I want to blog more often. I’m exhausted. I’m in the worst phys­i­cal shape I’ve been in since my early 20s. My job sucks. I’m poor. I don’t know where I’m going next. I’ve a road of bro­ken dreams behind me. Many of my plans and goals are all shat­tered and bro­ken beyond repair.

All that said, I really love my life more than I ever have before. I pur­sue on a reg­u­lar basis, what is impor­tant to me. I have spent the last two years mak­ing res­o­lu­tions, strength­en­ing my resolve, and get­ting knocked around for all my trou­bles. But I know it’s always worth it. Even though I don’t know what is next, or where I’ll go from day to day, I’m learn­ing how to live with that uncertainty.

I’m pretty sure that the whole aero­space engi­neer thing is out, even long term. I spent ages decid­ing if it was worth pur­su­ing, because if I want some thing badly enough, I will have it. While part of me still pines for it, I know what I truly want is to make the world a bet­ter place, to touch the stars, and cre­ate beauty. And I think I’ve found some ways to do that in a more direct path, even if it means finally let­ting go of some­thing that dear to me. I will just have to sat­isfy myself with mak­ing enough money in my old age to be a space tourist.

Also, in a semi-related note, it’s NaNoW­riMo. This is me get­ting back in the writ­ing frame of mind. I’ve got some seri­ous cob­webs to dust off, and some mus­cles to flex. It’s time to crawl out of the pro­tec­tive walls I’ve built so stur­dily around myself and relearn vuner­a­bil­ity. It’s going to hurt.

I freak­ing mean it, too.

Got hacked, had to change the pass­word a zil­lionty times, and had to dump the old theme. I haven’t cleaned up since, partly because I need to do more than just write a post. Work has been an adjust­ment. But I need to write, and I have a year more of the domain name paid for, so I’ll be back. If I write it here I’ll do it.

Much love to all my Peeps! (That joke was mildly funny when I meant to post this on Easter. Oh well.)

This Sun­day, my favorite radio sta­tion got the axe thanks to Citadel Broad­cast­ing.  I shouldn’t be sur­prised, because it seems as soon as I get attached to a sta­tion, it will be cut soon in favor of some­thing more cor­po­rate.  This time, the rumor is that WAPI, a local AM talk sta­tion, will move to FM.  This mir­rors the sim­i­lar fate of 105.5 the Vul­can last year.  I liked the Vul­can, too, and had just about decided to give up on Birm­ing­ham radio all together. I was going to just go to the inter­net. And then Live 100.5 won my heart.

To the best of my under­stand­ing (and faulty mem­ory — cor­rect me if I’m wrong on any of this, I’d appre­ci­ate it) Live 100.5 was built around a show, Reg’s Cof­fee­house, that has sur­vived a few incar­na­tions in the Birm­ing­ham mar­ket.  I’ve lis­tened to some ver­sion of Reg’s Cof­fe­house for ages, prob­a­bly all the way back since 1997.  Then his show was just a Sun­day a.m. spe­cial DJ on WRAX.  WRAX bounced around a lot, and even in 2006 became WJOX for a lit­tle while, a Citadel sport­stalk sta­tion but it didn’t work out, and the Birm­ing­ham pub­lic clam­ored for some­thing bet­ter to replace the old WRAX.  That some­thing became WWMM Helena, Live 100.5.

Reg (Scott Reg­is­ter) and I don’t always see eye to eye on music.  He loves John Mayer, for exam­ple, and con­sid­ers him­self at least partly respon­si­ble for that tool’s suc­cess.  But Reg always is about expand­ing your music col­lec­tion, try­ing new things, and not clos­ing your mind. He even played coun­try music (*gasp*) on an alter­na­tive sta­tion! Old stuff, new stuff, Reg was an hon­est DJ and all about the music. And the sta­tion was built on that con­cept, too. You could tell it, because it wasn’t a con­ven­tional lineup by any means. Tues­day nights were one of my favorites, because the DJs would get together and play new stuff and ask the lis­ten­ers to voice their opin­ions. If we liked it, we heard more of it, and things like it. If the lis­ten­ers gen­er­ally hated it, we weren’t sub­jected to it. Even if I hated some­thing they were play­ing, it was so cool because they actu­ally cared about the music and the lis­ten­ers. They weren’t out there just shilling the same old cor­po­rate music.

Right now the sta­tion hasn’t made the tran­sis­tion to WAPI. Instead, they’re just play­ing “auto­mated” music and stock com­mer­cials, no DJ per­son­al­i­ties involved. And it’s already pretty bad. Yesterday’s Fleet­foxes, Neko Case, Flam­ing Lips and Johnny Cash have already dis­ap­peared, as far as my obser­va­tion goes. There is hope, though, in the form of a hum­ble Face­book page. My fin­gers are crossed that a pub­lic out­cry will be heeded.

