Temporal Alchemist

 Space.

It's less the final frontier and more the unattainable aspect of life when you spend your weekends solo parenting. Space: The Unattainable Frontier. I have, again, felt pressed for time and unfit to do anything about it. Therefore, I have determined that I must develop a new invention, "A Temporal Alchemy Machine." The Temporal Alchemy Machine will create time where there is no time. It will help the average person work one, two or three extra jobs, whatever they might need to solidify a more substantial and supportive income. It will allow people to produce more stable and beneficial relationships with their loved ones. It will allow you to play those games with your children while STILL finishing that very important contract with the extremely necessary client. You, yes you, will become harder, better, faster AND stronger.

In all seriousness though. I am struggling to find the time to do the things that I need to do and as my therapist has suggested, I've begun to steal time from elsewhere in order to do the things that I need to do to function. It just never occurred to me that some of the things that I do creatively are actually things that I "need" to do. However, how does one do any of the creative things that they want or yes, need, to do with a a conjoined four or seven year old....... I put no question mark there because it is 100% rhetorical. 

Since my wife and I split up nearly a year ago, my weekends have been almost entirely devoted to the needs of my children but I still manage to create here and there around the edges. But am I stealing time? Should I actually be focused on the entertainment and development of my children at all times? Is this like a dance that some people are just better at because they’ve worked on the muscle memory? I rather suspect that is the case. 

At any rate, here I sit. I need to make an extra $200 this weekend to make the check for preschool clear. It’s been a thing. Always borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. I have two commissions on my table that if I could finish them would make it, but the kids won’t let me get a minute in edge wise this week. Grant me strength, friends. 

Carry the Zero

 I’ve been carrying the sad for so long I don’t know if I exist without it. I can’t separate myself from it because it has become so intrinsically a fiber of my being that it is sometimes the only thing that feels true. For years I’ve looked to others to fix this: to hide in their joy, to mistake their happiness with my deeds as my own happiness. 

But I struggle. And I realize that we all struggle, but I struggle to maintain a sense of caring. I do often paint myself the victim in my story because I overreact to others criticism. I view their displeasure as my short coming but then blame the situation on them and talk about these people and their horrible ways as a way to exonerate myself from my own inner sense of justice. It’s no way to live. I don’t suggest it. 

I’ve read a children’s book over and over to my daughter: Zen Shorts. Stillwater, a panda who has moved in next door teaches a young family of morals and mindful thinking through parables, the author explores giving, good and bad luck and carrying negativity. They are such simple tales and they make so much sense, but only a priori, at least for me. I tend to complicate. 

So I sit here in this hot bath, after bedtime went so well, then so poorly and then came to a screeching halt. My sinuses are achy and stuffed, my body tired from another week of giving and seldom taking. And when I do, feeling guilty about it. 

I don’t feel built for what I’m doing. But like Alan Watts attempting to define Zen, I find it easier to name what I am not built for than what I am built for. 

And so I sit here attempting to carry the zero. 

There are Nights When I Think that Sal Paradise was Right

" ...Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together..."

In my last therapy session, I was assured that I just needed to focus on the next step rather than all of the steps. This advice always sounds so obvious. Did I put on pants? Did I go to work? It is so simple, but so necessary to vocalize. What do we do if we can't vocalize? What if we're all just stuck between stations?

But anyway, I didn't jump on here to be a drag today. I'm listening to the Holdsteady and painting Chipper Jones. I've nearly finished one of the documents that I needed to work on for my divorce and I swept and mopped the majority of my apartment earlier today. Oh, and I even bought myself food and swam a mile today. Hurray for randomly gifted paid days off! I went to work, but apparently I wasn't ever scheduled to begin with. And then, somewhere in the middle of writing all of this I felt overwhelmed with the urge to go to sleep and I took a little nap with the kitties as well. Overall, it has been a pretty good day.

I am very pleased with how this Chipper Jones is coming out. Here's a little sneak peak for your peepers.

I'm hoping to get this guy finished up tonight and out the door tomorrow. Remember, times are tough, half of my paycheck goes to the ex during the summer. If you want a piece hit me up.

It's Really Good to see you Once Again

 It's difficult to pinpoint the myriad emotions that I've felt the past several months, but easy to notice when things are going well. I feel a bit like I am trying to find my Inuit-like 52 different words to describe depression, or even my very own Hawaiian "ho'oponopono," that's "I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you" for the uninitiated.

