Did I tell you about my wife’s laptop? I bet I haven’t.

The spot in which you plug the power supply into became loose and as a result, the battery could not get charged.

I get online and chatted with Dell Support, I find that chatting in less frustrating than speaking on the phone with them. e established that she probably needed a new system board, that the laptop was out of warranty and that a new system board would cost 800 bucks.

My wife needs a laptop to do her job. It didn’t take much to justify buying a new one instead of shelling out that kind of money on parts.

This left this laptop in my house, that had nothing wrong with it except that it couldn’t draw power. I decided that I could fix it. And since no one was counting on using it now, there was no problem if I screwed it all up. It looked like I could just re-solder the power jack. And I was ready to do just that until we got a letter in the mail.

The letter said that we members of a class that had secured a victory from Dell for this very problem. In light of this law suit, Dell was very willing to replace the system board at no cost to us. We sent the laptop off and in a week or so it came back.

It sat for a few weeks while I was busy with other things. This week I decided that I was ready to mess with it. I wanted to install Kubuntu on it. I put the install CD in and turned the laptop on and… nothing happened. It seems that the CD Drive no longer worked.

Once again I chatted with Dell. He had me run Dell Diagnostics on the laptop. The diagnostics said the Hard Drive was failing, but the CD Drive was fine. Go figure. He said he would send me a new CD/DVD drive and a new hard drive. The sad thing part is that I don’t think there is anything wrong with the CD/DVD drive. I think it’s the system board. But there is no arguing. I’ll get the new parts, install them and if when the new CD/DVD drive also doesn’t work, I’ll chat with them again.

I can’t complain, I’m getting a lot of service for free on a laptop that was out of warranty.

It’s Thanksgiving, which for me means food, football and family. Usually too much of the first and third and not enough of the second. But that’s how it is supposed to be.

As far as holidays go, this is one of my favorites. Although I get tired of it marking the beginning of teh Christmas ‘Season.’ Christmas is one day. It bugs me that we, as a culture, can’t seem to enjoy something on it’s own merits. We seem to need to tie it in to something else.

But it is a small irritation, it sits on the periphery and will not interfere with my day.

Sometimes it seems like I should enumerate the things I am thankful for. But I don’t work that way. The Pilgrims were thankful to their god for providing for them. My belief structure doesn’t work that way. What I have and what I do not is a combination of hard work and luck. And I’m not sure who I am supposed to be thanking. Besides, I don’t need a special occasion to tell me what I have to be happy about.

I’m to cynical for my own good, I know. But that too is on the periphery.

Today I am focused on turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy. Pumpkin pie and apple too. Parents, grandparents and kids. Brothers and sisters. Nieces and nephews. Joey Harrington’s return to Detroit and Tony Romo’s bid for greatness. Conversation and laughter.

I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving in the way that is special to your family. And if you are one of those readers from outside of the United States, you have my condolences, you are missing out. Have an extra big dinner and try to enjoy it.

Peace.

Once upon a time, I started a blog. I did it because I had read a few blogs and it seemed interesting. But mostly I did it, because I had heard a rumor that Blogger was giving Gmail accounts to its members. I didn’t get a Gmail account from Blogger. I did eventually get one from some other blogger, because of my whining about it on my blog.

I liked blogging. I put my thoughts up on the internet, but no one read them. I signed up with a bunch of things to draw traffic to my blog. If only people could see his blog then they would read it. But for the most part they did not. For the most part, they still don’t.

Once upon a time, I joined a blogging club. It was kind of a joke. Before long I found myself in charge of it. People like silliness on the internet, I’ll have contests and polls and shit. People will come and hang out and it will be fun. People did come, but mostly just to get another link. Everyone wants a link. Fun? Not so much. People told me that I had to do this and I had to do that. I held make believe contests and people got mad.

Once upon time, I believed I could be a writer. I wrote stories. Carefully choosing every word. People came and told me how great my writing was. I read their sites and told them how great they were. I decided to get serious. Maybe write a novel. Maybe not. Maybe I should just stick to let people compliment me on the internet.

Once upon a time, I had a radio show. It was dumb. It was a joke. I didn’t try to make anything serious, just a diversion for fun. Well, yeah, that didn’t work out either.

People ask me why I hate the Internet so much. No reason.

You’d think I’d learn. I made the same mistake last year.

We get Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off this week. Yea for me! But this leaves a 2-day work week.

Nothing good can come from this.

