come into contact with others, in a way we are consumed by the public.  You don’t have to be famous for that to happen; how many times have you seen people walking past you down the street or in the mall, and made a snap judgement about them based on their clothing or their shoes or their walk or their accent?  We all do it. And genuine or not, façade or reality, the image we project is the summary of ourselves we portray to the world.  If somebody had one tweet (140 characters) to summarise their impression of you, what would it say?  If you had that same tweet to summarise your impression of yourself at any given moment, what would that tweet say?

The power that I mentioned at the end of the first paragraph stems, I believe, from an awareness of these reactions that we are able to elicit.  The façade I try to give off at most, if not all times, is one of icy confidence.  I have an interlude on my forthcoming Quiet Storm album called “Theory”, in which I briefly explain why I have grown to like designer clothes. The status of wealth that labels emit, whether true or false, gives out a certain image that can protect the inner me.  Whether I’m happy or depressed, whether I am feeling insecure about my body or thinking about my family, the image I portray is teflon confidence. I guess in a word, it’s my armour, and I use people’s presumptions to my advantage.  I know the real me, my friends who have penetrated beyond the façade know the real me, and know that I am deeper than Prada and Armani.  The rest of the world just knows I look fly, and that’s exactly how I like it.

I often get mocked for my vanity by family, friends and colleagues alike.  I’m always checking in mirrors (only glances, but I happily admit I glance quite often – when no mirror is available, the back of my ipod is most handy) that my hair is fine, my body is complimented by what I wear, my lips don’t look dry, that all is well.  That’s who I am, and that is not a façade!  But I am my own harshest critic.  I don’t go to the gym and wear what labels I wear solely because I want to fit a stereotype or be accepted socially.  I don’t seem to be able to fit a stereotype even when I do want to, and social acceptance seems to come to me as a thing of luck in any case – I am thankful to have family and friends around me in whom I can confide, even if sometimes I prefer to let my façade do the talking because there are things I want to keep to myself.  I exercise and work to my own diet (which you won’t find in any magazine, partly because it’s just a bit crazy and uneven!) because I have a drive to be the best I can be.  I can accept criticism if it’s something I’ve already conceived (which most of the time it is) because then it’s a work in progress that I’m aware of and looking to fix.  What throws me for a loop is the rare occasion when I’ve been completely misconstrued, misunderstood, or somebody has made a judgement that I couldn’t have seen coming in a million years.  Those occasions are very rare, but it’s at those times when my façade might slip, because I am taken by surprise.  Of course, it’s food for thought, and I probably do devote too much time to what other people think, but I see my own self-improvement (or masturbation, to quote Tyler Durden) as resulting from an exchange of ideas.  Sometimes criticism is ridiculously invasive, but other times it can be constructive.  At the end of the day it’s my decision to do something about it or not, and the decision I make is in order to carve out my identity and benefit me, not anyone else.  That’s why I choose to portray myself the way I do, wear the clothes I wear, sing the songs I sing, go where I go.  If I’m happy with the final product, then whatever people think is secondary… at least on the outside.  Of course, we all have insecure moments, but then who is really happy 100% of the time?  As long as people are thinking that I’m happy / successful / sexy / non-stick, then the façade is working 😉

unintentional sexy.

If you’ve been following me on twitter (see the box on the right, or click here and follow me!) then you might have seen my tweets from the gym.  There is a guy there (well actually two, but the other one is a meathead and irrelevant to this story) who must go every single morning because it doesn’t matter which days I’m there, he’s always there.  He’s Scottish, he must be around 30, or late twenties, and he is (to put it simply) the sexiest motherfucker  (6pack, perfect body, rugged tattoos, tanned skin) I have laid eyes on in quite a while.  Obviously because we see each other quite often, even though we all keep to ourselves (I have my ipod, he has his braindead gym buddy), so over the last few weeks we greet each other (in a manly, nodding “alright mate” way – very masculine of course) and occasionally have conversation.  Last week, it was whether it was raining outside (it’s difficult to determine the weather from behind the frosted windows in the changing room).  One time, he asked me what the time was.  Today, he had difficulty taking his shirt off after his workout, and I expressed that was glad that it doesn’t just happen to me! So we effectively talked about removing our clothes.  Obviously, this is the beginning of a beautiful love story that will end happily ever after.

