I think I am a metropolitan at heart. Somehow that seems to be work for me, too. Maybe it's just this city, which really seems to be so small and such a gathering of villages. But there are shops that do have soul. There are street corners with flair, happenings and culture all around. I'm just not going there.
My dog-sitting precedessor said: Nothing prevents stagnation of character like a big city. Especially artists need this rubbing against other peoples ideas, cultures, lifes. It's out there. I should start meeting it.

One fourth of all books in my racks are unread. And I'll probably never read them. Half of them are read and will never be read by me again, I just liked them enough to keep them. And only another fourth of them are read and reread and will be reread until they fall apart.
I'm not settled yet. There will be at least three more relocations of my home in my future. Why exactly do I hoard books? Yes, I always liked the idea, and yes, someday I will have a room just for reading, my own private library. But I don't think I want to carry around the ones I don't love with all my heart three times more.
If I want to read something new I'm going to the library anyway. Yes, Poe looks good on the rack but I don't even really like him. XD

I need to stop looking at my own bellybutton, and I desperately need to concentrate on not only letting others live like they want to, but also to stop thinking about it. Tolerate everything but intolerance. And if you happen to stumble about intolerance online... just. Fucking. Ignore it. It's not worth it. That should make it a mite easier to avoid hating.

Oh, btw, when I write in my LJ about the condition of my mind and soul, I do it to express myself, I do it, well... to write. About me and for myself. So before you feel pointed at or sad about my harsh feelings, know that I write with undertones. For example I say: "I'm in love with ideas and ideals." And I for myself know that this could be said about fascists, religious fundamentalists and hard-liners of all kinds, whom I despise. So for me there's a hushed kind of absolute horror in this sentence. I don't mean to adulate myself and I don't mean to hurt anybody. Hmm. maybe I should put this in my info.

You are given a life and a world and a body to explore it with and you can do everything you want to with this. Everything. I will not let that make me afraid, I will not let that cow me into inactivity. Inventing yourself is a form of art, maybe it's art itself, it's purest form. So of course it's scary and laborious. You are always tempted to cheat. Take the easy way out, just copy someone elses idea or settle for that which isn't what you could reach but that which can be reached with minimum effort.

There's an old thought about how real life and the internet are adversarys. Old insofar as it was said about television too. When phones came into every household, scared idiots warned that people would stop to meet to talk normally, or stop to talk to each other without phone altogether. I'm sometimes desoriented enough to confuse this untruth with one of the facts of my life: There is an antagonism between active life and passive life. TV and the net can be a big part of passive life if I let them. But to lead an active life is about a state of mind, not about which media you use for information. (Btw, I still think the shutdownday is a nice experiment, not life changing or anything, but maybe a good occasion for some things. Never thought it to be more.)

So, this is my new checklist so far:
active, tolerant, less assets, more reading, more writing (and less harsh if it's LJ), more courage and laid-back-ness (I know that's not an actual word. XD).
I saw a documentation about Central Park right now. There was the first glimpse of a new ideal me, somewhere between the painters, the freaks and the jazz.

I need a new LJ-Layout. I'll experiment for a while I think. Tokyo Skyline? William Morris wallpaper? Cologne city fox? Nomnomnot quite right yet...