Me in a... Messenger Bag?

As I have been working and commuting on the bus recently, I have had an increased reliance of the majority of my life fitting into my messenger bag. As I sat at work the other day, looking into my bag, I began to realize: the possessions of one's bag really capture the essence of who they are. Honestly, much more than my wallet, my bag gives you a great in-depth look into who I am and what I do. I realize that it's a cliche idea, and it only makes sense that the one place where you put almost everything you might need on a daily basis had better well speak volumes about you, but I figured it could make for pretty good blog to give a brief rundown of what all goes into making a fully-grown Bill.

Glasses. I wear glasses to read, and 99% of my work requires that I wear them, plus I wear them when I read on the bus, which is all the time. I'm one of those sick weirdos who actually wishes he could wear glasses all the time. I realize that if I actually did have to wear them all the time, I would hate it, but I personally really like the way my glasses make me look, and wish more people saw me in them on a regular basis. These days, I keep a red felt-tip pen for editing markup in the case as well, and I always find that it looks just a little bit menacing in there lurking just below the glasses.

Whatever book I happen to be reading at the time. Reading on the bus is the one bright and shining silver lining that balances out the usually awful experience of having to ride MUNI. The trains are seldom on time, more and more people seem to think it's okay to bring a pet or do something gross on the bus, and I am seemingly constantly lambasted by homeless. But taking the bus to work means that I have two hours out of every week day in which the only enjoyable thing I could think to do is stand around and read, and I kind of love it.

Two Moleskine Notebooks. One is for general notes, one is for band notes. I don't use them nearly as much as I probably should, but they do come in wildly handy when I either think I should write something down (sometimes about this very blog) or need it for work, and by having the notebooks, I can keep them all organized and held together in a single book.

An iPod classic. I have an iPhone that I don't hardly ever listen to music on, I need the full 80 gigs of space to stash music on, and sometimes even that isn't enough. I actually kind of miss the days when iPods were considered devices that people used only to listen to music. This whole multi-functionality thing is for the birds. I want something small and light with enough music to let it outlast the battery life of the device.

Headphones. For me, headphones are one of the few places where I don't mind spending money. I hate earbuds, and because I like listening to music loudly in quiet offices, I want headphones that isolate sound well. I have burned through about four pairs of headphones in the last four or five years, but it's one of those things where I can't help but drop decent coin on a high quality pair.

Accordion File. This is a remnant from my teaching days; I found it in the band room where I was, and it is now adorned with a mirror-reflective B that came my way via a chemistry lab. It's perfect for two things: first, it keeps a little bit more structure at the back of the bag, which keeps everything inside a little more orderly. Second, it holds a lot of loose crap. I can put in spiral notebooks, manila folders, loose paper, all that. It's even got a special loop where I keep one of my many pens. I also keep Hello Monster CDs in there. I have a whole folder full of musical staff paper which I don't use nearly often enough, and stack of printouts explaining how you can build your own silk screen press from scratch, which I've never done.

Small pocket notepad. I bought some of these a few years ago, and honestly had halfway forgotten that I still had this one in here. Needless to say, it doesn't see a lot of use.

Writing utensils. I'm a huge pen dork, so I have a wide variety of pens, and somehow I assign a certain amount of significance to when each gets used. By my current count, there are 3 black pens, 3 pencils (two traditional, one mechanical), one red pen, one multi-color pen/pencil, a fine-tip sharpie, and the aforementioned red felt pen for editing. Sad thing is, I used to keep my old glasses in one of the pencil flaps of the bag until those broke, so now I'm thinking about what pens need to get added in.

Gum. One of my oldest friends was somewhat surprised to find that I almost always have gum with me. I keep it in my bag, I keep a huge container in my car, a huge container on my desk at home, and pretty much anywhere that isn't in my pockets. I am an obsessive gum chewer, even though I'm the type who will chew a piece of gum until it is hard as a rock and lost its flavor some hours earlier.

The other day, I even had a volume pedal in there, but that was strictly there because I was selling it on Craigslist and was supposed to meet the buyer that afternoon. Still, it seemed a fitting addition that I could include for the sake of this blog.

Perhaps most importantly, the main thing about my bag is that it is organized to a T. Just like the way I try to live my life, there is always a place for everything, and everything is usually in its place. I know where each pen should be, which side the books should be on, and what needs to be moved where in order to accommodate other items.

In other words, I'm a huge dork who spends too much time looking into his bag.

Different Worlds

Last week I started a new contract job, and was pretty excited not only to make some money, but also to get out of the house, ride the bus, and have some interesting fodder for the ol' blog. Lo and behold, I have already found some pretty blog-worthy material. Earlier today I was thinking of writing a tale about my bus ride the other morning, which consisted of two homeless guys hitting up everyone on the streetcar for beer money (at 11:00 a.m.), two riders with dogs (one of whom sat on the floor with his dog), and a whole bunch of messes of people all over the place.

