How the Hell did I Wind Up Here?

How the hell did I wind here?

It's been a while since I blogged... too damn long as I'm prone to do. Well... prone to do over the last several years. I used to blog way more often... but life has a way of getting complicated and that's impacted more things than I'd like to admit.

How the hell did I wind up here?

Heh... there's the crux of the situation, isn't it? 

Y'know, when I was a kid, I used to sit, gargoyle-style, and listen to the grownups talk when there was a cook out or a get together or whatever. I used to shut the hell up and listen to them tell their stories or do their "I-don't-want-to-gossip-but-I'm-going-to-anyway" gossip and just... absorb.

I learned a lot of things back then about my family... who, let's face it, are pretty damn tight-lipped about most things. Hell, it wasn't until I was around sixteen years old that I realized my paternal grandfather had taken a second wife. She had passed away of cancer and I guess I was too young to remember meeting her, but she was never mentioned. Never. Mentioned. Ever.

Why? Shit, man... I don't know. I guess my keep-your-damn-mouth-shut mentality comes naturally. Maybe it's in my DNA... I don't know. But it's there.

Time flies, doesn't it? When I used to stand by, concrete statue style, and listen to the grownups talk, I'd hear them, when they occasionally acknowledged me and engaged in conversation, tell me that time speeds up as you get older.

It damn sure does.

I have a beautiful, amazing cousin that's been working for the government for 15 years. It seems like only yesterday that she graduated college and took her first job.

I saw my grandfather a couple days ago and he reminded me the last time I saw him was at my grandmother's funeral... years ago.

I have a daughter turning 14 this year and a son that's 10.

My parents, as much as I love them (they are amazing parents and always have been), have reached a point where they're unable to hide their age. My mother (a cancer survivor) is on and off different meds and there's no way she can hide the effects they have on her.

My best friends... no... my brothers (whom I feel a terrible effect with time's passage), are raising their families and living lives and my tumultuous life has had an affect. I haven't had any "real" conversation with any of them in quite some time. 

I have a partnership at an advertising agency that I look forward to going to every day — even with the volatile atmosphere advertising invites in today's economic Nagasaki environment. I have fun at my day job, even though some days I want to climb into a tower with a high-powered rifle.

How the hell did I get here?

Life... life has a funny way of running away from you when you're not paying attention. It's been a while, but I wrote a blog a while back about tending your garden. I haven't been tending my garden at all. It's run amok and has gotten away from me. The weeds are high and the kudzu has taken toll.

I don't think... in my entire life... I've been as financially poor as I am right now. And it's taking every ounce of my willpower to keep it together most days, do the mental math on future bills, and plunge forward anyway.

Life is struggle... guaranteed. And until you give up, you don't give up. I'm doing the best I can in all regards. But sometimes, that's not enough.

I'm just trying to work back to a point where I can tend my garden. It's not enough sometimes to "want" to do things... sometimes you just have to plunge forward and do them, no matter what.

You have to tend your garden. But sometimes... you don't have enough tools or worse yet, you don't have the correct tools to do so.

I need better tools.

b

August 2013