Some weeks, this column writes itself. Some weeks, you have hipster milk, or the ice off some asshole’s minivan shatters your windshield, or something you say gets taken out of context and used against your publication in a competitor’s emails to your advertisers. These are the easy weeks. These are the weeks where I know Wednesday what I’m going to turn in to go to press the following Monday. Though the event that brings about the certainty is usually a colossal pain in the ass, I still like that certainty. I like knowing.
Then there’s weeks like this past week: Monday I worked and went to class. Tuesday I worked late and went to band practice. Wednesday I went to class and then worked afterwards until about 10:30 p.m., as I’ve been doing all semester much to the detriment of my general wellbeing. Thursday I worked late and did homework all night. Friday ditto, with a stop off at the local townie for dinner because I couldn’t call up the gumption to clean the kitchen for the requisite hour before deeming it okay for cooking in. Yesterday, which was Saturday, I was in Connecticut for a staggering four family birthdays, and today I drove back to Jersey, did another five hours of homework, helped the process of installing a shower and sat down (albeit late enough so that the food was long since cold) to a family dinner. Fact is, I don’t have time to know what the hell I want to write about for Deleted Scenes this week.
As a result, I’ve sat here for longer than I care to admit now, switching back and forth between BBC News and an open, empty Word document, trying to get started on a column—any column—that I could possibly see through to some reasonable conclusion. In the words of the Internet: “Fail.”
So be it. I’ve never missed a deadline for a Deleted Scenes and I don’t intend to start with the March 9, 2011, issue. Seems a silly date anyway. Maybe sometime in July or August, when the heat gets to me, but not March. What the hell?
What I’ve decided to do for this week’s Deleted Scenes is present to you, through the magic of CTRL+Z, the four false starts I had writing columns before finally settling on this—the hopefully final—concept. Enjoy:
Doing What You Love
I am a busy bastard. I work full-time at The Aquarian…
Writing Deleted Scenes
I don’t want to talk about politics, and I don’t want to talk about myself. Already tonight I’ve sat here for 40-odd minutes and tried starting columns about both, and both have fallen flat. To be perfectly honest with you, I’m all writinged-out for the night. My head feels like jelly. I spent a good five hours this evening doing homework and I have nothing to add either to the discourse on national or international issues…
The To-Do List
I should have done laundry tonight. I’ll have no clean clothes by Tuesday. I should have made a podcast tonight…
Life With Thin Walls
I’ve been sitting here for about 20 minutes now, trying to muster up the energy and mental will to say something about the civil war that’s broken out in Libya in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi’s refusal to leave power as the head of the country. Aside from being too fucking tired to think of anything even remotely interesting to say about it, distracting me from this purpose is the fact that, in the next room over, I can clearly hear every single word of a conversation my wife and her family are having. Vaguely muffled, but still. Every word. It’s like I’m there, like I’m invisible.
It’s almost enough to make me want to yell out, “Hey, what about that JJ guy?” just to hear what they’d have to say on the subject (me), but I already know they think I’m a useless jackass, so it’s not like I’d be gathering any new information. Nonetheless, as I sit here and look at the pictures of men and women and automatic weapons—not nearly as hot as it sounds given the reality of people dying—the laughs, the proclamations from my brother-in-law, the careful, explanatory and professorial tone of my wife, they’re all right there.
One can only fart in empty protest…
Well, there they are. That last one might have been gold if I’d had the energy to pull it off, but I didn’t. And the first I might actually do some other time, but I’d prefer it to be a time when I actually love what I’m doing in both the present-moment and big-picture sense. Clearly that’s not the case tonight. The third was going to be me bitching about being busy, which this column turned out half to be anyhow, and the second, though probably an interesting discussion, wasn’t as funny to me as this. Ergo, this wins.
Rest assured, in the next seven days, until I once again sit down to put fingers to keys to write Deleted Scenes, I’ll be doing my best to get shit on by life so I have something to talk about. Seems the least I can do, and what the hell, it’s not like I have anything else going on. Right?
A sad, broken shell of a man,
JJ Koczan
jj@theaquarian.com
