The Lay of the Land

I've tried blogging in the past, and found it too impersonal for my tastes. I found myself being too conscious of what I wrote, trying to impress with noble notions, controversial ideas, and glitery wordsmithery to attract devotees and carve some sort of niche for myself as a writer. At times, I acted in fear of exposure, choosing not to write about something that truly moved me, for fear of politially-correct labels, sometimes even of physical retaliation by some cyberstalker or other. My personal pen-and-paper journal was my safe-haven from everything, and I am saddened to bid it a proverbial good-bye, but this now is my only real option, as the act of handwriting is now not only difficult, but painful. And, thus, we begin.

I am half-way through my thirty-eighth year. I attended university to become a professional musician, a path that began while I was still in the sixth grade and began earning money as a double bassist in the local community orchestra. I stayed at university until I had earned a bachelor of music in theory and composition and a master of music in performnce. I worked nearly every day during the orchestra season, which was september through June with a few local musicals and summer pops thrown in here and there, and made enough for myself to survive modertely. I had entertained notions of relocating somewhere in Europe, where a middle-income life in the arts is a doable reality, rather than here in the United States, where one either starves (without the Bohemian charm and romance attatched) or has too much money for any sane person to know how to handle properly. I gave those up when I met and married my wife and we began a family. Some had suggested that traipsing across Europe may have been a great way for my children to grow up, but I saw it more as a burden to my family. The die was cast once a personal manager for one of the orchestras with which I performed suggested that my new family was interfering with my musical career. Perhaps, to a measure, they were, but that was my call, not theirs. I left music entirely and embarked on to 'normal life.'

I was able, at fist, to still work close to the arts, first as an inventory clerk in a music store and then as a stringed instrument repair technician in the same store. That fell apart when I turned thrity; apparently the work they had assigned me was supposed to last forever, not just two and a half years. I left for a breif stint in furniture sales. That path was interupted by the birth of my third (and final) child. He was born with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia which had escaped the ob/gyn's attention for the previous thrity weeks. My family and I essentially relocated to the Ronald McDonald House near the C.S.Mott Childrens' Hospital on the campus of the University of Michigan for roughly six weeks. He spent another three weeks in the hospital once we returned home to complete his surgeries, a stay made more lengthy by the e-coli he contracted from the surgical tubing that ran from IV bags to various injection sites and a Broviac line implanted into a leg artery. I was unable to return to furniture sales after that, despite having shown some promise. I was simply unable to feel any empathy for people who had to wait an extra day or two for their custom-order sofa after I had watched my newborn son expire several times in a pediatric intensive care unit only to be revived to carry on the struggle without so much as a whimper or cry during the etire ordeal.

I left the furniture store and have been in retail management ever since. I've managed two gas-stations, a Goodwill store, and now I'm with Foot Locker. Truth be told, I hate it. It's dfficult for me, knowing what I and my family have been through, the sacrifices we have made, to try and fuel the sort of blind, greedy consumerism we are told this economy needs so badly. It is difficult to mange a staff where the next oldest member is still seventeen years younger than I, still lives at home, and has no real responsibilities other than his own indulgence. As it may or may not have become evident, I am definitely left-of-center politically. I have been investigating socialist parties of one vein or another for some time, and although I have not yet made any commitments, I have determined that, at least for me and those for whom I care, the free-market and capitalism are wrong, providing sustenance and freedom only for those who find new ways to exploit and oppress.

I have recently had some health problems, which makes the approach of the dread age Forty that much more ominous. I have had difficulty with kidney stones since I was twenty-three, and now have developed a clotting disorder that prevents me from having the meniscal arthroscopy I need on my right knee. I have developed bursitis in the left knee, and both now have full-fledged arthritis. The overall unifying diagnosis I have been given is multiple endochrine neoplasia (MEN1), which, I am told, does not automaticly lead to cancer, but does make the risk of endochrine cancer more substantial. No one has really said anything at work, beyond my district manager offering me FMLA or short-term disability (which I am still considering), but I have a feeling that seeing me walk about the store with a cane gives them some sort of derisive jolly. The cane, or some other effect of my disorder, has also left the ring finger and pinky of my right hand almost completely numb and useless, hence n more handwriting a journal.

I've tried a few things to fend off the beginnings of midle-age. I made a MySpace page, which I recently cancelled. The whole format made me feel like a very old fish in a very young pond. Plus, to be fair, I made the mistake of adding most of my employees as freinds and learned far more than I ever wanted to know about all of them. I also joined Facebook, and have stuck with that one. It seems more geared to those not as interested in impressing others with juvenile antics and statements. I've tried to update my 'look' (after all, I manage a Foot Locker), but it made me seem like some of the middle-agers wandering the mall where I work, their ball caps backwards on top of wrinkled brows and over receding hairlines, their basetball jersey tops flowing against skin as tanned and weathered as saddle leather. If I cannot retain my youth, I can retain what's left of my dignity.

So here we are. Forty has been showing its ugly head just over the horizon, I have a rare endochrine disorder that provokes more questions than answers, I can't tolerate my career, and yet I'm a little on in years to embark on a new one. I find myself questioning everything from religion to politics, from going back to school to continuing head on and fast into retirement, every value and scruple I have ever held dear. The land is bumpy, the knees are shakey, but there's still so long to go. These posts, pages, whatever you wish to call them, will serve as my compass and map. If they help someone else out as a guidepost, so be it. If they give a chuckle to a younger reader, perhaps that's just as well. Make sure, though, before you laugh, you have the balls to make the trip.