Tag Archives: reflection

Mental Illness, Personal, Work, Writing

Frustration

Just when I think that I can breathe a sigh of relief, safe in my choices at work and home, I find myself buried beneath a mountain of frustration. I won’t go into work things, because they are working themselves out (probably). That leaves me, of course, with the ever-abundant source of grim revelations: those found within my home. For days, I have watched my living room transform into something of which I don’t necessarily approve, the result of my granddaughter’s full-on assault on everything which she perceives may be destroyed (most of these items are, of course, mine). I awoke from a nap a week ago to find her in my room, with the remnants of a pack of my cigarettes splayed out before her on the floor. Books are being torn to shreds (this is particularly irksome, as her father has said that it’s okay if she tears up his books, which is all fine and good, were she able to differentiate between his books and mine). Discs are being forcibly relocated (mainly to the floor, or beneath furniture, such as my office chair). But today I found that my sweet little Goldilocks had outdone herself. My trusty Chromebook (which I’d purchased as a secondary machine so as to spare my main computing device the ignominy of its senility) is now a multi-colored paperweight whose cracked screen would cost more to repair than a new machine would.

So now, in the midst of the Holiday Season, I am in need of a new computing machine. I mean, to be honest, the one I’ve got left is still more or less okay (or, at least until the Fates realize that I have tempted them), but it’s a bit unwieldy, and something that I will need in the coming months, if I am going to find a way to balance work and writing, is a machine with portability. Also, I’d like to have something that wouldn’t crap out on WiFi just when I was really getting into my groove. So what do I do?

I’ve already seen that I can’t fit in a pocket of time before work, or once I get home, as I am simply too exhausted to function after a full day and nearly half again as much on my commute. I want to write. I want to do these again. Every day. I need to get back into doing what I love because I can’t keep working in the industry forever. I want to write for a living. And I can’t do that if I can’t make the time to write. I know that since May of last year. I’ve already begun to oxidize. Three decades, now, since I made up my mind what I was going to do. I mean, I know that I am a Master of Procrastination, but it seems to have gotten out of hand.

Upon further reflection, it seems that I can make do with the damage to my Chromebook’s screen, but it still doesn’t address my need for something upon which I can write in an unconnected world. What I really need is a portable word processor. Something that I can use to bang out my words whilst I am on my commute, and then upload once I’m back at home, and connected to my WiFi. Honestly, I suppose that I could just use a notebook (of the original variety) and pencil, but I’d prefer to only write them once, and typing is far more effective.

It’s kind of funny, in a way. I used to have stacks and stacks of notebooks which I’d write in all the time. As a matter of fact, I still have them somewhere. I never used to need a computer to focus my inner wordsmith. Well, almost never. It’s come in handy as a method of safekeeping (definitely a priority since the Great Purge of 2000), and as a way to preserve the forests of the world.

There is a distinct possibility that I am going through a depressive phase right now. It usually begins somewhere in November and finishes up sometime around… October. In all seriousness, though, I think a bigger one has reared its head this time. It’s been a tough year for me. My grandfather died, my dream (non-writing) job didn’t pan out (something I may eventually discuss when I feel able), and I spent another year not doing what I felt that I was meant to do. Hell, about the only decent thing to come about this year was the new Metallica album, which, Holy Shit!, right? Intellectually, I know that I am in a good place (or a better place, anyway), but it doesn’t feel that way.

I just want to hide under the covers and never come out. The fact that finances do not allow for this seems to be exacerbating my anxiety on the matter. Which in turn is driving me deeper into depression.

I’ve got health insurance now, so pretty soon, I should be able to see a Medical Professional. Despite the fact that I know that what I got is a lifetime commitment (ha!), there is still a small part of me which hopes that maybe one day all of this will come to an end, that one day I will wake up and not feel this way anymore, and that, this time, that feeling will stick. I wish that I could believe that sort of thing could happen, but I know better.

I also know that whatever imbalance exists within my brain has also given me ability to do what I most love: substances of a questionable nature. But it also allows me to string words together in an interesting fashion, and the desire to do so. It allows me to see the world differently, so that I might interpret it in such a manner that has not been done before.

Once again, I seem to have gone round and round in circles and wound up somewhere I never truly intended (especially impressive considering that circles generally bring you back to where you where, and not to… I don’t know… taupe.

