The Dream of what my Perfect Day Would Be

I’ve been kinda down, lately.  In case some of you haven’t noticed.  Adulthood kinda sucks, and despite my best efforts, it feels like I’ve gone nowhere in life.  There’s this great scene in the Recess movie where Principal Prickley is talking with TJ and he makes a point that he remembers summer vacation, and all the memories he made when he was younger.  As an adult, in a dead-end job, those memories are all he has left.  When I saw that movie when I was younger, it didn’t hit me.  Now, at 35, with no real prospects for a better future, no potential for home ownership, and no real hope that things are ever going to get better, memories of the days when life didn’t suck this much, before I busted my skull open at 14, are very comforting.

However, I got to thinking – let’s not fantasize about being back in the past, but instead look forward, toward the idealize world where I actually had some form of good luck before today and things aren’t shit at 35.  Let’s imagine, for a moment, that I live in the dream home that I have spoken of (linked here).  Let’s talk about what a typical day is in the life of me in that dream home.  The life of me, my fiancee (though in that reality we had enough money to actually have a wedding and get married), and our kitties.  Let’s take a look at that.  Let’s see what my favorite day would actually look like, in a world where I have a place I can call my own and the Sword of Damocles that is money doesn’t hang over my head.

For starters, I wake up at 0730 to 0800.  That’s a good time to wake up.  I’m tired earlier and earlier, and I accept that that is part of getting older.  My old man goes to bed at 2100 and wakes up at 0500, so I know what my fate is to be, one day.  Honestly, it isn’t so bad.  Early enough to appreciate the dawn hours.  To sit outside on my patio and take in the sounds of the world waking up.  When it is winter in the Pacific Northwest, to enjoy the morning darkness.

After eating a small breakfast of a honeycrisp apple or some Oat Crunch Cheerios (that shit is so good!) with oat milk, I take a nice walk and enjoy the crisp morning air.  For the summer months, where everything is hot as fuck, these are the hours to enjoy.  To make the most of the coolness, before the heat comes back.  In the winter, it is a time to get the crisp air.  Enjoy the few days when it is snowy.  Snow here in Washington is great.  It shows up for a few days or a week or two, then fucks off.  It’s great.

Getting back home, I decide that I’m going to do some chores around the house.  Just a few things to spruce the place up.  My fiancee stops is waking up by this point, going to where command center, waking up with some YouTube.  And a couple of kitties following her around.  They are so sweet, but are both mama’s cats.  Then I go into the our little library and decide to catch up on some of my artbooks.  Maybe a little of the Calvin and Hobbes complete collection, that I have.  Or one of my favorite novels.  Just for an hour or two, to keep my eyesight sharp and fuel my imagination.  Maybe type on my own novel?  Ideas, ideas.

It’s the middle of the day, and I bake.  I love to bake!  No joke, I really do.  My biggest hatred of my situation now is that I don’t have space enough to really enjoy baking.  My kitchen is so small.  Everything is so small.  Life is so horrifically unfair.  What am I baking?  Don’t know.  Cookies sounds like fun.  I have ideas for next year’s Christmas in March cookies, and I wouldn’t mind seeing if they match up with what I am hoping for.  Little things, right?  Though, part of me likes being pleasantly surprised, too.  So maybe not.  Maybe bagels!  Ooo, bagels sound really good.  My fiancee wants me to make zucchini bread for her birthday.  She loves the taste of banana bread, but is allergic to bananas.  Zucchini bread is essentially the same thing, and it tastes just as good.  Lots of ideas.  At my counter, sitting on one of the tall chairs, rolling out cookies and putting them on baking sheets that are covered with silicon baking mats.

After that’s done, or while it’s cooking, I might read more of my books.  A book while I sit there, waiting for the cookies to finish baking.  Sounds wonderful.  But what about after that?  Well, I have a couple of options.  First, I could see what my fiancee is doing.  She is likely in her solarium, taking in the warmth of the sun, working on an art project, or reading a book as well.  Or she is upstairs in the office, typing to her Discord peeps or running a game for them as GM.  I could also play some vidya.  Always a good time.  Playing vidya on a gentle afternoon.  That sounds pretty nice.  Or play with our kitties.  I work to keep them active, not just for the physical, but also for their mental health.

For dinner, I make stir fry for me and mine.  There’s some shrimp that I have been marinading in my fridge overnight, mixed with Yoshida sweet and savory sauce, some Mongolian fire oil, garlic, sweet chili sauce, and sesame oil.  I fry up some onions, carrots, and broccoli, then put in the shrimp and the marinade, and after all that is done cooking, add some yakisoba noodles.  The taste is spectacular.  I promise, it’s like nothing you have tasted before.  Been making that every weekend for the last month or so.  It’s good to make fresh food, and to have more vitamins in my diet.  I chop up my veggies, because it is WAY cheaper than getting pre-cut ones.  For real, it isn’t hard.  Just have a good knife and it takes no time at all.

During dinner, we watch something funny.  We both LOVE the movie Airplane!  It’s a classic comedy that couldn’t be made today, but it is wonderful.  I put that on the other night when my fiancee was having a bad day and she was immediately better.  I know what makes a tiny lady smile.

What about desert?  Well, my fiancee doesn’t much care for it.  She doesn’t have a very big sweet tooth.  So for me, some of the cookies I made that day.  A dear friend of ours and her girlfriend stop over, and maybe we play some games or just shoot the shit in the conversation pit outside over making smores in the fire pit.  It is the perfect end to a perfect day.

It ends with me getting ready for bed, then curling up to sleep with my gal and our two kitties.  They know that both of us move around a lot, so maybe they will sleep in the kitty tower, but eventually they will make their way inside.  It’s funny – my gal and I both have a sleeping side that is opposite the other.  I prefer to sleep facing my left, and she prefers sleeping facing her right.  If you saw us in bed, you’d wonder if we’re fighting.  But I promise, we’re not.  We just ended up having a side of the bed we prefer and then sleeping positions that work for us that is ironic.  We have a laugh about it, sometimes.

And that’s my dream day.  A perfect day that I don’t have to worry about the little things in life.  Money will work itself out.  It’s a weekend, so no office stuff.  Just a nice day where I get to really savor the life I have and how blessed I am.  It isn’t much, but it makes me happy.  I don’t want the world.  I really don’t.  All I want is to have a peaceful life, in a quiet place, and be able to enjoy it to the fullest.  That doesn’t seem like a big ask, to me.

