vacating the everything

Waking up around 6:00 this morning, I realized something that made my day, I didn't need to be up at 6:00.  The time has finally come for me to do . . . whatever I felt like.  Well, OK, we all know not whatever, but that simple fact that I didn't drag my body out of bed simply to go along with my muscle memory felt like success in that department.

I had forgotten several times over the course of last week that I had off the next.  Caught in the relentless flow that is my workplace, my mind refused to accept that it would have to actually stop thinking about the daily grind.  I could now think of the morning's cup of coffee as a cup of coffee and not my first daily dose of caffeine.  Even in my social life (yeah, there is one, a small one) I noticed a rut forming.  Activities I do for fun became not so fun.  Friends, while great people, became predictable once the weekend rolled around.  Beer tasted . . .  no beer is still fine.  


I couldn't agree more with the wise saying, "Everything in moderation".  The good or bad, work or play, friends, family, coworkers or food, too much of anything, for a long enough period of time, dulls the senses.  


On that note, it's late, I'll finish my thoughts tomorrow . . . if I feel like it.

greasey slicks and love

I was living in Kentucky and working as a line-cook in Ashland's premier "fancy" restaurant, all while watching my mid-twenties, and college degree, go down the floor drain.  Love brought me out to a state I knew only for baseball bats, bourbon and the Derby.  My relationship with my then girlfriend grew stronger while depleting my faith in finding a job that could set me on my way to the classic young American dreams: marriage, house, kids, retirement, grand kids, death (death in a dream sounds creepy, but you get it).  Don't get me wrong, I made some wonderful friends, had some memorable times, ate some great regional food, drank lots of beer (a topic of another post), set off lots of fireworks (while drinking said beer), and came to appreciate a nook of the country written-off by at least my mom, if not most of the East Coast.

So, why start with this stroll into my past that wasn't so long ago?  I blogged then, posting almost everyday.  I wrote some of the deepest, most honest and intelligent paragraphs in my life on that blog, using the computers in the library across the street from our apartment in the podunkiest of podunk towns. However, unlike while in Kentucky, I have a full-time with benefits job that I rarely come home stressed from and definitely not wreaking of grease, we have internet in the house and I'm now married to the aforementioned girlfriend.  My job, coworkers and surroundings produced some angst, despair, frustration driven posts.  Still much healthier then getting drunk daily and taking things out on my girlfriend.  MUCH healthier.

I came to realize recently that that was truly my space and I miss it.  These social networking sites feel demanding of me to post my whit and my feelings via my status update, seemingly to quell all of my "friends" and that just isn't cutting it for me anymore.  Lately I've had a rash of thoughts, not rants or simple venting, but thoughts that made me happy to think and I just had to have another new place to put them. 

Yes, a friend told me about this.  Yes, I can't get too much more on a band-wagon that's cutting its ruts across America.  At least I stopped going to walmart.