One Charmed Motherfucker

Living Intentionally

A few weeks ago I was faltering and fading fast. I had a list of 10,000 things to do, and was so overwhelmed that I didn't know where to begin. I knew that if I started doing anything on the list, I'd never stop. So I didn't start anything on the list. I lived the sweet life of the unemployed: sleeping until the afternoon, surfing the internet, masturbating, scratching my ass... basically getting nothing done in the least attractive manner possible.

Then the self-loathing begins to set in. You wake up, piddle around, and in the blink of an eye, it's the middle of the night, and you've done nothing but soak up everything the Internet Movie Database has to offer on the entire cast of HBO's Deadwood. "Where the fuck did that day just go?" You feel awful and lazy and stupid, and the only available remedy (if you don't drink or use drugs) is to go to bed and get no less than eleven hours of sleep. And the vicious cycle begins, and rolls merrily forward until you wake up to discover that the month you gave yourself to accomplish your to-do list has become what scholars like to call "last month."

I went to Coach and told her my problems. In a nutshell, I said I felt like I needed my mom to say "Clean your room," and stand in the doorway to watch and make sure I didn't get distracted.

Coach informed me that I was living without purpose, and introduced me to a few tools to help me get motivated and get balanced.

The first piece of the puzzle is her own device called "The Positive Living List." I'm actually going to hold off on giving you the full scoop, because it's her professional property, and I don't feel right putting it on the internet for anyone to Google for free when she earns her living developing such helpful tools. The gist of the list is that rather than have a huge, intimidating taskmaster list, you break your life down into bite-sized bits, and start each day with the question, "What can I do today to be able to say to myself tonight, 'This was a great day'?" And more importantly, the list MUST include things that refill your stock of precious, positive energy. Some people have this simple organizational skill already in their arsenal. Me, notsomuch.

I have to tell you, the first day of using this list my body woke itself up at 6:30 in the morning after only 5 hours of sleep (it's not like I wasn't well-rested after sleeping 16 hours/day for the past two weeks) ready to take on the world. And even though I only scratched the surface of my big, bad, scary to-do list, I accomplished almost everything on my Positive Living List, and was able to spend most of the day in complete joy.

The next thing she told me to do was to go home and watch "The Secret." I had already watched "What The Bleep Do We Know," so "The Secret" was really just a Cliff's Notes refresher course of that, with much smaller words. Always good.

She also mentioned, as did the folks in The Secret, Vision Boards. This was a new one on me, but I knew as soon as I heard about them that they worked, and I'll tell you why in a minute.

You can find all kinds of information about Vision Boards online, especially on YouTube. And since Oprah has had them on her show as well, I assume everyone on the planet has had one for years, and I'm just now hearing about it. (You know you're in a social coma when something is on YouTube AND Oprah, and you've remained oblivious.)

There's nothing magical about Vision Boards - they won't automatically conjure up anything you'd like without some work on your part. What is fascinating and completely functional about them is that they reign in your focus and energy on what you desire most at that moment in your life. The sales pitch for Vision Boards is that they can give you your dream house, fast cars, beautiful women, and all just by thinking about these things for a few minutes a day. And I would not argue that. My argument is the same argument that I have with prayer: people who pray to god for a mansion and a Porsche seem to be pissing away a limitless source of divine power. People who pray for a cancer-free human race and an end to famine have a much smaller chance of their prayers being answered, but at least they aren't asking god to perform parlor tricks for their own amusement. Soap box finis.

As soon as I heard about Vision Boards, I instantly knew they worked, and would work, for absolutely anybody. The proof was in two absolute douchebags with whom I attended college, Adam and Tom. Adam and Tom spent their entire adolescent lives surrounded by posters of beautiful, mostly-naked women. They were creepy little perverts that weren't much to look at, didn't date much, didn't have a sophisticated set of social skills (Tom kept his farts in a Gatorade bottle), and snuck porn magazines into class to look at during lectures. I'd watch these guys and laugh, knowing that they'd be sorely disappointed when they got out of college and realized they couldn't land a girl hotter than a 4. Of course, when I bumped into each of them at separate industry functions several years later, and they were married to a couple of the hottest women I've ever seen. You think all that time staring at the high-quality poon-tang on their bedroom wall didn't somehow manifest a hottie for each of these mental midgets? I'm not saying that with these hotties comes complete bliss, happiness, and fulfillment. But on the surface, douchebags 1 and 2 got exactly what they'd always wanted, exactly what was on their Vision Boards.

