It's Gonna Be a Busy Year

This will be a pretty busy year for me. I'm going to be enrolling in outpatient drug and alcohol treatment, I'm going to start looking for part-time mainstream wage-slave employment, I'll be actively seeking to start engaging in side-income projects like freelance writing and DIY crafts, I'll also start seriously learning bike mechanics and begin assembling them for fun and a meager under-the-table supplement to my income, I'll start putting myself out there socially, I'm going to be temporarily moving to a new apartment while this building gets a seismic upgrade … and, of course, it's election year, a time of grim foreboding I'm sure.

That's right, a seismic upgrade. More like a stress-inducing pain in the ass, to me. Because I live in a project-based section eight voucher, I'm at the mercy of how the political winds blow the sails of the federal government – and right now those winds are filling the sails with corruption and disintegration, being blown by a criminal upstart who is destabilizing society and destroying our government as a functional body. And he hates the poor, wants us all in chain gangs or debtors prisons or sleeping on the streets. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if this amounts to displacement, that somehow I'll get priced out when I return here. That's why I'm going to be gearing up to be homeless, an if I'm lucky I may even be able to buy a van to live in.

As for all that other stuff, well it's just time for me to actually start moving forward with my life, rather than just spinning around in the same eddy ruminating on dissatisfaction and animosity whilst idly daydreaming about the better life I ignorantly believe I deserve. I got off the streets so I could stop being a victim and a loser, do things like sober up and get back to work, try to figure out how to get along with people and get a handle on the weirdness in my head. I'm probably never going to be truly self-sufficient, but at least I can be some kind of participant in society and enjoy myself a little bit.

A Smooth Jazz Sunday

Silence reigns all throughout the building except for the occasional stereo being played; I'm listening to jazz on the local station now, the kind of smooth stuff that perfectly accompanies a soft rain and twilight's descent into night. Fall has arrived with all the subtlety of Napoleon: overnight the daytime temperatures dropped to delightful sixties and seventies and the clouds rolled in and occluded that frightful blistering orb and washed the air and the streets clean; soon it will wash the raucous revelers back home early on the weekends and chase those obnoxious Road Warriors down to California.

It wasn't always so silent, at least not on my floor. A couple days in a row I decided to allow my resolve to become responsible to waver and ended up inviting assorted neighbors over to my place to drink. Yeah, the room with the nice carpet that everyone seems eager to put cigarettes out on! That's the thing about alcohol, it causes inhibitions to relax while also impairing judgment; that's why there's such an appalling recidivism to drinking and driving, because the best of intentions evaporate after a few drinks and the car keys have been wrestled out of a friend's hands again. Hell, Mr. Brownsville from the fourth floor almost broke my computer by falling on what I use as a computer desk! Needless to say, he had to leave right then. It's just amazing to me how slipshod many of the drinkers here are. I very seldom get drunk enough to slur significantly or to fall down; I probably learned my lesson when I popped a bone out of my right hand trying to catch myself falling when really drunk three years ago, resulting in reconstructive surgery that has left my right index and middle fingers noticeably weaker and will no doubt hurt like hell as arthritis sets in over the coming years. Maybe I'm just burned out and only drink when I'm bored and want company I can't suffer with any grace except by being intoxicated. Either way, alcohol is ebbing out of my life even without me actively pursuing any form of treatment, and I'm glad because it's a really dirty and destructive high that wreaks havoc on the human body.