A day off, a day off, my kingdom for a day off

Boy, do I feel better. (Except for feeling like crap, thanks to the ducking and weaving of this hybrid alllergy-cold thing that has me trading off between like 6 kinds of medicine in an increasingly futile attempt to find an effective treatment.) I'm finding myself thinking about things -- money, career, dating, identity, etc. -- and realizing that I no longer have the ominous specter of the divorce floating in the background. I didn't really realize how much I was allowing the divorce to define me until I stopped doing it all the time. It's awfully liberating not to have to use it as the starting point for everything. I'm not clear of the whole affair, of course, and won't be for quite some time, but, oh, this is what moving forward feels like.
Also, boy do I feel better drinking less. I didn't really realize how much I was drinking, and how it was affecting me, until I cut back. The whole thing just kind of snuck up on me a bit at a time, a couple after work, a couple after work again, three or four turns into a six-pack on Friday, and so on, until I looked at my recycle bin and had to blink a few times. So no more drinking during the week, and all of a sudden, I'm in a better mood, less tired, more alert, and feeling miles more responsible. An entire trip downtown to see my friend perform and I stop at two beers and get home at a reasonable hour. It's like I cleaned my windshield and realized how dirty the damn thing was and how badly I was driving as a result. So, whew. That's much better.

How odd... People actually read (or at least have at some point read) this blog. That was unexpected. I can't possibly imagine why anyone would want to read this. Scanning old posts I always feel like I'm reading the ramblings of a malcontent teenager. I'm one whiny bastard. But if I've got that stuff floating around in my brain, best to unleash it on the spectacularly anonymous blogosphere and keep my public identity as a grown-ass man intact. If nothing else, it's an excuse to practice typing without being on a deadine.
I can't figure out why I sleep on my couch. I don't remember the last time I slept in my bed. Not that I pass out like the ne'er-do-well antihero in a cliche cop movie, mind you. I've moved my alarm clock (which is about to go to the great Kohl's in the sky and I can't wait because the thing was poorly designed in the first place and it was a gift from my ex-wife but on the other hand I don't want to have to buy another one) to the coffee table, along with the bulk of my bedtime reading (which consists of about seven books at any given time -- I like to have options). I make "the bed" every morning, and keep the room clean. I thought about sleeping in my bed a couple of times, but it just didn't seem right for some reason. Perhaps it's that by sleeping on the couch, I streamline my life just a bit, eliminating the bedroom, and I'm all about streamlining; perhaps it's that I bought the couch right after I moved into the apartment, because almost all the furniture in the house was my ex-wife's, and, dammit, it's mine; perhaps it's that the TV is in the living room and I can go to sleep watching DVD reruns of West Wing and Studio 60 and Californication; or perhaps it's that it saves time and money not having to wash the sheets, and I'm all about streamlining. Maybe when I move to Austin I should just take the couch and easy chair and rent out a room rather than taking up a whole one-bedroom or efficiency. That would be a terrific excuse to get rid of almost everything I own, which would be so fantastic that the mere thought gives me goosebumps. Not sure how the owners of the abode would take to the guitar(s), though.
My coworker keeps trying to find word games on Facebook at which she can best me and I keep carving her up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I'm starting to feel a little badly for how obnoxiously I beat her high scores. But it's AWESOME to be a bad-ass at something.

I am witty. I am educated. I am usually flippant. I am foul-mouthed, but would never, ever swear at someone because I'm upset with them. I am reticent but not shy. I am reserved but not insecure. I am introverted but not anti-social. I am, generally, quiet. I am a good listener. I can be passive agressive but I'm okay with that because it's less harmful than being physically aggressive. I like to get to the point. I am patient. I have learned to (almost always) defuse my temper. I love diversity and react to homogeneity with a degree of judgementalism that I find a little disturbing. I am attracted to brainy girls. I think glasses are sexy. I choose the path of least resistance as long as it leads to where I want to go. I have trouble following through, but I'm okay with that because when I'm on, look out. I love how introspective I am. I am uncomfortable with polish. I could never date someone who didn't like "The Princess Bride." Seriously. I don't say the pledge of allegiance. I detest Robert Browning. I want less. I hate being angry. I refuse to be an emotional crutch for my family. I will never get there, and thank God for that.

Lines written a few feet beside by loud-ass neighbors

Book recommendation of the Day: The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Explains the four agreements you make with yourself to achieve fulfilment. Very empowering. Useful for tearing down old constructs and building new ones.

Well that holiday season sucked. I drank too much, wasted too much time, wrote, worked out, and read too little, frittered away most of my alloted sixteen days doing I don't know what, and did almost no work. Hence the three hours of work a night all this week to catch up. I hope I've learned my lesson, young man. No more stretches of unstructured time for me. Apparently I can't handle it. New Year's resolution: impose order in my life when none exists. I suppose sixteen days of depression is worth it if it means I learn never to go down that road again. I feel like I survived some sort of crucible, which is an invaluable experience, but only if you never repeat it.

