So 2008 is upon us, and as I muse on the years gone by I see that, still, nothing has changed. Perhaps nothing ever will, I don’t know. As more and more time passes, it becomes more and more difficult to remember those days when I was happy, when I was normal, when I was alive.

It’s one thing to be depressed, distraught, but struggling against the darkness. Fighting to keep going, to overcome, to somehow reconnect with the great human family and rejoin life. I’ve had a few periods of that, over the years (15 years now since things fell apart). But since I’ve moved, probably since well before that, the fight is simply gone out of me.

I sleep. I wake. I eat. I sleep again. I think there might be the occasional tv show or video game in there somewhere, but everything tends to blur.

I have no shortage of ways to improve my life, to fight back: Pray. Write. Read. Exercise. Volunteer. Find a new hobby. Get back into karate. Join a club. Get a job. Really, pretty much anything. What I do have a shortage of is the will to do any of those things, the energy to actually lift a finger in my own defense. I simply - don’t care.

I’m like a man on fire, only inches from a swimming pool full of water, but I just can’t be bothered to move even as my flesh bubbles and pops.

Maybe someday I’ll find the energy. Maybe I won’t. Somehow, it just doesn’t matter.

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How to even put into words what she meant to me? When I was a baby, she protected me, fiercely; when I was a child, she loved me, unconditionally; when I was a man, she was proud of me, blindly. Every single day of my life she did nothing but want the best for me, see things in me that I still don’t see, ignored every failure and celebrated every strength. She was hope when I was in pain, she was comfort when I was afraid, and she was love when I was alone.

Never once did she ask a single thing in return. Not once. She deserved a better son than me, but she never complained. She just loved me. The happiest I ever saw her was at my wedding - she was beaming, I mean almost literally glowing. My joy was her joy. And when the traditional dance of the groom and his mother came, despite my being six feet tall and having to bend over almost in half to reach her, I still felt like her little boy. That’s the way she always made me feel.

I miss you Mom. We all do, every day. In the quiet of the night I can still hear your voice, and you’re still always telling me that everything will be okay.

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And my Christian friends will ask themselves, “Why couldn’t he just talk to God again, pray for strength and peace and purpose, rediscover his place in the universe as a beloved son of God?”

And my hedonist friends will ask themselves, “Why couldn’t he just learn to live again, enjoy himself, let go, have some fun, stop thinking so much and just laugh and play and love?”

And my online and gamer friends will ask themselves, “Why couldn’t he find solace and community with us, throw himself into the virtual world, let all that creativity of writing and imagining and socializing pour over him again?”

I wish I knew.

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My mother died.

Her 80th birthday was this week (biologically she was my grandmother), but she had to spend it in an ICU, and then at 10:30am AZ time yesterday she passed away, painlessly, with my sister and father near her.

She will be missed beyond the telling of it. I loved her very much.

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As some of you noticed, if my overflowing email Inbox is any indication, I was offline against my will for about 3 weeks there, as that miraculous little cable that spews data to my home was shut off by The Man, trying to Keep Me Down.

Hopefully I will be much more ‘talkative’ (typative?) in the near future, but for the moment I don’t have time to really post much - but the cable was just turned back on, so I wanted to give a speedy shout out to mah peeps to let them all know I’m alive again.

Three weeks can be a long time with A) no job, and B) no money, and C) no cable. When the cable is shut off, it’s a big deal to me - that is no television, no on-demand movies, no web surfing, no message boards, no instant messenger, no online games, no email, no NOTHING. It takes a certain level of suckitude to register in my already-bleak life, but having no cable is like a little death (and not in the good, French way), somewhat because it robs me of a lot of my fun time shenanigans, but mostly because it cuts me off from the majority of my friends who are “online only”. I see them, chat with them, spend time with them more than most of my meat friends (mmm, meat), but I’ve never talked to them over the phone. So, the three weeks were not what one would call pleasant.

On the other hand - I did get quite a bit of reading done, worked on some gaming stuff which stirred ancient passions in my rusty old soul, wrote a tiny bit, prayed in a lot of different ways, put some thought into how to salvage a tail spin existence, went on a job interview, and finally got the cable turned back on.

Thoughts were thunk. Words were set to paper. Perhaps I will share some soon, drag them even, kicking and screaming into the light of the campfire. Give my fingers something to do.

In the meantime, I have many spammer accounts to deactivate, emails to answer, PMs to reply to, all sorts of little details to be caught up on and fussed with. Things should be back to what passes for normal around here lickety split.