People that I need, to take care of what I’m doing are invariably taking these 2 days off. And since staffing is thin, I’m more likely to get saddle with some stupid task.

My kids get the week off. If I were smart, I’d burn 2 vacation days. I have plenty.

But we all know better than to think I would do the smart thing.

So here I am with two days to get through.

I just need to do my best to keep a low profile. I can do that. I think.

I hope.

It’s true, I am a big dork.

Yesterday I set up a VM Server. That is to say, a server that holds a number of Virtual Machines. Wait, you probably don’t know what a virtual machine is. For starters, the cool geek acronym is VM. A VM is a fully functional computer that installed, well, virtually. The entire computer is contained within a single file on another computer. It is very cool technology and it getting too be very popular in industry.

The coolest thing about my VM Server is that it is completely free technology.

I installed a base install of Ubuntu Server on P4 2.8 GHz with 512 MB RAM . And then I installed the new free VMServer product from VMware. Once that was installed , I installed the VMware Server Console on my regular PC. This allowed me to create a few VMs on the VM Server. I started with a Windows 2003 Server install. It works well, if a bit slow. I was hoping to attach my external hard drive to the VMServer and have the W2k3 Server operate it as a Shared Drive, or actually a few different shared drives. But I had some issues with the VM consistently seeing the USB Drive. Having shared drives that aren’t always there is no good, so I put the external drive back on my main PC.

I also installed a LAMP Server in a second VM. This is a Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP Server. Basically, your standard open source web server. Next up will be a Vista VM. Although I expect that to be terribly slow.

I guess this whole project is kind of a proof of concept thing for me. To really do this right, I would need to max out the RAM and put a 300 GB Hard Drive in.

Like I said, I’m a dork. Nice way to spend most of a Saturday.

At least, later I went out and bought a few comic books.

I think that what is wrong with me… and don’t doubt for a minute that something is wrong with me. What is wrong with me may be that I don’t know what I want.

Or perhaps as my wife says, “You think to much about stuff.”

It’s true. But that doesn’t matter. I can’t help it.

Warning. This post is long, boring and probably filled with self pity. If that is a problem for you go read something else.

Work is making me nuts. Not the job itself, but my co-workers. To explain…

It’s complicated. Of course it is, probably because I’ve thought about too much.

I don’t think I’ve blogged too much about this, mostly because I have no desire to whine about things here. But to understand, you have to understand the back story.

At my job, and you probably have some one like this at your job too, there is this guy. He’s an idiot. Truly. Let’s call him Buddy. To add insult to injury, unlike many of us he a College Diploma, though I can’t imagine how. He knows less about computers than most of our users. He doesn’t understand the network. He can’t multi-task. He’s a hold over from a different time. Before there was IT. He was the ‘tech.’ A hardware monkey that could set up dot matrix printers and Apple IIe’s and whatever else. No real technical skill need.

But bureaucracy works in funny ways. You promote people for working somewhere a long time, you bounce him from department to department. Until somehow, he’s a “Network Engineer.” Of course no one thinks that he could do anything remotely like what a Network Engineer needs to do. So they put him in charge of ordering parts and processing repairs. They stick him in a warehouse and forget about him.

I don’t care about any of that. Not really. It burns me a little bit that this monkey gets paid more than me. A lot more than me. But his paycheck is his business and I know that.

Our department is growing rapidly and our office is over crowded as a result. Another tech and myself get relocated out to the warehouse. Since we are onsite technicians it shouldn’t matter to much.

And it doesn’t.

So when I am at my ‘desk,’ I get to see Buddy in action. It’s a site to behold. He talks to himself, get frustrated the first time doesn’t go the way he thinks it should, and he cannot trouble shoot anything. First roadblock and he’s on the phone with a real engineer. He cusses and yells and throws temper tantrums. But we accept this, for no reason other than this is just how he is.

Life goes on. I even take a vacation. On my first day back, I come in to catch up on email and what not. Buddy is all worked up. It’s early and he’s already cussing and yelling and freaking out about something or another.

“How do you assign admin rights to a new account? This doesn’t make any sense.”

Admin rights? I ask him needs admin rights. Chris does. I find out that his son, Chris has been hired to be the Help Desk guy. There are 3 other techs in the warehouse this morning. I look to my buddy and he gives me the same puzzled look.

“Helpdesk doesn’t get admin rights.” We both say.

Buddy loses it. His face gets all red, the chords in his neck jump out.

