There are sometimes when you sit on your porch in Southern California listening to the sounds of old motorcycles backfiring. There are sometimes when you are sitting on that porch, which is covered in a thin layer of black soot, drinking a Korean beer and wondering what your friends in Chicago are doing. There are sometimes that you wish the four porches across from you were filled with your Chicago friends, your Colorado friends, your Texas friends, and your Kentucky friends, just like you talked about at the lake or while playing Canasta. There are sometimes when one of those friends is sitting in Kentucky with one leg three inches longer than the other and five months of chemo on his calendar. There are sometimes when you wonder what another buddy is up to in BFE, KY that is prohibiting him from returning your phone calls. There are sometimes when you look at your roommate’s bike sitting on the dust-covered porch that you want to join one of those seemingly endless groups of bikers that roam through the streets wreaking havoc on traffic for hours. There are sometimes when you are sipping that Korean beer and writing, that you think, “this is what relaxation looks like,” except you are not relaxed. There are sometimes that you almost cannot distinguish the difference between this porch and the one you sat on many years ago and learned how to write in an old green chair from the seventies. But that porch was different because occasionally your roommate-turned-Colorado-friend would come out to smoke and share profound silences and the other roommate would come home and tell you his day, “wasn’t too bad” and you both would wonder what exactly that meant. There are sometimes while sitting on the new porch, appearing to the Asian woman watering her flowers on the next balcony like you are relaxing, that something feels like it needs to be violently removed from your stomach and your not sure if it is the Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles you just ate or loneliness.

I hate it when a leggy and cute Jewish girl wearing short red shorts that you probably wouldn’t date, but who knows, sits down nine feet away from you at the coffee shop and starts talking about “mirror neurons,” something you read about a week ago in a marketing book, with her friend and you are too far away to blurt out your knowledge of mirror neurons without drawing the attention of everyone in the establishment and you’re too much of a sissy to get up and sit down next to her and regale her with your knowledge of the human brain.

It’s frustrating when sexy six-foot-three security guard women with middle-of-the-back pig-tails from Germany wink at you and then disappear from your life before you gain the balls to flirt with them and when the girl you’ve been secretly pining over all day because there is no one else to pine over leaves with some other dude and doesn’t have the courtesy to say goodbye.

I want someone to eat at these cute little road-side restaurants with on a Saturday that I don’t have to ask if they’ll go, it will just be given that she’ll will and we won’t have to worry about the conversation being dull because it won’t be or whether or not I am picking her up or meeting her there because we will already be together when we wake up.

I often believe that something is wrong with my mind, but now is one of those moments when I am almost certain. It’s Friday night at 8:38pm and I’m sitting at the kitchen table in my empty apartment. I’m wearing a freshly pressed white v-neck t-shirt and my go-to plaid cardigan. My hair is the perfect mix of comb-over and shag. I’ve just spent the last two hours brutally debating whether or not I wanted to go out or not.

Two and a half hours ago I was contentedly reading a marketing book on my porch and enjoying learning. The thought of going out and getting wasted seemed like a hassle and contrary to my goals of regaining decent financial status and improving myself.

Two hours ago, I decide I am bored and tired of working/reading/learning and want to appease the highly social chunk of my being. I jump up from my chair, start cooking a quick dinner and get into my women whooing outfit. The thought of wasting another night inside and not getting out and meeting the people of this city and partaking in new, unexpected adventures makes me want to vomit.

But then I slow down for a second and picture tomorrow morning. I’d wake up on the floor of my buddy’s house with a crick in my neck, just when I had almost fully recovered from a recent spine injury. I’d get in my car and head to the coffee shop, but realize I was still a little drunk, or at best very tired. Little would get accomplished at the shop. Not much written. Few relationships fostered. Then I would recall how much money I spent the night before and I’d feel bad about my lack of self-control. It probably would not be TOO much, but it’s impossible to go out and spend less than $50. On the other hand, that 50 dollars and back-ache might have lead to a great story, or a new lady friend. Whether its accurate or not, I pride myself on being a “carpe diem” kind of guy and sitting around not taking advantage of potential mischief makes me feel like I am wasting life. But its that carpe diem attitude that has gotten me in debt and fretting about money.

