mixed emotions

Sometimes I read a story and I'm not sure whether I should be sad or joyful. This happened to me this morning when I read this, a column by WaPo metro columnist John Kelley.

And I don't just have these mixed emotions about Kelley's hat, which is so retardedly and/or awesomely displayed for our amusement each week in his picture.

Nope. This time I felt mixed emotions about the actual content, which profiles a dude named Jon Urban, who's quitting his day job to move to Vegas and become a fulltime poker player.

At first I was like, "Oh, awesome! This guy has the guts to follow his dreams!" But then I was like, "Oh, no! But his dream is to move to Vegas and play poker. How sad."

He's basically trading in one douchey activity (you know, having a legitimate job...or something) for another. Now, if he was moving to Vegas to play craps, that'd be a different story...

But who am I to judge a man and his dreams? Like I said, at least he's chasing his instead of continuing to rot in a job that clearly doesn't make him happy. That takes a lot of guts and, so regardless of how douchey his dream is, I gotta respect Mr. Urban.

"I'm the age, and this is the time to do it," said Jon, 28. "I'm not married. No kids. . . . Everybody at work was impressed that at least I was trying to live my dream."

It's too bad those people who are so impressed with Jon will probably never allow themselves to follow their own dreams...

Me, on the other hand, well, my dream isn't exactly like Jon's, but it's still a gamble. And although I find myself pursuing it out of default (Jon quit his steady, boring job; I got fired from mine, although with a good deal of self-sabotage), I am compelled these days to pursue it.

I'm writing a book. A fiction book, to be exact. Unfortunately, the work I'm putting into it is cutting into the amount of time I devote to blogging. For anyone (of you three people) who check in regularly, you've probably noticed in the past couple of months my posts have been hardly regular. In fact, The Anti DC has the blog version of irritable bowel syndrome. Except instead of eating too much cheese, the lack of regular e-droppings on here is due to writing too much elsewhere.

While I don't want to say too much about the project before I have the chance to pitch it to an agent or two, I will tell you that I am greatly enjoying it. So, even if that agent or two hates my work and tells me I should probably try a little harder to get a day job to go complain about again, at least I know I have the guts (albeit a bit by default) to follow my dream (as silly and cliche as it may be).

But if this doesn't work out, perhaps I'll move to Vegas and pursue that craps fantasy.

In the meantime, I'm sorry to report, the regularity of my blog posts will remain random. Or, who knows, maybe I'll start posting excerpts from the manuscript. Or short stories. Or flash fiction.

Or maybe I'll just post videos reminding you of the dangers of dolphin rape.



You're welcome, although I have this nagging feeling that I've posted this video before...good thing it's worth watching twice. I'll e-see you tomorrow! Or maybe not...

Credit to above artwork: It's a panel in the graphic novel adaptation of probably the greatest book ever, Mikhail Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal.