The sand falls from the top before it can build at the bottom.
Sometimes I find myself fading. Raising the opacity of the work layer of my life's picture above all the others, letting myslef get lost in what I'm doing and not thinking about anything else. But even sometimes that in itself is an effort to not face things that are hard to resolve.
It's like my whole deal lately (although the theme seems to be a recurring one) is this utter sense of loneliness that I've been dealing with. Not just because of personal distances, but also in terms of a realization that I had recently:
At the same time I fully admit to being a friend snob. Over the years I've had the good fortune to connect with some seriously cool people. Some of them I grew up with, while others have come into my life through jobs, other friends, or across the wires of this superhighway. Unfortunately the majority of these either live or have moved to different places - following the winds in their sails to whatever ends that they might take them too.
And while I'll always be grateful for the friends I've made in my life, one fact remains clear. Having all of you in my life has utterly spoiled me, a fact proven time and time again as other people routinely fail to pass muster. And while I mean that as a compliment to those I know and love, the simple fact is that it leaves me with very few devices. I need to meet people, I want to find friends I can hang with, but I end up searching for these things all alone, and it gets frustrating.
Plus I'm not always the big social butterfly even when I need to be. Like for example, this past weekend was mine to spend with my son. There's this HUGE playground near the Ponte Vedra suburbs that I sometimes bring the boy to because it's by far the biggest and best maintained public playground I know of. It's always crammed with kids and parents hanging out -- but it is a hoidy-toidy part of town so most of the parents have those cel phone earpieces going and are carrying on business conversations as they push their children on the swings. Still, it's always comfortable place to go.
Anyways, when I have my weekends with my son or I'm out doing something with him my ex-wife will occasionally call up and ask if she can "tag along." She says she gets lonely when the boy's not around, and depsite all that's happened it's good for the three of us to get out togther once in a while. There are probably other currents running in that stream -- but sometimes you just have to let it all go and climb on a few jungle gyms as a family, you know?
So we’re playing and doing our thing when this other kid taps my son on the shoulder and says that they go to the same school. Almost immediately my ex seeks out this kid's parents, and within moments is laughing and chatting away; getting phone numbers and setting up play dates, networking, whatever -- Which is like the LAST thing I would have ever done. If somebody came up to me and said "hey our kids are playing together" my first response would probably be something like "Oh crap, what happened - how much do I owe you?"
I mean, who knows if my ex will ever actually call these people, but at the very least she made the effort. I don't really have much interest in flitting around parent to parent and making that sort of contact, but at the same time it's kind of exactly what I need to be doing if I want to solve this whole "running buddy" dilemma.
I think having all this in my head put extra motivation on me to make sure my kid was at the birthday party for the son of one of my oldest friends, Chris. He doesn't live that far from me, but his job is pretty involving and he spends most of his off time with his wife and 2 kids. We trade emails now and then, but even that fell off when I went through my recent unemployment jag, mainly because ..there just wasn’t that much to talk about outside of that fact.
I thought it would give our kids a chance to play and maybe allow for some time to hang with Chris myself -- seeing as it had been far too long since we'd had a chance to hang out, but there was always that chance that perhaps being in a group of people like that might offer the chance for meeting people worth meeting. But when I got there it was a totally different scene. Sure there were a bunch of kids I'd never seen before (classmates at the preschool, apparently) being doted on by upper-middle class types complaining about the price of private schools, but what I immediately noticed was that almost all of the old gang I used to hang out with when Chris and I were back in school were there. From Tiffany and Jason (who I hadn't seen in ages), to Chris' father Bailey (who lives most of the year in Detroit as a part of his job), his mother, sister, and even his grandparents were there.
And that's when it struck me -- these were almost exactly the same people who were always at Chris' house all the time when I was there. Even all these years later this same core group had found a way to come together (without really trying to do so).
But the weird thing that started turning over in my mind was the fact that they're all still here. Most of these people had stayed here after graduation, or (like me) had moved back after venturing away.
As I talked to them it became clear that just like the old days they still mainly hang out with each other. Everyone has their work friends or whatever -- but when you get right down to it this group of people that were inseparable as kids are in a lot of ways still tied to each other as adults. I probably shouldn't really be referring to them as some sort of separate group, because even though I've been probably the most absent of all of them from hanging out -- you'd never know it from the party.
