I was wondering when you'd show up!

Hey! It's crippling doubt! Buddy! Where have you been these past weeks?! It's been lonely without you lurking around. I've been lazily skipping through my new life, feeling on top of the world, braver than ever before without you. You can imagine how hard that was to get used to, so I'm relieved to have you back weighing me down. Like a mean, little yoda-type creature gripping my shoulders, training me with sage words "Too old, you are." and "You, no one wants." Reuninted, and it feels no good, my familiar disease.

How is it that I can see this part of me makes absolutely no sense part of the time, and the rest of the hours be completely certain of my worthlessness. I feel like a child of a broken home where one parent tells me I'll never amount to anything, then the shared custody switches and the other half reminds me that is a bunch of ridiculous nonsense, reminds me I'm special and awesome and gives me a juice box. But these caretakers are all in my head pushing chemicals and images and words around my noodle to keep me a confused, middle-aged bullying victim of my own damn thoughts.

I just got to ride this out, maybe watch some Mr. Rogers clips on YouTube, and press on until the sensible part of me comes to take me to the zoo or something.

Funemployment

This morning, I woke up for the second time, an unproductive resident of Los Angeles, wondering what to do with myself. This feeling is strangely alien and disturbing, having worked steady at one or more jobs since the age of 14, downtime doesn't come easily to me. Yesterday, I filled the void washing my roommates entire closet and picking up litter from his floor like community service for a punishment of my own sentencing.

My first instinct (after cleaning, that is) passed down from a long lineage of tireless farmers and diligent homemakers, was to go online and immediately look for work of any kind. My muscle memory took me through all of the graphic design positions on Craigslist, filling me with a familar dread. Yesterday, after fullfilling my only mandatory requirements of the week by moving all my belongings into public storage before lunch, I instinctively froze in front of a 'help wanted' sign in front of a tiny sea food restaurant. And I don't know the first thing about the preparation or service of sea food, and I don't much care to learn, either.

Do I need a job right now? Not really. My bills are up to date, I have enough money saved to get by for a while and I've been sustaining on the same bag of Korean BBQ take-out since my plane touched down. So the only thing pushing my need to work is me.

As the beautiful looking, former reality TV show chef said in the booth next to me at the coffee shop said "Do what you love and you never work a day in your life." Cliche, I know, esspecially for someone whose main passion is Beschamel sauce, but I've been "working" non-stop since I can remember and frankly, I'm sick of it. So today I wander my new home, determined to fill my time with new creative thought and not the thoughts of failure for finding myself in a period of societally-deemed unproductive self-reexamination, determined not to fall back into old patterns of doing what is expected of me, not doing what I love.

Yep, I think that's what I'm going to do today.
That and catch a matinee of Man of Steel.

Feeling strangely calm

Congratulate me, I'm homeless!

No! It's really alright. I meant to do it! It's not by unfortunate circumstances, but by the calculated (albeit, perhaps unwise) choice to ditch the life I had settled into and settled for, to chase the unknown. Being the age that I am, I guess you could say I'm getting a head start on my mid-life crises. Or perhaps a delayed outreach to 'find myself' that really should have happened all the times I dreamed of running away in the past 20 years. Anyway, it's happening. My job is almost done. My apartment is home to someone else now. Hell, even my cat has gone on to better things! For the foreseeable future, it's just me and a couple of suitcases and a misguided yearning to go west and try something new.

A couple of days ago, I was in a coffee shop next to a threesome of an organized group of graphic designers. While I was paying bills online and emailing my mom, they droned on about websites and fonts, and this and that, and audiences and aesthetics, the customer and the kerning... In my head I was screaming, "Oh Good Grief, who gives a rats batooty?!" Even before it dawned on me that that IS me! -Soon to be 'former me', in my defense. But that's my life so far by trade. I move other people's photos and words and ideas around and create something entirely not my own. The banality of hearing the language of it as a fly on the wall of a Dunn Brother's made me feel briefly angry.

However, as of a week from today, that is my former self, facing a future-self that is not blank, but a white-washed canvas with a few ill attempts at greatness buried below the surface. At the same time I feel the physical aches of my road so far and the mental lightness of making a childish decision. We'll see which one wins in the end.

At the moment, I'm a house guest - drinking someone else's booze, using someone elss washing machine, walking someone else's dog at a point in my life where I know for a fact that some may judge me on my lack of material wealth and see the lack of production of my womb as an unfortunate result of  unfortunate circumstances.  But, as I've learned with age, my friends, comes orneriness, and I don't care what some think anymore. Actually, I have a feeling some people might be secretly jealous I can pick up and start over, and that's good enough for me.