Michigan

Back again!

So.  I left Huntington Beach... as it turns out, the rooming house was not so bad.  One of the guys living there hooked me up with an old laptop that he fixed up so I'd have something to jump online with on the road.  And, yeah, I hit the road... no job, no money.  Had a lead on a job in Kansas, recommended by a friend.  So I went there first and waited about for two weeks before discovering that they had given the job to someone else.  C'est la vie... but I had no plan after that, so I looked into staying with my cousin in Michigan.  I mentioned it to my aunt (his mother) and she said that she had a room I could stay in.  So I am in Michigan, at my aunt's house, next door to my cousin and his family.

And I am not yet working.  Getting antsy.  Have some more leads, and have been looking at everything from teaching to customer service to working on the line for Chrysler.  Not sure what's in the immediate future for work, but I am hoping to get working soon so I can fix up the car or buy a camper... maybe just a van with a bed in it.  I don't know yet.  And I'd like to go to GenCon, maybe back to Burning Man, and so forth.  Probably can't afford both this summer, but I'll try to head to GenCon for sure, as Indianapolis is only about six or seven hours from here.

I miss Jenny, my former girlfriend, and I miss Greta, my pit bull.  I guess "former" dog, but that doesn't sound right.  I'll always think of her as my dog, and I imagine she'll always think of me as one of her humans.

Just checking in... with myself, for the most part, as I'm not exactly advertising this blog or using it as much more than an online journal at the moment.  Maybe that will change.

I am working on a book, and discovering that it's work!  Surprise, surprise.  It's enjoyable, but there's much to keep track of.  I don't know who writes and just has a book flow out of them, but that's not me.  I am tracking bits and pieces of information, creating character profiles, creating a history for the world (it's fantasy fiction) and then going back and revising that history or those profiles and so forth.  I decided recently to start getting into the meat of it, even if I go back and change much of it, so I am now bouncing back and forth between writing scenes and adding to or revising the information in my notes.

I suppose I need to get my ibogaine experience out here some time.  Life-changing experience.  Terrible experience in some ways... horrific... but also perfect, and just what I needed, and insightful.  Worth Googling if you've never heard of it.  It has changed my perspective on the world as a result of allowing me an opportunity to change my perspective of myself through plumbing the depths of my consciousness.  And I feel that I have a better understanding of the nature of reality, and that it is awesome and terrible at once, and I am intimately a part of it, and that I forge my own destiny based on the way I think and the actions I take as a result.  Something like that.  Perhaps I will write more about the experience later.

Up late.  Insomnia is back.  Craving a smoke.

Change is coming.  I can't see the shape of it yet.  A new career and all that entails, or a new job that just gets me along for a while... maybe a new place to live, meet some new people who will impact my life.  Maybe things won't work out, and I'll be on the go again.  Maybe I'll have to sell the car, hitchhike, sleep in my tent in the woods, stock up on MREs.  Maybe I'll be happy.  Maybe I'll be happy.

Back.

So, right.  A few years have passed.  They slip right by.

Still a "serial monogamist", though I have been in longer relationships, and my latest girlfriend broke things off with me after something short of a year.  Progress, I suppose.  Mostly feels like I was dumped, and makes me wonder if my modus operandi of leaving a few months into things wouldn't have saved me some grief.  Maybe it would have.  But then I wouldn't have had the experience... isn't that what they say?  It has always seemed to be something of a cop-out.  If you are in a crap spot in life, you can imagine it's just so you can get to a better spot and remember how those crap times built character... but if you're in a good spot already, then it was all worth it, and all the pain was necessary.  It's as if we need to feed ourselves empty platitudes in order to continue with our lives and forgive ourselves for our own shortcomings and poor decisions.

Anyone who says, "Even if I could, I wouldn't change a thing." is insane.  If you could go back and you did not have the memories you have now, of course you wouldn't change anything, because you'd be just as ignorant and unaware as you were the first time around.  But if you retain your current memories of experiences you've already had, you would go back and do it all the exact same way again?  Lunacy, even if you had it good.  And I had enough moments of shame, idiocy, and crippling pain for a lifetime already.  

Who read that and didn't think, "we all have those moments", or "me, too", or "you're preaching to the choir"?  So, why go back and do it all the same way?  I have some great friends, sure.  But I've also lost track of people I cared about, and I've blown opportunities that could have changed my life drastically.  Sure, those other friendships and other avenues might have led to great pain as well, and might even have meant an early death by fire or gunshot or who-knows-what.  Still seems worth the risk, compared to walking around stuck in a loop of your own life, repeating every decision and every mistake.

Anyway.  So, what happened during these past few years?  I finished an M.Ed, taught briefly in Florida, moved to Connecticut, went to Burning Man, moved to California, moved in with a woman and rescued a pit bull, then left when she broke things off... she kept the pit bull, as I don't have two nickels to rub together and can't realistically care for it.  Love that dog.  I'm glad she has a good home.  I also took ibogaine at a treatment center in Mexico.  That was a real eye-opener, and I can't do it justice in a few words, so I won't try to.  Maybe later.

Now I'm in a crap rooming house in Huntington Beach.  Well, it could be worse.  But the guy who lived in this room before me left me a carpet that carries a slight odor, mildew maybe, and so far I can't get the smell out after trying baking soda and other remedies.  So who wants that?  And I hate living by myself, which is certainly what I am doing here.  It's like an apartment building inside, it just happens to be a house with a shared kitchen area.  Everyone locks their doors and pays no mind to everyone else.  There is no living area; it was converted to a bedroom, like every other room in the house outside the kitchen and the one bathroom.  I've had one conversation with one tenant for about ten minutes, and I've introduced myself to two others, but that's it.  There are two more I've never met after the better part of a month.  There seems to be an unwritten rule not to enter the kitchen when someone else is in it.  It's a strange, empty way to live.

I'm trying to find work.  I have been away from the job market.  Mentally, for while.  Depressed.  Then I had serious problems with my groin.  Infections, pain, sleeplessness.  Eventually had to have an operation, and I am nearly the end of the recovery phase.  Pain has now decreased considerably, as expected.  But it's been over a year since the ordeal began.  Could be worse.

Sort of found God.  Not the Abrahamic god, and not a god I can easily explain.  Nothing that defies current scientific understanding.  A god intimately connected to me and to all things by virtue of existence.  I am God, that is, and so are you.  And so is a tree, and a rock.  But we are part of a God-consciousness, whereby the universe knows itself.  Something like that.  Sounds like a throwback hippie definition, maybe.  But it comes of an ineffable mystical experience, so there's no good way to put it into words.

Speaking of which, that's enough words for the time being.  I hope you're doing well out there, and being good to yourselves.  Back later.  Maybe not even years later.  We'll see.