Pity Party

I loathe writing about myself. Mostly because when I do, it’s something bad or depressing, and I’m not really sure why I would go out of my way to share my gloom and doom with anyone, or why anyone would really care about it.

However, writing gives me the time and the space to really think about things. It forces me to focus on what’s inside my head so I can really consider what’s going on in there, and what kinds of things I need to be doing to address/rectify the issue.

To be blunt, the past 12 months are sucked a pile of elephant droppings. It all started on the 14th of August when I rolled my car. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the whole thing ended up costing a cool couple of grand, even with full coverage, and my rate has gone up A LOT since, so the cost of that wreck, that wasn’t my fault, is still being calculated.

Then, needing cash, and watching the global economic situation meltdown, I decided I would try and kill myself with work. Between August 15th and the end of March I was on the road 150 out of 225 days. That doesn’t count days traveling, of which there are an average of 1.6 for every 5 days on the road. That means that over the course of 7.5 months I was effectively “gone” for all but about 25 days.

By the time March rolled around I was crabby, but flush with cash and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, I was hopeful that the damage caused to nearly all the relationships in my life due to being gone so much, could be reversed thanks to some much needed, but ultimately forced, downtime due to the lack of any real events to work.

Unfortunately, I was too late.

So April and May came, and I spent a lot of time alone, and writing. I had just 16 days of work out of the 60 that those two months comprise. This was, on one hand, a good thing because I had wanted to spend more time here on the blog, and writing all the stuff that never quite makes it to the blog. I read and learned about all kinds of things that I never knew before, which is really one of my favorite things to do this side of eating and breathing (in that order). But, by the end of May, I was running out of money (thanks to a depression that had me spending like a lottery winner and taxes that I should have pre-paid earlier, but didn’t), I was emotionally fragile, and I was giving up hope.

At the end of May my grandmother passed. It wasn’t really a surprise. For the past few years, just about every time the phone rang from a family member, I was sure that’s what the call was about. Still, with unresolved feelings about that side of the family, I was forced, at one of the most depressed times in my life, to confront those feelings and find a way to re-engage on the part of the family that I had largely left behind.

Thankfully, June and July picked up a bit, and I was able to get my finances together a little better. I also got some help from my dad, which is really the only reason I’ve been able to keep my money together.

Now we’re nearing the end of August, and I’m looking ahead. Business is about to pick up some, and hopefully I’ll be able to tread water for a little while longer, but the reality is, everything I’ve built over the past 5 years here in Memphis is in jeopardy.

The home I bought nearly 3 years ago is really too big and expensive for one person. I’ve considered taking on a roommate, but the house is laid out poorly for two people that aren’t sleeping together, and I’m really not in the market for that situation either. What’s more, I don’t think I could damn someone that wasn’t emotionally entangled with the burden of having to live with me.

So, I’m thinking of selling sometime soon, probably closer to the end of the year or the beginning of next. I’m not upside-down on my loan, and the appraised value of my home is a lot more than I paid for it, but the house needs some work to ensure that I get what I have in it, plus enough to pay any of the selling expenses.

From there, I don’t know. I’d like to buy a duplex or something that I could rent out the other side of. I’d like to be able to go back to school and get a degree (probably poly-sci), but I don’t know if I can really do that and do what I do for a living. I’d like to eventually work in politics or doing some kind of community development/activism thing that spends as much time thinking about and doing what ought to be done, as it does out in neighborhoods helping empower people, but I don’t see a lot of opportunity on that front that doesn’t involve me starting ANOTHER business (which would be number 5 for me), which is not something I’m real jazzed about doing right now.

So yeah, I’m feeling pretty pitiful and pathetic right now. It’s not that I don’t see a path forward, but that I don’t feel like I’m in control of that path, and that’s something I’m really not comfortable with. I feel like I’m being forced to consider things that just 12 months ago were unfathomable to me. In short, it sucks.

I know it’ll get better if I take charge of my own situation, but to be honest, I’m neither in the right state emotionally or mentally to really do much of that right now. I just feel beat up.

I’ve got to get over it if I’m gonna keep my head above water, and I know this.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my self-absorbed whiny assed pity party. This is not the post I wanted to publish today, but it’s the post that came out. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish the other sometime before you decide I’m a hopeless loser that doesn’t deserve your attention.

/pityparty