bought a house in upstate ny, with a barn, and garage, and 50 acres of land, and a pickup truck, commute to nyc on amtrak once a week and work from home the rest of the time. it's rural enough here that when you say 'the city' people think you mean albany. i set up an office in one of the spare bedrooms but usually just camp out in the living room by the picture window so i can look at the field and animals and traffic. still not sure what i'm doing or what the point is. there's enough to do here that i can usually distract myself with chores tidying setup but still afraid to commit more although, i bought a house and took a loan from my retirement account to do it so if that's not committed then what is? i think you know what i mean. just keep building shelves and organizing and cleaning and hope that everything else will come together somehow at the same time
Vincent • 11:43 AM not much you? what's going on in your lifesteez
me • 11:44 AM oph the usual trying to avoid a redo of my yearly autumnal existential crisis i might have to start drinking again to manage that
Vincent • 11:44 AM yeah what's that entail? is it pre SAD disorder?
me • 11:45 AM the avoidance is like, i start running more, start doing things that give me the illusion of getting my shit together, and planning stuff to do with meg the crisis, if it gets to that stage is like, i listen to a lot of The National, stay up too late, and look up the ones that got away on facebook what's up with you?
cursory safety inspection, chain is tight, tires new, engine has acquired a sound rather like pennies clinking but only if you listen close, in third gear, throttle half open, pulling over the bridge leaning deep into the exit ramp and weaving around the sign marked "beach closed", halfheartedly stopping at the guard station. all clear, pulling through against traffic, the beachgoers returning home drunk with sun and coors. motoring slowly until past the first beach and then kicking the small engine up into high 4th, settling back in the seat, hearing nothing but the wind in my open helmet, letting the rumbling of the single cylinder shake loose any remaining thoughts from my skull
not sure what happens next. sometimes when it slows down, work is off my mind, the animals are fed, meg is away, i forget who i am. without easy labels, boxes, definitions, who are we. what would i be without you, and this. blank
i think at one point it all got to be too much and i worked on shutting it out, like a prisoner trying to melt into the monotony of a harsh sentence, detaching and letting it float by, at first by plugging myself into a computer all day, then with alcohol, hoping that eventually i would change, my term commuted, freed into something else? but i stopped drinking and i try to only use the computer at work now, and probably because of the no-alcohol thing i am on the verge of tears forever in a way that brings me back to being 17, 18, 19 , probably because it's the time right before i found how to shut it all down.
i can't really account for the last few years, it's all a little bit dull, i feel fuzzy