The other alternative is to stay in and stay reasonably sober, do some reading, some writing and feel pretty damn good about it. Despite the good feelings, there would be an ache for social interaction, an annoying twinge of boredom. Seven-thirty AM will come and I will rise from bed ready to take on the world. It will be one of the best feelings, I’ve ever experienced. I’ll workout and be at the coffee shop by nine-thirty ready to smile at unsuspecting passers-by and conquer the literary world.

But by noon, I’ll have run out of smiles and words and I will be longing to sit in the back of a breezy automobile with friends, listening to rap music I don’t even like and heading to the beach to sub-bathe, an activity I don’t particularly care for. After that, I will go spend thirty bucks at lunch and twenty on a movie. Sure, I will have some laughs with friends and say, “life is good” several times, but I’ll have spent the 50 bones I did not want to spend on Friday night.

I flip flop twenty times in an hour and finally decide to chach out. I text my compadres and make them aware of my decision, knowing that I am rapidly approaching the limit of declines before they stop calling. I worry for a little bit about my decision then sit down at the kitchen table to write. I consume a couple of beverages and chat with a couple friends on Facebook. The fact that I am not the only person online on a Friday night gives me some comfort.

A couple of hours pass, a blog entry is created, and I don’t know about you, but I am stoked that I stayed in tonight and got some writing done. I can’t think of a better way to have spent this evening. Well…

Yesterday, hiding in my car CD case, I found a six year old gem of a song. It is a song that makes me dance, sing, and make idiotic hand gestures with no regard to the people at the stop-light next to me. If you’ve read more than one or two of my blog entries you’re probably thinking, “it seems like all songs have that effect on him.” Many do, but this one in particular has also given me a new confidence in my own art, writing.

I may never make any money by typing out thoughts and stories or achieve a readership of over six people, but this song has reminded me of the true motivations behind creating art, to move someone, to entertain someone, or to make someone think.

It has also reminded me that some of the world’s best works of art can be created by political science students, marketers, or real estate agents. The song in question was written and recorded by a high school buddy of mine who has surely spent more money creating music than he has been paid.

But if my friend never falls in love, never succeeds in any job or endeavor, and never does anything else but lay in a drunken stupor and rot, his life will have been worth it. He will have created something that affected someone, affected me. He has recorded a song that I can relate to, a three-minute combination of sounds that is worth putting on repeat for days, a device for wiping brains clean from worry and that frees appendages to roam in obnoxious ways.

So while I may not write a best-selling memoir or be recommended by Oprah’s Book Club, I retain hope that I may occasionally write something that causes someone to act out with no regard their surroundings.

You’ve probably seen the Dos Equis billboard with a quote from the world’s most interesting man that states, “the bulk of one’s life should be off the record.” Every time I see this I question myself. Up until the last few years, I’ve always kept my secrets and the inner rumblings of my mind to myself. The concept of posting a Facebook status updating my “friends” on my whereabouts, actions, or opinions made me want to vomit. I’d spend three hours debating whether I wanted to say “Go Cards!” on my wall.

Then something happened and I wrote a 50-page document on my inner most thoughts and feelings and proceeded to print and mail it to thirty-five people. Over time I’ve gradually adopted Dave Egger’s philosophy (posted on the right of the blog). His point is that even if I give you intimate details, that I have given you nothing. You do not own my soul or truly know me. By the time I have written something and someone else has read it, I’ve already changed, “shed my skin like a snake” and have moved on to another mental/physical state. For the most part, I believe this, but when I see the XX billboard I begin to doubt.

When I pass the world’s most interesting man I wonder, “should I be more like him? Should I be mysterious and leave the happenings in my head up to conjecture?” I worry that I am sharing too much information about my life. There is no more mystery about Salamander Davis. Everyone knows who I am. My weaknesses, my faults, my tendencies are all open for the world to see. The more I write, the more transparent I become, the more predictable are my actions.

Though I’d like to think that when I write, I learn, and in turn gradually change, improve. But to Mr. Equis’s point, I could do the same learning in the privacy of my personal journal and still keep the majority of my life off the record.

Driving home this afternoon after 12 grueling days of work in a row, there lurked an ache in my stomach that I had not felt in a while (at least three weeks). During this fortnight of mental labor, I longed to sit in this chair at the coffee shop and relax. Sip on my lemonade green tea, release a month’s worth of caged thought into the wild, and smile at the occasional female.