I get plenty of high-quality, naked hotness, so right now my vision board is all about the half-marathon, with a plan to include some business structure in the very near future. My Vision Board has to be able to go on the road with me for six weeks, so making a huge poster to put up by my bed or in my office is not going to help much. My Vision Board is completely digital, and thus, completely portable. It's just a Photoshop document, which is great because I don't have to scour magazines for images, I can use anything I can find on the interweb. It's also completely editable from anywhere in the world, no magazines, glue or scissors required. I can also have multiple copies of my Vision Board - one on my desktop computer, one on my laptop computer, and one on my iPhone. The ability to put your Vision Board on the iPhone is fantastic - I can take it with me anywhere, and look at it anytime. I can even play meditational/motivational songs on my iPhone's headphones while focusing on my goals, and all in complete privacy, even in the most public of places. Ain't technology grand?

Last night was my first night with my vision board, and I looked at it for maybe 8 minutes before I went to bed while listening to a mellow mix of music that I threw together just before 1:00 a.m.. And again, my body woke itself up, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6:00 am with a desire to conquer everything in my path. The shift in attitude is almost completely unconscious at this point, and I'm loving it! I mean, obviously, this power lies within me without these "tricks," but the Positive Living List and Vision Boards are fantastic tools to minimize the emotional effort needed to stay in the game.

The important thing to note in this post is the overwhelmingly powerful effect that focus can have on your energy. I'm a long way from having my Vision Board spring to life, but just having these tools at my disposal has made a huge difference in my motivation. I'm looking forward to continuing this experiment.

130 Days From Now.

Part of me wants to just jump back into this blog and pretend that I've completely been posting stuff for the past 8 months. Part of me wants to close this blog completely and have one less thing to maintain in my life. Yet another part of me feels like turning this blog into something good and positive, and feels that anyone still reading needs an explanation.

So an explanation. Yeesh.

For most of my adult life, I've practiced and believed in the Law of Attraction without really knowing what it was. Without having the mass-marketed DVDs, the self-help books and people all tizzy about some "secret," I knew that if I put positive energy into the world, I would get positive energy in return. It was never with the mindset that "this will get me a big house and a fancy car," which seems to be the major selling point of media designed to exploit philosophies like "The Secret." It was simply the closest I'd ever get to anything resembling religion - I'm not going to pray to a god, I'm not going to worship fucking ANYONE who threatens me with eternity in hell if I don't, and I'm not going to hang around with a bunch of hypocrites who follow to the letter the bible passages that suit their agenda and ignore or even contradict the ones that don't. Rather than wade around in all that muck, I chose to be more helpful than hurtful. Plain and simple.

And that works. The results actually come back to you tenfold. Hence the whole "One Charmed Motherfucker" business.

Within the past year, events have conspired to drain my precious, positive energy. That sales job I was so hyped up about turned out to be more stressful than performing brain surgery in the middle of an active runway. I was so stressed out, in fact, that I contracted a vicious case of pneumonia just before a crippling ice-storm. After six days in the hospital and three months sitting on my ass, unable to walk, talk or breathe, freezing and contemplating how One Charmed Motherfucker like myself could have fallen so far off the positive pedestal, I realized that slowly but surely, many of the people and things that I valued as examples of my positive returns had disappeared. My cool design studio, my lifelong friends, my incredible good fortune - all vanished, leaving me feeling even more lost as to who I was and just what the fuck happened. Ultimately, in a desperate act of self preservation, I quit my sales job and severed any ties with anything that didn't refill my reservoir of awesome, wonderful positiveness.

The recovery from pneumonia was actually much easier than recovering from a loss of charms. That's been a slow, ongoing rebuilding process, and involves a lot of therapy and life-coaching to get me back to having faith in myself, goals, motivation, and all-around "good vibes." Anyone upset that I'm not letting them help, you have to understand that this is something that I have to do for myself. End of discussion.

Part of recovering was reading back through the blog. Several times. I chuckle when I read posts that are clearly, in hindsight, attempts to convince myself that everything is okay. I worked very hard to convince myself that I liked the sales job. I didn't metaphysically commit to the job, because at its core, I didn't really like it. Vision boards, mastermind groups and/or meditation would only have pulled me further from Graphic Design, a true passion-turned-career.

And that's the thing with the Law of Attraction: The universe will give you everything you want, but if it's wrong for you, there WILL be a sign. I thought I wanted to be a successful salesperson. In reality, what I actually wanted to be was exactly what I already am. I just wanted a break from Graphic Design. And I got that. Thanks, you smart-assed universe, you. Now I know that if I need a new challenge, it will be in existing passions like music or sex. Not sales.

