Bruce’s Online Journal

“I write because I don’t know what I think, until I read what I say.” — Flannery O'Connor

Week of May 14, 2001

May 20

I just don’t know where to start. I overextended myself for several weeks and it kept me from what I like best and need most – writing here. It’s the same old pattern of doing for others before I do for myself. This time though, I recognized it early, over a month ago, and took steps to keep myself from sliding back to the abyss and balancing all the commitments I’d made to others until I could clear the desks.

Since I’m new to that sort of balancing act, naturally I didn’t get it right all the time. I got so far behind in journal reading that in catching, everyone’s blended together in my head. So I’m not sure who made this reference, and therefore can’t attribute or link to it, but it fit me perfectly.

I felt like one of the plate spinner guys on the old Ed Sullivan Show. I was dashing about trying to keep them all from crashing to the floor while at the same time taking on more and more dishes. This time, although several came close, none crashed and broke.

I’m learning.

So when I sit down to write, I wind up being overwhelmed by all the stuff I want to write about. I start writing about this, then veer off and write about that, then I run out of steam and finally close Word. There’s a wealth of stuff in my March, April and May files that I just never finished. This entry began life on Thursday. I added to it on Friday and Saturday. Here it is on Sunday and I’m inserting all this at the top.

Wherever this one ends, that’ll be it. I’ll post, take another nap, then shower and go to dinner at a friend’s.


I indulged myself on Thursday and it felt good. I’m not sure when I made the decision. It seemed to have been made before the alarm clock summoned me to consciousness. Sort of. Consciousness, not summoned.

I went through the motions knowing full well that that’s all I was doing. Ninety minutes later I rolled out of bed. Then I went about my morning as if it was perfectly normal for me to stay home on a Thursday. I fiddlefarted around for another hour before I could call in. As soon as the switchboard opened, I phoned my counselor at Park-Ridge.

“Yeah, I wanted to call to tell you I won’t be coming in today,” I told him.

“Why’s that?”

“Well, I could tell you one of the dozens of lies and excuses I came up with, many of them quite plausible if I may say so myself. But the truth of the matter is that I want to stay home to work on my web site.”

“You know that if you don’t come in at least for a urine screen I have to write it up as an unexcused absence, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know. It’s only my third absence in total and the second unexcused one, which was in September. I can deal with the consequences.”

A major geekfest ensued. And a successful one too, I might add.

I put in a standard eight-hour day doing nothing but learning how to recode my site so it’s “according to Hoyle.” Hoyle in this instance is the W3C. Yes, everything works and works marvelously already. There’s no need for me to change anything with my coding habits and techniques, nor to change anything on the site itself.

That doesn’t change the fact that I want to. I’ve been whining and bellyaching for over a decade that technology is moving too fast for me to keep up. That’s a real problem when your career is technology. Especially if you’re older than say, 22. Next month I’ll be twice that.

So this little web thing came along, Project A, and I found it fit within my existing skill set. And I enjoyed doing it. And the clients are thrilled. Which makes me feel really good about myself. For about the first time in roughly 44 years, give or take.

I saw in it the opportunity to actually get ahead of where most people are at with regard to one teeny-tiny niche of web development. And since that teeny-tiny little niche is about the only thing that Microsoft and Netscape agree on, I went for it.


The saying goes that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’m not saying I’m an old dog, (well I am older than Methuselah in AOL years… and in gay years too when I think about it) but I set a conservative goal. I gave myself about triple the amount of time I figured it would take for me to acquire the new skills and become productive with them. I gave myself seven months.

It’s three weeks after making the decision, two weeks after shelling out nearly $90 for two books at Borders. (Almost $15 a pound!) Ninety dollars represents the bulk of my life savings at the moment. Buying those two books was as big a financial decision for me as it was when I bought my first house. Think about that for a minute. It serves to demonstrate my commitment to myself, something I couldn’t even consider eleven months ago (on Saturday.)

Anyway, in just two weeks of self-study and experimentation I’ve made some damned good progress. If I do say so myself.

Friday I was faced with a choice. Do I spend a couple of extra hours to add a section to the work-in-progress on the redesign of the home page, or do I just plop it in to the existing one. I’m delighted I took the harder way out and incorporated it into the minor redecoration I did on the home page.

Aesthetically, there’s not much of a change from the way it’s looked for the past couple of months. Everything sits in an orange-bordered box now. Big whoop. Ah! But scroll down to the bottom of the page. See that logo on the left that says, “W3C XHTML 1.0” with a checkmark? Click it.

Better yet, it looks halfway decent in Netscape 4 too. The horizontal lines and the graphics at the bottom are flush left instead of centered. Given time I’ll figure out how to fix that without breaking the page in other browsers and doing it with validated code.

But what about Thursday?

Thursday I did this. Most of the links don’t work but that’s only because it was a coding and styling exercise and I didn’t want to lose focus. http://www.brucew.com/html/newdesign/contents.htm Using a single page template and using identical page content I replicated the contents page of not only the present version of the site, but of the two preceding versions as well. The only significant difference between them all are the stylesheets. And it all validates.

While the successful results certainly contributed to how I felt at the end of the day, it was having had eight straight hours I could devote to it that gave me the real pleasure.


I’m back to Sunday here.


