I think what I was getting at is that I need to remember how to be a contented single person and to learn to like myself again. I used to do that really well. Without ignoring the fact that being married changed my outlook in many ways–most of them for the better–I need to remember that I did pretty fucking well on my own too. I was once happily, gloriously, and unapologetically single. In fact, I think that independence used to be one of the more appealing aspects of my personality, and ironically enough may have been what attracted Mark to me in the first place.

I need to get that independence and sense of individuality back and focus on what’s good about me rather than following the easy option of blaming all my problems on outside influences. Yes, a lot of sucky stuff has happened to me in the past year. Boo hoo. Whining about it will not change a bloody thing for me. Blaming my parents for getting old and sick and cranky and blaming my ex for not wanting our lives to continue according to plan does not one single thing to improve my life. It just allows me to make excuses for my own unhappiness and to harbor resentments against very good people who love me and have on the whole treated me very well even when behaving in ways I sometimes didn’t like.

As I was saying to a friend at dinner tonight, I really used to enjoy my own company. I don’t find myself very pleasant to be around anymore, and I imagine I’m not the only one. And I want that to change. I’m hoping spending some quality time with myself in a different environment will be sort of a reboot and that I may even learn how to have fun with myself again. I am someone who needs very much to enjoy my own company before I can even begin to think much about enjoying the company of others.

I hope It will work. I think it will. And even if not, I’ll get to shop at Loblaw’s a lot. That’s always fun, anyway…

October is traditionally a time of great reflection and new beginnings for me.

Earlier in life, it was the time that the new school year stopped seeming quite so new, when the weather got nice, and when it was time for the fair–which always made me feel like a kid again, long after I’d stopped really being one. It was when I moved to Charlotte in 1986 and San Francisco in 1992, and it was when I began my career as a librarian in 2009. It was in October that I first met the love of my life in 2001 (and October again nine years later when that relationship really began to break down in earnest). And October has always been my favorite time of year to travel.

Now I’m starting my forty-eighth October. The weather has been lovely and the school year is once again becoming less new. I stopped going to the fair after the last three or four times because it doesn’t make me feel like a kid anymore. I’m not moving this year, but I’m starting my third year in this new career and doing quite well with it. And I’m alone again, which may be best for everyone involved–but that doesn’t make it any easier.

As in so many Octobers past, I’m also about to be traveling and pondering the future on a far away highway. I’m probably expecting too much from a simple road trip, but this one is extremely important to me. I need some time to be alone outside my everyday environment. I need to remember that there’s a world outside my little protective cocoon of home, work, and the highway connecting the two. I need to think about what that world means to me, about what my place in it might be, and about how I might proceed in order to get rolling on the next phase of my life. I need to get back in touch with me as an individual (rather than “me as a son” or “me as an ex-husband”) and what is important to my own happiness. I need to stop thinking so much about where I’ve been and start thinking about where I’m going.

And I need something…anything…that makes me feel like a kid again.