January 5, 2021

Perceived Insignifcance

It’s weird the things you remember. For me there are moments that, while they were occurring, didn’t seem like anything significant but in fact were. I’d even go so far to say, life altering. It was as if my brain operates on an entirely different wavelength and knows, without letting me know, that this is something worth retaining.

I vividly remember the day I met the man who would one day be my husband. I mean down to the tiniest of details. Yet, I don’t know what was so significant for me, because initially the only reason I was meeting with him was as a quick fuck. He was exceptionally desireable at the time because the man who had just dumped me was super into him, but because that guy was the polar opposite of my husband’s type he never gave my ex the time of day. I had decided (being ever the truest scorpio) to meet with my soon to be husband for a quick fling as an insult to my, then, most recent relationship.

As it turned out we didn’t even do anything sexual. All we did was kiss and I left that night (abosolutely convinced) that I would never see him again. This is why I find it odd that I even retained any of the pertinent details of the story. For all I had assumed, it was over. So why take the time to commit it to memory?

The same could be said about the boyfriend. Again, it was an assumed “limited moment.” Yet, despite my then belief I have held onto the details of our meeting. The same cannot be said for the countless other chance encounters. The moments were had and then they moved into the darkest parts of my memory, never to be seen again.

Is it something where we keep every memory inside of our minds and when these things begin to transform into something significant that it grows into an entirely different brain cell? Like we remember getting that coffee a week ago, but because nothing happened we just just store it in some mental drawer? But, say the barista who happened to grab and hand me my coffee turned out to be the man who would save my life, would I remember the mundane meeting?

It is probably different for everyone. Most don’t have a sharp memory that (more often than not) is observing and retaining that which they experience on an insane level. (Well, when I’m not in a mental fog from emotional trauma.) It’s odd, because every one of my home inspections, I remember. Like if I look at the photos in my workfile my brain will run a mini film in which flashes of the full inspection will play like a film.

I’d like to pretend that I am some kind wunderkinde, but I’m most likely not. My mind just tends to dwell too long on the past, the present, and the imagined future. One time someone described me as being “cerebral” and I don’t think any truer statement had (or has) ever been said to me.

January 3, 2021

Superfluous Drivel

With every new year, we all settle into what we think is a “new age” unbound from our previous life and experience. As if by the stroke of 12 we will magically jump through a portal and enter a completely different reality. The only problem is, as we jump into this new time, our ankles are tethered to the past and we bring with us the same bullshit and baggage that had previously plagued us. We attempt to change this by making resolutions, as if these statements of absolute change will be keys to unbind us from the shackles of the past. It’s the optimistic spirit of humanity, I suppose. We want to believe in abrupt and resolute transformation.

As I stare down into the valley of a new dawn, I know that it will be much of the same as before. Only that the landscape is entirely different and it will be far worse. My life isn’t really on any path to a brighter tomorrow. The one I tread is only taking me further into the darkest of woods, in which I will discover who I truly am, through tests of emotional fortitude.

Like the title of this blog says, these posts are the entries of the journal of a jaded josh. I am not here to offer any real optimism. If I alluded to that I sold you false hope. I will try to bring some light into the darkness of the woods I journey to and through, but for the most part it will always be an unaltered, unfiltered view.

I write all of this as a mental exercise for my “writer skills,” the abilities and “talent” that have long languished in my apathy. I have goals and aspirations to one day be published. And I very well can’t get there unless I fucking write something. Want and action are not the same, as much as I want them to be. And despite my jaded perspective, I am still human and therefore an optimist. I enter into this with the same hope as all the others.

Despite knowing that there should only be one, I have two New Year’s resolutions. The first is for my health, even though I secretly wish for my own death most days. However, the thing in which I want to stop isn’t going to be a quick trigger. It will most likely be a long and painful demise, as “god” likes to bestow upon those in my life. Therefore I am going to stop smoking. My last cigarette was on December 30th. I knew that if I even purchased a pack on the 31st I would drag this bullshit into a New Year. So I started this one a little early. So far… It has been successful, as most of my previous attempts have been. Well… that is until I broke beneath the weight of my emotional turmoil and decided to purchase a pack of smokes.

The second was hinted at earlier and (I’m sure) has since been guessed: I want to write more. Initially, I had this grand scheme of writing every single day from a book of writing prompts that “Writer’s Digest” had provided me, after purchasing a subscription. I had attempted such an endevour in the past, however by day 3 (or 4) it petered out and I was left feeling defeated. In an effort to stop anymore feelings of failure (of which I feel daily, regardless) I decided to simplify my task. By committing to “write more” I give nothing to measure my efforts, but a general benchmark that was better than last year, and that is somewhat measureable through blog posts and stats provided to me through wordpress. And that’s the best I can hope for.