The silver lining, it seems, is that I've knocked something loose, and for the first time I really feel like I'm grieving the loss of my marriage. I thought I had, but really, in retrospect, I was angry, or sad because I was lonely, or feeling like a failure, or impatient to move on, or frustrated. But now I feel grief. Good old-fashioned healthy grief. I feel like I'm just now realizing that I'm divorced, and that that means that I have a new life. I feel like I've come from a funeral, like I'm honoring a loss, honoring all that was good about what was, respecting the cyclicality of life, and accepting that all that comes must go, and go where I cannot. Like I'm no longer tethered to my marriage. Which works out nicely, because my ex-wife is finally taking over the mortgage and the house officially. All that's left now is to strike out for greener pastures, and find the new me.

Or maybe I'm just not getting enough sleep and it's making me a bit loopy.

I feel like a failure. I keep thinking that I'm more or less over the divorce, save some residual anger and frustration, but an evening with six college friends who all have houses and marriages and babies, and all I can think about is how I have a failed marriage, failed finances, and a completely unimpressive job. It did get me to the gym for a couple of frustration- and self-loathing-fueled workouts, though the irony is of course that I want nothing to do with a woman to whom I appeal because of physical attractiveness. I guess it's more that I try. Hell, I don't shave, I cut my own hair, and I buy my clothes on the clearance rack, so I don't really think I can be categorized as superficial. That doesn't really matter to me anyway. What I really want is to know who I am. I used to be Kelly's husband. That was my identity. I know now what it means to really put yourself out there, so to speak. I based my existence on putting her first, and she disappears. It's not so simple as a feeling of rejection, or even of failure. It's a complete obliteration of the universe. Not an obliteration of existence, but of the world itself. It's like closing your eyes and opening them and finding yourself in a world you've never seen before, with totally new laws of physics and survival. Or like renting a video game and not getting the instruction manual. And not a simple video game, either. A real-time strategic war simulation, where the only way to learn is to jump in and play and start clicking on buttons, while you get attacked from all sides by enemy forces, all of whom know the rules, so your only option is to sit there and get pounded and hope to pick something up here and there. That's what it's like.

I have $600. At least after I get done paying my entire checking account to fix my car I will. That's it. I think that was how much Will Smith had in The Pursuit of Happyness before he ended up homeless. I'll get paid Thursday night, but for now, I have $600. If my car breaks again I can either afford to go to school or to fix my car. Meanwhile, my mother, who rolled about $30,000 of my student loans (that I didn't know I had) into revolving credit, says that she will use her bonus at work to remodel her backyard. Which she already remodeled. Instead of paying down her delinquent debt. Or, failing that, paying down the portion of my credit debt that she still pays because she made such a mess of it that I can't make all the payments on my own. I think I need to be reminded that there are worse things than being poor. And, for that matter, that I'm not poor. But it would be nice not to be tethered to debt.

O Melville Where Art Thou

I think I'm moving to Austin.

Now what to do about my job?

Ha! That's a totally (well, okay, not totally) new train of thought. Ha!

I'm also going to begin reading Moby Dick in a few minutes. I'm terribly excited. And I love that I'm a big enough nerd to be excited about reading Melville. A person who gets excited about reading Melville has no business living in New Braunfels, Texas. I should be living in a city where people know who F. Scott Fitzgerald is and the streets are paved with books. Or at least the Fitzgerald thing. And I'm still going to buy the three bottles of liquor. *crosses fingers* But it'll have to wait until after payday, because apparently blowing a head gasket is a little on the expensive side.

Lat pulls, Moby Dick, and Ally McBeal

Scatter-shooting while wondering what happened to certain highly-paid Dallas Morning News sportswriters. . .

I think I'm moving to Austin.
(beat)
Has the cycle finally been --
Or maybe not.
Dammit.

Now that my grad class is over for the semester, I finally have enough time to get back to the gym. And I am sore as crap. I have every intention of getting in two ass-kicking hours at the gym every day over the break. I have come to terms with the fact that I flat-out suck at working out, and will never, for a variety of reasons, have anything even resembling an impressive physique, but going to the gym regularly does insure that my pants will continue to fit and that I can take off my shirt at the pool. Most importantly, however, it gives me a bizarre boost of mental energy. I assume that for most people this manifests itself as sustained energy throughout the day, getting up more easily in the morning, etc., and I enjoy a modicum of those benefits as well, but mostly I suddenly find myself with the gumption, the pluck, the audacity, really, to, say, attempt to conclude the semester in my literature elective, the one filled with random students who needed a second period class, by teaching Othello. Take that, teenagers. Do your worst. And also to read Moby Dick, so as not to have to look embarrassed every time one of my literature professors says during class, "I assume you have all read Moby Dick?"

There was an episode of Ally McBeal once in which, at the beginning, Ally is caught by a co-worker buying some sort of prophylactic. The rest of the episode is comprised of the office speculating about why she might be buying prophylactics, and with whom she might be using them. She explains to a friend at the end of the episode that when you buy a lottery ticket, you have no intention of winning the lottery. Yes, technically someone does win the lottery, each and every time, but the odds are so astronomical that you'd have to be delusional to think that you would win. But you buy it anyway, because it just feels good to act as if you have hope. She bought the prophylactic because it was her lottery ticket. In that vein, I'm going to buy a bottle each of red wine, white wine, and, I don't know, vodka (and some cranberry juice or something to go with it). You know, just in case someone happens to want a drink. It'll be my lottery ticket. *crosses fingers*