Until next time, a quote,

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Detweiler – every adult you’ve ever known was a kid at one point in their life.  You think that we don’t remember summer vacation?  Riding bikes down by the creek, catching pollywags in a jar, camping out under the stars?  Well you’re wrong!  Some days I sit in my office and I look out on you kids on the playground, and I think – they don’t know how good they got it.  In a few years, they’re all gonna be grown-ups, like me.  And all those good times will just be memories for them too.” – Principal Prickley, Recess: School’s Out

Peace out,

Maverick

Christmas in March, 2024

It’s a quiet Friday afternoon.  I took the afternoon off work, scheduled it out a few weeks out.  Knew that I would need the time to get this all sorted out today, and so I took it.  Might take the entire day off, next year.  Just have an entire day to get this all sorted out.  Boy howdy, it was tiring.  Yet I feel more accomplished right now than I do most days.  Most days, working my medical billing job, I don’t feel accomplished.  My workqueue gets smaller, but it’ll just get bigger again, so I don’t feel any sense of accomplishment.  But all the work I did today, it feels like an accomplishment.

For those who don’t know the story of Christmas in March, I’ll give the Cliff Notes version.  I moved down to Washington, ordered a table and chairs for me and mine’s apartment, and they were supposed to arrive in time for the holidays.  But this was back when COVID had everything delayed.  Just, everything.  So they didn’t arrive until March.  I had been planning to christen the table in by making holiday treats.  Decided that I would do it anyway, as a lark.  Christmas in March sounded funny.  Even decided to get holiday treat baggies and Christmas cards and everything.  My fiancee, wise woman that she is (wiser than me, that’s for sure), thought it would be fun if we decided to make this a yearly thing.  I agreed.  The story alone of all this was worth it.  Plus, no waiting in holiday lines!  And I got to give six groups of people something to look forward to in the springtime.

So I sit here, basking in my success now that they have all gone out and waiting for people to tell me how good they are.  This year was kind of a mess.  I have decided to have the red velvet shortbread cookies be a permanent fixture of Christmas in March.  Normally I hate repeat performances, but these things are so good!  Especially cream cheese frosting, which is what you have on red velvet anything.  If you do buttercream or whipped cream frosting with red velvet anything, we can’t be friends.  Cream cheese frosting is the only one that balances out with the flavors of the red velvet.  They are perfectly complimented by one-another.

Part of me thinks that this is how my mother felt, after she was done with holiday cookies and she got to hear about how much people loved them.  If the day comes when I can get a proper kitchen with a proper freezer to store things in, I want to expand this.  Have it grow to be a few more people who I think could use some Christmas in March cheer.  The dream, of having an actual home where I can make the most of things.  I know it will never happen, but it’s a nice thought.

Been feeling so miserable, lately.  Like my life is going nowhere and I’m a failure.  Got this spectacular painting that I’ve been wanting ever since I saw it in the Ken Burns documentary series about national parks.  It hangs in my place, right by my work area.  Love the artwork, yet also feel melancholy because this is probably the closest that I’ll ever get to Yellowstone National Park.  I will likely NEVER have vacation money.  I’ll be lucky at this rate if I have home rental money.

The reality of how shit my life situation is, as I start heading into the second half of it, is not lost on me.  Sally, my mother, who is the wisest person I’ve ever known, warned me it would be like this.  She knew that my sister and I would have harder lives than her and my old man had, and it did make her sad.  Prepared me as best she could, and now I feel so lost.  I’m headed into the best earning years of my life, and I’m making $23 an hour for a job that I’m criminally over-qualified for, because the jobs that I’m perfectly qualified for almost never even interviewed me.  The job market down here is brutal, but there is some hope on the horizon.  The working population is aging, and as more and more retire or move on, I’ll have options.  Things I keep in mind as I go through my days.  The only hope that I’ll have, of finding a better life where I could at least get to Yellowstone, and see if the sunrise is as beautiful as it is in this painting.

Hell, if I could be making $10 more per hour, most, if not all of my major financial worries currently would be abated.  $40 an hour is the absolute dream.  That would get me enough to be saving pretty well and at least feeling comfortable.  I can only dream about a world where I make $45 or 50 an hour.  Magical.  It won’t ever happen, but it’s a nice thought.

Listening to Dave Brubeck’s Christmas music, and it’s so satisfying.  Man, if I was back in Alaska, it would be cold in here and there would be snow outside.  But down here in Washington, green is just starting to come back.  Leaves are budding on trees.  It’s awesome.  I don’t miss the ice and snow and people’s inability to drive in it.  I miss my best friends, some of the fam, my old man, and being able to see them in person, but the truth is, I don’t miss any of the nonsense with winter.  Winter is pretty, but I want it to show up for only a few days, maybe a week or two, and then fuck off.  Thanks to climate change, it only shows up here for an afternoon now.

Maybe there is something better in the future for me.  Sally told me, before we left, that things would get harder before they got better, and boy if she wasn’t right.  Last words we spoke, and they were words of wisdom.  Even as her mind was failing from cancer, she gave me something to keep in mind.  Now we keep trying, hoping that the better days come.

An accomplished day, on a sunny Friday afternoon.  Not too bad.  Hopefully you all are well.

Until next time, a quote,

“Half the Louvre is floating in space.”
“You ever been there?”
“Pah!  With the chump change I got screamin’ into a mic?  Yeah, in my dreams…” – Johnny Silverhand, Cyberpunk 2077

Peace out,

Maverick

The People who “Go” From Your Life

There’s this great line in a video that I watch anytime that I’m feeling down called “Everybody’s Free to Wear Sunscreen.”  It was made back when MTV was really good.  Remember those days?  It was a graduation speech to the class of ’99, telling them about the world.  Man, to be graduating then, with the whole world in front of you.  Everything must have looked so much better back then.  They graduated at the time when life was about as good as it was going to get in America, before the crash of 2008, which we never recovered from.

In that video, there’s a line that goes – “understand that friends come and go, except for the precious few that you should hold onto.”  At 35 years old, friends don’t come into my life anymore.  They just go.  Years go by, and they get less and less.  It has me feeling pensive, thinking about the years that have passed and all the people who have left my life.  Not gonna share this post like I do most of mine.  A few people who would be bummed to see it, and I’m working to try and foster positive attitudes.

With some people, it happened gradually.  They went off in their own direction, having their own lives, and we stopped being as close as we used to be.  Those are the lucky relationships.  The ones that I can look back on fondly and think of the good times.  The days we shared that were special, or the memories that we made that were wonderful.  There aren’t many of those.  Not now.

Then there are the ones that it got awkward because of words that were said, or that we didn’t say soon enough.  One of the closest is one where I should have said what I meant to say a long time earlier.  Maybe if I had, it wouldn’t have been so awkward when they found out anyway.  Maybe they would have been able to understand, after a while.  But we had already started to grow apart by the time I told them, and that just bolstered the decay of things.  Now they went their own way and we’re strangers to one-another.  Even if they won’t admit it.  We’ve been strangers for almost longer than we were close, now.

