His head was a faucet leaking love, laughter and lies: all his secret wishes, all his world famous sighs*

For those paying attention, I'm sure its obvious the RocknRollScientist has had some issues as of late. I'm noticing that many of my issues are common for someone approaching the age of 30 in the early 21st century. Or maybe it's just my friends all have the same issues because we're all around the same age, and we're of the same or similar mindset. Hell, that's why we're friends in the first place. We're getting close to the time where we need to make big changes: trim away the fat literally and metaphorically. First up are fair-weather friends. There's no use for these people. See my post back in January on what friends really are to see how I feel about that. In fact, this may be the most important change of all for the Generation X-in-conflict. The fair-weather friends are the people who reinforce our negative opinions of society, so just get rid of 'em. Next, it's time to get healthy. Beer is not your friend. Neither is McDonald's. Start a routine, go for a walk everyday, get in a little bit of exercise everyday, even if it's for 10 minutes. Stop eating fast food, I've lost 10 pounds since I quit eating fast food everyday. The next step is to reinforce the positive friendships. These are the people you must keep in your life. It may be work sometimes, but they're doing the same thing, so quit whining. Now, you have to keep yourself aware. Know what's gong on in your world. For chrissakes, don't even bother watching the local news, because it's really just "Entertainment Tonight," with a couple of blurbs about local crime thrown in to keep up the veneer of being a serious news show. Go and buy an actual newspaper. Or, better yet, read the news online (see the first 14 or so links on this page). Online news is updated much more often, and content tends to be more cutting edge than print or TV. Finally, the most important thing we need to do is start thinking of ourselves more. We need to make ourselves happy, because that's what's most important. Sounds selfish or self-centered, but really it's not. For a long time, I was afraid to think of myself too much, and it's hard to stop trying to help everyone. You have to help yourself first, that's all there is to it.

*from "Ambulance vs. Ambulance" from the Blood Brothers album "Burn Piano Island, Burn"

I'm a lonely planet boy