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Showing posts from August, 2012

A second decade in Charlottesville

A circle is completed as August comes to a close, and I mark ten full years in Charlottesville . I'm beginning a second decade here. What a long, strange trip it has been. There have been moments of joy, moments of sadness and at least one moment where a gun was pointed at me. I've met many people, have had many chapters, and in general I feel blessed to be here in this community. "You're going to make a ton of friends here," said my first wife when we moved here. We'd been in Roanoke ever since we moved back from Calgary. I liked the Star City, and was somewhat hesitant to leave because she was in the process of establishing her career there. And, I liked being a public radio journalist working for WVTF. But, I needed a job, and it was here. And so we moved here, even though she spent the first four months commuting back and forth. Our first house was up in Albemarle County on the land where the North Pointe community will one day be built

A cleaning journal

Does anyone really need their utilities bills from 2006, when they lived in another house? I'm not sure, but I've decided that things like this simply have to go. I'm sad, though, to give it up, because it's a record of a different time. I've got to find a way to let go of the past, or I have no hope of making it to the future in style. So, I'm going now to find a box that I can put this all in so I can recycle them. I used to recycle back in 2006. I was religious about it. Now, everything goes in the trash can.  Well, not everything.  I don't want to lose the paperwork from when my children were born. That's a very important paper trail indeed. The hospital were they born doesn't exist anymore. It moved and then was purchased by another hospital, so it can't possibly be seen as the same thing. So, I'll hang on to that. I'm also not sure if I want to get rid of my car insurance payments, which date back 10 years, wh

When it comes home to roost

Here's what happens. I'll be having a somewhat good time. In these moments, I feel positive and I feel so excited and happy to be alive. Then someone will mention something about something I don't like to think about but can't escape. This triggers a switch.  I have a sudden sensation that gravity has been modified. All of the good cheer is being sucked away from me. I'm left with nothing but all of my negativity. Suddenly I don't remember what it like to feel good and my mind just repeats all of the negative thoughts. During my birthday week, I was able to keep these feelings at bay. But now that time is receding and I'm a little worried I won't have another sustained period of good feeling for a while. This is when I have to have faith that things will get better. This is when I have to fight myself the most. This is when I have to fight my past and try to move on. But, dear reader, it's so hard. I view my life as one big game of

At 39, a hope for courage

This is that time of the year where my human programming has me looking back at my life because I have grown another metaphorical ring. Another year down, another year to look up at the stars. I shall take pause for the next few minutes to reflect on what happened, what didn't happen, and what might happen as the next 365 days unfold. I am most interested at this moment in just being in this moment. I want to realize that I made it here. I made choices that carved out this existence I'm now in. I want to make sure the choices that come in the next little while are the right ones. A lifetime has taught me to be more cautious, yet I still make poor decisions from time to time. I don't make others one quick enough. This 39th year shall be one of paring back a little, and concentrating on what's most important to me. I want to find a pathway to being more courageous and more bold about the things that matter to me. At the moment I am deciding to invest some time i

Before what happens to Curiosity

I've decided to stay up to see what happens to Curiosity. We may not know what happens until later on in the week, but I want to appreciate a little about why this country is spending $2.5 billion to land a rover onto the surface of Mars. So, of course I'll stay up a little while, even though I'm a bit tired. As I type this, I'm reading up on Curiosity on Wikipedia . I'm learning about how the mission was put together, how it was named, how it launched. I'm planning on watching the NASA telecast, and maybe listen to some of the Radiolab show that's going on. I'm talking to one of my roommates from Virginia Tech. He's staying up as well, I believe. His father has been involved in solar system exploration for decades. We're talking in Facebook chat about what other missions are coming up after Curiosity. As near as we can tell, there are only two major planetary expeditions en route to their destination. New Horizons should make it to Plut

Weddings

On this first Sunday of August, I begin typing under the cloud of severe exhaustion. I worked a wedding yesterday from 4 to 1. This involves a lot of walking. During the day, I'd decided to go for a two-hour bike ride because I didn't want to sit around waiting for work to begin. Yesterday was the first Saturday I had to work since June 30. Ever since I left Court Square Tavern, I decided to pursue catering as opposed to working at a restaurant. In theory, that would give me time to spend however I see fit. The experience has been interesting in a way. I'd not been to a wedding since my first in 2001. There are many reasons for this but I'm not sure how many of them are actually worth pondering as I type these particular sentences. It's more important to note that I just don't know much about how weddings work. Well, now I've been to six of them and each of them has been a rewarding experience in its own way. Yesterday was a marriage between an America

Overcoming hatred

The national appreciation day for Chik-Fil-A's stance on gay marriage has prompted me to do something I do not do as a journalist. I'm going to tell you what I think.  This is a matter that I'm personally affected by, and a matter that has been on my mind very much for the past three and a half years. I may have alluded to it in my writing here, but I've never directly addressed it until now.  My second marriage ended in part because my ex-wife finally had the courage and support of a community to become who she really is -- a woman who loves another woman. I watched them falling in love in slow motion. This is not a post where I will talk about that in detail. But, when the end came, I felt a tremendous sense of loss and pain. At times, the sorrow pushed me in a negative direction. I felt waves and waves of anger. Sometimes I rode these waves of anger. At times, I approached hatred.  I don't think I ever fully went to hatred, but I could see wh

Daybreak of August

Last night I finished watching Battlestar Galactica for the second time. The first time I'd watched it was in the initial months following the end of my marriage. Without going into the details of the show, I'll just say that the final season is heart-wrenching. There's a lot of death, a lot of despair, and at times it feels that the word "hope" has been erased from the dictionary. I began rewatching the final season about two months ago. This coincides with what has been a pretty rotten time in my mind as I fight off another bout of depression tinged with anxiety over my future. Well, enough. I don't want to wallow in those details. I want to stay positive and not give in to the poisonous thoughts in my mind that seek to skew me towards the negative. I get to choose how I want to be. I don't understand the forces that seek to pull me down, but I am hopeful that I can use them to sail to new shores. So, this month I will be reflecting on this, and