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Things are at critical ’round these parts - I haven’t found any work, all the bills are heading to collection, the car is going to get repo-ed … you know, pretty much the usual you would expect to happen to someone out of work for 3 months. Because things are so bad, I had decided to finally suck it up and ask my dad for a “loan”. My folks don’t even know I lost my job yet (nor do they spend anytime online), since it’s much less humiliating to say “I lost my job in February but now I’m working Someplace Else” than to just say “I got fired in February and haven’t done shit since”. So last night I waded through my debt to see what might help, and this afternoon I took a deep breath and dialed the number.

Except Dad isn’t at home, he’s in the hospital.

Apparently he fell late Tuesday night and fractured his hip. Refused to see a doctor until Wednesday afternoon, when the pain really started in, at which point he headed to the ER, and, eventually, into surgery for a partial hip replacement. He’ll be there for another week, then in a rehab for another 2-3 weeks of physical therapy. Assuming everything goes according to plan, and there are no complications.

Damn it.

He’s a hell of a guy, my dad. The absolute warmest memories I have of childhood are memories with him. He got me hooked on comic books, and movies, and novels of wondrous adventures; he showed me by example that it doesn’t matter how mundane and humdrum your life is, you can always take time to visit John Carter of Mars, or Spider Man, or detective Sam Spade. In many ways, he is me, just a couple generations out of time (technically speaking, he is my step-grandfather … he’s 79 years old) - my Spider Man was his The Spirit; my Tolkien is his Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Every single weekend he would spend an afternoon in Boston, and from the time I could finally keep up with his gargantuan strides until the time my inevitable adolescent idiocy kicked in, I got to go with him. I looked forward to those trips to the city all week, hundreds of them I’m sure over the years. The train ride, the maze of subway stations, the stop at ‘our’ comic book store for the week’s goodies, lunch from a pushcart, and always capped off with a movie at one of the dozen theaters we knew like old friends.

Unfortunately, he hasn’t walked like that in too many years, and this blow to his hip isn’t likely to help. And so I’m sitting here on the other side of the country, worrying for him and praying for him, and railing against the universe for taking such delight in heaping abuse on us all.

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Internally however, all is not lost - I continue to ruminate, introspect, analyze, and ponder with the best of them. I’m sure I have more internal dialogues and debates before 9am than most people do all day - it’s what I do (quite literally, it is what I do, nearly all that I do). The topic for these past few months, from before my unfortunate “letting go” but nicely appropriate to it, has been work. Not work specifically in the sense of “What job should I do?”, though that’s a part, but more in the sense of “What do I do with my life?”.

The bottom line is, everyone needs money. Money gets you food, clothes, and a place to live - also, video games, DVDs, and books, if you’re lucky. You can’t live without money. Well actually that may not be true, I don’t know…maybe you don’t need money, maybe you live off a trust fund or barter for everything you need or have a rich lover. But I need money. Too much money (I wish I could say I’ve never lived beyond my means, or racked up enormous depression-fueled debt, but I can’t - I know better now, but it’s too late, damage done).

So - I need money. The next obvious question is, how do I get it? My employment history is a bit eclectic. My first job ever was at an ice house, followed in those early years by stints at a book store, a convenience store, and even a board game factory (short-lived as it was). My first ‘real’ job field, lasting more than a few months or a year, began as a summer thing.

A friend of mine was working at a state facility for the mentally retarded. Yes, we still called it ‘retarded’ in those days, though I know the current term is ‘developmentally delayed’ (the sound you hear is George Carlin popping an aneurism). The job was chaotic but interesting, and after the three month gig was up I stayed on - for about 11 years (at that facility, and later a couple different residential programs they opened). Following that I moved down to Georgia and, again thanks to a friend, got a techie job with a medical billing company, that one lasting just over 5 years before recently ending.

Let’s not mistake length of employment with passion, however - though it’s true I’ve worked only two different jobs in the last 16 years, neither of them was anything I felt particularly called to. I more or less just drifted into both of them and stayed because of inertia.

Some months ago I came to a powerful realization - no matter what it is you like to do, there is someone, somewhere out there, who will pay you to do it. Love to be around animals? Work at a pet store, or become a veterinarian. Love to scuba dive? Become an instructor, or join the Navy Seals. Love to get spanked with a ping pong paddle while singing “Hail to the Chief”? You may have to look a little harder, but I’d be surprised if there wasn’t at least one person out there who’d put you on the payroll.