Today I resolved to return to my daily drawings. I had started the year doing a painting of my wife every day, but come February break that was no longer a possibility as we were working very hard to not be husband and wife any more. I was depressed by this. I quit doing the daily drawings, a practice which I had conducted for five plus years, even through graduate school and pneumonia. The crushing realization that you are not wanted does funny things to the creative spirit, however. I wasn't strong enough to work through it.

But today I returned to the 2020 daily drawing, my house plants, which have never left me and always remained steadfast to my side. It was lovely to return and it meant a lot to my wounded soul.

It felt fitting to begin with the bonsai tree which my friend Katie gifted me. I had proclaimed to myself that I would get a bonsai tree as a housewarming gift for myself once I was settled in this apartment by myself but I had not done so. So when I was in Rhode Island, my friend picked up this little friend for me. It's perfect and I love it.

Today was a good day. I traveled to Searsport and brought my son home. I missed him. For all of his attitude and vulgarities I love him so much, and I know that he loves me the same. We are just muddling our way through these tribulations and the closer that I seem to hold him, the less troubled he seems. He needs me and I need him. I need Katie. I need whoever is reading this. I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you"

Lend me Your Ear

"It was me against the world, I was sure that I'd win, but the world fought back and punished me for my sins." ~ Mike Ness "I Was Wrong"

This song was my mantra before I ever understood what it was to have a relationship devolve because of self destruction. Granted, I had been tuning myself up for the fight with myself ever since I was a wee lad, but I didn't fully understand the pain and anguish in this song until about a decade ago, and here I am again, perhaps a little bit wiser, but still making some of the same mistakes.

That said, the line that rings out louder than any other in the punk anthem is "how can you love when you don't love yourself?" I'm not going to say that my self loathing is at its peak. Far from it. I find time for myself when I can. I make fairly methodical decisions to place in line to be doing the things that I want to be doing with the people that I want to be doing them with at roughly the time that I would like to do whatever that activity may be. That all said though, I still struggle, because the last person that I am willing to take into account when people are asking me to do things is myself. And now, in a situation where I am providing child support and child care I find myself in a position where I am truly not sure that I will have enough in the bank next week to pay my rent. I am just having such a hard time saying no, but I don't have the actual funds to back it up. I don't know why I can't consider my own self-preservation just a bit better in that instance, but I'm not sure that the why truly matters. I have a sincere need to figure out how to move past that inclination and take care of myself. 

Today I went into a complete tailspin. I was feeling awful and then my daughter broke my glasses and I completely lost it. I was done. I didn't want to be a parent and I didn't want to hang out with my kids and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and avoid existence. Everything felt so overwhelming and so unnecessary. Fast forward to now, 11 pm, roughly 4 hours later. I've picked up and sorted the majority of the kid's room, picked up my room/living room as well as can be achieved this evening and am starting to feel a little more settled. I reached out to my colleague who I am attempting to take the last course from that I need for my certification as Applied STEM teacher. I am behind in her class. I signed up for this fall semester and asked whether I should take the fall class or keep working on it this summer and plan on taking an incomplete. My schedule will still be relatively full come fall too after all.

That felt like a sincere weight off my shoulders. It doesn't solve everything. I still need to finish that coursework, but I feel a bit more in control. Now maybe I can focus on finishing some artwork so that maybe I can pay that rent thing. You know, roofs and heads, that sort of thing. 

Rocket From The Crypt - Circa Now! - Swami 125 (2004)

The one good thing about feeling like you are at complete rock bottom? I feel creative. I feel like making. Even my instagram post earlier had me thinking creatively. Silver linings, people. Anyway, this ditch digger should get to bed so I can get up super early.

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

I have been thinking about freedom. When I speak with my therapist about freedom, he quotes Viktor Frankl, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." I think about this theory which was developed during Frankl's time in a Nazi Prison Camp, Thich Naht Hahn's philosophies developed during a genocide in Vietnam or even the power and soul of Black music from the Southern United States particularly in the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries.

The stimulus in all of these situations was at its most intense. As in one must give in to their situation and choose to live. It's a serious Andy Dufresne mentality, no? "Get busy living or get busy dying." 

