Such are the thoughts which cross my mind at random times of day or night:
You know, “The Heir of the Air may err” is a perfectly valid sentence but without context it’d be difficult to understand when spoken.
Author: Karel Kerezman
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Muddling Through
It’s been a rough few years.
I know: Just look at the abysmal rate at which I’ve been posting.
Losing the Entercom job hit me really damned hard; I never recovered from that, even most of six years later. It’s more than that, though. Now my day-to-day existence is just getting through the day. Each day is planned out: Mondays, I do this. Tuesdays, I do that. A minimum of 12 hours per 24 on weekdays revolves around getting ready for, going to, being at and going home from work. And at the end of the money, there’s a lot of month left.
On a side note: Once-per-month paychecks are a pain in the ass.
On another side note: Not once getting a cost-of-living increase in over five years really sucks in this economy. (Yes, yes, I have a job, shut up. I know.)
It’s not all bad, mind you. My romantic relationships are stable, even joyful. The kids are awesome. (Like that’s new.) I am gainfully employed, I have enough to pay the bills, etc. Could be worse.
But. I’m not where I wanted to be, financially or otherwise, by this point. I turn 40 in a few weeks and many of the things I thought I’d have accomplished by now are so far out of reach they might as well be on the planet Mars. And from the look of things, nothing good is coming down the pipe for a long while yet… and more unpleasantness is headed my direction even as I compose this posting. (Knowing the type but not the exact scale of this oncoming unpleasantness does not help.)
I don’t even know what I’m “good” at anymore, except occasionally I can make some people laugh. Other than that? No idea. My current job has taught me that no, I’m not really that good at the computer stuff. So… what is it? What do I bring to the table? If I wanted another job, how would I convince anyone to hire me?
Yeah, right.
Most days I don’t feel strong enough, smart enough, or good enough. But, I muddle through. People are counting on me. So I’ll keep at it.
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Goodbye, French Bread Pizza
We enjoyed a “fend for yourself” dinner last night, my roommates and I. Since we also went to the grocery store right after work this turned out to be a great plan. (Responsible Me picked up some breakfast and lunch options for work so I’m not eating out all week long…) In a fit of nostalgia I picked up a box of something I hadn’t enjoyed in quite a while: Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza. I used to eat those things all the time, I tell you.
Coincidentally, I also used to deal with acid reflux attacks fairly often. I couldn’t quite figure out why, and eventually they just stopped and I didn’t worry about it much.
Yes. Well. Quarter-past-three this morning I woke up to the nastiest acid reflux I’ve suffered in ages. Oh.
I think that’s it for those French Bread Pizzas, don’t you? Now to stumble through my day on about four hours accumulated sleep…
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Toys Will Be Toys
Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
I dare you to find another photograph featuring a Zentraedi Officer’s Pod, a cast-iron “rubber” duck, and a black LEGO minifig.
Context will arrive in the form of Thursday’s Quacked Panes comic.
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Goodbye, 2011
Perhaps letting an entire month go by without a post isn’t the best way to end the year, so let’s do this instead:
I choose here not to excoriate the year we leave behind. Yes, much of it sucked, but regurgitating the reasons won’t help anybody. Instead, I’m focusing on what’s good in my life.
- My loves, who keep me going when nothing else can.
- My children, who make me so proud I can’t even describe it.
- My job, that pays the bills, even if just barely.
- My friends, offline and on, who laugh at my jokes, however terrible they may be.
- My library of books and music, which help me forget the real world for a while.
- My stack of games, which can be played with family and friends to bring amusement to the household.
- My growing collection of ducks, which I use to entertain a couple dozen folks on the Internet every week.
I’ve had a particularly rough time of things lately, hence the lack of writing output. There are plans to improve things somewhat, but I’ve also never been good at making & carrying out plans, so… we’ll see.
Here’s to 2012. May it go better for us all.
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Dragonsinger
I wondered what it would take to kick me in the ass enough to bring me back here again.
When I was thirteen, Mom gave Sis & I to a nice couple from church named Ken and Virginia Savage for the duration of a summer or so. They lived in Soap Lake, WA and made annual road-trip pilgrimages back to Kansas City and to Omaha for the purpose of visiting relatives and important church sites. It was right around the time of that year’s trip when, while we were at the grocery store, I spotted a book cover near the checkout counters and decided that I really wanted that book.
Perhaps you’ve heard of it.
That little story, read out-of-sequence from the rest of its series, helped ruin me for lesser books. If it doesn’t involve friendship, wonder, perseverance against the odds and the bad opinion of people who shouldn’t matter, risk, reward, at least one proper brawl, and considerable doses of humor… then what’s the point of your book, I ask. I read the hell out of that book, and it survived up until just a few years ago… so I replaced it with another from the same printing.
I love quite a few books, but Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonsinger” will always hold a peculiar and special place in my heart. Only a few others share a similar prominence: Raymond E. Feist’s “Magician” volume, for instance, and Julian May’s “Intervention.”
Folks might look at a guy funny for listing McCaffrey as one of his favorite writers, but I can live with that. And, true, there are things about some of her books (parts of the Pern series in particular) that it doesn’t pay to examine too closely. In later years, I think she lost a bit of her storytelling verve and took to treating bad guys and good guys alike a bit too much with kid gloves; consequences became gentler than one might expect. That was her choice to make, of course, and it’s my choice to leave off the reading of certain novels.
Today’s a sad one, for today we all learned that Anne McCaffrey is no longer with us. This avid reader, at least, is largely so because of her talent and because of a very nice couple who indulged a spoiled little boy all those years ago in Soap Lake.