I haven’t had personal access to a Mac for a couple of years. That really sucks because statistically, among my regular visitors there’s a larger proportion of Mac owners than you’d expect given the sales figures. For what it’s worth, once upon a time I was an Apple certified technician.

Yesterday (Saturday) I attended a workshop at Writers & Books, Legal Issues for Writers. Since I’m now, or at least soon will be, and instructor there, (I’ll get to that in a minute) I didn’t feel like I’d be breaking any rules or boundaries by sitting down to one of the iMacs in the LIT Lab to have a quick look-see.

The home page looks fine (in fact I was so pleased that I left it up when I was done with the Mac) but the pages I did on Thursday look hideous. Well, the one formatted to look like this page is okay, but not perfect. The other two are a different story. The iMacs in the LIT Lab run IE 4.5 and it shows the same problems that I have trying to make those pages work under Netscape 4.x. The column of stuff that’s supposed to be along the right margin puts itself right over the text on the left side. I’m not sure how to code my way out of this, but I at least have access to a testing platform.


On Friday I’d planned to catch up on sleep, chores and writing, in that order. Just as my head hit the pillow for my morning nap, the phone rang. Tim of W&B called to remind me of the workshop on Saturday. Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And, oh by the way, how does Thursday nights in July sound for your workshop?"

Starting on Thursday July 5th, I'm teaching the Project Formerly Known as B, "Introduction of Online Journaling" in the LIT Lab at Writers & Books. If enough people sign up. And the creek don't rise.

So the adrenaline and the stuff I felt I had to do to promote the class (like changing the home page and posting the workshop outline) ate up the entire day. And no, I didn't exactly do the dance of joy. I will, however, confess to a couple of spins in the desk chair. Thank heavens for cordless phones.

I really thought I’d jinxed it after I wrote about it here on the 8th. I hadn’t heard a peep from W&B since them. That’s why it was such a great surprise on Friday. Yesterday at the workshop I attended the Executive Director walked by. I had my back to him so I didn’t notice. On his way back with coffee he stopped to welcome me. That felt really good.

The kicker was when Tim, the Director of Adult Education said that he was impressed with the stuff I’d posted to promote the workshop and said, “I like the way it reads. You did a good job with it.” Coming from someone who’s essentially my new boss and who has published five novels in the past ten years, well, you can imagine how it made me feel.


Yesterday was also the 2001 Rochester Gayla Roundup, cleverly sub-titled, “The Fruits of Sobriety”. It’s a gathering of gay members of AA from Central and Western NY and Toronto and Southern Ontario. Some came from as far away as Boston. It was huge.

I’d missed the morning sessions so I was a little disoriented arriving after lunch. I discovered there were three sessions in the afternoon -- two workshop sessions (each with three workshops to choose between) and the closing speaker. I chose “Am I Going Nuts?” It wasn’t because I’m afraid I’m going nuts, it’s because I’ve accepted that I’m well and truly nuts. And I relate to the moderator and like his style.

The second afternoon workshop I chose was “Grapes of Wrath – Anger, Fear and Resentments”. I still have a lot to do in that area and the woman who was moderating always cracks me up. She really should do stand-up.

On the way in, one of the roundup organizers pulled me aside. “Bruce. Can you help me out?” she asked.

“Sure [D**]. What’s up?”

“[A******] had something come up and she can’t be here. I’m taking over as moderator. Would you join me [S*****] and [K****] on the panel to provide a male perspective?”

Of course my first reaction was to run away and hide. I know now that my first reaction is generally wrong, so I threw out that idea. Then I thought, I’m not qualified to be on the panel at an AA roundup. I don’t even have a year in yet.

Then [D**] said, “I only have 11 months in so I could sure use your help.”

So much for that defense, I thought. I only have 11 months in too. As of today. Well, since I’m an alcoholic, an addict and I have the same anger, fear and resentment issues that everyone else has, I guess I’m no less qualified than anyone else.

“Sure,” I heard myself say. “I’ll help you out.”

“Oh thankyouthankyouthankyou! You’re the best.”

Backpedaling a bit, I added, “I’m not really prepared, so maybe I should go last.”

As it turned out, it wasn’t much different than speaking at a regular meeting. I was a little redder, I broke out in a sweat and I found myself addressing my coffee cup a bit more than usual. But I made it through and got a few laughs and several people related well to what I said. Of course I have no idea what it was, but it was well taken. Or at least tolerated.

The closing speaker was a guy from Toronto. I really liked the way he spun a yarn and how he made all his points yet remained within the context of his story. And even so, I started nodding out.

You know that feeling when you’re running along and then it feels like someone pulled your plug and you shut down. That’s what happened. The fatigue of the past few weeks finally caught up with me.

I blew off dinner, my regular Saturday meeting and the dance at the roundup last night. I was in bed shortly after 7:00. I awoke after midnight to let the dogs in. (Mark’s brother got married yesterday so I’m pet-sitting again this weekend.) The dogs were anxious to get out when my alarm sounded at 6:00. I let them out, uncovered the birds and came back upstairs to sleep another three hours.

This morning I did some e-mail, fed the dogs, the birds and myself before going down for another three hours. I’d been hoping I could make it until after that big meeting for “Project A” on Tuesday. Now I’m glad I didn’t. I’ll be rested and should be feeling pretty good for when I stand in front of over 200 people to give my dog and pony show.

It would not have looked good if I’d fallen asleep at the podium.

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