“YOU”RE A FUCKING ASSHOLE, JECKLES! A FUCKING ASSHOLE!”

Nice. Wow. As it turns out he was trying t figure out he get Chris Rights to the Help Desk, not Admin rights. But he flipped on me. What did I do?

I walked away. I got a cup of coffee. And when I came back, I simply asked him to please interact with me in professional manner. He proceeded to explain to me what a jerk I am, and I just tuned it out.

And life goes on. Interrupted occasionally by outburst from Buddy.

Until last month.

I was sick, and had been for a while. I was running a fever. I had my laptop set up on the work bench, since some other tech had hijacked ‘my desk.’ But since I don’t really have a desk, I can’t complain. I have my headphones in and I’m trying tto work while tuning out the idiocy around me. In other words, a pretty typical day.

Buddy keeps reaching right over my head for something. I ignore once, twice, but three time is too much. Three times of having his meaty arm in front of my face. Three time of having his disgusting gut right up next to me. It’s too much.

“Do you want me to move?” I ask, making no attempt to hide my displeasure.
“I’m just trying to do my fucking job!” He screams at me.

Too much. Too much Buddy. Too much working while sick. Too much not having a desk to work at.

“What do you think I trying to do. I don’t have anywhere else to fucking sit? Do you think I Sat to fucking inconvenience you? Jesus Fucking Christ. Don’t fucking worry about it. I’ll move out of your fucking way!”

I picked up my laptop and stomped off.

Not my most shining moment, I know. But given the environment and the history I didn’t think much of it… until my boss called me in her office.

I got warned. I was told that we don’t act like that. I was told the F-Bomb was inappropriate. Somehow, I managed to not point out that she had no problem dropping the ole F-Bomb.

She asked if this was an isolated incident, I told no it wasn’t and I gave her the history.

I didn’t get in trouble beyond that. And they managed to find me a desk back in the office.

Problem solved.

Except that it is not. This is where the problem begins. Word gets around. People joke about me losing my cool. Suddenly I have a reputation as a hot head. As some one who will lose his temper at the drop of a hat.

My boss doesn’t chat with me anymore. People are careful around me.

I can’t stand it. And I think my career path here will be affected by this. My boss doesn’t think of me as reliable tech with loads of knowledge about Active Directories and everything else. She sees me as a potential liability.

And every time I hear some one say something like, “Hey Jeckles, I know that user is a total idiot, try not to yell at him.” It knocks the wind out of me. And there are comments. Some obvious. Some subtle. It makes each and every work day hell.

I am so tired. Tired of the shit. Tired of shooting myself in the foot again and again. Tired of not being able to succeed.

And I don’t see any rest in sight.

Backpacking. Again, it’s what I do. Like a junkie, I need my fix. I’ll be alright, just let me get a fix.

This weekend would be my last fix, till next spring.

But making it happen was proving difficult. The Uber-Bot, my most reliable hiking buddy, had said she would go this weekend. But had to back out due to a previous engagement, which she had forgotten about. Okay. No problem.

But I wasn’t going to let that stop me. Re-think. The trip to hike to the Delaware Water Gap, and in the process complete the AT in Pennsylvania, was out. But there are other options. The Tuscarora Trail for example. Not as well known as the AT, this 250-some-odd-mile trail running through Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania provides plenty of opportunities for hiking. There was a stretch that my Dad and I had been looking at for a potential trip.

I called him up and asked him if he was interested in an overnight trip. He was. I decided to make it a family affair. My boy is 13. Old enough to come along on a trip like this. Time to break him in. Why not.

Would you believe that they were calling for rain? Of course you would.

Saturday morning we drove over mountains, back roads and one streambed until we reached the place where we planned to end the hike. We left my truck there and headed for the beginning.

We started our hike at the Silar Country Store. I picked up two blaze orange vests for my son and I, we tied them on to our packs, on account of it was the first day of Black Powder Hunting Season. The Tuscarora Trail is not as established as the AT and this stretch of trail actually started out on a public road. VA 689, as a matter of fact. Rain was forecast for the afternoon, but at the moment the sky was clear and blue. We actually worked a good sweat walking along the road. After a mile or so, the trail made a left on to VA 671, which was a smaller gravel road. We made our way up a fair sized hill and then down again.

Finally we made it to the point where the trail left the roads completely. As we stood there, taking a small snack and water break, a service van driving by slowed to a stop. The lady in the passenger seat rolled down her window and said:

“Y’all be careful in the woods with all those hunters.”