The reason I've been thinking on freedom has less to do with suddenly feeling myself alone and more do with this feeling that it doesn't matter so much that I am alone. My best friend lives by herself. She's like the coolest and most self sufficient cat I think I've ever met. She just has my complete respect. She owns a little house with a big yard, is in graduate school and teaches full time. I spent a couple days with her this week and while I had already been valuing a sense of comfort in my own skin, I found myself longing for more time to myself.

Perhaps this is a phase in divorce. To be sure I've taken some interest in seeing who is out there. I've done my fair share of swiping right, but I'm not expecting much out of it and honestly my ideal would be to go have a nice dinner and some drinks and not worry about "it going anywhere." The best part of hanging out with my friend this week, was the moment when I was painting in her yard, looking at birds and sitting quietly sipping on coffee with her five feet from me in her own chair doing her own thing. I'm finally reaching that sense of self comfort where I can just be around the people that I appreciate without having to uncomfortably filling the air with nonsense. Inevitably women that I end up dating have been subjected to this garbage and I would just like to offer a heartfelt apology to your ears. It's nice to find myself settling into my skin.

But here I digress again.

I can't get over the way that the lights in my apartment on Gilman Street attacked me in the early 2010s, the way that the dark seemed to creep in through the windows and strangle me. Loneliness was only drowned when my friends started pouring me five fingers worth glasses of Makers. I could never seem to quiet the tensions in my head. I don't know if it is having kids or if it is a sense of heading in the right direction, but I do not feel this now. I do not feel alone most nights. I am depressed, but I don't mind dwelling in it. I know that my reactions are due to depression and even that awareness seems to help ever so slightly. Or maybe the depression itself is its own collection of stimuli.

I've felt obsessed with Elliott Smith today and the strange thing is that I no longer must feel depressed to listen. I can certainly 'feel' some of his messages as I always have but I don't feel controlled by that perspective right now. "Between the Bars" in particularly has been hitting me, both because of the high raw chorus, but because of the lyrics..."People you've been before, that you don't want around anymore, they push and they shove and won't bend to your will...." I am hearing this line with a hope that I've never felt before. I have definitely been a number of versions of myself that I no longer want to be around and that is completely okay.

But anyway, freedom... The space between stimulus and reaction. It's like that sense of approaching a limit. I'm not sure that I am really getting that close to it, but at the same time I can legitimately feel the gap between impetus and response widening. The kids, the kids push those buttons more than anyone else can, and yet they are also the two people on the planet that I find that I love unconditionally. I'm not sure that I can hold off on reacting long enough with them though. I come up short with them even as they are the people that I WANT to come up short with the least. 

What's one to do?

So Far Away

I have come to an impasse it seems. With only one class remaining to achieve my certification, one summer of hustling until I am on a more financially rewarding contract, and only two more months until the kids begin a regularly scheduled schooling, which, no doubt will improve their outlooks on life and general behavior, I find myself hitting a wall.

I am struggling to get my homework done on time in my programming class. More importantly, I find myself having little interest in doing the work anymore. I have been going to school while working full time since the Fall of 2018, and it would appear that I have reached my limit. While interested in the material, I do not care about finishing all of the material. Toss in some allergies and having the kids nearly every moment that I have to myself and that's it. There goes any motivation that I may have started the day with.

Additionally, I need to put in a requisition request for my new position. This is the first time that I have ever had to put a budget together for a job and I must say that I have trouble even beginning to figure out what I need to do. There is so much leftover stuff from the previous instructor, but I cannot begin to guess what works and what does not work at this point. And alas, but the janitorial staff has been using the classroom as a catchall throughout this entire school year too, so I can't even begin to get to the stuff to assess what I have or may need.

Basically, it's a lot of work to be done, but I'm looking forward to the job coming up.

Of late I've wanted to spend more and more time on my porch. It's really nice to have a porch after all of these years living in an apartment building. I've taken to using watercolors while I'm out there as I have a small tree line that I am really excited about. This has gotten me into doing small watercolors when I take the kids to the playground and such as well. It's a good thing, I think. The portable A Gallo Colors kit has proven to be just the ticket for that.

But even granting myself tiny reprieves, I still find myself having so much trouble with my kids. Today, I spent 30-45 minutes arguing with my daughter trying to get her into her car seat after we went to the grocery store. I was already frustrated because I canceled having someone come to watch the kids so that I could go in to work and put together my requisition requests, but the timeline was destroyed from the get go today.

I just can't seem to keep all three of us happy at once. It is such a struggle. I know that we'll hit our stride at some point but it seems so very far away right now. Send good thoughts.