But the ones that really have stuck with me, that I reminisce on right now in a very sad way, are the ones where they hate my guts now.  The ones where everything fell apart and it fell apart in such a spectacular fashion where they hate me now.  One in-particular comes to mind, and I’m just so bummed about it all.  But it’s WAY too late now.  We haven’t spoken in over ten years.  How did so much time pass?  Where did it go?  Why am I so old now?  I feel old, lately.  Every day, a little older than the day before.  All the days do is eat away at my life, and all I can do is keep trudging through it, desperately trying to make some kind of headway.

Thankfully, nobody who cares about the person who really hates my guts follows this site anymore.  They all moved on.  I’m sure motivated by what must have been horrible things said about me, over and over and over again, without me even being given the courtesy of being able to defend myself.  Story of my life, really.

Then there was the friend I called Gypsy Girl.  That friendship ended because I said that all rap music sucks.  No joke, that’s it.  Then I was blocked and that was that.  I guess she lived up to her name.  Some crazy memories with that one.

Though, as I sit here and think about it, the worst ones are the ones where there was no big fight, or no sense of gradual distance.  The worst ones are the ones where I was just ghosted.  Where they just stopped talking to me.  Where I desperately tried to keep the conversation going, but they decided that I’m not worth their time anymore.  How?  When?  Why?  I’ll never know.  They’ve moved on to greener pastures, or wherever they have ended up.  Lost stories in time that will never be revisited.  Old stories that are long passed. Thus having me in my state of malaise, listening to music that was captured inside the Grand Canyon.  No joke, it’s a french horn, inside of the Grand Canyon.  It’s spectacular stuff.

I guess that’s all I have to say about that.

Until next time, a quote,

“When you reach my age, friends don’t come and go.  They mostly just go.” – Vik Vektor, Cyberpunk 2077

Peace out,

Maverick

Tales of Sally, #5

It’s been harder and harder to think of memories that I haven’t already shared on here about Sally.  The years get longer, and the memories are more sporadic.  Or I think of them, but by the time I have the ability to write on here, they’re gone.  Faded, to come back another day when I think about them again.  I think that’s how it goes.  Life becomes less and less about what you remember, and more and more what you feel.  The emotions that come to mind when you think about the person who’s gone.  However, I did have some emotions that came to me fairly recently, and I’m going to share some of them with you now.  While they’re still here, and I can still put a face and a place on them.

One of Sally’s favorite movies was The Shawshank Redemption.  She LOVED that film.  Passionately loved it.  I can see why.  It’s a great movie.  From Morgan Freeman’s narration, to one of the greatest escape stories ever told.  I get why she loved it as much as she did.  There weren’t a lot of movies that she would watch on her own.  She was just fine watching whatever the rest of us were watching, to a point.  She DESPISED my old man and I watching Family Guy, back when that was still funny.  Groj do I feel old, lately. I never got around to asking her what her favorite scene in that film is.  What it was about that film that she gravitated toward so much.  The things you don’t think to do until it is way too late to do.

Another of her favorite film was Simon Birch.  This is a movie that I will NEVER understand what she loved so much about it.  This is EASILY one of the most depressing movies ever put to celluloid.  It was so dark, so sad, and I know for a fact that it made her cry every time she watched it.  And yet, I would see her watching it fairly often.  Not a film that I’m a fan of.  It is too depressing for me.  Plus, it made me think of how maintaining long-term friendship was hard for me.  Especially after my head injury.  Still, just like with Shawshank, part of me is interested to know what it was about that film that called to her.  What she saw in that movie that she wanted to see, over and over again.  Now I’ll never know.

My family was a bunch of Trekkies, in case you didn’t know.  I assume I’m going to amuse some people with this little anecdote.  I didn’t grew up with The Next Generation as my Star Trek.  I grew up with Voyager.  I still love that show.  If there is ever a blu-ray release of the entire franchise, I am on that shit like stink on cheese.  Trust and believe.  I got all seven seasons on DVD, but I want it on blu-ray so I can see it at its best.  See how some of the CG scenes have aged like milk.  In the house where we watched this, I would be watching it on the TV in the basement, while my parents would be watching it upstairs.

Something to know about Sally, much like CAPT. Janeway, she HATED time travel stuff.  That sort of thing was confusing, and she hated it.  So there would be episodes where it was a significant element, and once there was a commercial break, I would be called upstairs by Sally to explain things that are happening.  It is such a fun memory to look back on, even now.  Makes me want to rewatch Voyager again.  At least from season 2 on.  The first season of that show was rough, but such is any show.  The first season of TNG was almost unwatchable.  Especially with how many episodes had Wesley saving the day.  Fuck that little puke-stain.  The show got infinitely better after Roddenberry died and they had him on less and less of it.  But I digress.

I can guarantee you that Sally never understood my passion for gaming, and yet, when I would put games on my Christmas or birthday list and she actually got them, she made sure it was the right thing.  Part of me likes to think that she was glad to help foster that side of me.  I figure that she would shake her head as I’m getting so into whatever I’m playing and think it is so weird, but she still worked to foster the hobby all the same.

She did hate when things I was into were violent.  I never asked if she believed the whole canard about how video games cause violence.  I like to think she didn’t, because she saw me play some games that had things get pretty hardcore, yet I was never into the idea of causing harm to anyone.  She walked in on my cousin Griffin and I playing Silent Hill 2.  Easily one of the scariest survival horror games ever made, to say she was weirded out by it was an understatement.  And yet, even when she thought it was freaky beyond all reason, she still helped foster that part of me.  She knew it was important to me, and I never got the chance to tell her how grateful I am for that.  So many things I never got to say.

Had to make sure I hadn’t talked about this before I did here in previous Tales of Sally posts, but one of her favorite hymns was “Lord of the Dance.”  I remember she was very into it back when we used to go to church.  Here’s the best version of the song I could find, in case you’ve no idea what I’m talking about –

Sally wasn’t a Christian, per se.  She was a spiritual person, but much like Giordano Bruno, her belief was that God was something more than what any book made them out to be.  There is a family member who I am glad I can’t talk to anymore, because if ever I talked to him again, I would have words with him about her beliefs and his not taking her point of view well.  Yet, much like myself, there were religious tunes that she was into in a very substantial way.

Music was one of the ways to Sally’s heart.  I don’t know if it’s fate, but I am engaged to a woman who, much like Sally, could burst into song if I said something that would have even small amount of lyrics in them.  Maybe it’s karma, for the amount of times my sister and I used to be exasperated when Sally would do that.  But anyone who could join her in song as immediately her friend.

There was a night when my parents and I were across the lake with the Jehovo family, and they had a Russian friend of theirs over, who brought his parents.  I can’t remember what got everyone into singing, but the Russian family started singing their national anthem, and boy howdy were they dignified and respectful of that.  Sally and her choomba, on the other hand, were 110% not respectful of the American national anthem.  They half-remembered it and were off-key and clearly amused.  Might have been the Russian vodka that Sergei brought with him.  I got out of that indigestion narrowly.  It’s bad hospitality, but I had no desire to get wasted with them.  But it was hilarious to watch the Russian family getting more and more offended as they saw Sally and her choom poorly doing the national anthem, because in Russia, it’s something to be respected and treated with reverence.

