I just took the Monday evening yoga class at the Westhaven Community Arts Center, and it was just what the doctor ordered. Good to touch base with my Hippie roots.

There are a lot of places I haven't stretched out or accessed in quite a long time, and it's more than worth my ten bucks to have an external structure to focus and calm my mind for 90 minutes. I left feeling lighter than I have in quite a while.

It also made me miss my old artsy city life and all the human connections. Things these days just aren't as rich.

Lately my life feels very much two steps forward one step back. It's frustrating. One of my little personal mantras for many years has been Believe in the Divinity of Your Forward Momentum, which becomes harder to do when you're getting jerked around. Nobody likes it when divinity is a tease.

Perhaps I'm a spoiled and petulant man-child who can't handle a setback. Or maybe I'm an uncompromising idealist. Or maybe I'm just impatient.

Currently I'm leaning towards the latter; impatient with a touch of insecurity, which is a deadly combination. It seems that most of the times lately when I've been uptight or freaking out about something, a few days later things change and everything is alright.

For instance, I'm about to go and write myself a paycheck for the month of March, 20 days late. It's not super-awesome to be behind on this, and the whole month-to-month business thing produces the same kind of stress -- though obviously less dire in nature -- as living paycheck to paycheck did back in the day. Yesterday I was upset about it. Today we finally got one of our clients to pony up, and things suddenly look better.

This kind of manic swing is the sort of thing that doesn't really help, and which I'd frankly like to buffer on out of my life going forward. It's a pattern that goes far beyond my work experience. Something to think about for sure.

The taxman cometh, and he requires of me about seventeen thousand dollars. Yeah, that's right. I grossed a little over fifty G's last year, and because I ride that crazy "self employment" train the IRS wants a big piece of the pie. It's no biggie though: compared to, say, Bank of America, the Internal Revenue Service is a paragon of reason, patience, and customer service. Plus, their juice is only six percent.

The truth is that I sunk all my spare income over the past year into starting a new business and in paying off my high-interest credit card debts. That this now leaves me with a massive tax liability and no savings is a little annoying (Redman wants out!), but it's a much better position compared to being square with the government, but without a growing small business and eight or nine grand in hock to the corporate shylocks.

Hell, by the time I pay this off -- I'm guessing the end of the year or so -- we might even be on our way out of Iraq, so maybe I can think of it as a kind of war-tax resistance.

That said, I'm actually fine with paying taxes. I don't want to pay more than I have to, but I tend to think that for all its faults this old US of A has some pretty good perks. Freedom isn't free, bitches. Besides, a bigger portion of the money I owe goes towards Social Security (which I believe in) than the Pentagon anyway.

Here's to funded retirement and an end to empire!

Congratulations are in order for Mr. Yarwood, who successfully completed the Boston Marathon in under four hours, raising several thousand dollars for needy children. That's what I call Lunch Truckin'.

Rolling over the clouds, chasing the sun, looking back at the expanding crescent of the earth's shadow in the sky behind, it hits me all over again.

I'm going to have to find my own way.

And the only way that works is if I've got the pride, ego, confidence, vision or whatever you want to call it to make it happen on my own terms. I spend a lot of time second-guessing myself and guarding against hubris -- a well-known tragic flaw -- but it's too late at this point to hope that some ordained path will mystically arise. I'm not destined to fit into a "career track," too independent (cocky) to go into apprenticeship, and I'm certainly not going to find some guru to hand me down my purpose on a silver platter. That much is clear by now.

My experience as a performer (and with a few other things) has given me a bedrock belief in my power to create moments of sublimity, to temporarily transcend the normal boundaries and limitations of humanity and make contact with the divine. It's real, glorious even, but also ephemeral. You can't live it, although you can do your damnedest live for it, by it, and through it. For better or for worse that's how I roll; seeking the edge.

This past year and a half I've struggled with my rambling nature, trying to settle down in one way or another. It hasn't really taken. I've learned a lot about myself and gotten into some really great things -- and so I have no real regrets -- but I'm coming to the conclusion that now is not the time for me to put down roots in the conventional sense, and indeed that "conventional sense" may simply not apply.

I'm on my 12th day of travel and I'm beat. Currently I'm tanking up at the office and fixing to meet with some do-gooders downtown and then make the haul back to the HC.

A few things.

