Tiger strike

Grief is such a strange animal...The closest thing I can compare it to is love. Both can strike you out of the blue, without much pretext or warning. I was driving home from work tonight after a typical busy Monday. The sun is out, it's pretty warm out, so I had the windows down. I wasn't thinking much of anything, other than following the audio book I'm currently listening to (Duma Key by Stephen King, if you care). Then bam- tiger strike from the old grief monster. Full on- tears streaming down the cheeks, and shortness of breath. Missing my Dad with every fiber of my being. Thinking on the adventure I'm going to embark on, and wondering what he would think.

It passed quickly, like a surprise thunderstorm. It left me shaken and tired. It burned through the rest of my energy, so all I had left is the desire to lay down. I had to make myself sit down and write this. All I want to do is turn on the TV and ignore the world. I will fight through for a while, I have dinner to make and a few other things, before I can rest my weary head. It's been over a year since we lost him. I hope that he found some peace.

Existential crisis

Talking to a friend the other day, he mentioned how sometimes his life felt pointless. Like what he did or didn't do wouldn't be important after he was gone. This struck a chord with me, as I think that it is a common feeling for a lot of people out there. This existential crisis is a symptom of the world we live in, where many of our jobs are trivial on the grander scale of things. Our society is so specialized that many of our jobs exist only to support a facet of modern life that is largely unnecessary. Take my current job for instance. I offer technical support for a point of sale software tailored to dry cleaners. Would things on a long term scale truly matter if suddenly dry cleaners didn't exist? Not really. If I wasn't here to do this job, would it really matter? Probably not in the grand scale. So how do you respond to this? What makes you get out of bed every morning?

I told him that was what made my work with Extra Life matter. My job is a means to an end. Because if I can make some child's pain a little less because they have somewhere to recover, that means I have impacted the world. Not in a big way, but in a way that I'm able to justify. It gives the struggles I have a little definition, and makes the hard times a bit easier to bear. The desire to be remembered is part of being a human, don't ignore it. Find something that makes your step a little lighter, that makes you stand a little straighter when you talk about. Be passionate about something.

One of my favorite quotes is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a great show if you've never watched it) - "The hardest thing in this world is living in it."

Cursed

Sleep, oh ye elusive beast...
you creep close and then skitter away before I can grab hold
tormentor, you seem so near.
the harder I try to capture you it's to no avail

Normally, right now, I'd be slumbering blissfully away. Yes it's only a little past 11pm but I'm an early bird, so I crash early. Not tonight. I went up to bed a few hours ago, tossed and turned for a few hours, and gave up. Too much running through my head.

Too many bills to pay, too many things to plan, too many worries. If there was some sort of digital readout on my brain, it would be in the red. It's a problem I've lived with for as long as I can remember. I get overwhelmed with things, my brain goes nuts and I don't sleep well for a while. Welcome to my own private hell.

Price to pay

Monday morning. In stereotypical fashion, I am, of course, dragging today. Patently unmotivated would be a fair term to use. I had a decent weekend. Saturday I was at my friendly local game store, Crossroad Games, to help them celebrate their 16th anniversary. It was fun, I ran a D&D game, which went really well, probably one of the best I've ever run. It felt good to flex my imagination and tell a story. I think the reading and writing I've been doing more of lately, have really awakened that part of me that has been lulled to sleep by the drone of the idiot box, where you don't have to think. It is invigorating to me, to tell a tell and watch as people you're telling it to get drawn in.

Imagination is a funny thing. I spend a lot of time suppressing it, because it invariably makes me imagine the worst possible outcome of any given situation. It's the thing that makes me unable to sleep with the closet door open. There's usually a price to pay for any talent. A lot of the fears I bear are direct results of the things I've read or heard over the years. I absorb them, unable to stop the runaway train of horrible images that railroad through my mind. There's always a price to paid for talents.

Ticking away

I managed to survive what was a very tough week of work. It's amazing how much that can take out of you. I didn't have the energy to do anything after work except eat some dinner and then watch a little TV and then pass out. Not a very productive week. I need this weekend to recharge the batteries a bit before it starts all over again.

Throughout it all, I still hear the clock ticking in the background. I'm still working on getting gear donations, not having a ton of luck so far, but I'm not really surprised at that all that much. I've been holding off on creating a gear list until I can find out if anything is going to be donated, but I think the time has come to at least put something down and start working on it.

It's only Wednesday

I'm sitting at my desk waiting for file transfers to happen. Another wonderful day of technical support. Some days I feel like the modern world and my day to day existence is eroding my soul, one megabit at a time. I have a window behind me in the office and I look out occasionally at the wider world. I wonder where I'll be in a year. I know what I'll be doing, probably walking. It seems really far away when it's mid-afternoon and there's still a ton of calls to wade through before I can go home. And it's only Wednesday.