That's what it's supposed to be like with friends, of course - instant comfort without posturing or any other BS to speak of, but it was still kind of weird. I mean, in a lot of ways it felt almost exactly like a scene from those days -- talking music with Jason, half-flirting with Tiffany, horseplay with Kelly, laughing with Chris, getting hassled about my piercings from Bailey (only to have him offer me a beer a few minutes later), and Chris mother and grandparents alternately asking when my dad was going to come by again.
For my part, I moved (not far enough, obviously) away from Jacksonville to avoid that very sort of thing, and try to make my own mark on the world. I didn't want to stay here -- like so many hometowns there was a time when I simply felt that I had outgrown the place.
Which is why I sometimes quietly view the fact that all these years later I'm back here, hanging out in a lot of the same places I did when I was a teenager as a failure of sorts.
In short, There are reasons it happened, and I'm making the best of it -- but this isn't the life I wanted. This isn't where I wanted to be. But there I was on that windy Sunday afternoon thick as thieves with people I love and adore who in many ways achieved those exact things they wanted, and are happy as clams to have them.
I mean, I'm not actively trying to cultivate some Neal Pollack-ian sense of cool in a hopeless attempt to deny the fact that I'm almost 35 years old, but it's not that hard to accuse me of still trying to live like it's 1992 or something
I mean sure I have the corporate job, bald spot, and spare tire -- but deep down I still maintain this feeling that I'm a writer/musician who's taken a day job to pay the bills. Almost like some flatbed truck will drive by the office with a rock band playing on the back when suddenly their guitarist slips and falls off the truck to his death, at which point I spring from my cubicle, rip off my security badge/name tag and shout "Here I come to save the day!"
A lot of it probably stems from this sense I have sometimes that makes me feel like I "lost part of myself" during the time my marriage was failing, leaving me a chance now to be more like that person. I don't think that thought process is a bad one, but it occasionally resembles an attempt to live as if I were in my 20's, which sometimes seems like I'm trying to be the square peg in a round hole.
But I can't help who I am -- I mean, I think I'm supposed be really excited about it, but honestly I would prefer The Police to stay broken up and not reform into some old-folks Aerosmith version of themselves that can't play their own songs fast enough or hate each other in the proper manner that gave the original band the edge that made them so appealing to me in the first place (seriously, the only thing I want to see on the Grammy's when the Police re-unite is an unplanned mid-song fist fight between Steward Copeland and Sting).
Maybe that's why I didn't go see the Lemonheads play last week. I'm sure it was a good show and all (I saw Even Dando on his solo tour a year ago, and he was fantastic) but I just didn't feel like I needed to see it, you know? Something about it smells too much like that Pixies reunion that happened recently, or even worse the Sex Pistols fiasco before that.
At the same time I still crave live music. Or perhaps better said I crave being around the atmosphere, the people, and the energy that comes with a good show. That being said, when you're the oldest guy in the mosh pit, everyone knows it.
I guess I'm just in a weird place. I like this job, they seem to like me, the money's good and as long as I don't do something monumentally stupid it seems like I could really find a niche here for as long as I want -- and considering where I was just a few months ago that's a huge step back in the right direction, but now that I have a job I'm finding myself concerned with improving that whole "quality of life" side of the equation, and I guess I'm having troubles figuring out which direction to go in.
One thing does seem clear though -- I shouldn't be sailing this latest pirate adventure alone, so running buddies of some sort seems like a must.
You're there and then you fade.The disappear is seamless, edge dissolved and clean -- like some Hollywood special effect, some manufactured trick of the eye. One minute you're in the picture and the next you're gone. A faded afterimage, burned chemically into the cellulose, only to be digitally removed as the world grows up all around.
Sometimes I find myself fading. Raising the opacity of the work layer of my life's picture above all the others, letting myslef get lost in what I'm doing and not thinking about anything else. But even sometimes that in itself is an effort to not face things that are hard to resolve.
It's like my whole deal lately (although the theme seems to be a recurring one) is this utter sense of loneliness that I've been dealing with. Not just because of personal distances, but also in terms of a realization that I had recently:
I don't have any running buddies.I know a handful of people here in town, but most of them are either married with kids (which makes finding free time hard), locked into some social habit I really can't get behind, or just too tied into their own thing that there's no room for something else.