We smiled at her and assured her that we’d be alert and it would be fine. And with that we headed up the trail, the path was well marked as we made our way up another fair sized hill. As we got close to the top, I could see the mountain we would be climbing in a mile or so. It looked pretty steep, and according to the map would be just over a thousand foot climb.

I looked back to see how far behind my companions were. I saw that they were about 100 feet behind and I turned to start walking again. It was at this point that I heard a sound that I imagine that I will remember for the rest of my life.

It was the sound of a small object whistling through the air, above my head and to the left. Although it was certainly moving very fast, time seemed to slow down for me. I heard the sound of it cutting through air, spinning as it went. I could not see it, but I knew where it was as I heard it cut through leaves and small twigs as it went by.

As time went back to its normal speed and I remembered to start breathing again, I looked down to my Dad and my son. They were looking back at me with expressions of shock on their faces. I turned and looked to see if I could see where the bullet had come from. I couldn’t tell.

“Oh SHIT!” I yelled. I yelled it extra loud so that hopefully whoever was shooting would stop.

After a moment or two passed and no more shots were fired, my hiking partners walked up to where I was.

“You heard that?
“Yeah.”
“Where did it come from?”
“Up there.”
“Over there?”
“No, had to be closer. Up there.” My dad pointed to clear area at the top of the hill, right where the trail was heading.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know.”

We walked the 50 yards or so to the top of the hill. Carefully. As we got close to the top we heard the sound of a small engine receding from us. A four wheeler, most likely.

“Good, maybe he’s gone.”
“Probably. This area is posted. He probably heard us and drove off.”
“I didn’t see any deer.”
“I doubt he was shooting at one. You know. They come out here into the woods with a gun… they’re going to want to fire it.”
“Fucking idiot.” I shot a guilty look at my son as the words left my mouth.
“What should we do?”
“That’s the question. Was this a fluke, and now we have nothing to worry about? Or are we in danger?”
“One idiot doesn’t represent all hunters.”
“True. And we’ve hiked in hunting season before without any trouble.”
“Yeah… but that was the AT.”
“I say we go on.”
“Sure.”

We started walking again, but before we had taken a dozen steps we heard the report of a black powder rifle, and not far from us. The three of us hunched down, ready to hit the deck. We exchanged looks. Another shot fired.

That settled it. We dug out a cell phone and called for a ride. We backtracked down the trail and headed back up the gravel road, until we saw our ride coming up the road to meet us.

And the worst part of all, worse than some asshole shooting in my general direction, is that I didn’t get my fix. And in all likelihood, I won’t get it till some time in March.

This is not a good thing.

I think I’ve mentioned that before.
That was Sarcasm. We both know I’ve said it again and again.

Blogging frustrates the shit out of me.

I started reading blogs four or five years ago. I had a few that I enjoyed. Of course, with the exception of WWdN, they are all gone.

I don’t read blogs to make friends. I rarely comment. I’m not really looking to interact with the blogger. What I enjoy is a glimpse into a stranger’s life. It is voyeurism of a sort. But it is different than peeping through window and trying to catch a glimpse of someone’s life. When you read a blog, you a peeping into a person’s life, not through the window, but through their own eyes.

That is one of the oddest things about this whole blog as community concept. When you interact with people out there in the real world, you derive a perception of that person. You see their body language, you observe how they interact with different people, you hear other people comment on that person, and most of all, you have your own direct interaction with them. The sum of these experiences (and more) is your mental sketch of this person.

But here in the blogoshere, it is whole different ball of wax. Your first impression of any blogger is based on a combination of how they see themselves and how they want to be seen. By the nature of the medium, bloggers give a false picture of themselves. No matter how honest they may be in their blogging, the way that they see themselves is going to be radically different than how we perceive them.

But that’s not the part that frustrates me. That was just a tangent. Sorry about that.

I don’t want to try to read hundreds of blogs. What I want to do is find a few that resonate with me and read them. And that’s what I do. But… and this is the part that frustrates me… I find a dozen blogs or so I enjoy and go read them. And after a while some of them will stop posting. Some of will them will become less interesting to me as the blogger begins to focus on different things. Of course, I understand that they can blog about whatever they want and they should. I am not reading because I am friends with that person but because I want something interesting to read. If what you write doesn’t interest me, well you’ve got nothing for me to read. And before you know it, I have nothing to read. Then I have to go find more to read.

