The Zolas
Fell in love with New York (2015)
I thought it was time for a break from all the nostalgia…
This article pretty much sums up one of the major reasons I don’t want guns in my house. I speak from experience here, because this almost happened to me once when I was about twenty years old. I was working late, but I came home earlier than my dad expected that night. I got to my room and closed the door, but I had to use the bathroom. When I opened the door, my dad was standing there with a gun pointed at me.
A few of my cousins couldn’t quite understand how willing I was to get rid of my father’s guns when he died. They thought I might like to save them as mementos. Frankly, though, I didn’t really want to remember my dad holding a lethal weapon that was aimed at me. I loved him way too much to hold on to anything that reminded me of that particular incident.
So yeah, twenty years ago tonight, I logged onto my dialup connection and used Fetch (which I still use on occasion) to upload the original set of HTML and JPEG files that became the first version of Planet SOMA (now Otherstream). A lot has changed since then–the fact that the site no longer runs on static HTML and I no longer have a dialup connection, for example–but it’s still here after twenty years, even if far fewer people care nowadays, so I guess that’s saying something.
Maintaining this space since 1996 has done some really good things for me. It’s how I met some of my closest friends and it also led pretty directly to a midlife career change for me. It’s gotten me laid several times, and it got me married once…even if not till death did us part. It’s given me a record of an interesting period in my life and helped me frame the way I thought about that period, and it’s resulted in no small number of adventures.
In recent years, the traffic and the content have been diminishing, which is to be expected because the personal website/blog is not the cutting-edge medium it once was, because social media has taken over many of the roles a site like this used to play, and frankly because my content has become less interesting to a wider audience. The proportion of posts that mainly involve me babbling about me has increased, which is not really a good thing.
But I don’t care all that much, really. While I’d be lying if I said that reaching other people is not important–otherwise this would be a diary rather than a public website–it’s always been more about amusing myself than amusing anyone else. And it will probably continue to be that way until I decide it’s time to stop. Until that time, I hope you’ll keep coming by, either here or here or here or even here. And many, many thanks to those of you who already do, and especially to those of you who have been doing so for a long time. I appreciate it.
Back to the fun…
So I’ve kind of started pondering a pretty monumental road trip for this fall, the like of which I haven’t attempted in many years. No real details yet, but most of my ideas center around Winnipeg, and one of my drafts got me as far west as Alberta.
I know I have some readers in the prarie provinces, so if any of you want to remind me how boring I will probably find some of the vast spaces between all these cities (seeing as how I don’t much care for nature and the great outdoors) now would be a good time to rein me in a bit.
An alternate agenda would replace the western provinces with time in the US Midwest–specifically my first trip to Minneapolis in almost two decades. But I’ll probably still go to Winnipeg either way. It fascinates me. And after this year–what with the tenure process, all the teaching, and all the consulting work on the side–I deserve a big trip.
Inspiration includes this, which led to much geekerage and to this.
My freshman year in college is now officially “history”.
One of the main things that jumped out at me when I was looking at old content for the anniversary retrospective a couple of weeks back was how incredibly pissed off I seemed to have been over the past twenty years or so. It seems like I hated pretty much everything. That wasn’t really the case, of course, but the whole site did seem really negative…not that I necessarily thought (or think) of that as a completely bad thing.
I’m still pretty ill-tempered, cynical, and curmudegeonly. A lot of things irritate me, piss me off, and just generally compel me to ridicule the individual(s) or orgnization(s) who are responsible for them. It’s part of who I am and part of what many people seem to have liked about me over the years. I think, though, that I’ve gotten a lot better–especially over the past couple of years–at focusing on things I do like, both in my life and in the virtual representations thereof. If someone is an idiot, I will not hesitate to call him one, particularly if that idiocy is harmful or potentially harmful to someone else. But I don’t get off on hating things anymore, or at least not like I apparently used to.
I think this is due to the fact that I do kind of enjoy things and take more pleasure in life now. I’m happier in general than I have been in a long time. Either as a cause or an effect of that fact, I tend to focus more energy on things and people and issues that make me happy than on those that don’t–which explains why I curate my Twitter feed so carefully, among other things. I mean things like experiencing music and history and cities and buildings and food and life rather than bitching (quite so much) about what stupid people do.
It’s also due to the fact that hating everything gets really exhausting after a few years or decades.
Because tenure. And beans.
