laptop

I've dug out my PII ThinkPad. I love it, it's old, it's scuffed, it's a pure genuine old 'notebook'. I feel I should be sitting in a smokey NYC coffee house, 'ThinkPad'ing my blog, like a real blogger, rather than sitting in my dimly lit living room surrounded by the trappings of family life (sleeping 3 week old daughter, 4-almost-5-year-old son playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater on my PC, dog barking at the back door).

Reality is, smokey coffee houses don't exist anymore (do they?), and TBH I prefer the reality rather than the day dream.

I've been thinking, this 'naelife' thing could become some sort of franchise. I mean, the naelife philosphy is that it can appear that you have nae life (no life), namely your life consists of working and being a family man. The reality is that this sort of life is probably more fulfilling, ultimately, than that enjoyed by our single, childless contemporaries. Naelifers supplement their perceived lack of a life with things like worrying about our eBay rating and whether our CD of 90's hits is going to sell or not, or the FPS we're getting on Half-Life 2.

So my thoughts today travelled, as they're wont to do, along the lines of buying the naelife.org domain name, getting some cheap hosting and setting up a simple site dedicated to naelifers, guys that work, come home to their families, and spend their freetime fannying about on-line or playing games. Or recording the litre-age of Stella that they consume a day (Jason). The site could have a testimonial page where other guys like me could post their stories, and detail how they discovered they'd turned in to a naelifer.

It's all about irony. Ok, unlike people like my friend Matt, I don't go out once or twice a week to the Sports Bar (and then on to wherever it is that he goes to until 3am), and I'm not as lean as I once was, and I'm not as nippy around the 5-a-side pitch as I once was. I mean, Matt's married with 2 kids as well. He - I'm sure - looks at me with a degree of scorn, concern and sympathy. But just because it may be preceived that I have naelife, doesn't mean that it's so. The irony is that I consider my life to be good, that I have a life. I would contrast my life with his and be thankful that I can accept my 30-something-cohabitational-childrearing-examplesetting existance.

Because I'm happy and content with.

Anyway, my eBay rating has gone from 1 to 22 in just 3 weeks! Cuh, naelife? I don't think so...