my emotional well-being

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Hidden Reserves

July 30, 2010 in Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | No comments

I’ve been searching for energy lately. It’s been rough. Buying this house and working on it and the transitions at work–I’m finally appreciating just how burnt out I was getting. So the past few weeks I’ve just been pretty wiped out. If you’ve run into me, then probably that’s been pretty apparent.

But things are calming down. As I type this the asshole contractor who I’ve been fighting with is replacing the shit tile job he did in my bathrooms. This is a relief. My third bedroom is ready to go, and I may now begin the hunt for Roommate #2. This is also a relief.

I take a measure of pride in myself whenever I pull through a tough stretch, and this will count as one. It’s not epic or legendary, but it has yielded some very tangible results.

As I cool off and prepare to resume a more normal routine, there’s something I’ve been thinking about: vigor.

I miss the vigor of my younger days. I mean, one of my friends at work has been emailing me this morning talking about how crazy her week has been: staying up late, getting up early, always busy and basically running on fumes. I miss that. Well I miss some of that. I don’t really need to go back to my “4 happy hours a week plus 2-3 dance clubs on the weekend” days. But I do miss the energy that propelled me through it.

When I hit a rough patch like lately… man, it just makes me feel like an old man sometimes. I guess this is life past 30.

But I hate feeling worn out like that, so my big goal for the next couple weeks is to just be more energetic. Maybe a few tweaks to my routine. Maybe some more time in the gym or some healthier eating. Maybe just being a little more social.

And maybe that sounds a little cheesy. But sometimes this is the best thing that life can offer you: a big cheesy goal.

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Routines

June 22, 2010 in Film and Television, Home Ownership, Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | 1 comment

Generally speaking, I’m a fan of routines.  Regular, predictable events and actions that string days together easily and seamlessly.  They empower the imagination in an inverse sort of way: I can easily imagine, for example, what my next Monday will look like.

Perhaps that thought is a little disturbing: the looming specter of the Monday next.  But really, it’s only a negative if your days are negative.  Do your days routinely suck?  Then maybe you should make some changes.  Most of my days are good, or at the least, they definitely aren’t bad.  So I’ve few complaints.

That imagined visage of a comfortable, routine day is seldom as warm as when displaced.  I get this when I go on long vacations.  At a certain point I get homesick and long to return.  And I’ve felt a little bit of that in a strange way lately.  Moving, house shopping, packing, unpacking, and constantly working on the house have me so displaced from my usual self that I’ve been longing for some normality.  I can’t stand living out of boxes.  The other night, as I was crashing, I felt an aching desire to thumb through one of my books before I fell asleep, but the book was buried in any one of a dozen boxes.  What is the point of owning books if you don’t return to them on occasion to remember their treasures?

Still, though, I’ve managed to weird myself out a little.  One habit that I never wanted to become a habit is television.  If there’s one form of background noise that I positively can’t stand it’s television.  Whenever I’m at a parent’s house, the television is incessantly blaring.  At my father’s it’s always on in the background.  At my mother’s, she and her husband are interminably glued to it.  Either way, I hate it.  I never wanted to be a “tv person.”

But one of the most annoying things about my move was that I got behind on my shows.  “My shows” see there I said it.  I’m deliberate about what I watch, and I always DVR it so that I  can skip the commercials.  But still.  I feel that I’ve become a shade of my parents in this way.

Now this isn’t a new concern of mine, but what surprised me about the temporary interruption was the realization of how important these shows are to my relaxation.  I mean, they’ve really become my decompression routine.  When I get home from an eleven hour day at the office (or even a nine hour day), I queue up one of my shows and chill out.

Partly this is good.  I’m glad I’ve found an outlet.  But at the same time, I don’t like the feeling that television is necessary.  I’d like to think that I could cancel my cable subscription at any time and with few regrets.

So this is a goal for me to work on this summer.  I want some new routines.  Routines that feel a little more active.  It’s going to be tough.  Trueblood just started back up, as did Top Chef, and Louis CK’s new show starts soon.  Oh, and did we mention Entourage?  Oh and MadMen will be here before you know it.

You see what I mean?  You see!  It’s an endless spiral.

I’m hoping to get some major unpacking done this week, and once those things are settled, we need to focus on some new routines.  Even if they’re old ones revived.

Oh, but I am still planning a fitting Treme wrap-up post here.  Both Treme and the Tudors just wrapped up.  All I really have to say about the Tudors is “Henry VIII with a conscience” sounds more like a thought experiment than basis for a tv show, but the writers made it work.  Recommended.

Treme, now.  I’ve been thinking about Treme.  And you should be watching it.  I feel guilty even calling what David Simon does “tv” anymore.  It’s just so damned good.

But more on that later.

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Slow Motion

May 28, 2010 in Home Ownership by Cheshire Splat | 9 comments

Everything is happening slower than I want it to.  I’m glad that I bumped the move up a week, because it’s taken a lot longer than expected.  There are still a few things left at the apartment that I need to pick up (I left my pictures hung because I didn’t have time to spackle the walls yet).

Just the move itself took twice as long as expected.  I do this thing right…. people, they usually assume I’m in my 20s.  I look young.  And sometimes I feel like I’m still in my 20s.  But after loading and unloading that truck several times this weekend, I felt like I was 50.  Despite having more muscle tone than I used to, I’m not the young buck I once was.

And now that I’m in the house, everything is taking forever.  My list of things I hope to get done this weekend is impossible:
- Reseal grout in kitchen
- Chop down branches in back yard
- Get the deck ready for company
- Get my lawn mower and mow the lawn
- Paint my basement
- Sort boxes and unpack more
- Hit up IKEA and put together some furniture
- Install CO detectors

Heck, I know there’s a bunch I’m forgetting.

I guess part of home ownership is learning to take things one step at a time.

Despite what sounds like griping there, I’m sleeping better than I have in months.  Oh speaking of sleeping, I now need to purchase a split box spring for my bed.  So there’s another thing to do this weekend.

And this is, of course, in addition to this weekend’s social events.

I guess we’ll see how it all goes.  One step at a time…

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To the Asshole Who Rifled through my Car Last Night

May 16, 2010 in Open Letters by Cheshire Splat | 4 comments

Dear, Asshole Who Rifled through my Car Last Night,

Thank you.  Thank you, well first, for not taking anything.  Yes, you found nothing of value in the car.  I could, perhaps should, stand upon my soapbox here and upbraid you for not even taking a moment to look through the mound of CDRs, the absolute wealth of music, days and days of it if played end to end–I could lambast you for the ignorant musical taste that lead you to so quickly pass up a horde of treasures.  You had your pick.  No one (apparently) was watching.  I could not even have found myself angry if a thief had broken into my car only to purloin the most choice album in the deck.  The CD might as well be a loaf of bread, in my mind.

But no, you took nothing.  Because, of course as a city boy, I keep nothing of value in an unattended car.  But I shouldn’t really be thanking you for not taking what was not yours.  And I’m not even going to thank you for putting most of my stuff back after you’d pawed through it.

My thank you is a little more nuanced than that.

You see, asshole thief man, sometimes I feel paranoid.  Well, not literally paranoid, but I feel like I’m acting paranoid.  I check the lock on that car door often.  Very often.  More often than I do most things, when you consider it.  If I come and go from the car two to three times a day, that’s four to six times (or more) that I’ve double checked the lock.  That’s more than I floss or brush my teeth.  I have one of the little clickers, like most people, and I “click click” ”click click” until I am beyond certain that the car is secure.

But last night, oh last night.  I don’t have to tell you, my asshole thief man friend.  You know.  I even remember, as I was walking in, my arms draped with empty boxes, I remember asking myself, “did I lock the door?”  The keys were in my pocket, I’d have to put everything down again to check it.

“No, of course you locked the door. ” I said to myself, “You always lock the door.”

As you discovered, this was a mistake.

But as mad as I am at you–and I am fucking mad at you–I can only take it so far.  Because you, by finding my humble unlocked car the one time I left it unlocked, you have reminded me that I am not paranoid after all.  I am not some crazy person, fearful of the unruly hordes waiting in the shadows for me to turn my back, if only momentarily.

No, I am merely engaging in what my computer nerd friends would call “best practices.”

So thank you for that, Mr Asshole Thief Man Who Rifled through my Car Last Night.  I needed the reminder.

–CS

PS: I hope you got ran over by a car as you were fleeing my neighborhood after your spree.

PPS: And not just run over, but run over by a half asleep truck driver who didn’t hear the bump, and who dragged you for two miles before you flopped off of the fender into some ditch.

PPPS: And not just any ditch, but a rat and were-dog infested ditch, where you were slowly eaten alive by vile rats and were-dogs, which as you know, resemble dogs but eat their prey like a fly does, by vomiting corrosive bile upon your face and licking it up.