Anyways, I am pretty confident that he doesn’t realise how sexy he is, and certainly not how sexy he is to me.  As far as he is concerned (unless he is secretly feeling the same way – I won’t hold my breath) we work out at the gym and we are acquaintances who occasionally exchange pleasantries. So I got to thinking how the smallest of gestures or things that people do, without realising, can be so sexy and such a turn-on to another person who is observing them.  Here is a quick list:

• In the gym shower, I look up in the midst of washing the shampoo out of my hair, and sexy Scottish bodybuilder’s eyes meet mine as he comes out of the sauna room.  He nods, I continue massaging my scalp while my knees go week.
• Scottish bodybuilder in shorts that are really too short.  But that’s fine.
• Scottish bodybuilder getting his shirt stuck halfway over his head, his lats and abs straining.  I had to hold myself back from volunteering to help him out.
• Scottish bodybuilder’s ass crack slipping out over his towel.
• Guy on the bus repeatedly wiping a spot on the steamed-up window so that he could look out.  The way he was wiping off the condensation was sexy in a weird way.
• When someone has on an alluring or subtle fragrance.  One of the reasons why I love perfume so much, is that it is a purely sensual experience and it’s unique to each person and their body chemistry.  Different things work for different people, but when something works, it really works.
• When a guy absentmindly scratches or rubs his stomach under his shirt.
• When a pretty girl is delicately smoking a cigarette.
• When a guy has tattoos that actually suit him, and don’t look like the same tribal design that absolutely everyone else has *yawn*.
• When someone knows how to dress to flatter or compliment their body.
• When someone smiles in a slightly dangerous way.

Okay, that is a very brief list.  Please add your thoughts and suggestions as comments, because I realise there are plenty of things left unsaid! And what is sexy to me may not be sexy to you.  But the sexiest thing of all, IMO, is swagger and confidence – not because someone else might be watching, but just because that is who you are.

just another day.

I don’t know if anyone else finds this, but when you’re into a book, you start narrating your life in your head in the same style as the author.  As I’ve mentioned in either the last post or the one before, I’m currently reading The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis, and its characters have a profound disconnect from their lives, for various reasons (daily medicating their lives with a curious combination of drugs, sex, anonymity and fame) rendering their day-to-day experiences utterly soulless and colourless.  So in this period of unemployment (now entering week 4! yay.) I can feel a veneer filming over my eyes with every day that passes, stopping me from becoming too depressed with the boredom of not having anything to do, but also stopping me from enjoying the things I do to distract myself from that boredom.

There’s only so many times I can call the hospital asking politely if they have any hours yet (why employ me for a job – I have a contract!!! – which effectively doesn’t exist) before I become disheartened.  There’s only so many times you can go to the gym and gaze at the sexy but incomprehensible Scottish bodybuilder (who now says hello to me, he’s a nice enough guy) before it becomes passé and I snap back to the reality of the treadmill.  My body is getting better but my standards are way out of reach because I always dreamed of being a singer and a fashion model.  I can have a coffee + refill at Starbucks and read my book and occasionally converse with someone else or people watch, and I find myself trying any tactic to escape my life and immerse myself in others’.  I go shopping and find nothing I want to buy – now, my friends will tell you that there must be something seriously wrong for this to be the case, but my standards have been raised by fashion magazines, and until River Island stocks Dior Homme (when not even Dior Homme’s website stocks the new season of Dior Homme!) I’m never going to find the clothes I want, yet alone at a price I can afford in my currently unemployed state (though by some stroke of luck, I’m not actually strapped for cash… yet).  So I just spark up another cigarette and numb myself as I walk along the street looking fierce in my Prada sunglasses (I dyed my hair black yesterday so it matches the shades… talk about reverse accessorising), because at least I can look the part even if it’s a lie.  Well, I am fierce, of course, but it doesn’t seem to be getting me anywhere, and that’s the most frustrating thing of all.  So I try to escape that feeling of frustration, and end up escaping most emotions.

This became a bit of a moan, sorry.  On the plus side, I do look good and I’ve had plenty of time to spend with my family (my friends seem to have things to do – how I envy them).  I’ve also nearly finished my album, so I’ll keep updating y’all with that progress in the rare event that somebody reading might care… I am really proud of the concept, the sound and the songs, and I look forward to trying to promote it and release it and all that biz.  I’m reading more books and that makes me feel a little more educated and in touch with the real adult world.  After all, I’m a real adult and I suppose these are real adult feelings that I am learning to get to grips with.  But I always dreamed of something more, and although at 23 yo this is hardly the end of my life (well, you never know, but you know what I mean), I find myself all the same desperately questioning that “surely this can’t be it?!” University this September will hopefully kick-start things back into productivity… I should look at the plus column of my life because I’ve done really well so far… I guess I just don’t do inactivity or stasis or whatever you want to call it very well… it feels like limbo to me.  And until things get more exciting, today was just another day in a long string of days.  I hear that that is how some people define life… but I’m looking for a bit more than that.  Here’s to hoping that we all find more.