The Russian guy had a very interesting kid.  The dad was Russian, the mom was Brazillian, and he grew up here in America.  So he could speak Russian to his dad, Portuguese to his mom, and English to the rest of us completely inter-changeably.  It was insane!  To be trilingual at that age, it is beyond impressive.

Anyway, those are the memories that came to mind to me tonight.  So much of this stuff is slipping away from memories into emotions that come to me with certain stimuli.  It’s a sad reality, but there it is.  At least the feelings it gives me makes me smile.  That’s something I’ll always have with me.

Until next time, a quote,

“Hair!  Long beautiful hair!  Shining, gleaming!  Streaming, flaxen, waxing!  Oh say, can you see, my eyes then that means – that my hair’s too short!” – Song lyrics Sally would burst into with the slightest provocation

Peace out,

Maverick

 

Nikki Haley and Why Millennials Will Work Until We Die

I saw this news thing from Republican Presidential “nominee” (she has no chance) saying that millennials and Gen Z need to cozy up to the reality of retirement age being raised to 70.  Why?  Because apparently, we are all living longer and the working age needs to reflect that.  Her words, not mine.  However, I know the reality of why Republicans are so gung-ho about this.  It’s simple – because the SECOND that millennials start retiring, the working world is going to go off a cliff.  Republicans are so desperate to keep the wheels of capitalism spinning that they will work us until we have one foot in the grave.  Never mind that the median age of death is now 73.  So, they want us to work until we can afford to live for roughly three more years, then die.  All so their PRECIOUS capitalism doesn’t take a hit.  And if you think the Democrats are on the opposite side of this, then you’re out of your fucking mind. They are all slaves to capitalism.

Somewhere along the way, I made peace with the fact that I’m gonna be working until I’m dead.  I’m 35 years old, at a job making $23 an hour.  Like most millennials, I live paycheck to paycheck.  If it weren’t for my fiancee working and helping with bills, I couldn’t survive where I am.  They want me to work the next HALF of my life with no hope for retirement?  Wow.  I don’t get how the suicide rate among my generation isn’t higher.  I really don’t.  What’s the incentive to keep going?  They want us to work until we die, pretty much.

Time was, you worked a job until you reached 65, then you had a nice cushy pension and social security to supplement it.  Medicare got your medical bills covered, so life made sense.  You got that twilight years to make the most of.  Is it the best?  No.  But given that inflation and the cost of living has skyrocketed so hard in the last twenty years, it was livable.  You got some vacation money.  You got some casual spending money for whatever strikes your fancy.  It wasn’t a great life, but it was alright.  The middle class was thriving and things were good.

What is there to look forward to for us?  We will NEVER be able to afford a home.  Ever.  Boomers are retiring, or downsizing their homes, but the homes they’re selling are for ASTRONOMICAL amounts of money.  We can’t afford them.  Unless we want to live in a roach-infested flophouse in the worst parts of any town, we can’t afford a single family home.  So that part of the “American Dream” (the biggest canard fed to us) is locked out for us.  Good retirement benefits?  Where?  Virtually no companies have pensions anymore.  Union jobs have good retirement benefits, but unions are being gutted left and right in America.  You’re lucky now if you get a 401k.

Vacation?  With what money?  Over 70% of my generation are living paycheck to paycheck.  We don’t have vacation money.  Not to mention that most jobs have shit vacation leave accrual.  We have to pay for shitty commutes to shitty jobs that pay shit and have shit benefits.  Including the biggest lie benefit of all time – private health insurance.  The single biggest scam perpetrated on the American people.  We are ALL one major medical disaster away from financial destitution and likely death.

Gen Z?  They have it EVEN WORSE.  They’re coming into the job market knowing how fucked they are.  I’m amazed the suicide rate among them isn’t higher too.  Millennials have next to no buying power, and Gen Z has none.  Gen Alpha will have less than none.  Gen whatever follows will basically be a slave race to the rich and powerful.  And we have Nikki Haley saying that we need to work until three years before we are statistically likely to die.

It’s weird being a part of a generation who has no hope of things ever getting better.  Why be involved in politics?  So we can be lied to by D and R corpo rats?  Every time that there’s a politician who we think will stand with us, they either turn out to be completely pathetic and fight for nothing, or they are a wolf in sheep’s clothing.  There’s nobody fighting for us.  Hell, politicians bend over backwards to cater to old people, while basically telling us to get fucked.  Yeah, let me go out there and engage with that system.  Sure.

I don’t know what has to happen before the people decide they have had enough and storm the proverbial Bastille, but it needs to happen.  Soon.  Because if something doesn’t happen soon, then we’re all going to dying while the rich count their money.  Hell, that’s already happening now, and we still do nothing.  I guess it’s just easier to go along, one foot in front of the other, down that endless road into the meat grinder and enjoy the tiny moments we can, until we finally end up dying and that’s it.

The things that it would take to be able to make the world a better place aren’t that big.  A four-day work week that pays a five day one.  Eight weeks of leave time per year.  Remote work for jobs that are in an office and not in front of clients.  We don’t need to commute.  Offices are an artifice that needs to go the way of the dodo.  Fuck corporate real estate costs.  They can eat that cost.  Easily.  Corporations in America are worth trillions of dollars  This is a cost well within their margins.  But then that would mean they aren’t making as much obscene wealth as they could be making.  Groj forbid that, am I right?

My bigoted conservative uncle thinks that as I age, I would get more conservative.  I haven’t.  I’m a bigger leftist now than I have ever been, all because of the reality that I’m 35 years old, and retirement is an illusion to me.  I’ll never be able to afford it.  I’ll be doing medical billing until I’m dead, or so close to it that the difference is indistinguishable.

And then they wonder why my generation hasn’t been making babies.  Man, real fucking mystery, isn’t it?  I wonder why the generation who can barely afford to survive isn’t having kids.  Big fucking mystery.  Hell, at this point, I think that having kids is a crime.  Bringing a child into this awful world, forcing them to have to grow up in a world without a future, why would you do that?

Until next time, a quote,

“Here’s a thing – life’s an endless series of trainwrecks with only brief, commercial-like breaks of happiness.” – Wade Wilson, Deadpool

Peace out,

Maverick

Taking the Tree Down, 2024

I’ve been busy today.  This is the longest that I’ve left my Christmas tree up before.  Normally I take it down in the first weekend in January.  I always wondered how Sally felt when she took the Christmas stuff down.  If it was a sad thing for her.  Everyone helps put up the tree when we were younger, but taking it down was something she was by herself to do, pretty much.  I was a kid, and I don’t feel good about it now.  Not making excuses, it’s just how it is.  And hey, now I’m getting to do that myself, so I feel it.  Though in today’s case, it’s because my fiancee was at work.  She did offer to help when I did take it down.  But just like when I put it up, I got a sudden burst of inspiration to do things, and I followed through.

