Someone pass the ketchup or is that katsup? I don’t know. Either way I’m terribly behind on the writing front. So much so that I have no idea where to start or how to make it cohesive. Maybe snippits are the way to go. I’m not sure. We’ll roll the dice and see what we get, a rant, a rave, a laugh, a cry maybe, who knows.
It’s a new year and that time where people make all these resolutions to do things differently and end up still doing the same stuff anyway. Example… Why must I see Oprah on CNN for a half an hour whining about how she’s back up to 200+ pounds when… funny she has lost this weight how many times before?? you know how. Get off your ass and do the work. I don’t stay at the weight I’m at by eating Doritos and sitting on the couch watching afternoon talk shows. Funny, I do the work, no resolution required. Okay, maybe this sounds a bit harsh, but there I was at the gym, sweating it out on the elliptical then rowing machine while seeing her on CNN with the headline “Oprah Struggles With Weight Gain” – really??. I don’t have a full time chef or trainer (or full time surgeon on retainer that puts the little band on, who’s to say), I just get up and go. Maybe I go a bit to hard on the celebs, but jeezis… give me a break. They’re in your face and you can’t escape them. But, this little blog is not about celebs is it.
This is about the new year, new starts, new things to rant about (hopefully, because frankly the uggs are grating on me), new places and new peeps. It’s about me (focus jeff-fa-fa). Last year wasn’t the hardest year I’ve faced but it was up there. Let me learn ya something (picked that up from a movie this weekend, bonus if you know which one)… That old saying that the grass is always greener is a truckbed full of shit- er manure. In the beginning I was stressed and in the vortex of grump everyday, but the grass was not greener in the land of quiet, peopleless, boredom. I will take doped-up, drunk people, phone ringin off the hook, paperwork up the ass, crotchety old timers who “didn’t do it”, grumpy-ass coworker and crazy people who want their license yesterday- over three phone calls a week, staple pulling then collating, psycho people with invisibugs, fake shiny-happy politically correct until you want to scream obscene and offensive things, bored off my ass any day. It took a couple months to realize what was happening but when the realization hit… it hit hard. The spiral downward was a ride I was unprepared for. So the other stuff wasn’t handled with my usual sense of humor and look-at-the-big-picture approach. It took the better part of the year to learn that sometimes the grass in your comfy little pasture isn’t grass at all. It’s more like a field of thistle or milk weed (maybe I did get something out my time with the farm geeks :). The relationship you worked so hard to keep wasn’t yours in the first place. In order to keep yourself, to be able to feel the sun, you had to let it go. Way, way easier to say… but it can be done. And you can keep all your favorite woodland friends while removing the weedy parts- no heavy herbicides are necessary. Sometimes you even get lucky enough to find there is still some grass hiding out. You can still enjoy a walk without your shoes now and again (but wear some flip-flops). I know, I can get all crazy with the metaphors. I’ve gotten more than one “is that about me?” phone call. The reality is that the names get changed and the not so innocent get buried in the mire or is that roasted on the pyre? For all intents and purposes I write for my sanity. I just happen to let you peek in. That can be painful when I realize the one that hurt me will read it on purpose to see what I said.
I lost much this past year, maybe not physically, but mentally the toll was palpable. In the end I gained far more. I lost a position at a job I loved, at a place I believed in. It was stressful and at times I hated the stress. More than once (or twice) I got frustrated with grumpy, old, set in their ways, government employees with “not my job” mentality. I took the first thing offered and that’s not always the best idea. I was bored out of my gourd and well… you know. The lessons were big and hard earned. Boredom is far more taxing on the spirit than stress. I moved in and out of the psycho landlady’s house in the span of 25 days. I’m not even gonna attempt to give a reader’s digest condensed version of this… read all of April 08. But make sure to align your chi and fung your shui first. I wouldn’t want you to hurt anything. Realizing that a relationship you put so much time and effort into is going to fail, is all the things you read about and hear about on tv. It’s heart breaking and gut-wrenching. But I was lucky. I lost a lover and though it took some time to sort out, gained a friend. This doesn’t happen often, almost never. I still have moments of doubt but they are moments. Moments are fleeting. In the end all was not lost, letting go meant being open to something old being new. Sharing a relationship with someone who knew my lifetime of roller-coaster rides holding the hand of someone who wasn’t holding my heart. He’s holding my heart. Applying the salve to so many layers of wounds and scars. So here I am, with a new job- throwing up numbers at rapid fire speeds, a new place- no shui or fung required and entertaining a necessity, new peeps- extraordinary man, amazing friends (well, they aren’t so much new as a reminder that all should be treated as such) and a new attitude. Okay the attitude isn’t so much new as it is changing toward the better. And so it begins…