But as I drove to this oasis, I was not filled with relief.

You may have observed that I am quite an obsessive person. Once I set my mind on a woman, a friendship, a cause, an organization, I clutch it and pull it in close, curling my body up into the fetal position and resign myself to never letting go. In Smegle-like fashion, all of my energy is spent trying to protect and nurture my precious. I carry it everywhere. I stay up all hours of the night thinking about it and every action I take is aimed at enhancing it.

I am not yet willing to say that I love my job or that I want to do it for the rest of my life (or even two years), but my job, my company, my co-workers are slowly becoming my precious. Partly by choice and partly by necessity, my work load over the past month has been obnoxious. It has reminded me of flipping a house or growing a mustache for cancer. It even reminds of the fraternity, for which six years of my life were almost exclusively devoted.

Part of me is very excited. My life revolves around having a precious. When with a precious, there is an added pep in my step. My pants fit better. My shoulders look manlier. Once my life revolves around a precious, I cannot be stopped. I will not be stopped.

So while the weekend is a blessing, for the first time since taking this job, I feel lost not being at work. Time is being wasted. I could be spending these two days stroking my precious and feeding it organic veggies. I could be reading my precious industry related books and increasing our bench press capabilities. I am excited and afraid that this might be the last weekend where I relax and enjoy non-work related activities. These might be the last two days where am I am not insanely devoted to my precious.

The Sal craze has begun at work and I am not sure how I feel about it. I sign my name on every email as Salamander. I introduce myself to co-workers and clients as Salamander. Yet, somehow the Sal epidemic has commenced. I can pinpoint the exact moment.

This new hot-shot VP called me “Sal” in a meeting and next thing I know, people who have been calling me Salamander for 7 months just forgot my full name and started dropping Sal every twenty seconds. Sal can you pull this data. Sal can you re-do this chart because the way I originally asked you to make it was wrong. Thanks for staying late, Sal, you’re the best!

To some degree it is annoying as shit. Salamander is a name that commands respect. Salamander is the name of someone who does first-rate work. Salamander is going to the CEO one day. Sal is the label of a jokester. Sal values his office friendships more than his job. Sal never works late and is always the first one drunk at the office Christmas Holiday party.

While there are obvious benefits to remaining Salamander in the eyes of my colleagues, maybe Sal could also work to my advantage. In the last three weeks at work, I have improved my relationships with my co-workers and standing within the company substantially. Also, in the last three weeks people have started calling me Sal. Are they related? I don’t know. But it has been incredibly fun laughing and taking on challenges with these people.

My hunch is that I would prefer people to call me by my full name, but I also sort of want to just let the cards play out naturally, let the people decide whether I am a Salamander or a Sal.

Our cars give away our secrets. A line-backer sized man with tattoos on every visible appendage walks into the coffee shop. I would not want to encounter him in a dark alley. He leaves and gets into a maroon Kia. Cover blown.

Reading the newspaper is a square-jawed forty year old man with skinny jeans and one of those (insert that big GRE word that means “is everywhere”, I think its ubiquitous) big-square plaid shirts that all the L.A. hipsters wear. I can’t decide whether or not I want to be like him when I grow up. He walks across the street and pulls away in a Crown Vic. Douche bag.

Woman in “keepin’ it green” t-shirt plops down next to me. She pulls her personal coffee mug out of her cloth Trader Joe’s grocery bag and sneers at my paper cup. After an hour of being more eco-friendly than the rest of us, she walks down the block, and when she thinks no one is looking, hops into a Range Rover. Oh really.

I sit here with my newly acquired Mac, wearing sweatpants, gold New Balances, a blue Sizzler shirt, and a green and white striped cardigan. Don’t let me forget to tell you about my knee-high argyle socks and mustache. It is not as impressive as the hipsters’ I’ve seen with surpluses of testosterone, but it’s nothing to scoff at. I’ve got a ‘murse’ chilling at my feet that holds all the essentials: SLR camera, pink and green sunglasses, Moleskin journal, What is the What by Dave Eggers. When I leave I will walk past the two blocks of empty parking spots and around the corner before I get in my Hyundai.