Lots of my posts lately have been waxing nostalgic about life, and I guess this one will be no exception.  Taking down the Christmas tree and decorations is always a sad thing.  An acknowledgement that the holidays are over and it’s facing another year.  That’s always difficult.  Facing the rest of a dour winter, the dark and cold and snowy.  Well, snowy for places that aren’t where I am now.  Here, it’s dark and cold and rainy.  The Pacific Northwest is something I’ve been working to adapt to.  In the fall, spring, and summer months, it’s totally fine.  It’s during the winter months that it’s awkward.  Thankfully, winter only lasts for a few months, unlike back home where it’s there for seven months of the year.

I feel like I’ve hit this brick wall of life and I genuinely don’t know what to do next.  Like, I’m 35 years old.  This is the age where I begin the middle part of my life.  I work a job that I am criminally over-qualified for, making $23 an hour, with the reality being that I’m probably not going to see a raise until almost two years from now because I was hired at the tail end of last year, and they do raises for everyone at the early part of the year, but they don’t see it until the later part of the year.  So I don’t qualify this year, and won’t get one until next year.  Next September.  Until then, it’s just scraping by, while life finds new expenses for me. This is my life.

People keep asking – when are my fiancee and I getting married?  Honestly, legally, on paper, probably some time later this year.  With a ceremony?  Maybe never.  I may never have the scratch for a wedding.  We downgraded our ideas to a reception ceremony with pictures at a nice place, but even that might be out of our price range.  I live in a time where I’m so poor that I can’t even afford to get married.  That’s the world I live in now.  And it’s never getting any better.  D party doesn’t give a shit, and R party is pure evil.  There’s no hope.  Hope is an illusion.  I miss feeling hope.  That tomorrow is going to be a better day than today.  Even if we get married, a honeymoon isn’t happening.  We don’t have the scratch for that, either.

I don’t get why so many older people want life to suck for my generation.  Sally, my mother, didn’t.  She was actually bummed about the fact that life is going to be a LOT harder for my generation than it was for hers.  She acknowledged that she grew up in this amazing era that had so much more opportunity than my generation has.  Most parents I knew from good households wanted things to be better for their kids than they were for them.  I’ve lived through one major economic collapse, and am now living through a collapse that the political parties are pretending isn’t happening because it’s an election year and they have geriatrics to prop up.

There was that article in The Atlantic, that had avocado toast on a golden platter, and I want to choke the bitch who wrote that to death.  I’m entering into my peak earning years, making $23 an hour.  There’s no hope.  It’s an illusion.  In this dark room, without the lights from my Christmas tree, I have a lot of time to think about the reality of the world I live in now.  This cold, dead reality where everything is expensive and everyone is miserable.  An entire generation who is jaded and doesn’t give a shit anymore.  It’s not gonna get better, so why bother?  Why bother getting involved?  So we can be lied to by people like John Fetterman?  So we can see people we trusted turn on us?

God’s speed to Gen Z.  They’re stepping up and really fighting for what matters.  That’s good.  They don’t want to end up like us.  Maybe they can actually do what we failed to do, when it mattered most.  We were graduating high school or being early into college when the 2008 collapse happened, and we had this bubble burst when we worked hard to get the first black President elected on a wave of populism, only for him to stab all of us in the back by being a corpo rat President.

The tree is down, and now it’s dark in here, and I’m thinking about where I am in life at 35.  People who are happy are an enigma, to me.  It must be nice.  I hope they appreciate it.  Like, there are these little moments where they think to themselves – I’m glad that my life is going as well as it is.  I’m glad that I’m not in the situation that these millennials are at, facing down getting older with nothing going for them.  Who are praying for a collapse so the cost of a home can get into the tank, even though that won’t happen because corpos have bought up single-family homes to rent out, in order to avoid another collapse like 2008.  So yeah, hope is an illusion.

Part of me wonders if Sally had these moments in life, after she took down the tree and it was all dark and drab again.  Probably not.  We had a great life, when I was younger.  They worked hard, in a time when all you needed to get into the middle class was hard work.  I’ve been busting my ass for years, and I’m working a job that pays me $23 at 35.  That’s where I’m at.  And the best I can hope for in two years time is that it will be paying me $25 an hour.  Why does it have to be like this?

I’m tired of waking up wishing that all I could do is go back to bed.

Until next time, a quote,

“I really did wake up energized this morning.”
“I know.”
“I never go to bed that way.” – Jed Bartlet, The West Wing

Peace out,

Maverick

15 Years Ago Today…

I was made aware of something pretty awesome today – my WordPress blog, this site that is my baby, is 15 years old.  This site, that has gone through some of the hugest moments of my life, is 15 years old today.  It has been such a journey.  I think of this as my baby, and with that thought in mind, it isn’t a baby anymore.  Now it’s a teenager.  In a year, it will be old enough to drive a car!  In three years, it will be old enough to vote.  You can guess how my blog votes, given what I post on here.

The first thing I posted on this site was a story about the Glenn Beck Sarah Palin rally in the city where my alma mater is located.  I remember a guy who was there with his cat.  He became a choom of mine, during my time in college.  He drifted away afterwards, much like all the rest.  So many old memories that feel like another lifetime ago.  God, I feel so old lately.  A choom of mine who hates me now feels like I knew her half my life ago.  In a little over five years, that’ll be the case.  I wonder what she’s doing now.  Like so many people left my life, I’ll never know.  They forgot about me.  I’m surprisingly easy to forget.  Surprising, considering I am a titan who stands just under seven feet tall.

Like so many sites or channels, it has had its ups and downs.  It’s nowhere near where it was when I was at my most popular.  Back then, I was getting over 150 views a day.  About 200 was where it was on a typical night.  It was great stuff.  Made me feel so good.  When I started this site, I didn’t think that anyone would ever want to read what I have to say.  When I got 10 subs, that felt like an accomplishment.  But it became so much more of a part of my life.

I found out that Sally, my mother, used to read it to her coworkers.  She thought I was funny.  She didn’t always care what I had to talk about, but she absolutely loved to read it to her coworkers.  Part of me wishes she had recorded some of those interactions.  I would have loved to know their reactions.  Little things that I can dream about.  I do know that at least a couple of them started following my site because of her.  I don’t know if they still do, but it’s kind of a fun thought all the same.