To help facilitate my goals, I’ve decided to set aside the hour between 10 and 11 P.M. to tapping out some kind of bullshit for public perusal. Or I might even finish my fucking novel, which has sat unpolished for 11 years now. It’d be ironic if I completed my edits by year 12. (Twelve is my lucky number for those not in the know.)

So even though this new terrain looks ever more terrifying than the one I leave behind, I continue on this “new path” just as jaded, but with a glimmer of hope. I want to switch the addiction of puffing on a cigarette to punching these tiny keys. There is no shortage of keyboards to achieve my goal. I carry one in my very pocket. Letter by letter I can possibly piece together a better future for myself, and wind up more skilled than last year. And maybe through the written word I can handle the emotional turmoil that I am most certianly going to see in this coming year.

December 30, 2020

Donning a Tin-Foil Hat

Conspiracy theories are easy to believe because they give one the sense of explanation in a situation where there seems like no logical reason for what has occurred. Most are not sounds arguments but they give the believer meaning. I for one am easily susceptible to such wild takes and in knowing that, when I hear such wild reasonings, I tread with caution and asks lots of questions. However if they’re concocted in my own head is another thing entirely.

In the span of a year a slough of neurological disorders have befallen my family. My mother with her Alzheimer’s and my husband with his ALS. My father, prior to his passing, was showing signs of a similar diagnosis to my husband’s, however we never got any concrete tests. He had difficulty getting his legs to move and it was because of that that he fell and hit his head, killing him. His walking had been problematic prior to this though, which we had discovered it was built up fluid on his brain. That had been remedied by a shunt that drained the water into his stomach.

Seeing as how all this happened in such a short time makes me wonder if we had all come into contact with something poisonous enough to initiate all of this. If not, then this is all some highly coincidental shit.

My husband tries to quell the crazy by offering me reason. He wants to know if they’re all affected, why not me? Good question. Maybe it just hasn’t become readily apparent.

I keep searching for answers of when we were all together for this to happen. For a year we had lived with my parents in 2010, while the hubs and I built up enough cash to buy a house. After that the only other time was when we took a trip to Lake Tahoe. It is there that my mind makes a connection, but where we would have been “exposed” is unknown.

Logically I understand that I am just searching for reason in all this chaos. Deep down I know that life is cruel and there is no meaning to what happens. Sometimes things just work like that. I jokingly opine that “life shops at Costco” and we’re going through a jar of pickled herring. (I say that cause that sounds disgusting to me.)

That’s the alluring factor of conspiracy theories, they’re such easy answers for odd questions. And they’re hardly ever reasoned down, especially when the believer believes so strongly because it’s the only explanation for such depressing circumstances.

December 26, 2020

Superstition and Doubt Don’t Help the Writer Out

It’s amazing the things we believe, the stories we tell ourselves to justify our own shortcomings. As a writer (and I am being generous here) I hold this deeply held belief that where I sit to pound out some prose, dictates the quality of my writing. In the end it’s my own ability that gets me through what I’m writing. However if I have this perceived belief that it sucks or it didn’t come as easy it was all because I was sitting in the wrong place, or listening to the wrong music, or I didn’t have the correct amount of silence… It’s all nonsense. They’re just the mental gymnastics of my insecurity.

I’m sitting now in the very room and position where I previously typed countless on-line blogs and where I composed and compiled a “book” in my high school days. In this spot was where I had drafted some of my most memorable work. Even as I type this now, I know that this sentiment is bullshit. Since then I have written many other pieces that (in the moment) I had loved or perceived as brilliant, only to later deem it garbage at a later reading. And I also can’t help but notice, as I type this, that the words do also seem to flow a little more easily than previous. Coincidence, I’m sure.

My passion for writing has been rekindled this Christmas by two very “writer specific” gifts. My mother in law gave me a blank check to copyright my near-finished novel and my husband gave me a typewriter that’s almost 100 years old, and still works. Well, it mostly works in that I can punch the keys and produce letters on a page, as long as they don’t contain a 1 or a “space” in between the words I choose to stitch together. Granted, the husband bought it as a decorative piece and not as a functional one. Either way, I love the gifts I received.

An ember of “wanting to be published” has been growing ever since my husband’s diagnosis. For whatever reason, I want to produce something he can see and hold. And despite the story being about someone else entirely, I want to dedicate it to him. Even though he has been, simultaneously, my biggest supporter and my second loudest naysayer. I don’t think he ever doubted my ability to write, it was just my dedication to following through with my own goal. I like to pretend he was using this negativity to drive myself to “prove him wrong” and actually produce my novel. He just didn’t realize how insecure I am about my “talent” and how quickly I acquiesce to my self-doubt.

As these embers have started to catch, I wanted to see if it even mattered that I took my old spot in my mother’s living room, my back to the front door, clacking away on the keyboard. Does my talent or ability to write hinge on where I place myself, or is it all in my head.

If you were waiting for some sort of answer, you will find none. Because, as I have learned time and time again, it is all relative. It all depends on what I tell myself, and choose to believe, in that moment.