PPPPS: But as you know vile rats and were-dogs will not consume everything, so you were of course still alive come daybreak.  With just enough left in you to see the crows and gizzard necked vultures swoop down to pluck out your beady eyes.

PPPPPS: And also your testicles.

PPPPPPS: And then I hope you got run over again.

PPPPPPPS:  Asshole.

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Are You Happy?

May 10, 2010 in Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | 2 comments

So, I was having some beers at the bar with a friend of mine this weekend, and he posed this question to me. “Are you happy?” Although, he definitely did mean it in a general sense, it was presented within a context. We were talking about dating. My friend is living the settled down coupled life, while I’m living the single bachelor’s life. Most of my friends are settled down into a relationship these days, so this exact contrast pops up often.

And so we were kind of going back and forth about our respective lifestyles, and he just asked me. “Well… are you happy?”

The answer is yes. Yeah, totally, but that’s not really the point I’m looking for.

I sometimes wonder about people’s need to be in a relationship. I remember being younger and feeling that need, sometimes feeling it with a crushing weight, and I remember being so miserable at those times. That’s not to say that I haven’t experienced the upshot of those feelings: the intense love and intimacy of another person. But looking back on those younger days, I see myself so out of balance. Swinging from one extreme to another.

My friend was asking the question out of general, genuine curiosity. It wasn’t a loaded question or anything. But sometimes I wonder what people think. They’re all settling down. I mean pretty soon most of them will be married, and half of them will have kids. And here I am, single as they come. What the hell’s going on with this guy, you know?

I guess one could take the “the 30s are the new 20s” attitude and embrace it. I’ve no desire to relive my 20s, so I’m not particularly fond of that adage. But on the flip side, when I think about settling down and having kids and stuff, that’s definitely not something I want in my life right now. I mean, the neighborhood I’m moving into, it’s all young parents. I will be glad to stand out as the young single guy in that crowd.

But what gets me about the whole settling down thing, is that I’m bothered by the notion that happiness can only come to someone who’s settled into a long term relationship. A marriage, generally. You have to be married to be happy. Nevermind my pro-monogamy-but-anti-marriage friends, who hate that marriage dogma. I’m just talking any kind of LTR. You have to be with someone to be happy.

Well, do we? I’m not so sure about that. In fact, I think that if you can’t be happy with just yourself, then how good can your marriage really be? I’m a child of divorce, and I watched both of my parents find themselves in their second marriages. Not their first. In the first marriage, my parents had no idea who they were as people. And I mean, not to sound like the asshole cynic, but among people getting married right now, how many of those marriages are going to last? I know that when I finally settle down and get married, the prospects are going to be good. But that’s because I wanted to wait on that. I wanted to be happy with me before I even considered being happy with an “us.”

So can one be happy being single in their early thirties? Hell yes. It can be freakin’ awesome.

Now. All of that said, though, I am looking forward to being able to date normally when my life settles down in a few weeks. Part of the truth here is that I’ve been too pre-occupied with work lately to really even be available. I don’t want to keep that up. I guess we’ll see how that goes. Hell, I just might have a date set up for this week, even, which is probably not a very good idea, but oh well. I need to get out of my apartment full of boxes at some point.

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Decompressing

April 22, 2010 in Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | 1 comment

Got my first good night of sleep in weeks last night.  I’ve finally started to destress.  Going through the mortgage application process has felt like an unwelcome trial by fire.  In order for me to make a grab at the housing tax credit, I really had to do things last minute.  I don’t like going into something this big with, well, what seem to me like big unknowns.

Things seem to be falling into place, however.  Deep sigh of relief.

It’s a strange feeling, going through this transition.  It’s April right now, but I’m living in June.  July really.  All there is for me to do is keep my head down and keep logging extra hours at work until I get settled in.  And then:  bam!  Volte face.  Suddenly I can get back to having a normal routine.  A social life.  Free time to get back into a few things.

I’ve been bouncing around a lot over the past few years, and it’s odd.  Instead of feeling constrained by purchasing a home, I feel this looming sense of freedom.  When I look at my new neighbors, I should be afraid.  They’re like me, but aged a little.  Kids, beer bellies.  They’re happy, but they look tired.  The toll of family life is clear.

But I don’t feel headed that way.  I don’t have kids.  Hell, I don’t even have a steady girlfriend.  With this whole living situation sowed up for the next several years, I feel free to focus my attention on other parts of my life.  I can do whatever the hell I want.

