Saturday...

Hurricane Sky

Living on the perimeter of a hurricane has some benefits. We had a beautiful sunset last night. Today the wind is blowing a nice breeze and the humidity has gone somewhere else for the moment. I am going to head into work in a little bit, and I think I might get there by bike. My knee has improved in the last few weeks and I have been able to take Emma on walks and I think I might be able to manage the fixed gear. I am a little nervous about clipping in, but I think I can manage without too much pain. Let's hope at least.

Work has kicked my ass this week. I am the project manager for a grant research project, and the project involves a selection of folks from the community. I have about 37 people who are my research, uh, subjects. Sort of. But some of them live out of town, so that means plenty of evening and weekend involvement on my part. It's okay. Maybe my the end of this project (next year) I will have accrued a significant amount of comp time and I can take a month off or something. And then move to the mountains. hehe.

September is going to be an interesting month, with deadlines for this project and some travel to other towns and cities. Friends and mountains and road trips and good times. I am looking forward to it. I just have to be patient. Very patient. For a lot of things. The coming fall is going to stir up my urge to burrow, my urge to make great change, my urge to not suppress my urge to be stirred up. Whatever that means.

For now, I am going to suit up for my trek on the bike downtown. Wish me luck.

this atmosphere is made of sound

i missed the earthquake today. i was completely unaware, even while having a conversation about the rumbling of the earth. i was told the earth moved, that the ground was shaking beneath me. but i didn't notice a thing.


everything around seems so surreal sometimes. the ties that bind are getting thin. i am playing the game here. day in and day out. i let this place make me.

cooler nights and a summer breeze, my dog acts out her dreams. i keep time by the rise and fall of her ribs.

the whole season is nothing but a reflective surface...

somebody from my past said something to me recently that i keep rolling over in my brain. we were catching up after a few years of requisite silence after, well, the main thing that sometimes necessitates a few years of requisite silence. i was asking him how things were, what he was up to. he said he was doing more of that and less of this. when i asked him if it was by choice or by circumstance, he said that they are the same thing, that we choose our circumstances. for whatever reason, i found the statement to be fairly profound and i have been thinking about it quite a lot.

so this is what i have been thinking. if he is correct, if our particular circumstances are all a consequence of choice, choices that we make all the time, never knowing the ultimate results but always hoping for the best...then i really am my own worst enemy. i don't mean to be dramatic, but i am not shy in admitting that i am not content with where i am in life. but my comfortable silence and solitude are a result of choices i have made, even if somewhere deep down in my heart of hearts i know that is not ultimately what i want for myself.

but what do i do? if my default is designed to maintain this status quo, and i want to make my life better, do i make choices that are not in line with what i have done in the past? do i take uncomfortable risks? do i commit to overt acts that are unnatural to me? do i trust in my instinctual fight or flight, do i continue to hide under these rocks? do i walk away? do i maintain this path? and if i do, what am i walking towards?

i tend to lose the battle between the theory and the reality. historically. i used to be prone to taking risks, not always the best kind, but the results have never been catastrophic either. the biggest thing that has changed in my life since then is this double barrel of debt and a law license. having those pointing at me with every major (and minor) decision makes it very difficult to actually make a decision.

since my circumstance is a result of my choice, and since i want to change my circumstances, i guess i have to start making different choices. that seems pretty scary....

One less thing.

An amazing thing happened today. I woke up this morning and got out of bed. I was walking down the stairs and I realized that my knee was barely hurting at all. It was amazing! After limping and being in pain with the slightest move, finally it seems to be improving. This makes me very happy. So happy that I decided to celebrate by taking Emma on a walk after work. I made it nearly 1/2 mile before the limp set in. I will take it. My mood has been nothing but rainbows and puppy dogs all day, and I think the foul mood that had settled over me is going to dissolve. For a little while at least. whew. Such a relief.

All thanks to my (no longer) bum knee.

File your complaints here.....

I am pretty sure this blog entry is going to be nothing but bitching. If you are into that kind of thing, welcome. If you are just curious as to what kind of thing gets under my skin, please stay. If you are looking for something to use against me in the future, grab a seat.

I should start with this thing we all have to deal with: money. As we all know, Congress fucked around with the debt ceiling for far too long, achieved very little, and showed themselves to be about as ineffective as possible. Unemployment is still hovering just over 9%. The S&P downgraded its credit rating for US debt. While I was never a big fan of the government, I always trusted that things would work out, somehow, even if they worked out a different way than I would have liked. I want to believe that people are rational and can engage in reasoned discourse to find a solution. But no. There is no more reasoned discourse or rational acts. Actual and direct damage is being done. I don't think there is a single person who hasn't been affected. I know that all the time I spent busting my ass to save my pennies to invest and save and have something to retire with....well, it was all a waste of time. Thousands of dollars just disappear over night. The markets are false. It's like a game, only suddenly we realize we have been talking about real money and not the Monopoly version. It's all so abstract until you realize how much actual suffering is going on in the world because of Tea Party ideology or conservative Republican rhetoric or liberal everyone gets a blue ribbon or the outdated and false democratic majority rule bullshit. It's all a bunch of crap. There is no direct say in how we are governed. But that is nothing new. It's all a matter of hoping that no one fucks anything up too badly.

There is plenty more I could say about that, but I guess it's time to take this to a more personal level. I've been pretty reclusive over the last few years. I will go to work and see people and chat and joke and do all the things people do at work, and I will run errands and chat with people in the store. But then I will make it to my house, like I finally crossed the finish line, and all that social ability, all the chattiness and smiley a/t will slowly dissolve and I would find myself avoiding eye contact with my next door neighbor. I will intentionally leave my phone, on vibrate, somewhere where I won't see it for hours. I will sit on my back porch and slowly feel some degree of relief, even though I didn't realize I needed it. Many times when I am sitting there I wonder what is wrong with me, what made me this way...I feel like something must be wrong with me because I seem so unwilling to participate in the world at large, and everyone else seems to want to do exactly that. At the same time, I really do love people. I love having genuine connections with people, and I never get around to telling anyone how much it means to me. I do best one on one. Groups of people seem almost inhuman to me. But I can pretend. I can play along and do all the things that people expect. I can laugh on key. But....all I will be thinking about is my quiet back porch, crickets, and my dog.

This is probably entirely too personal for a blog, but it doesn't really matter.