But then, at the office, I decided to hop in the elevator and head down to the lobby to get a coffee, and I ran into the most stereotypically sleazy sales guy that I have just about ever met. I got into the elevator and he gave me the classic bro-nod. I returned favor and stepped in for the ten-flight ride. After a second or two, he turns to me and asks "Dude, how do you get away with the mohawk?"

Now, a few points of clarification before I get into our entire convo: yes, I kind of have a mohawk, but it's definitely more of a faux-hawk, and I never have it combed all the way up. It's not like I have a foot tall wall of hair running down the middle of my head or anything. Still, I guess it's noticeable enough to comment on. Also, this guy just couldn't stop eating miniature candy bars. He had a handful of about four of them, and ate three of them throughout the course of our forty second-ish elevator ride. So all of his statements are said around a mouth full of little Snickers bars.

So I ask him to repeat himself, in part because it was hard to understand him around all the chocolate and nougat, and in part because I couldn't tell if he was being friendly or being kind of a dick. So I pause to think about it and reply "Well, you cut your hair like this, trim down the sides, and let everyone deal with it."

He kind of nods, adding "Well, what kind of work do you do? IT?" And I informed him I was in the creative department (truth be told, I don't know the official title of the department I'm in) and he says back "yeah, I guess that is more of a creative haircut... I couldn't get away with it." Yes, I know that we looked very different; he was in a blue pinstripe suit and I was in a Dickies shirt and jeans, but what really struck me as the difference was that he was wearing sunglasses, despite having come from inside of the building.

Our conversation continued, I commented "Well, you know, there are pluses and minuses. I'm technically kind of a behind the scenes kind of guy, so my appearance is usually just kind of matters to me, my boss, and my computer monitor. I don't deal with execs or customers, I only have to impress people with my work, not my appearance."

He pauses and mulls that over. "Yeah, I guess you're right. Pluses and minuses.... Like, I make great money and live a life of leisure. I am pretty much set for life. But you have a mohawk. I'd probably trade with you, because you have a mohawk and I don't. I can't buy the right to wear a mohawk. You just can. Yeah, I'd trade with you in a heartbeat."

I assured him that I'd trade haircuts if we could trade incomes as we parted ways.

So again, as per the usual, this anecdote once again proves that apparently I attract weirdos like a fiddler attracts a square dance. All I wanted to do when I set foot on that elevator was to stand in once place and somewhat blankly stare at the numbers go by, just like anyone else would usually expect in the same situation.

Having had a few days to mull this over in my head, and after discussing this with some friends, I kind of assume this dude must have been pretty baked. That is the best explanation for him wearing sunglasses when getting onto the elevator from inside the office, for his insane consumption of mini candy bars, and for his generally strange manner. Nonetheless, baked or no, this guy still saw me and just knew: this guy will make for some good conversation. Little did he know that almost as soon as he started talking to me, I just knew: this guy will make for some good blog.

Long time, no blog

Wow. This is absolutely appalling. It's been months, again proving that I'm absolutely terrible at this. If there is one thing that I can blame at the moment, it is a lack of external stimuli. Over the past few months, I've taken to a somewhat hermetic lifestyle, mainly for economic reasons. See, I had a job for a bit, and ever since that job ended, I've been spending the majority of my time either at home on my couch, at my friend's place on his couch, or at various band practices. While that is good news for my consistently dwindling bank account, it is bad news for this blog.

I'm one of those folks who thrives on external stimuli when it comes to blogging. I see stuff around me on the bus, at a coffee shop, at the bar - wherever - and I find that it stirs up something in me or something like that, and then I write about it here.

So half the reason I haven't written in a while is the fact that plain and simple that I haven't really had much of anything to write about. I don't think anyone is really interested in left side of the couch vs. right side of the couch, or how excited I was when I finally got a DVD rack that I could fit everything into so that I could finally get the boxes out of my living room. Nobody other than myself or my roommates care when I max out my character in Borderlands. You get the picture. I am leading a pretty darn mundane life at the moment, and while there is nothing wrong with that, it doesn't exactly make for good reading.

So, here's to hoping that I become more active again. I start a new contract job next week, which will mean upwards of ten hours a week on MUNI which is always rife with blog-worthy material. Also, I just want to be more disciplined in setting aside some more time on a regular basis to write; I am, by profession, a writer (some might argue) and therefore I do need to keep the old tools well honed.

So let's hope that this is the start of a more diligent trend. As always, I'm not making any promises, but it would be good to get back into the swing of things a little bit more.