Wednesday. To bed at ten after a nice hot bath (good), up with the alarm, to breakfast and back by eight (hup! hup!). The guitar lesson coming up now at ten. Better go over the lesson at least once. For someone who should know better I'm always a little nervous, even with lots of preparation. I discuss this with myself now and again - what in the hell am I nervous about? - but it seems to be a hold over from music lessons as a kid. Silly kid. Is our entire course in life channeled by what we experienced as a child? (hup? hup?)

Do bears beat off in the bushes?

Later. Not so bad, a good session. The “riff” went well and I've been assigned another one, this time with a two string rhythm section that stretches your fingers farther than they were ever meant to be stretched. Which has been true in learning more than one new chord or another so far, so I guess “farther than they were ever meant” is just beginner me reacting to reality. Guitar reality. My, my. I started this to get away from reality, what has happened? Here in the northern modeled on the Matrix nerve center of Oakland.

Later still. OK, a walk down to the morning restaurant (again) to have a diet Coke and a bun of some kind, the head clear, no sign of the double vision. A little tired, but otherwise in pretty good shape. Better than I've been for a while. The little tired can be taken care of with a nap. The weather, by the way, is fine: the temperature cool, but comfortable; the sun bright. Let's hope summer has arrived or, at least, California has come to its senses and this is what we have to look forward to for the rest of the year.

An hour's nap since the last paragraph. Just like that. Feel better, it takes about twenty minutes to come awake after a nap, not a lot different than waking in the morning, but now it's early afternoon and I'm feeling pretty good. We'll pick up the guitar, see what can be done, maybe head out later again to get in a more substantial walk, try for one or two pictures, but of what? Decisions, decisions. This retired business is stressful.

If you're going to attempt dumb jokes, make them at least clever. Nobody needs to hear about you being retired. Hung over would be more interesting, combine the two for a two-fer.

I'm realizing I need to have projects now that I'm not going to an office anymore. Something that has goals and stimulates the mind and probably the body. Too easy to just sit. The photography works, although the “projects”, as such, need a lot of work (as in creating some). The guitar works too, the weekly lessons, the need to practice, although I'll have to think about where it eventually goes when I reach a certain point. Play in a band? That really hadn't been the idea, but it's what playing an instrument is usually about.

Be nice if I could come up with a project I wanted to devote time to locally, a charity or political thing of some kind. Doesn't have to be pictures or working with the web although maintaining a web site would be interesting. Have to think about that. Summer is coming, we need to do something more than attend the family party in July. I'd guess.

How about doing something with all those domain names you've accumulated?

They've been at the back of my mind, but so far I've not thought about them much and no light bulbs have gone off. I've been more collecting them like you'd collect baseball cards than thinking of any particular project they'd be good for other than what I've done with artandlife, 100favoritebooks and hereinoakland. Any task is work, but it needs to be work that I perceive more as fun. The American Dream: work as fun, too bad it's so hard to find anything approaching it that you can earn a living from.