© Paul Zarzyski. All rights reserved. These words may not be reprinted or reposted without the author's written permission.

9. My most courageous—and, in the same breath, maybe idiotic—endeavor during the opening 9 weeks of 2009 was signing up for Facebook.  In the past two weeks, I’ve come close to pulling the plug hourly.  I know it’s important to keep an open cyberspace mind, but, speaking of space, how many black holes, how many time toilets or life’s–maintenance vortices can we take on without totally pissing off our muses to WHOM, I say, we owe the most focus?  When something new involving the consumption of time enters an already over-saturated life, something present is forced out.  I am NOT relinquishing one minute of what little time I dedicate to reading, to music, to film, to religiously doing my old-guy workout routines and rounds on the heavy-bag.  Correspondence spit the bit years ago.  As did hunting and fishing, the latter activity which I’m hoping to rekindle.  I can’t even mention the guilt I shoulder over how little attention our horses get.  It goes on and on—the ol’ priority list

imploding, discombobulating, on a daily basis because of the intrusions allowed a “say,” a “role.”  My dear, DEAR friend, Red F. Gusano Shuttleworth caught me at a weak moment and prompted the Facebook entry.  I warned him that he’d pay in spades—a bottle of top-shelf whiskey and the loss of an ear of his choosing—if the venture further burdened my festering sensibilities with yet another facet of exasperation.  I’m honing the blade of my hunting knife, aka scalpel, to a feathered edge, while old Red decides which side of his Irish noggin he wants his 10X Beaver Resistol Hat to list.  I’m guessing he’ll be posting a new portrait snapshot soon on his Facebooksite.