helping hands

Well, I didn't just "sit there", I indeed got up and got away from the computer and did stuff, then last week happened.  Every evening was filled with something scheduled and by the time I got to sit down I was too tired to get back up.  This computer is still poisoning my productivity, sitting on a warm sofa on a hot evening, sweating.  The house hunt started out well; yep, got a loan so here we go.

Remember that scene in the movie "Labyrinth" where the girl is falling down a shaft of "helping hands"?  Yeah, that's about the feel right now . . . down we go, then stopping to talk to the hands helping us, then down, then stop because we realize some hands further down will reach in our pockets to take our cash, sooo, do we continue down quickly or slow it down?  Life is well personified by that shaft with hands.  Some hands help, others take, other push you on your way, no questions asked, no stopping you, some giving you a high-five, then one flips you off.

OK, so let's see where we're taken.  I'm a bit frustrated, a bit scared, a bit anxious, a bit of everything a guy my age in this situation might have going on inside of him.  Deep breathes and beer for now.

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.