Sometimes you just have to inspire yourself.

This post is only surreptitiously about tea. It's about tea in the sense that somewhere in the long run, all the dull work that I'm doing now will pay off, and Lauren and I will be making a living with tea being a central part of our success. Considering that probably no one besides Lauren's mom reads this blog at this point (Hi Julie!), I feel less inhibited in my expression. Therefore, I will now document the general state of things without reservation.

("Proceed Sir")
("Thank you, I shall")

Having just finished a dull dinner of plain rice cooked in water with chicken boullion, after a rather tiring day of installing used sheetrock for an eco-friendly contractor, with inadequate tools, for a sad wage, with co-workers who almost hindered more than helped, after weeks of not making much money at all because the economy's in the shitter, living in a crappy, noisy room, with a really messy room mate who pretty much finds an area you just cleaned, and takes a crap on it, and after having a crazy reaction to an acupuncture treatment that gave me a huge headache for three days so I couldn't sleep, and in that three days I discovered that the web host that I had been researching for two weeks and then paid for (for the Darjeeling tea website I'm working on) requires that I know (or learn) how to write code....................after this stretch of complete and utter non-sense, I'm actually feeling alright about things.

Since I've been more or less unemplyed for over a month, I decided that this was the time to start a website that sold tea. It would get Lauren and I "into the business" of tea, and having just come back from India where we met a guy who is all over the tea world of Darjeeling, who could sell us the high end tea's that we prefer; I decided that it made sense to get started. (excuse me, I'm ignoring proper sentence structure) As it stands right now, I have about $600.00 of extremely good Darjeeling teas on it's way from India. I have a few other little accoutrements, and I've got my toes wet with the website. The hard part is just beginning, because it involves some marketing stuff that I'm just learning about, website building issues (new to me), and I have limited funds. In some respects it would be great if I could avoid working for a little while longer, but I can't live on dew and Universe juice, so I have to de-prioritize the website, and go out and labor.

I also have an illustration project I'm working on for my mom, which I'm happy to do, but the deadline's coming up, and I have to make a bit more progress. We're also moving in less than two weeks, and we have some social obligations. To top it all off, the summer finally got truly hot and muggy, so I'm a sweaty mess all the time.

The saving grace in all this is Lauren, and the clarity of purpose that I more or less feel. Sometimes I get bogged down, and don't keep totally focused, but having a clear sense of what you are doing changes everything. I don't think anyone ever accomplished anything without being very clear about what it was that they were doing. "How" is sometimes a mystery, but "What" has to be well understood.

Lauren has been a trooper though all this, and she may not realize it, but she's made some things possible that I couldn't have done on my own. Namely; skate by on only a day of work here and there. It's making a larger, more important goals possible. Thank the stars that I was smart enough to do something with this time. I could have just spent my days trolling Craigslist for jobs, and sinking into depression. Well I did that for a minute, but then I got clear on some stuff.

So to Lauren; Thanks, I love you very much.

and to me; Good job.

There you have. That is the state of things. Not exactly what this blog is all about, but I found that somewhat cathartic.