It occurs to me today that, to vastly oversimplify an idea, there are three options:

1) Die before accomplishing everything that you hope to do.
2) Accomplish everything you hope before dying.
3) At the precise moment of accomplishing the very last thing on your list (give or take a few hours to enjoy the silence), you die.

Ideally, for me, it would be number three. The absolute worst thing, said the lightbulb over my head, would be number two.

This is what happens when I leave my iPod at home and am stuck listening to the last Dark Suns disc for the millionth time.

I spend my days in a blur, by and large: besides the nine or so hours that I spend at the office, working for Tha Man, there’s filmmaking, music, writing, reading, and the daily crossword. Lots of plotting and planning ahead, trying to set new plates aspin while I keep the old ones balanced. And that can get overwhelming, but I’ve learned over the years that that on-the-edge, pre-panic feeling is what keeps me going. It’s what drives me to work a little harder, a little faster, a little smarter than the people that I’m surrounded by every day.

I want to succeed, and I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my hand and a chain of hotels in my name in someone’s will. Success — whatever that may be — takes a little more. You can bitch and moan about how unfair it is that Paris Hilton doesn’t deserve it like you do, or you can press forward and do everything in your power to get there. Me, I choose the latter (with a blog so I can still participate in the former).

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I was at my favorite bar / second home the other night, helping out with a few drinks and stocking. One of my fellow regulars asked how I managed to get behind the bar, with the implication that he wanted to do the same. And I told him what I tell everyone: Bartending is great fun, as long as it’s an option. Yeah, you’ll likely find me back there once a week or so, and quite happy to be there; put me back there on a regular schedule, four nights a week, and I’ll not be so cheerful about it.

The whole thing started over Thanksgiving, when the guys were shorthanded, and needed an extra hand. I’ve got the experience, so I helped out. Since then, there’s been more and more of it, and I’m happy to help — both because it’s helping out friends of mine (and the staff here is not a bunch of bartenders, but genuine friends of mine), and because it’s a nice walk down memory lane. I loved aspects of bartending while I was doing it for a living: the extreme pace of a busy Friday night, the people, making new drinks on the spot with whatever’s in reach, and, yeah, even the occasional bounce. But that life takes its toll, just like all others — and besides, the challenge was gone after a while, and it became boring (like all the jobs I’ll ever work).

It’s nice, though, every now and then, to dip my feet back in certain pools. And I’m realizing that what most people do with exes (if they still get along, or run into them at reunions and such), I do with interests and hobbies.

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And so, yeah, I work a lot. But I play a lot, too — every night, as much as I can stand it physically and financially. Part of this, I;m sure, has to do with the fact that I am a night owl. Always have been, in spite of having to be at work like every other 9-to-5er. So that’s when I get lax, and watch way too many movies, way too much TV (f’rex, I’ve watched all of season 1, half of season 4, and 1/4 of season 5 of 24 in the past week. Plus Family Guy, Lost, Numbers, Scrubs, Bones, CSI, and a few random IFC short collections) (my god I’m geek/outting myself again), read, surf, and… oh, yeah, drink.

And occasionally, like I said, it gets overwhelming. I don’t think it’s necessarily that I have too much to do — I’ve yet to miss deadlines or have to drop projects, even after 34 years — as much as it is the number of balls I’ve got in the air simultaneously. It’s a lot to think about (and probably the one reason I’m such a list-maker).

But it’s nice to know that I’ll never get bored. Even on days when there’s nothing on the TV, and nothing to talk about and no one to talk to, on days when there’s not even an Evil Elmo story in the news, I’ll have my plate full. At least for the foreseeable future, in a world with only 24 hours in the day.