• After getting my monthly dose of Cable News courtesy Jetblue airlines, I wrote a blog on FM about the disintegration of Don Imus, who will forever be "Anus in the Morning" to me thanks to a play I did back in the sweaty Lower East Side summer of 2002.
• Driving over the Bay Bridge into SF today, I saw a gas station in downtown that had their fuel priced out at $3.99 / $4.19 / $4.29. Clearly they're an outlier, but the only other place I've seen that is Trinidad, the last branded gas before you head into the Redwood National Forest on 101. Get ready.
• Also on the plane, I wrote a big high and heady companion blog to the "Missing the Old You" post below. It felt not quite so good the next day, but I'll throw in some afterthoughts and post it soon.
• Need some outrage? Try this.

I'm ready to go home and take a weekend off.

In Which I Explain With A Single Quote My Certainty That All My Achievements Will Be Eclipsed By My Sister:

By 7[pm] I was sitting in the back of a really small, really red, bar (alone, I might add. A practice I'm not a fan of) listening to some Columbia graduates read from their first published works. Nothing like hearing words pulled off the page and spoken out loud, it evokes a good feeling, a little internal nudge that this is what I really love spending my time doing. But, for the love of God, what's with that fucking wispy, ethereal, panty waist voice grown men get when they read poetry? That's got to stop, people. Let's put the balls back in prose.

The blog you all really want to be reading.

I'm doomed! Doooooomed!

One of the things I do of late when I come back to NYC is see women I used to be involved with. I'm a big believer in maintaining connections, especially the ones that have meant a lot, and it's been a point of pride for me that I'm friendly with virtually all my lovers and girlfriends.

Life in the Woods is more romantically lonely (lots more) than my urban days have been, so I really enjoy these dinner dates, remembering what it was like. I've no real agenda in mind, but it does wonders for my psyche to sit down with a beautiful girl and have a good conversation and realize that I'm still a likable guy. My day-to-day doesn't offer me much evidence of this -- again, speaking in a romantic context -- and my self-confidence is fragile enough that after spending enough time without positive feedback I begin to regress.

So last night I was having a great chat with this tall, enterprising, quick-witted beauty at the still-excellent Great Jones Cafe, and the topic of nostalgia comes up; my saw being that it feels depressingly premature to be looking back like that at the tender age of 27. She has a really great insight: the devilish thing isn't reminiscing for "the old times" as it's inevitable and arguably proper to cherish your own personal history, and anyway if you want to do the things you used to do, the odds are you can do them again. That's just a question of will. The real bugger is missing the person you used to be.

Well, it looks like two of my favorite peer-level politics organizations are making a run at financial independence. This is a great thing, as one of the major lessons I've learned over the years is that the Revolution cannot progress on an allowance from daddy.

I'll write a real blog about this for Future Majority at some point soon, but for now here are some links if you want to get on the bandwaggon:

First there's Chris and Matt from MyDD, who provide some of the most diligent, honest, insightful and inspiring political blogging around, and who I sort of think of as comrades. I just sent them $50.

Then, a bit more ambitious, Living Liberally, an organization which has build real social capital all over the nation, is turning pro and running as an LLC. I like the enterprising angle, and will be giving them money as soon as I figure out how deep I'm in hock to the IRS and what I can affort.

If you feel moved, you can give as well. I'll also post a link to my piece on FM explaining why this matters whenever I get around to writing it.

I'm in NYC for a spell, and have spent the last two days inside a big ol' corporate office once more. The project is actually pretty interesting, and the people I'm working directly with are great, but the whole experience still gave me a healthy dose of The Fear.

My old friend, mentor and colleague Peter Crawford once pointed out to me that Corporate America is a lot like High School. It's an astute observation. Subsequently, I've come to see this as a common thread in most institutional settings, but having been off and running around politics and other scenes, I'd forgotten just how much the corporation creeps me out.

In part its because the modus operandi cuts against my own passionate (and arguably excessive) intermingling of life and work. It just seems like such a limiting thing, being in this big building, in your little cubicle or office, wearing some outfit, eating lunch in a cafeteria, renting away your days to make some other people rich.

It also irks me how corporations (any bureaucracies, really) tend reward ladder-climbing, don't-rock-the-boat, playing-office-politics type behavior rather than real innovation, drive, results, etc. It's a really different set of values than the world I inhabit most of the time. There are lots of rules about who's allowed to access what; a closed-source approach; personal fiefdoms wrapped in red-tape.

Anyway, it's good -- if a bit dispiriting -- to be reminded that this is how most peoples' work-lives really are. Dispiriting because it makes me momentarily pessimistic about humanity's chances ("this is the best we can do?"), and sad for all the squandered human potential. Good though because it reminds me how lucky I am, and also makes me optimistic based on how much progress is possible.