The quotidian life

That’s what Harvey Pekar calls the everyday-existence stuff that he writes about in ”American Splendor,” his autobiographical comic-book chronicle. It’s kind of an anti-drama, in a way, just like most of our daily lives.

Well, some lives are more exciting than others, I guess, but I think that if you got a truly honest assessment from people – even celebrities and world leaders and astronauts – you’d find that most of their time, like ours, dribbles past them in long files of little chores and annoyances relieved by stretches of random hanging around. Once you become something, it loses a lot of its mystique. 

“Entrepreneur” still sounds like an exciting gig to me, even though being one has shown me just how much glamorless grunt work goes into it. It sounds energetic, intrepid, brainy – the next best thing to “adventurer.” It feels that way, too … every once in a while. 

So what’s in an entrepreneur’s day? Since I haven’t done any serious drawing in decades, I’ll give you a verbal version of “Entrepreneurial Splendor,” with apologies and homage to Harvey:

Panel 1.  “Uuuuuunnnngh.” (Entrepreneur Woman – or EW – rolls over in a blind, bedbound coma of fatigue from blogging until 1 or 2 in the morning. The clock reads 7 a.m.)

Panel 2. (In her pre-verbal sunrise state, with knuckles and chins scraping the floor, EW staggers to the bathroom, where a hot washcloth eventually unseals her eyes.)

Panels 3, 4,and 5.  ” ‘Morning. … ‘Bye.” (Words begin returning just as family members leave. EW consumes cereal and news on autopilot, squints slightly more enthusiastically at the funnies. Not “Mary Worth.”)

Panel 666. Click.Taptaptaptaptaptap.Click. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.” (Internet connection’s out again. EW brushes her teeth while rebooting continues … and continues.)

Panel 7. Click. taptapta… bzzzzt! ”Hello?” (Mother calls. EW surreptitiously continues answering e-mail while on the phone, typing ve-e-e-ery quietly so Mother doesn’t get bent out of shape because EW’s multitasking during her call.)

Panel 8. “Ow.” (EW has sent 583 e-mails and placed four dozen calls, trying to reach artists, writers, designers, advisors, insurance people, repairmen, school administrations, brokers, doctors, investors, kids and friends and now her lower back has fused with the frame of her ergonomic chair.)

Panel 9. “Ungh. Huuuuh. Ungh. Huuuh.” (EW resumes pre-verbaling at 10, while working out. Plenty of time to get ready for that lunch meeting, plenty of ti….)

Panel 10. “Shoot!” (This is the euphemistic panel, which gets its own workout as EW realizes she doesn’t have enough time to get ready for the lunch meeting and speed-showers dries hair checks voice mail dresses checks e-mail logs off splotches on makeup collects contracts brochures shoes purse hurls self into driver’s seat and bounces down the MLK like a coal car through a mine shaft applying lipstick at red lights which never happen when you need them to and sprints the last 100 feet from parking meter to coffeeshop arriving her usual 15 minutes late.)

Panel 11. “I’m fine, thanks. My business? We bring the power of creativity to every …plus hands-on…creative worksartssciences …writing best growing numbers up…looking for have need marketingadsproposal networkingand revolution journalism. … So … how are you?”  

Panel 12. “G’night, g’night. Love you. “ Taptaptaptaptap. (It’s midnight. EW has made it to a second meeting, chauffeured to afternoon music practice and the skate park, brought groceries to Mother, written a new executive summary, sent 583 follow-up e-mails, printed out 16 contracts, checked the site, made dinner, signed permission slips and, limp and spaghetti-stained, is concluding her next day’s blog post. … ) 

Panel 13. Taptaptaptaptap. Click …… Aaaaugh! (The bad-luck panel! Internet out again! EW tries to stab herself to death with a highlighter.)     

Panel 14. (Post rewritten. Face washed. Lights out. Eyes … open. Night-night, EWwwwwww…)

Fear and Loathing in the Age of Internet Technology

I wish that Hunter S. Thompson had lived long enough to write a book about the dark reality of digital electronics. I can’t help but believe that the author of “Hell’s Angels” and “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and a bat-winged flock of other bizarre, crazed, depravity-saturated fantasy exposes on contemporary life wouldn’t have richly appreciated the psychosis-inducing torments of, say, server crashes or attempting to sign up for online ad service.

For sure, he would have relished the terrors of tech-based entrepreneurship.  Fear – and coping with fear through sheer, substance-induced, firearm-wielding recklessness – figured big in much of Thompson’s oeuvre. There are few software bugs, file-eating viruses and lousy navigation set-ups he wouldn’t have solved with a handful of peyote buttons and a handgun fired into his own hard drive. So imagine what he would have done with site development, Power Point presentations, blog software, offshore tech support, frozen screens, lost Internet connections and code.

 I like to.  That would be an e-blast, indeed.  

I’m not endorsing his illegal excesses, of course. Just sympathizing with what drove them.

Now, I’ve always explained to my kids that courage doesn’t mean being unafraid – it means doing what must be done even though you are afraid. And being an entrepreneur means being afraid all the time , except when you’re on a momentary manic high because somebody finally returned your phone call or in a deep, leaden, lasting La Brea Tar Pit of a low because you’re alone, broke and trapped in a Doomsday business machine of your own creation.

Ah, creativity. Hunter Thompson was creative. He created his own feral brand of journalism. He also created brilliant trouble and there was no mess so enormous that he couldn’t fuel himself up and drive over it in a hallucinatory frenzy of bravado.

That’s how it feels when you’re the head of every department in your business start-up and you have no experience with half of them and you can’t get it all done properly even putting in 20-hour days and 7-day weeks and you have to walk up to complete strangers and convince them in 10 seconds that your idea is more exciting than sex itself and you’re pretty damn sure they won’t believe you but you have to accelerate off the edge of that psychological abyss over and over in your trashed little 4-cylinder ego made of hope and absurd enthusiasm and all you can do is wave your hat and scream yee-ha! all the way down like Slim Pickens in “Dr. Strangelove.”

And Hunter Thompson didn’t write “Dr. Strangelove,” but I bet he wished he had.

He died Feb. 20, 2005. Three years and one week ago, Thompson’s ashy remains were scattered all over his Woody Creek, Colo. homestead by a cannon, to the accompaniment of sparkly fireworks and a whole lot of drinking.  He was an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, making strangely stylish opportunity out of disaster his whole life long. And he did it all, I feel safe saying, without once having to decipher site traffic reports. Lucky man.