It’s a Friday night and I am sitting at home, burning a very loud candle. I know it sounds weird, but trust me, this thing is loud. Before I was listening to Queensryche’s Empire album. Such a great album. Now I’m listening to James’s album Laid. Totally underrated band which only got airtime with American Pie commercials. It’s one I listen to on quiet nights like this. It reminds me of driving alone at night when I was young (and could afford to just drive at night–and I could actually see at night). Songs like Dream Thrum, Lullaby, P.S., One of the Three, Five-O…amazing.
Tonight I feel ancient.
It could be that I overdid it installing the last of my flooring today. It was a project that was put on hold because winter came early last year and I needed to have the door open when I worked. Or at the very least to have been able to cut the flooring outside. It kicks up quite a bit of dust. You don’t want to breathe that stuff.
All that nasty old green tile is covered up now for good now. I could have written, but I needed to feel like I finished something today. So much in my life has been left open ended and unfinished. Unrequited. Unanswered. Uncertain. Now that the floor is in, I have something I can cross off the list. And why not? The boxes of flooring have been sitting under my table for around nine months. I took a nap for an hour and hobbled around the house, scrounged up some dinner. I made a chicken caesar salad. I need to eat better.
Every day is a small step, a balance of taking care of myself, inching towards a future, setting goals, and holding myself to promises I made with myself which have nearly been forgotten over the years. If you are hearing a lot of “self” talk, you aren’t wrong. I’m at a point in my life where I’m going to be a little more selfish. My whole life has been taking care of others. It’s time to learn another way to be. After a while you get used to doing things a certain way…it’s weird when you take a step back and ask yourself if you’ve been doing things this way because it’s right or because it’s what you’ve always been told is right.
You hit a moment like that, and you might feel that sense of peace just wash over you. It’s a Friday night and I’m at home listening to old songs with my dog, writing down my thoughts. Not really having that Fear of Missing Out that I used to get. Very much in a Wherever You Go, There You Are state of mind. I’m alone, but not lonely.
Tomorrow I will do dishes, work on the book, maybe work on some other plans as well. Getting out of my comfort zone to create other things. I’m thinking of starting a YouTube channel, but I’m such a perfectionist that I’m not happy yet with the kind of content I would be making. Not just yet. Think of it as a video version of what I wrote here.
I made a mistake with my blog. I wanted my GettingOutMore site to get more exposure, so I migrated my followers to that site, not realizing it would completely remove them from this site. There’s no way to move them back either. Oh well. It’s a learning experience. Maybe it will encourage me to write more content over there, after all there are followers now. haha I hope I haven’t annoyed anyone too badly with that.
I dunno. This site is a lot more personal. The tone is different. Sometimes people don’t get that. I’ve been confronted about my levels of melancholy here, but the words I write here are a lot like sitting across from someone in a quiet room, just having a quiet conversation about life, regrets, and hope. It is melancholic, but if you want something else, check out the other site.
“Tremendous melancholy and tremendous mirth.” –Robert E. Howard said that.
The last few weeks have greeted me with a new understanding. I know now that some people who used to keep track of me here for old times sake are gone forever. It’s that hollow sensation to know that. Hell, I’m the guy who still remembers kids I went to elementary school with and wonder how they are doing. I hope they are well. I hope everyone whose life has touched mine at some point has found what they’ve been searching for. If that sounds a little too hippy-dippy, so be it.
Like Vonnegut said, “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
I’ve got a new leather-bound notebook. I filled the last one up just the other day. There is a reluctance to put words in the new one. An empty notebook is a holy thing. It carries with it nothing but potential. But a greater sin than blemishing its pages with bad writing is to never write in it at all. It’s a lot like life.
Welcome to my TedTalk.
Wendigo Mountain 