In regards to gratitude, I'm definitely grateful for the lessons I learned in the past year. I will get over this hump, and I will be rebuilt stronger and better than ever. I've never regretted any steps I've ever made, because everything has always worked out to my ultimate advantage. It's my universe, and for whatever reason, I constructed it in exactly this way. I'll accept that, and one main goal is to be able to read back through this blog in 130 days and be grateful that I am no longer lost.

Tonight I was told that I have been "living inside my own head" a lot lately, and that's completely accurate. I'd even add a "happily" to either end of that. Right now, and well into fall, it's all about me. I've got to find the kid that I left behind a few years ago. The damage that I've allowed to happen is more severe than I would have ever admitted to in previous months, and it's not just a "funk" that I need to get out of, I need to adopt an entirely different frame of mind. The combined one-two-punch of physical illness coupled with mental anguish has taken a toll on each and every one of my chakras, and both of my brain cells.

Over the next 130-odd days, I'll be training to run a half-marathon that takes place in November, the same month as my birthday, and one year from when I contracted pneumonia. I'll also be working on building my business and getting my finances in order. Again, prior to this year, The Law of Attraction has always worked for me before I even consciously knew of its existence. And since then, the growing popularity of this Fantastic Little Law has brought to light many wonderful tools and techniques to help one achieve his or her goals. (Get on YouTube and search for Vision Boards, and you'll see what I mean.) And with me being at what I'll allow myself to call "rock bottom," I'm going to utilize these tools to test their efficacy.

Progress and analysis to be posted here at OneCharmedMotherfucker.com.

Comments are henceforth closed to the public. I appreciate the feedback, but for the time being, I don't need the entire internet yakking at me. I want to retain as much focus as I can on the voice inside my head. I've missed that guy.

Lucky For Me, I Don't Drink Dark Soda

...because if I drank dark soda, I wouldn't have seen the dead fly.
From now on: bottled water. Jesus.

The Things I Get Paid To Do

Today I earned a few hundred dollars just for spending 2 hours designing, 1 hour "consulting," and 1 hour sightseeing. But don't be jealous. To do all that, I have to spend 15 hours trapped in a car with a slightly retarded woman who talks to traffic and laughs at her own statements. Not jokes. Statements.

Fuck You, You Goddamn, Shit-Sucking Airline

I'm flying Northwest Airlines again today. The last time this happened, I was in transit for something like 18 hours and hit 4 different cities before I reached my destination. It's all chronicled on the old blog, for those of you who like to listen to me bitch.

This time, these motherfuckers have cancelled my 6:30 flight to Baltimore, and every airline has assured me that I won't be leaving this airport until 11:30. This complicates matters somewhat, as I have appointments booked at noon in our nation's Capitol. To further compromise my sunny disposition, I've already been paid for this trip.

Oh, how I truly hate this airline. And while it does me no immediate good to expel energy seething like this, outwardly screaming "HOW MANY DICKS CAN THIS AIRLINE POSSIBLY SUCK?" in the middle of the airport will at LEAST give me a mental association that won't allow me to forget that Northwest Airlines is consistently dogshit, and they should never, ever, EVER be used for air travel.

I'm Bad, I'm Nationwide.

Days when you can find your own photography as album art on iTunes can't be bad days, right? I really have no use for MySpace. When I was online, it really only served as yet another inbox to check. But I did get to meet this really cool singer/songwriter chick who asked if she could use my photo as her album cover. And now "Album Cover Art" can be crossed off of my List Of Things To Do Before I Die.

As I write this, Apple just sent me an e-mail expaining that they're now offering over 2 million iTunes Plus songs (songs that are free of DRM and can be played on any MP3 player and limitless computers) for 99¢ each. Yet another nudge towards progress for the music industry. I never understood why record labels were so ferocious about Digital-Rights-Management. If you're packaging your own music without copy protection of any kind, it's unreasonable to ask online merchants to do the same. What's the difference? If I buy your CD in a store, I can make thousands of copies and give them to my friends. But buying one song and sharing it with more than 5 people is somehow going to bankrup the record industry? Riiiiight.

Looks Like I Used The "Abbra-Cadaver!" Title Too Soon.

It doesn't totally suck to be me. Every once in a while, I get to fly across the country and be paid to do something that I absolutely love. And if I'm really lucky, while I'm there I get to venture out on the town and see what kind of trouble I can get myself into.

Last weekend's location presented me with two options for entertainment:

I could have gone to the Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights, which I assumed to be something that would haunt me for the rest of my life. Where I'm from we don't have the luxury of Universal Studios makeup artists and costumers preparing our haunted houses, and we don't have the beneift of the built-in terror equity that comes with well-branded horror icons such as Freddy Krueger, Jason & Leatherface. Haunted houses around these parts are supplied by the same Wal-Mart and Garden Ridge in which we citizens have already been shopping. So when a "monster" pops out at you, you're first reaction is less of an "AIEEE!" and more of a "Hey, I almost bought that mask! Glad I didn't...not nearly as scary as I had hoped." So I imagine the Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights to be the equivalent of The Playboy Mansion for the Undead. Definitely worth consideration.