My file transfer is over 50% now. Only a hundred megabytes to go. The speed of transfer seems to be our primary concern for everything nowadays. How fast can you get there? I don't want to get anywhere fast anymore. I want to see the sights. I want the experience of getting there.

Inspiration

A friend of mine sent me a Facebook message this morning, to let me know that I had inspired her and another friend of ours to start running and exercising more often. That was a little surprising to me, but after I thought about it for a bit, it made sense. Often when I see that someone else is making a change in their lives, it makes me want to follow suit. The changes I've made so far are fairly small, but they will be much larger in about 8 months or so. I'm glad that I was a positive agent for change to someone.

There's a lot of times when I don't see the impact that I have on the world, I'm just one guy who spends most days thinking what I do doesn't make much of an impact. There are billions of people in the world, and I don't have children to teach, or much of a legacy to leave behind. I know that's flawed logic, everyone has a legacy, but it is my emotional brain that runs the show a lot. My work with Extra Life and The Barbara Bush Children's Hospital is the thing that keeps that emotional, negative part of me in check. I can look back and say "Well, I didn't get much done, but at least I did that." And every time that I add another dollar to the amount I've raised, or brought someone else to awareness of what Extra Life is, it's one more tally in the positive column. Every check mark there is one more fear that doesn't paralyze me in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. If my legacy is the Tabletop Game Marathon continuing to be an event for years to come, I will rest easy. If in twenty years, I can look back at a series of pictures of me waving the Extra Life flag at various points along the Appalachian Trail, that will mean that all my struggles were worth it.

Find something that inspires you. Make a change. If not now, when?

Pretty old school

One of the things that I've noticed in writing this blog on a (semi) regular basis, is how good it feels to flex my writing muscles. This is the most writing that I've done for a long time or in actuality probably ever. It has also awakened my desire to read, I've been reading two different books as well as listening to an audio book in the car on my commute. All these things make my mind hungry for more. As a result, I dusted off a novel that I haven't touched in over a year, one that I really hope to finish. As I re-read what I'd written so far, it drew me in once again, made me remember where I was and where I wanted to go with it. I started working on it again as of this morning.

One of the things that I'll have ample time for on the trail is thinking. I hope that I can turn that into more writing. I'm not sure how I'll accomplish that, a smartphone is not ideal for composition, and a laptop is way too heavy and fragile to carry. Maybe just an old fashioned notebook will suffice. Might be an interesting experience to write that way again. I can't remember the last time I wrote something down long form. Pretty old school. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Have you tried turning it off and then turning it back on again?

Having spent the week just outside of NYC in New Jersey, it was a stark reminder of how nice it is to live where I do. Everything I saw in NJ was road, strip malls, apartments or houses that had postage stamp sized yards. Even at night, the world was awash with light and color and sound. We drove home late Friday night and it was about 1 a.m. when I was getting close to my home in Gorham. I looked out the window and was immediately surprised at how DARK it was outside. There were no lights out the window except for the stars.

I can't imagine living my life surrounded by so much all the time. I would imagine that it is a draining experience for your soul. Nothing recharges my batteries more than sitting on my deck in the darkness and just experiencing the peace and quiet of my section of the world. Next summer will be a cleansing of my soul. I will be disconnected from the "real world" of television and video games and the constant bombardment of media. I submit that I will be the one in the REAL world. A world largely unmarred by technology and human hands. As much as I love my toys, I feel like I need to unplug as much as I can. I work in IT and everything needs a reboot every once in a while.

Curse you, New Jersey.

First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates. I was in New Jersey all week last week for work and it was an exhausting experience. I simply didn't have the energy or time to get any updates in. Basically, everything that could go wrong over the course of the week, did.

But I'm back now! So here I am. I went for a 4 mile walk today, which felt pretty good. I spent some time playing some games this afternoon, kind of getting back into the swing of my "normal" life. Now that I'm back and in regular mode, I'll get back to my regular updates, I promise. 

Mountain Division Trail

I just finished a nice 4 mile walk on the Mountain Division Trail, which runs close to my house. The MDT goes from Fryeburg to Portland, a stretch of 52 miles. Not much compared to the AT but it is a great place to walk and bike. I ran into 3 deer, which was a nice surprise considering it was about 10am and broad daylight. 

It was also the first chance I'd had to get some exercise in the past few weeks being sick and all. It felt good to get out there again. I'm still coughing like crazy but that will pass. 

I'm headed to Boston Comic Con tomorrow morning and from there down to New Jersey for work for the week. Working in a dry cleaning plant in August should be a blast!