This site has gone with me through a lot of VERY hard times.  It went with me for the loss of the aforementioned friend who hates me now.  There was a disagreement between us, and I did as I so often do when I was upset, I came here to vent.  I didn’t think she was one of my regular readers.  She was, and while I have never named names with any of my venting, she knew damn well who I was talking about, and I wasn’t nice.  It was the beginning of the end of our friendship.  A friendship that meant so much to me.  And now it’s gone, and she hates me.  Well, the day for apologies is long gone.  One of those things that you can’t take back.  I was immature back then.  Grown up a lot more now.  I also have a lot more emotional stability now than I did back when.

This site saw me go through a “nice guy” phase.  It was NOT pretty.  Like so many young men who subscribe to that mentality, it was cringe.  It’s part of why I don’t look back too much at the personal writing I did during that time.  To say nothing of the fact that my writing style was pretty rough too.  I’ve been able to see myself refined as a writer here.  The first thing I wrote was BAD!  It was informative, but amateur as fuck!  Now I can look at what I write and it’s pretty nice to read.  Much easier, if nothing else.

My journalism teacher once described my writing style as writing the way other people talk.  This makes it very easy to read, because you can hear it in your head as if someone is speaking to you.  I took that to heart, and have worked to continue that style.  Part of me likes to think that that is why Sally liked to read it so much.  She could imagine me saying what I was writing about, in my own words.  So she would be eating her white cheddar popcorn and imagining me saying all this stuff, and her either laughing or rolling her eyes or just not being especially interested because it was my nerd hobbies.

As I go along, this site is now about me and my journey through adulthood.  As I navigate through the labyrinth that is the voyage myself and the family I am building down here is doing.  It’s hard.  Unimaginably hard.  Part of me is so exhausted and feels like it will never get better.  But I’m working again, and eventually I will get paid more.  Figured out how the raise system works.  Probably won’t be getting one this year, which sucks, but whatever.  I will be getting one next year, which is nova.  Hopefully it is substantial.  With as much money as the medical industry makes, I would really hope it is.

When I started, I was HUGE into talking about politics, but those days are long past.  I’ve become a jaded leftist who realizes that everything is fucked, and our corrupt two-party system is going to do fuck-all to save us.  A choom of mine did his PhD paper on the state of the environment and the direction our governments are taking.  His conclusion was that fuck all has been seriously done, and there is no hope.  Climate change has gone from the fuck around part, and now we’re about to find out.  Talking about politics now is just me arguing with people who are too stupid to realize that all this “harm reduction” bullshit is just staving off the inevitable.  Fascism is coming.  The right is an organized weapon, while the left is squabbling baboons.

My nerd hobbies are still big to me.  There are some very exciting games coming out this year.  Next month has two of them, and I’m VERY excited to write about them.  My reviews don’t get the reviews they used to, but that’s okay.  I still love doing them.  Even moreso now that I have my Further Discussion posts, where I can get into spoilers and really nerd out about the stuff I like most, or the things I think deserve to be talked about.

Thinking about where I was 15 years ago.  I was in a dorm room, at the very early part of my college education.  Still bright eyed and bushy tailed.  I wanted to believe that there was something better waiting for me at the end of that.  In some ways, I was right.  And yet, I still retreat back into earlier parts of my life, because in other ways, I was horribly wrong.  I’m not the same person I was back in the memories I go into.  That person, that version of myself, I don’t remember him all that well.  I wish I did.  Wish someone had told that person to savor the memories and the time that he got when he was younger more than he did.  He wanted to be older so much.  It wasn’t worth the price of admission, that’s for damn sure.

Where will I be in another 15 years?  I’d like to think that by then I will at least be in a home that I’m renting.  I know I’ll never own a home, but renting one would be nice.  Have a bigger kitchen and have some more memories made.  Have a wall with some pictures that my fiancee and I have made of adventures we have been one.  Places we’ve gone.  Things we’ve seen.  Memories we’ve created.  Milestones we’ve crossed.

This site is the closest that I’ll ever have to a child.  My fiancee is unable to have kids, so this is it.  Don’t have the finances to afford that anyway.  For whatever audience I have, this is the legacy that I leave behind.  And you know what, I’m proud of it.  Who knows where I will be writing about next.  About my adventures at Mt. Rainier National Park?  Maybe!  That’s going to be an exciting trip.  One that I’m stoked about, trust and believe.  Olympic National Park?  That’s a place my fiancee and I both are stoked about going to.  It has places that look right out of a fantasy novel, and I desperately want that.  To see an actual rain forest in the state I live in.  A dream that I’ve had for ages.

I have no idea if the first person who subbed to this blog is still subbed.  I have no idea how many people from 15 years ago still read it.  Part of me wishes Sally was still around, so she could answer that.  Alas, life is unfair in so many ways.  But I am thankful for you all, and I hope you will stick with me for 15 years to come.

Until next time, a quote,

“I dunno, just like…a happier ending, for all involved.”
“Here, for folks like us? Wrong city, wrong people.” – Johnny Silverhand, Cyberpunk 2077

Peace out,

Maverick

What I Wish I Could Do

I watched The Menu recently, and I loved it.  Slowik is one of my favorite characters.  Everyone says he is an evil person, and he does do evil things, but when you realize who he’s doing these evil things to, it becomes a lot more sympathetic, because you realize that this guy has been the victim of his own success.  Margot survives because she realizes that all he has ever wanted is just to make something simple, like when he was a short order cook.  It was the happiest he ever was, so she gives him the chance to make that food again and you can see his satisfaction.  He even lets her leave with the food, which you see her eating as she goes and his satisfied with.

That got me to thinking about the things that I would do in life if I wasn’t having to constantly worry about money.  If I worked a four day week that paid like a five day one.  With three days off, what would I do with my time?  If it was a job that I was comfy with and didn’t have to worry about bills.  What would I do with my time?  If I had the scratch to buy whatever noms I was thinking about.  To have my passions take me where I wanted to.  What would I do?  What is the simple joys that life could give me that I would embrace?

For starters, assume that all this takes place in the Dream Home.  If you don’t know what that would look like, here’s a refresher.  Now let’s get down to what I would do with my time if I didn’t have to worry about all the bullshit that comes with life.

For starters, I would cook/bake.  One thing that I’ve always wanted is an outdoor pizza oven.  To be able to have that wood-fired pizza taste.  Sure, it would be work to learn how to do that just right, along with a lot of burned pizzas, but I would get it right, with time.  It cooks so fast.  About five minutes.  That’s it.  In a good pizza oven, with stone like a pizza stone on the base, it would cook so evenly.  I also want to learn how to grill.  Grilled chicken.  Not a huge fan of steak.  Grilled bratwurst sounds great.  You boil it in beer and onions and then grill it.  And the onions.  It is DIVINE!