Personal

Three Dozen

In less than twenty hours, I will reach another milestone: three dozen years upon this world. That’s about a dozen more than I intended, but I’ve at least managed to have some times worth living in this enforced surplus I’ve been given. After this, there’s really not another one to celebrate until I hit the big 4-0 (unless you count the Clerks milestone next year, which, sadly, I kind of do). But that’s okay, because this year is special enough to last awhile. You see, I am now She was when I was only seventeen. I traveled into the future (albeit the long way ’round), and found myself… diminished. There may have been a million reasons to hold on to a little bit of anger, but at least I could now tell myself to lay off on some of the little jokes, like mocking her for smoking Ultra Lights, or… Okay, I guess that’s basically it. Nineteen years (well, and six more months away), since I began the Adventures of Tex Batmart. Of all the possible outcomes I could foresee, this was never one of them, at least not exactly. Here I am, a husband, father, stepfather, and grandpa, some dude who works a Regular Joe job, having mostly abandoned his calling in order to pay the bills. I’ve redeemed some part of that last self-recrimination, but it’s still a work in progress, to be sure.

As of 1:44 p.m. tomorrow, I will have been around for 1,136,073,600 seconds (margin of error +/- 59 seconds), and I swear I’ve felt the weight of nearly all of them. Although, and maybe this is just the romantic stirring somewhere deep within me, there were a few that lasted for quite a bit longer than the clock recorded (yet weighing almost nothing in my gravitic reckoning), as I tapped into the wellspring of true happiness and rode the tidal waves of love. Sometimes I feel that I’m just too old to feel that kind of teenage ardor, the hopeless throes of passion that only the young can truly feel (or at least bother themselves to act upon). With every year that passes, I keep hearing that some future demographic is now the “new” (different, younger) demographic. Why are the goalposts continually being moved? Why is it that 36 has to force me back into my twenties? Why can’t the 30’s be the new 40’s? I feel like I’m stumbling up an escalator which is rolling slightly faster downward. By the time that I am dead, I will have only been the “New 21”. Forget that! I want to be all old and crotchety, if I am to live that long. I want to be decrepit and scream for teenaged hooligans to vacate my lawn. I don’t mind the trade-off of truly free and uncensored speech, if the only thing it means is that people disregard me. They’ve been doing so for nearly four decades, so I’d rather just go off on random people, if it’s all the same to you.

So what have I accomplished in these past three dozen years? I suppose that it depends upon what you feel merits the title of an accomplishment. I learned to sit up without being held, and to walk unaided. I mastered the use of indoor plumbing before I ever went to school. I made my career choice before arriving at double digits, and the first time that I ever fell in love, I was the same age as my son is now (my first kiss as well. I am grateful that my son has exponentially less game than I did, which is kind of depressing, from an evolutionary standpoint). I learned how to write by devouring the masters, and very nearly managed to almost learn guitar. I fell in love so many tens of times, that I should probably be nominated for some kind of unrequited award. I owned my own business when I was seventeen, and also… you know, became an adult, in the biblical sense (and I’m not referencing a Bar Mitzvah). I started at the bottom of the lowest rung of the restaurant industry to work my way up toward the top by the time my twenties were half over. I finally got married, and became a dad for real (having practiced on another youngster ten years before that), though not in that strict order. I’ve never gotten fired, having always chosen instead to quit (though once I learned about the ins and outs of unemployment, I began to reconsider the pride that I had taken in it).

But all of those are just things, you know? What have I done to change the world (for either good or evil)? I’ve never saved a whale, nor clubbed a baby seal. I have planted trees, but I also eat a lot of burgers. I have done my part to save the Amazon by selling my soul to the Seattle-based usurper, but it’s a hometown business, so I guess I’m still shopping locally? It used to be enough for me that I would be remembered, and now that I’ve passed along my D.N.A., my legend is almost guaranteed (though I should probably make sure that I can get a grandchild out of the Minkey at some point before patting myself upon the back). But now I seem to be hung up on having managed to accomplish something of worth. It’s like I feel that I must justify my existence, though I never really wanted it to start with. I want to write something of such beauty that it will resist the vagaries of time and pass down through the centuries without ever having been misquoted, I want to do something that will save someone else’s life. I want to reach out into the mists of the unknown with the pain which I have felt, and take someone suffering all alone, and pull them to their feet. I want to find out, once and for all, who it is I really am.

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