I’m aware that this is not exactly a new idea, by the way - most truths aren’t. I didn’t so much think this up on my own as finally see the wisdom and truth in the universal idea in a personal way. But it’s still powerful when something internal like this ‘clicks’, and you feel like you have just a slightly deeper understanding of the reality around you (at least, it should be!).

Anyway, this particular concept really got me fired up. So many people are so miserable at so many jobs, and I felt like I had discovered the secret to a happy life: find what your passionate about, find someone to pay you for that passion, and bingo, you win. If you can earn your way through life by doing whatever it is that makes you happy, then in a lot of ways you’re not even really ‘working’. You’re just living your life, doing what you want to do, and as an added bonus every couple weeks someone gives you money.

Fantastic in theory, but…what is it that I’m passionate about? What do I really love to do?

The obvious answer is writing. I’ve loved stories, both experiencing and creating, since before I can remember, it’s hardwired into my reptilian brain. My own Spider Man comic books when I was wee, roleplaying games when I was older, a stream of ‘my eyes only’ journals throughout, the hundreds if not thousands of online conversations I’ve been party to, and all the other tiny day-to-day creations that have sprung forth to the page or computer screen over these 38 years of mine - I’ve loved writing them all. Clearly then, writing seems to be what makes me happy (at least as much as I get ‘happy’ this past decade or so).

So that’s the path I’ve chosen, and am going to work at making reality. I want to immerse myself in a literary life, reading, and writing, and reading about writing, and what the hell, may as well occasionally write about reading too, just to keep the symmetry.

I am, of course, terrified. I may find that I can effortlessly churn out excellent magazine article after novel after poem after short story, filling my days with overflowing reams of quality, publishable work. Or, I may find that passion does not always equal talent, and things that seem wonderful and funny and interesting to me are really just the mad scribblings of a deluded mediocre hack.

Guess we’ll find out.

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It kind of took me by surprise, as I’ve never been fired from a job before - I don’t recommend it to anyone, it sucks and makes you feel stupid. Three years ago, when I was moving back here to Massachusetts from Georgia, this company I was sacked from was kind enough to offer (it was their idea, not mine) to let me work from home…so in total I was with them for about 5 years. Overall, they were fantastic to me.

Unfortunately, for the past few months I’ve been in Heavy Funk Mode (as separate from my Chronic Funk Mode). I knew it was affecting my work, but I was hoping I was keeping it together and that things would eventually turn around.

Nope.

Long story short, the office eventually just lost confidence in the fact that I was able (or willing) to do my job, so they cut me loose, and who knows, maybe rightly so. Regardless of the circumstances, I find myself suddenly out of work. Kaput. No visible means of support. Up the Fecal River sans paddle.

Please don’t mistake my lightheartedness for genuine lack of concern - on the contrary, despite the slight mental glow from days without decent sleep and hours of mind numbing activities, I’m worried. Very worried.

Extremely worried.

But so far a strict regimen of denial and refusal to deal with reality has allowed me to survive without having an Uber Freakout Fest. Not really sure how long this bubble of comfortable numbness will last - but until then my appearances around the forums, the SoF2 game server, email etc. may be even more sporadic than usual as I try to slowly process what’s going on, and what comes next. I just wanted to give everyone a heads up and let you know what’s been going on with me.

Who knows, I may even put some much-needed work into the site - seems like my days suddenly freed up a bit.

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The weekend is drawing to a close, tomorrow I’ll be forced to once again endure a week of numbness, and my soul is feeling restless -

I could write - but what’s the point?
I could read - but what’s the point?
I could catch up on email - but what’s the point?
I could work on the website - but what’s the point?
I could make some calls - but what’s the point?
I could go out somewhere - but what’s the point?
I could play some video games - but what’s the point?
I could watch tv - but what’s the point?

You get the idea. This is my prison; this is my dilemma. I have so many projects, so many things that briefly seem worthwhile in the bright light of day. But when the shadows come, when I become lost in my thoughts, they all fall away and I am once again left to ponder the question, What Is The Point?

I have some answers to the question - things that comfort me and help me through the day. But they are all intellectual answers, cold and sterile; they answer the question factually, but they don’t spark my heart, they don’t fill that hollow place that cries for meaning.

So, this will pass - in a few hours I’ll be lost in some vapid television show or twitching my fingers over an Xbox controller, and then it will be time to sleep, and then it will be time to work, and then I’ll forget all about this question I just can’t seem to answer for myself.

Until the next quiet time, when I have moments alone with my thoughts and the question returns. I’ll never get out of this rut until I can answer the damned question…

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