I would bake dairy-free cinnamon rolls for my fiancee.  She’s not vegan, just allergic to dairy.  Instead of seeing that as a hindrance, I see it as a challenge.  And I LOVE a challenge.  It has made for some spectacular creations.  My dairy-free alfredo with scallops and linguini was a masterpiece.  Nothing short of a masterpiece.  A spectacular dish that couldn’t have been better.  Thinking about what to do for Valentines Day now.  I don’t see myself as having to one-up what I do.  Instead, I have ideas that I run with because they sound like fun.  Something that Slowik hasn’t been able to do in decades.  My baking ideas would flourish with more time to really enjoy it, alongside a kitchen to go nuts with it in.  I would make MASSIVE amounts of cookies for Christmas in March.  Each year would be a voyage of self-expression.  Finding new ideas for delicious things that would tantalize the palate.  Everyone who eats them would never be disappointed.  I would get tins that I could send them in, properly distributed so that they don’t crumble or fall apart at all.  Yes, it would be spectacular.

But beyond that, I would also savor other things in life.  Sitting in the couch in our library, looking through art books of my nerd hobbies.  That would be wonderful.  Having a kitty nearby who I can pet as I look through Soul Arts, the artbook that VaatiVidya had commissioned from the art contests he did.  Some of the most spectacular works of contemporary artists.  I cannot compliment it enough.  Though I would also enjoy reading other books.  Sitting on the veranda, reading some of my favorite books and listening to the sound of the ocean crashing against the shore.

Game nights with chooms would be wonderful.  Not only would it be awesome to have fun with friends, but also to make some hors d’oeuvres.  Never done that before.  It sounds exciting.  Dinner would be something that is pretty universally liked.  Pizza.  Ordered out pizza, from a pizza place that isn’t chain pizza.  Something with dairy-free cheese for my fiancee and those who aren’t big on regular cheese, while something that is loaded up for the rest of us.  I actually would love to try that sourdough pizza from Inside Out.  Binging With Babish made it look pretty bomb.

Walking through down the beach or through the woods around our place would be a special pleasure of mine.  A way to connect with nature.  To feel my connection to the world.  Seeing my fiancee playing with the kitties or sitting in her solarium would be nice too.  Reading in the library with her.  I don’t talk enough about us spending time together.  One of the perks of my dream kitchen is that it would be easier to talk with people.  So when friends would be over, family would be visiting, or when she is wanting to talk while I am cooking, we could do that.  It would be a nice way to connect.

Oh, and the shower.  I am SO tired of showers that double as a tub.  To have a shower that I can walk in and out of.  It sounds like such a simple thing, but it’s not.  To be able to pop open the bathroom window to drain the steam, as I savor taking a nice long shower.  That’s such a nice thought.

There are other things.  Having a telescope so I can look up at the stars at night.  To live far enough away from civilization to not have to deal with light pollution, and so be able to take in the cosmic majesty.  That’s one thing I’ve missed after leaving Alaska.  That and not being in a state where it seems like everyone has weaponized incompetence.  Using binoculars to look out at the ocean and see whales as they pass by.  Orcas are one of my favorite animals.  I’d love to see them out and about.  There is also bee-keeping.  It’s something I’ve been interested in for years.  In this dream life, where money doesn’t frighten me and I can actually live the life I want to live, that’s something I would pursue.

I don’t want all the bells and whistles.  Life doesn’t need to be an amazing adventure.  I’d be perfectly fine if it was just quiet days and gentle nights, with some random adventures every now and again to make things exciting.

Until next time, a quote,

“Once-again, thank you for dining with us tonight.  You represent the ruin of my art, and my life.  Now you get to be a part of it.  What I hope will be my masterpiece.” – Julian Slowik, The Menu

Peace out,

Maverick

The Changing Face of Life and my Site

I’ve been watching the goodbye video from MatPat on Game Theory.  It’s a channel that I haven’t thought about in some time, but when I heard he was saying goodbye, I decided to look into it.  I used to love their stuff, but then I got less and less interested as it became clear that they were chasing the algorithm.  To say nothing of all the FNaF videos.  That shit got old real fast.  All the same, seeing MatPat walking away from it all was honestly kind of a sober thought.  A lot of great YouTubers that I grew up with have either gone away or what made their content special has gone away.  It’s one of those things that has stuck with me.

Over the last few months, it’s become clear to me that I’m getting older.  I’m starting to feel older.  The ages between 35 – 40 is, statistically speaking, the middle of your life.  By the time I reach 40, there is a very good chance that I have more years behind me than I do ahead.  It’s bee saddening, for me.  Deeply saddening.  I’m at the middle of my life, and not only am I working a job where I’m making WAY less than I should be, but I’m in a place that’s awful and things aren’t shaping up the way I was hoping they would.  Being an adult sucks, and I am finding myself more and more retreating into memories of better times.  Of being a kid and spending my days of summer with a girl that I dearly love, and the brother that I never had.  At least before he stabbed me in the back.

If there are any people who have kept up with this site from its inception, you probably remember that I used to be so much more active on it.  When I was in college, that was easy to do.  Nowadays, I have a 9 to 5 jobs, a fiancee and our kitty, as well as playing games and engaging with the world.  I still love to write on this site.  It’s my baby.  But it isn’t something that I have been able to commit to in the way that I wish I could.

So much has changed from when I started it.  I’ve become a lot more jaded.  That much is probably clear to anyone who reads what I post.  My dour nature has become more refined over time, not less.  My fiancee was hoping that her infectious positivity would be more of an affect on me than my dour negativity on her.  She couldn’t be more wrong.  My dour negativity has become such a huge part of both of our lives, and she is becoming much more like me than I like her.  Thankfully, she hasn’t gotten as jaded as I am.  I’m genuinely glad about that.  It’s exhausting, I’ll tell you that.

It’s just weird as I look at the passing of time, and I think about how much things have changed online, and it’s a saddening reminder of how far I’ve come.  I will say, if the day comes that Red Letter Media decides to close up shop, I would be so sad.  Their Best of the Worst series of videos are such a huge part of my life.  Probably my favorite entertainment right now, after video games.  It has been the background music of me grinding in RPGs for years, and I hope for it to be that way for years to come.

But thinking about the entertainment that has come and gone, there was The Drunken Peasants Podcast, which died away.  There were YouTubers who I used to really love, some of whom just closed up without any sort of fanfare and then deleted their entire catalog.  You probably don’t know some of them.  Ones like The Dishonored Wolf and Triox.  They just vanished into the ether.  The former was a victim of his depression and ended up hating everything he created.  That part is just so sad.  To work so hard to make content, only to despise it.  SuperBunnyhop barely posts anymore.  Armoured Skeptic got tired of his own persona and threw it all away and the bulk of the catalog with it.  I unsubbed from him because his content got dull.  MrBTongue vanished into the ether as well, though his content is still up.  Can always hope he returns one day, but I doubt it.