After that last whiny pity party of a post, I didn’t even want to look at this eff­ing blog any­more.  (My hand still hurts, by the way, but it’s no longer pur­ple or ginor­mous.) I decided to just wait until things felt right again, because I felt like it has been a plat­form for so much mis­ery that it is painful even for ME to come out here.  I know that peo­ple might be wor­ried about me, writ­ing a post like that and drop­ping off.  I was so down in Decem­ber.   The hol­i­days were bru­tal.  So, Dear Read­ers, I fig­ure it’s time to update you, and let you know that for the first time in a good while, I’m truly feel­ing great.  I’m not just smil­ing in the mir­ror and wait­ing for the mood to match it, then see­ing my own face and start­ing to cry.  I’m actu­ally for­get­ting about the damn mir­ror and liv­ing my own life again, and when I catch a glimpse of myself, it tends to be smirk­ing or mis­chevi­ous or in thought.  That’s more hon­est than just a smile any­way, at least for me.

Right now I’m focused on a job search and get­ting some things in order, so it’s going to be spotty, but I feel so much more like ME and I want to express some of that again.  So, here I am.  Time for another reboot.  I know many peo­ple hate New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions and the like, but it’s a nat­ural time to reeval­u­ate for me.  My birth­day, my wed­ding anniver­sary, and the New Year all come within three weeks of each other. It’s a time of look­ing over the past year, see­ing what has hap­pened, and how to con­tinue that path if it’s work­ing, or to change it, if it’s not.  I didn’t really con­sciously decide to change my atti­tude, though I’ve been try­ing to work on it steadily, but a switch seemed to flip for me on the last day of the year.  The emo­tional sig­nif­i­cance on mak­ing it through the year strength­ened me, and all the whin­ing and mis­ery kind of dropped off.  Yeah, since then I’ve had bad moments, but mostly I’ve felt con­fi­dent and opti­mistic again.

I wanted to start 2010 off with a bang, and I really man­aged to do most of what I wanted.  No fire­works, but there was a gor­geous round full moon the night of New Year’s Eve. It was a blue moon and an eclipse was vis­i­ble on the other side of the world, to boot.  My year would be start­ing with beauty.

On New Year’s Day, we had the tra­di­tional col­lards, black eyed peas, and I even added cab­bage in this year for good mea­sure. I wore a pretty new sweater, to show I wanted more of the same.  I didn’t do any clean­ing at all — so as not to sweep the good luck out, and also not to spend the rest of the year clean­ing up messes.  I had friends over, and we had a good time. The luck and money gods have not been slighted this year.  Hope­fully they will reward me with heaps of green stuff and luck in my endeavors.

I think there really is some­thing to start­ing the year off like that.   While the charms and tokens might not in and of them­selves bring the good luck, the atti­tude will, I truly believe.  If I start out think­ing, “2010 is going to suck as hard as 2009 did” — a Face­Book sta­tus I’d already read twice by noon Jan­u­ary first — then the prophecy might be self-fulfilled.  Yes, I know that the arena of uncon­trol­lables is out there, wait­ing to zap me.  I’m all too aware.  But I’ve sus­tained a good half a month of really good days.  I expect more to come.

As I was mak­ing my morn­ing cof­fee, I real­ized that I’d for­got­ten to post at all last night.  Red Chief was puny, and I was dis­tracted with try­ing to cheer him up.  Both of the boys and I watched Moose and Squir­rel in bed together until we fell asleep.  Did you know that Rocky and Bull­win­kle was around in 1959?  I didn’t, but when I real­ized that they were spec­u­lat­ing on the exis­tence of moon men, I had Chris wiki it for me real quick.

In the midst of all of that, I just for­got all about the blog.  I was furi­ous at myself when I real­ized, though.  I railed about how if some­one else had asked me to promise to post every day, I’d have done it.  But since it was a promise to myself, I broke it. Didn’t do the novel, no, so I’m going to stick with blog­ging, and still I don’t even make that. I’ve no idea why I don’t treat myself with the respect I’d treat oth­ers, but this is just another exam­ple, and typ­i­cal.  So close to being fin­ished, and I blow it. Even now, look­ing at the clock, I wanted to just say “screw it” and go on, not blog­ging for the rest of the month.

I guess I’m pretty burnt out of blog­ging right now, if I tell the truth.  I’m also strug­gling with other issues, and won­der­ing where the line between utterly stressed out and griev­ing and truly depressed lies.  Of course, if I decide I need more help, then I have to decide how to get it, what with the lack of income and all.  One day at a time.  I’m seri­ously sleep­ing too much. I sup­pose I should be proud of how well I have done, given the month, but all I saw was one more bro­ken promise.

I’m aggra­vated at myself, but I am not allow­ing the typ­i­cal “well, I blew it, let’s go the whole dis­tance” tantrum that I’d nor­mally throw to fully pun­ish myself.  I’m work­ing on that self-forgiveness thing.  It really isn’t that big a deal, if I look at it as if I’m another per­son.  When it’s me,“good enough” doesn’t seem to exist.  Right now tiny fail­ures ter­rify me any­how.  I need to work past that, because the only cure for that is inac­tiv­ity, which is unacceptable.