Or I could have gone to a science museum and seen ACTUAL deceased humans, cut to shreds, plasticized and put on display with nothing between me and the carcass except muggy Florida air.

It wasn't really a tough decision: Barring any further global warming leading to massive hurricanes and the utter destruction of Florida, Universal Studios will likely host their Halloween Horror Nights again for years to come. But the odds of me and plasticized cadavers being in the same city at the same time are slim at best. Besides, if I visit the Universal Studios thing, it would spoil me for all of the wonderful abortion-themed spook houses put on by all the churches here in Hicksville.

So I essentially got paid to go look at a bunch of dead people, which is rather beautiful this close to Halloween. The museum folks were pretty adamant about me not taking photos, but that didn't stop me from busting off a few gonzo shots while nobody was looking. I was there about an hour before the exhibit closed, so nobody was really watching me all that closely.

The exhibit was creepy enough to give me the heebie-jeebies. If walking through the exhibit uninformed, one might think that he was looking at a bunch of wax statues. The specimens are all Asian, and not to make a broad generalization, but in the instance of this particular exhibit, their frames and features were considerably smaller than mine. So it was easy for me to imagine that I wasn't really looking at dead people, I was looking at elaborate department store mannequins.

...until I saw the eyelashes. *shudder*

I really did get a tour of every part of the body - the central nervous system; the respiratory, reproductive and digestive systems; there was even a pre-natal exhibit showing us what we look like before we're either born or aborted.

I saw human heads, brains, guts and eyeballs lying on tables. I saw a man's penis and a woman's vagina cut form their bodies and laid out to show the entire reproductive system. I saw a brain that suffered a stroke, which really does look like there was some sort of electrical fire in the noggin. I saw a healthy lung next to a smoker's lung, and they were BOTH fucking disgusting. And I saw two entire human cadavers, one cut into sections lengthwise, and the other cut from toes to nose. Haunted houses are for pussies.

Trick-or-treat at MY house this year, and you'd better be carrying your own fucking flesh on a coat hanger.

Found at Target.

I'm also testing out the mobile blogger feature. This is what posts
look like from my phone. Enjoy!

Abbra Cadaver!

Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.

I'm here. I'm alive. I'm almost well.

I haven't blogged for a myriad of reasons. MOSTLY - I'm just too fucking busy. I put more time than is necessary into my posts, and I just don't have the time or the clarity of mind lately to generate anything coherent for the internet to consume. Every once in a while I'll start a post, but it always winds up in the "unfinished" pile with a bunch of other tasks that need to be done in order for me to put food on my table.

I also haven't blogged because I don't want to bog anybody down with stories that are written in the wholly opposite persona of One Charmed Motherfucker. But the fact of the matter is, this new job is severely beating me down. According to the five-year forecast, I'll be kicking ass and taking names by 2010. But immediately, I've gone from being a seasoned veteran in my field to being a wet-behind-the-ears rookie, making mistakes and generally failing at everything I've attempted to do.

I get it now. I was the rare example of someone who loved his job and did his job well. I could almost be considered cocky and ignorant for giving that up only to have the piss beaten out of me daily. Most people would have been jealous of the ease at which things used to swing my way. And I'm forever grateful for that. But for whatever reason, I wanted a challenge, and I got exactly that. Now I have to put my money where my mouth is: Will the challenge pay off and eventually put me back on the throne as One Charmed Motherfucker, or will I be doomed to blog stories of my recent stumbles under an ironic pen name?

Tune in and find out.

She Sets 'Em Up, I Knocks 'Em Down.

My aunt tried to set me up with a girl during our Fun, Old-Fashioned Family Fireworks Extravaganza. I have yet to figure out why people so frequently try to set me up on dates. It's a futile endeavor from the get-go, mostly because I'm the kind of guy who enjoys the thrill of the chase. But aside from that, I don't necessarily need some girl I just met running back to our mutual friend and telling them that I get hard while watching The Gilmore Girls, or that I came in her mouth without any verbal warning. My friends and family don't need to know these things about me. These are secrets that I save for you, the Internet. (Shhhh!)

The pitch always starts the same: "I work with a girl that I think you would really hit it off with." No, you don't. You work with a girl that Tivos Dr. Phil. Unless this girl you work with is an agnostic bisexual nymphomaniac lingerie model, we can end this conversation right now.