So many great voices and content creators just fading away.  Whether they do what MatPat did and sign off, or just fade away without a word, it is the end of so many eras.  The Internet is so different now.  So much of entertainment is geared toward short-form videos like Tik-Tok.  My fiancee watches YouTube shorts for hours on end.  Tik-Tok by another name.  But that world isn’t my world.  I feel like the old man watching the world change and not being a part of it anymore.  Age has been on my mind more and more.  Maybe it’s having to deal with a ton of medical bullshit all at once.  I feel like the world went and left me behind.  Like I’m a relic from another age, who doesn’t have a place in the world that exists now.

Talked at length about this with gaming.  Seeing so many franchises that I grew up with become unrecognizable to me now, and feeling sad that something that I loved so much is gone.  Where does it end?  I don’t know.  I really don’t.

It isn’t always memories of younger years that I retreat into.  Another place I like to go is into the world of the home that I want to live in.  The dream home that I want to make, but can’t.  The home that is all I want, but will never be.  I’m sure the dream home will be linked down below.  This site is good at pulling relevant posts to whichever one I am writing now.  Thinking about the life that I would want to live, if I could.  But that life is never coming.  Not in the world I live in.  Instead, it will be being a wage slave for the rest of my life and working until I got one foot in the grave.  Magical, isn’t it?

Part of me will miss that MatPat is gone.  I’m glad he’s pursuing the happiness he always felt.  It’s good that he has the kind of scratch where he can do that.  I’m pretty sure he still has ownership stake in his channel, so he’s going to get residuals, moving forward.  Gotta pay for the good life somehow.  Wish I had been able to pursue what I always wanted to do at a younger age, when it would have mattered.  Now, that world is gone.  I’m still here, in my written word.  A dying medium.  But you all are here.  Some of you have been following this site for over a decade, and I’m grateful to each and every one of you.  I don’t know where things are going from here, but I’m not anywhere near done.  It just gets more sporadic than it used to be.

Until next time, a quote,

“This is why you don’t bring back fallen warriors.  Sooner or later they’re going to see that everything they fought for has turned to shit.” – Johnny Silverhand, Cyberpunk 2077

Peace out,

Maverick

What is Happiness?

I’ve been trying to answer this question ever since I was 14.  That’s over half my life ago now.  Half of my journeys around the Sun, and I’m no closer to answer that question than I was back then.  Why?  I like to think that I’m a smart person.  That with enough intellect and commitment, I can work my way through any major question, yet this one simple question has eluded me since I had my head injury.  I woke up and didn’t know who I am.  When I tried to figure that out, I got no answers.  Just more questions.

I’m 35 years old, now.  At the beginning of the statistical middle of my life, and I still have no fucking clue who I am and what I’m doing.  But more than anything else, I just feel so lost.  The question that’s boggled my mind more than any other is – what is happiness?  You can ask 1,000,000 people that, and you’ll get 10,000,000 responses.  There is no answer that I understand.  So here I am, trying to make sense of it all.

Maybe, at long last, I’ve finally figured it out.  The question that drives people as they go through life.  Everyone is just trying to answer what happiness is.  Throughout all my health problems, all my tribulation down here in Washington, when I have to drive into Seattle, there’s this thought that bites at me.  It’s a simple one – I want to go home.  But what is home?  It’s not a place.  At least, not a place in the real world.  It’s a concept.  A state of mind.  A place that I want to be, where life makes sense.

Part of it is my dream home.  The one I’ve talked about in a previous post (linked here).  Being in that place, listening to the sound of the waves.  I want to wake up to that sound.  To have my day greeted with the sound of the ocean, as if the world is waking up with me.  In that place, my job that I have now, as a billing specialist for a local hospital, pays all that I need.  We don’t live like kings, but why would we want to?  I don’t want that life.  I’ve never wanted that life.  Nor does my fiancee.  We want a simple life.  I want to read books in our library.  I want to have a kitty in my lap while we watch movies or play games.  To make amazing foods in my kitchen.  To have more energy to live our best life.  To learn how to grill, and make moose-burgers.  Wish my old man could send some frozen.  Would put it in our freezer.  Would have this amazing freezer in the garage.

The home would be away from the hustle and bustle of the world.  An Internet connection would keep us in touch with the world, but we would only go into town for major food runs at Costco about once a month.  The cacophony of our area is birds, animals, wind in the trees, the waves on the shore.  I love it there.

Real life is so hard.  My job doesn’t pay what I need.  If my fiancee didn’t work, we wouldn’t get by.  I’m tired a lot.  It’s been getting a little better.  My job isn’t stressful.  Quite the opposite.  It’s soothing.  When I get into the zone, do my thing, am able to enjoy my day.  Listen to the music I want to listen to.  Not have to commute into the office.  It’s a peaceful life.  I love it.  But everything is so fucking expensive.  How can happiness be found in a world so cruel and ugly as this?

Home, where I want to be, is a peaceful place.  It’s a gentle world.  There I get to explore my interest in bee-keeping.  There’s a hive at the edge of my yard, surrounded by native grasses and flowering plants that they can draw nectar from and make honey.  It’s like nothing you’ve ever consumed before.  I make honey cookies that are spectacular.  The flavor profile is unlike anything else.  I cannot begin to describe it.  My fiancee saves the wax, makes art projects with it.  Her solarium is beautiful.  A place of nature and tranquility where she can be connected with nature.  The stupid things like money, healthcare, all of that, don’t exist in that place.  Sure, we got bills to pay, but they aren’t a threat looming over us.  Just something to get through in the day-to-day.  Going to a doctor costs nothing, because taxes pay for that instead of paying for America killing brown people.

Maybe happiness is a place.  A place inside you where you get to be the person you want to be, with the people who make you happy.  Home, where our friends come over for game night and it’s always a lot of fun.  They all live in the area, each with a home that is uniquely their own.  We are a quirky bunch.  The neighbors who aren’t our friends know me, but it’s one of those things where I’m kind of there, and kind of not.  I’m still an introvert, after all.  Get me talking and we’ll have lots to talk about, but it’s just about getting me there first.

Happiness is something that I don’t fully understand, but I know what I want it to be.  I know what it looks like in my head.  A lot of people say that happiness is being satisfied with where you are now, but that doesn’t mean much to me.  Not in a time and place where everything is so uncertain.  So maybe it’s the idea that you have a life you want to pursue, and you work diligently to seek it out.  Maybe you never find it, but so long as you can see that place, that beautiful place that is somewhere that feels like a home, and don’t lose sight of it even at the worst of times, then maybe you’ve found as close to happiness as most people will ever get.

I know none of this made sense.  Welcome to my mind.

Until next time, a quote,

“My thanks.  I will paint a world named after thee.  It will be a cold, dark, and very gentle place.  One day, it will make someone a goodly home.” – Arya, Dark Souls 3: Ashes of Ariandel DLC

Peace out,

Maverick