I don’t really have it these days and here’s why:
- Let’s be frank. There haven’t been a lot of offers. Turns out chunky, greying, middle-aged librarians are not really many people’s fetish, despite what they told us in library school, and this is particularly true among impossibly young, scruffy alternaboys. It was much easier back when I was an ill-tempered thirtysomething alternaboy who could devote much more time to the quest (and was in close physical proximity to venues that encouraged said quest). And dating/hookup apps are just out of the question. That said, I have had several offers, but…
- I can’t really bear the thought of having sex with someone I already know and like. The familiarity aspect sort of freaks me out for whatever reason, and I’m also leery of doing something that might make a friendship uncomfortable. Yes, friendship trumps sex for me now and the FWB thing sort of creeps me out. Go figure. For some reason, the only sex that seems appealing right now is of the anonymous and/or NSA variety, but…
- Again, that’s easier said than done at this point in my life. See #1.
So basically, the kind of sex it might be relatively easy to have is not really appealing and the kind of sex that seems relatively appealing is not something I could likely have.
Add to this the fact that I get nervous at the thought of bringing random strangers into my house (because they’re scary) and of bringing friendly, nice boys into my house (for fear they might want to spent too much time there) and you see the conundrum that really isn’t that much of a conundrum. So I just said the hell with it. I’m surprised how much I don’t care, kind of like when I got rid of the cable. Maybe the difference now is that I actually have other hobbies I didn’t have twenty years ago.
Or maybe I’m just old. I always promised myself I would have some dignity when I hit middle age and wouldn’t be one of those creepy old fags who always chased around boys half his age. And I’ve pretty much succeeded, despite the fact that I work on a fucking college campus.
But I kind of don’t feel like I’m missing much anyway…
It may seem an odd thing to celebrate, but as of today, I have been single again for five years.
Today in 2011, I was in a pretty rotten place. I’d pretty much known where things were headed for several months; deciding that we weren’t going to live together anymore (or even live in the same time zone) was a pretty unmistakeable sign. But I was still unprepared for how hard it hit me on that Wednesday night when I realized that it was really over after nine very happy years and six really shitty months.
Being “coupled” has never been my natural state, even though there were some times that I really wanted it to be…and even though there was one time where it really did feel right. By the time I met Mark in 2001, I was pretty comfortable–hell, even enthusiastic–about the prospect of remaining a confirmed bachelor for life. One very serious case of love changed all that and I do not for a minute regret that it happened. All in all, it was a very happy time in my life and I was very sad when it ended.
The fact that it ended at a time when there were a lot of other things going on in my life made it much harder, and the fact that I didn’t feel entirely comfortable talking about most of it even with close friends made it even harder.In the end, I was not prepared to make one really big compromise that might have (at best) delayed the end, but would have done so at the expense of my sanity and my emotional health–which looks in retrospect like the very moment I started my recovery. It didn’t seem like it at the time but ultimately, I realized there was a bigger problem in my life/brain/body chemistry/whatever and I began working on that. Pretty successfully, I think.
But I’ve also spent the past five years learning how once again to be that single person I used to love. I think I’ve been pretty successful at that, too. Frankly, I like myself better as a single person. I think most of my friends like me better that way, too. I’m more adventurous, I generally have more fun, and I don’t have to have anyone else along for the ride when I travel (which in itself is justification enough). And the introvert in me has more time for my friends now that most of the limited time I’m willing to allot to other people is not dedicated to just one other person.
I’m also more independent. In retrospect, I gave up a lot of that when I was coupled, just because it was easy to do so, and he was willing to take over a lot of things and make a lot of decisions. And, of course, that really wasn’t fair to either of us. It took me a long time to get back in the habit of taking care of things on my own. I’m still working on it. I think the task of building a very successful and satisfying new career while I was pretty much in “the depths” is what saved me. In fact, I didn’t even miss one day of work, which either means that I really loved my job or that I was scared to stay home the next day. Or both.
Again, I don’t regret having spent nine-plus years in this relationship. Not for a second. I do have some regrets about the end and the aftermath, but that’s to be expected.
Five years later, though, I also don’t regret where I am today. I’m happy, I like my life, and I finally gave the goddamned chair to Habitat.
I think that’s worth celebrating.
For decades, North Carolina’s economy thrived largely due to its relatively moderate government and its relatively well educated population compared to its neighbors. The current Republican administration seems determined to do away with both. They have apparently determined that the best way to stay in power is to keep everyone ignorant and poor by destroying public education and through backward social legislation that scares off they very types of businesses and professions that might actually build the economy.
When I moved back here from California eleven years ago, I was pretty happy to be back in the “sane” part of the South. I didn’t realize I’d gotten here just in time for the birth of a new Mississippi. Ad campaigns notwithstanding, North Carolina is starting to feel a lot less like home.
I’ll stay, mainly because I have a pretty good life and a really good job, and because I want to piss off the assholes who have taken over a state that may not have been perfect but that used to be a hell of a lot better than it is now. Staying will be my own little way of telling Phil Berger and his mob to bite me.