At the same time I fully admit to being a friend snob. Over the years I've had the good fortune to connect with some seriously cool people. Some of them I grew up with, while others have come into my life through jobs, other friends, or across the wires of this superhighway. Unfortunately the majority of these either live or have moved to different places - following the winds in their sails to whatever ends that they might take them too.
And while I'll always be grateful for the friends I've made in my life, one fact remains clear. Having all of you in my life has utterly spoiled me, a fact proven time and time again as other people routinely fail to pass muster. And while I mean that as a compliment to those I know and love, the simple fact is that it leaves me with very few devices. I need to meet people, I want to find friends I can hang with, but I end up searching for these things all alone, and it gets frustrating.
Plus I'm not always the big social butterfly even when I need to be. Like for example, this past weekend was mine to spend with my son. There's this HUGE playground near the Ponte Vedra suburbs that I sometimes bring the boy to because it's by far the biggest and best maintained public playground I know of. It's always crammed with kids and parents hanging out -- but it is a hoidy-toidy part of town so most of the parents have those cel phone earpieces going and are carrying on business conversations as they push their children on the swings. Still, it's always comfortable place to go.
Anyways, when I have my weekends with my son or I'm out doing something with him my ex-wife will occasionally call up and ask if she can "tag along." She says she gets lonely when the boy's not around, and depsite all that's happened it's good for the three of us to get out togther once in a while. There are probably other currents running in that stream -- but sometimes you just have to let it all go and climb on a few jungle gyms as a family, you know?
So we’re playing and doing our thing when this other kid taps my son on the shoulder and says that they go to the same school. Almost immediately my ex seeks out this kid's parents, and within moments is laughing and chatting away; getting phone numbers and setting up play dates, networking, whatever -- Which is like the LAST thing I would have ever done. If somebody came up to me and said "hey our kids are playing together" my first response would probably be something like "Oh crap, what happened - how much do I owe you?"
I mean, who knows if my ex will ever actually call these people, but at the very least she made the effort. I don't really have much interest in flitting around parent to parent and making that sort of contact, but at the same time it's kind of exactly what I need to be doing if I want to solve this whole "running buddy" dilemma.
I think having all this in my head put extra motivation on me to make sure my kid was at the birthday party for the son of one of my oldest friends, Chris. He doesn't live that far from me, but his job is pretty involving and he spends most of his off time with his wife and 2 kids. We trade emails now and then, but even that fell off when I went through my recent unemployment jag, mainly because ..there just wasn’t that much to talk about outside of that fact.
I thought it would give our kids a chance to play and maybe allow for some time to hang with Chris myself -- seeing as it had been far too long since we'd had a chance to hang out, but there was always that chance that perhaps being in a group of people like that might offer the chance for meeting people worth meeting. But when I got there it was a totally different scene. Sure there were a bunch of kids I'd never seen before (classmates at the preschool, apparently) being doted on by upper-middle class types complaining about the price of private schools, but what I immediately noticed was that almost all of the old gang I used to hang out with when Chris and I were back in school were there. From Tiffany and Jason (who I hadn't seen in ages), to Chris' father Bailey (who lives most of the year in Detroit as a part of his job), his mother, sister, and even his grandparents were there.
And that's when it struck me -- these were almost exactly the same people who were always at Chris' house all the time when I was there. Even all these years later this same core group had found a way to come together (without really trying to do so).
But the weird thing that started turning over in my mind was the fact that they're all still here. Most of these people had stayed here after graduation, or (like me) had moved back after venturing away.
As I talked to them it became clear that just like the old days they still mainly hang out with each other. Everyone has their work friends or whatever -- but when you get right down to it this group of people that were inseparable as kids are in a lot of ways still tied to each other as adults. I probably shouldn't really be referring to them as some sort of separate group, because even though I've been probably the most absent of all of them from hanging out -- you'd never know it from the party.
That's what it's supposed to be like with friends, of course - instant comfort without posturing or any other BS to speak of, but it was still kind of weird. I mean, in a lot of ways it felt almost exactly like a scene from those days -- talking music with Jason, half-flirting with Tiffany, horseplay with Kelly, laughing with Chris, getting hassled about my piercings from Bailey (only to have him offer me a beer a few minutes later), and Chris mother and grandparents alternately asking when my dad was going to come by again.
