The last couple days has been pretty rough. I can’t go into details right now, but I will say that in spite of what has been going on I was able to sit down today and finish an assignment ahead of the deadline. Much of the rest of the day has been a confusing mix of processing as well as taking the edge off with seratonin and dopamine hits you get from social media, talking with friends, and petting the dog.
Today has been a day of chasing those feel good hormones, because there are a hundred thousand reasons to feel like the world is burning down around you. Part of chasing that was to bust out the BBQ grill I picked up for free at a garage sale. I haven’t grilled much in the last several years. Usually if I was visiting someone’s cabin or hanging out at their house and we decided to have a grillout, I would get grillmaster duties. I’m a good cook, though a little rusty, and fire is my speciality.
Tonight I made chicken satay with grilled green beans. All of it cooked over actual charcoal briquettes. I didn’t have it in me to do dishes. Tomorrow I’m getting my windshield replaced so I’ll have some time at home waiting for that to be done, so I’ll probably make some phone calls and do dishes while that is going on. Gas prices have made going almost anywhere prohibitively expensive. Lucky for me I have a 360 degree view of some gorgeous mountains. Soon the good trailheads should clear up and I should be able to get some use out of the camping equipment I got for a song at the garage sale.
Something I’ve noticed lately is everyone has problems. And to each of us, for the most part, problems are an egalitarian concept. Some may consider the things I have been going through lately to be godawful, and for some reason they always apologize for venting about what is going on in their lives. Just because I probably wouldn’t consider theirs Defcon One, doesn’t mean they aren’t going through some stuff. After all, my problems aren’t Cancer. Things can always be worse. I’m grateful they aren’t, yet. “We’ll see.”
Right now I’m trying to envision a life moving forward. I wonder sometimes if this is like what happened when the cannon fire stopped on the Western Front in WWI. When the noise of war drifted off like the sound of fading thunder, I guess the men didn’t whoop and holler. They wondered what was next. How do you go home again after that? Who else can possibly understand what you’ve been through? So, today, I’ve been microdosing on social media to keep the distraction going because it’s hard to think about what happens next.
Sometimes when the path ahead of you is open to all possibilities, it doesn’t feel like liberation, it feels like you have outlived your usefulness. Did I come up here to start over or be forgotten?
Last night I wrote a scene that was good for the book. It tied some concepts together that I felt were neglected a little in the first draft. The next couple scenes I want to write are still germinating. They aren’t going to be easy, conceptually or emotionally. I have a feeling I need to start them in the afternoon so my mind isn’t running and keeping me from sleeping.
Onward.
Wendigo Mountain 