Building a Better Batmobile

So, I'm back.

I'm hoping not to leave this time.

When I started this blog close to a year ago I had just been dumped by my longtime girlfriend, and I was looking to do something that justified my spending a lot of time hanging out with my friends, doing cool stuff, and creating opportunities to expand and challenge myself despite being very very sad. What's funny, and not in a "ha ha" way, is that I felt (and still feel!) like I had to create some large scale project that justified spending my time that way, as though just doing fun stuff couldn't or shouldn't compete in priority with work, career ambition, or sitting in bed for hours refreshing internet browsers. In order to feel like I wasn't wasting my time on something inconsequential it needed to be something with consequence. And so Collected Possibilities became a reality - part writing exercise and prompt, part social activity, part self improvement quest, and all designed to make me feel a lot better in a bad place.

And it did! At a time when my relationship was gone and my passion for theater was just starting to fray, working on the 300 was the most fun several weeks I've spent in recent memory, aside from the sadness of missing Kelly. It was a very positive way of dealing with that sadness, and that sadness really was the fuel that fired this blog. I haven't gone back to re-read Chapter 1, as it were, but from what I remember there were two or three major narrative strands that emerged over that first set of posts. One was my deep friendship with Christian Sullivan, my most consistent cohort on my adventures, and how lucky I was and am to have someone like him by my side on the good days and bad. The second was a story about a guy dealing with a pretty hard breakup in a unique way, and if you can read between the lines, getting back together with her after several months of growth on both ends.

That's right. We got back together, and after several rough months, we're at a better place than I can ever remember us being. I love her, she loves me, and we're a lot better at this whole 'being a team' thing.

That's a pretty great story!

Unfortunately, the casualty was this blog. And not only this blog, but the entire endeavor of the 300 before 30. Like Christian correctly predicted would happen, and tried to make me promise wouldn't, once Kel and I got back together the fuel went out of the fire and in pretty short order I stopped doing any of this. Once I wasn't actively sad, the idea of spending so much time trying to be happy just felt masturbatory. I was almost embarrassed to spend my time on writing this instead of creating art. I had more important things to focus on.

Quickly I went back to being hyper-focused on my career and that previous fraying led to burn out, and now here I am - in the biggest personal rut that I can remember. I'm totally burned out, and for the first time ever have no access to my passion or creativity. I'm in poor financial shape, terribly overweight and unhealthy, and suffering from the same level of procrastination that I used to in high school. That ended with me being kicked out of my house and getting a GED instead of graduating, so I'm not eager to repeat the journey. And with theater, my mistress of the last 8 years, no longer providing almost any kick, I need something new.

I started thinking about this blog.

I thought about the tagline at the top - "300 Adventures in Search of a Better Life."

That's pretty significant.
More significant than I've given credit in the past.

To live a better life.

Why is that not THE most important thing I'm doing at all times?

Why the embarrassment? Why the feeling of wasting time? Where has my tremendous ambition truly gotten me? I've accomplished a lot, I'm not denying that, but I am so far from where I want to be, and I'm starting to understand that to move to the next level I need to focus my attention in other areas while I recharge. A better foundation. So I'm going to own this challenge, and commit fully to accomplishing a better life one Adventure at a time.

For the immediate future Collected Possibilities is, if not my number one priority, then at least high up there. Maybe it's not the artistic project I've thought I should be working on, but I hope that both personally and for an audience it will turn out to be rewarding. And I very much hope that you'll join me in a few different ways:

1. By reading, or sharing this blog with others who may enjoy.
2. By picking one or many of these Adventures to join me on.
3. By suggesting new ideas to add or replace to the list. It is still a fluid thing.
4. By creating your own 300 list. There is nothing I'd love more than a number of people, each with their own set of challenges, that I can join you on - so that there is a whole community of people undertaking Adventures and chronicling them. It has helped me in hard times and I imagine it can help you as well. Let me know if you want help getting started.

A FEW HOUSE-KEEPING NOTES

• You may notice that there are more than 300 things on the list right now. That's for a few reasons. A number of the challenges involve hooking up or sexual activities with different kinds of people. I'm, uh, kinda with someone at the moment, and I have no intention of breaking up with her anytime soon. So I have some alternates to do without removing the sex/dating stuff from the list. I'm also still replacing certain things, and the 300 page is a useful place to keep track of things. Finally, while there is a purity to the 300 as a set number (and one I respect) I also like the idea of a growing list of cool things. I think it will settle to a solid 300, but I want the best list, not the now list.

• I got rid of "Review Every Comic Book You Own." After doing three I realized what a TREMENDOUSLY unrewarding burden that would be, and since it was my own suggestion I felt very comfortable removing it. I now have Heroic Endeavours for that kind of writing, and I encourage you to check it out if you want even more on Comics and Pro-Wrestling than you are likely to find here.

• There are several catch up posts that will be coming up over the next few days that chronicle activities that happened over the last 6 months or so. So be on the lookout for those, and from there I'll start with new ones again.