Save for the fact that we all have kids and look older, itBut later that afternoon as we said our goodbyes and exchanged numbers I found myself digging into the experience, thinking probably way too much about the whole thing. I mean, on one hand these people sort of already are running buddies (or at least they used to be) and if I wanted to, I could probably easily fall right back in the fold. But at the same time, there is something quietly bothersome about the fact that these are the ones who didn't leave Jacksonville, the people who (at least from outward appearances) wanted to stay here, wanted to get married and start a family (which is cool, more power to ya) - but it was the sort of mindset that probably created the space that eventually developed between us in the first place.
could have been any old weekend at the MacEwan's house.
For my part, I moved (not far enough, obviously) away from Jacksonville to avoid that very sort of thing, and try to make my own mark on the world. I didn't want to stay here -- like so many hometowns there was a time when I simply felt that I had outgrown the place.
Which is why I sometimes quietly view the fact that all these years later I'm back here, hanging out in a lot of the same places I did when I was a teenager as a failure of sorts.
In short, There are reasons it happened, and I'm making the best of it -- but this isn't the life I wanted. This isn't where I wanted to be. But there I was on that windy Sunday afternoon thick as thieves with people I love and adore who in many ways achieved those exact things they wanted, and are happy as clams to have them.
There's a connection, and yet I feel utterly separate.I don't know exactly when or why , but somewhere in the last six months my self-confidence took an enormous hit that I'm still trying to recover from. As a result (despite the fact that I hate when I get like this) -- I've been doing the whole mopey thing more than I really want to be lately -- which has led me to all sorts of extremes in terms of trying to either relish the emotional well I've been sitting in or claw my way out of it.What’s worse, there’s always a chance that it’s a division I'm creating myself..
I mean, I'm not actively trying to cultivate some Neal Pollack-ian sense of cool in a hopeless attempt to deny the fact that I'm almost 35 years old, but it's not that hard to accuse me of still trying to live like it's 1992 or something
I mean sure I have the corporate job, bald spot, and spare tire -- but deep down I still maintain this feeling that I'm a writer/musician who's taken a day job to pay the bills. Almost like some flatbed truck will drive by the office with a rock band playing on the back when suddenly their guitarist slips and falls off the truck to his death, at which point I spring from my cubicle, rip off my security badge/name tag and shout "Here I come to save the day!"
A lot of it probably stems from this sense I have sometimes that makes me feel like I "lost part of myself" during the time my marriage was failing, leaving me a chance now to be more like that person. I don't think that thought process is a bad one, but it occasionally resembles an attempt to live as if I were in my 20's, which sometimes seems like I'm trying to be the square peg in a round hole.
But I can't help who I am -- I mean, I think I'm supposed be really excited about it, but honestly I would prefer The Police to stay broken up and not reform into some old-folks Aerosmith version of themselves that can't play their own songs fast enough or hate each other in the proper manner that gave the original band the edge that made them so appealing to me in the first place (seriously, the only thing I want to see on the Grammy's when the Police re-unite is an unplanned mid-song fist fight between Steward Copeland and Sting).
Maybe that's why I didn't go see the Lemonheads play last week. I'm sure it was a good show and all (I saw Even Dando on his solo tour a year ago, and he was fantastic) but I just didn't feel like I needed to see it, you know? Something about it smells too much like that Pixies reunion that happened recently, or even worse the Sex Pistols fiasco before that.
At the same time I still crave live music. Or perhaps better said I crave being around the atmosphere, the people, and the energy that comes with a good show. That being said, when you're the oldest guy in the mosh pit, everyone knows it.
I guess I'm just in a weird place. I like this job, they seem to like me, the money's good and as long as I don't do something monumentally stupid it seems like I could really find a niche here for as long as I want -- and considering where I was just a few months ago that's a huge step back in the right direction, but now that I have a job I'm finding myself concerned with improving that whole "quality of life" side of the equation, and I guess I'm having troubles figuring out which direction to go in.
One thing does seem clear though -- I shouldn't be sailing this latest pirate adventure alone, so running buddies of some sort seems like a must.
Well that, and the fact that I still think Tiffany is cute.
[Listening to: NonPoint, "Done it Anyway"]
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