I am subscribed to 44 blogs in Bloglines. Yet most of those update very infrequently. And when I sit down at my computer and want to read a blog there is nothing there for me.

So I will go find more, but that is a painful process. I can’t stand most blogs. I’ll parse through the shit looking for something worth reading.

And when I find it, that blog I want to read, I’ll just have to hope that I have a little time before it one fades away.

My day didn’t start bad.

I got up, showered, enjoyed a cup of coffee. Went off to one of my sites and took care of a detail that was left over from the day before. I stopped and filled up the tank before heading back to the main office.

Parking is tight at the office. Our lot only holds a fraction of the cars that bring us there. So I parked in teh lot accroos the street as I usually do. And that was fine with me. The sunny was shining, it was practically warm. I grabbed my laptop and headed towards the office building.

I should pause here to explain something. I have two bad knees. I’ve had arthritis of some sort in one knee or the other (or Fun! Fun! sometimes both of them) since I was four years old. I guess backpacking is a funny hobby for a guy with bad knees, but that is not by accident. I sort of refuse to accept that my knees are shit. I hike, jog, do whatever I want. Maybe it helps, maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know, but I spent to much of my childhood being gimped up, I refuse to do that now. Sooner or later, I’ll probably be forced to slow down, but until then… I’ll keep trucking.

Why am I telling you about my knees, in the middle of a narration about my morning? Well you need to understand that my knees (and sometimes by extension my hips) sometimes rebel against me. And that is what happened this morning.

I stepped on to the curb, to look for traffic, before crossing, but I stepped a little forward throwing my balance ever so slightly off. I should have re-adjusted and not even noticed, but this was just enough to throw off my often useless knees. They gave way underneath of me, throwing me to the street. I put my hands out to break my fall and slammed into the asphalt.

My first reaction was embarrassment. I looked around and luckily there was only one witness and he was a stranger to me. I picked myself and headed towards the building. I inspected my hands as I walked, they were both scraped pretty good and beginning to bleed. My left knee felt as though it had been scraped. And even before I made to the door my left hand was beginning to throb.

I went to my desk and docked my laptop. I went to the bathroom and washed of my hands. Scraped, but not cut deep anywhere. Back to my desk and back to work.

But my left hand was killing me. A bruise was building deep in there somewhere and I was having trouble gripping things. Lifting anything with my left hand was painful enough to make me catch my breath.

I took a half dozen Advil and after a half hour or so the pain faded to a point I could work around it.

I smashed the shit out of the bone in heel of my hand, down near the thumb. I suppose there could be a hairline fracture. More likely, I just bruised the bone.

The only good news is that I have tomorrow off. And with any luck it will be feeling much better by Saturday. Cause I’m going backpacking.

Want to guess at the forecast?

It is, as I sit here waiting for a computer to re-image, that I question what I am doing with my life?

With my career in this case. I guess I’m tied to IT for better or worse, but this? This end user support?

I’m over-qualified for this. Is it cocky to say that? Perhaps, but it is true. I have the knowledge and intelligence to be designing enterprise scale networks. I should be a network engineer. But instead, I’m an onsite support technician. A computer re-imager and part-swapper.

You may be wondering why I don’t just leave and get another job. Honestly, I’m considering it. But, as is often the case, it is that simple. There is room for advancement here, in time. And the pay is decent. It’s close to home and I get a lot of vacation and sick time. A whole lot. And most importantly, it’s low pressure, low stress.

Do I really want to give up benefits for a more challenging job?

I don’t know. But I’m thinking it over real hard.

I was supposed to go back packing next weekend, but it looks like that fell through. I will still try to get something to together, but it isn’t looking hopeful. I only have a few more opportunities to go backpacking before I have to wait until spring. And I really wanted to get to Delaware Water Gap on the AT this year.

I got a new set of headphones for my iPod. They are Shure E2c Sound Isolating Earbuds. Basically the Earbuds are like earplugs, blocking out the sounds of the outside world and allowing you to hear just the music. They were pricey, but worth it. How good are they? To test them, I played Pink Floyd’s Great Gig in the Sky. I had known that it is rumored to have a woman’s voice saying quietly, “If you can hear this you are dying.” I had heard faintly before, but never could hear her clearly. To my surprise there was a man’s voice at the beginning saying something like, “I not afraid of Dying, why would I be afraid of dying.” In the middle of the song, near the 3:30 mark I heard her. Clearly. She said, “I never said I was afraid of dying.”