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Collaborations

March 18, 2010 in Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | 2 comments

I do so love reading David Byrne’s blog.  Here he talks about recent collaborations, sorta focused on what he’s working on with St Vincent, but then turning around and talking about collaborations in general.  I find it somewhat disheartening to see that someone over at Pitchfork was panning him for collaborating so much.  As far as I’m concerned, David Byrne has made his mark on modern music–even successful working musicians, whose albums never score below 8.0 on Pitchfork, would be so lucky as to be as remembered as Byrne will be.  Anyway, Byrne doesn’t seem to bothered by some snarky criticism, which is one of the things I like about him.  Anyway interesting read.  And as far as I’m concerned if Byrne wants to spend his later days collaborating with anyone he feels inspired to, then more power to him.

Oh, and how about this St Vincent show!  St Vincent, plus David Byrne, plus Justin Vernon, plus one of the dudes from The National!  Man I wish I lived in NYC sometimes.  I’m not even that big of a St Vincent fan, but that would have been a cool show.

Anyway, not much else to say.  It’s been an extremelly long and trying week.  Very, very tired.  Really stressed.  Had some crap go down last weekend with my downstairs neighbors, and it’s got me kinda stressed.  And work has me worn out.  Last night, I celebrated St Paddy’s day by going to bed at 9:30.  Lame!  Not that I’d have wanted to get shitty with the amatuers that take the holiday as an excuse to get crappy, but a Guiness to mark the occassion still would have been nice.

In either case, right now I must get back to work.

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Berries and Cream

March 8, 2010 in Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | 2 comments

It’s hard to find a better start to the week than one of your coworkers just breaking out a giant plate of berries and cream for everyone to share.  Talk about spring being here.

Last week was actually full of positive spontaneous energy, and I barely found the time to post anything.  This week might be starting off the same.  This seems to be a trend, or at least I hope it’s a trend, after the pall of negative energy that fell over the last few months.

I’ve been great about logging lots of hours at work, so all I need to do is keep that up and be good about a few other things, and we’ll be back on track.  I think my goal for this week is to get some reading done.

This weekend I managed to check out Sam’s Kid and Tapas Adela, and both were amazing.  Recommended!  Go to Sam’s Kid when it’s not busy, though.  They seem to be a little short staffed.

I have a post about Alice in Wonderland, but wanted to give it its due.  The short review:  imagine the hottest, cutest art school girl/boy you ever dated (or crushed on).  Tattoos, skinny jeans, amazing taste in music, and soooo god damn gorgeous that it was almost unbearable.  But as soon as this crush of yours opened his/her mouth and started talking, you just wished they would stop talking (and preferably start making out).  Because as soon as their lips start moving, their aching beauty is sullied by the complete nonsense that spills from their mouth.  Hot and stupid.  That’s what Alice in Wonderland is.

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Bad Moon Risen

February 21, 2010 in Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | No comments

I’m listening right now to the 40th anniversary re-issue of CCR’s Green River.  This is probably top 5 of all time favorites for me.  John Fogerty’s catchy songwriting was at its peek with this album.  In just a few years CCR cranked out more classics than most bands can ever hope, and this has some of the best of them.  Just the name, Green River, will always remind me of the Appalachian hills I was born in.  It transcends the simple status of classic rock and reconnects me with a halcyon period of yet-to-be-spoiled youth.

In either case…

I had to do a little self-reflection today and accept the fact that I’m in denial, at least to some extent, about my stress level.  This winter weather–and I’m not talking about the blizzards, but all several weekend snowstorms that preceded them, as well as the one week I got sick again–have cost me a lot of money.  My grand scheme for 2010 involved me blowing off my social life for a month or two in winter and grabbing all the extra hours at work I could handle.  Those hours were canceled.  Nothing I could do.  Thousands of dollars gone before I had a chance at them.

So now everything’s screwed up.  I’ve still got OT at work, but now the weather’s about to warm up and my social life is a calling.  I’ve been invited to two weekend getaways in March, and I don’t think I can do either of them.  One of them is a cheap weekend away in the Appalachians.  The other a trip to Boston.  I really want to go on this Boston trip, and not being able to afford just sucks.  It is going to be so – much – fun, and I am going to miss out.

I kind of got called out for being grumpy by a family member, and after some wild dreams last night I’ve decided to just accept it.  I’m stressed out.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of.  These blizzards have cost a lot of people a lot of money and problems, and mine are one among many.

