This whole show called Life has changed. A LOT. History started to change about 3 years ago, and then the future changed when Kate arrived in May of last year. The present, if that’s what you call these fleeting moments of intermission between acts, moves too fast to document. That’s one reason (okay, it’s one attempted excuse) to explain my complete inability to maintain my blog.
But I don’t care if I fail at maintaining it to some absurd standard frequency I’ve set. I’ll keep writing - erratically scheduled, a mélange of topics, self-referential exploratory voice, and any other $5 phrases you can think of to describe whatever this thing is – and hope that I haven’t completely alienated all of you. (I think maybe only some family members & a few techies with RSS feeds of this still read. RSS feeds are … something I still haven’t figured out how to wield in such a way to make my life easier.)
That being said, there are a lot of events of sheer magnitude – a baby, re-writing the upper branches of family trees, moving cross-country, closing myself off to outlets like acting & this blog - that would justify completely re-scripting this to fit the last years’ worth of posts, much the same way my life’s changed.
Well that just won’t work. This is me. This is part of whoever I am, and it’s the part that is whatever I say. The only thing I know (or at least come close to knowing) is me. Write what you know.
So here I am. I’m in New Jersey. I’m still working with the same company, same role, same everything – just doing it from here & going back to the West Coast once a month to maintain relationships. I moved back in September/early October, and in the three months since, we’ve done a lot of adjusting. Adjusting lifestyles (only one of us working, both of us closer to friends), adjusting finances (one income, extra body to clothe), adjusting eating habits (how to eat tons of the world’s best pizza & not look like we do), adjusting activity levels (horrible weather, have to drive more than we walk)… but it’s a new year & a new act, and we feel settled. Settled in a good way, though. Not in, like, the dying way. 
Being a new act, and having a fresh new calendar year at the same time, it’s been pretty hard to resist the temptation to chase every dream I’ve ever had all at once. It’s like someone opened a jar of carefully curated butterflies called Things We Could Do, and I’m running around with this tiny little net called 2011, and for some reason I think I can fit all the butterflies in my net, tie strings to their wings & make them do my bidding. Open a restaurant. Or at least go to Culinary School. Start a charter school. Or at least be a teacher. Be a cooler, funnier, younger, less Southern Dr. Phil. Or at least watch all the OWN network the DVR can capture. Finally get into the shape I think I deserve. Or at least try the caveman diet for three months. Blog every day & write something that will add a spark in people’s minds. Or at least make my 8-month old daughter laugh out loud once or twice.
But here was my epiphany (NOTE: I almost just wrote “a-ha moment” – I really gotta lay off of the OWN network): January 1st is no more special or accommodating to life changes than any other day.
Realizing this & embracing this is the first of what I’ve come to identify as Shitty Sacred Blessings. The Shitty: that means all of this energy for change that you feel on New Year’s Day, all that Resolution magic, is artificial, superficial, one of the other -ficials – and propagated by Hallmark & seafood vendors & diet companies & sauerkraut companies (I think we all already knew that sauerkraut companies are up to no good – their reason for being is to take the worst-tasting vegetable & make it soggy & then sell it to you so you force it on your kids as “tradition”.) Made me feel kind of Shitty.
But the Sacred Blessing: that means that when you decide to act on that energy & make those changes, you can do it ANY DAY YOU WANT. There’s no need to wait for a new year or until you move cross-country or whatever particular “natural” inflection point you might think you need. (I think the January 1st thing is strictly that – it feels like a natural point of inflection that comes on a regular basis – but consider that the entire concept of time & calendars is man-made and arbitrary and therefore not natural, and you’ll free yourself from the same gravity that causes the New Year’s Rockin’ Eve ball to drop.) You can pick your own point of inflection. That is nothing short of a Blessing. It may or may not qualify as Sacred… but really, that adjective is highly misused – it’s rarely used, but when it is it’s almost never used properly. So piss off.
I don’t know where all these thoughts are going to lead us, but I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve felt like we’re embracing our ability to choose our own path. Why is that happening now? IN NEW JERSEY OF ALL PLACES?? I can’t say for sure. (I can say that it has little to do with the State of New Jersey itself, although I’ll admit to being somewhat fascinated by Chris Christie.) But if I had to venture a guess, I’d say it’s because San Francisco always felt temporary. Because we knew it would be. We knew we could neither afford real estate nor to raise a child out there without becoming debt-leveraged, lottery winners, or slaves to larger corporations. Hence we knew we weren’t there forever, because both of those things were goals, and none of those requirements were particularly appealing.
But now, even with all this energy around change & all these adjustments we’re making, our location feels permanent. … No, that’s not the right word. It feels… very Aronofsky. As in there may or may not be an end to it, but if it kept going forever you’d be okay with it, and if it does eventually end you’ll be glad you went through it. It just feels like we don’t have any guaranteed forks in the road ahead, which means we have (or at least feel like we have) much more control over the steps we take toward our golden sunset. Pretty good feeling. Away we go!
Oh, and in an update from the prior post: the wyf uses the iPad more than I do. She loves it. Loves the convenience, the portability, the enhanced productivity that results from both. It’s a surprise that she’s as in to it as she is, but it’s also surprising that it means I’m not using it as much as I thought I would either. Most of that may be because it’s not worth fighting over who gets to use it & when, and it’s DEFINITELY not worth having two of them. Plus, the majority of time she’s using it to sell/give away some of our stuff via Craigslist or eBay, or helping to organize her best friend’s wedding. I’d just use it to look up random crap and/or spend money in the App Store or iTunes. De-cluttering our space trumps IMDB inquiries almost every time.
