In the spring, I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. -Mark Twain
I’ve been circling around my blog for the last few months like a vulture to prey. I know that I should update because so much has happened since we closed on the house but I can’t find the will (as it were) to do the actual writing. So as the dead prey decomposes, so does this blog.
It would seem that my life is in flux, our life is in flux, though we have permanency (we closed on the house on 1/7/11, moved 1/13/11, TheHusband’s birthday), I have some sort of an income (I’m now working as an adjunct librarian at our local community college ) and our long laid plans are finally coming to fruition. We have started plotting our edible (fruit/veg/herb) and non-edible (flowers/shrubs) garden. I submitted a short story to a local contest. The pug, Ms. Wednesday, has had a few health scares but those seem to be under control. We are not poor, by anyones standards, and can enjoy the luxuries of roof over our head, clean water in our taps and the ability to purchase food. It’s hard to complain about our first world issues (shoes recently ordered were not the same color as on the website; I can only find our favorite bottled water in plastic bottles, not glass; etc) because in the larger scheme of things, they seem so trivial. So stupid.
I know the reasons TheHusband has been restless: this winter has been long (we woke this morning to find a dusting of the white stuff everywhere and it has been officially spring for a week) and most (if not all) of his hobbies are based out of doors. Cabin fever? Maybe. Lack of constant sunlight? Very much so. After living in California for over a decade, shuffling off to the greys of Michigan is a switch his body is not prepared for. He needs to feel the dirt between his fingers, eating the fruits of his labors.
We are depressed and that depression feeds back and forth to the other. I’m tired of being cold, of wondering when we will have a day when the sun will be out and it will BE warm and not an illusion as it is today. Regrets of why I, we – us, did not pursue living somewhere south or warm. Friends on social networks talk about flowers blooming, wearing skirts and flip-flops and all I can think of wrapping up in layers of clothing and drinking hot beverages to keep myself warm, inside and out.
In flux.
How to describe, then, when on the surface everything looks fabulous but you’re in misery? Misery is probably too strong of a word, more like conscious of the missing element. Something is missing and has been long before we made the move, bought the house, obtained the job. I’ve talked with friends who also feel it, that sense of self that seem to have locked itself away for awhile. Is it, then, a search for self? Everything I have long worked for is finally coming together, do I simply just need a new big life project to feel happiness? Maybe. It is, perhaps, about being centered about what it is I’m looking for? Probably. I have found that I am not alone in feeling as if they are missing the element of something in their lives when everything else is robust and happy. But we don’t want to talk about it – not to each other, not in our blogs, not to agony aunts. We keep it bottled up until we burst forth like an uncorked bottle of soda that has fallen. Some of it is about finding the center of ourselves, others it is for a search for some kind of meaning. The internet was to bring us close together, to commune with those like us and yet, when it comes to the inner parts of our soul, we hide and seek because retribution of differing opinions on these topics can be brutal. But it seems that for all the social networking we do to be connect with others, at the end of the day we are still alone in some fashion or another.
I wonder why that is? No one has an answer. Bourgeois, aging Generation X syndrome. Far too young for AARP, too old to think waking up in my own drunken vomit is a good thing. A slew of generation problems that go beyond the basics. To harp on comes off as snot nosed, spoiled Western brat. To ignore, causes distress and pain.
That is my confession.