Tomorrow is election day. I couldn’t be less excited. I am really beginning to believe that Congress is broken. I don’t know that it matters who we send. And the Gubernatorial race in my great state. It’s Dumb and Dumber. I can’t stand it. I’m not even sure why I’m still planning to vote.

The Ravens are 6-2. There is much I have to say about it, but I won’t. Not yet. I don’t want to jinx them. (I’m only superstitions when it comes to Sports.)

Dork that I am, I organized my comic book collection, made a quick Access Database to keep inventory of them with, and made sure that they all had bags and boards. This proved to me a few things, other than the fact that I am a total nerd. I have weird taste. The titles I have the most of are from Marvel’s 2099 universe and the Marvel Razorline, which was the line of comic Marvel had Clive Barker create. Ever heard of them? No? You’re not alone.

Look! The computer is re-imaged and it is time for me to move on.

The amount of candy on the table was truly staggering. Spread out to single depth, it covered the dining room table. It had sat there since Halloween. And to be honest, it didn’t even look like we had made a dent in it. Although, I know that we’ve had more candy this week than any family needs.

This is the beauty and the curse of living in a densely populated neighborhood. Even though, over half the houses did not even offer candy we were able to collect ridiculous amounts of candy. Obscene amounts.

We piled it up on the table. And left it there.

We are not great parents. Don’t patronize me, by telling me different. You don’t know. You just don’t, do you?

We had meals at the table, covered in candy. We pushed it into a mountain in the middle of the table and ate around it. We should have put it somewhere. But where does one put that much candy. So, it remained on the table. The elephant in the room, that no one is willing to mention. —Is that how that saying goes? I’m not sure.

And that is how it was this morning. Bacon and eggs in the shadow of scenic mount candy. As we finished our breakfast, we eyed the candy.

“What should we do with it?”
“Pack it up and I’ll take to work for the vultures.”
“All of it?”
“I guess we could leave a little bit for us for next week.”
“OK.”
“I’ll take all of the Reese’s cups.”

I began to pick through the pile picking out those delights wrapped in orange squares. But it seems I wasn’t the only one who coveted the peanut butter in my chocolate. My wife began grabbing them out until we had pulled out all of the peanut butter cups.

But why stop there. We began grabbing up the Snickers Bars.

And the Crunch Bars.

My son got in the act, pulling out the bubble gum.

Soon we were sorting the table in to piles of Sweet Tarts, lollipops, Baby Ruths, Hershey Bars, Starburst and Tootsie Rolls.

We sorted and categorized.

Now on our table instead of a mountain we have a collection of piles.

The Tootsie Roll pile is too big.

Next year, when you are buying Halloween candy, if you are thinking of buying Tootsie Rolls… STOP! Don’t do it. It’s not good candy. It’s not anyone’s favorite. Don’t do it. Buy Reese’s Cups or M&M’s or Sweet Tarts or Nerds. Buy candy someone actually likes. Helps us to lower the Tootsie Roll Ratio.

Now, if you’ll excuse me there are a few Reese’s Cups with my name on them.

Bare with me, I’ve been feeling introspective today.

I think I have spent my life preparing to be disappointed by the rest of it.

Did that make any sense? Probably not.

I didn’t like being a kid. Really. I mean, sure I had some fun. But I spent a lot of time waiting.

Waiting till I’d be old enough to stay up and watch Saturday Night Live.
Waiting till I’d be old enough to watch R rated flicks.
Waiting to drive.
Waiting till I’d be old enough that girls my age thought I was cool. You know what I mean.
Waiting to be old enough to buy my own smokes.
Waiting to be old enough to drink in the bar.
Waiting to be old enough that other adults took me seriously,
Waiting to make enough money.
Waiting.

I’ve wanted to be 40 most of my life, I think.
I was too serious to be a kid.

And now I’ve almost grown in to me.

It’s not all I hoped it would be.

Am I depressed? No.

But I realize that I have no idea what I want from life. I mean no clue.

And this leaves me…

well, off balance.

And after years of practice, the conclusion that want to leap to the front of my mind, is that maybe when I’m older it will make more sense.

I can’t help but feel that this day to day bullshit that I endure is meaningless. That I should pack up the wife and kids and just go. Screw having a job. Screw worrying about money, mortgages and bills.

Just go live.

But I can’t. The “what if’s” rush in anytime my mind wanders down that path.

So here I am. Waiting for something more.