Seeking joy and meaning in a joyless mind and meaningless existence

Friday, December 28, 2012

Best Wishes for a Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone all the best for a happy, safe and prosperous new year!!!
 
I have been on vacation with my entire family at my sister's home in Battle Creek, Michigan.  I brought along a bunch of personal papers to sort through and had plans to make a budget for the new year along with a lot of other long-overdue personal task.  Fortunately or unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) I haven't really been able to get to much of it done; however, I have spent the time drying out and reconnecting with my sobriety.  My drinking has been growing progressively worse over the past few months and has impacted my personal and professional lives.  I've been working through the physical tiredness and over-emotionalism (I cried while watching The Hobbit movie, for God's sake!) without putting a damper on my family visit.  (They're used to my sleeping a lot.)  I've even gotten out for a bit of exercise more days than not.
 
Hopeful for the New Year
 
As for myself, I have high hopes for 2013!
 
My goal is to transform my body and refocus my mind to the task of writing.  I have several projects with potential and worth pursuing, one of which necessarily involves collaboration...
 
 

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

What A Drag It Is Growing Old

I am the oldest person in my office.  I'm older than my boss and all of the attorneys I work for.  Growing old is depressing for a lot of reasons, but one thing that's really annoying is my outdated frame of reference and shared social context.  When I spill some of the drink I'm drinking on my shirt and say, "I still have my drinking problem," all I get are blank looks.  *sigh*

One of the attorneys told me today that he's been listening to '90's music because it reminds him of his childhood.  (!!!)  I told him the music that reminds me of my childhood is Captain & Tennille.  So now I've had "Muskrat Love" running through my head all afternoon...

Muskrat Susie, muskrat Sam
Do the jitterbug down in muskrat land...
{Captain & Tennille, "Muskrat Love"}

The Final Insult

And just now the cute little copy center guy called me "Sir," as in "Don't break a hip, sir."

Monday, December 3, 2012

The Indignity of Death

Time grinds on, dragging us in its wake.  We stumble, struggling to keep up, to keep ahead or, at least, to not fall too far behind.  And time just grinds on.

You never get to spend the kind of time you want with the people and creatures that you love.  And time just grinds on.  And then infirmity and death take them away from you, and they're gone from your life forever.  You feel the sting of realizing that you will never hold them, never speak to them again.  Made all the more monstrous by the prosaic nature of something which should be ineffably sublime, but isn't.  And time just grinds on.  Until one day you realize that even loss and sadness mean nothing and crumble like everything else before time's inexorable march.

"Even grief is vanity."
{Albert Camus, Caligula}