In acknowledging this I do feel a little bit of relief.  I can just accept it and deal with how I have to.  I might still be pulling extra hours when the weather turns warm and everyone wants me to come outside and play, but what can you do.

So there’s that.

This weekend was pretty good besides said personal revelations. The Charm City Rollergirls finally got their season going, and I had the pleasure of cheering on a friend who made one of the teams.  She did great her first bout.  Go Junkyard Dolls!  Let’s hope the rest of their season goes a little better than last night.

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Wrapping it Up

December 30, 2009 in Journal Entry by Cheshire Splat | 2 comments

Sitting back and ruminating whistfully for a few moments here on this penultimate evening of the year, the moment doesn’t exactly necessitate declarations.  However, I am prepared to declare 2009 a pretty good year.

It started off with me in a major funk actually.  Last winter.  It was sort of inexplicable, although I think it came down mainly to being in too much of a tedious routine at work.  I was hitting up the junk food restaurants and avoiding the gym after work.  Which was a real shame because I had gotten into pretty decent shape back in ’08.

But I fixed that.  Got promoted to another division at work.  Got back into shape a bit.

I moved.  I live in a very swanky apartment that I’m completely in love with.  The mastery of my own domain has brought me a wealth of inner tranquility.  Already I’m dreading the day that I move out of here.

I went on a few vacations that were a lot of fun.  Had to take a break from that once I moved out on my own (no roommate!), but I’ll be back at it soon enough.  Next time out I need to get further from home.  I’m thinkin’ about Europe (perhaps I should resolve to brush up on my Spanish this year… or perhaps learn some French).

I dated a lot this year.  More than in most years, if not any year.  Did that online dating thing for awhile, and it was like new date, new date, new date every week.  It was alright.  A few of them lasted a little while, and each of them not working out was a shame in its own unique way.

Oh, by the way, I am no longer dating the lovely young lady I was most recently dating.  I think I had mentioned her on here.  I wish I could say that it was something I did, but she went rather suddenly from being really, really into it, to being really, really not into it.  Don’t know what to say.  We talked about it a bit during the breakup conversation, and the gist of it was mainly that she’s got too many things going on right now and can’t get her head into a relationship right now.  God typing that out right here, it just sounds trite.  Like nonsense.  One thing that life has taught me is that no matter how pure one’s intentions are going into a breakup conversation, pretty much all of it ends up coming out like nonsense.  I’ve only been on the receiving end of that conversation a few times, and I’ve learned that what I tend to do is go into super, super sweet and understanding mode.  I become Mr. Copacetic.  There’s probably a psychoanalysis session in there somewhere…. something about my mother and father’s conflicts, for sure.

Oh but speaking of being super sweet, after talking about this whole episode with one of my BFFs, the one who I can pretty much tell ANY relationship stuff to, we came up with a dating resolution for me:  be more crazy, or be more of an asshole.  Girls don’t suddenly get bored with and ditch crazy assholes.  So that’s something I can work on this year.

But enough talk of dating. Except to say that this one was a real shame. I really liked her a lot.  Nothing to do but move on and forget about it right now.

And right now I have a different focus anyway.  Being single really behooves me in these first few months of 2010.  I’ve got to buckle down and finish some things that I started here.  One of them includes working a lot of overtime, so that I can pay down a credit card.  The other involves getting back into the shape I was in not so long ago.  Actually, muscle tone wise I’m already out ahead.  I can bench more than I used to, and I hope to be able to bench my body weight this year.  We’ll see.

Just in general, though, I need more discipline right now.  I’ve been in this sort of, I don’t know what to call it, hedonistic I guess kind of mode.  I’m fine with that version of me, but I don’t want to be that version of me right now.  I need to drag out a different set of habits.

As to the rest of the coming year, it’s hard to predict.  It’s funny, not to bring up that recent breakup again, but one of the things she said was something like “my life is so hectic and transitional right now, and you’re so settled down in your life.”  I don’t really see it that way.  I feel changes in the air.  The last thing I want to do right now is buy a house, settle down, and resign myself to life as an insurance man.  I’m okay with being an insurance man right now, but I sure as shit don’t want to die one.

But, that said, I’ve got a lot to sort out.  Before I do any of it, I need to put my nose to the grind for a few months.  Once these loose ends are tied up I can start focusing on other life changes.

Anyway, adios 2009!  Please don’t feel remiss that 2010 is going to make you seem horribly lame by comparison, but yes 2010 is going to rock.

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