A drunk pretends that he can change

Here's how drunk I've been: I recently thought about blogging for the first time, but it wasn't the first time. I started this blog maybe eight years ago, around 2010, but completely forgot about it. I began my first post back then and never published it until today, the fifth of November, 2018. I forgot a lot of things in my haze. I don't even remember what the title of that post was supposed to mean. Time to close what gap? Writing I guess, which I used to be able to do.

Matrimony didn't happen as I had predicted in that first post, thankfully. It might have been drinking that brought that relationship down, and if so, I'm glad I had whiskey on my side. At times it has saved my ass. Like Mojo Nixon used to say: "Why do I drink? To take away the pain of living." That's the trouble I've had with it. I genuinely believe that it actually saved my life. Maybe that's why I never let go of it until yesterday, but that probably won't last. I'm trying. I've got to find success, because now it hurts more than it helps.

Obviously it changes people, but I haven't wanted to admit that for at least 18 years, maybe a lot longer. I don't want to dwell on that now, though. I'm in an entirely different place, space and frame of mind. I once had a powerful brain in my head, and I want it back.

The different place is Albuquerque, New Mexico, and what brought me here was discontent. I left behind that career as a telephone cable splicer because it bored me to death and because I was surrounded by complainers. Long story short, the company paid for my education (a union benefit), I got it and left them. I am now a soil scientist who must master that discipline along with botany, geology, climate, and ecology. An f-ing scientist. Sometimes I can't believe it, but I'm here. I've got a long way to go to legitimately lay claim to that professional label, but it is indeed my job title, and I'm going to own it.

The different space is maybe not so different. It's actually quite familiar. I'm at the bottom looking up, and I feel like I've been here, off and on, for years. But something is different now. I don't know what, though. All I know is that I'll blow it if I don't change. And I guess that's the different frame of mind. Here in my mid-50s I've got the opportunities of a young person with a new career in a new town. A good old-fashioned American second chance. Now to overcome the forces that seem whiskey-bent and hell-bound to hold me back. It's not just the bottle, but tonight, at least, I'll go to bed completely sober for the first time in a long time.

Time to close the gap

It's been almost 12 years, an eventful span, since I really did what was then called keeping a journal.  Back then we did it in private, not really knowing if anyone would ever read of our apprehensions, dreams and trials.  Now it's called blogging and although I wrote down thoughts (in a notebook) through the dark years of 2001 through maybe 2007, that dismal perspective has passed.  Things are good and life is way different than it was when I wrote of my travels across half the country back in October of 1999, back in the 20th Century.  That was when I made my journey to Phoenix where I still live and work. 

I came here to make money, to make $2500 a week, but that didn't happen.  I also came here married, but that lasted only another year or so.  And I came here ignorant of my own inclination to insanity, but I'm at least a little bit aware of that today.  The matrimonial status will likely change soon.  That would be because I'm fortunate to have a lovely woman in my life named Gina, my little SweetPea.

So I spend my days at work for Qwest soon to be CenturyLink watching Mexican guys dig holes in the ground so I can then jump into the holes and create splices on the telephone cables.  It's the kind of stuff we did when I lived in Hawaii in the late 90s, only there it was mostly aerial work up on telephone poles, a much more pleasant environment to me.  I am tired beyond words of hunching over wires in a dusty, hot hole in the ground, especially when it is 115 degrees like is called for today.  May something change soon.  Hold on, I'll be right back...gotta jump in the pit since our cable just arrived...........