The problem with a set-up is that the two people having their futures arranged are seldom "matches." And I can see how that could easily happen, because why would anyone waste a third-party endorsement on someone they could bag on their own? As far as I'm concerned, if you're going to set me up, don't bother setting me up with the really sweet, shy, 350-pound mother of three. I have no problem attracting those gals. Use the set-up to my advantage. Talk me up to the smoking hot bartender with the Betty Paige tattoos. Tell your tanned, toned personal trainer about your oh-so-charming nephew who just happens to be single this week. "What's that? Your wealthy husband just died and left you enough money to buy a small island and bigger boobs? How awful for you. You should meet my cousin - he's a great listener." The downfall of the arrangement is that if you're being bumped up to First-Class, the company you keep will still consider you steerage.

To further sabotage the set-up, people often TELL ME that they're going to try to set me up with someone. This will bite you in the ass every. single. time. If you really want your set-up to work, don't say a word. Just peddle your friend's flesh before my eyes and if she gets my motor running, believe me, we'll go a few laps. But broadcasting that I'm about to be introduced to someone because you think we'll be a cute couple is the single best way for me to loathe your friend and even resent you just a little bit. First of all, it implies that you think I need your help. Need I remind you that I am One Charmed Motherfucker, and fresh, moist pussy flows freely from a spigot above my bed? Secondly, it means that if this woman has a trait, mannerism or physical quality that offends me, then you obviously see that same characteristic in me. "She has buck teeth so you must think I have buck teeth. Gads, what our children would look like!" And finally, if I'm aware that you're expecting me to fall in love with your friend, then not only do I have to reject HER, but I have to reject YOU as well. "Yes, she was very sweet and her toddler was adorable. But do you realize that right now I could be in a room full of mattresses videotaping the Sigma Kappa Bikini Team sharing a strap-on and a bottle of Redi-Whip? What the fuck were you thinking?"

This isn't to say that if you did happen to set me up with a modern-day goddess that you'd achieve a successful match. When I lived in Texas, my roommate thought that one of her co-workers and I would hit it off over our love of music. We exchanged a few e-mails and I found her to be funny, intelligent and articulate. And yeah, we both liked music and concerts a lot. I enjoyed her e-mails immensely, but funny and intelligent in cyberspace can physically translate in real-life into a drab little bookworm in an apartment full of cats. She had already seen a picture of me, courtesy of my roommate, but I was going into this date completely blind.

"So, is she hot," I asked my roomate.

(shrugs) "Meh...yeah, I guess she's hot."

"How hot?"

"I dunno. She's, umm...pretty hot?"

"Do you have a picture of her?"

"What do you need a picture of her for?"

"Great, she's a bookworm. With cats."

I went to this girl's apartment expecting to find Velma the Frump-Girl, and opened the door instead to find one of the single hottest women I've ever encountered. Physically fit with flawless, olive skin and long, straight, black hair, she was wearing a red top that barely concealed the most perfect breasts I've ever pretended not to notice. She was still getting ready for our date, and her stereo was playing some incredible band that I'd never heard before or since. Her entire apartment was decorated for sex, with expensive candles everywhere and giant posters of naked women hanging above her satin sheets. And the come-fuck-me shoes she was strapping onto her feet were a clear sign that there was only one thing in her world with a feline descriptor, and if I called to her nicely, I'd be petting her pussy before the night was over.

I was...grossly...under-prepared for that.

"Hi, I'm One Drab Little Motherfucker, and these little guys are my hideous love handles. I think I'm supposed to be in Steerage. Can you just point to where that is, and I'll be on my way? Thank you."

I was so stunned by her entire package that I couldn't form a complete sentence the entire evening. I was goofy and awkward and totally off my game. All the while she's telling me how her military father HATES artsy guys, so fucking a designer/drummer like me would definitely piss him right the fuck off, so why don't we go to my car and get naked right now? But I didn't hear any of that. All I heard was my roommate saying "Yeah, I guess she's hot. She's kind of hot. I think she's sort'a hot." A girl like this does not merit any hemming and hawing about her hotness, okay? She's FUCKING HOT! And why didn't you tell me she was so fucking hot!? Jesus!

I was so uncomfortable in my own skin that when the date was over, I dropped her off at her spanish villa apartment and sped out of the parking lot during our goodbyes. Her fingers were still loosely grasping the car door when I punched the accelerator and hauled ass outta there. I didn't even stick around to see if she made it through the barrio to her front door alive. There was no time - I had to race home, take a cold shower, bitch-slap my roommate, and begin an intense regimen of stomach crunches and squat-thrusts.